parts of a tune

 .

One old man keeps humming the same few notes
of some song he thought he had forgotten
back in the days when as he knows there was
no word for life in the language 

and if they wanted to say eyes or heart
they would hold up a leaf and he remembers

the big tree where it rose from the dry ground
and the way the birds carried water in their voice

they were all the color of their fear of the dark
and as he sits there humming he remembers
some of the words they come back to him now
he smiles hearing them come and go


–W. S. Merwin

The Shadow of Sirius

.

the physics of beauty

.

The physics of beauty requires math. The sunflower has spirals of 21, 34, 55, 89, and - in very large sunflowers - 144 seeds. Each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers. This pattern seems to be everywhere: in pine needles and mollusk shells, in parrot beaks and spiral galaxies. After the fourteenth number, every number divided by the next highest number results in a sum that is the length-to-width ratio of what we call the golden mean, the basis for the Egyptian pyramids and the Greek Parthenon, for much of our art and even our music. In our own spiral-shaped inner ear’s cochlea, musical notes vibrate at a similar ratio.

The patterns of beauty repeat themselves, over and over. Yet the physics of beauty is enhanced by a self, a unique, self-organizing system. Scientists now know that a single flower is more responsive, more individual, than they had ever dreamed. Plants react to the world. Plants have ways of seeing, touching, tasting, smelling, and hearing.

Rooted in soil, a flower is always on the move. Sunflowers are famous for turning toward the sun, east in the morning, west in the afternoon. Light-sensitive cells in the stem “see” sunlight, and the stem’s growth orients the flower. Certain cells in a plant see the red end of the spectrum. Other cells see blue and green. Plants even see wavelengths we cannot see, such as ultraviolet.

Most plants respond to touch. The Venus’s-flytrap snaps shut. Stroking the tendril of a climbing pea will cause it to coil. Brushed by the wind, a seedling will thicken and shorten its growth. Touching a plant in various ways, at various times, can cause it to close its leaf pores, delay flower reproduction, increase metabolism, or produce more chlorophyll.

Plants are touchy-feely. They taste the world around them. Sunflowers use their roots to “taste” the surrounding soil as they search for nutrients. The roots of a sunflower can reach down eight feet, nibbling, evaluating, growing toward the best sources of food. The leaves of some plants can taste a caterpillar’s saliva. They “sniff” the compounds sent out by nearby damaged plants. Research suggests that some seeds taste or smell smoke, which triggers germination.

The right sound wave may also trigger germination. Sunflowers, like pea plants, seem to increase their growth when they hear sounds similar to but louder than the human speaking voice.

In other ways, flowers and pollinators find each other through sound.
A tropical vine, pollinated by bats, uses a concave petal to reflect the bat’s sonar signal. 

The bat calls to the flower. The flower responds.


–Sharman Apt Russell
Anatomy of A Rose: Exploring the Secret Life of Flowers

.
Dr. Bohumil Kröhn photo, 1937/38
.

5 percent

.

... We perceive only a negligible portion of the vibrating ocean in which we are immersed.

We fail to detect the infrared and the ultraviolet, infrasound and ultrasound, and in general the very high and very low frequencies; we can’t even detect the X rays, gamma rays, radioactivity, and cosmic rays, which all still affect our bodies. And so many frequencies are still unknown.

The senses are therefore incomplete; our neural circuits can’t process the majority of inputs in order to translate them into images. According to some, our senses comprehend only 5 percent of the signals from the world, which means that we miss 95 percent of our environment.


–Citro Massimo, M.D.
The Basic Code of the Universe:
The Science of the Invisible in Physics, Medicine, and Spirituality

.

the key

.

What is the key
To untie the knot of your mind’s suffering?

What

Is the esoteric secret

To slay the crazed one whom each of us

Did wed

And who can ruin

Our heart’s and eye’s exquisite tender

Landscape?

Hafiz has found

Two emerald words that

Restored

Me

That I now cling to as I would sacred

Tresses of my Beloved’s 

Hair:

Act great.

My dear, always act great.

What is the key

To untie the knot of the mind’s suffering?

Benevolent thought, sound

And movement.


–Hafiz

.

Ubuntu (oo-boon-too, n.) means, “I am because we are."

.

 Ubuntu is a Zulu or Xhosa word, and a traditional African concept.
It’s a term for humaneness, for caring, sharing and being in harmony with all of creation.

.
thingsthatsing
.

Of the Surface of Things, excerpt

.

In my room, the world is beyond my understanding;

But when I walk I see that it consists of three or four
hills and a cloud.


—Wallace Stevens

.

like this

 
.

As stars, a lamp, a fault of vision,
 

As dewdrops or a bubble,

A dream, a lightning flash, a cloud,
 

So one should see conditioned things.


–Diamond Sutra

.
buffleheadcabin
.

witness

.

Sometimes the mountain
is hidden from me in veils
of cloud, sometimes
I am hidden from the mountain
in veils of inattention, apathy, fatigue,
when I forget or refuse to go
down to the shore or a few yards
up the road, on a clear day,
to reconfirm
that witnessing presence.


–Denise Levertov

.

that Unchanging thing

.

The things that change are not our real life.

Within us there is another body, another beauty.

It belongs to that ray of Light which never changes.

We must discover how to mingle with It and become one

with that Unchanging thing.

We must realize and understand this treasure of Truth.

That is why we have come to the world.

Within your heart, in a space no bigger than an atom,

God has placed the 18,000 universes.


–M. R. Muhaiyaddeen

.

A so-called Brocken Spectre as seen in the Tatra mountains in Zakopane, Poland. A Brocken Spectre is a rare optic phenomenon that can be observed in mountains when an observer standing on higher altitude can see his own shadow cast onto a cloud at a lower altitude below him. The head of the figure is often surrounded by rings of coloured light.

–Gregorz Momot

.

First Light Edging Cirrus

.

10²⁵ molecules
are enough
to call woodthrush or apple.

A hummingbird, fewer.
A wristwatch: 10²⁴.

An alphabet's molecules,
tasting of honey, iron and salt,
cannot be counted–

as some strings, untouched,
sound when a near one is speaking.

As it was when love slipped inside us.
It looked out to face in every direction.

Then it was inside the tree, the rock, the cloud.


–Jane Hirshfield

.

from A Cloud in My Hand

سَبْعُ سنابِلَ تكفي لمائدةِ الصَيْفِ…”
سَبْعُ سَنَابِلَ بين يديَّ. وفي كل سُنْبُلَةٍ
يُنْبِتُ الحقلُ حقلاً من القمح. كانَ
أَبي يَسْحَبُ الماءَ من بئرِهِ ويقولُ
لَهُ: لا تجفَّ. ويأخذني من يَدِيْ
…لأَرى كيف أكبُرُ كالفَرْفَحِينَةِ
أَمشي على حافَّة البئر: لِيْ قَمَرانْ
واحدٌ في الأعالي
آخرُ في الماء يسبَحُ … لِيْ قمرانْ

 

.

…Seven sheaths of grain are enough for the summer table
Seven sheaths of grain in my hands. And in each grain
a wheat field makes another grow. My father
drew water from his well. Don’t dry up, he
told it. He took me by the hand
to see how I’d grow like rose moss…
I walk at the edge of the well: I have two moons
one above
and another in the water swimming… I have two moons

[…] A cloud in my hand wounds me. I don’t
want from earth more than
this earth : the scent of cardamom and hay
between my father and a horse
In my hand is a cloud that wounded me. But I
don’t want from the sun more
than an orange seed and more than
the gold that flowed from the call to prayer


—Mahmoud Darwish
Why Did You Leave the Horse Alone?
Jeffrey Sacks translation 

.
wait - what?
.

considering

.

Consider that:

• you can see less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum and hear less than 1% of the acoustic spectrum.  
• As you read this, you are traveling at 220 km/sec across the galaxy.
• 90% of the cells in your body carry their own microbial DNA and are not “you.”
• The atoms in your body are 99.9999999999999999% empty space and none of them are the ones you were born with, but they all originated in the belly of a star.
  
• Human beings have 46 chromosomes, 2 less than the common potato.
• The existence of the rainbow depends on the conical photoreceptors in your eyes; to animals without cones, the rainbow does not exist.
  
  

So you don’t just look at a rainbow, you create it. 

This is pretty amazing, especially considering that all the beautiful colors you see represent less than 1% of the electromagnetic spectrum. 

–NASA Lunar Science Institute
image: Earth, Jupiter and Venus, seen from Mars

.

pebble

.

The pebble
is a perfect creature

equal to itself
mindful of its limits  

filled exactly
with a pebbly meaning
 

with a scent that does not remind one of anything
does not frighten anything away does not arouse desire
 

its ardour and coldness
are just and full of dignity
 

I feel a heavy remorse
when I hold it in my hand
and its noble body
is permeated by false warmth
 

- Pebbles cannot be tamed -
to the end they will look at us
with a calm and very clear eye


–Zbigniew Herbert
Peter Dale Scott and Czeslaw Milosz translation

.

we have a beautiful Mother

.

We have a beautiful
Mother
Her hills
Are buffaloes
Her buffaloes
Hills.

We have a beautiful

Mother

Her oceans

Are wombs

Her wombs

Oceans.

We have a beautiful
Mother
Her teeth
The white stones
At the edge
Of the water
The summer
Grasses
Her plentiful
Hair.

We have a beautiful
Mother
Her green lap
Immense
Her brown embrace
Eternal
Her blue body
Everything we know.


–Alice Walker

.
listen here
.

your body is a divine stream

.

Your body is a divine stream,
as is your spirit.

When your two great rivers merge, one voice is found

and the earth applauds

in excitement.

Shrines are erected to those songs

the hand and heart have sung

as they serve

the world

with a love, a love

we cherish.


–St. John of the Cross

.

love sonnet, XXXIV

.

You are the daughter of the sea, oregano's first cousin.
Swimmer, your body is pure as the water;
cook, your blood is quick as the soil.
Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth.

Your eyes go out toward the water, and the waves rise;
your hands go out to the earth and the seeds swell;
you know the deep essence of water and the earth,
conjoined in you like a formula for clay.

Naiad: cut your body into turquoise pieces,
they will bloom resurrected in the kitchen.
This is how you become everything that lives.

And so at last, you sleep, in the circle of my arms
that push back the shadows so that you can rest--
vegetables, seaweed, herbs: the foam of your dreams.


–Pablo Neruda

.

Romanesque Arches

  

.

Inside the huge Romanesque church the tourists jostled 

in the half darkness, vault gaped behind vault, no complete view.
A few candle flames flickered.

An angel with no face embraced me
and whispered through my whole body:
"Don't be ashamed of being human, be proud!
Inside you vault opens behind vault endlessly.
You will never be complete, that's how it's meant to be."

Blind with tears
I was pushed out on the sun-seething piazza
together with Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Mr. Tanaka, and Signora Sabatini,
and inside each of them vault opened behind vault endlessly.


–Tomas Tranströmer
from The Half Finished Heaven
translated by Robert Bly

. 

shing like the sun

.

In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. 

It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness.

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud.

I have the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate. 

As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realize what we all are. 

And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained.
 

There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun. 

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. 

This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. 

It is so to speak his name written in us … like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. 

It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.

I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. 

But the gate of heaven is everywhere.


–Thomas Merton  

.

how it works

.

You create what you resist.

—Luis Alvarez
Nobel Prize/Physics

.

not to worry

 .

The likeness of this worldly life is that of a snake: soft to the touch, it will kill you with its poison. So turn away from what impresses you of it, since what stays with you is so little.

And do not be concerned about it, since you are certain about its parting. 

And be most happy in it when you are most heedful of it; for every time its companion takes solace in one of its delights, it gives way to one of its woes.


–Alî b. Abî Tâlib
(radiAllahu anhu)

Ibn Abî Al-Dunyâ,
Kitâb Al-Zuhd article 164.

.

you are that

.

This is a subtle truth: Whatever you love, you are.

–Rumi

.

Open Secret

.

Think of the phoenix coming up out of ashes,
but not flying off.
For a moment we have form.
We can't see.

How can we be conscious and you be conscious
at the same time and separate?

Copper when an alchemist works on it loses its copper qualities.
Seeds in Spring
begin to be trees, no longer seed. Brushwood
put in the fire changes.

The snow-world melts.
You step in my footprint and it's gone.

It's not that I've done anything to deserve
this attention from you.

Predestination and freewill: We can argue them,
but they're only ideas. What's real
is a presence, like Shams.


–Rumi
Coleman Barks version

.

hush

.

 

If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.

—Nikola Tesla

.

cup and ocean

 

.

These forms we seem to be are cups floating in an ocean
of living consciousness.

They fill and sink without leaving an arc of bubbles or any good-bye spray. What we are is that ocean, too near to see, though we swim in it and drink it in.

Don't be a cup with a dry rim, or someone who rides all night and never knows the horse beneath his thighs, the surging that carries him along.


–Rumi
Mathnawi 1, 1109-16
Coleman Barks version

.

so radical, so difficult

.

Consciousness is the ground of all being.

We all have the habit of thinking that everything around us is already a thing existing without my input, without my choice. You have to banish that kind of thinking.

Instead, you really have to recognize that even the material world around us, the chairs, the tables, the rooms, the carpet, time included, all of these are nothing but possible movements of Consciousness. And I’m choosing, moment to moment, out of those movements, to bring my actual experience into manifestation.

This is the only radical thinking that you need to do. But it is so radical, it is so difficult, because our tendency is that the world is already out there, independent of my experience.

It is not.

Quantum physics has been so clear about it. Heisenberg himself, co-discoverer of quantum physics said, “Atoms are not things, they’re only tendencies.”

So instead of thinking of things, you have to think of possibilities.
They’re all possibilities of Consciousness.


–Dr. Amit Goswami Ph.D.
Theoretical Quantum Physicist

.

song of Kabîr

.

Between the poles of the conscious and the unconscious, there has the mind made a swing:

Thereon hang all beings and all worlds, and that swing never ceases its sway.

Millions of beings are there: the sun and the moon in their courses are there:

Millions of ages pass, and the swing goes on.

All swing! the sky and the earth and the air and the water; and the Lord Himself taking form:

And the sight of this has made Kabîr a servant.


–Kabîr
Rabindranath Tagore translation

.

things will happen

.

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego, and when we escape like squirrels turning in the cages of our personality and get into the forests again, we shall shiver with cold and fright but things will happen to us so that we don't know ourselves.

Cool, unlying life will rush in, and passion will make our bodies taut with power, we shall stamp our feet with new power and old things will fall down, we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like burnt paper.


–D. H. Lawrence

.

i worried

.

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers 

flow in the right direction, will the earth turn 

as it was taught, and if not how shall 

I correct it? 

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven, 

can I do better? 

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows 

can do it and I am, well, 

hopeless. 

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it, 

am I going to get rheumatism, 

lockjaw, dementia? 

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing. 

And gave it up. And took my old body 

and went out into the morning, 

and sang.


–Mary Oliver
Swan: Poems and Prose Poems

.

I go among trees and sit still

.

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last, and I sing it.
As we sing, the day turns,
the trees move.


–Wendell Berry

.

come into animal presence

.

No man is so guileless as

the serpent. The lonely white

rabbit on the roof is a star

twitching its ears at the rain.

The llama intricately

folding its hind legs to be seated

not disdains but mildly

disregards human approval.

What joy when the insouciant

armadillo glances at us and doesn't

quicken his trotting

across the track and into the palm brush.

What is this joy? That no animal

falters, but knows what it must do?

That the snake has no blemish,

that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings

in white star-silence? The llama

rests in dignity, the armadillo

has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.

Those who were sacred have remained so,

holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence

of bronze, only the sight that saw it

faltered and turned from it.

An old joy returns in holy presence.


–Denise Levertov

Poems: 1960-1967

.