the world is a phenomenon

 

.

You see various scenes passing on a cinema screen: fire seems to burn buildings to ashes; water seems to wreck ships; but the screen on which the pictures are projected remains unburnt and dry. Why? Because the pictures are unreal and the screen real.

Similarly, reflections pass through a mirror but it is not affected at all by their number or quality. In the same way, the world is a phenomenon upon the substratum of the single Reality which is not affected by it in any way. 

Reality is only One.

Talk of illusion is due only to the point of view. Change your viewpoint to that of Knowledge and you will perceive the Universe to be only Brahman. Being now immersed in the world, you see it as a real world; get beyond it and it will disappear and Reality alone will remain.


—Sri Ramana Maharshi

.

In essence, the ideas of space and time are creations of the mind that serve as the screen upon which we project the contents of the depths of our mind, both conscious and unconscious. 

Being constructs of consciousness as well as the receptacles for its projections, space and time serve as consciousness’s own way of providing a context for its contents so that they can be revealed, brought to light, reflected upon, and contemplated by a consciousness that is forever getting to know itself in new ways.


—Paul Levy
Quantum Revelation

.

This is the pipe that pierces the dam
that holds back the universe,

that takes off some of the pressure,
keeping the weight of the unknown

from breaking through
and washing us all down the valley.

Because of this small tube,
through which a cold light rushes

from the bottom of time,
the depth of the stars stays always constant

and we are able to sleep, at least for now,
beneath the straining wall of darkness.


—Ted Kooser
telescope

.

regarding ma†erials

.

... as those who claim to know nothing about ultimate reality are called agnostic (literally, “not-knowing”), the person who does claim to know such things is called gnostic (“knowing”). But gnosis is not primarily rational knowledge. 

The Greek language distinguishes between scientific or reflective knowledge (“He knows mathematics”) and knowing through observation or experience (“He knows me”), which is gnosis. As the gnostics use the term, we could translate it as “insight,” for gnosis involves an intuitive process of knowing oneself. And to know oneself, they claimed, is to know human nature and human destiny.
 

—Elaine Pagels
The Gnostic Gospels

.

day(light

 

.

When you are out walking in the sunlight,

see the love covering all.

—Rumi

.

 

Spring, and everything outside is growing,
even the tall cypress tree.
We must not leave this place.

Around the lip of the cup we share, these words,
"My Life Is Not Mine."

If someone were to play music, it would
have to be very sweet.
We're drinking wine, but not through lips.
We're sleeping it off, but not in bed.

Rub the cup across your forehead.
This day outside is living and dying.
Give up wanting what other people have.
That way you're safe.
"Where, where can I be safe?" you ask.

This is not a day for asking questions,
not a day on any calendar.

This day is conscious of itself.
This day is a lover, bread, and gentleness,
more manifest than saying can say.

Thoughts take form with words,
but this daylight is beyond and before
thinking and imagining. 

Those two, they are so thirsty, but this gives
smoothness to water. 
Their mouths are dry, and they are tired.

The rest of this poem is too blurry
for them to read.


—Rumi
Coleman Barks version

.

 

may what I do flow from me like a river

  

.

I have many brothers in the South
who move, handsome in their vestments,
through cloister gardens.
The Madonnas they make are so human,
and I dream often of their Titians,
where God becomes an ardent flame.

But when I lean over the chasm of myself –
it seems
my God is dark
and like a web: a hundred roots
silently drinking.

This is the ferment I grow out of.

More I don't know, because my branches
rest in deep silence, stirred only by the wind.


—Rainer Maria Rilke
from The Book of Monastic Life, I,3

.

I believe in all that has never yet been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving. 

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
no forcing and no holding back,
the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
these deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
streaming through widening channels
into the open sea.


—Rainer Maria Rilke
Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy version

.

invitation

.

Let us look for secret things

somewhere in the world

on the blue shores of silence.

.

I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees.

—Pablo Neruda

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the eye of practice

.

When dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you may assume it is already sufficient. When dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. For example, when you sail out in a boat to the middle of an ocean where no land is in sight, and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular, and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square; its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time.

All things are like this.

Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. In order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know that although they may look round or square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety; whole worlds are there.

It is so not only around you, but also directly beneath your feet, or in a drop of water.


—Dogen

.

💗

 

 

.

Poor, dear, silly Spring, 
preparing her annual surprise!

 

—Wallace Stevens

.

when faces called flowers float out of the ground

    

.

when faces called flowers float out of the ground

and breathing is wishing and wishing is having-

but keeping is downward and doubting and never

-it’s april(yes,april;my darling)it’s spring!

yes the pretty birds frolic as spry as can fly

yes the little fish gambol as glad as can be

(yes the mountains are dancing together)


when every leaf opens without any sound

and wishing is having and having is giving-

but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense

-alive;we’re alive,dear:it’s(kiss me now)spring!

now the pretty birds hover so she and so he

now the little fish quiver so you and so i

(now the mountains are dancing, the mountains)


when more than was lost has been found has been found

and having is giving and giving is living-

but keeping is darkness and winter and cringing

-it’s spring(all our night becomes day)o,it’s spring!

all the pretty birds dive to the heart of the sky

all the little fish climb through the mind of the sea

(all the mountains are dancing;are dancing)

—E. E. Cummings

.

 

spring paints the countrside

  

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It’s the season of spring, let us be cheek to cheek with the east wind 
Let us be friends with the rose, and companions of its scent 
It is the time of the wild tulip

With pure hearts let us take up the cup
Like the narcissus, let us be drunk without pretense 


—Sheyhi
from The Gathering of Desire,
Ottoman Lyric Poetry: An Anthology

.

Spring paints the countryside.

Cypress trees grow even more beautiful,

but let's stay inside.


Lock the door.

Come to me naked.

No one's here.


—Rumi

.

the first sky is inside you, friend

 

.

What birds plunge through is not the intimate space,
in which you see all Forms intensified.
(In the Open, denied, you would lose yourself,
would disappear into that vastness.)

Space reaches from us and translates Things:
to become the very essence of a tree,
throw inner space around it, from that space
that lives in you. 

Encircle it with restraint.
It has no limits. For the first time, shaped
in your renouncing, it becomes fully tree.


—Rainer Maria Rilke
Gabriel Caffrey version

.

Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.

The inner -- what is it?
if not the intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.


—Rainer Maria Rilke
Stephen Mitchell version

.

Look at the birds. Even flying
is born

out of nothing. The first sky
is inside you, Friend, open

at either end of day.
The work of wings
was always freedom, fastening
one heart to every falling thing.


—Li-Young Lee
Book of My Nights, One Heart

.

trans(formation

   

Brahmin moth, transformed

.

It is the one Reality which appears to our ignorance as a manifold universe of names and forms and changes. Like the gold of which many ornaments are made, it remains in itself unchanged. Such is Brahman, and That art Thou.


—Adi Shankara

.

Just as one might have to turn the whole body round in order that the eye should see light instead of darkness, so the entire soul must be turned away from this changing world, until its eye can bear to contemplate reality and that supreme splendour which we have called the Good.


—Plato

.

The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony, and all things take place by strife.

—Heraclitus of Ephesus

On Nature, Fragments 

G. T. W. Patrick, translation

.

questions

.

Could I ask you to explain the music of heaven for me?

Sounding the ten thousand things differently, so each becomes itself according to itself alone, who could make such music? 


—Chuang Tzu (369-286 BCE)

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hush

   

.

Hush.

I am so close, I may look distant. 

So completely mixed with you, I may look separate. 

So out in the open, I appear hidden. 

So silent, because I am constantly talking with you.


—Rumi

.

 

The clear bead at the center
changes everything. 

There are
no edges to my loving now.

You've heard it said there's
a window that opens from one
mind to another,

but if there's no wall, 
there's no need for
fitting the window, or the latch.

—Rumi

.

in your body lies a priceless gem —Rumi

 

.

 

Grace is always present. 

You imagine it is something somewhere high in the sky, far away, and has to descend. It is really inside you, in your Heart, and the moment you effect subsidence or merger of the mind into its Source, grace rushes forth, sprouting as from a spring within you.


—Ramana Maharshi

.

Images, however sacred they may be, retain the attention outside, whereas at the time of prayer the attention must be within - in the heart.

The concentration of attention in the heart - this is the starting point of prayer.


—Saint Theophan the Recluse
for lovers of god everywhere
compiled by Roger Housden

.

Parting is one of the exactions
of a Mortal Life.
It is bleak - like Dying
but occurs more times.

To escape the former,
some invite the last.
The Giant in the Human Heart
was never met outside.


—Emily Dickinson
New poems of Emily Dickinson

.

the still point of the turning universe

 

.

The world's spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally that the mind's muddy river, this ceaseless flow  of trivia and trash, cannot be dammed, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness.  

Instead you must allow the muddy river to flow unheeded in the dim channels of consciousness; you raise your sights; you look along it, mildly, acknowledging its presence without interest and gazing beyond it into the realm of the real where subjects and objects act and rest purely, without utterance.


—Annie Dillard 
from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

.

When you live your life at peace with every circumstance of your life, favorable or terrible, you situate yourself at the still point of the turning universe. Then you are the world of cause and effect itself, you become this. You become, with nothing between you and it, this precarious world. You are precariousness itself and so you are no longer subject to precariousness. When you live like this you are the master of precariousness, the master of cause and effect, and then everything is blessed, just as it is.

Interestingly, the root of the word precarious is "prayer,” or “imprecation.” When you fully enter precariousness, our ordinary human world of one mistake after another, you are “full of prayer,” open to connectedness. Then you can see how a life of human limitation is also a life of grace.


—Susan Murphy
Upside-Down Zen: Finding the Marvelous in the Ordinary

.

At the still point of the turning world.

Neither flesh nor fleshless; 

Neither from nor towards; 

At the still point, there the dance is, 

But neither arrest nor movement.

And do not call it fixity.

Where past and future are gathered. 

Neither movement from nor towards, 

Neither ascent nor decline.

Except for the point, the still point, 

There would be no dance,

And there is only the dance.


—T. S. Eliot
from Burnt Norton
in The Four Quartets

.

the story of more

 

.

The mass extinctions of long ago were dramatic periods of destabilization that resulted in widespread reorganization—exactly what we are starting to experience today. At the end of a mass extinction, the tree of life has lost several branches—and yet, afterward, life does go on. Plants regreen the earth and animals repopulate the oceans; different species take over and different landscapes result; and time resumes its relentless forward march.

There will be life on planet Earth after the sixth mass extinction, but we are not able to imagine it any better than the dinosaurs could have imagined a world dominated by mammals walking on two legs, driving bulldozers, and flying airplanes.


—Hope Jahren
The Story of More

.

In short, the greatness of nature, and the subtle and unspeakable care with which she works is a source of unending contemplation.


—Galileo
in a letter to Federico Cesi in 1624,
after gazing into a microscope for the first time

.

sudden rightnesses, wholly containing the mind

.

Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph.
And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea’s throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.


—T.S. Eliot

.

The poem of the mind in the act of finding

What will suffice. It has not always had

To find: the scene was set; it repeated what

Was in the script.

Then the theatre was changed

To something else. Its past was a souvenir.


It has to be living, to learn the speech of the place.

It has to face the men of the time and to meet

The women of the time. It has to think about war

And it has to find what will suffice. It has

To construct a new stage. It has to be on that stage

And, like an insatiable actor, slowly and

With meditation, speak words that in the ear,

In the delicatest ear of the mind, repeat,

Exactly, that which it wants to hear, at the sound

Of which, an invisible audience listens,

Not to the play, but to itself, expressed

In an emotion as of two people, as of two

Emotions becoming one. The actor is

A metaphysician in the dark, twanging

An instrument, twanging a wiry string that gives

Sounds passing through sudden rightnesses, wholly

Containing the mind, below which it cannot descend,

Beyond which it has no will to rise.

It must

Be the finding of a satisfaction, and may

Be of a man skating, a woman dancing, a woman

Combing. The poem of the act of the mind.

—Wallace Stevens
Of Modern Poetry
(begs to be spoken

.

drama of the visible and the invisible

Tree of Knowledge, 1913

Hilma af Klint, Swedish 

.

There slumbers in every human being faculties by means of which he can acquire for himself a knowledge of higher worlds. Mystics, Gnostics, Theosophists — all speak of a world of soul and spirit which for them is just as real as the world we see with our physical eyes and touch with our physical hands.

[...] Just as in the body, eye and ear develop as organs of perception, as senses for bodily processes, so does a man develop in himself soul and spiritual organs of perception through which the soul and spiritual worlds are opened to him.

For those who do not have such higher senses, these worlds are dark and silent, just as the bodily world is dark and silent for a being without eyes and ears.


―Rudolf Steiner

. 

It is clear that 'higher' always means and implies 'more inner,' 'more interior', 'deeper', 'more intimate'; while 'lower' implies 'more outer', 'more external', 'shallower', 'less intimate' ... the more interior a thing is, the less visible it is likely to be. 

The progression from visibility to invisibility is just another facet of the great hierarchy of Levels of Being. We do not understand that life, before all other definitions of it, is a drama of the visible and the invisible.

Our ordinary mind always tried to persuade us that we are nothing but acorns and that our greatest happiness will be to become bigger, fatter, shinier acorns; but this is of interest only to pigs. Our faith gives us knowledge of something better: that we can become oak trees.


―E.F. Schumacher
A Guide for the Perplexed, excerpts

.

allchannels

.

this road is the heart opening —Mirabai

   

.

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light. 

To know the dark, go dark. 

Go without sight, and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings, and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.


—Wendell Berry

.

The window is the absence of the wall, and it gives air and light because it is empty. Be empty of all mental content, of all imagination and effort, and the very absence of obstacles will cause reality to rush in.

All you need is to understand that you are the source of reality, that you give reality instead of getting it, that you need no support and no confirmation. 

Things are as they are because you accept them as they are. Stop accepting them and they will dissolve.


—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

you know ...

 

.

The world only exists in your eyes … 

You can make it as big or as small as you want. 

—F. Scott Fitzgerald 

.

adaequatio

.

Knowledge comes about insofar as the object known is within the knower.

—St. Thomas Aquinas

.

Knowing demands the organ fitted to the object.

Never did the eye see the sun unless it has first become sunlike, and never can the soul have vision of the First Beauty unless itself be beautiful.


—Plotinus

.

This is the Great Truth of “adaequatio” (adequateness), which defines knowledge as adequatio et rei et intellectus—the understanding of the knower must be adequate to the thing to be known.

[] “As above, so below’ the ancients used to say: to the world outside us there corresponds, in some fashion, a world inside us.


—E.F. Schumacher
A Guide for the Perplexed

.

know(ledge

  

.

When we say that the world is knowable, i.e. that knowledge as such exists, we state through this fact itself the tenet of the essential unity of the world or its knowability. We declare that the world is not a mosaic, where a plurality of worlds which are essentially strangers to one another are fitted together, but that it is an organism - all of whose parts are governed by the same principle, revealing it and allowing reduction to it. 

The relationship of everything and of all beings is the conditio sine qua non of their knowability.

—Anonymous (Valentin Tomberg?)

Meditations on the Tarot

.

the shapes of all things

Lotta at Hof Butenland Farm Sanctuary

.

... the wind has its reasons. We just don't notice as we go about our lives. But then, at some point, we are made to notice. The wind envelops you with a certain purpose in mind, and it rocks you. 

The wind knows everything that's inside you. 

And not just the wind. Everything, including a stone. They all know us very well. From top to bottom. 

It only occurs to us at certain times. And all we can do is go with those things. As we take them in, we survive, and deepen.


—Haruki Murakami
Hear the Wind Sing, excerpt

.

thou art that

 

.

A knower of the Truth
travels without leaving a trace
speaks without causing harm
gives without keeping an account

The door he shuts, though having no lock,
cannot be opened
The knot he ties, though using no cord,
cannot be undone

If you think otherwise,
despite your knowledge, you have blundered


—Lao Tzu
Tao Te Ching

.

You know that you are. 

Don’t burden yourself with names, just be. 

Any name or shape you give yourself obscures your real nature.

—Sri Nisargadatta

.

on bee(ing

.

 

There is a being wonderful, perfect; It existed before heaven and earth. How quiet it is! How spiritual it is! 

It stands alone and it does not change; It moves, but does not on that account suffer. All life comes from it, yet it does not demand to be Lord. 

I do not know its name, so I call it Tao, the Way, 

And I rejoice in its power.


—Tao Te Ching
25th Chapter

 

.

 

God expects but one thing of you, and that is that you should come out of yourself in so far as you are a created being and let God be God in you.

 

—Meister Eckhart

.