there are numberless aspects to all things

.

When the truth doesn’t fill our body and mind, we think we have had enough. When the truth fills our body and mind, we realize that something is missing. 

For example, when we look at the ocean from a boat, with no land in sight, it seems circular and nothing else. But the ocean is neither round nor square, and its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. Only to our eyes, only for a moment, does it seem circular. All things are like this. 

Although there are numberless aspects to all things, we see only as far as our vision can reach. And in our vision of all things, we must appreciate that although they may look round or square, the other aspects of oceans or mountains are infinite in variety, and that universes lie all around us. 

It is like this everywhere, right here, in the tiniest drop of water.


—Dogen

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kin(dred

 

.

... down deep, at the molecular heart of life, 
we are essentially identical to trees.


—Carl Sagan

.

The general imprecise way of observing sees everywhere in nature as opposites (as, e.g., ‘warm and cold’) where there are, not opposites, but differences of degree. 

This bad habit has led us into wanting to comprehend and analyse the inner world, too, the spiritual-moral world, in terms of such opposites. 

An unspeakable amount of painfulness, arrogance, harshness, estrangement, frigidity has entered into human feelings because we think we see opposites instead of transitions. 


—Friedrich Nietzsche
The Wanderer and his Shadow

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the way in

 

.

Who really respects the earthworm,
the farmworker far under the grass in the soil.
He keeps the earth always changing.
He works entirely full of soil,
speechless with soil, and blind.

He is the underneath farmer, the underground one,
where the fields are getting on their harvest clothes. 

Who really respects him, this deep and calm earth-worker,
this deathless, gray, tiny farmer in the planet's soil?


—Harry Martinson
the earthworm
Robert Bly version

.

Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body.
Sometimes the way in is a song.
But there are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding, and beauty. 

To enter stone, be water.
To rise through hard earth, be plant
desiring sunlight, believing in water. 

To enter fire, be dry.
To enter life, be food.


—Linda Hogan
the way in

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pray(er

 

.

Four times a day—on rising, at noon, late afternoon, and before going to bed—Agnes and Father Damien became that one person who addressed the unknown. The priest stopped what he was doing, cast himself down, made himself transparent, broke himself open. That is, prayed. 

He prayed that the seething factions merge and dissolve their hatred. He prayed, uneasily, for the conversion of Nanapush, then prayed for his own enlightenment in case converting Nanapush was a mistake. Agnes asked for a cheerful spirit and that her dangerous longings cease. She asked for answers, and for the spirit of the language to enter her heart. 

Agnes’s struggle with the Ojibwe language, the influence of it, had an effect on her prayers. For she preferred the Ojibwe word for praying, anama’ay, with its sense of a great motion upward. She began to address the trinity as four and to include the spirit of each direction—those who sat at the four corners of the earth. Wherever she prayed, she made of herself a temporary center of those directions. There, she allowed herself to fall apart. 

Disintegrated into pieces of creation, which God might pick up and turn curiously this way and that to catch the light. What a relief it was, for those moments, to be nothing, a smashed thing, and to have no thought or expectation. Whether God picked up the fragments and stuck them back together, or casually swept them aside was of no consequence either to Agnes or Father Damien.  

She rose, once she was finished, rubbed her eyes like a child, went on in Father Damien’s skin. Her loneliness sometimes seemed a thing not of this world, but a loneliness only that mysterious being, solitary and unique, could understand.


—Louise Erdrich
The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse

. 

We have weaved our past into the present, a rhythmic pattern of long cotton strings pressing in and pulling out across the loom. It thunders through our existence like wild horses run across the desert. No matter how far we go, what kind of car we drive, how much money we make, how many degrees we pile up behind our name, we are still here. 

We are here, a tiny piece of woven stories, like pixels in a photo or molecules of mist in a rainbow. We are here, together on the same earth. It is important to notice one another smile, hug, dance, and sing together while our piece of thread is being woven into a bigger picture of a peaceful future.


—Tu Bears

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Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

 

.

Light the first light of evening, as in a room
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing: 

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence. 

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous. 

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one . . .
How high that highest candle lights the dark. 

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.


—Wallace Stevens

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you where the heart begins

 

.

Human feeling is like the mighty rivers that bless the earth: it does not wait for beauty — it flows with resistless force and brings beauty with it.


—George Eliot

.

You who let yourselves feel: enter the breathing
that is more than your own.
Let it brush your cheeks
as it divides and rejoins beside you.

Blessed ones, whole ones,
you where the heart begins:
You are the bow that shoots the arrows
and you are the target.

Fear not the pain. Let its weight fall back
into the earth;
for heavy are the mountains, heavy the seas.

The trees you planted in childhood have grown
too heavy. You cannot bring them along.
Give yourselves to the air, to what you cannot hold.


—Rainer Maria Rilke
Sonnets to Orpheus, Part One, IV 

.

You must learn to stop being yourself. That's where it begins, and everything else follows from that. You must let yourself evaporate. Let your muscles go limp, breathe until you feel your soul pouring out of you, and then shut your eyes. That's how it's done. 

The emptiness inside your body grows lighter than the air around you. Little by little, you begin to weigh less than nothing. You shut your eyes; you spread your arms; you let yourself evaporate. And then, little by little, you lift yourself off the ground. 

Like so.


—Paul Auster
Mr. Vertigo

.

 

pray without ceasing

   

 

 

 

 

.

What I wear is pants.

What I do is live.

How I pray is breathe.

—Thomas Merton 

.

Rejoice evermore.
Pray without ceasing.
In everything give thanks.

I am not all the way capable of so much, but those are the right instructions.


—Wendell Berry

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imag(ine

 

.

Imagine if all the tumult of the body were to quiet down, 
along with our busy thoughts. 

Imagine if all things that are perishable grew still. 

And imagine if that moment were to go on and on, leaving behind 
all other sights and sounds but this one vision which ravishes and 

absorbs and fixes the beholder in joy, 

so that the rest of eternal life were like that moment of 
illumination, which leaves us breathless.


—Saint Augustine

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exist(ential

 

gnarled goddess, David Lorenz Winston

.

Often, the ideas, concepts, and questions of metaphysics sound easy—childish even. What are objects? Do colours and shapes have some form of existence? What is it for one thing to cause another rather than just being associated with it? What is possible? Does time pass? Do absences, holes, lackings, and nothingnesses have any form of positive existence at all? 

To some these seem like silly questions, but for others they are at the core of what philosophy is all about. And those who see it that way often get a sense that the issues these questions raise are the most fundamental and profound about which humans can think. 

Metaphysics is the subject among all others that inspires the sense of wonder in us, and for that reason some think that doing metaphysics is the most valuable use we could make of our time.


—Stephen Mumford
Metaphysics: A Very Short Introduction

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questions

.

There was a smell of Time in the air tonight. He smiled and turned the fancy in his mind. There was a thought. What did time smell like? Like dust and clocks and people. 

And if you wondered what Time sounded like it sounded like water running in a dark cave and voices crying and dirt dropping down upon hollow box lids, and rain. 

And, going further, what did Time look like? 

Time looked like snow dropping silently into a black room or it looked like a silent film in an ancient theater, 100 billion faces falling like those New Year balloons, down and down into nothing. 

That was how Time smelled and looked and sounded.

—Ray Bradbury
The Martian Chronicles

.

Whether we know it or not, we transmit the presence of everyone we have ever known, as though by being in each other’s presence we exchange our cells, pass on some of our life force, and then we go on carrying that other person in our body, not unlike springtime when certain plants in fields we walk through attach their seeds in the form of small burrs to our socks, our pants, our caps, as if to say, “Go on, take us with you, carry us to root in another place.” 

This is how we survive long after we are dead. This is why it is important who we become, because we pass it on.

―Natalie Goldberg

Long Quiet Highway

.

 

I have heard what the talkers were talking,
the talk of the beginning and the end.
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world …

—Walt Whitman

Song of Myself

.

wait

whiskeyriver

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we are occasional like that

.

We are not one with this world. We are not
the complexity our body is, nor the summer air
idling in the big maple without purpose.
We are a shape the wind makes in these leaves
as it passes through. We are not he wood
any more than the fire, but the heat which is a marriage
between the two. We are certainly not the lake
nor the fish in it, but the something that is
pleased by them. We are the stillness when
a mighty Mediterranean noon subtracts even the voices of
insects by the broken farmhouse. We are evident
when the orchestra plays, and yet are not part
of the strings or brass. Like the song that exists
only in the singing, and is not the singer.
God does not live among the church bells
but is briefly resident there. We are occasional
like that. A lifetime of easy happiness mixed
with pain and loss, trying always to name and hold
on to the enterprise under way in our chest.
Reality is not what we marry as a feeling. It is what
walks up the dirt path, through the excessive heat
and giant sky, the sea stretching away.
He continues past the nunnery to the old villa
where he will sit on the terrace with her, their sides
touching. In the quiet that is the music of that place,
which is the difference between silence and windlessness.


—Jack Gilbert
Music Is in the Piano Only When It Is Played

.

 

each hath one world, and is one

.

No longer in a merely physical universe, man lives in a symbolic universe. Language, myth, art and religion are parts of this universe. They are varied threads which weave the symbolic net, the tangled web of human experience.

No longer can man confront reality immediately; he cannot see it, as it were, face to face. Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man's symbolic activity advances.

Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself.

He has so enveloped himself in linguistic forms, in artistic images, in mythical symbols or religious rites that he cannot see or know anything except by the interposition of this artificial medium.


—Ernst Cassirer
Philosopher (1874 - 1945)

.

Our conscious now—what William James dubbed the “specious present"—is actually an interval of about three seconds. That is the span over which our brains knit up arriving sense data into a unified experience.

—Jim Holt
When Einstein Walked with Gödel

.

And now good-morrow to our waking souls,
Which watch not one another out of fear;
For love all love of other sights controls,
And makes one little room an everywhere. 

Let sea-discoverers to new worlds have gone;
Let maps to other, worlds on worlds have shown,
Let us possess one world; each hath one, and is one.


—John Donne 1572 – 1631
The Good Morrow

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we are the imagination of our(selves

 

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I do not believe in spiritual paths. The purpose of spiritual paths is to enmesh you in the world of knowledge, while Reality resides prior to it. 

All spiritual paths lead to unreality.

Discard all paths.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

[...] matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration ... we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively ... there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. 


—Jed McKenna’s Notebook

.

Understand, I’ll slip quietly away from the noisy crowd when I see the pale stars rising, blooming, over the oaks.

I’ll pursue solitary pathways through the pale twilit meadows, with only this one dream: You come too.


—Rainer Maria Rilke

.

What is called the world is only thought. —Ramana Maharshi

[I]

THE STUDENT

1. Who makes my mind think?

Who fills my body with vitality?

Who causes my tongue to speak? Who is that

Invisible one who sees through my eyes

And hears through my ears?

THE TEACHER

2. The Self is the ear of the ear,

The eye of the eye, the mind of the mind,

The word of words, the life of life.

Rising above the senses and the mind

And renouncing separate existence,

The wise realize the deathless Self.

3. Him our eyes cannot see, nor words express;

He cannot be grasped even by the mind. 

We do not know, we cannot understand.

4. Because he is different from the known

And he is different from the unknown.

Thus we have heard from the illumined ones.

5. That which makes the tongue speak but cannot be

Spoken by the tongue, know that as the Self.

This Self is not someone other than you.

6. That which makes the mind think, but cannot be 

Thought by the mind, that is the Self indeed.

This Self is not someone other than you.

7. That which makes the eye see but cannot be

Seen by the eye, that is the Self indeed.

This Self is not someone other than you.

8. That which makes the ear hear but cannot be

Heard by the ear, that is the Self indeed.

This Self is not someone other than you.

9. That which makes you draw breath but cannot be

Drawn by your breath, that is the Self indeed.

This Self is not someone other than you.

The Katha Upanishad
Eknath Easwaran version, excerpts

.

You are not what you think yourself to be, I assure you.

The image you have of yourself is made up from memories and is purely accidental.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj


 

.

 

this is what i believe

  

Beth Moon, Ancient Trees: Portraits Of Time 

.

This is what I believe: That I am I.

That my soul is a dark forest.

That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest.

That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back.

That I must have the courage to let them come and go.


—D. H. Lawrence

.

I am a forest, and a night of dark trees: but he who is not afraid of my darkness, will find banks full of roses under my cypresses.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Thus Spoke Zarathustra

.

where two or more are gathered

 

.

Those doing soul work, who want the searing truth more than solace or applause, know each other right away.

Those who want something else turn and take a seat in another room. Soul-makers find each other’s company.


—Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī

.

The consciousness in you and the consciousness in me,
apparently two, really one, seeks unity and that is love.


—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

the hardest part

.

One fine morning
I'm gonna ride out
Yeah, one fine morning
I'm gonna ride out

Just me and the skeleton crew
We're gonna ride out in a country kind of silence
We're gonna ride out in a country silence
Yeah one fine morning

Yeah it's all coming back to me now
My apocalypse, my apocalypse
The curtain rose and burned in the morning sun
Yeah the curtain rose and burned in the morning sun

And the mountains
And the mountains bowed down
In the morning sun
Like a ballet of the heart
Yeah the mountains bowed down
Like a ballet
In the morning sun

And the baby and we all lay in state
Yeah the baby and we all lay in state
And I say "Hey! no more drovering!"
I say "Hey! no more drovering!"

When the earth turns cold
And the earth turns black
Will I feel you riding on my back?
Yeah when the earth turns cold
And the earth turns black
Will I feel you riding on my back?

And for I am a part of the road
Yeah I am a part of the road
The hardest part
The hardest part

My apocalypse
DC 4 5 0
DC 4 5 0

.

more complete

.

on giving up the illusion of central position

 

.

If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in the way in which our visual field has no limits.

—Ludwig Wittgenstein

.

To give up our imaginary position as the center, to renounce it, not only intellectually but in the imaginative part of our soul, that means to awaken to what is real and eternal, to see the true light and hear the true silence.


—Simone Weil
Waiting for God

.

What if I came down now out of these

solid dark clouds that build up against the mountain

day after day with no rain in them

and lived as one blade of grass

in a garden in the south when the clouds part in winter

from the beginning I would be older than all the animals

and to the last I would be simpler

frost would design me and dew would disappear on me

sun would shine through me

I would be green with white roots

feel worms touch my feet as a bounty

have no name and no fear

turn naturally to the light

know how to spend the day and night

climbing out of myself

all my life


—W. S. Merwin
a contemporary

.

A man has not seen a thing who has not felt it. —Henry David Thoreau

.

The careful observer can observe the seemingly impossible even with the unaided eye, a fact which forces one to prostrate oneself in adoration before the mysterious origin of all things.

We all walk in mysteries. We do not know what is stirring in the atmosphere that surrounds us, nor how it is connected with our own spirit. So much is certain—that at times we can put out the feelers of our soul beyond its bodily limits; and a presentiment, an actual insight . . . is accorded to it.

—Geothe

. 

No striving, no grasping at this or that, no entertaining any self involved stories whatsoever. Instead, attention pivots toward a light in the heart in which the ‘field of boundless emptiness’ is revealed. All questions and doubts are put to rest.


—Hongzhi

.

quest(ions

   

 

 .

What in your life is calling you?

When all the noise is silenced, 
the meetings adjourned,
the lists laid aside, 
and the wild iris blooms by itself
in the dark forest,
what still pulls on your soul?


—Rumi 

.

Through what roads and how did you find my soul? 

Who taught you the steps that would lead you to me? 

What flower, what stone, what smoke revealed my abode?


—Pablo Neruda
milky night

.

listen

 

.

The purpose of poetry is to remind us 
how difficult it is to remain just one person,

for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors, 
and invisible guests come in and out at will.


—Czesław Miłosz

.

As soon as one speaks, as soon as one enters the medium of language, one loses that very singularity. 

[...] Once I speak, I am never and no longer myself, alone and unique.

—Jacques Derrida
The Gift of Death

.

 

 

What I want also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me. —Rumi

.

Go deeper
Past thoughts into silence.

Past silence into stillness.
Past stillness into the heart.

Let love consume all that is left of you.


—Kabir

.

ancient rites of conscience

.

There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are.

And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song — but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.


—Pablo Neruda

.

allchannels

.

your(self

.

Be kind to yourself; 

it is the only one and perishable.

—Allen Ginsberg

.

If you put your hands on this oar with me, they will never harm another, and they will come to find they hold everything you want.

If you put your hands on this oar with me, they will no longer lift anything to your mouth that might wound your precious land, that sacred earth that is your body.

If you put your soul against this oar with me, the power that made the universe will enter your sinew from a source not outside your limbs, but from a holy realm that lives within us.

Exuberant is existence, time a husk.
When the moment cracks open, ecstasy leaps out and devours space;
love goes mad with the blessings, like my words give.

Why lay yourself on the torturer’s rack of the past and future?
The mind that tries to shape tomorrow beyond its capacity will find no rest.

Be kind to yourself, dear - to our innocent follies.
Forget any sound or touch you knew that did not help you dance.
You will come to see that all evolves us.

If you put your heart against the earth with me, in serving every creature, our Beloved will enter you from our sacred realm and we will be, we will be happy.


—Rumi
Love Poems From God
Daniel Ladinsky version

.