Water has a perfect memory, and is forever trying to get back to where it was. —Toni Morrison

 

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We are made of contracted water, earth, light and air - not merely prior to the recognition or representation of these, but prior to their being sensed. Every organism, in its receptive and perceptual elements, but also in its viscera, is a sum of contractions, of retentions and expectations. At the level of this primary vital sensibility, the lived present constitutes a past and a future in time.


—Gilles Deleuze
Difference and Repetition

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The soul is the greening life force of the flesh, for the body grows and prospers through her, just as the earth becomes fruitful when it is moistened. The soul humidifies the body so it does not dry out, just like the rain which soaks into the earth.


—Hildegard of Bingen

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not no(thing

 

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It is impossible for us to know the reactions of beings constituted in a different way. It is, however, reasonable to think that in the same world ... different worlds are perceived by different beings according to the nature of their respective organs of perception.

[...] Does that mean that in absolute truth our senses have made contact with a real horse, a real apricot, etc.? There is no proof of this, for the only existing proof depends on the evidence of the senses ...

[...] We cannot presume any thing more than the existence of a stimulus which has caused the sensation that we have felt, a sensation which we have interpreted in our own way, adding to it images of our own invention.

Should we then believe that we have been taken in by a pure mirage? Not entirely. Probably the stimulus corresponds to something, but this something, that is to say the object of some kind with which one of our senses has made contact, remains unknown to us.


—Alexandra David-Néel
The Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects

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Anyone who has common sense will remember that the bewilderments of the eyes are of two kinds, and arise from two causes, either from coming out of the light or from going into the light, which is true of the mind's eye, quite as much as of the bodily eye; and he who remembers this when he sees any one whose vision is perplexed and weak, will not be too ready to laugh; he will first ask whether that soul of man has come out of the brighter light, and is unable to see because unaccustomed to the dark, or having turned from darkness to the day is dazzled by excess of light. 

And he will count the one happy in his condition and state of being, and he will pity the other; or, if he has a mind to laugh at the soul which comes from below into the light, there will be more reason in this than in the laugh which greets him who returns from above out of the light into the den.


—Plato (c.424 - 348 BC)
Republic, The Allegory of the Cave

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i am that

 

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Watching my hand; He is moving it.

Hearing my voice; He is speaking...

Walking from room to room --

No one here but Him.


—Rumi

Andrew Harvey version 

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Staying very still in the darkness, I became less and less convinced of the fact that I actually existed.


—Haruki Murakami

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Listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world. —Jack Kerouac

 

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God is not external to anyone, but is present with all things,

though they are ignorant that this is so.

—Plotinus

.

You need not go to heaven to see God; nor need you speak loud, as if God were far away; nor need you cry for wings like a dove to fly to Him. Only be in silence, and you will come upon God within yourself.


—Saint Teresa of Avila

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the depth of the drop is the height of the moon

 

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You are like a dewdrop, on a multidimensional spider's web in the morning. 

And if you look at that thing carefully, you will see in every dewdrop the reflections of all the other dewdrops. 

So the way that dewdrop looks goes with the way all the other ones look, you see.

—Alan Watts

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Enlightenment is like the moon reflected on the water. 
The moon does not get wet, nor is the water broken. 

Although its light is wide and great, the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide. The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in dewdrops on the grass, or even in one drop of water. 

Enlightenment does not divide you, just as the moon does not break the water. You cannot hinder enlightenment, just as a drop of water does not hinder the moon in the sky. 

The depth of the drop is the height of the moon.

Each reflection, however long or short its duration, manifests the vastness of the dewdrop, and realizes the limitlessness of the moonlight in the sky.


—Dogen Zenji (1200 - 1253)

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Meditation Celestial and Terrestial

 

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The wild warblers are warbling in the jungle
Of life and spring of the lustrious inundations,
Flood on flood, of our returning sun.

Day after day, throughout the winter,

We hardened ourselves to live by bluest reason

In a world of wind and frost,

And by will, unshaken and florid

In mornings of angular ice,

That passed beyond us through the narrow sky.

But what are radiant reason and radiant will

To warblings early in the hilarious trees

Of summer, the drunken mother?

—Wallace Stevens

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real(ly

 

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Reality is what we take to be true. What we take to be true is what we believe. What we believe is based upon our perceptions. What we perceive depends upon what we look for. What we look for depends upon what we think. 

What we think depends upon what we perceive. What we perceive determines what we believe. What we believe determines what we take to be true. What we take to be true is our reality.


—David Bohm

.

Theoretically there is no absolute proof that one's awakening in the morning (the finding oneself again in the saddle of one's personality) is not really a quite unprecedented event, a perfectly original birth.


—Vladimir Nabokov

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tonight

.

Everything will be alright tonight

Everything will be alright tonight

No one moves

No one talks

No one thinks 

No one walks tonight

Everyone will be alright tonight

Everyone will be alright tonight

No one moves

No one talks

No one thinks 

No one walks tonight

I’m gonna love you till the end

I will love you till I reach the end

I will love her till I die

I will see you in the sky

Tonight

Everything will be alright tonight

Everything will be alright tonight

No one moves

No one talks

No one thinks 

No one walks tonight

.

We are one, after all, you and I.

Together we suffer, together exist,
and forever will recreate each other.


—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

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wait

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I’d woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist. —Fernando Pessoa

 

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My originality consists in putting logic of the visible 

to the service of the invisible.

—Odilon Redon

The Death of Buddha

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So what can they tell us,

the writers of dreambooks,

the scholars of oneiric signs and omens,

the doctors

with couches for analyses—

if anything fits,

it’s accidental,

and for one reason only,

that in our dreamings,

in their shadowings and gleamings,

in their multiplings, inconceivablings,

in their haphazardings and widescatterings at times

even a clear-cut meaning may slip through.

—Wisława Szymborska

Dreams, excerpt

Clare Cavanaugh and Stanisław Barańczak version

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If you are falling …. dive. —Joseph Campbell

 

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You feel you are hedged in; you dream of escape; but beware of mirages. Do not run or fly away in order to get free: rather dig in the narrow place which has been given you; you will find God there and everything. God does not float on your horizon, he sleeps in your substance. 

Vanity runs, love digs. If you fly away from yourself, your prison will run with you and will close in because of the wind of your flight; if you go deep down into yourself it will disappear in paradise.


—Gustave Thibon

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We’re in a freefall into future. We don’t know where we’re going. Things are changing so fast and anxiety comes along. All you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act. 

It’s a very interesting shift of perspective and that’s all it is, joyful participation in the sorrows and everything changes.


—Joseph Campbell

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The way of love is not a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.

Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.
How do they learn it?

They fall, and falling, they're given wings.


—Rumi

(notes to self

two tanka

  

Nordin Seruyan, central Borneo

.

From outside my house,

only the faint distant sound

of gentle breezes

wandering through bamboo leaves

in the long evening silence.

Late evening finally

comes: I unlatch the door

and quietly

await the one

who greets me in my dreams.


–Otomo No Yakamochi

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questions

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Perhaps we don't love unreasonably because we think we have time, or have to reckon with time. But what if we don't have time? 

Or what if time, as we know it, is irrelevant?


—Franz Kafka
Letters to Milena

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listen

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To be conscious of oneself right to the core is to perceive, at the depths of the self, an Other. This is prayer: to be conscious of oneself to the very center, to the point of meeting an Other. 

Thus prayer is the only human gesture which totally realizes the human being’s stature.


—Luigi Giussani

.

The Greeks understood the mysterious power of the hidden side of things. They bequeathed to us one of the most beautiful words in our language—the word ‘enthusiasm’—en theos—a god within. 

The grandeur of human actions is measured by the inspiration from which they spring. 

Happy is he who bears a god within, and who obeys it.


—Louis Pasteur

.

If the eye were a complete animal, sight would be its soul. —Aristotle

   

.

Blessed be you,
mighty matter,
irresistible march of evolution,
reality ever newborn;
you who, by constantly
shattering our mental categories,
force us to go ever further
and further in our
pursuit of the truth.


—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 - 1955)
Hymn of the Universe

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Thinking and prayer are much the same thing anyway, when you stop to think about it ... Prayer goes up and thought comes down—or so it seems. 

As far as I can tell, that's the only difference.


—Alan Bradley
A Red Herring Without Mustard

.

the house we live in

  

.

What we speak
becomes the house
we live in. 
Who will want
to sleep in your bed
if the roof leaks
right above it?

Fear is the 
cheapest room 
in the house,
I would like
to see you living
in better conditions.

There is only one reason
we have followed God
into this world:
to encourage laughter,
freedom,
dance and love ....

God and I are rushing
from every corner of 
existence,
needing to say
we are yours.

The sun never says
to the earth,
even after all this time
“you owe me”.

I once asked a bird
how is it that you 
fly in this gravity
of darkness?
she responded,
love lifts me.

I should not make 
any promises right now
but I know if you pray
somewhere in this world
something good 
will happen.


—Hafiz
Daniel Ladinsky and
Robert Bly version

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listen

 

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The airy sky has taken its place leaning against the wall.
It is like a prayer to what is empty.

And what is empty turns its face to us and whispers:
“I am not empty, I am open.”


—Tomas Tranströmer
Robert Bly version

.

—the sea is also a breviary, it speaks of God. —Jean-Paul Sartre

 

. 

 

There are no fixtures in nature.

The universe is fluid and volatile.

Permanence is but a word of degrees. 


—Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

.

We perceive an eddy…and imagine that it is in some way separate from the river and that it is in some way permanent. We experience ourselves, and likewise assume that there is an unchanging core, even if there is much evidence to undermine that conclusion.


—Bodhipaksa
Living as a River

.

We are what we think. 

All that we are arises with our thoughts. 

With our thoughts we make the world. 

Speak or act with a pure mind and happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakeable.


—The Dhammapada

.

listen

 

.

This is the first thing
I have understood:

Time is the echo of an axe

Within a wood.


—Philip Larkin
The North Ship

.

exercises

 

.

First, forget what time it is
for an hour
do it regularly every day

then forget what day of the week it is
and do this regularly for a week
then forget what country you are in
and practice doing it in company
for a week
and then do them together
for a week
with as few breaks as possible 

follow these by forgetting to add
or to subtract
it makes no difference
you can change them
around after a week
both will help you later
to forget how to count 

forget how to count
starting with your own age
starting with how to count backwards
starting with even numbers
with Roman numerals
starting with fractions of Roman numerals
with the old calendar
going on to the old alphabet
going on to the alphabet
forgetting it all until everything
is continuous again 

go on to forgetting elements
starting with water
proceeding to earth
rising in fire 

forget fire


—W. S. Merwin

.

certain(ty

.

Where does unbelief begin? 
When I was young 

there were degrees of certainty. 
I could say, Yes I know that I have two hands.
Then one day I awakened on a planet of people whose hands occasionally 
disappear.


—Anne Carson 

.

 

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness. —the Dalai Lama

  

.

When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. 

Some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. 

So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. 

So they covered each one over with mud. 

And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another.


—Zora Neale Hurston, born 1891
Their Eyes Were Watching God

.

small bird on fire

   

.

It was passed from one bird to another,
the whole gift of the day. 

The day went from flute to flute,
went dressed in vegetation,
in flights which opened a tunnel
through which the wind would pass
to where birds were breaking open
the dense blue air -
and there, night came in.

When I returned from so many journeys,
I stayed suspended and green
between sun and geography -
I saw how wings worked,
how perfumes are transmitted
by feathery telegraph,
and from above I saw the path,
the springs and the roof tiles,
the fishermen at their trades,
the trousers of the foam;

I saw it all from my green sky.
I had no more alphabet
than the swallows in their courses,
the tiny, shining water
of the small bird on fire
which dances out of the pollen.


—Pablo Neruda
Ode to the moment

.

 

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth
let's not speak in any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines,
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fishermen in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his wounded hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victory with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.


—Pablo Neruda
Keeping Quiet

.

what if

Vegetable fields in Wonosobo, Indonesia

.

No permanence is ours; we are a wave 
That flows to fit whatever form it finds: 
Through day or night, cathedral or cave 
We pass forever, craving form that binds.
 

—Hermann Hesse
from “Lament” in The Glass Bead Game
Clara and Richard Winston version

.

Although from the beginning 
I knew
the world is impermanent,
not a moment passes
when my sleeves are dry.


—Ryokan
Sky Above, Great Wind

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