Saturday, August 31, 2024

place(ment

 






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Our hands imbibe like roots,
so I place them on what is beautiful in this world.

I fold them in prayer, and they
draw from the heavens
light.


—St. Francis of Assisi



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Friday, August 30, 2024

Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive. —William S. Burroughs

 






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I am the thought that lives in the light.
I live in everyone, and I delve into them all...
I move in every creature...
I am the invisible one in all beings...
I am the voice speaking softly...
I am the real voice... the voice from the invisible thought...
 
It is a mystery... I cry out in everyone...
I hid myself in everyone, and revealed myself
within them, and every mind seeking me longs
for me...
 
I am she who gradually brought forth everything...
I am the image of the invisible spirit...
The mother, the light... the virgin… the womb, and the voice...
 
I put breath in all beings..


—Nag Hammadi Scrolls
from Why Religion, Elaine Pagels




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Tuesday, August 27, 2024

looking, walking, being

 






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All moments, past, present, and future, always have existed, always will exist. It is just an illusion we have here on earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever.


—Kurt Vonnegut


.



I look and look.
Looking's a way of being: one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.
Walking wherever looking takes one.

The eyes
dig and burrow into the world.
They touch
fanfare, howl, madrigal, clamor.
World and the past of it,
not only
visible present, solid and shadow
that looks at one looking.

And language? Rhythms
of echo and interruption?
That's
a way of breathing,
breathing to sustain
looking,
walking and looking,
through the world,
in it.


—Denise Levertov




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Monday, August 26, 2024

if


 






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Those who don't feel this Love
pulling them like a river,
those who don't drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take in sunset like supper,
those who don't want to change,
let them sleep

This Love is beyond the study of theology,
that old trickery and hypocrisy.
If you want to improve your mind that way,
sleep on

I've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.

If you're not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful robe of words
around you,
and sleep.


—Rumi

.
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Saturday, August 24, 2024

thou art that








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Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language.


―Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Notes on Grief



.



Breathing in, I see the presence of my beloved in every cell of my body.
Breathing out, I smile to my beloved in every cell of my body.
My beloved in every cell,
Smiling.

Breathing in, my loved one is breathing in with me.
Breathing out, my loved one is breathing out with me.
My loved one breathing in with me
My loved one breathing out with me

Breathing in, I am breathing with my loved one's lungs.
Breathing out, our bodies relax.
Breathing with my loved one's lungs,
Our bodies relaxing.

Breathing in, I am looking with my loved one's eyes.
Breathing out, I am listening with my loved one's ears.
Looking with my loved one's eyes
Listening with my loved one's ears

Breathing in, I see I am part of the wonderful river of life, flowing continuously for thousands of years.
Breathing out, I smile and entrust myself to this river of life.
River of life, entrusting myself.


—Thich Nhat Hanh
How to Live When a Loved One Dies,
Healing Meditations for Grief and Loss



Friday, August 23, 2024

messages

 






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A story is like water
that you heat for your bath.
It takes messages between the fire
and your skin. It lets them meet,
and it cleans you!
Very few can sit down
in the middle of the fire itself
like a salamander or Abraham. 
We need intermediaries.

A feeling of fullness comes,
but it usually takes some bread
to bring it.
Beauty surrounds us,
but usually we need to be walking
in a garden to know it.
The body itself is a screen
to shield and partially reveal
the light that’s blazing
inside your presence. 

Water, stories, the body,
all the things we do, are mediums
that hide and show what’s hidden.

Study them,
and enjoy being washed
with a secret we sometimes know,
and then not.


—Rumi
Coleman Barks version




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the only true statement








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You judge and begrudge because you think, ‘I am like this and the other should be like that’. This is make-believe knowledge.

Go ahead with your fantasizing but know that ultimately you will be left with a sense of incompleteness, even sorrow. I know it can be difficult to grasp but the knowledge you really seek is not something that your mind can find. It is not discernible as long as you are a slave to mind.

My advice is to ease back and sense what is really here before you, already in your heart. In ease and stillness you can expand past your petty judgments and find the source of fellowship and an effortless strength.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj



.




'I do not know’ is the only true statement the mind can make.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj




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Wednesday, August 21, 2024

It’s your solemn duty to learn how to enjoy this thing! —Alan Watts

 





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All that you are attached to, all that you Love,
all that you know, someday will be gone.

Knowing this, and that the world is your mind
which you create, play in, and suffer from,
is known as discrimination.

Discriminate between the real and the unreal.

The known is unreal and will come and go
so stay with the Unknown, the Unchanging Truth.

All which appears and disappears is not real,
and no nectar will come from it so do not cling to it.


—Papaji


.



There are always moments when one feels empty, estranged and afraid. 

You are detaching, the old is over and the new has not yet come. The soul has cast its moorings and is sailing for distant places. 

Remember the instruction: whatever you come across 
- go beyond. 


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

.

 

 

 



Tuesday, August 20, 2024

all those things for which we have no words are lost. —Annie Dillard

 






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Before this longing,
I lived serene as a fish
At one with the plants in the pond,
The mare's tail, the floating frogbite,
Among my eight-legged friends,
Open like a pool, a lesser parsnip,
Like a leech, looping myself along,
A bug-eyed edible one,
A mouth like a stickleback,-
A thing quiescent!

But now-
The wild stream, the sea itself cannot contain me:
I dive with the black hag, the cormorant,
Or walk the pebbly shore with the humpbacked heron,
Shaking out my catch in the morning sunlight,
Or rise with the gar-eagle, the great-winged condor,
Floating over the mountains,
Pitting my breast against the rushing air,
A phoenix, sure of my body,
Perpetually rising out of myself,
My wings hovering over the shorebirds,
Or beating against the black clouds of the storm,
Protecting the sea-cliffs.


—Theodore Roethke
her longing 



.






everything that happens is the message







.




Everything that happens is the message:
you read an event and be one and wait,
like breasting a wave, all the while knowing
by living, though not knowing how to live.

Or workers built an antenna -- a dish
aimed at stars -- and they themselves are its message,
crawling in and out, being worlds that loom,
dot-dash, and sirens, and sustaining beams.

And sometimes no one is calling but we turn up
eye and ear -- suddenly we fall into
sound before it begins, the breathing
so still it waits there under the breath --

And then the green of leaves calls out, hills
where they wait or turn, clouds in their frenzied
stillness unfolding their careful words:
"Everything counts. The message is the world."


—William Stafford
A Message from Space
from The Worth of Local Things











Monday, August 19, 2024

tru(ly

 






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Do not go about worshipping deities and religious institutions as the source of the subtle truth. To do so is to place intermediaries between yourself and the divine, and to make of yourself a beggar who looks outside for a treasure that is hidden inside his own breast. 
If you want to worship the Tao, first discover it in your own heart.
Then your worship will be meaningful.


—Hua Hu Ching


.



Moments, crumbs, fleeting configurations—no sooner have they come into existence than they fall to pieces. Life? There’s no such thing; I see lines, planes, and bodies, and they’re transformations in time. 

Time, meanwhile, seems a simple instrument for the measurement of tiny changes, a school ruler with a simplified scale—it’s just three points: was, is, and will be.


—Olga Tokarczuk
Flights


.





There is no alternative for you but to accept the world as unreal, 

if you are seeking the Truth and the Truth alone.


—Ramana Maharshi 





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Sunday, August 18, 2024

listen

  

 




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Life is like music for its own sake. 

We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.


—Alan Watts


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Saturday, August 17, 2024

blue pill or red pill








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"This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back.You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes."


—Morpheus, The Matrix



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Friday, August 16, 2024

call and answer

  






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Words, even if they come from
the soul, hide the soul, as fog

rising off the sea covers the sea,
the coast, the fish, the pearls.

It's noble work to build coherent
philosophical discourses, but

they block out the sun of truth.
See God's qualities as an ocean,

this world as foam on the purity
of that. Brush away and look

through the alphabet to essence,
as you do the hair covering your

beloved's eyes. Here's the mystery:
this intricate, astonishing world

is proof of God's presence even as
it covers the beauty. One flake

from the wall of a gold mine does
not give much idea what it's like

when the sun shines in and turns
the air and the workers golden.


—Rumi


.



I am where I was:
I walk behind the murmur,

footsteps within me, heard with my eyes,


the murmur is in the mind, I am my footsteps,


I hear the voices that I think,


the voices that think me as as I think them.
I am the shadow my words cast.


—Octavio Paz
closing lines to A Draft of Shadows
Eliot Weinberger translation 



.




... treat each day as a word spoken to us. 

And yourself—as an answer to the word.


—Anna Kamieńska




.




 


Thursday, August 15, 2024

friend





.



Friend, we’re traveling together.
Throw off your tiredness. 

Let me show you one tiny spot of the beauty that cannot be spoken. 


—Rumi

 

.

 


 


Monday, August 12, 2024

part(ners







.



For intervals, then, throughout our lives we savor a concurrence, the great blending of our chance selves with what sustains all chance. 

We ride the wave and are the wave.

And with renewed belief inner and outer we find our talk turned to prayer, our prayer into truth: for an interval, early, we become at home in the world.


—William Stafford



.



Take me to the other side of this night,

where I am you, we are us,

the kingdom where pronouns are intertwined

… and the sea sang with the murmur of light.


—Octavio Paz



.








friends





 
. 



Wherever and whenever
You hear this
You hear

What was meant for you
Since before
Time began.

This is the moment
Of our meeting
Mind, heart, body

That was written
In your stars
When your soul began

Its long journey back
To your own house.

So, friends,
Open the door
And see Kabir

Waiting for you
Sitting on
Your favorite chair.

Let's talk
Or better
Let's not.


—Kabir
  
.

 

 



Saturday, August 10, 2024

treat the life force as God... no other God exists... —Sri Nisargadatta

 






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A man may go into the field and say his prayer and be aware of God, or, he may be in Church and be aware of God; but, if he is more aware of Him because he is in a quiet place, that is his own deficiency and not due to God, Who is alike present in all things and places, and is willing to give Himself everywhere so far as lies in Him.

He knows God rightly who knows Him everywhere.


—Meister Eckhart


.



Sit and be still

until in the time

of no rain you hear

beneath the dry wind's

commotion in the trees

the sound of flowing

water among the rocks,

a stream unheard before,

and you are where 

breathing is prayer.


—Wendell Berry




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Friday, August 9, 2024

say i am

 






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Our conversations imitate those that the stubborn crystals, molecules, clouds, rock faces and rivers incessantly entertain between themselves. 

We live as slices of the world [parts du monde].


—Michel Serres
Temps, usure: feux et signaux de brume
Time, wear and tear: lights and fog signals




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I have learned so much from God that I can no longer call myself a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Jew.

The Truth has shared so much of Itself with me that I can no longer call myself a man, a woman, an angel, or even a pure Soul.

Love has befriended me so completely it has turned to ash and freed me of every concept and image my mind has ever known.


—Hafez


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Thursday, August 8, 2024

the source of all things








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For beauty is the cause of harmony, of sympathy, of community.
Beauty unites all things and is the source of all things.

It is the great creating cause which bestirs the world and holds all things in existence by the longing inside them to have beauty.

And there it is ahead of all as the Beloved, toward which all things move, since it is the longing for beauty which brings them into being.


—Pseudo-Dionysius
from The Divine Names


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Wednesday, August 7, 2024

i am and look

 







.





It has come to this: I'm sitting under a tree
beside a river
on a sunny morning.
It's an insignificant event
and won't go down in history.
It's not battles and pacts,
where motives are scrutinized,
or noteworthy tyrannicides.

And yet I'm sitting by this river, that's a fact.
And since I'm here
I must have come from somewhere,
and before that
I must have turned up in many other places,
exactly like the conquerors of nations
before setting sail.

Even a passing moment has its fertile past,
its Friday before Saturday,
its May before June.
Its horizons are no less real
than those that a marshal's field glasses might scan.

This tree is a poplar that's been rooted here for years.
The river is the Raba; it didn't spring up yesterday.
The path leading through the bushes
wasn't beaten last week.
The wind had to blow the clouds here
before it could blow them away.

And though nothing much is going on nearby,
the world is no poorer in details for that.
It's just as grounded, just as definite
as when migrating races held it captive.

Conspiracies aren't the only things shrouded in silence.
Retinues of reasons don't trail coronations alone.
Anniversaries of revolutions may roll around,
but so do oval pebbles encircling the bay.

The tapestry of circumstance is intricate and dense.
Ants stitching in the grass.
The grass sewn into the ground.
The pattern of a wave being needled by a twig.

So it happens that I am and look.
Above me a white butterfly is fluttering through the air
on wings that are its alone,
and a shadow skims through my hands
that is none other than itself, no one else's but its own.

When I see such things, I'm no longer sure
that what's important
is more important than what's not.


—Wislawa Szymborska
S. Baranczak and C. Cavanagh version





.




I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars …


—Walt Whitman




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Saturday, August 3, 2024

this being human is a guest house

  






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Set your life on fire.
Seek those who fan your flames.

Who gets up early to discover the moment the light begins?
What was whispered to the rose to break it open last night was whispered to my heart. 
You’ve gotten drunk on so many kinds of wine. 
Taste this. It won’t make you wild.

It’s fire. 
Give up, if you don’t understand by this time that your living is firewood
Set your life on fire.
Seek those who fan your flames. 

The lamps are different,
But the Light is the same. 
To change, a person must face the dragon of his appetites with another dragon, the life-energy of the soul. 

What is the body? 
That shadow of a shadow of your love, that somehow contains the entire universe. 
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival. 

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. 
Welcome and attend them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. 
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. 
Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets that serve to cover, and then are taken off.

That undressing, and the beautiful naked body underneath, is the sweetness that comes after grief.
You haven’t dared yet lose faith - so, can faith grow in you? 
Gamble everything for love, if you’re a true human being. 
If these poems repeat themselves, then so does Spring


—Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī
this being human is a guest house





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Thursday, August 1, 2024

no(thing, not nothing

 






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Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara,
Sitting in the depth of knowledge,
Lit with the glow of his wisdom five elements
And saw that all of them are empty.
After this enlightenment he overcame the pain.

Listen, Shariputra,
Form - a void, emptiness - is the form
Form - is nothing but emptiness,
Void - it is nothing but a form.
The same is true for the senses,
Perceptions of mental activity and consciousness.
Listen, Shariputra,
All dharmas are empty properties.
They do not create and are not exterminable,
Are not dirty and are not cleaned,
Do not grow or shrink.

Hence, in the void
There is no form, no feelings, no perceptions,
No mental activity or consciousness.
There is no dependent origination
No eyes, no ears, no nose,
No tongue, no body, no mind.
There is no form, no sound, no smell,
No taste, no touch, no object of mind.
No sphere of elements, ranging from eye
And the ending of consciousness.

And it is not fading, from ignorance
And ending with death and decay.
There is no source of suffering and misery,
No Cessation of Suffering
And there is no way to end suffering.
There is no wisdom and no progress.
Since there is no progress, all the Bodhisattvas,
Relying on perfect wisdom,
No obstacles are in your mind.
With no obstacles, they overcome fear,
Forever exempt from error
And reach true nirvana.
Thanks to this perfect wisdom,
All the Buddhas of the past, present and future
Enter into a full, true and total enlightenment.

Therefore, to know that perfect wisdom
Expressed unsurpassed mantra,
The highest mantra, devastating suffering
Perfect and true.
Hence, the mantra Prajnaparamita
Must be declared.
Here is the mantra:

Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.
Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.
Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.

—The Prajñāpāramitā, the Heart Sutra
History of the Universe


 
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fishing for falling light

 





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The changing of bodies into light and light into bodies is very comfortable to the course of nature which seems delighted with transmutations.


—Sir Isaac Newton



.




Use your own light and return to the source of light.

This is called practicing eternity.


—Lao-Tzu




.



If each day falls 
inside each night, 
there exists a well 
where clarity is imprisoned.

We need to sit on the rim 
of the well of darkness 
and fish for fallen light 
with patience.


—Pablo Neruda



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