The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it. —Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

The appearance of water in a mirage persists after the fact that it is a mirage has dawned on us. So it is with the world.

Though knowing it to be unreal, it continues to manifest - but we do not try to satisfy our thirst with the water of the mirage.

As soon as one knows that it is a mirage, one gives it up as useless and does not run after it to get water.


—Ramana Maharshi

.

A billion stars go spinning through the night, blazing high above your head. But in you is the presence that will be, when all the stars are dead.


—Rainer Maria Rilke

.

 

listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go 

 ―E.E. Cummings

 

.

the softness of all phenomenal reality

 

.

Strongly influenced by the substrata of the native religion Bon (a form of Northeast Asian shamanism) and the later imports of Mahayana Buddhism and tantric ideas from India and Nepal, the Tibetan world view is uncompromising in its insistence on the “softness” of all phenomenal reality. 

The question of “apparent” versus “real” in relation to phenomenal existence, which has long been a preoccupation of Western philosophy, was in Tibet long ago firmly decided in favour of the former; stong pa nyid (“emptiness,” “voidness”) is part of everyday speech of a Tibetan and the explanation he offers for the many riddles of life. 

In the Tibetan view, all that exists is a mirage of the mind, imperfect images on a screen covering “absolute” reality, which can only be realized in liberation. Everything in the universe, then, has a meaning other than the apparent one, and the world is full of oracles and signs that need to be interpreted. 

Imagination reigns supreme and all that can be imagined is as real as all that exists. There is no place for the supernatural in this world since one may arbitrarily choose to regard everything either as miraculous or as commonplace. 

As David-Neel describes it, “None in Tibet deny that such events may take place, but no one regards them as miracles. Indeed, Tibetans do not recognize any supernatural agent. The so-called wonders, they think, are as natural and as common daily events and depend on the clever handling of little known laws and forces.” 

Since phenomenal existence is believed to be created by the mind, then phenomenal reality can also be controlled, the relationship between its elements varied, and new phenomena created, by special types of mental effort involving concentrated meditation, elaborate rituals and the transforming power of mantra.


—Sudhir Kakar
Shamans, Mystics, and Doctors

.

we are that

.

The Net of Indra is a vast, bejewelled matrix spanning and encompassing the whole universe. 

From every knot hangs a jewel, and each jewel reflects all the other jewels within the net. My father’s life was one jewel hanging from a knot in that infinite web, and in that jewel was reflected my life, and my brothers’ lives, and my mother’s life.

—Eugene Richards
A Life Too Long

.

You were enmeshed in a great network which magically changed you into something vaster than yourselves.

For you have need of the vastness that such words alone impart.


—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Wisdom of the Sands

.

Inside us there is something that has no name,

that something is what we are.

—José Saramago

Blindness 

.

this only

Indian scops owl, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India. photo: Digvijay Lande 2017

.

A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map led him here. 

Or perhaps memory. Once, long ago, in the sun,
When the first snow fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong, without reason,
Joy of the eyes. Everything was the rhythm
Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight,
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast of motion. 

He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

—Czesław Miłosz

This Only
Robert Hass version

.

 

whose question is it?

   

.

 

D.: How is the mind to dive into the Heart?

M.: The mind now sees itself diversified as the universe. 

If the diversity is not manifest, it remains in its own essence, that is the Heart. Entering the Heart means remaining without distractions.

The Heart is the only Reality. The mind is only a transient phase. To remain as one’s Self is to enter the Heart.


—Ramana Maharshi 

.

 

Is anyone there

if so

are you real

either way are you

one or several

if the latter

are you all at once

or do you

take turns not answering

is your answer

the question itself

surviving the asking

without end

whose question is it

how does it begin

where does it come from

how did it ever

find out about you

over the sound

of itself

with nothing but its own

ignorance to go by

—W. S. Merwin
To The Soul

.

a gift for you

 

.

You have no idea how hard I've looked
for a gift to bring You. 
Nothing seemed right.

What's the point of bringing gold 
to the gold mine, or water to the ocean. 
Everything I came up with was like 
taking spices to the Orient.

It's no good giving my heart and my soul
because you already have these. 

So I've brought you a mirror.
Look at yourself and remember me.


—Jalal al-Din Rumi

.

there are moments in moist love when heaven is jealous of what we on earth can do. —Hafiz

 

Andromeda Galaxy, Bersonic

.

Little soul, 
you have wandered
lost a long time.
The woods all dark now,
birded and eyed.
Then a light, a cabin, a fire,
a door standing open.
The fairy tales warn you:
Do not go in,
you who would eat will be eaten.
You go in. You quicken.
You want to have feet.
You want to have eyes.
You want to have fears.


—Jane Hirshfield
Amor Fati
Poetry, 2017

.

where is heart is beauty

.

Under a lonely sky a lonely tree
Is beautiful. All that is loneliness
Is beautiful. A feather lost at sea;
A staring owl; a moth; a yellow tress
Of seaweed on a rock, is beautiful.

The night-lit moon, wide-wandering in sky;
A blue-bright spark, where ne'er a cloud is up;
A wing, where no wing is, it is so high;
A bee in winter, or a buttercup,
Late-blown, are lonely, and are beautiful.

The eye that watched you from a cottage door;
The first leaf, and the last; the break of day;
The mouse, the cuckoo, and the cloud, are beautiful.

For all that is, is lonely; all that may
Will be as lonely as is that you see;
The lonely heart sings on a lonely spray,
The lonely soul swings lonely in the sea,
And all that loneliness is beautiful.

All, all alone, and all without a part
Is beautiful, for beauty is all where;
Where is an eye is beauty, where a heart
Is beauty, brooding out, on empty air,
All that is lonely and is beautiful.


—James Stephens
on a lonely spray

.

look

 

.

I am not one of those who neglect the body in order to make of it a sacrificial offering for the soul, since my soul would thoroughly dislike being served in such a fashion.


—Rainer Maria Rilke

.

I learned through my body and soul
that it was necessary for me to sin, 
that I needed lust, 
that I had to strive for property, 
and experience nausea and the depths of despair 
in order to learn not to resist them, 
in order to learn to love the world ... 


—Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha

.

the secret of both worlds

   

 

.

The whole world is a marketplace for Love,

For naught that is, from Love remains remote.

The Eternal Wisdom made all things in Love.

On Love they all depend, to Love all turn.

The earth, the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars

The center of their orbit find in Love.

By Love are all bewildered, stupefied,

Intoxicated by the Wine of Love.

From each, Love demands a mystic silence.

What do all seek so earnestly? “Tis Love.

Love is the subject of their inmost thoughts,

In Love no longer “Thou” and “I” exist,

For self has passed away in the Beloved. 

Now will I draw aside the veil from Love,

And in the temple of mine inmost soul

Behold the Friend, Incomparable Love.

He who would know the secret of both worlds

Will find that the secret of them both is Love.

—Farid ud Din Attar

Essential Sufism

.

There is another world, but it is inside this one —Paul Éluard

   

.

I cannot sit still with my countrymen in chains.
I cannot act mute
Hearing the world's loneliness
Crying near the Beloved's heart.

My love for God is such
That I could dance with Him tonight without you,
But I would rather have you there.

Is your caravan lost?

It is,
If you no longer weep from gratitude or happiness,
Or weep
From being cut deep with the awareness
Of the extraordinary beauty
That emanates from the most simple act
And common object.

My dear, is your caravan lost?

It is if you can no longer be kind to yourself
And loving to those who must live
With the sometimes difficult task of loving you.

At least come to know
That someone untied your camel last night
For I hear its gentle voice
Calling for God in the desert.

At least come to know
That Hafiz will always hold a lantern
With the galaxies blooming inside
And that

I will always guide your soul to 
The divine warmth and exhilaration
Of our Beloved's 
Tent.

—Hafiz

.

beloved

. 

Are you looking for me?

I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours. 

You will not find me in the stupas,
not in Indian shrine rooms,
nor in synagogues,
nor in cathedrals:
not in masses,
nor kirtans,
not in legs winding around your own neck,
nor in eating nothing but vegetables. 

When you really look for me,
you will see me instantly —
you will find me in the tiniest house of time. 

Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.

—Kabir

.

All of you is holy. 

You are already more and less than whatever you can know. 

Breathe out, look in, let go. 

—John Welwood

.

thank you

ian sanders

.

all the flowers are forms of water

  

.

The act of trying to find the way home is what convinces us we are lost. 

We are not lost, we are not alone, and we have never left home.

—Rumi

. 

Never during its pilgrimage is the human spirit completely adrift and alone. From start to finish its nucleus is the Atman, the god-within. 

Underlying its whirlpool of transient feelings, emotions and delusions is the self-luminous, abiding point of the transpersonal god. 

As the sun lights the world even when cloud-covered, the Immutable is never seen but is the Witness; 

it is never heard but is the Hearer; it is never thought but is the Thinker; it is never known but is the Knower. 

There is no other witness but This, no other knower but This.

—The Upanishads

. 

All day the stars watch from long ago

my mother said I am going now

when you are alone you will be all right

whether or not you know you will know

look at the old house in the dawn rain

all the flowers are forms of water

the sun reminds them through a white cloud

touches the patchwork spread on the hill

the washed colors of the afterlife

that lived there long before you were born

see how they wake without a question

even though the whole world is burning

—W. S. Merwin

Rain Light

.

wholeness is never lost

.

One day, I will be a bird, and will snatch my being out of my nothingness. 

The more my wings burn, the more I near my truth and arise from the ashes.

—Mahmoud Darwish

.

holograms of time feeling space

.

Stone erratics. Transcending time, eclipsing distance. Shipwrecked monoliths that sail across the empty landscape. As natural markers and ports of call, they have been worshipped as loci of divine power since time immemorial. They have formed the focal points for human wonder and wish fulfilment. And being untethered from their place of origin, they are a kind of pilgrim – commuting across the ancient byways and migrating from ancestral grounds of stone. 

The root of ‘erratic’ is in the Latin errare which means to wander. As they wander through the immensities of time and space these giant rocks become witnesses to the earth’s internal monologues. They are the eavesdroppers of the sediments.

[…] Each rock is a wave equation – a complex model of bifurcation and wave formation. The involutions of unstable gestures have made an avatar of mathematical conjecture, and like holograms of time feeling space to predict a future state, each curve in stone foresaw a future boundary state to return its figured sum. 

But perception, distracted by the rock’s baroque designs, may forget the secret forces that framed its final form – the tiny interferences, the micro-instabilities, and the Laplacian quests of flow regimes. Endless habits carved to stone as the tireless sculptor of the manifold weaves its liquid signals into space. 

Shells may store the sounds of waves, but Taihu stones compile the liquid physics into an alphabet of epsilons and upsilons – the sinusoidal cells of tidal swells and the shapes that sign the lunar paths.

Paul Prudence

Figured Stones: Exploring the Lithic Imaginary

.

thank you

noosphe.re

.

We are not stuff that abides, but patterns that perpetuate themselves. —Norbert Weiner

 

.

... if a mirror ever makes
you sad
you should know
that it does
not know
you.


—Kabir

.

telling time

  

.

.

Eternity is not a long time; rather, it is another dimension. 

It is that dimension to which time-thinking shuts us. 

And so there never was a creation. Rather, there is a continuous creating going on. 

This energy is pouring into every cell of our being right now, every board and brick of the buildings we sit in, every grain of sand and wisp of wind.


—Joseph Campbell
Myths of Light

.

For the birds there is not a time that they tell,
but the point vierge between darkness and light,
between being and non-being.

You can tell yourself the time by their waking,
if you are experienced. 

But that is your folly, not theirs.


—Thomas Merton 
Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

.

yes

.

It could happen any time, tornado,
earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.
Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That's why we wake
and look out -- no guarantees
in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,
like right now, like noon,
like evening.


—William Stafford

.

 

listen

   

Paul Slyer photo

.

Only 

That Illumined 

One 

Who keeps 

Seducing the formless into form 

Had the charm to win my 

Heart. 

Only a Perfect One 

Who is always 

Laughing at the word 

Two 

Can make you know 

Of 

Love.

—Hafiz

.

.

It could have happened.
It had to happen.
It happened earlier. Later.
Nearer. Farther off.
It happened, but not to you.

You were saved because you were the first.
You were saved because you were the last.
Alone. With others.
On the right. The left.
Because it was raining. Because of the shade.
Because the day was sunny.

You were in luck -- there was a forest.
You were in luck -- there were no trees.
You were in luck -- a rake, a hook, a beam, a brake,
A jamb, a turn, a quarter-inch, an instant . . .

So you're here? Still dizzy from
another dodge, close shave, reprieve?
One hole in the net and you slipped through?
I couldn't be more shocked or
speechless.

Listen, how your heart pounds inside me.


—Wislawa Szymborska

.

blessed one

   

.

May the Sound of this Bell Penetrate deep into the Cosmos 
Even in the darkest spots 

Living Beings are able to hear it clearly 
So that all suffering in them ceases 
Understanding comes to their hearts 
And they transcend the path of Sorrow and Death 

The Universal Dharma Door 

Is already open 
The Sound of the Rising Tide is heard clearly 
The miracle happens 
A beautiful child appears in the heart of a Lotus flower 
One single drop of this Compassionate Water 

Is enough to bring back the refreshing Spring 
To our Mountains and Rivers 

Listening to the Bell I feel the afflictions in me begin to dissolve 
My mind is calm, my body relaxed 
A smile is born on my lips 
Following the Sound of the Bell 
My breath brings me back to the safe Island of Mindfulness 
In the Garden of my Heart 
The flowers of Peace Bloom beautifully

I know that for thousands of lifetimes,
you and I have been one,
and the distance between us is only a flash of thought.
Just yesterday while walking alone,
I saw the old path strewn with Autumn leaves,
and the brilliant moon, hanging over the gate,
suddenly appeared like the image of an old friend.

And all the stars confirmed that you were there!
All night, the rain of compassion continued to fall,
while lightning flashed through my window
and a great storm arose,
as if Earth and Sky were in battle.

Finally in me the rain stopped, the clouds parted.
The moon returned,
shining peacefully, calming Earth and Sky.
Looking into the mirror of the moon, suddenly
I saw myself,
and I saw you smiling, Blessed One.
How strange!


—Thich Nhat Hanh 

.

Be at peace with your own soul.

Then heaven & earth will be at peace with you.

Enter eagerly into the treasure house that is within you,

And you will see the things that are in heaven, for there is but one single entry to them both.

The ladder that leads to the Kingdom is hidden within your soul…

Dive into yourself and in your soul and you will discover the stairs by which to ascend.

—Isaac of Nineveh

.

 

your mind is the knife

 

.

With only simple tools at their disposal, Ladakhis spend a long time accomplishing each task. Producing wool for clothes involves the time-consuming work of looking after the sheep while they graze, shearing them with hand tools, and working the wool from beginning to end—cleaning, spinning, and finally weaving it. Yet I found that the Ladakhis had an abundance of time. They worked at a gentle pace and had a surprising amount of leisure.

Time is measured loosely; there is never a need to count minutes. "I'll come to see you toward midday, toward evening," they will say, giving themselves several hours' leeway. Ladakhi has many lovely words to depict time, all broad and generous. Gongrot means "from after dark till bedtime"; nyitse means literally "sun on the mountain peaks"; and chips-chirrit, "bird song," describes that time of the morning before the sun has risen, when the birds sing.

Even during the harvest season, when the work lasts long hours, it is done at a relaxed pace that allows an eighty-year-old as well as a young child to join in and help. People work hard, but at their own rate, accompanied by laughter and song. The distinction between word and play is not rigidly defined.

—Helena Elena Norberg Hodge

Ancient Futures: Learning from Ladakh

.

 Your mind is the knife that cuts the continuum of space and time into neat slices of linear experience.  

 

—Deepak Chopra

.

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 

.

 

a song for no(body

 

.

A yellow flower
(Light and spirit)
Sings by itself
For nobody.

A golden spirit
(Light and emptiness)
Sings without a word
By itself.

Let no one touch this gentle sun
In whose dark eye
Someone is awake.

(No light, no gold, no name, no color
And no thought:
O, wide awake!)
A golden heaven
Sings by itself
A song to nobody.


—Thomas Merton

.