question

.

Who is this self on whom we meditate?

Is it the self by which we see, hear, smell and taste,
Through which we speak in words? Is self the mind
By which we perceive, direct, understand,
Know, remember, think, will, desire and love?

These are but servants of the Self, who is
Pure consciousness.
The self is all in all.

He is all the gods, the five elements,
Earth, air, fire, water, and space; all creatures,
Great or small, born of eggs, of wombs, of heat,
Of shoots; horses, cows, elephants, men and women,
All beings that walk, all beings that fly,
And all that neither walk nor fly. Prajna
Is pure consciousness, guiding all. The world
Rests on Prajna, and prajna is Brahman.

Those who realize Brahman live in joy
And go beyond death. Indeed
They go beyond death.

Om shanti shanti shanti


—The Aitareya Upanishad, Part III
Eknath Easwaren version,
Easwaren's Classics of Indian Spirituality, Book 2

.

question

 

. 

Do you think I know what I'm doing? 

That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?

As much as a pen knows what it's writing, 

or the ball can guess where it's going next. 


—Rumi 

.

if you live well

hero

.

1. India

In India in their lives they happen
again and again, being people or
animals. And if you live well
your next time could be even better.

That's why they often look into your eyes
and you know some far-off story
with them and you in it, and some
animal waiting over at the side.

Who would want to happen just once?
It's too abrupt that way, and
when you're wrong, it's too late
to go back - you've done it forever.

And you can't have that soft look when you
pass, the way they do it in India.

2. Having It Be Tomorrow

Day, holding its lantern before it,
moves over the whole earth slowly
to brighten that edge and push it westward.
Shepherds on upland pastures begin fires
for breakfast, beads of light that extend
miles of horizon. Then it's noon and
coasting toward a new tomorrow.

If you're in on that secret, a new land
will come every time the sun goes
climbing over it, and the welcome of children
will remain every day new in your heart.
Those around you don't have it new,
and they shake their heads turning grey every
morning when the sun comes up. And you laugh.

3. Being Nice And Old

After their jobs are done old people
cackle together. They look back and shiver,
all of that was so dizzying when it happened;
and now if there is any light at all it
knows how to rest on the faces of friends.
And any people you don't like, you just turn
the page a little more and wait while they
find out what time is and begin to bend
lower; or you can turn away
and let them drop off the edge of the world.

4. Good Ways To Live

At night outside it all moves or
almost moves - trees, grass,
touches of wind. The room you have
in the world is ready to change.
Clouds parade by, and stars in their
configurations. Birds from far
touch the fabric around them - you can
feel their wings move. Somewhere under
the earth it waits, that emanation
of all things. It breathes. It pulls you
slowly out through doors or windows
and you spread in the thin halo of night mist.

—William Stafford
ways to live
written just over a month before William Stafford's death in August, 1993
hero

.

sight

   

.

Once

a single cell

found that it was full of light

and for the first time there was seeing

when

I was a bird

I could see where the stars had turned

and I set out on my journey

high

in the head of a mountain goat

I could see across a valley

under the shining trees something moving

deep

in the green sea

I saw the two sides of the water

and swam between them

I

look at you

in the first light of the morning

for as long as I can

—W. S. Merwin
hero

.

relation is mutual

 

.

I consider a tree.

I can look on it as a picture: stiff column in a shock of light, or splash of green shot with the delicate blue and silver of the background.

I can perceive it as movement: flowing veins on clinging, pressing pith, suck of the roots, breathing of the leaves, ceaseless commerce with the earth and air—and the obscure growth itself.

I can classify it in a species and study it as a type in its structure and mode of life. I can subdue its actual presence and form so sternly that I recognize it only as an expression of law—of the laws in accordance with which a constant opposition of forces is continually adjusted, or of those in accordance with which the component substances mingle and separate. I can dissipate it and perpetuate it in number, in pure material relation. In all this the tree remains my object, occupies space and time, and has its nature and constitution. 

It can, however, also come about, if I have both will and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is now no longer It. I have been seized by the power of exclusiveness.

To effect this it is not necessary for me to give up any of the ways in which I consider the tree. There is nothing from which I would have to turn my eyes away in order to see, and no knowledge that I would have to forget. Rather is everything, picture and movement, species and type, law and number, indivisibly united in this event.

Everything belonging to the tree is in this: its form and structure, its colours and chemical composition, its intercourse with the elements and with the stars, are all present in a single whole.

The tree is not impression, no play of my imagination, no value depending on my mood: but it is bodied over against me and has to do with me, as I with it—only in a different way.

Let no attempt be made to sap the strength from the meaning of the relation: relation in mutual. The tree will have a consciousness, then, similar to our own? Of that I have no experience. But do you wish, through seeming to succeed in it with yourself, once again to disintegrate that which cannot be disintegrated? I encounter no soul or dryad of the tree, but the tree itself.


—Martin Buber
I and Thou
Ronald Gregor Smith version

.

 

braiding sweetgrass

    

.

In a mist of light 

falling with the rain

I walk this ground

of which dead men

and women I have loved

are part, as they

are part of me. In earth,

in blood, in mind,

the dead and living

into each other pass,

as the living pass

in and out of loves

as stepping to a song.

The way I go is

marriage to this place,

grace beyond chance,

love’s braided dance

covering the world.

—Wendell Berry

.

When the blood of your veins returns to the sea and the dust of your bones returns to the ground, maybe then will you remember that this earth does not belong to you, you belong to this earth.

—Sweetgrass

Native American Prophet

.

cosmic life

Mariya Golub

“Morning is Breathing”, 2020

Acrylic on Canvas, 80 × 90 cm

.

Now we have to get back the cosmos, and it can’t be done by a trick. The great range of responses that have fallen dead in us have to come to life again. It has taken two thousand years to kill them. Who knows how long it will take to bring them to life.

When I hear modern people complain of being lonely then I know what has happened. They have lost the cosmos. 

It is nothing human and personal that we are short of. What we lack is cosmic life, the sun in us and the moon in us.

—D.H. Lawrence

Apocalypse

.

wait

.

love flows down

 

.

Love comes with a knife, not some 
shy question, and not with fears 
for its reputation! I say 
these things disinterestedly. Accept them 
in kind. Love is a madman 

working his wild schemes, tearing off his clothes, 
running through the mountains, drinking poison, 
and now quietly choosing annihilation. 

You've been walking the ocean’s edge, 
holding up your robes to keep them dry. 
You must dive naked under and deeper under, 
a thousand times deeper! Love flows down. 

The ground submits to the sky and suffers 
what comes. Tell me, is the earth worse 
for giving in like that? 

Don’t put blankets over the drum! 
Open completely. Let your spirit-ear 
listen to the green dome’s passionate murmur. 

Let the cords of your robe be untied. 
Shiver in this new love beyond all 
above and below. The sun rises, but which way 
does night go? I have no more words. 

Let soul speak with the silent 
articulation of a face.


—Jelalludin Rumi 1207 – 1273
Coleman Barks version

.

heart of the swallow

Beth Moon, The Lovers, Morondava, Madagascar, 2006

.

They made love among the hazel shrubs

beneath the suns of dew,

entangling in their hair

a leafy residue.

Heart of the swallow

have mercy on them. 

They knelt down by the lake,

combed out the earth and leaves,

and fish swam to the water's edge

shimmering like stars.

Heart of the swallow

have mercy on them.

The reflections of trees were steaming

off the rippling waves.

O swallow let this memory

forever be engraved.

O swallow, thorn of clouds,

anchor of the air,

Icarus improved,

Assumption in formal wear,

O swallow, the calligrapher,

timeless second hand,

early ornithogothic,

a crossed eye in the sky,

O swallow, pointed silence,

mourning full of joy,

halo over lovers,

have mercy on them.

—Wislawa Szymborska

.

love letters

   

.

Every day, priests minutely examine the Law

And endlessly chant complicated sutras.

Before doing that, though, they should learn

How to read the love letters sent by the wind

and rain, the snow and moon.


—Ikkyu
Sonya Arutzen version

.

all things change, no(thing perishes

 

.

Everything must change
Nothing remains the same
Everyone must change
No one and nothing remains the same

The young becomes the old
Oh, mysteries unfold
Cause that's the way of time
Nothing and no one remains the same

There is so little in life you can be sure of 
Except the rain comes from the clouds
Sunlight from the sky
And, Hummingbirds do fly

The young becomes the old
And, mysteries do unfold
That's the way of time
Nothing, no one remains unchanged

There are so little things, so few things in life you can be sure of
Except
Rain comes from the clouds
Sunlight from the sky
And Hummingbirds do fly
Everything must change

Everything
Everything must change


—Bernard Ighner 

.

Souls never die, but always on quitting one abode pass to another. All things change, nothing perishes. The soul passes hither and thither, occupying now this body, now that … 

As a wax is stamped with certain figures, then melted, then stamped anew with others, yet it is always the same wax. So, the Soul being always the same, yet wears at different times different forms.

―Pythagoras 

.

place(ment

 

.

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

.

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

 

.

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

.

looking, walking, being

 

.

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

.

thou art that

.

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

.

largerloves

quidnunc (what now?

.

messages

 

.

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

.

the only true statement

.

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

.

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

 

.

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

. 

tru(ly

 

.

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 

.

listen

  

 

.

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

.

blue pill or red pill

.

"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

.

call and answer

  

.

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

.

 

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

.

say i am

 

.

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

.

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

.

the source of all things

.

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

.

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

.