look at that face ...

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Be aware that the two paths of jnana (knowledge) and bhakti (devotion) are inseparably related. Therefore, without separating one from the other through the delusion that they are different, practice both simultaneously and harmoniously in your heart.

–Sri Ramana Maharshi

...

The heart can think of no devotion
Greater than being shore to ocean 
Holding the curve of one position,
Counting an endless repetition.


—Robert Frost

.

if you hanker

.

If you hanker for
a zenith of felicity
on the bed of the Divine
begin by dusting off
the wings of wonder
on your local pillow

Lift your ineffable
out of the mundane
Aim for airborne
with the eye of the heart
as your sky pilot
and soar to glory

–James Broughton

.
Laurence Winram
.

you know ...

.

The little space within the heart is 

as great as the vast universe. 

The heavens and the earth are there, 

and the sun and the moon and the stars. 

Fire and lightening and winds are there, 

and all that now is and all that is not.

—The Upanishads

...

I am blind and do not see the things of this world;
but when the Light comes from above, it enlightens my Heart,
and I can see, for the Eye of my Heart sees everything.

The Heart is a sanctuary of the Center in which there is a little space
wherein the Great Spirit dwells, and this is the Eye.
This is the Eye of Wakentaka by which he sees all things,
and through which we see Him.

—Black Elk

...

there is no place at all
that is not looking at you.


—Rainer Maria Rilke

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The definition of prayer is paying careful and concentrated attention to something other than your own constructions. —W. H. Auden

  

. 

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

.

like this

.

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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pray(er

.

Heart, do not stain my skin

With bruises; go about

Your simple function.

Mind,

Sleep now; do not intrude;

And do not spy; be kind.

Sweet blindness, now begin.

–Edna St. Vincent Millay

Theme and Variations II

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I ... am beginning to feel an immense need to become a savage and create a new world. –Strindberg

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Be suspicious of what you want.

—Rumi


...

If you are lugging a heavy bag,
do not fail to look inside it
to see whether what is inside is bitter or sweet.

If it is really worth bringing along, bring it;
otherwise, empty your sack
and redeem yourself from fruitless effort.

Only put into your sack
that which is worth bringing.

—Rumi

...

We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe.

―The Upanishads

...

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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buffleheadcabin
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Need, then, is the net for all things. –Rumi

.

You need not do anything.

Remain sitting at your table and listen.

You need not even listen, just wait.

You need not even wait,

just learn to be quiet, still and solitary,

and the world will freely offer itself to you unmasked.

It has no choice, it will roll in ecstasy at your feet.


—Franz Kafka

...

We never see the world as our retina sees it. In fact, it would be a pretty horrible sight: a highly distorted set of light and dark pixels, blown up toward the center of the retina, masked by blood vessels, with a massive hole at the location of the “blind spot” where cables leave for the brain; the image would constantly blur and change as our gaze moved around. What we see, instead, is a three-dimensional scene, corrected for retinal defects, mended at the blind spot, stabilized for our eye and head movements, and massively reinterpreted based on our previous experience of similar visual scenes. All these operations unfold unconsciously—although many of them are so complicated that they resist computer modeling. For instance, our visual system detects the presence of shadows in the image and removes them. At a glance, our brain unconsciously infers the sources of lights and deduces the shape, opacity, reflectance, and luminance of the objects.

—Stanislas Dehaene

Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts

...

Give up to grace.

The ocean takes care of each wave ‘til
it gets to shore.

You need more help than you know.

—Rumi

.

listen

 .

Love with no object.
There is a way of loving not attached to what is loved. 

Observe how water is with the ground, always moving toward the ocean, though the ground tries to hold water’s foot and not let it go.

This is how we are with wine and beautiful food, wealth and power, or just a dry piece of bread: we want and we get drunk with wanting, then the headache and bitterness afterward.

Those prove that the attachment took hold and held you back. Now you proudly refuse help. “My love is pure. I have an intuitive union with God. I don’t need anyone to show me how to be free!”

This is not the case. A love with no object is a true love.
All else, shadow without substance.

Have you seen someone fall in love with his own shadow? That’s what we’ve done. Leave partial loves and find one that’s whole.

Where is someone who can do that? They’re so rare, those hearts that carry the blessing and lavish it over everything.

Hold out your beggar’s robe and accept their generosity. Anything not coming from that will damage the cloth, like a sharp stone tearing your sincerity.

Keep that intact, and use clarity; call it reason or discernment, you have within you a deciding force that knows what to receive, what to turn from.

 –Rumi 

Mathnawi III: 2248-80

Coleman Barks version

...

Out of a great need
we are all holding hands
and climbing.

Not loving is a letting go.

Listen,

the terrain around here
is
far too
dangerous
for
that.


–Hafiz

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Butterflies are self propelled flowers. ―R.H. Heinlein

.

The physics of beauty requires math. The sunflower has spirals of 21, 34, 55, 89, and - in very large sunflowers - 144 seeds. Each number is the sum of the two preceding numbers. This pattern seems to be everywhere: in pine needles and mollusk shells, in parrot beaks and spiral galaxies. After the fourteenth number, every number divided by the next highest number results in a sum that is the length-to-width ratio of what we call the golden mean, the basis for the Egyptian pyramids and the Greek Parthenon, for much of our art and even our music. In our own spiral-shaped inner ear’s cochlea, musical notes vibrate at a similar ratio.

The patterns of beauty repeat themselves, over and over. Yet the physics of beauty is enhanced by a self, a unique, self-organizing system. Scientists now know that a single flower is more responsive, more individual, than they had ever dreamed. Plants react to the world. Plants have ways of seeing, touching, tasting, smelling, and hearing.

Rooted in soil, a flower is always on the move. Sunflowers are famous for turning toward the sun, east in the morning, west in the afternoon. Light-sensitive cells in the stem “see” sunlight, and the stem’s growth orients the flower. Certain cells in a plant see the red end of the spectrum. Other cells see blue and green. Plants even see wavelengths we cannot see, such as ultraviolet.

Most plants respond to touch. The Venus’s-flytrap snaps shut. Stroking the tendril of a climbing pea will cause it to coil. Brushed by the wind, a seedling will thicken and shorten its growth. Touching a plant in various ways, at various times, can cause it to close its leaf pores, delay flower reproduction, increase metabolism, or produce more chlorophyll.

Plants are touchy-feely. They taste the world around them. Sunflowers use their roots to “taste” the surrounding soil as they search for nutrients. The roots of a sunflower can reach down eight feet, nibbling, evaluating, growing toward the best sources of food. The leaves of some plants can taste a caterpillar’s saliva. They “sniff” the compounds sent out by nearby damaged plants. Research suggests that some seeds taste or smell smoke, which triggers germination.

The right sound wave may also trigger germination. Sunflowers, like pea plants, seem to increase their growth when they hear sounds similar to but louder than the human speaking voice.

In other ways, flowers and pollinators find each other through sound.
A tropical vine, pollinated by bats, uses a concave petal to reflect the bat’s sonar signal. 

The bat calls to the flower. The flower responds.


—Sharman Apt Russell
Anatomy of A Rose: Exploring the Secret Life of Flowers

...

There is an endless net of threads throughout  the universe.
The horizontal threads are in space. 
The vertical threads are in time.

At every crossing of the threads, there is an individual, and every individual is a crystal bead.

And every crystal bead reflects not only the light from every other crystal in the net, but also every other reflection throughout the entire universe.

—The Rig Veda

...

No experience has been too unimportant,
and the smallest event unfolds like a fate, 

and fate itself is like a wonderful, wide fabric in which
every thread is guided by an infinitely tender hand 

and is laid alongside another thread
and is held and supported by a hundred others.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

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possibilities, excerpt

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I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.


—Wislawa Szymborska

...

The sun turns like a pinwheel.

It counts

its radiant, radioactive petals, ending always

in ‘love,’ an odd number—


—Oni Buchanan

...

you know

.

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

–Norbert Weiner

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Be still, my heart, these great trees are prayers. –Rabindranath Tagore

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Ah listen, for Silence is not lonely:
Imitate the magnificent trees
That speak no word of their rapture, but only
Breathe largely the luminous breeze. 

—D. H. Lawrence
Corot, Love Poems and Others



...

The earth is not a dead body, but is inhabited by a spirit that is its life and soul.

All created things, minerals included, draw their strength from the earth spirit.

This spirit is life, it is nourished by the stars, and it gives nourishment to all the living things it shelters in its womb.

—Basilius Valentinus
15th Century Benedictine
monk and alchemist

...

All things in this creation exist within you, and all things in you exist in creation; there is no border between you and the closest things, and there is no distance between you and the farthest things, and all things, from the lowest to the loftiest, from the smallest to the greatest, are within you as equal things. 

In one atom are found all the elements of the earth; in one motion of the mind are found the motions of all the laws of existence; in one drop of water are found the secrets of all the endless oceans; in one aspect of you are found all the aspects of existence.


—Kahlil Gibran

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fishing for fallen light

.

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

.

Love is not consolation. It is light. —Friedrich Nietzsche

.

And if I forget how many times I have been here, and in how many shapes,
this forgetting is the necessary interval of darkness between every pulsation of light.


—Alan Watts
On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

...

All that passes descends,
and ascends again unseen
into the light: the river
coming down from sky
to hills, from hills to sea,
and carving as it moves,
to rise invisible,
gathered to light, to return
again. "The river's injury
is its shape." I've learned no more.

We are what we are given
and what is taken away;
blessed be the name
of the giver and taker.

For everything that comes
is a gift, the meaning always
carried out of sight
to renew our whereabouts,
always a starting place.
And every gift is perfect
in its beginning, for it
is "from above, and cometh down
from the Father of lights."
Gravity is grace.


—Wendell Berry
The Gift of Gravity, excerpt

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