Luke 17:20-21, John 15:12

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The reference of the metaphor in religious traditions is to something transcendent that is not literally any thing. If you think that the metaphor is itself the reference, it would be like going to a restaurant, asking for the menu, seeing beefsteak written there, and starting to eat the menu. 

For example, Jesus ascended to heaven. The denotation would seem to be that somebody ascended to the sky. That’s literally what is being said. But if that were really the meaning of the message, then we have to throw it away, because there would have been no such place for Jesus literally to go. We know that Jesus could not have ascended to heaven because there is no physical heaven anywhere in the universe. Even ascending at the speed of light, Jesus would still be in the galaxy. Astronomy and physics have simply eliminated that as a literal, physical possibility.

But if you read “Jesus ascended to heaven” in terms of its metaphoric connotation, you see that he has gone inward – not into outer space but into inward space, to the place from which all being comes, into the consciousness that is the source of all things, the kingdom of heaven within. The images are outward, but their reflection is inward. The point is that we should ascend with him by going inward. It is a metaphor of returning to the source, alpha and omega, of leaving the fixation on the body behind and going to the body’s dynamic source.

—Joseph Campbell

Odilon Redon

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gray herons in the field above the river

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Now that the nights turn longer than the days
we are standing in the still light after dawn

in the high grass of autumn that is green again
hushed in its own place after the burn of summer

each of us stationed alone without moving
at a perfect distance from all the others

like shadows of ourselves risen out of our shadows
each eye without turning continues to behold

what is moving
each of us is one of seven now

we have come a long way sailing our opened clouds
remembering all night where the world would be

the clear shallow stream the leaves floating along it
the dew in the hushed field the only morning

—W. S. Merwin

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whiskeyriver

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the law of love

 

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Love is the basis of the spirit
and the law of love is the basis of creation.

—Walter Russell

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The sign of God’s love is to bestow three attributes on His lover: 

A generosity like that of the sea, 

a kindness like that of the sun, and, 

a humility like that of the earth.


—Bayazid

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on the road home

 

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It was when I said,

“There is no such thing as the truth,”

That the grapes seemed fatter.

The fox ran out of his hole.

You….You said,

“There are many truths,

But they are not parts of a truth.” 

Then the tree, at night, began to change,

Smoking through green and smoking blue.

We were two figures in a wood.

We said we stood alone.

It was when I said,

“Words are not forms of a single word.

In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.

The world must be measured by eye.”

It was when you said,

“The idols have seen lots of poverty,

Snakes and gold and lice,

But not the truth;”

It was at that time, that the silence was largest,

And longest, the night was roundest.

The fragrance of the autumn warmest,

Closest, and strongest.

—Wallace Stevens

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virtue

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largerloves

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before the names

 

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I dream of the silence
the day before Adam came
to name the animals,

The gold skins newly dropped
from God's bright fingers, still
implicit with the light. 

A day like this, perhaps:
a winter whiteness
haunting the creation,

as we are sometimes
haunted by the space
we fill, or by the forms

we might have known
before the names,
beyond the gloss of things.

—John Burnside

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white fox image

 

just sit

 

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We just sit.

It is like something happening in the great sky.

Whatever kind of bird flies through it, the sky doesn’t care.

That is the mind transmitted from Buddha to us.


—Shunryu Suzuki

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question

 

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What happens when your soul
begins to awaken
your eyes
and your heart
and the cells of your body
to the great Journey of Love?

First there is wonderful laughter
and probably precious tears

and a hundred sweet promises
and those heroic vows
no one can ever keep.

But still God is delighted and amused
you once tried to be a saint.

What happens when your soul
begins to awake in this world

to our deep need to love

and serve the Friend?

Oh, the Beloved

will send you

one of his wonderful, wild companions –

Like Hafiz.

—Hafiz

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clarity

 

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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

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love is a place

 

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The Sky where we live
Is no place to lose your wings.

So love, love,

Love.


—Hafiz

 

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for nothing is fixed

 

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For nothing is fixed,
 

forever, forever, forever, 


it is not fixed;
 

the earth is always shifting,

the light is always changing,

the sea does not cease to grind down rock.

Generations do not cease to be born,
 

and we are responsible to them
 

because we are the only witnesses they have.
 

The sea rises, the light fails, 


lovers cling to each other, 


and children cling to us.
 

The moment we cease to hold each other, 


the moment we break faith with one another,
 

the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

—James Baldwin

For Nothing Is Fixed

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a triangle has a spiritual value of its own

 

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Many colors have been described as rough or sticky, others as smooth and uniform, so that one feels inclined to stroke them (e.g., dark ultramarine, chromic oxide green, and rose madder). Equally the distinction between warm and cold colors belongs to this connection. Some colors appear soft (rose madder), others hard (cobalt green, blue-green oxide), so that even fresh from the tube they seem to be dry. The expression “scented colors” is frequently met with. And finally the sound of colors is so definite that it would be hard to find anyone who would try to express bright yellow in the bass notes, or dark lake in the treble… 

Color is a power which directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand which plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul. 

This essential connection between color and form brings us to the question of the influences of form on color. Form alone, even though totally abstract and geometrical, has a power of inner suggestion. A triangle (without the accessory consideration of its being acute — or obtuse — angled or equilateral) has a spiritual value of its own. In connection with other forms, this value may be somewhat modified, but remains in quality the same. The case is similar with a circle, a square, or any conceivable geometrical figure [which has] a subjective substance in an objective shell. 

The work of art is born of the artist in a mysterious and secret way. From him it gains life and being. Nor is its existence casual and inconsequent, but it has a definite and purposeful strength, alike in its material and spiritual life. It exists and has power to create spiritual atmosphere; and from this inner standpoint one judges whether it is a good work of art or a bad one. If its “form” is bad it means that the form is too feeble in meaning to call forth corresponding vibrations of the soul… The artist is not only justified in using, but it is his duty to use only those forms which fulfill his own need… Such spiritual freedom is as necessary in art as it is in life.


—Wassily Kandinsky (1866 - 1944)
Concerning the Spiritual in Art

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source and photo

Andy Ilachinski
taoofdigitalphotography
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in the privacy of the home

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You want to get a good look at yourself. You stand before a mirror, you take off your jacket, unbutton your shirt, open your belt, unzip your fly. The outer clothing falls from you. You take off your shoes and socks, baring your feet. You remove your underwear. At a loss, you examine the mirror. There you are. You are not there.


—Mark Strand

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looking for God

 

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I long for You so much

I follow barefoot Your frozen tracks 

That are high in the mountains

That I know are years old.

I long for You so much 
I have even begun to travel
Where I have never been before.

Hafiz, there is no one in this world

Who is not looking for God.

Everyone is trudging along

With as much dignity, courage

And style

As they possibly 

Can.


—Hafiz

Daniel Ladinsky translation

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be calm and full of peace

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Drink water from the spring where horses drink. The horse will never drink bad water. Lay your bed where the cat sleeps. Eat the fruit that has been touched by a worm. Boldly pick the mushroom on which the insects sit. Plant the tree where the mole digs. Dig your fountain where the birds hide from the heat. Go to sleep and wake up at the same time with the birds – you will reap all of the day’s golden grains. 

Eat more green – you will have strong legs and a resistant heart, like the beings of the forest. Swim often and you will feel on earth like the fish in the water. Look at the sky as often as possible and your thoughts will become light and clear. Be quiet a lot, speak little – and silence will come in your heart, and your spirit will be calm and full of peace.

—Saint Seraphim of Sarov

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bless

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On the journey of the warrior-bodhisattva, the path goes down, not up, as if the mountain pointed toward the earth instead of the sky. Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward turbulence and doubt however we can. We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. 

If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of bodhichitta. Bodhichitta is our heart—our wounded, softened heart. 

Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die. This love is bodhichitta. It is gentle and warm; it is clear and sharp; it is open and spacious. The awakened heart of bodhichitta is the basic goodness of all beings.


—Pema Chödrön
Comfortable with Uncertainty: 108 Teachings on Cultivating Fearlessness and Compassion

 

. . .

 

It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. 

Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced.


—Ursula K. Le Guin
The Dispossessed

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the seed cracked open

 

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It used to be
That when I would wake in the morning
I could with confidence say,
“What am ‘I’ going to 
Do?” 

That was before the seed
Cracked open.
Now Hafiz is certain:
There are two of us housed
In this body,
Doing the shopping together in the market and
Tickling each other
While fixing the evening’s food. 

Now when I awake
All the internal instruments play the same music:
“God, what love-mischief can 'We’ do
For the world
Today?”
  

—Hafiz
The Gift

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question

 

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You ask why I make my home
in the mountain forest
and I smile, and am silent,
and even my soul remains quiet:
It lives in the other world
which no one owns.
The peach trees blossom.
The water flows.


—Li Po

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not to worry

 

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Ever since happiness heard your name, it has been running through the streets trying to find you!

—Hafiz

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dear friends

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Practice until you see yourself in the cruelest person on Earth, in the child starving, in the political prisoner. Continue until you recognize yourself in everyone in the supermarket, on the street corner, in a concentration camp, on a leaf, in a dewdrop.

Meditate until you see yourself in a speck of dust in a distant galaxy. See and listen with the whole of your being. 

If you are fully present, the rain of Dharma will water the deepest seeds in your consciousness, and tomorrow, while you are washing the dishes or looking at the blue sky, that seed will spring forth, and love and understanding will appear as a beautiful flower.

[..]


You too are a tree. During a storm of emotions, you should not stay at the level of the head or the heart, which are like the top of the tree. You have to leave the heart, the eye of the storm, and come back to the trunk of the tree. 

Your trunk is one centimeter below your navel. Focus there, paying attention only to the movement of your abdomen, and continue to breathe.
 

—Thích Nhất Hạnh

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Inside us there is something that has no name,

that something is what we are.

—José Saramago

Blindness 

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wait - what ?

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your longing is made out of the very stuff for which you are longing

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What we are looking for is what is looking. 
 
―Francis of Assisi

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The now is our self. 

We are not present in the now.

We are the now.

The now is not a container that contains our self along with everything else. 

It is our self, eternal presence.


—Rupert Spira
Presence

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questions

 

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You said, ‘Who’s at the door?’

I said, ‘Your slave.’

You said, ‘What do you want?’

‘To see you and bow.’

‘How long will you wait?’

‘Until you call.’

‘How long will you cook?’

‘Till the Resurrection.’

We talked through the door. 
I claimed a great love and that I had
given up what the world gives, to be in that love.

‘You said, ‘Such claims require a witness.’
I said, ‘This longing, these tears.’

You said, ‘Discredited witnesses.’
I said, ‘Surely not!’

You said, ‘Who did you come with?’
‘The majestic imagination you gave me.’

‘Why did you come?’
‘The musk of your wine was in the air.’

‘What is your intention?’
‘Friendship.’

‘What do you want from me?’
‘Grace.’

Then you asked, ‘Where have you been most comfortable?’
‘In the palace.’

‘What did you see there?’
‘Amazing things.’

‘Then why is it so desolate?’
‘Because all that can be taken away in a second.’

‘Who can do that?’
‘This clear discernment.’

‘Where can you live safely then?’
‘In Surrender.’

‘What is this giving up?’
‘A peace that saves us.’

‘Is there no threat of disaster?’
‘Only what comes in your street, inside your love.’

‘How do you walk there?’

‘In perfection.’

Now silence. 
If I told more of this conversation,
those listening would leave themselves.

There would be no door, no roof or window either!


—Rumi
talking through the door

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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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Time is not a line, but a series of now-points. —Taisen Deshimaru, Zen To Go

Night Sea, 1963, Agnes Martin
oil, gold, canvas

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In my best moments I think "Life has passed me by” and I am content.

—Agnes Martin

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from an untitled poem

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To sing is to begin a sentence

like “I want to get well." 

I am not born for nothing
and neither are you:

Heaven never wept
over nothing.

—Thomas Merton

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(tears)

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bless

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Let me imagine that we will come again 
when we want to and it will be spring 
we will be no older than we ever were 
the worn griefs will have eased like the early cloud 
through which the morning slowly comes to itself 
and the ancient defenses against the dead 
will be done with and left to the dead at last 
the light will be as it is now in the garden 
that we have made here these years together 
of our long evenings and astonishment

—W.S. Merwin
To Paula in Late Spring

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