Epic of Gilgamesh

turtle image

palm

 

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Interior of the hand.

Sole that has come to walk

only on feelings. That faces upward

and in its mirror

receives heavenly roads, which travel

along themselves.

That has learned to walk upon water

when it scoops,

that walks upon wells,

transfiguring every path.

That steps into other hands,

changes those that are like it

into a landscape:

wanders and arrives within them,

fills them with arrival.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

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love letters

  

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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

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the highest teaching

 

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From joy all beings have come. 
In joy all beings are sustained. 
To joy all beings return. 

This is the highest teaching. 
This is the highest teaching.


—The Upanishads

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the kingdom where pronouns are intertwined

 

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door of being, dawn and wake me,
allow me to see the face of this day,
allow me to see the face of this night,
all communicates, all is transformed,
arch of blood, bridge of pulse,
take me to the other side of this night,
where I am you, we are us,
the kingdom where pronouns are intertwined,

door of being: open your being
and wake ....


—Octavio Paz
Sandstone (excerpt)

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the wisdom of nondiscrimination

  

 

 

 

 

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My right hand has written all the poems
that I have composed.
My left hand has not written a single poem.
But my right hand does not think,
‘Left Hand, you are good for nothing.’

My right hand does not have a superiority complex.
That is why it is very happy.
My left hand does not have any complex at all.
In my two hands there is the kind of wisdom
called the wisdom of nondiscrimination.

One day I was hammering a nail
and my right hand was not very accurate
and instead of pounding on the nail
it pounded on my finger. 

It put the hammer down and took care
of my left hand in a very tender way,
as if it were taking care of itself.

It did not say, ‘Left Hand, you have to remember
that I have taken good care of you
and you have to pay me back in the future.’ 

There was no such thinking…

And my left hand did not say,
‘Right Hand, you have done me a lot of harm
— give me that hammer, I want justice.’

My two hands know that they are members
of one body; they are in each other.


—Thich Nhat Hanh

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friend(ship

  

Agnes Martin, Friendship, 1963

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Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition. 


—John O'Donohue

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sorrow arrow

  

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You sit in your body, quietly making blood 

Wild blood 

Bird of the world

—Emily Kendal Frey

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a gift for you

 

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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

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spirit of a place

 

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Different places on the face of the earth have different vital effluence, a different vibration of chemical exhalation, a different polarity with the stars; call it what you like. 

But the spirit of a place is a great reality.


—D. H. Lawrence

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A thought without a body is not a star. —Aaron Shurin

  

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Immanuel Kant perhaps composed the longest list of defects in classical Greek “pure reason”. One that has received less publicity than most goes like this:

When an arrow gets fired from a bow toward a target it appears to move through space. However, at every instant the arrow actually occupies one position in space, not two or three or more positions. Thus, at every instant the arrow exists in one place, not in two or three or more. In other words, at every instant the arrow has a position. If the arrow has one and only one definition position at every instant, then at every instant it does not move. If it does not move at any of these instants, it never moves at all.

You cannot escape this Logic by positing instants-between-instants. In these nanotime units, the same logic holds. At each nano-instant, the arrow has some location, not several locations. Therefore, even in nano-instant, the arrow does not move at all.

It seems the only way out of this absurdity consists of claiming that the arrow does, after all, occupy two locations at the same time. Alas, this leads to worse problems, which I leave you to discover for yourself.

And that shows where Logic gets you, if uncorrected by observations. If we do not correct our Logic by comparing it with experience, we may go on for centuries elaborating our most ancient errors endlessly.

—Robert Anton Wilson

Quantum Psychology

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Seek God in self-abasement and self-extinction,

for nothing but form is produced by thinking.

And if you derive no comfort except from form,

then the form that comes to birth within you involuntarily is best.

Suppose it is the form of a city to which you are going:

you are drawn there by a formless feeling of pleasure, O dependent one;

therefore, you are really going to that which has no location,

for pleasure is something different from time and place.

Suppose it is the form of a friend to whom you would go:

you are going for the sake of enjoying his company;

therefore, in reality you go to the formless world,

though you are unaware of that being the object of your journey.

In truth, then, God is worshiped by all, since all wayfaring

is for the sake of the pleasure of which He is the source.

—Rumi 
Mathnawi VI: 3749-3755
Camille and Kabir Helminski version

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Don’t think the garden loses its ecstasy in winter. It’s quiet, but the roots are down there riotous. —Rumi

 

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gifts and 'good tidings from the depths of winter' from

emergencemagazine

Cold Mountain

Stonehouse

Red Pine

and here

Forrest Gander

Katie Holten

Studio Airport

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