stay deep

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Stay deep within yourself and stay alone there – that is where your poems come from, and that has nothing to do with audience. You are the audience.


—Stanley Plumly

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Contemporary trends of thought have imagined art to be a fountain, whereas it is a sponge. They have decided that art ought to gush forth, whereas it should absorb and become saturated. They think it can be broken down into means of depiction, whereas it is composed of organs of perception.

Its proper task is to be always among the spectators and to look more purely, receptively and faithfully than all others.


―Boris Pasternak

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Every perception of colour is an illusion, we do not see colours as they really are. In our perception they alter one another.


—Joseph Albers (1888 - 1976)

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photo AndyIlachinski

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Twelve Theses on the Economy of the Dead

 

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1. The dead surround the living. The living are the core of the dead. In that core are the dimensions of time and space. What surrounds the core is timelessness.

2. Between the core and its surroundings there are exchanges, which are not usually clear. All religions have been concerned with making them clearer. The credibility of religion depends on the clarity of certain unusual exchanges. The mystifications of religion are the result of trying to systematically produce such exchanges.

3. The rarity of clear exchange is due to the rarity of what can cross intact the frontier between timelessness and time.

4. To see the dead as the individuals they once were tends to obscure their nature. Try to consider the living as we might assume the dead to do collectively. The collective would accrue not only across space but also throughout time. It would include all those who have ever lived; yet the dead already include the living in their own great collective.

5.The dead inhabited a timeless moment of construction continuously rebegun. The construction is the state of the universe at any instant.

6. According to their memory of life, the dead know the moment of construction as, also, a moment of collapse. Having lived, the dead can never be inert.

7. If the dead live in a timeless moment, how can they have a memory? They remember no more than being thrown into time, as does everything which existed or exists.

8. The difference between the dead and the unborn is that the dead have this memory. As the number of dead increases, the memory enlarges.

9. The memory of the dead existing in timelessness may be thought of as a form of imagination concerning the possible. This imagination is close to (resides in) God; but I do not know how.

10. In the world of the living there is an equivalent but contrary phenomenon. The living sometimes experience timelessness, as revealed in sleep, ecstasy, instants of extreme danger, orgasm, and perhaps in the experience of dying itself. During these instants the living imagination covers the entire field of experience and overruns the contours of the individual life or death. It touches the waiting imagination of the dead.

11. What is the relation of the dead to what has not yet happened, to the future? All the future is the construction in which their "imagination" is engaged.

12. How do the living live with the dead? Until the dehumanization of society by capitalism, all the living awaited the experience of the dead. It was their ultimate future. By themselves the living were incomplete. Thus, living and dead were interdependent. Always. Only a uniquely modern form of egoism has broken this interdependence. With disastrous results for the living, who now think of the dead as the eliminated.


—John Berger
Hold Everything Dear

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true be(longings

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The Buddha recommends that we recite the “Five Remembrances” every day:


1. I am of the nature to grow old. 

There is no way to escape growing old.

2. I am of the nature to have ill-health. 

There is no way to escape having ill-health.

3. I am of the nature to die. 

There is no way to escape death.

4. All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.

5. My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. My actions are the ground on which I stand.


—Thich Nhat Hanh

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question

 

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Do you have the patience to wait until your mud settles
and the water is clear?


—Lao Tzu

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the root of happiness

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In 2006 a high school English teacher asked students to write a famous author and ask for advice. Kurt Vonnegut was the only one to respond - and his response is magnificent:

Dear Xavier High School, and Ms. Lockwood, and Messrs Perin, McFeely, Batten, Maurer and Congiusta:

I thank you for your friendly letters. You sure know how to cheer up a really old geezer (84) in his sunset years. I don’t make public appearances any more because I now resemble nothing so much as an iguana.

What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

Seriously! I mean starting right now, do art and do it for the rest of your lives. Draw a funny or nice picture of Ms. Lockwood, and give it to her. Dance home after school, and sing in the shower and on and on. Make a face in your mashed potatoes. Pretend you’re Count Dracula.

Here’s an assignment for tonight, and I hope Ms. Lockwood will flunk you if you don’t do it: Write a six line poem, about anything, but rhymed. No fair tennis without a net. Make it as good as you possibly can. But don’t tell anybody what you’re doing. Don’t show it or recite it to anybody, not even your girlfriend or parents or whatever, or Ms. Lockwood. OK?

Tear it up into teeny-weeny pieces, and discard them into widely separated trash receptacals. You will find that you have already been gloriously rewarded for your poem. You have experienced becoming, learned a lot more about what’s inside you, and you have made your soul grow. 

God bless you all!

—Kurt Vonnegut 

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futurity - questions

    

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A memory may feel abstract or immaterial, but it is actually a biochemical process taking place in the brain. It involves neurons communicating with each other via the “wires” or synapses connecting them. The pathway an electrochemical signal follows as it continually travels from neuron to synapse to neuron constitutes a memory.  

Whenever you have that memory, the same pathway gets activated. And the more it’s activated, the more it becomes hardwired into the brain’s circuitry. Eventually, it becomes a long-term memory. 

Activation also requires enzymes, molecules that set off chemical reactions. The problem is that these enzymes don’t exist for longer than a week. If a memory is to endure, it would seem that the enzymes would have to remain functioning for years or even decades. 

Once the enzymes turn off, one would expect the memories to go with them. “This became a holy grail in neuroscience,” Lisman says. “How can a molecule in your brain serve as a memory? How does nature accomplish this?”

—John Lisman 

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What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then.

—T.S. Eliot

The Cocktail Party

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the narrow gate

  

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Fall in love.

There is no salvation for the soul 
But to fall in Love.

It has to creep and crawl 
Among the Lovers first.

Only Lovers can escape 
From these two worlds. 
This was written in creation.

Only from the Heart 
Can you reach the sky.

The rose of Glory 
Can only be raised in the Heart.


—Rumi

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i am that

 

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Among animals I am the lion; among birds, the eagle Garuda. I am Prahlada, born among the demons, and of all that measures, I am time.

I am death, which overcomes all, and the source of all beings still to be born. Just remember that I am, and that I support the entire cosmos with only a fragment of my being.

Behold, Arjuna, a million divine forms, with an infinite variety of color and shape. Behold the gods of the natural world, and many more wonders never revealed before. Behold the entire cosmos turning within my body, and the other things you desire to see.

I am time, the destroyer of all; I have come to consume the world.

—Lord Krishna

The Bhagavad Gita

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The flowers, the incense, 

Grain, spices, and honey 

Offered in worship 

Are made out of the same divine stuff as you. 

Who then is worshiped?

—Vijnana Bhairava Tantra

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in gratitude

 

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We kneel in gratitude
as the movements in love
disperse our sweet intentions
across the fictions
of Companionship-

two of the creatures
which You named Me


—Leonard Cohen

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bless

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My writing, when it hasn't been in defense of precious things,

has been a giving of thanks for precious things.

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Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.

Listen to carrion -- put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?

Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go.

Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.


—Wendell Berry
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

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the desire for all things

 

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Learn by little the desire for all things 
which perhaps is not desire at all 

but undying love which perhaps 
is not love at all but gratitude 

for the being of things which perhaps
is not gratitude at all

but the maker’s joy in what is made, 
the joy in which we come to rest.


—Wendell Berry
from Leavings

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yes

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For all that has been, Thanks.
To all that shall be, Yes.


—Dag Hammarskjöld

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note to self

 

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life is a garden,
not a road

we enter and exit
through the same gate

wandering,
where we go matters less
than what we notice


—Bokonon

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if the root be in confusion, nothing will be well governed

  

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The Great Way has no gate; there are a thousand paths to it.

If you pass through the barrier, you walk the universe alone.  

—Wu-Men



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[...] 4. Wanting equilibrium in the empire, that light which comes from looking straight into her and acting, they first set up good government in their own states.

Wanting good government in their states, they first established order in their own families; wanting order in the home, they first disciplined themselves; desiring self-discipline, they rectified their own hearts; and wanting to rectify their hearts, they sought verbal definitions of their inarticulate thoughts (the tones given off by the heart); wishing to obtain precise verbal definitions, they set to extend their knowledge to the utmost. This completion of knowledge is rooted in sorting things into organic categories. 

When things had been classified in organic categories, knowledge moved toward fulfillment; given the extreme knowable points, the inarticulate thoughts were defined with precision (the sun’s lance coming to rest on the precise spot verbally).

Having obtained this precise verbal definition (aliter, this sincerity), they then stabilized their hearts, they disciplined themselves; having obtained self-discipline, they set their own houses in order; having order in their own homes, they brought good government to their own states; and when their states were well governed, the empire was brought into equilibrium.

5. From the Emperor, Son of Heaven, down to the common man, singly and all together, this self-discipline is the root.

6. If the root be in confusion, nothing will be well governed. The solid cannot be swept away as trivial, nor can trash be established as solid. It just does not happen.

—Confucius

The Great Learning
Ezra Pound version

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no(thing

Richard Cartwright, The Messenger

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In an old Eastern story, God wants to reward a man for his exceptional kindness and purity of intentions. He calls an angel and tells him to go to the man and ask him what he wants. 

He will have whatever his heart desires.

The angel appears before the kind man and gives him the good news. The man replies, “Oh, but I am already happy. I have all that I want.”

The angel explains that, with God, you just have to be tactful. If He wants to give us a gift, it is best to accept. The kind man then replies, “In this case, I would like all who come in contact with me to feel well. But I want to know nothing about it."

From that moment, wherever the kind man happens to be, wilted plants bloom again, sickly animals grow strong, ill people are healed, the unhappy are relieved of their burdens, those who fight make peace, and those beset by problems resolve them. And all this happens without the kind man’s knowing — always in his wake, but never in front of his eyes. There is never any pride, nor any expectation. Unknowing and content, the kindly man walks the roads of the world, spreading happiness to everybody.


—Robert Ferrucci
The Power of Kindness
Teaching Story

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season

  

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We give thanks for the blessing of winter:
Season to cherish the heart. 

To make warmth and quiet for the heart. 

To make soups and broths for the heart. 

To cook for the heart and read for the heart. 

To curl up softly and nestle with the heart. 

To sleep deeply and gently at one with the heart. 

To dream with the heart. 

To spend time with the heart. 

We give thanks for the blessing of winter:
Season to cherish the heart. 

Amen.

—Michael Leunig

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I am what is around me.

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I am what is around me.

Women understand this.
One is not duchess
A hundred yards from a carriage.

These, then are portraits:
A black vestibule;
A high bed sheltered by curtains.

These are merely instances.


—Wallace Stevens
theory

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utterance

  

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Sitting over words
very late I have heard a kind of whispered sighing
not far
like a night wind in pines or like the sea in the dark
the echo of everything that has ever
been spoken
still spinning its one syllable
between the earth and silence

—W.S. Merwin

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love is not all

  

 

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Love is not all: It is not meat nor drink
Nor slumber nor a roof against the rain,
Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink
and rise and sink and rise and sink again.

Love cannot fill the thickened lung with breath
Nor clean the blood, nor set the fractured bone;
Yet many a man is making friends with death
even as I speak, for lack of love alone.

It well may be that in a difficult hour,
pinned down by need and moaning for release
or nagged by want past resolutions power,
I might be driven to sell your love for peace,
Or trade the memory of this night for food.

It may well be. I do not think I would.


—Edna St. Vincent Millay

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glimpsey

 

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The ancient Druids are said to have taken a special interest in in-between things like mistletoe, which is neither quite a plant nor quite a tree, and mist, which is neither quite a rain nor quite air, and dreams, which are neither quite waking nor quite sleep. 

They believed that in such things as those they were able to glimpse the mystery of the two worlds at once.

—Frederick Buechner
Whistling in the Dark

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Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face — there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes. 

Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself. The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.

—Fernando Passoa

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speech pouring down

  

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Let me say this before rain becomes a utility that they can plan and distribute for money. By ‘they’ I mean the people who cannot understand that rain is a festival, who do not appreciate its gratuity, who think that what has no price has no value, that what cannot be sold is not real, so that the only way to make something actual is to place it on the market. The time will come when they will sell you even your rain. At the moment it is still free, and I am in it. I celebrate its gratuity and its meaninglessness.

The rain I am in is not like the rain of cities. It fills the woods with an immense and confused sound. It covers the flat roof of the cabin and its porch with insistent and controlled rhythms. And I listen, because it reminds me again and again that the whole world runs by rhythms I have not yet learned to recognize, rhythms that are not those of the engineer.

I came up here from the monastery last night, sloshing through the cornfield […]. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the place where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!

—Thomas Merton 

Raids on the Unspeakable (1960)

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arrivals

  

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The great corn arrives. 

The child-rain arrives. 

In a way of beauty arrives. 

Grasshopper arrives. 

From the west arrives. 

Vegetation arrives. 

Pollen arrives. 

In a way of beauty arrives. 


—Diné

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i am not what i am aware of

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Give your attention to the experience of seeing rather than to the object seen 

and you will find yourself everywhere.

—Rupert Spira

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aspects of open space

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And strangely enough, these experiences of the six realms - gods, jealous gods, human beings, animals, hungry ghosts, and hell - are ‘space’, different versions of space. It seems intense and solid, but in actual fact it isn’t at all. They are different aspects of space - that’s the exciting or interesting part.

In fact, it is complete open space, without any colors or any particularly solid way of relating. That is why they have been described as six types of consciousness. It is pure consciousness rather than a solid situation - it almost could be called unconsciousness rather than even consciousness.

The development of ego operates completely at the unconscious level, from one unconscious level to another unconscious level. That is why these levels are referred to as loka, which means ‘realm’ or 'world’. They are six types of 'world’. Each is a complete unit of its own.

In order to have a world, you have to have an atmosphere; you have to have space to formulate things. So the six realms are the fundamental space through which any bardo experience operates.

Because of that, it is possible to transmute these spaces into six types of awakened state, or freedom.


—Chögyam Trungpa

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