the cosmos is a vast body

 

.

The moon is a white strange world, a great, white, soft-seeming globe in the night sky, and what she actually communicates to me across space I shall never fully know. But the moon that pulls the tides, and the moon that controls the menstrual periods of women, and the moon that touches the lunatics, she is not the mere dead lump of the astronomist. 

When we describe the moon as dead, we are describing the deadness in ourselves. When we find space so hideously void, we are describing our own unbearable emptiness.

We and the cosmos are one. The cosmos is a vast body, of which we are still parts. The sun is a great heart whose tremors run through our smallest veins. The moon is a great gleaming nerve-centre from which we quiver forever. 

Who knows the power that Saturn has over us or Venus? But it is a vital power, rippling exquisitely through us all the time … Now all this is literally true, as men knew in the great past and as they will know again.


—D. H. Lawrence

.

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

.

Love is the mystery of water and a star. —Pablo Neruda

 

.

Love in its essence is spiritual fire. 

—Seneca

.

Let your love flow outward through the universe,
To its height, its depth, its broad extent,
A limitless love, without hatred or enmity.

Then as you stand or walk,
Sit or lie down,
As long as you are awake,
Strive for this with a one-pointed mind;

Your life will bring heaven to earth.


—The Sutta-Nipāta

.

In the end these things matter most:

How well did you love?

How fully did you love?

How deeply did you learn to let go?


—Buddha

.

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

.

you are stardust

   

.

Everyone who terrifies you is sixty-five percent water. And everyone you love is made of stardust, and I know sometimes you cannot even breathe deeply, and the night sky is no home, and you have cried yourself to sleep enough times that you are down to your last two percent, but nothing is infinite, not even loss. You are made of the sea and the stars, and one day you are going to find yourself again.


—Finn Butler

.

Believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.


—Rainer Maria Rilke

.

The cosmos is also within us. 

We are made of star-stuff. 

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.

—Carl Sagan

. 

the river of love

.

Time, nature, necessity, accident,
Elements, energy, intelligence —
are but dreams of the conscious Self, the Love
dwelling in the one heart.

The world is a wheel of consciousness
turning within the one heart,
merging and emerging in
the river of Love.

The self is present in the one heart
in the one love
as butter is in cream
conscious


—Lessons from The Shvetashvatara Upanishad
Eknath Easwaran version

.

 

it(self

   

.

Consciousness is consciousness of something. 

This means that transcendence is the constitutive structure of consciousness; that is, that consciousness emerges supported by a being which is not itself.
 

—Jean-Paul Sartre

.

if

 

.

Those who don't feel this Love
pulling them like a river,
those who don't drink dawn
like a cup of spring water
or take in sunset like supper,
those who don't want to change,
let them sleep

This Love is beyond the study of theology,
that old trickery and hypocrisy.
If you want to improve your mind that way,
sleep on

I've given up on my brain.
I've torn the cloth to shreds
and thrown it away.

If you're not completely naked,
wrap your beautiful robe of words
around you,
and sleep.


—Rumi

.

.

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?

.

so we have heard

  

.

We are enshrined in each other.
We are the supreme reality.
Rejoice in that.
We are what we have coveted.

Thus working we may live a hundred years.
Thus we may work in real freedom.
When the Self in denied, the dream continues
and the true love is hidden.

Ever still, the Self is one.
Swifter than thought, swifter than the senses.
Though motionless, the Self outruns pursuit.
There is only the Self.

Seeming to move, we are ever still.
Seeming far away, we are always here,
We are within, transcending all.

When we see all creatures as the Self
And the Self as all creatures
We know no fear.
We know no grief.
How can the multiplicity of the Self be hidden from its Self?

We are everywhere. Bright is the Self,
Indivisible, untouched by sin, wise,
Immanent and transcendent,
The self holds the cosmos together.

Dreaming in the dark night, the world without alone is real;
In night darker still, the world within
Alone is real. The first leads to a life
Of action, the second to a life of meditation.
But those who combine action with meditation
Cross the sea of death through action
And enter into the timeless Self
Through the practice of meditation.

So have we heard.

In dark night the Self is perceived as other,
Darker still when the Self is perceived as immanent only.
The Self is both immanent and transcendent,
Crossing the sea of death
With the immanent and entering into
The light with the transcendent.

So we have heard.

The face of truth is hidden. O sun,
I, who adore the truth, see
The glory of truth. O nourishing sun,
Solitary traveller, creator,
Blessed Self of all that is created,
I am that.

OM shanti shanti shanti


The Katha Upanishad
lessons from Eknath Easwaren version

.

 

All this is full. All that is full.

From fullness, fullness comes.

When fullness is taken from fullness,

Fullness remains.

OM shanti shanti shanti

 

.

this other night

 

.

Outside, the freezing desert night.
This other night grows warm, kindling.
Let the landscape be covered with thorny crust.
We have a soft garden here.

The continents blasted, cities and little towns,
everything become a scorched blacked ball.

The news we hear is full of grief for that future,
but the real news inside here is 
there is no news at all.


—Rumi

.

conduct(ion

 

.

God dwells in you, as you, and you don't have to 'do' anything to be God-realized or Self-realized, it is already your true and natural state. 

Just drop all seeking, turn your attention inward, and sacrifice your mind to the One Self radiating in the Heart of your very being. For this to be your own presently lived experience, Self-Inquiry is the one direct and immediate way.


—Sri Ramana 

.

Love is not a sentimental attachment to a human being; 

love is a mode of conduct that comes from the heart.


—Ma Jaya Sati Bhagavati 

.

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

.

my dear

  

.

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to hold hands with the Beautiful One.

You have waltzed with great style,
My sweet, crushed angel,
To have ever neared God's heart at all.
Our Partner is notoriously difficult to follow,
And even His best musicians are not always easy
To hear.

So what if the music has stopped for a while.
So what
If the price of admission to the Divine
Is out of reach tonight. 
So what, my dear,
If you do not have the ante to gamble for
Real Love. 

The mind and the body are famous
For holding the heart ransom,
But Hafiz knows the Beloved's eternal habits. 
Have patience,
For He will not be able to resist your longing For Long. 

You have not danced so badly, my dear,
Trying to kiss the Beautiful One. 
You have actually waltzed with tremendous style,
O my sweet, O my sweet crushed angel.


—Hafiz

.

It’s your solemn duty to learn how to enjoy this thing! —Alan Watts

 

.

All that you are attached to, all that you Love,
all that you know, someday will be gone.

Knowing this, and that the world is your mind
which you create, play in, and suffer from,
is known as discrimination.

Discriminate between the real and the unreal.

The known is unreal and will come and go
so stay with the Unknown, the Unchanging Truth.

All which appears and disappears is not real,
and no nectar will come from it so do not cling to it.


—Papaji

.

There are always moments when one feels empty, estranged and afraid. 

You are detaching, the old is over and the new has not yet come. The soul has cast its moorings and is sailing for distant places. 

Remember the instruction: whatever you come across 
- go beyond. 


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

 

.

 

 

 

listen carefully

  

.

Although the evening is cold and starless
And the rain is raging,
I’m still singing my song during this period,

I don’t know who’s listening.
Though the world is drowned in war and fear,
At some point
Burning secretly, if no one sees them,
The love continues.

—Hermann Hesse

 

.

Listen carefully,
Neither the Vedas 
Nor the Qur'an 
Will teach you this:
Put the bit in its mouth,
The saddle on its back,
Your foot in the stirrup,
And ride your wild runaway mind 
All the way to heaven.

—Kabir

 

.

 

 

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

.

 

rest

 

.

Just rest. 

Just sit there right now
Don’t do a thing
Just rest.

For your separation from God,
From love,
Is the hardest work
In this
World.

Let me bring you trays of food
And something
That you like to
Drink.

You can use my soft words
As a cushion
For your
Head.


—Hafiz 
Daniel Ladinsky version

.

friend

.

Friend, we’re traveling together.
Throw off your tiredness. 

Let me show you one tiny spot of the beauty that cannot be spoken. 


—Rumi

 

.

 

 

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

.