philosophy

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I’ve lost my way…I need someone to take me by the hand and lead me out of the woods.

—Kurt Vonnegut

 

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I used to sit in the cafe of existentialism,
lost in a blue cloud of cigarette smoke,
contemplating the suicide a tiny Frenchman
might commit by leaping from the rim of my brandy glass.

I used to hunger to be engaged
as I walked the long shaded boulevards,
eyeing women of all nationalities,
a difficult paperback riding in my raincoat pocket.

But these days I like my ontology in an armchair,
a rope hammock, or better still, a warm bath
in a cork-lined room--disengaged, soaking
in the calm, restful waters of speculation.

Afternoons, when I leave the house
for the woods, I think of Aquinas at his desk,
fingers interlocked upon his stomach,
as he deduces another proof for God's existence,

intricate as the branches of these bare November trees.
And as I kick through the leaves and snap
the windfallen twigs, I consider Leibniz on his couch
reaching the astonishing conclusion that monads,

those windowless units of matter, must have souls.
But when I finally reach the top of the hill
and sit down on the flat tonnage of this boulder,
I think of Spinoza, most rarefied of them all.

I look beyond the treetops and the distant ridges
and see him sitting in a beam of Dutch sunlight
slowly stirring his milky tea with a spoon.
Since dawn he has been at his bench grinding lenses,

but now he is leaving behind the saucer and table,
the smokey chimneys and tile roofs of Amsterdam,
even the earth itself, pale blue, aqueous,
cloud-enshrined, tilted back on the stick of its axis.

He is rising into that high dome of thought
where loose pages of Shelley float on the air,
where all the formulas of calculus unravel,
tumbling in the radiance of a round Platonic sun--

that zone just below the one where angels accelerate
and the ampitheatrical rose of Dante unfolds.
And now I stand up on the ledge to salute you, Spinoza,
and when I whistle to the dog and start down the hill,

I can feel the thick glass of your eyes upon me
as I step from the rock to glacial rock, and on her
as she sniffs her way through the leaves,
her tail straight back, her body low to the ground.


—Billy Collins
The Art of Drowning

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thank you

largerloves

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no(thingness

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Everything is determined by forces over which we have no control. 

It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. 

Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust—we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper. Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the descernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. 

Veneration for this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious.

—Albert Einstein

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God made everything out of nothing.

But the nothingness shows through.

—Paul Valéry

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The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it. —Nisargadatta Maharaj

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The appearance of water in a mirage persists after the fact that it is a mirage has dawned on us. So it is with the world.

Though knowing it to be unreal, it continues to manifest - but we do not try to satisfy our thirst with the water of the mirage.

As soon as one knows that it is a mirage, one gives it up as useless and does not run after it to get water.


—Ramana Maharshi

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A billion stars go spinning through the night, blazing high above your head. But in you is the presence that will be, when all the stars are dead.


—Rainer Maria Rilke

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listen: there’s a hell of a good universe next door; let’s go 

 ―E.E. Cummings

 

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the softness of all phenomenal reality

 

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Strongly influenced by the substrata of the native religion Bon (a form of Northeast Asian shamanism) and the later imports of Mahayana Buddhism and tantric ideas from India and Nepal, the Tibetan world view is uncompromising in its insistence on the “softness” of all phenomenal reality. 

The question of “apparent” versus “real” in relation to phenomenal existence, which has long been a preoccupation of Western philosophy, was in Tibet long ago firmly decided in favour of the former; stong pa nyid (“emptiness,” “voidness”) is part of everyday speech of a Tibetan and the explanation he offers for the many riddles of life. 

In the Tibetan view, all that exists is a mirage of the mind, imperfect images on a screen covering “absolute” reality, which can only be realized in liberation. Everything in the universe, then, has a meaning other than the apparent one, and the world is full of oracles and signs that need to be interpreted. 

Imagination reigns supreme and all that can be imagined is as real as all that exists. There is no place for the supernatural in this world since one may arbitrarily choose to regard everything either as miraculous or as commonplace. 

As David-Neel describes it, “None in Tibet deny that such events may take place, but no one regards them as miracles. Indeed, Tibetans do not recognize any supernatural agent. The so-called wonders, they think, are as natural as common daily events and depend on the clever handling of little known laws and forces.” 

Since phenomenal existence is believed to be created by the mind, then phenomenal reality can also be controlled, the relationship between its elements varied, and new phenomena created, by special types of mental effort involving concentrated meditation, elaborate rituals and the transforming power of mantra.


—Sudhir Kakar
Shamans, Mystics, and Doctors

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in out, is of, one Heart, one Self

  

  

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In the mango grove, shade poured into his black eyes, when playing as a boy, when his mother sang, when the sacred offerings were made, when his father, the scholar, taught him, when the wise men talked. 

For a long time, Siddhartha had been partaking in the discussions of the wise men, practicing debate with Govinda, practicing with Govinda the art of reflection, the service of meditation.

He already knew how to speak the Om silently, the word of words, to speak it silently into himself while inhaling, to speak it silently out of himself while exhaling, with all the concentration of his soul, the forehead surrounded by the glow of the clear-thinking spirit. 

He already knew to feel Atman in the depths of his being, indestructible, one with the universe.


—Hermann Hesse (1877 - 1962)
Siddhartha 

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Brahman is a word/sound that refers to the ground of being, the one heart, that which 'is'

The sound OM/Aum is a sound which expresses the 'consciousness of’

Spoken, it expresses conscious awareness of the invisible, indivisible wholeness

Manifested beings exist only in the consciousness of the one Heart

Perceptions of change and manifestations are the play of consciousness of the one Self


—Lessons from the Isha Upanishad
Eknath Easwaren version

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All this is full. All that is full.

From fulness, fulness comes.

When fulness is taken from fulness, 

Fulness still remains.

OM shanti, shanti

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we are that

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The Net of Indra is a vast, bejewelled matrix spanning and encompassing the whole universe. 

From every knot hangs a jewel, and each jewel reflects all the other jewels within the net. My father’s life was one jewel hanging from a knot in that infinite web, and in that jewel was reflected my life, and my brothers’ lives, and my mother’s life.

—Eugene Richards
A Life Too Long

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You were enmeshed in a great network which magically changed you into something vaster than yourselves.

For you have need of the vastness that such words alone impart.


—Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Wisdom of the Sands

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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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this only

Indian scops owl, Nagpur, Maharashtra, India. photo: Digvijay Lande 2017

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Everything is connected. The wing of the corn beetle affects the direction of the wind, the way the sand drifts, the way the light reflects into the eye of man beholding his reality. 

All is part of totality, and in this totality man finds his hozro, his way of walking in harmony, with beauty all around him.

—Tony Hillerman
The Ghostway

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A valley and above it forests in autumn colors.
A voyager arrives, a map led him here. 

Or perhaps memory. Once, long ago, in the sun,
When the first snow fell, riding this way
He felt joy, strong, without reason,
Joy of the eyes. Everything was the rhythm
Of shifting trees, of a bird in flight,
Of a train on the viaduct, a feast of motion. 

He returns years later, has no demands.
He wants only one, most precious thing:
To see, purely and simply, without name,
Without expectations, fears, or hopes,
At the edge where there is no I or not-I.

—Czesław Miłosz

This Only
Robert Hass version

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thank you

wait - what ?

whiskeyriver

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there is not a fragment in all of nature —John Muir, 1867

   

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We are connected by the fundamental oneness of our consciousness; we are all individuated lumps within, as well as parts of, the same sheet. 

We are connected by the ability of one individual to vitally affect, and be affected by, another through the purposeful control of thought energy or the energy of consciousness. 

We are connected by the theoretical ability of one being to exchange energy or information with any other being simply by focusing intent. 


—Thomas Campbell
My Big Toe

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This moment this love comes to rest in me,
many beings in one being.
In one wheat grain a thousand sheaf stacks.
Inside the needle's eye, a turning night of stars.

Listen, if you can stand to.
Union with the friend
means not being who you have been,
being instead silence, a place,
a view where language is inside seeing.

From the wet source
someone cuts a reed to make a flute
The reed sips breath like wine,
sips more, practicing. Now drunk,
it starts the high clear notes.

There is a path from me to you
that I am constantly looking for,
so I try to keep clear and still
as water does with the moon.

We do not have to follow the pressure-flow of wanting.
We can be led by the guide.
Wishes may or may not come true
in this house of disappointment.
Let's push the door open together and leave.

My essence is like the essence of a red wine.
My body is a cup that grieves because it is inside time.
Glass after glass of wine go into my head.
Finally, my head goes into the wine.


—Rumi
Coleman Barks version
The Big Red Book

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all things are like this

 

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When dharma does not fill your whole body and mind, you may assume it is already sufficient. When dharma fills your body and mind, you understand that something is missing. For example, when you sail out in a boat to the middle of an ocean where no land is in sight, and view the four directions, the ocean looks circular, and does not look any other way. But the ocean is neither round nor square; its features are infinite in variety. It is like a palace. It is like a jewel. It only looks circular as far as you can see at that time. 

All things are like this.

Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. 

In order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know that although they may look round or square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety; whole worlds are there. It is so not only around you, but also directly beneath your feet, or in a drop of water.

—Dogen

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If an idea is held in the mind and lighted up with sharpened attention, it will form a new magnetic field in which the results of connections unseen till that moment may gather and unite this idea with others of the same or even of an entirely different order.

—Henri Thomasson

The Pursuit of the Present

Rina Hands version

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the heart in thee is the heart of all

  

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Man is a stream whose source is hidden. Our being is descending into us from we know not whence. I am constrained every moment to acknowledge a higher origin for events than the will I call mine. 

As with events, so is it with thoughts. When I watch that flowing river, which, out of regions I see not, pours for a season its streams into me, I see that I am a pensioner; not a cause, but a surprised spectator of this ethereal water; that I desire and look up, and put myself in the attitude of reception, but from some alien energy the visions come. 

[...] Within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is all accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul. 

A man is the facade of a temple wherein all wisdom and all good abide. What we commonly call man, the eating, drinking, planting, counting man, does not, as we know him, represent himself, but misrepresents himself. Him we do not respect, but the soul, whose organ he is, would he let it appear through his action, would make our knees bend. When it breathes through his intellect, it is genius; when it breathes through his will, it is virtue; when it flows through his affection, it is love. 

[...] The heart in thee is the heart of all; not a valve, not a wall, not an intersection is there anywhere in nature, but one blood rolls uninterruptedly in an endless circulation through all men, as the water of the globe is all one sea, and, truly seen, its tide is one. 

[...] So come I to live in thoughts, and act with energies, which are immortal. Thus revering the soul, and learning, as the ancient said, that "its beauty is immense," man will come to see that the world is the perennial miracle which the soul worketh, and be less astonished at particular wonders; he will learn that there is no profane history; that all history is sacred; that the universe is represented in an atom, in a moment of time. 

He will weave no longer a spotted life of shreds and patches, but he will live with a divine unity. He will cease from what is base and frivolous in his life, and be content with all places and with any service he can render. He will calmly front the morrow in the negligency of that trust which carries God with it, and so hath already the whole future in the bottom of the heart.


—Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1841
ESSAY IX The Over-Soul, excerpts 

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whose question is it?

   

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D.: How is the mind to dive into the Heart?

M.: The mind now sees itself diversified as the universe. 

If the diversity is not manifest, it remains in its own essence, that is the Heart. Entering the Heart means remaining without distractions.

The Heart is the only Reality. The mind is only a transient phase. To remain as one’s Self is to enter the Heart.


—Ramana Maharshi 

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Is anyone there

if so

are you real

either way are you

one or several

if the latter

are you all at once

or do you

take turns not answering

is your answer

the question itself

surviving the asking

without end

whose question is it

how does it begin

where does it come from

how did it ever

find out about you

over the sound

of itself

with nothing but its own

ignorance to go by

—W. S. Merwin
To The Soul

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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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heart and soul

sunday smile )

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If you have illusions about heaven, lose them. 

The soul heard of one attribute of Love and came to earth. 

A hundred attributes of heaven could never charm her back. 

It is here the soul discovers the reality of Love.


—Rumi

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there are moments in moist love when heaven is jealous of what we on earth can do. —Hafiz

 

Andromeda Galaxy, Bersonic

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Little soul, 
you have wandered
lost a long time.
The woods all dark now,
birded and eyed.
Then a light, a cabin, a fire,
a door standing open.
The fairy tales warn you:
Do not go in,
you who would eat will be eaten.
You go in. You quicken.
You want to have feet.
You want to have eyes.
You want to have fears.


—Jane Hirshfield
Amor Fati
Poetry, 2017

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where is heart is beauty

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Under a lonely sky a lonely tree
Is beautiful. All that is loneliness
Is beautiful. A feather lost at sea;
A staring owl; a moth; a yellow tress
Of seaweed on a rock, is beautiful.

The night-lit moon, wide-wandering in sky;
A blue-bright spark, where ne'er a cloud is up;
A wing, where no wing is, it is so high;
A bee in winter, or a buttercup,
Late-blown, are lonely, and are beautiful.

The eye that watched you from a cottage door;
The first leaf, and the last; the break of day;
The mouse, the cuckoo, and the cloud, are beautiful.

For all that is, is lonely; all that may
Will be as lonely as is that you see;
The lonely heart sings on a lonely spray,
The lonely soul swings lonely in the sea,
And all that loneliness is beautiful.

All, all alone, and all without a part
Is beautiful, for beauty is all where;
Where is an eye is beauty, where a heart
Is beauty, brooding out, on empty air,
All that is lonely and is beautiful.


—James Stephens
on a lonely spray

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Isn’t it obvious that we “inter-are”?

   

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One of the surprising things in the event of quantum collapse is that when you look, not only does an object appear in consciousness but also a subject appears looking at the object. Quantum collapse produces the awareness of a subject-object split –the experience of a subject looking at an object.

... In the event of a quantum measurement, the collapsing subject and collapsed objects, including the brain, arise simultaneously, codependently. The experiencing subject and the experienced objects co-create one another.


—Amit Goswami
Quantum Doctor

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You are me, and I am you.

Isn’t it obvious that we “inter-are”?

You cultivate the flower in yourself,

so that I will be beautiful.

I transform the garbage in myself,

so that you will not have to suffer. 


I support you;

you support me.

I am in this world to offer you peace;

you are in this world to bring me joy.


—Thich Nhat Hanh

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In fact, my soul and yours are the same. 

You appear in me, I appear in you. 

We hide in each other.


—Rumi 

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look

 

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I am not one of those who neglect the body in order to make of it a sacrificial offering for the soul, since my soul would thoroughly dislike being served in such a fashion.


—Rainer Maria Rilke

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I learned through my body and soul
that it was necessary for me to sin, 
that I needed lust, 
that I had to strive for property, 
and experience nausea and the depths of despair 
in order to learn not to resist them, 
in order to learn to love the world ... 


—Hermann Hesse
Siddhartha

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You observe the heart feeling, the mind thinking, the body acting;

the very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.

—Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj 

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the secret of both worlds

   

 

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The whole world is a marketplace for Love,

For naught that is, from Love remains remote.

The Eternal Wisdom made all things in Love.

On Love they all depend, to Love all turn.

The earth, the heavens, the sun, the moon, the stars

The center of their orbit find in Love.

By Love are all bewildered, stupefied,

Intoxicated by the Wine of Love.

From each, Love demands a mystic silence.

What do all seek so earnestly? “Tis Love.

Love is the subject of their inmost thoughts,

In Love no longer “Thou” and “I” exist,

For self has passed away in the Beloved. 

Now will I draw aside the veil from Love,

And in the temple of mine inmost soul

Behold the Friend, Incomparable Love.

He who would know the secret of both worlds

Will find that the secret of them both is Love.

—Farid ud Din Attar

Essential Sufism

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starry night

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He was there alone with himself, collected, tranquil, adoring, comparing the serenity of his heart with the serenity of the skies, moved in the darkness by the visible splendours of the constellations, and the invisible splendour of God, opening his soul to the thoughts which fall from the Unknown. 

In such moments, offering up his heart at the hour when the flowers of night inhale their perfume, lighted like a lamp in the center of the starry night, expanding his soul in ecstasy in the midst of the universal radiance of creation, he could not himself perhaps have told what was passing in his own mind; he felt something depart from him, and something descend upon him, mysterious interchanges of the depths of the soul with the depths of the universe.


―Victor Hugo
Les Misérables

 

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To watch the courses of the stars as if you revolved with them. 

To keep constantly in mind how the elements alter into one another. 

Thoughts like this wash off the mud of life below.


—Marcus Aurelius 121 - 180 CE
Meditations

 

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I am not to speak to you, 

I am to think of you when I sit alone, or wake at night alone, 

I am to wait, I do not doubt I am to meet you again, 

I am to see that I do not lose you.

—Walt Whitman

To A Stranger

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thank you

wait - what ?

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this is a truth of our universe

  

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What science has recently proven about the universe has already been known by mystics for millennia: that everything is fundamentally energy and we are all One. 

Science calls this interconnected web of energy “entanglement theory,” but for thousands of years Buddhists have called this “Dharmakaya,” Taoists have called it the “Tao” and Hindus have referred to this as “Brahman".


—Aletheia Luna

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Each quantum event, each of the trillions of times reality’s particles interact with each other every instant, is like a note that rings and resonates throughout the great bell of creation. And the sound of the ringing propagates instantaneously, everywhere at once, interconnecting all things.

This is a truth of our universe. It is a mystical truth, that reality at its deepest level is an undivided wholeness.


—David Zindell 

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The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. 

Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. 

Buddhism answers this description.

—Albert Einstein

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real illusions

 

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I have realized that the past and the future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

—Albert Einstein

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being to timelessness as it's to time,
love did no more begin than love will end;
where nothing is to breathe to stroll to swim
love is the air the ocean and the land

(do lovers suffer?all divinities
proudly descending put on deathful flesh:
are lovers glad?only their smallest joy's
a universe emerging from a wish)

love is the voice under all silences,
the hope which has no opposite in fear;
the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:
the truth more first than sun more last than star

-do lovers love?why then to heaven with hell.
Whatever sages say and fools,all's well


—E. E. Cummings

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close your eyes. fall in love. stay there. 

—Rumi

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