p(raise

  

.

Praise the rain, the seagull dive
The curl of plant, the raven talk—
Praise the hurt, the house slack
The stand of trees, the dignity—
Praise the dark, the moon cradle
The sky fall, the bear sleep—
Praise the mist, the warrior name
The earth eclipse, the fired leap—
Praise the backwards, upward sky
The baby cry, the spirit food—
Praise canoe, the fish rush
The hole for frog, the upside-down—
Praise the day, the cloud cup
The mind flat, forget it all—

Praise crazy. Praise sad.
Praise the path on which we’re led.
Praise the roads on earth and water.
Praise the eater and the eaten.
Praise beginnings; praise the end.
Praise the song and praise the singer.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.
Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

—Jo Harjo

.

ask me

 

.

Hold me, don't hold me down
Carry me, but keep my feet on the ground

That storm is comin' down hard
I'm your shelter every time it starts
But if you leave me, I'll be movin' on
You'll have a hard time dryin' when the fire is gone

I'll hold ya, I won't hold you down, yeah, yeah
I'll carry ya, but keep your feet on the ground

You're the storm and I'm the Murray-Darling
You keep me goin' every time I'm dry
But if you leave me, I'll be movin' on (I'll live on)
But have a hard time runnin' when the weather is gone

Hold me, don't hold me down
Carry me, but keep my feet on the ground, yeah
I'll hold ya, I won't hold you down
I'll carry ya, but keep your feet on the ground

In so many ways
I just keep pulling
But you're pushing
Me away, me away

Hold me, don't hold me down
Carry me, but keep my feet on the ground
I'll hold ya, I won't hold you down
Carry ya, but keep your feet on the ground, yeah
Oh, hold me, don't hold me down
Love me, but don't let me drown

 

—The Teskey Brothers 

 

know it as it is known/by galaxy and cedar cone

 

.

I don't know somehow it seems sufficient

to see and hear whatever coming and going is,
losing the self to the victory
of stones and trees,
of bending sandpit lakes, crescent
round groves of dwarf pine: 
for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and death could never end it: 
the swamp's slow water comes
down Gravelly Run fanning the long
stone-held algal
hair and narrowing roils between
the shoulders of the highway bridge: 
holly grows on the banks in the woods there,
and the cedars' gothic-clustered
spires could make
green religion in winter bones: 
so I look and reflect, but the air's glass
jail seals each thing in its entity: 
no use to make any philosophies here:
I see no
god in the holly, hear no song from
the snowbroken weeds: Hegel is not the winter
yellow in the pines: the sunlight has never 
heard of trees: surrendered self among
unwelcoming forms: stranger,
hoist your burdens, get on down the road. 


—A. R. Ammons 

Gravelly Run

.

no death, no fear

.

When you look at the surface of the ocean, you can see waves coming up and going down. You can describe these waves in terms of high or low, big or small, more vigorous or less vigorous, more beautiful or less beautiful. You can describe a wave in terms of beginning and end, birth and death. That can be compared to the historical dimension. In the historical dimension, we are concerned with birth and death, more powerful, less powerful, more beautiful, less beautiful, beginning and end and so on. 

Looking deeply, we can also see that the waves are at the same time water. A wave may like to seek its own true nature. The wave might suffer from fear, from complexes. A wave may say, “ I am not as big as the other waves,” “I am not as beautiful as the other waves," "I have been born and I have to die.” The wave may suffer from these things, these ideas. But if the wave bends down and touches her true nature she will realize that she is water. Then her fear and complexes will disappear.

Water is free from the birth and death of a wave. Water is free from high and low, more beautiful and less beautiful. You can talk in terms of more beautiful and less beautiful, high or low, only in terms of waves. As far as water is concerned, all these concepts are invalid. 

Our true nature is the nature of non-discrimination, of no birth, of no death, of no being and no non-being. We do not have to go anywhere to touch our true nature. We are what we are looking for. 

We can ask a flame: “Flame, where do you come from and where will you go?” Listen to the reply closely. The flame is replying by its presence. The flame is saying: “I do not come from anywhere. I do not go anywhere."

When we look deeply, we see that when all the conditions are sufficient something will manifest. What manifests does not come from anywhere. And when a manifestation ceases, it does not go anywhere.

Manifestation is not the opposite of destruction. It is simply a changing of forms.

We think of our body as our self or belonging to our self. We think of our body as me or mine. But if you look deeply, you see that your body is also the body of your ancestors, of your parents, of your children and of their children. So it is not a “me,” it is not a “mine.” Your body is full of everything else—limitless non-body elements—except one thing; a separate existence.  

Nothing can exist by itself alone. It has to depend on every other thing. That is called inter-being. To be means to inter-be. There is no being; there is only inter-being.

Everything is without a separate self.

Impermanence and no-self are not rules to follow given to us by the Buddha. They are keys to open the door of reality. The Buddha said “My teachings are a finger pointing to the moon. Do not get caught thinking that the finger is the moon. It is because of the finger that you can see the moon.”


—Thich Nhat Hanh
no death, no fear, (treasure)
excerpts

.

the greatest of these

 

.

Though I speak with the tongues of angels,
If I have not love...
My words would resound with but a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophesy...
And understand all mysteries...
and all knowledge...

And though I have all faith
So that I could remove mountains,
If I have not love...
I am nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind;
Love tolerates all things,
Aspires to all things.

Love never dies.

While the prophecies shall be done away,
tongues shall be silenced,
knowledge shall fade...
thus then shall linger only
faith, hope, and love...

but the greatest of these...

is love.


—1 Corinthians 13

.

 

that is your name

  

.

I guess you are kind of curious as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind.

If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago:  Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.

That is my name.

Perhaps it was raining very hard.

That is my name.

Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was wrong—“Sorry for the mistake,”—and you had to do something else.

That is my name.

Perhaps it was a game you played when you were a child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting in a chair near the window.

That is my name.

Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around.

That is my name.

Perhaps you stared into a river. There was something near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened.

That is my name.

—Richard Brautigan

Watermelon Sugar 

.

sit down, be quiet

  

.

 

Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill — more of each
than you have — inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.


—Wendell Berry
how to be a poet (to remind myself)

.

If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things Made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.

Like all obsessions, the Making obsession has disadvantages; for instance, my only interest in making money would be to make it. Fortunately, however, I should prefer to make almost anything else, including locomotives and roses. It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my poems are competing.

They are also competing with each other, with elephants, and with El Greco.


—E. E. Cummings

.

.

take off from here

   

bower

.

There is no point in work unless it pre-occupies you as well as occupies you.

When you are only occupied, you are an empty shell.

A man needs to be independent at his work, so that he can put his own self into it.

When a man puts his own self into his work he is living, not merely working. 

When men wove with their hands and their soul’s attention the cloth they wore, they lived themselves forth, like a tree putting out woven leaves and it made them happy, and the woven cloth of their hands came from them living like leaves from the tree of their life and clothed them with living leaves.

And as with cloth, so with all things, houses, shoes, wagons or cups, men used to put them forth sensitively like boughs, leaves, fruits, flowers from their tree of life, and villages, whole cities lived, lived as true bowers of men.

It will be so again, for man will smash all his machines again at last, and for the sake of clothing himself in his own leaf-like cloth, issued from his life and dwelling in his own bowery house, like a bird in a bush and drinking from the cups that have flowered from his own fingers he will cancel again these machines we have got.

—D.H. Lawrence

.

Cultivate a work-lust that imagines its haven like your hands at night, dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast. 

You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous. 

Take off from here. 

And don't be so earnest.

—Seamus Heaney

.

you must have chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star —Nietzsche

  

.

 

The wild. I have drunk it, deep and raw, and heard its primal, unforgettable roar. We know it in our dreams, when our mind is off the leash, running wild. 'Outwardly, the equivalent of the unconscious is the wilderness: both of these terms meet, one step even further on, as one,' wrote Gary Snyder. 'It is in vain to dream of a wildness distinct from ourselves.' 'There is none such,' wrote Thoreau. 'It is the bog in our brains and bowels, the primitive vigor of Nature in us, that inspires the dream.'

And as dreams are essential to the psyche, wildness is to life.

We are animal in our blood and in our skin. We were not born for pavements and escalators but for thunder and mud. More. We are animal not only in body but in spirit. Our minds are the minds of wild animals. 

Artists, who remember their wildness better than most, are animal artists, lifting their heads to sniff a quick wild scent in the air, and they know it unmistakably, they know the tug of wildness to be followed through your life is buckled by that strange and absolute obedience. ('You must have chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star,' wrote Nietzsche.) Children know it as magic and timeless play. Shamans of all sorts and inveterate misbehavers know it; those who cannot trammel themselves into a sensible job and life in the suburbs know it.

What is wild cannot be bought or sold, borrowed or copied. It is unmistakable, unforgettable, unshameable, elemental as earth and ice, water, fire and air, a quintessence, pure spirit, resolving into no constituents. Don't waste your wildness: it is precious and necessary.


—Jay Griffiths
Wild: An Elemental Journey

.

Be a good animal, true to your instincts. —D. H. Lawrence

  

.

You are not a drop in the ocean.

You are the entire ocean in a drop.


—Rumi

open secret

  

.

Think of the phoenix coming up out of ashes,
but not flying off.
For a moment we have form. 
We can't see.

How can we be conscious and you be conscious
at the same time and separate?

Copper when an alchemist works on it loses its copper qualities. 
Seeds in Spring
begin to be trees, no longer seed. Brushwood
put in the fire changes. 

The snow-world melts.
You step in my footprint and it's gone.


—Rumi
Coleman Barks version
 

 

.

 

 

question

empty only of a separate existence

.

 

Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara,

Sitting in the depth of knowledge,

Lit the glow of his wisdom five elements

And saw that all of them are empty.

After this enlightenment he overcame the pain.

Listen, Shariputra,

Form - a void, emptiness - is the form

Form - is nothing but emptiness,

Void - it is nothing but a form.

The same is true for the senses,

Perceptions of mental activity and consciousness.

Listen, Shariputra,

All dharmas are empty properties.

They do not create and are not exterminable,

Are not dirty and are not cleaned,

Do not grow or shrink.

Hence, in the void

There is no form, no feelings, no perceptions,

No mental activity or consciousness.

There is no dependent origination

No eyes, no ears, no nose,

No tongue, no body, no mind.

There is no form, no sound, no smell,

No taste, no touch, no object of mind.

No sphere of elements, ranging from eye

And the ending of consciousness.

And it is not fading, from ignorance

And ending with death and decay.

There is no source of suffering and misery,

No Cessation of Suffering

And there is no way to end suffering.

There is no wisdom and no progress.

Since there is no progress, all the Bodhisattvas,

Relying on perfect wisdom,

No obstacles are in your mind.

With no obstacles, they overcome fear,

Forever exempt from error

And reach true nirvana.

Thanks to this perfect wisdom,

All the Buddhas of the past, present and future

Enter into a full, true and total enlightenment.

Therefore, to know that perfect wisdom

Expressed unsurpassed mantra,

The highest mantra, devastating suffering

Perfect and true.

Hence, the mantra Prajnaparamita

Must be declared.

Here is the mantra:

Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.

Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.

Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha.

.

this is how you become everything that lives

  

.

You are the daughter of the sea, oregano's first cousin.
Swimmer, your body is pure as the water;
cook, your blood is quick as the soil.
Everything you do is full of flowers, rich with the earth.

Your eyes go out toward the water, and the waves rise;
your hands go out to the earth and the seeds swell;
you know the deep essence of water and the earth,
conjoined in you like a formula for clay.

Naiad: cut your body into turquoise pieces,
they will bloom resurrected in the kitchen.
This is how you become everything that lives.

And so at last, you sleep, in the circle of my arms
that push back the shadows so that you can rest--
vegetables, seaweed, herbs: the foam of your dreams.


—Pablo Neruda
love sonnet, XXXIV

.

love and love and nothing else

 

.

The holiest of all holidays are those 

 Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; 

The secret anniversaries of the heart …

—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Holidays, excerpt

.

atom of the universe

 

.

The 1930s had seen monumental advances in atomic science and radiation research and the spectacular discovery of nuclear fission in 1938 was overshadowed by the outbreak of war just a year later. But physicists were quick to realize the devastating potential of their new discovery.

Albert Einstein co-signed a letter to then president Roosevelt with a warning: "It is conceivable that extremely powerful bombs of a new type... may thus be constructed." So the US developed their own bomb before any other nation could. The test was considered a great success and just 21 days later the United States dropped a similar atomic bomb, the so-called Fat Man, on the city of Nagasaki, Japan.

If it had not been for the deadly pressures of war nuclear science may have followed a very different and likely slower path. The exploration of the atom, one of the tiniest particles of matter, had until then been little more than a curiosity, the domain of at first philosophers and then gentlemen scholars.

Small improvements in experimental methods and equipment brought small breakthroughs until the fateful revelation that atoms and their nuclei were indeed not the end of the Russian doll. A discovery that led directly to New Mexico and then Japan.

As the glow from that first nuclear explosion faded it left behind a new thirst to understand what our universe was actually made of and how it came to be. That journey, the quest to discover what makes up everything, would see scientists delve ever deeper down a rabbit hole of matter and mass of fields and particles and even further back in time in a century-long quest to answer the immortal question: 

What is at its most fundamental level everything, and perhaps even more importantly is any of it really real at all?

—Leila Battison

.

the less i seek my source

 

.

I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
And the best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
It's only life after all

Well, darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
And I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety 'til I sank it
I'm crawling on your shores

And I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
Closer I am to fine
Closer I am to fine

And I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind
Got my paper and I was free

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
Closer I am to fine
Closer I am to fine

I stopped by the bar at 3 A.M
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
And I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I'd been the night before
And I went in seeking clarity

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain

We go to the doctor, we go to the mountains
We look to the children, we drink from the fountain

We go to the Bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival, we stand up for the lookout
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
Closer I am to fine
Closer I am to fine
Closer I am to fine

—Indigo Girls
Closer To Fine

.

 

hey!

 

.

I am yours.

Don’t give myself back to me.


—Rumi

:)

bless

. 

this is how love catches up and wants to be our friend, as we hold 

each other, and the good secret inside slides forth continuous

—Rumi

.

We offer gratitude to and for all friends

Who create, remake and refine one another;

Who point to stars and keep us from the dark;

Who help us hear the music in the silent places ...

Who hold us and will not let us go.


—Marge Ackley

.

the cold before the moonrise

 

.

Instantaneous architectures
hanging over a pause,
apparitions neither named
nor thought, wind-forms,
insubstantial as time
and, like time, dissolved.

Made of time, they are not time;
they are the cleft, the interstice,
the brief vertigo of between
where the diaphanous flower opens:
high on its stalk of a reflection
it vanishes as it turns.

Never touched, the clarities
seen with the eyes closed:
transparent birth
and the crystalline fall
in the instant of this instant
that forever is still here.

Outside the window, the desolate
rooftops and the hurrying clouds.
The day goes out, the city
lights up, remote and near.
Weightless hour. I breathe
the moment, empty and eternal.


—Octavio Paz

interval
Eliot Weinberger version

.

It is too simple to turn to the sound
Of frost stirring among its
Stars like an animal asleep
In the winter night
And say I was born far from home 

If there is a place where this is the language may
It be my country 

—W.S. Merwin

.

wolf water image

  

time is a child

 

.

In 1950, on the occasion of his 75th birthday, Jung set up a stone cube on the lakeshore, just west of the Bollingen Tower, inscribing it on three sides. One side contains a quote taken from the Rosarium philosophorum: Hic lapis exilis extat, pretio quoque vilis, spernitur a stultis, amatur plus ab edoctis. 

Here stands the mean, uncomely stone, ‘Tis very cheap in price! The more it is despised by fools, The more loved by the wise. 

A dedication is also inscribed on this side of the stone: IN MEMORIAM NAT[ivitatis] S[uae] DIEI LXXV C G JUNG EX GRAT[itudine] FEC[it] ET POS[uit] A[nn]O MCML. 

In memory of his 75th birthday, C.G. Jung out of gratitude made and set it up in the year 1950.

The second side of the cube depicts Jung’s Telesphoros figure, bearing a lantern and wearing a hooded cape. It is surrounded by a Greek inscription: «Ὁ Αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεττεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη» · Τελεσφόρος διελαύνων τοὺς σκοτεινοὺς τοῦ κόσμου τόπους, καὶ ὡς ἀστὴρ ἀναλάμπων ἐκ τοῦ βάθους, ὁδηγεῖ «παρ’ Ἠελίοιο πύλας καὶ δῆμον ὀνείρων». 

Time is a child — playing like a child — playing a board game — the kingdom of the child. This is Telesphoros, who roams through the dark regions of this cosmos and glows like a star out of the depths. He points the way to the gates of the sun and to the land of dreams.

"Time is a child at play, gambling; a child’s is the kingship” is a fragment attributed to Heraclitus. 

“He points the way to the gates of the sun and to the land of dreams” is a quote from the Odyssey (Book 24, Verse 12). It refers to Hermes the psychopomp, who leads away the spirits of the slain suitors. 

The second side also contains a four-part mandala of alchemical significance. The top quarter of the mandala is dedicated to Saturn, the bottom quarter to Mars, the left quarter to Sol-Jupiter [male], and the right quarter to Luna-Venus [female]. 

The third side of the cube is the side that faces the lake. It bears a Latin inscription of sayings which, Jung says, “are more or less quotations from alchemy.” 

The inscription reads: 

I am an orphan, alone; yet, I am found everywhere. I am one, but contrary to myself. I am youth and old man at the same time. I have known neither father nor mother, because I must be lifted up from the depth like a fish, or i fall from the sky like a white stone. In woods and mountains I roam, but I am hidden in the innermost soul of man. I am mortal for everyone, yet I am not touched by the cycle of time.

From the one comes two,

from two, three,

and from the third comes the one as the fourth.

.

true be(longings

.

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

.