we work in the dark
To the Reader
As you read, a white bear leisurely
pees, dyeing the snow
saffron,
and as you read, many gods
lie among lianas: eyes of obsidian
are watching the generations of leaves,
and as you read
the sea is turning its dark pages,
turning
its dark pages.
- Denise Levertov
season
The only truth:
the others, in blossom, a dream
Do not ask
for flowery perfume
when I can give you
fruits of autumn
Do not reject nourishment
because winter is at the door
and already the old saints
have raised their brows
to contemplate eternity
We children of the moment
drink up the last of the wine
- Lalla Romano
translated by Canio Pavone
Sixty-six times have these eyes beheld the
changing scene of autumn.
I have said enough about moonlight,
Ask no more.
Only listen to the voice of pines and cedars
when no wind stirs.
- Ryonen
The world is
not with us enough
O taste and see
the subway Bible poster said,
meaning The Lord, meaning
if anything all that lives
to the imagination’s tongue,
grief, mercy, language,
tangerine, weather, to
breathe them, bite,
savor, chew, swallow, transform
into our flesh our
deaths, crossing the street, plum, quince,
living in the orchard and being
hungry, and plucking
the fruit.
- Denise Levertov
"Generosity is another quality which, like patience, letting go, non-judging, and trust, provides a solid foundation for mindfulness practice. You might experiment with using the cultivation of generosity as a vehicle for deep self-observation and inquiry as well as an exercise in giving. A good place to start is with yourself. See if you can give yourself gifts that may be true blessings, such as self-acceptance, or some time each day with no purpose. Practice feeling deserving enough to accept these gifts without obligation - to simply receive from yourself, and from the universe."
- Jon Kabat Zinn
"There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem, the more likely one will be to treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity."
- Nathaniel Branden
"You have not lived a perfect day, even though you earned your money, unless you have done something for someone who will never be able to repay you."
- Ruth Smeltzer
"There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life - happiness, freedom, and peace of mind - are always attained by giving them to someone else."
- Peyton Conway March
- Buddha
- Richard Brinsley Sheridan
"Generosity is that palpable extra that comes along with the gift, motiveless as a good wind. Best is the extra that comes unencumbered: pure generosity of spirit, always replenishing itself. We the less generous are quick to suspect it, remembering what we've given and why. But those who have it irradiate the day. They redefine the meaning of wealth. We fall in love with them, we try to shine that brightly, yet before long they've mostly instructed us about what it is we want to keep. Blessed are the generous who keep enough for themselves so we can live with them without guilt. Blessed, too, are those who receive well, so the generous get their reward."
- Stephen Dunn
"The new value placed on the transitory, the elusive and the ephemeral, the very celebration of dynamism, discloses a longing for an undefiled, immaculate and stable present."
- Jurgen Habermas
"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle.
The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours."
- Ayn Rand
"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.
Dream delivers us to dream, and there is no end to illusion. Life is a train of moods like a string of beads, and, as we pass through them, they prove to be many-colored lenses which paint the world their own hue, and each shows only what lies in its focus. From the mountain you see the mountain. We animate what we can, and we see only what we animate. Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them. It depends on the mood of the man, whether he shall see the sunset or the fine poem. There are always sunsets, and there is always genius; but only a few hours so serene that we can relish nature or criticism.
It is very unhappy, but too late to be helped, the discovery we have made, that we exist. That discovery is called the Fall of Man. Ever afterwards, we suspect our instruments. We have learned that we do not see directly, but mediately, and that we have no means of correcting these colored and distorting lenses which we are, or of computing the amount of their errors. Perhaps these subject-lenses have a creative power; perhaps there are no objects. Once we lived in what we saw; now, the rapaciousness of this new power, which threatens to absorb all things, engages us. Nature, art, persons, letters, religions, -- objects, successively tumble in, and God is but one of its ideas. Nature and literature are subjective phenomena; every evil and every good thing is a shadow which we cast.
Thus inevitably does the universe wear our color, and every object fall successively into the subject itself. The subject exists, the subject enlarges; all things sooner or later fall into place. As I am, so I see; use what language we will, we can never say anything but what we are."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We exist only in the dreams of the Supernaturals, and even they can sometimes have nightmares which trap us in events nobody can predict."
- Anne Cameron
Child of her People
we do what we can
we give what we have.
Our doubt is our passion,
and our passion is our task.
The rest is the madness of art."
- Henry James
"My brother - I have been on a long journey after supreme knowledge, I took a long time to rest. Then, upon coming back, I had to give all my time to duty, and all my thoughts to the Great Problem. It is all over now: the New Year's festivities are at an end and I am "Self" once more. But what is Self? Only a passing guest, whose concerns are all like a mirage of the great desert . . . ."
- Mahatma K.H.
The Mahatma Letters to A. P. Sinnett
"I am aware of the need for constant self-revision and growth, leaving behind the renunciations of yesterday and yet in continuity with all my yesterdays. For to cling to the past is to lose one's continuity with the past, since this means clinging to what is no longer there.
My ideas are always changing, always moving around one center, and I am always seeing that center from somewhere else.
Hence, I will always be accused of inconsistency. But I will no longer be there to hear the accusation."
- Thomas Merton
The Hidden Ground of Love
That missing something, strange to say, is a grasp of nothing itself. Understanding nothing matters, because nothing is the all-important background upon which everything else happens."
- K. C. Cole
The Hole in the Universe: How Scientists Peered over the Edge of Emptiness and Found Everything
Dear John,
Because this page and the mountains and the clouds all arise in your awareness, there is nothing outside your Self. That there is literally nothing outside your Self means there is literally nothing that can threaten it. Since you know this Self, you know Peace. Because you are already, directly, immediately, and intimately one and identical with That which is reading this page right now, you know God right now, directly and immediately and unmistakably and undeniably . And because you know God right now, as the very Self reading this page, you know you are finally, truly, deeply home, a home that you have always directly known and always pretended you didn't.
Therefore, pretend no more. Confess that you are God. Confess that you are Beauty. Confess that you are the very Truth the sages have sought for centuries. Confess that you are Peace beyond understanding. Confess that you are so ecstatically happy that you had to manifest this entire world just to bear witness to a radiant beauty you could no longer contain only in and for yourself. Confess that the Witness of this page, the Self of this and all the worlds, is the one and only true Spirit that looks through all eyes and hears with all ears and reaches out in love and compassion to embrace the very beings that it created itself in an eternal ecstatic dance that is the secret of all secrets. And confess that you are Alone, that you are literally the only One in the entire universe: there are no others to this One. There are indeed others to John, but both John and the others arise in the awareness that is reading this page, and this awareness, this Self, has no other because all others arise in it. One without a second is what is reading this page. Therefore, be that One.
And also give my love to John.
Ken Wilbur
"There are a lot of loose ends. You try to look at everything officially as extending from one particular point to another particular point. You have certain boundaries that you don't go beyond. You can't be bothered. And beyond those boundaries are still greater loose ends. Then you try to tidy them up again. This is the greater thing that we don't talk about, that everyone knows about."
- Chögyam Trungpa
"Our way of relating to our bodies is often very rigid and tends to restrict our potential as embodied beings. Our attitudes and investigations of the body often perpetuate either a mechanical or a ghost in the machine perspective. These same attitudes in many ways insure that knowing will not change or mature qualitatively and will remain a rather isolated occurrence in a basically unknowing world. The self is the only thing that is allowed to know in such a picture. Everything that supposedly surrounds and interacts with it must be seen as objects which are merely known. However, this rather frozen picture can be thawed. It is possible to allow a greater measure of liveliness, clarity, and intimacy with our surroundings to replace the isolated appearances of body, mind, and world.
In order to thaw out our world of appearance and to regain the knowing that has somehow been frozen in the process of building this world, we need to learn what we ourselves are. We must work with – and thaw out – what we apparently have close at hand."
- Tartang Tulku
"People do not live in the present always, at one with it. They live at all kinds of and manners of distance from it, as difficult to measure as the course of planets. Fears and traumas make their journeys slanted, peripheral, uneven, evasive."
- Anais Nin
Someone spoke to me last night,
told me the truth. Just a few words,
but I recognized it.
I knew I should make myself get up,
write it down, but it was late,
and I was exhausted from working
all day in the garden, moving rocks.
Now, I remember only the flavor -
not like food, sweet or sharp.
More like a fine powder, like dust.
And I wasn't elated or frightened,
but simply rapt, aware.
That's how it is sometimes -
God comes to your window,
all bright light and black wings,
and you're just too tired to open it.
- Dorianne Laux
I needed an amulet last week
To help me work at my painting studio.
Be a Mad Monk
I wrote
Thinking of Shih T'ao and Jung Kwang.
How can I be a mad monk
When I am applying for office work
And paying bills?
You may not know what
You are,
But you can know that
You are
The old books tell me
As I sit in my kitchen
Scrawling poems in the near dark.
- Tanya Joyce
"It is a life that cannot be held and studied as object, because it is not a thing. It is not reached and coaxed forth from hiding by any process under the sun, including meditation. All that we can do with any spiritual discipline is produce within ourselves something of the silence, the humility, the detachment, the purity of heart, and the indifference which are required if the inner self is to make some shy, unpredictable manifestation of his presence."
- Thomas Merton
When The Shoe Fits
Ch'ui the draftsman
Could draw more perfect circles freehand
Than with a compass.
His fingers brought forth
Spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind
Was meanwhile free and without concern
With what he was doing.
No application was needed
His mind was perfectly simple
And knew no obstacle.
So, when the shoe fits
The foot is forgotten,
When the belt fits
The belly is forgotten,
When the heart is right
"For" and "against" are forgotten.
No drives, no compulsions,
No needs, no attractions:
Then your affairs
Are under control.
You are a free man.
Easy is right. Begin right
And you are easy.
Continue easy and you are right.
The right way to go easy
Is to forget the right way
And forget that the going is easy.
- Chuang Tzu
translated by Thomas Merton
You become part of what's wild.
Striving to cease grasping
Is, itself, grasping.
So how do you gain control and get beyond desire?
Open those eyes . . . the ones that were born in your own skull."
- Hsu Yun
"So don't ask yourself what people want.
Ask instead, What is true? What really inspires me, excites me? What will really help people and take away their confusion and suffering? It's sort of a funny, crazy way to go, but I think it's the only way to bring water to the wasteland Joseph Campbell described. When I read something truthful, something real, I breathe a deep sigh and say, "Fantastic - I wasn't mad or alone in thinking that, after all!" So often we are left to our own devices, struggling in the dark with this external and internal propaganda system. At that point, for someone to tell us the truth is a gift. In a world where people all around us are lying and confusing us, to be honest is a great kindness."
- David Edwards
Nothing to Lose but our Illusion
- Mary Oliver
Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?
Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches
of other lives -
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey,
hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning,
feel like?
Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over
the dark acorn of your heart!
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
Well, there is time left -
fields everywhere invite you into them.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!
To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!
To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened
in the night.
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.
Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe
I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery bodies.
For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!
A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.
Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?
And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.
That was then, which hasn't ended yet.
Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.
I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.
- Mary Oliver
- Matsuo Basho
"A daydream is a meal at which images are eaten. Some of us are gourmets, some gourmands, and a good many take their images precooked out of a can and swallow them down, absent-mindedly and with little relish."
- Wystan Hugh Auden
"The purpose of poetry is to remind us how difficult it is to remain just one person, for our house is open, there are no keys to the doors, and invisible guests come in and out at will."
- Mary Watkins
amid the affluent traffic
to serve this unpopular art which cannot be turned into
background noise for study
or hung as a status trophy by rising executives,
cannot be 'done' like Venice
or abridged like Tolstoy, but stubbornly still insists upon
being read or ignored . . . "
- W H Auden
regarding poetry
The Swan
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
- Mary Oliver
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