listen

.

Listen: this world is the lunatic’s sphere,
Don’t always agree it’s real!

Even with my feet upon it
And the postman knowing my door
My address is somewhere else.


–Hafiz

.

confession

.

Sometimes I patrol the perimeter of life,
checking for holes where reality might leak in.

—Sayings of Te Toh

.

you know ...

.

Staying very still in the darkness, I became less and less convinced of the fact that I actually existed.

–Haruki Murakami

.

note to self

.

You create what you resist.


—Luis Alvarez
Nobel Prize/Physics

.

if you want

.

If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial.
If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked.

If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.
If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.

If you want to be given everything, give everything up.
The Master, by residing in the Tao, sets an example for all beings.


–Lao Tzu

.

observation

.

The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed,
will set off a revolution.


—Paul Cezanne

.

greening

.

Therefore we ought not to say ‘the tree (became) green’ or ‘the tree (is) now green’ (both of which imply a change in the tree’s ‘essence’), but rather ‘the tree greens’. By using the infinitive form of ‘to green’, we make a dynamic attribution of the predicate, an incorporeality distinct from both the tree and green-ness which captures nonetheless the dynamism of the event’s actualisation. The event is not a disruption of some continuous state, but rather the state is constituted by events ‘underlying’ it that, when actualised, mark every moment of the state as a transformation.

—Cliff Stagoll
The Deleuze Dictionary

.

look

.

Try another way of looking.

Try you looking and the whole universe seeing.


—Rumi

.

for the children

.

The rising hills, the slopes,
of statistics
lie before us.
the steep climb
of everything, going up,
up, as we all
go down. 

In the next century
or the one beyond that,
they say,
are valleys, pastures,
we can meet there in peace
if we make it. 

To climb these coming crests
one word to you, to
you and your children: 

stay together
learn the flowers
go light 


–Gary Snyder  

.

note to self

.

It is not the work that hinders (peace) but the idea that it is you who are doing it.

—Sri Ramana Maharshi

.

perspective

.
ashramof1
.

so below

.

That which is above is like that which is below

and that which is below is like that which is above,

to achieve the wonders of the one thing.


–Hermes Trismegistus

.

i am that

.

Watching my hand; He is moving it.

Hearing my voice; He is speaking...

Walking from room to room --

No one here but Him.


–Rumi

Andrew Harvey version

.

alchemy

.

I have inside me the winds, the deserts, the oceans, the stars, and everything created in the universe.

We were all made by the same hand, and we have the same soul.


—Paulo Coelho
from The Alchemist

.

It Is I Who Must Begin

.

It is I who must begin.
Once I begin, once I try --
here and now,
right where I am,
not excusing myself
by saying things
would be easier elsewhere,
without grand speeches and
ostentatious gestures,
but all the more persistently
-- to live in harmony
with the "voice of Being," as I
understand it within myself
-- as soon as I begin that,
I suddenly discover,
to my surprise, that
I am neither the only one,
nor the first,
nor the most important one
to have set out
upon that road.

Whether all is really lost
or not depends entirely on
whether or not I am lost.


–Vaclav Havel

.

 

 

medicine

.

When the wind blows

that is my medicine

When it rains
that is my medicine

When it hails
that is my medicine

When it becomes clear after a storm
that is my medicine


–Holy Woman Poem

.

listen

.

The horse's mind

Blends
 
So swiftly

Into the hay's mind.


–Fazil Husnu Daglarca
Talat Sait Halman translation

.

earthspeak

 

.

Trees are the earth’s endless effort to speak to the listening heaven.

–Rabindranath Tagore

.

kindred

.

... down deep, at the molecular heart of life,
we’re essentially identical to trees.

–Carl Sagan

.

arrivals

.

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

.

ode to the moment

.

This moment
as smooth
as a board,
and fresh,
this hour,
this day
as clean
as an untouched glass
--not a single
spiderweb
from the past:
we touch the moment
with our fingers,
we cut it
to size,
we direct
its blooming.
It's living,
it's alive:
it brings nothing from yesterday that can't be redeemed,
nothing from the lost past.


–Pablo Neruda

.

this moment

.

This moment is like this.

–Ajahn Sumedho


.

the way in

.

Sometimes the way to milk and honey is through the body.
Sometimes the way in is a song.
But there are three ways in the world: dangerous, wounding, and beauty.

To enter stone, be water.
To rise through hard earth, be plant
desiring sunlight, believing in water.

To enter fire, be dry.
To enter life, be food.


—Linda Hogan

.

question

.

Observe your own body. It breathes. 

You breathe when you are asleep, when you are no longer conscious of your own ideas of self-identity.
Who, then, is breathing? 

The collection of information that you mistakenly think is you is not the protagonist in this drama called the breath. In fact, you are not breathing; breath is naturally happening to you. 

You can purposely end your own life, but you cannot purposely keep your own life going. The expression, 'my life' is actually an oxymoron, a result of ignorance and mistaken assumption. 

You don't possess life; life expresses itself through you.
Your body is a flower that life let bloom, a phenomenon created by life.


–Ilchi Lee

 .

you keep thinking

.


The whole world is you.

Yet you keep thinking there is something else.


–Hsueh-Feng


.

not to worry

 

.

There is nothing to do. Just be. 
Do nothing. Be. 

No climbing mountains and sitting in caves. 
I do not even say: ‘be yourself’, since you do not know yourself. 

Just be. 

Having seen that you are neither the ‘outer’ world of perceivables, nor the ‘inner’ world of thinkables, 
that you are neither body nor mind,
just be.


–Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

the further one goes

.

Without stirring abroad,
one can know the whole world; 

Without looking out of the window
one can see the way of heaven. 

The further one goes the less one knows.


–Lao Tzu

.

beyond mind

.

Don’t rely on your mind for liberation. 

It is the mind that brought you into bondage.

Go beyond it altogether.


–Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

possibilities, excerpt

.

I prefer zeroes on the loose
to those lined up behind a cipher.
I prefer the time of insects to the time of stars.
I prefer to knock on wood.
I prefer not to ask how much longer and when.
I prefer keeping in mind even the possibility
that existence has its own reason for being.


–Wislawa Szymborska

.

you know ...

.

The mind creates the abyss, the heart crosses it.
 

–Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

the appearance of water in a mirage

.

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

.

you are that

.

You are not what you think yourself to be, I assure you.

The image you have of yourself is made up from memories and is purely accidental.


—Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

merrily, merrily

.

Atoms themselves are not real; they form a world of potentialities or possibilities rather than one of things or facts.

—Werner Heisenberg

.

just sit

.

We just sit.

It is like something happening in the great sky.

Whatever kind of bird flies through it, the sky doesn’t care.

That is the mind transmitted from Buddha to us.


–Shunryu Suzuki

.

changeless

.

Know yourself to be the changeless witness of the changeful mind.
That is enough.
 

–Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

you know ...

.

You and I are just swinging doors.

This kind of understanding is necessary.


–Shunryu Suzuki

.

come into animal presence

.

No man is so guileless as

the serpent. The lonely white

rabbit on the roof is a star

twitching its ears at the rain.

The llama intricately

folding its hind legs to be seated

not disdains but mildly

disregards human approval.

What joy when the insouciant

armadillo glances at us and doesn't

quicken his trotting

across the track and into the palm brush.

What is this joy? That no animal

falters, but knows what it must do?

That the snake has no blemish,

that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings

in white star-silence? The llama

rests in dignity, the armadillo

has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.

Those who were sacred have remained so,

holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence

of bronze, only the sight that saw it

faltered and turned from it.

An old joy returns in holy presence.


–Denise Levertov

Poems: 1960-1967

.

inevitable

.

Each of us inevitable,
Each of us limitless --

Each of us with his or her
right upon the earth,

Each of us allow'd
the eternal purports
of the earth,

Each of us here
as divinely as any is here.

 
–Walt Whitman

.

something grand

 

.

The sun and stars that float in the open air... the appleshaped earth and we upon it... surely the drift of them is something grand;

I do not know what it is except that it is grand, and that it is happiness,

And that the enclosing purport of us here is not a speculation, or bon-mot or reconnoissance,

And that it is not something which by luck may turn out well for us, and without luck must be a failure for us,

And not something which may yet be retracted in a certain contingency.


–Walt Whitman

.