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

.

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

.

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

.

Meditation Celestial and Terrestial

.

The wild warblers are warbling in the jungle
Of life and spring of the lustrious inundations,
Flood on flood, of our returning sun.

Day after day, throughout the winter,

We hardened ourselves to live by bluest reason

In a world of wind and frost,

And by will, unshaken and florid

In mornings of angular ice,

That passed beyond us through the narrow sky.

But what are radiant reason and radiant will

To warblings early in the hilarious trees

Of summer, the drunken mother?

–Wallace Stevens

.

the proof

 



.

Ultimately, you are the proof that God exists, not the other way around. For before any question about God can be put, you must be there to put it.


–Nisargadatta Maharaj

.

slow growth

 

 .

The most living moment comes when
those who love each other meet each

other's eyes and in what flows

between them then. To see your face

in a crowd of others, or alone on a 

frightening street, I weep for that.

Our tears improve the earth. The

time you scolded me, your gratitude,

your laughing, always your qualities

increase the soul. Seeing you is a 

wine that does not muddle or numb.

We sit inside the cypress shadow

where amazement and clear thought

twine their slow growth into us.


–Rumi

.

hope is the thing

.

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.


–Emily Dickinson

.

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

.

from a letter, Oct. 13, 1819, to his fiancée Fanny Brawne

.

I have been astonished that men could die
martyrs for their religion –
I have shuddered at it,
I shudder no more.

I could be martyred for my religion.
Love is my religion
and I could die for that.
I could die for you.


–John Keats

.