A Collection of Powerful Poems
Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn
A cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.
If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things,
This is the best season of your life.
Wu-men
To the mind that is still
the whole universe surrenders
"Trust your wound to a teacher's surgery.
Flies collect on a wound.
They cover it,
those flies of your self-protecting feelings,
your love for what you think is yours.
Let a Teacher wave away the flies
and put a plaster on the wound.
Don't turn your head.
Keep looking
at the bandaged place.
That's where
the Light enters you.
And don't believe for a moment
that you're healing yourself."
Rumi
Your grief for what you've lost lifts a mirror
up to where you're bravely working.
Expecting the worst, you look, and instead,
here's the joyful face you've been wanting to see.
Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes.
If it were always fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding.
the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated
as bird wings.
This being human is a guest-house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
Who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture.
Still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
Jalrudin Rumi
Today like every other day
We wake up empty and scared
Don't open the door of your study
And begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument
let the beauty we love be what we do
There are hundreds of way to kneel
And kiss the earth.
Rumi
When I'm with you
we stay up all night
When you're not here
I can't get to sleep
Thank god for these two insomnias
and the difference between them.
\
Come to the garden in Spring
There's wine and sweethearts
In the pomegranate blossoms
If you come, these will not matter.
If you do not come, these will not matter.
The Truth stands before me,
On my left is a blazing fire, and
On my right, a cool flowing stream.
One group of people walk toward the fire, into the fire,
And the other towards the cool flowing waters.
No one knows which is blessed and which is not.
But just as a just as someone enters the fire,
That head bobs up from the water,
And just as a head sinks into the water,
That face appears in the fire.
Those who love the sweet water of pleasure
And make it their devotion are cheated by this reversal.
The deception goes further-
The voice of the fire says:
“I am not fire, I am fountainhead,
Come into me and don’t mind the sparks.”
Rumi
Come, come whoever you are!
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan
of despair.
Come,
come even if you have
broken your vows
a thousand times.
Come,
come yet again,
come!
Inscribed at the tomb of Jelaluddin Rumi
“You can hold back from
suffering of the world,
you have permission to do so,
and it is in accordance
with your nature,
but perhaps this very holding back
is the one suffering
you could have avoided"
Franz Kafka
"I have a feeling that my boat
has struck, down there in the depths,
against a great thing. And nothing happens!
Nothing . . . Silence . . . Waves . . .
-Nothing happens? Or has everything happened,
and am now standing quietly, in my new life?"
Juan Ramon Jimenez
[
Love After Love
The time will come, when with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other's welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you.
all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Dereck Walcott
[
Keeping Quiet
Now we will count to twelve and we will all keep still
for once on the face of the earth, let's not speak in any language;
let's stop for a second, and not move our arms too much.
It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines;
we would all be together in a sudden strangeness.
Fisherman in the cold sea would not harm the whales
and the man gathering salt would not hurt his hands.
Those who prepare green wars, wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors, would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers in the shade, doing nothing.
What I want should not be confused with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about...
If we were not so single-minded about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing, perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us as when everything seems to be dead in winter and later proves to be alive. Now I'll count to twelve and you keep quiet and I will go.
Pablo Neruda
Please Call me by My True Names
I am the 12 year old girl, refugee on a boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.
I am member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his ”debt of blood” to my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp.
My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life.
My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills up the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be open the door of compassion.
Thich Nhat Hahn
The Journey
One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,
though the whole house began to tremble
and you felt the old tug at your ankles.
"Mend my life!" each voice cried. But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers at the very foundations,
though their melancholy was terrible.
It was already late enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen branches and stones.
But little by little, as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly recognized as your own,
that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do,
determined to save the only life you could save.
Mary Oliver
There is a pain so utter it swallows substance up,
then, covers the abyss with a trance
so memory can step around, above
upon it, as one in a swoon travels freely,
where an open eye would drop him,
bone by bone.
Emily Dickinson
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope,
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.
And wait without love. For love would be love,
of the wrong thing.
Yet there is faith.
But the faith and the hope and the love, are all in the waiting.
And the darkness shall be the light
and the stillness the dancing.
T.S. Elliot
God has no body now on earth but yours
no hands but yours
no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which he pours out,
compassion in the world, compassion in the world.
His are the hands, blessing me now.
All praise to the one.
Ring the bells that can still ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in.
A native American Elder was asked,
“What shall we do if we get lost?”
Stand still. The trees before you and the bushes beside you are not lost.
Wherever you are is a place called here,
and you must treat it as a powerful stranger
both asking to know and be known.
Listen. The forest whispers,
“I have made this place, you can leave and return once again
saying, here.”
No two trees are the same to Raven,
no two branches the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a branch does is lost on you,
you are truly lost.
Stand still. Listen.
The forest knows where you are.
Let it find you.
Ancient Celtic Wisdom
Be a full bucket, drawn up the dark way of the well.
Something lifts you up into the light
and show you your wings.
A full cup is set before you.
You taste only sacredness.
Now is the time
Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.
Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God?
Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child’s training wheels
To be laid aside
When you can finally live
with veracity and love.
Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.
That this is the time
For you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.
Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is Sacred
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could to where it bent in the undergrowth;
then took the other, just as fair, and having perhaps the better claim,
because it was grassy and wanted wear; though as for that the passing there had worn them really about the same,
and both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence:
two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.
Robert Frost
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean the one who is
eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth
instead of up and down -
who is gazing around with her
enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms
and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall into the grass,
how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed,
how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Mary Oliver
Of Death
And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its rest
less tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?
Only when you drink form the river of silence
shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top,
then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs,
then shall you truly dance.
from: The Prophet Kahill Gibran
Willing to die,
You give up
your will. Keep still
until, moved
by what moves
all else, you move.
Wendell Berry
[
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For the time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Wendell Berry
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet around me
like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places where I left them
asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings and I hear its song.
Than what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings and I hear its song.
Did I believe I had a clear mind?
It was like the water of a river
flowing shallow over the ice. And now
that the rising water has broken
the ice, I see that what I thought
was the light is part of the dark.
Wendell Berry
The dogs of indecision
Cross and cross the field of vision.
A cloud, a buzzing fly
Distract the lover’s eye.
Until the heart has found
Its native piece of ground
The day withholds its light,
The eye must stray unlit.
The ground’s the body’s bride,
Who will not be denied.
Not until all is given
Comes the thought of heaven.
When the mind’s an empty room
The clear days come.
"It may be when we no
longer know what to do,
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go,
we have begun our real journey."
Wendell Berry
The Watchers
The horses graze the winter slope
and then go to the high ground
and stand, watching the traffic
along the road, the slow river,
the trees leaning and straightening
in the wind. The day's time
is their time. They do not move
toward it or away. Their minds
are at home in this world,
diminished by no question.
Wendell Berry
As soon as I felt a necessity to learn about the non-human world,
I wished to learn about it in a hurry.
And then I began to learn perhaps
the most important lesson that nature had to reach me:
that I could not learn about her in a hurry.
The most important learning, that of experience,
can be neither summoned nor sought out.
The most worthy knowledge
cannot be acquired by what is known as study—
though that is necessary, and has its use.
It comes in its own good time
and in its own way to the man who will go where it lives,
and wait, and be ready,
and watch.
Hurry is beside the point, useless, an obstruction.
The thing is to be attentively present.
To sit and wait is as important as to move.
Patience is as valuable as industry.
What is to be known is
always there.
When it reveals itself to you, or when you come upon it,
it is by chance.
The only condition is your being there and being
watchful.
Wendell Berry
Is my soul asleep?
Have those beehives that labor
at night stopped? And the water
wheel of thought,
is it dry, the cups empty,
wheeling, carrying only shadows?
No my soul is not asleep.
It is awake, wide awake.
It neither sleeps nor dreams but watches,
it’s clear eyes open,
far off things, and listens
at the shores of the great silence.
from Antonio Machado (translated by Robert Bly):
Last night, as I was sleeping
I dreamt - marvelous error! -
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?
Last night, as I was sleeping
I dreamt - marvelous error! -
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
Last night, as I was sleeping
I dreamt - marvelous error! -
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night, as I was sleeping
I dreamt - marvelous error! -
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.
Antonio Machado
The perfume of sandalwood,
the scent of rosebay and jasmine,
travel only as far as the wind.
But the fragrance of goodness
travels with us
through all the worlds.
Like garlands woven from a heap of flowers,
fashion your life
as a garland of beautiful deeds.
Buddha
“The thought manifests as the word;
The word manifests as the deed;
The deed develops into habit;
And habit hardens into character;
So watch the thought and its ways with care,
And let it spring from love
Born out of concern for all beings.”
Buddha
Breathing in, I know that anger is here.
Breathing out, I know that the anger is in me.
Breathing in, I know that anger is unpleasant.
Breathing out, I know this feeling will pass.
Breathing in, I am calm.
Breathing out. I am strong enough to take care of this anger.
--Thich Nhat Hanh
Earth teach me stillness
as the grasses are stilled with light.
Earth teach me suffering
as the old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility
as blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring
as the mother who sucures her young.
Earth teach me courage
as the tree which stands all alone.
Earth teach me limitation
as the ant which crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom
as the eagle which soars in the sky.
Earth teach me resignation
as the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me geneneration
as the seed which rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself
as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness
as dry fields weep with rain.
UTE Prayer
"Many times a day I realize how much my own outer and inner life is built
upon the labors of my fellow men, both living and dead and how earnestly I
must exert myself in order to give in return as much as I have received."
Albert Einstein
"There is no spiritual practice more profound than being kind to one's family,
neighbors,
the cashier at the grocery store,
an unexpected visitor, the con in the next cell,
a stray cat or dog,
or any other of the usually 'irrelevant' or 'invisible' beings who may cross our paths
in the course of a normal day.
Certainly there are spiritual mysteries beyond description to explore,
but as we mature, it becomes clear
that those special experiences are only meaningful
when they arise from and return to
a life of ordinary kindness."
--Bo Lozoff
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with an impure mind
And Trouble will follow you
As the wheel follows the ox that draws the cart.
We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts.
With our thoughts we make the world.
Speak or act with a pure mind
and happiness will follow you
As your shadow, unshakable.
"Look how he abused me and beat me,
How he threw me down and robbed me."
Live with such thoughts and you live in hate.
"Look how he abused me and beat me,
How he threw me down and robbed me."
Abandon such thoughts, and live in love.
You do not see me out here.
I am an image projected on the back of your own retina.
You do not hear me outside of yourself.
The sounds are simply vibrations on your own eardrum.
This is the profound, simple truth:
You are the master of your life and death.
What you do is what you are.
Lao Tzu
In Nelson Mandela's Inaugural Speech
he read this poem by Mariannne Williamson
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won't feel insecure around you.
We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine,
we unconsciously give other
people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear,
our presence automatically liberates others.
\
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy,
a quickening, that is translated into action
And because there is only one of you in all time
this expression is unique
And if you block it, it will never exist though
any other medium and will be lost. . .
The world will not have it
It is not your business to determine how good
it is, nor how valuable, nor how it
compares to other expressions
It is your business to keep it yours, clearly
and directly. . .to keep the channel open
You do not even have to believe in yourself
or your work. . .You have to keep open and aware
directly to the urges that motivate you
Keep the channels open!
Martha Graham
Ring the bells that can still ring,
Forget your perfect offering,
There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in.
Ich liebe meines Wesens Dunkelstunden
I love the dark hours of my being.
My mind deepens into them.
There I can find, as in old letters,
the days of my life, already lived,
and held like a legend, and understood.
Then the knowing comes: I can open
to another life that's wide and timeless.
So I am sometimes like a tree
rustling over a gravesite
and making real the dream
of the one its living roots
embrace:
a dream once lost
among sorrows and songs.
Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.
Da neigt sich die Stunde und rührt mich an
The hour is striking so close above me,
so clear and sharp,
that all my senses ring with it.
I feel it now: there's a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world.
I know that nothing has ever been real
without my beholding it.
All becoming has needed me.
My looking ripens things
and they come toward me, to meet and be met.
Rilke's Book of Hours: Love Poems to God.
He whom I enclose with my name is weeping in this dungeon. I am ever busy
building this wall all around; and as this wall goes up into the sky day by
day I lose sight of my true being in its dark shadow.
I take pride in this great wall, and I plaster it with dust and sand lest a
least hole should be left in this name; and for all the care I take I lose
sight of my true being.
Tagore, from Gitanjali
The same stream of life
that runs through my veins
runs through the world
and dances in rhythmic measure.
It is the same life
that shoots in joy
through the dust of the earth
into numberless blades of grass,
and breaks into tumultuous waves
of leaves and flowers.
It is the same life that is rocked
in the ocean cradle
of birth and death,
in ebb and in flow.
My limbs are made glorious
by the touch of this world of life;
and my pride is from
the life throb of ages
dancing in my blood this moment.
Tagore
On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I knew it
not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.
Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my dream and
felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind.
That vague sweetness made my heart ache with longing and it seemed to me that
it was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion.
I knew not then that it was so near, that it was mine, and that this perfect
sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.
\
The Mind of Love
Today I love the world.
Last week it was a vile place,
broken, beyond repair.
And my mind reached out
in all directions
like a spiders spindly legs
to mend and weave
and fill the empty spaces,
until falling, exhausted
dangling by a single thread,
discouraged and utterly humiliated
that I couldn’t mend the fissures,
that I ever thought I could.
Today I love the world,
the faces on the street
the wind and chill.
Pausing to look up through
dark bare branches,
reaching out in all directions
against the vast bright blue.
Soon buds and leaves
will fill the empty spaces.
In the mind of this love
The fissures mend themselves.
** Excerpts of *A Heart as Wide as the World: Living with Mindfulness,
Wisdom, and Compassion*, by Sharon Salzberg
\
Attention is not concentration. Attention is interest. If you’re interested in something, then you’re attentive. And if you’re attentive, you discover many things.
I shall pass through this world but once.
Any good therefore that I can do
or any kindness that I can show to any human being,
LET ME DO IT NOW.
Let me not defer or neglect it --
For I shall not pass this way again.
“. . . the mind is restless, turbulent, strong and unyielding. .
.as difficult to subdue as the wind.”
--Bhagavad-Gita
\
"Do not go by revelation or tradition,
do not go by rumor, or the sacred scriptures,
do not go by hearsay or mere logic,
do not go by bias towards a notion or
by another person's seeming ability
and do not go by the idea 'He is our teacher'.
But when you yourself know that a thing is good,
that it is not blamable,
that is praised by the wise
and when practiced and observed
that it leads to happiness,
then follow that thing."
--Buddha
Always we hope
someone else has the answer.
some other place will be better,
some other time it will all turn out.
This is it.
no one else has the answer.
no other place will be better,
and it has already turned out.
At the center of your being
you have the answer;
you know who you are
and you know what you want.
There is no need
to run outside
for better seeing.
Nor to peer from a window.
Rather abide at the center of your being;
for the more you leave it, the less you learn.
Search your heart
and see
the way to do
is to be.
--Lao Tzu
The perfume of sandalwood,
the scent of rosebay and jasmine,
travel only as far as the wind.
But the fragrance of goodness
travels with us
through all the worlds.
Like garlands woven from a heap of flowers,
fashion your life
as a garland of beautiful deeds.
--the Buddha
It is part of the cosmic law that what you say and do determines
what happens in your life.
The ordinary person thinks that this law is external to himself
and he feels confined and controlled by it.
So his desires trouble his mind, his mind troubles his spirit,
and he lives in constant turmoil with himself and the world.
His whole life is spent in struggling.
The superior person recognizes that he and the subtle law are one.
Therefore he cultivates himself to accord with it, bringing
moderation to his actions and clarity to his mind.
Doing this, he finds himself at one with all that is divine and enlightened.
This is the profound, simple truth:
You are the master of your life and death.
What you do is what you are.
Lao Tzu
"If one is at peace with the mind, one can sit in the middle of a prison riot with little or no concern. However, if one is at war with the mind, then even if one sits in a cave it will seem as if one is in the middle of a prison riot. It is the stillness of the mind that brings a peace within."
"A human being is part of the whole, called by 'Universe'; a part
limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts
and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of
optical delusion of our consciousness. This delusion is a kind
of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to
affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to
free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of
compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of
nature in its beauty."
--Albert Einstein
Where are you now, my good friend? Are you out in the field, in
the forest, on the mountain, in a military camp, in a factory, at
your desk, in a hospital, in a prison? Regardless of where you
are, let us breathe in and out together, and let the Sun of
awareness enter. Let us begin with this breath and this
awareness. Whether life is an illusion, a dream, or a wondrous
reality depends on our insight and our mindfulness. Awakening is
a miracle. The darkness in a totally dark room will disappear
the moment the light is switched on. In the same way, life will
reveal itself as a miraculous reality the second the Sun of
Awareness begins to shine.
Our relationships with one another
are like the chance meeting
of two strangers in a parking lot.
They look at each other and smile.
That is all there is between them.
They leave and never see each other again.
That is what life is--
just a moment, a meeting, a
passing, and then it is gone.
If you understand this,
then there is no time to fight.
There is no time to argue.
There is no time to hurt one another.
Whether you think about it in terms of humanity, nations,
communities or indiviuals--
there is no time for anything less
than truly appreciating the brief
interaction we have with one another.
--Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche
There is no exercise better
for the heart
than reaching down
and lifting someone up!
~John Andrew Holmes~
Saint Francis And The Sow
The bud
stands for all things,
even for those things that don't flower,
for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;
though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness,
to put a hand on its brow of the flower
and retell it in words and in touch it is lovely
until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;
as Saint Francis
put his hand on the creased forehead
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow
began remembering all down her thick length,
from the earthen snout all the way
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine
down through the great broken heart
to the blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths
sucking and blowing beneath them:
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.
Galway Kinnell
The rain has stopped,
the clouds have drifted away,
and the weather is clear again.
If your heart is pure,
then all things in your world are pure.
Abandon this fleeting world, abandon yourself,
then the moon and the flowers
will guide you along the way.
Connections
Every time we take a breath, we become the universe. The very moment of creation is contained in us and passes on to rocks and trees, animals and fish. The old ones say the essence of life is in water and wind, earth and breath, fire and bone, but most of all in breath, our first connection to the elk, the hawk, the bear, and the buffalo.
Without breath, no connection. Without connection, no creation.
Without creation, no breath.
This is the sacred circle of life, unbroken.
from Dancing Moons
by Nancy Wood
After great pain, a formal feeling comes --
The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs --
The stiff Heart questions was it He, that bore,
And Yesterday, or Centuries before?
The Feet, mechanical, go round --
Of Ground, or Air, Or Ought --
A Wooden way
Regardless grown
A Quartz contentment like a stone --
This is the Hour of Lead --
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow --
First--Chill--then Stupor--then the letting go --
Pain and bliss, love and hate, are like a body and its shadow;
Cold and warm, joy and anger, you and your condition.
Delight in singing verse is a road to Hell,
but at hell's gate -- peach blossoms, plum blossoms.
"Let the Soul banish all that disturbs;
Let the Body that envelopes it be still,
And all the frettings of the Body,
And all that surrounds it.
Let Earth and Sea and Air be still
And Heaven itself.
And then let the Body think
Of the Spirit as streaming, pouring,
Rushing and shining into it from
All sides while it stands quiet."
Plotinus, 205
The birds have disappeared
into the sky,
and now the last cloud
is melting away.
We sit together,
the mountain and me
until,
only the mountain
remains.
If the angel deigns to come
it will be because you have convinced her,
not by tears but by your humble resolve
to be always beginning; to be a beginner.
Rainer Maria Rilke
\
The cloud is free only to go with the wind.
The rain is free only in falling.
The water is free only in its gathering together,
in its downward courses,
in its rising into the air.
In law is rest.
If you love the law,
if you enter singing into it
as water in its descent.
Wendell Berry
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.
The song I have come to sing
remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my life
stringing and unstringing
my instrument.
Tagore
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.
Ranier Maria Rilke
\
The cloud is free only to go with the wind.
The rain is free only in falling.
The water is free only in its gathering together,
in its downward courses,
in its rising into the air.
In law is rest.
If you love the law,
if you enter singing into it
as water in its descent.
Wendell Berry
Out beyond ideas of wrong doing and right doing
there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.
The song I have come to sing
remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my life
stringing and unstringing
my instrument.
Tagore
The Coming of Wisdom with Time
The leaves are many but the trunk is one.
Through all the lying days of my youth
I waved my leaves and branches in the sun.
Now, I wither into the truth.
WB Yeats
"It Felt Love"
How
Did the rose
Ever open its heart
And give to this world
All its
Beauty?
It felt the encouragement of light
Against its
Being,
Otherwise,
We all remain
Too
Frightened
From The Gift: Poems by Hafiz
May your heart be like water,
Slings and arrows pass through.
Only the gentle scar of wisdom
Notes.
Little Gidding
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always.
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
T.S.Elliot
Sweet Darkness
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds except
the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the
sweet confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
David Whyte
"Dreams are the touchstones of our character...
our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."
Mary Oliver
I am awake. And clinging to my small life.
Occupied with tidying the house, and matters of finance
Steadfastly ignoring the flower of love that blooms in my heart.
Because her beauty is almost more than I can bear.
Occasionally, I summon the courage to look longingly at her before returning
to straightening the pictures of my life on the wall of my mind.
Amy Saltzman
A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner:
“Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time.”
When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied,
“The one I feed the most.”
"Come to the edge," he said.
They said, "We are afraid."
"Come to the edge," he said.
They came.
He pushed them . . .
And they flew
Guillaume Appolinaro
"You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."
Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.
The soul that rises with us our life star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory
Do we come.
"Hope" is the thing with feathers -
that perches in the soul -
and sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.
Emily Dickenson
For the raindrop, joy is in entering the river-
Travel far enough into sorrow, tears turn into sighing;
In this way we learn how water can die into air,
When, after heavy rain, the storm clouds disperse,
is it not that they’ve wept themselves clear to the end?
If you want to know the miracle, how wind can polish a mirror,
Look: the shining glass grows green in Spring.
It’s the rose’s unfolding, Ghalib, that creates the desire to see-
In every color and circumstance, may the eyes be open for what comes.
The Wood is shining this morning.
Red. Gold and green. The leaves
Lie on the ground, or fall,
Or hang full of light in the air still.
Perfect in its rise and in its fall, it takes
The place it has been coming to forever.
It has not hastened here, or lagged.
See how surely it has sought itself,
Its roots passing lordly through the earth.
See how without confusion it is
All that it is, and how flawless
Its grace is. Running or walking, the way
Is the same. Be still. Be still.
-Wendell Berry
Strip off the shoes and pantyhose,
the grown-up drag. Undo those soft
white arms and their blond down,
moss made of light,
Wash away the sour working sweat,
fatigue of heels and fluorescent lights.
Unhook that tired bra, unclench the feet
with their worn-out travelogues, knees,
complaining in their bone cradles,
the drooling sex, and the shamed
belly, pouched like a stubborn mountain.
Release the years in a shower of moths shaken free
from an old sweater so full of holes
you can see through to the skin.
Strip off the skin. Let it hang
over a chair the way it has hung
from your body lately, exhausted,
confessing to years of experience.
Strip away experience, that false umbrella
blocking only the sun.
Strip your mind of these words, clods
of dirt kicked up by donkey mind, clouds
that will soon pass. Let the clang of language die
in your mouth. Let your overworked tongue
hang, innocent and dumb
as tomorrow morning. No one owns it yet,
that paper mini-dress of time, meant
to be cast off after one wearing.
I want to strip. It’s the jewel
at the center I seek; let me be oyster, hoarding pearl.
Let me be coal, sheltering diamond.
Though in my heart of hearts I am afraid
I may be onion, each white circle
of stinky tears hiding another
exactly like it. Or rose:
whose petals are her everything.
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
Mary Oliver
When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?
And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.
When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)
e.e. cummings
I thought the earth remembered me, she
took me back so tenderly, arranging
her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds. I slept
as never before, a stone
on the riverbed, nothing
between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated
light as moths among the branches
of the perfect trees. All night
I heard the small kingdoms breathing
around me, the insects, and the birds
who do their work in the darkness. All night
I rose and fell, as if in water, grappling
with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower
streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure
that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you
as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--
or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?
WAGE PEACE
by Judyth Hill
"Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings and flocks of redwing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup. Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Don't wait another minute."
My father, for example,
who was young once
and blue-eyed,
returns
on the darkest of nights
to the porch and knocks
wildly at the door,
and if I answer
I must be prepared
for his waxy face,
for his lower lip
swollen with bitterness.
And so, for a long time,
I did not answer,
but slept fitfully
between his hours of rapping.
But finally there came the night
when I rose out of my sheets
and stumbled down the hall.
The door fell open
and I knew I was saved
and could bear him,
pathetic and hollow,
with even the least of his dreams
frozen inside him,
and the meanness gone.
And I greeted him and asked him
into the house,
and lit the lamp,
and looked into his blank eyes
in which at last
I saw what a child must love,
I saw what love might have done
had we loved in time.
from Dream Work (1986) by Mary Oliver
This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers
and they open ---
pools of lace,
white and pink ---
and all day the black ants climb over them,
boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away
to their dark, underground cities ---
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,
the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding
all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again ---
beauty the brave, the exemplary,
blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?
Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,
with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever.
Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange
sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again
and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands
of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails
for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it
the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---
there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---
each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,
whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.
from Dream Work (1986) by Mary Oliver
"Given to the Dying" Thich Nat Hahn
This body is not me; I am not caught in this body,
I am life without boundaries,
I have never been born and I have never died.
Over there the wide ocean and the sky with many galaxies
All manifests from the basis of consciousness.
Since beginningless time I have always been free.
Birth and death are only a door through which we go in and out.
Birth and death are only a game of hide-and-seek.
So smile to me and take my hand and wave good-bye.
Tomorrow we shall meet again or even before.
We shall always be meeting again at the true source,
Always meeting again on the myriad paths of life.
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
the world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
David Whyte
THE JOURNEY
Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again
painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.
Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens
so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.
Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that
small, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.
Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out
someone has written
something new
in the ashes
of your life.
You are not leaving
You are arriving.
-David Whyte
The Morning Wind by Rumi
The morning wind spreads its fresh smell.
We must get up and take that in,
that wind that lets us live.
Breathe, before it's gone.
There is nothing to save, now all is lost,
but a tiny core of stillness in the heart
like the eye of a violet.
The Lake Isle of Innisfree by W.B. Yeats
I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee;
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
All the World's a Stage by William Shakespeare
All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances,
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
Seeking the bubble reputation
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lined,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
Into the lean and slippered pantaloon,
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side;
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
This laboring through what is still undone,
as though, legs bound, we hobbled along the way,
is like the awkward walking of the swan.
And dying-to let go, no longer feel
the solid ground we stand on every day-
is like anxious letting himself fall
into the waters, which receives him gently
and which, as though with reverence and joy,
draw back past him in streams on either side;
while, infinitely silent and aware,
in his full majesty and ever more
indifferent, he condescends to glide.
Translated by Stephen Mitchell
The rain has stopped,
the clouds have drifted away,
and the weather is clear again.
If your heart is pure,
then all things in your world are pure.
Abandon this fleeting world, abandon yourself,
then the moon and the flowers
will guide you along the way.
Ryokan
"let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you truly love" RUMI
The way we define and delimit the self is arbitrary. We can place it between
our ears and have it looking out from our eyes, or we can widen it to include
the air we breathe, or at other moments we can cast its boundaries farther to
include the oxygen-giving trees and plankton, our external lungs, and beyond
them the web of life in which they are sustained.
-Joanna Macy, World As Lover, World As Self
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park.
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider-
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give-yes or no, or maybe-
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
-William Safford
The journey is the accumulation of stillness. Patience
Emptiness. The union that I seek is not of my creation.
The self I have created impedes union. Stillness must be
learned, and the endless time in which I learn it is filled
with doubts and desolations. Stillness often feels like
abandonment. Why isn't Spirit communicating with me?
What have I done to deserve such a stony, cold silence?
How do I avoid filling with new terrors
the emptiness that terrifies me?
And what you thought you came for
Is only a shell, a husk of meaning
From which the purpose breaks only when it is fulfilled
If at all. Either you had no purpose
Or the purpose is beyond the end you figured
And is altered in fulfillment.
Little Gidding I
Well of Grief
Those that will not nit slip beneath the still surface of the well of grief,
Turning downward in its black water to the place we can not breathe,
Will never know the source of which we drink.
The secret water, cold and clear,
Nor find in it the glimmering small round coins
Thrown by those who wished for something else.
David Whyte
First forgive the silence
That answers prayer,
Then forgive the prayer
That stains the silence
Excuse the absence
That feels like presence,
Then excuse the feeling
That insists on presence
Pardon the delay
Of revelation,
Then ask pardon for revealing
Your impatience
Forgive God
For being only a word
Then ask God to forgive
The betrayal of language.
Mark Jarman “Psalm: First Forgive the Silence”
He says keep changing.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat yourself as long as it is interesting.
He says keep doing what you love.
He says keep praying.
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
Mountains, trees, wood is alive.
Water is alive.
Everything has its own life.
Everything lives inside us.
He says live with the world inside you.
He says it doesn’t matter if you draw, or write books.
It doesn’t matter if you saw wood, or catch fish.
It doesn’t matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.
It matters that life lives through you.
Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength is life living through you.
He says don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid.
Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.
Let life live through you.
i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
e.e. cummings 1894-1962
The rain has stopped,
the clouds have drifted away,
and the weather is clear again.
If your heart is pure,
then all things in your world are pure.
Abandon this fleeting world, abandon yourself,
then the moon and the flowers
will guide you along the way.
Ryokan.
"Let the Soul banish all that disturbs;
Let the Body that envelopes it be still,
And all the frettings of the Body,
And all that surrounds it.
Let Earth and Sea and Air be still
And Heaven itself.
And then let the Body think
Of the Spirit as streaming, pouring,
Rushing and shining into it from
All sides while it stands quiet."
]
Plotinus, 205
Some Kiss We Want
There is some kiss we want with
our whole lives, the touch of
spirit on the body.
Seawater
begs the pearl to break its shell.
And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild darling!
At night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its
face against mine.
Breathe into me.
Close the language-door and
open the love window.
The moon
won't use the door, only the window.
--Rumi. Translator: Coleman Barks