Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?
Inertia is never the same as peace: peace is a kind of active order and harmony. It is vital, not inert. There is often no real reason for preferring one plae to another. Metaphysically it doesn't matter what town you happen to be in. You can work out your salvation in it and find peace there, if you want to, because for the peace we need we have to look inside ourselves...Maybe if I stayed here, what I now seem to possess as peace would cease to deepen itself and turn into inertia. Perhaps there is in places a certain value: they make it possible for you to seek and find certain things in your own soul. When you have found them, you begin to know the place has served you: if the place is pleasant and pretty doesn't mean much anymore. It has only one further value: the value of sacrifice. The only good thing that can be done with the place, the type of life, is to give it up. Renounce the temptation to keep what you have got as if it were a possession and to hold on to it in inertia.
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.
Then 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.
After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing
the day turns, the trees move.
...there is a contemporary form of violence to which the idealist
fighting for peace by nonviolent methods most
easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of
modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its
innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude
of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands,
to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone
in everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is
cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes
his or her work for peace. It destroys one's own inner capacity
for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of one's own work,
because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful."
An Ode to Slowness
I want to make my life a ceremony around slowness.
Time and space.
Open space.
In the desert there is space.
Space is the twin sister of time.
If we have open space, then we have open time to breathe, to dream, to dare,
to play, to move freely, so freely, in a world our minds have forgotten but
our bodies remember.
Time and space.
This partnership is holy.
In these redrock canyons, time creates space;
An arch, an eye, this blue eye of sky.
We remember why we love the desrt;
It is our tactile response to light, silence, and stillness.
Hand on stone patience.
Hand on water music.
Hand raised to the wind is this the birthplace of inspiration?
One day, some people came to the master and asked: 'How can you be so happy in a world of such impermanence, where you cannot protect your loved ones from harm, illness and death?' The master held up a glass and said: `Someone gave me this glass, and I really like this glass. It holds my water admirably and it glistens in the sunlight. One day the wind may blow it off the shelf, or my elbow may knock it from the table. I know this glass is already broken, so I enjoy it incredibly.'
Walk away quietly in any direction and taste the
freedom of the mountaineer... Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.
Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into the trees. The winds
will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while
cares will drop off like autumn leaves.
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 the 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 things 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.
Hokusai Says...
Hokusai says look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
He says there is no end to seeing.
He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat
yourself as long as it's interesting.
He says keep doing what you love.
He says keep praying.
He says everyone of us is a child,
every one of us is ancient,
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says everyone of us has to find
a way to live with fear.
He says everything is alive-
shells, buildings, people, fish,
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 the veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and the grasses in the garden.
It matters that you care.
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.
Peace is life living through you.
He says don't be afraid.
Don't be afraid
Look,feel, let life take you
by the hand
Let life live through you.
Remember the Clear Light
Remember the clear light, the pure clear white light from which everything
in the universe comes, to which everything in the universe returns; the original
nature of your own mind. The natural state of the universe unmanifest. Let
go into the clear light, trust it, merge with it. It is your own true nature,
it is home. ... No matter where or how far you wander, the light is only a
split second, a half-breath away, it is never too late to recognize the clear
light.
Don't hide, the sight of your face is a blessing.
Don't hide, the sight of your face is a blessing.
Wherever you place your foot there rests a blessing.
Even your shadow passing over me like a swift bird is a blessing.
The great spring has come,
Your sweet air blowing through the city,
the country, the gardens, and the desert is a blessing.
He has come with Love to our door, His knock is a blessing.
We go from house to house asking of Him, any answer is a blessing.
Caught in this body, we look for a sight of the soul
Remember what the Prophet said: One sight is a blessing.
The leaf of every tree brings a message from the unseen world,
Look, every falling leaf is a blessing!
All of Nature swings in unison
Singing without tongues, listening without ears,
What a blessing!
O Soul, the four elements are your Face.
Water, wind, fire, and earth, each one is a blessing.
And once the seed of faith takes root, it cannot be blown away,
Even by the strongest wind. That's a blessing.
I bow to You, for the dust on your feet is the crown on my head.
And as I walk towards You, every step I take is a blessing.
His form appeared before me, just now, as I was singing this poem,
I swear, what a blessing! What a blessing!
Every vision born of Earth is fleeting,
Every vision born of Heaven is a blessing.
For people, the sight of spring warms their hearts,
For fish, the rhythm of the ocean is a blessing,
The brillant Sun that shines in every heart,
For the heavens, earth, and all creatures,
What a blessing!
The heart can't wait to speak of this ecstasy,
The soul is kissing the earth, saying
O God, what a blessing!
Fill me with the wine of your Silence,
Let it soak my every pore,
For the inner splendor it reveals
Is a blessing,
Is a blessing.
Widening Circles
I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world
I may not ever complete the last one,
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God, that primordial tower.
I have been circling for thousands of years,
and I still don't know: am I a falcon,
a storm, or a great song?
What to Do if You Meet a Thought
There are no definite rules about what to do if you meet a thought. Thought
attacks are rare compared to the number of close encounters. However, if you
do meet a thought before it has time to leave the area, here are some suggestions.
Remember: Every situation is different with respect to the thought, the terrain,
the people, and their activity.
STAY CALM: If you see a thought and it hasn’t seen you, calmly leave the area.
STOP: Back away slowly while facing the thought. Give the thought plenty of room to escape. Wild thoughts rarely attack people unless they feel threatened or provoked.
SPEAK SOFTLY: This may reassure the thought that no harm is meant it.
If a thought stands upright or moves closer it may be trying to detect smells in the air. This isn’t a sign of aggression. Once a thought identifies you, it may leave the area or it may try to intimidate you by charging within a few feet before it withdraws.
Don't run or make any sudden movements. Running is likely to prompt the thought to give chase and you can’t outrun a thought.
Dhammapada
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.
In this world
Hate never yet dispelled hate.
Only love dispels hate.
This is the law,
Ancient and inexhaustible.
You too shall pass away.
Knowing this, how can you quarrel?
How easily the wind overturns a frail tree.
Seek happiness in the senses,
Indulge in food and sleep,
And you too will be uprooted.
The wind cannot overturn a mountain.
Temptation cannot touch the man
Who is awake, strong and humble,
Who masters himself and minds the law.
Verses on the Faith Mind
The Great Way is not difficult
for those not attached to preferences.
When neither love nor hate arises,
all is clear and undisguised.
Separate by the smallest amount, however,
and you are as far from it as heaven is from earth.
If you wish to know the truth,
then hold to no opinions for or against anything.
To set up what you like against what you dislike
is the disease of the mind.
When the fundamental nature of things is not recognized
the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.
The Way is perfect as vast space is perfect,
where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.
Indeed, it is due to our grasping and rejecting
that we do not know the true nature of things.
Live neither in the entanglements of outer things,
nor in ideas or feelings of emptiness.
Be serene and at one with things
and erroneous views will disappear by themselves.
When you try to stop activity to achieve quietude,
your very effort fills you with activity.
As long as you remain attached to one extreme or another
you will never know Oneness.
Those who do not live in the Single Way
cannot be free in either activity or quietude, in assertion or denial.
Deny the reality of things
and you miss their reality;
assert the emptiness of things
and you miss their reality.
The more you talk and think about it
the further you wander from the truth.
So cease attachment to talking and thinking,
and there is nothing you will not be able to know.
To return to the root is to find the essence,
but to pursue appearances or "enlightenment" is to miss the source.
To awaken even for a moment
is to go beyond appearance and emptiness.
Changes that seem to occur in the empty world
we make real only because of our ignorance.
Do not seek for the truth;
Only cease to cherish opinions.
Do not remain in a dualistic state;
avoid such easy habits carefully.
If you attach even to a trace
of this and that, of right and wrong,
the Mind-essence will be lost in confusion.
Although all dualities arise from the One,
do not be attached even to ideas of this One.
When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way,
there is no objection to anything in the world;
and when there is no objection to anything,
things cease to be— in the old way.
When no discriminating attachment arises,
the old mind ceases to exist.
Let go of things as separate existences
and mind too vanishes.
Likewise when the thinking subject vanishes
so too do the objects created by mind.
The arising of other gives rise to self;
giving rise to self generates others.
Know these seeming two as facets
of the One Fundamental Reality.
In this Emptiness, these two are really one—
and each contains all phenomena.
If not comparing, nor attached to "refined" and "vulgar"—
you will not fall into judgment and opinion.
The Great Way is embracing and spacious—
to live in it is neither easy nor difficult.
Those who rely on limited views are fearful and irresolute:
The faster they hurry, the slower they go.
To have a narrow mind,
and to be attached to getting enlightenment
is to lose one's center and go astray.
When one is free from attachment,
all things are as they are,
and there is neither coming nor going.
When in harmony with the nature of things, your own fundamental nature,
and you will walk freely and undisturbed.
However, when mind is in bondage, the truth is hidden,
and everything is murky and unclear,
and the burdensome practice of judging
brings annoyance and weariness.
What benefit can be derived
from attachment to distinctions and separations?
If you wish to move in the One Way,
do not dislike the worlds of senses and ideas.
Indeed, to embrace them fully
is identical with true Enlightenment.
The wise person attaches to no goals
but the foolish person fetters himself or herself.
There is one Dharma, without differentiation.
Distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant.
To seek Mind with the discriminating mind
is the greatest of mistakes.
Rest and unrest derive from illusion;
with enlightenment, attachment to liking and disliking ceases.
All dualities come from ignorant inference.
They are like dreams, phantoms, hallucinations—
it is foolish to try to grasp them.
Gain and loss, right and wrong; finally abandon all such thoughts at once.
If the eye never sleeps,
all dreams will naturally cease.
If the mind makes no discriminations,
the ten thousand things
are as they are, of single essence.
To realize the mystery of this One-essence
is to be released from all entanglements.
When all things are seen without differentiation,
the One Self-essence is everywhere revealed.
No comparisons or analogies are possible
in this causeless, relationless state of just this One.
When movement stops, there is no movement—
and when no movement, there is no stopping.
When such dualities cease to exist
Oneness itself cannot exist.
To this ultimate state
no law or description applies.
For the Realized mind at one with the Way
all self-centered striving ceases.
Doubts and irresolutions vanish
and the Truth is confirmed in you.
With a single stroke you are freed from bondage;
nothing clings to you and you hold to nothing.
All is empty, clear, self-illuminating,
with no need to exert the mind.
Here, thinking, feeling, understanding, and imagination
are of no value.
In this world "as it really is"
there is neither self nor other-than-self.
To know this Reality directly
is possible only through practicing non-duality.
When you live this non-separation,
all things manifest the One, and nothing is excluded.
Whoever comes to enlightenment, no matter when or where,
Realizes personally this fundamental Source.
This Dharma-truth has nothing to do with big or small, with time and space.
Here a single thought is as ten thousand years.
Not here, not there—
but everywhere always right before your eyes.
Infinitely large and infinitely small: no difference,
for definitions are irrelevant
and no boundaries can be discerned.
So likewise with "existence" and "non-existence."
Don't waste your time in arguments and discussion
attempting to grasp the ungraspable.
Each thing reveals the One,
the One manifests as all things.
To live in this Realization
is not to worry about perfection or non-perfection.
To put your trust in the Heart-Mind is to live without separation,
and in this non-duality you are one with your Life-Source.
Words! Words!
The Way is beyond language,
for in it there is no yesterday,
no tomorrow,
no today.
The General and the Zen Master
During a civil war, an especially cruel general ordered his troops to raze
the countryside and overrun everyone and everything in their way, including
farms and villages. When one town heard that he was coming, the townspeople
in terror all escaped into the mountains. The general angrily marched into
the deserted town and demanded that his soldiers find anyone who still remained.
Only one person remained, the soldiers reported back to him. A Zen monk. The
general angrily and arrogantly stormed the temple, and pulled his sword out
as he came face to face with the Zen priest. "Don't you know who I am?
I am the one who can run you through with this sword without batting an eye."
he said to the monk, brandishing the sword. The Zen master looked the general
directly in the eye and calmly replied, "And don't you know who I am,
sir? I am the one who can be run through by your sword without batting an
eye."
The general looked at the monk, bowed, turned and left.
Mercy within Mercy
The month before Easter had been our usual preparation, with extra
vigils and prayers. It was spring and I decided to let go and surrender myself
to them as I never had before. I spent hours ceontemplating the mystery of
Christ on the Cross. And then Easter was over and we had gone through the
joy of resurrection, and the whole community felt so opened by it all. One
evening about a week later I was in my room looking at the modern crucifix,
which was all we had on our walls. Then I was overcome by sadness and pain.
My body began to ache, and l lay on my bed in agony. I felt as if l was dying,
it felt so real. I was taken over and began to weep for Jesus on the Cross,
for His suffering and death. Then I was Mary holding her crucified child and
I knew that the crucifixion wasn't over. I was all the mothers who have lost
their beloved children in war, accident, or disease, who even today cannot
feed their hungry children. I was the mother trapped in an earthquake In Armenia,
struggling desperately unable to save her child. I was the young men, all
the soldiers in the senseless battles, I was the cows and pigs on the way
to the slaughterhouse, I was the modern generals and the Roman soldiers, the
welfare mothers and the slumlord, the victims and the perpetrators, all who
would die, all who are in pain. I lay there, watched over by the pain of the
world-so much pain. I couldn't bear it. My heart simply wept. Then Jesus was
there in my body and we were holding it together, the suffering of the world.
And I could see that to hold it in mercy was divine. It broke open my heart.
It became the holy pain that opens the heart. This is God's purpose for our
sorrows, to connect all our hearts. There is so much mercy. Mercy within mercy.
Tilicho Lake
In this high place
it is as simple as this,
leave everything you know behind.
Step toward the cold surface,
say the old prayer of rough love
and open both arms.
Those who come with empty hands
will stare into the lake astonished,
there, in the cold light
reflecting pure snow,
the true shape of your own face.
The Well of Grief
Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning down to its black water
to the place that we can not breathe
will never know
the source from which we drink
the secret water cold and clear
nor find in the darkness
the small gold coins
thrown by those who wished for something else
A Thousand Serious Moves
What is the difference
Between your Existence
And that of a Saint?
The Saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God
And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move
That the Saint is now continually
Tripping over joy
And Bursting out in Laughter
And saying, "I Surrender!"
Whereas, my dear,
I am afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves.
Oh, that my monk's robes were wide enough to gather up all the people in this
floating world.
Without desire everything is sufficient.
With seeking, myriad things are impoverished.
Plain vegetables can soothe hunger.
A patched robe is enough to cover this bent old body.
Alone I hike with a deer.
Cheerfully I sing with village children.
The stream under the cliff cleanses my ears.
The pine on the mountain top fits my heart.
Patience is Everything
Works of art are of an infinite solitude, and no means of approach
is so useless as criticism. Only love can touch and hold them and be fair
to them. – Always trust yourself and your own feeling, as opposed to
argumentations, discussions, or introductions of that sort; if it turns out
that you are wrong, then the natural growth of your inner life will eventually
guide you to other insights. Allow your judgments their own silent, undisturbed
development, which, like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot
be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each
impression and each embryo of a feeling come to completion, entirely in itself,
in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's
own understanding, and with deep humility and patience to wait for the hour
when a new clarity is born: this alone is what it means to live as an artist:
in understanding as in creating. In this there is no measuring with time,
a year doesn't matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not
numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force its
sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward
summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient,
who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and
vast. I learn it every day of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for:
patience is everything!
Clear Forest Pool
Try to be mindful and let things take their natural course. Then your
mind will become quieter and quieter in any surroundings. It will become still
like a clear forest pool. Then all kinds of wonderful and rare animals will
come to drink at the pool. You will see clearly the nature of all things (sankharas)
in the world. You will see many wonderful and strange things come and go.
But you will be still. Problems will arise and you will see through them immediately.
This is the happiness of the Buddha.
"To be enlightened is to be without anxiety over imperfection."
Free and Easy - A Spontaneous Vajra Song
Happiness cannot be found through great effort and willpower, but is
already present, in open relaxation and letting go.
Don't strain yourself,
there is nothing to do or undo.
Whatever momentarily arises
in the body-mind
Has no real importance at all,
has little reality whatsoever.
Why identify with,
And become attached to it,
Passing Judgement upon it and ourselves?
Far better to simply
let the entire game happen on its own,
springing up and falling back like waves
without changing or manipulating anything
and notice how everything
vanishes and reappears, magically,
Again and again, time without end.
Only our searching for happiness
prevents us from seeing it.
It's like a vivid rainbow which you pursue
without ever catching,
or a dog chasing it's own tail.
Although peace and happiness
do not exist as an actual thing or place,
it is always available
and accompanies you every instant.
Don't believe in the reality
of good and bad experiences;
they are today's ephemeral weather,
like rainbows in the sky.
Wanting to grasp the ungraspable,
you exhaust yourself in vain.
As soon as you open and relax
this tight fist of grasping,
infinite space is there -
open, inviting and comfortable.
Make use of this spaciousness, this
freedom and natural ease.
Don't search any further
looking for the great awakened elephant,
who is already resting quietly at home
in front of your own hearth.
Nothing to do or undo,
nothing to force,
nothing to want,
And nothing missing.
Emaho! Marvelous!
Everything happens by itself.
The Art of Disappearing
When they say Don't I know you? say no.
When they invite you to the party
remember what parties are like
before answering.
Someone telling you in a loud voice
they once wrote a poem.
Greasy sausage balls on a paper plate.
Then reply.
If they say we should get together.
say why? It's not that you don't love them any more.
You're trying to remember something
too important to forget.
Trees.
The monastery bell at twilight.
Tell them you have a new project.
It will never be finished. When someone recognizes you in a grocery store
nod briefly and become a cabbage.
When someone you haven't seen in ten years
appears at the door,
don't start singing him all your new songs.
You will never catch up.
Walk around feeling like a leaf. Know you could tumble any second.
Then decide what to do with your time.
Love and Fear
I was up in the mountains last week. Tuesday morning, just after dawn,
I crawled out of my tent and ran smack into a ranger whose job that morning
was to whisper the news from New York and Washington, D.C. When he had finished,
we looked at each other for a long, helpless moment. Then we both turned away
before either of us could cry. The ranger went off to find more campers. I
stood there staring at a tree.
There are moments in your life when the world splits open and forces you to decide what is most important to you and what you are going to do about it. Immediately, my mind ran through all the scenarios taking place back in the city: fear and hysteria crackling over the airwaves; calls for retaliation; a declaration of war, complete with nuclear warheads, biological weapons, and unthinkable devastation.
Then something made me stop and look. Right in front of me, the river ran down the mountain. A marmot froze on a rock. The real world grabbed me by the collar and hauled me back from the brink. Once it had my attention, it demanded to know exactly what I intended to do. What is required of me, right now, by everything that is holy?
That’s the question, and we must find an answer fast. We can no longer deny that evil exists, and we can no longer fail to respond. Standing by the river, I thought, We love the world too much. We love our own lives, and it has made us soft. Everything we love is fragile and vulnerable: this river, this fish, this rock. We are doomed. They know how to fight. All I know how to do is love this world.
Panicked, I scrambled around in my mind for inspiration, for an image of someone wise who had lived through a war and who could tell me who I was supposed to become in these desperate days. I was expecting a freedom fighter, maybe – someone with a gun. But the person who sprang to mind was Chiura Obata, the Japanese-American painter who fell in love with Yosemite and the High Sierra. He appeared to me looking exactly as he does in a photograph from 1942, taken at the Tanforan detention center. In the photograph, Obata is calm and smiling, teaching a bunch of children to paint.
Of all the things to do. There’s a war on, your people have been rounded up like cattle, and there you are playing with a paintbrush. I blinked, hoping to conjure a more martial role model this time, but Obata stubbornly remained. He sat before me, out on a rock in the middle of the river, watching impatiently as I struggled to comprehend.
Then, all of a sudden, I got it. Obata wasn’t teaching those kids how to paint; he was teaching them how to love. Day after day, right through the barbed-wire fence, Obata taught showed those children how to see beauty; how to keep their hearts open. He knew that when evil and destruction arrive, we must refuse to stop loving the world. Then – and this is the crucial thing – we must act on behalf of that enormous love.
What America has just learned, very painfully, is that we have not loved enough. We have cringed at gruesome wire-service photos and turned our backs on the suffering of the world. We have allowed our own government to bomb civilians, withhold medical supplies, and sell weapons to brutal thugs in every part of the globe. Through our own ignorance, we have helped create a world where desperate people will gladly sign up to be the messengers of death. And now that death and destruction have reached our own shores, we must decide how we are going to respond: with love, or with fear. The whole world is holding its breath, waiting to see which one we will choose.
So. Which will it be? Love, or fear? If you choose love, then you must act today to tell every person in a position of power that you will not allow our government to inflict more suffering in your name. After that, you must sit down and ask yourself what you have been put on this earth to love, and how you will let this one, great love of your life grow bigger than you ever imagined. You and I need to have this conversation with ourselves and with everyone we know. We need to figure out how to pool our gifts, all our infinite blessings, and let them spill out over the edges of our own, small lives.
There are people who will try to tell you that love is a luxury and that life
in all its miraculous beauty is less urgent right now than the need to retaliate
against the forces of evil. I am here to tell you that unless we respond with
love, we will certainly hand evil its great and final victory. Go out, right
now, and plant yourself in the middle of that which you love most –
the thing within you that is most alive. Now listen carefully, because as
that love cracks your heart open, it will tell you exactly what this broken
world needs from you. This is your holy work, and it cannot wait. Make it
big this time. Make it so.
Milarepa and the Demons
Once upon a time, a long time ago, and very far from here, a great
Tibetan poet named Milarepa studied and meditated for decades. He traveled
the countryside, teaching the practice of compassion and mercy to the villagers
he met. He faced many hardships, difficulties, and sorrows, and transformed
them into the path of his awakening.
Finally, it was time to return to the small hut he called home. He had carried its memory in his heart through all the years of his journey. Much to his surprise, upon entering he found it filled with enemies of every kind. Terrifying, horrifying, monstrous demons that would make most people run. but Milarepa was not most people.
Inhaling and exhaling slowly three times, he turned towards the demons, fully present and aware. He looked deeply into the eyes of each, bowing in respect, and said, “You are here in my home now. i honor you, and open myself to what you have to teach me.”
As soon as he uttered these words, all of the enemies save five disappeared. The ones that remained were grisly, raw, huge monsters. Milarepa bowed once more and began to sing a song to them, a sweet melody resonant with caring for the ways these beasts had suffered, and curiosity about what they needed and how he could help them. As the last notes left his lips, four of the demons disappeared into thin air.
Now only one nasty creature was left, fangs dripping evil, nostrils flaming, opened jaws revealing a dark, foul black throat. Milarepa stepped closer to this huge demon, breathed deeply into his own belly, and said with quiet compassion, “I must understand your pain and what it is you need in order to be healed.” Then he put his head in the mouth of this enemy.
In that instant, the demon disappeared and Milarepa was home at last.
Actualizing the Fundamental Point
To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is
to forget the self. To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.
When enlightened by all things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and
minds of others drop away. No trace of realization remains, and this no-trace
continues endlessly.
To study the Buddha Way is to be intimate with all things.
Precept Dedication Prayer
May all beings everywhere,
Plagued by sufferings of body and mind,
Obtain an ocean of happiness and joy
By virtue of my merits.
May no living creature suffer,
Commit evil or ever fall ill.
May no one be afraid or belittled,
With a mind weighed down by depression.
May the blind see forms,
And the deaf hear sounds.
May those whose bodies are worn with toil
Be restored on finding repose.
May the naked find clothing,
The hungry find food.
May the thirsty find water
And delicious drinks.
May the poor find wealth,
Those weak with sorrow find joy.
May the forlorn find hope,
Constant happiness and prosperity.
May there be timely rains
And bountiful harvests.
May all medicines be effective
And wholesome prayers bear fruit.
May all who are sick and ill
Quickly be freed from their ailments.
Whatever diseases there are in the world,
May they never occur again.
May the frightened cease to be afraid
And those bound be freed.
May the powerless find power
And may people think of benefiting each other.
For as long as space endures
And for as long as living beings remain,
Until then may I too abide
To dispel the misery of the world.
Song of the Open Road
From this hour, freedom!
From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, Going
where I list, my own master, total and absolute,
From this hour, freedom!
From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines,
Going where I list, my own master, total and absolute,
Listening to others, and considering well what they say,
Pausing, searching, receiving, contemplating,
Gently, but with undeniable will, divesting myself of the holds that would
hold me.
I inhale great draughts of space;
The east and the west are mine, and the north and the south are mine.
I am larger, better than I thought;
I did not know I held so much goodness.
All seems beautiful to me;
I can repeat over to men and women, You have done such good to me, I would
do the same to you.
I will recruit for myself and you as I go;
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go;
I will toss the new gladness and roughness among them;
Whoever denies me, it shall not trouble me;
Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and shall bless me.
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love for the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
When I have a toothache, I discover that not having a toothache is a wonderful
thing. That is peace. I had to have a toothache in order to be enlightened,
to know that not having one is wonderful. My non-toothache is peace, is joy.
But when I do not have a toothache, I do not seem to be happy. Therefore,
I look deeply in the present moment and see that I have a non-toothache, that
can make me very happy already.
Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart
and try to love the questions themselves ...
Don't search for the answers,
which could not be given to you now,
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps then, someday far in the future,
you will gradually, without even noticing it,
live your way into the answer.
Golfing in Calcutta
The story is told of a golf course in India. Apparently, once the English
had colonized the country and established their businesses, they yearned for
recreation and decided to build a golf course in Calcutta. Golf in Calcutta
presented a unique obstacle. Monkeys would drop out of the trees, scurry across
the course, and seize the golf balls. The monkeys would play with the balls,
tossing them here and there.
At first, the golfers tried to control the monkeys. Their first strategy was
to build high fences around the fairways and greens. This approach, which
seemed initially to hold much promise, was abandoned when the golfers discovered
that a fence is no challenge to an ambitious monkey. Next, the golfers tried
luring the monkeys away from the course. But the monkeys found nothing as
amusing as watching humans go wild whenever their little white balls were
disturbed. In desperation, the British began trapping the monkeys. But for
every monkey they carted off, another would appear. Finally, the golfers gave
in to reality and developed a rather novel ground rule: Play the ball where
the monkey drops it.
The House of Belonging
I awoke this morning in the gold light turning this way and that
thinking for a moment it was one day like any other.
But the veil had gone from my darkened heart and I thought
it must have been the quiet candlelight that filled my room,
it must have been the first easy rhythm with which I breathed myself to sleep,
it must have been the prayer I said speaking to the otherness of the night.
And I thought this is a good day you could meet your love,
This is the black day someone close to you could die.
This is the day you realize how easily the thread is broken between this world
and the next
and I found myself sitting up in the quiet pathway of light,
the tawny close-grained cedar burning round me like fire
and all the angels of this housely heaven ascending
through the first roof of light the sun has made.
This is the bright home in which I love,
this is where I ask my friends to come,
this is where I want to love all the things it has taken me so long to learn
to love.
This is the temple of my adult aloneness
and I belong to that aloneness as I belong to my life.
There is no house like the house of belonging.
Don't ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive.
And then go and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have
come alive.
When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, you think it's only a minute.
But when you sit on a hot stove for a minute, you think it's two hours. That's
relativity.
Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created them.
There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated
through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time
this expression is unique. and if you block it, it will never exist through
any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it! It is not your business
to determine how good it is nor how it compares with other expressions. It
is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel
open...
Fame or integrity: which is more important? Money or happiness: which is more
valuable? Success or failure: which is more destructive? If you look to others
for fulfillment, you will never truly be fulfilled. If your happiness depends
on money, you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you
have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you.
Zen Poetry
Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
Sixty-six times have these eyes beheld the changing scenes of autumn.
I've said enough about moonlight; ask me no more.
Only listen to the voices of pines and cedars when no wind
stirs.
Although the wind
blows terribly here,
the moonlight also leaks
between the roof planks
of this ruined house.
Break open a cherry tree and there are no flowers,but the
spring breeze brings forth myriad blossoms.
Since my house burned down,
I have a better view of the rising moon.
To what shall
I liken the world?
Moonlight, reflected
In dewdrops.
Shaken from a crane's bill.
All my life, false and real, right and wrong are
entangled.
Playing with the moon, ridiculing the wind,
listening to birds.
Many years wasted
seeing the mountain covered with snow.
This year I suddenly realize,
snow makes the mountain.
Pinto Bean Haiku
The Great Hall is still.
Pinto beans for lunch and now
Some lean left, some right.
Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How
sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what
softened
sound from outside fills the air?
Will you ever bring a better
gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you
go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better
thoughts?
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that
you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval
you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life--
What can anyone give
you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn
around?
The Way of Transformation
The man who, being really on the Way, falls upon hard times in the world will
not, as a consequence, turn to that friend who offers him refuge and comfort
and encourages his old self to survive.
Rather, he will seek out someone who will faithfully and inexorably help him
to risk himself, so that he may endure the suffering and pass courageously
through it, thus making of it a "raft that leads to the far shore."
Only to the extent that man exposes himself over and over again to annihilation,
can that which is indestructible arise within him. (and only in the giving
of love when she most wants to get love, can she know that she is really is
made of Love).
In this lies the dignity of daring. Thus, the aim of spiritual practice is
not to develop an attitude which allows a man to acquire a state of harmony
and peace wherein nothing can ever trouble him. On the contrary, practice
should teach him to let himself be assaulted, perturbed, moved, insulted,
broken and battered - that is to say, it should enable him to dare to let
go his futile hankering after harmony, surcease from pain, and a comfortable
life in order that he may discover, in doing battle with the forces that oppose
him, that which awaits him beyond the world of opposites.
The first necessity is that we should have the courage to face life, and to
encounter all that is most perilous in the world. When this is possible, meditation
itself becomes the means by which we accept and welcome the demons which arise
from the unconscious, a process very different from the practice of concentration
on some object as a protection against such forces.
Only if we venture repeatedly through zones of annihilation can our contact
with Divine Being, which is beyond annihilation, become firm and stable. The
more a man learns whole-heartedly to confront the world that threatens him
with isolation, the more are the depths of the Ground of Being revealed and
the possibilities of New Life and Becoming opened.
Wisdom tells me I am nothing.
Love tells me I am everything.
Between the two, my life flows.
Prayer and love are learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart has turned to stone.
i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes
(i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)
how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing anylifted from the no
of allnothinghuman merely being
doubt unimaginable You?
(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)
Metta Sutta
This is what should be done
By one who is skilled in goodness,
And who knows the path of peace:
Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech.
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied.
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm, and wise and skillful,
Not proud and demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in saftey,
May all beings be at ease.
Whatever living beings there may be;
Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,
The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,
The seen and the unseen,
Those living near and far away,
Those born and to-be-born,
May all beings be at ease!
Let none deceive another,
Or despise any being in any state.
Let none through anger or ill-will
Wish harm upon another.
Even as a mother protects with her life
Her child, her only child,
So with a boundless heart
Should one cherish all living beings:
Radiating kindness over the entire world
Spreading upwards to the skies,
And downwards to the depths;
Outwards and unbounded,
Freed from hatred and ill-will.
Whether standing or walking, seated or lying down
Free from drowsiness,
One should sustain this recollection.
This is said to be the sublime abiding.
By not holding to fixed views,
The pure-hearted one, having clarity of vision,
Being freed from all sense desires,
Is not born again into this world.
To Know the Dark
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
And find that the dark, too blooms and sings,
And is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
The Peace Of Wild Things
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 a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
You must lose things,
Feel the future dissolve in a moment
Like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
What you counted and carefully saved,
All this must go so you know
How desolate the landscapes can be
Between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
Thinking the bus will stop,
The passengers eating maize and chicken
Will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
You must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
Lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
How he too was someone
Who journeyed through the night with plans
And the simple breath that kept him alive
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak it till your voice
Catches the thread of all sorrows
And you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
Only kindness that ties your shoes
And sends you into the day to mail letters and purchase
bread,
Only kindness that raises its head
From the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
And then goes with you everywhere
Like a shadow or a friend.
Nothing in the world
is as soft and yielding as water.
Yet for dissolving the hard and inflexible,
nothing can surpass it.
The soft overcomes the hard;
the gentle overcomes the rigid.
Everyone knows this is true,
but few can put it into practice.
Therefore the Master remains
serene in the midst of sorrow.
Evil cannot enter his heart.
Because he has given up helping,
he is people's greatest help.
True words seem paradoxical.
Lost
Stand still.
The trees ahead and bushes beside you are not lost.
Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
Listen! The forest breathes, it whispers:
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again saying:
Here, just here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches the same the Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
Then you are surely lost.
Stand still.
The forest knows where you are
And you must let it find you.
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean –
The one who has flung herself out of the grass,
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 down
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 do you plan to do
with you one wild and precious life?
Wild Geese
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Five A.M. in the Pinewoods
I'd seen their hoofprints in the deep
needles and knew
they ended the long night
under the pines, walking
like two mute
and beautiful women toward
the deeper woods, so I
got up in the dark and
went there. They came
slowly down the hill
and looked at me sitting under
the blue trees, shyly
they stepped
closer and stared
from under their thick lashes and even
nibbled some damp
tassels of weeds. This
is not a poem about a dream,
though it could be.
This is a poem about the world
that is ours, or could be.
Finally
one of them — I swear it! —
would have come to my arms.
But the other
stamped sharp hoof in the
pine needles like
the tap of sanity,
and they went off together through
the trees. When I woke
I was alone,
I was thinking:
so this is how you swim inward,
so this is how you flow outward,
so this is how you pray.
In Blackwater Woods
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.
The Guest House
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.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
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.
Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think...and think... while you are alive.
If you don't break your ropes while you're alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten --
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the City of Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next life
you will have the face of satisfied desire.
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!
Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for,
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.
Enough
Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now.
It is Not Enough
It is not enough to know.
It is not enough to follow
the inward road conversing in secret.
It is not enough to see straight ahead,
to gaze at the unborn
thinking the silence belongs to you.
It is not enough to hear
even the tiniest edge of rain.
You must go to the place
where everything waits,
there, when you finally rest,
even one word will do,
one word or the palm of your hand
turning outward
in the gesture of gift.
And now we are truly afraid
to find the great silence
asking so little.
One word, one word only.
Faith
I want to write about faith,
about the way the moon rises
over cold snow, night after night,
faithful even as it fades from fullness,
slowly becoming that last curving and impossible
sliver of light before the final darkness.
But I have no faith myself
I refuse it even the smallest entry.
Let this then, my small poem,
like a new moon, slender and barely open,
be the first prayer that opens me to faith.
Self Portrait
It doesn't interest me if there is one God
Or many gods.
I want to know if you belong-or feel abandoned;
If you know despair
Or can see it in others.
I want to know
If you are prepared to live in the world
With its harsh need to change you;
If you can look back with firm eyes
Saying "this is where I stand."
I want to know if you know how to melt
Into that fierce heat of living
Falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing
To live day by day
With the consequence of love
And the bitter unwanted passion
Of your sure defeat.
I have been told
In that fierce embrace
Even the gods
Speak of God.
The Truelove
There is a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours,
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand
held out to you this way.
I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.
Years ago in the Hebrides
I remember an old man
who walked every morning
on the grey stones
to the shore of the baying seals,
who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the water,
and I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them,
and how we are all
preparing for that
abrupt waking,
and that calling,
and that moment
we have to say yes,
except it will
not come so grandly,
so Biblically,
but more subtly
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love,
so that when we finally step out of the boat
toward them, we find
everything holds
us, and confirms
our courage, and if you wanted
to drown you could,
but you don't
because finally
after all the struggle
and all the years,
you don't want to any more,
you've simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory
and any darkness,
however fluid and however
dangerous, to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.
The Opening of Eyes
That day I saw beneath dark clouds
the passing light over the water
and I heard the voice of the world speak out
I knew then, as I had before
life is no passing memory of what has been
nor the remaining pages in a great book
waiting to be read.
It is the opening of eyes long closed.
It is the vision of far off things
seen for the silence they hold.
It is the heart after years
of secret conversing
speaking out in the clear air.
It is Moses in the desert
fallen to his knees before the lit bush.
It is the man throwing away his shoes
as if to enter heaven
and finding himself astonished,
opened at last,
fallen in love with solid ground.
The Journey
Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again
painting their
black silhousettes
on an open sky.
Sometimes everything
has to be enscribed 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.
Fire in The Earth
And we know
When Moses was told
In the way he was told
Take off your shoes!
He grew pale
From that simple reminder
Of fire in the dusty earth
He never recovered his complicated way of loving again
And was free to love in the same way he felt the fire
licking at his heels loved him
As if the lion earth could roar and take him in one
movement
Every thing he said from there
Every step he took from there
Was carefully placed
Everything he said mattered
As if he knew the constant witness of the ground
And remembered his own face in the dust the moment
before revelation
Since then thousands have felt the same immobile tongue
With which he tried to speak
Like the moment you too saw for the first time
Your own house turned to ashes
Everything consumed so the road could open again
Your entire presence in your eyes
And the world turning slowly into a single branch of flame
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.
I have learned, that if one advances confidently in the
direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has
imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common
hours.
"Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to
draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of
initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the
ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that
the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves
too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never
otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the
decision, raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen
incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man
could have dreamed would have come his way. I have learned a deep
respect for one of Goethe's couplets:
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. W.H. Murray, The
Scottish Himalayan Expedition
There is a guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we
shall hear the right word...place yourself in the middle of the
stream of power and wisdom which flows into your life. Then,
without effort, you are impelled to truth and to perfect
contentment."
You live in illusion
and the appearance of things.
There is a reality.
You are that reality.
When you understand this
You see that you are nothing.
And being nothing,
You are everything.
That is all.
"Renunciation does not mean giving up the things of this world
but accepting that they go away."
Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your
understanding.
Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may
stand in the sun, so must you know pain.
And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of
your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your
joy;
And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have
always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.
And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your
grief.
Then said Almitra, Speak to us of love.
And he raised his head and looked upon the people, and there
fell a stillness upon them. And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays
waste the garden.
For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he
is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest
branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their
clinging to the earth.
Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become
sacred bread for God's sacred feast.
All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the
secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of
Life's heart.
But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's
pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass
out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of
your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from
itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.
When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but
rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it
finds you worthy, directs your course.
Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your
desires.
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the
night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another
day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude; And then to sleep
with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a son of praise
upon your lips.
"And forget not that the earth delights
to feel your bare feet and the winds long
to play with your hair."
"If you let go of a little you have a little peace. If you let
go of a lot you have a lot of peace. And if you let go
completely, then you have complete peace."
You don't need to leave your room.
Remain sitting at your table and listen.
Don't even listen, simply wait.
Don't even wait.
Be quite still and solitary.
The world will freely offer itself to you.
To be unmasked, it has no choice.
It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.
"In very round terms, the quantum world operates on a scale as
much smaller than a sugar cube as a sugar cube is compared with
the entire observable universe."
“It doesn't matter to what you're not
clinging.”
“Making a cup of green tea, I stop the war.”
“What do you say when you pray to God?”
“Nothing. I just listen.”
“Well, what does He say then?”
“Nothing. He just listens … and if you don't
understand that, I can't explain it.”
“If you sit and know you are sitting, the whole Dharma
will reveal itself to you”
“The entire path consists of nothing more nor less than
learning to rest in the gap between feeling and craving with ever
more depth and subtlety.”
What is Life?
It is the flash of a firefly in the night.
It is the breath of buffalo in wintertime.
I attain all my knowledge through observing the mind within.
Thus all my thoughts become the teaching of the Dharma and
apparent phenomena are all the books one needs.
The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but my making
the darkness conscious.
Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances
will know you in a thousand years.
August Rain, After Haying
Through sere trees and beheaded
grasses the slow rain falls.
Hay fills the barn; only the rake
and one empty wagon are left
in the field. In the ditches
goldenrod bends to the ground.
Even at noon the house is dark.
In my room under the eaves
I hear the steady benevolence
of water washing dust
raised by the haying
from porch and car and garden
chair. We are shorn
and purified, as if tonsured.
The grass resolves to grow again,
receiving the rain to that end,
but my disordered soul thirsts
after something it cannot name.
Otherwise
I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.
)
"This is the true joy in life being used for a purpose
recognized by yourself as a mighty one; that being a force of
nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and
grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to
make you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the
whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do
for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I
die, for the harder I work, the more I love. I rejoice in life
for its own sake. Life is no brief candle for me. It is a sort of
splendid torch which I have got to hold up for the moment and I
want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on
to future generations."
Deliver me, O Jesus from the desire of being loved, extolled,
praised, preferred, consulted, approved, popular,
From the fear of being humiliated, despised, suffering rebukes,
slandered, forgotten, wronged, ridiculed, suspected.
The Four Faults
Why is it that people should find it so difficult even to
conceive the depth and glory of the nature of mind? Why does it
seem to many such an outlandish and improbable idea?
The teachings speak of four faults, which prevent us from
realizing the nature of mind right now
1. The nature of minds is too close to be recognized. Just as we
are unable to see our own face, mind finds it difficult to look
into it's own nature.
2. It is too profound for us to fathom. We have no idea how deep
it could be; if we did, we would have already, to a certain
extent, realized it.
3. It is too easy for us to believe. In reality all, we need do
is simply to rest in the naked, pure awareness of the nature of
mind, which is always present.
4. It is too wonderful for us to accommodate, The sheer
immensity of it is too vast to fit into our narrow way of
thinking. We just can't believe it. Nor can we possibly imagine
that enlightenment is the real nature of our minds.
Four Mountain Postures
Walking in the mountains
Unconsciously trudging along
Grab a vine
Climb another ridge
Standing in the mountains
How many dawns become dusk
Plant a pine
A tree growing shade
Sitting in the mountains
Zig-zag yellow leaves fall
Nobody comes
Close the door and make a big fire
Lying in the mountains
Pine wind enters the ears
For no good reason
Beautiful dreams are blown apart
Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed
bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in
revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in
undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around
or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling
in at my west window, or the noise of some traveler's wagon on
the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew
in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better
than any work of the hands would have been. [This was] not time
subtracted from my life, but so much over and above the usual
allowance…This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen,
no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their
standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find
his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very
calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.
If you are seeking, seek us with joy
For we live in the kingdom of joy.
Do not give your heart to anything else
But to the love of those who are clear joy.
Do not stray into the neighborhood of despair,
For there are hopes: they are real, they exist Do not go in the
direction of darkness I tell you: Suns exist.
One, One, One
The lamps are different,
But the Light is the same.
So many garish lamps in the dying brain's lamp-shop,
Forget about them.
Concentrate on essence, concentrate on Light.
In lucid bliss, calmly smoking off its own holy fire,
The Light streams toward you from all things,
All people, all possible permutations of good, evil, thought,
passion.
The lamps are different, but the Light is the same.
One matter, one energy, one Light, one Light-mind,
Endlessly emanating all things.
One turning and burning diamond,
One, one, one.
Ground yourself, strip yourself down
To blind loving silence.
Stay there, until you see
You are gazing at the Light
With its own ageless eyes.
I've said before that every craftsman searches for what's not there to practice his craft.
A builder looks for the rotten hole
where the roof caved in. A water-carrier
picks the empty pot. A carpenter
stops at the house with no door.
Workers rush toward some hint
of emptiness, which they then
start to fill. Their hope, though,
is for emptiness, so don't think
you must avoid it. It contains
what you need!
Dear soul, if you were not friends
with the vast nothing inside,
why would you always be casting you net
into it, and waiting so patiently?
This invisible ocean has given you such abundance,
but still you call it "death",
that which provides you sustenance and work.
God has allowed some magical reversal to occur,
so that you see the scopion pit
as an object of desire,
and all the beautiful expanse around it,
as dangerous and swarming with snakes.
This is how strange your fear of death
and emptiness is, and how perverse
the attachment to what you want.
There were times when love heaved so rambunctious she thought
she
might die. Even a telephone pole could wrench it from her,
inanimate things;
things overlooked these made her tremble, these orphans, full of
their own beauty.
Let Evening Come
Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.
Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.
Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.
Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.
To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.
Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
Peonies at Dusk
White peonies blooming along the porch
send out light
while the rest of the yard grows dim.
Outrageous flowers as big as human
heads! They're staggered
by their own luxuriance: I had
to prop them up with stakes and twine.
The moist air intensifies their scent,
and the moon moves around the barn
to find out what it's coming from.
In the darkening June evening
I draw a blossom near, and bending close
search it as a woman searches
a loved one's face.
It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is
essential is invisible to the eye.
Ah, not to be cut off,
not through the slightest partition
shut out from the law of the stars.
The inner - what is it?
if not intensified sky,
hurled through with birds and deep
with the winds of homecoming.
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.
I am praying again, Awesome One.
You hear me again, as words
from the depths of me
rush toward you in the wind.
I've been scattered in pieces,
torn by conflict,
mocked by laughter,
washed down in drink.
In alleyways I sweep myself up
out of garbage and broken glass.
With my half-mouth I stammer you,
who are eternal in your symmetry.
I lift to you my half-hands
in wordless beseeching, that I may find again
the eyes with which I once beheld you.
I am a house gutted by fire
where only the guilty sometimes sleep
before the punishment that devours them
hounds them out into the open.
I am a city by the sea
sinking in toxic tide.
I am strange to myself, as though some unknown
had poisoned my mother as she carried me.
It's here in all the pieces of my shame
that I now find myself again.
I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held
in the great hands of your heart -
oh let them take me now.
Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God - spend them however you want.
The ancient Masters were profound and subtle. Their wisdom was
unfathomable. There is no way to describe it; all we can describe
is their appearance. They were careful as someone crossing an
iced-over stream. Alert as a warrior in enemy territory.
Courteous as a guest. Fluid as melting ice. Shape able as a block
of wood. Receptive as a valley. Clear as a glass of water. Do you
have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is
clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by
itself? The Master doesn't seek fulfilment. Not seeking, not
expecting, she is present, and can welcome all things.
Rest in natural great peace this exhausted mind, Beaten
helpless by karma and neurotic thoughts Like the relentless fury
of the pounding waves In the infinite ocean of samsara. Rest in
natural great peace.
Loving Kindness
There's a common misunderstanding among all the human beings who
have ever been
born on the earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid
pain and just try to get
comfortable … If we're committed to comfort at any cost,
as soon as we come up against the least edge of
pain, we're going to run, we'll never know what's beyond that
particuar barrier or
wall or fearful thing. When people start to meditate or to work
with any kind of
spiritual discipline, they often think that somehow they're
going to improve which is
a sort of subtle aggression against who they really are. It's a
bit like saying "If I had
a better job, I'd be a much better person" or "If I could only
get a nicer house,
I"d be a better person" or "If I could meditate and calm down,
I'd be a better person."
Or the scenario may be that they find fault with others and they
might say
"If it weren't for my husband I'd have a perfect marrriage." If
it were'nt for the
fact that my boss and I can't get on, my job would be just
great" and
"If it weren't for my mind, my meditation would be
excellent."
But loving-kindness - maitri - toward ourselves doesn't mean
getting rid of anything.
Maitri means that we can still be crazy after all these years.
We can still be timid or
jealous or full of feelings of unworthiness. The point is not to
try to change ourselves.
Meditation practice isn't about trying to throw ourselves away
and become something
better. It's about befriending who we are already. The ground of
practice is you or me
or whoever we are right now, just as we are. That's the ground,
that's what we study,
that's what we come to know with tremendous curiosity and
interest.
...if you meditate for an ulterior motive, that is to say to improve your
mind, to improve your character, to be more efficient in life, you've got
your eye on the future and you are not meditating. The future is a concept
it doesn't exist! There is no such thing as tomorrow! There never will be
because time is always now. That's one of the things we discover when we stop
talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only a present, only
an eternal now.
One meditates for no reason at all except for the enjoyment of
it. Here I would interpose the essential principle that
meditation is supposed to be fun it's not something you do as a
grim duty. The trouble with religion today is that it is so mixed
up with grim duties. You do it because it is good for you. It's a
kind of self-punishment. Meditation when correctly done has
nothing to do with all that. It's a kind of digging the present.
It's a kind of getting in the groove with the eternal now, it
brings us into a state of peace where we can understand that the
point of life, the place where it's at, is simply here and
now.
When you awaken your heart, you find to your surprise that
your heart is empty. If you search for the awakened heart, if you
put your hand through your rib cage and feel for it, there is
nothing there but tenderness. You feel sore and soft, and if you
open your eyes to the rest of the world, you feel tremendous
sadness…It occurs because your heart is completely open,
exposed. It is the pure raw heart…It is this tender heart
of a warrior that has the power to heal the world.
Overcome any bitterness that may have come because you were not up to the magnitude
of pain that was entrusted to you. Like the mother of the world who carries
the pain of the world in her heart, each one of us is part of her heart, and
therefore endowed with a certain measure of cosmic pain. You are sharing in
the totality of that pain. You are called upon to meet it in joy instead of
self-pity.
'But is that all there is to thought? Are there
not greater depths to thought than the mere response of memory?'
Thought can and does place itself at different levels, the stupid and the
profound, the noble and the base; but it is still thought, is it not? The
God of thought is still of the mind, of the word. The thought of God is not
God, it is merely the response of memory. Memory is long-lasting, and so may
appear to be deep; but by its very structure it can never be deep. Memory
may be concealed, not in immediate view, but that does not make it profound.
Thought can never be profound, or anything more than what it is. Thought can
give to itself greater value, but it remains thought. When the mind is occupied
with its own self-projection, it has not gone beyond thought, it has only
assumed a new role, a new pose; under the cloak it is still thought.
'But how can one go beyond thought?'
That is not the point, is it? One cannot go beyond thought, for the 'one',
the maker of effort, is the result of thought. In uncovering the thought process,
which is self-knowledge, the truth of 'what is' puts an end to the thought
process. The truth of 'what is' is not to be found in any book, ancient or
modern. What is found is the word, but not truth.
'Then how is one to find truth?'
One cannot find it. The effort to find truth brings about a self-projected
end; and that end is not truth. A result is not truth; result is the continuation
of thought, extended or projected. Only when thought ends is there truth.
There is no ending of thought through compulsion, through discipline, through
any form of resistance. Listening to the story of 'what is' brings its own
liberation. It is truth that liberates, not the effort to be free.
IINTERBEING
Through mindfulness we experience Interbeing
which means everything is in everything else.
Therefore, one should know that Perfect Understanding
is a great mantra, is the highest mantra,
is the unequalled mantra, the destroyer of all suffering,
the incorruptible truth. This is the mantra:
"Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha."
The Buddha in the Heart Sutra
A MANTRA IS something that you utter when your body, your mind and your breath are at one in deep concentration. When you dwell in that deep concentration, you look into things and see them as clearly as you see an orange that you hold in the palm of your hand. Looking deeply into the five skandhas, Avalokitesvara (the Buddha) saw the nature of inter- being and overcame all pain. He became completely liberated. It was in that state of deep concentration, of joy, of liberation, that he uttered something important. That is why his utterance is a mantra.
When two young people love each other, but the young man has not said so yet, the young lady may be waiting for three very important words. If the young man is a very responsible person, he probably wants to be sure of his feeling, and he may wait a long time before saying it. Then one day, sitting together in a park, when no one else is nearby and everything is quiet, after the two of them have been silent for a long time, he utters these three words. When the young lady hears this, she trembles, because it is such an important statement. When you say something like that with your whole being, not just with your mouth or your intellect, but with your whole being, it can transform the world. A statement that has such power of transformation is called a mantra. Alokitesvara's mantra is
"Gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha."
Gate means gone. Gone from suffering to the liberation of suffering. Gone from forgetfulness to mindfulness. Gone from duality into non-duality. Gate gate means gone, gone. Paragate means gone all the way to the other shore. So this mantra is said in a very strong way. Gone, gone, gone all the way over. In Parasamgate sammeans everyone, the sangha, the entire community of beings. Everyone gone over to the other shore. Bodhi is the light inside, enlightenment, or awakening. You see it and the vision of reality liberates you. And svaha is a cry of joy or excitement, like "Welcome!" or "Hallelujah!" "Gone, gone, gone all the way over, everyone gone to the other shore, enlightenment, svaha !"
THAT IS WHAT the bodhisattva uttered. When we listen to this mantra, we should bring ourselves into that state of attention, of concentration, so that we can receive the strength emanated by Avalokitesvara. We do not recite the Heart Sutra like singing a song, or with our intellect alone. If you practise the meditation on emptiness, if you penetrate the nature of interbeing with all your heart, your body, and your mind, you will realize a state that is quite concentrated. If you say the mantra then, with all your being, the mantra will have power and you will be able to have real communication, real communion with Avalokitesvara, and you will be able to transform yourself in the direction of enlightenment.
This text is not just for chanting, or to be put on an altar for worship. It is given to us as a tool to work for our liberation, for the liberation of all beings. It is like a tool for farming, given to us so that we may farm. This is the gift of Avalokita.
There are three kinds of gift. The first is the gift of material resources. The second is the gift of know-how, the gift of the Dharma. The third, the highest kind of gift, is the gift of non-fear. Avalokitesvara is someone who can help us liberate ourselves from fear.
The Heart Sutra gives us solid ground for making peace with ourselves, for transcending the fear of birth and death, the duality of this and that. In the light of emptiness, everything is everything else, we inter-are, everyone is responsible for everything that happens in life. When you produce peace and happiness in yourself, you begin to realize peace for the whole world. With the smile that you produce in yourself, with the conscious breathing you establish within yourself, you begin to work for peace in the world.
To smile is not to smile only for yourself, the world will change because of your smile. When you practise sitting meditation, if you enjoy even one moment of your sitting, if you establish serenity and happiness inside yourself, you provide the world with a solid base of peace. If you do not give yourself peace, how can you share it with others? If you do not begin your peace work with yourself, where will you go to begin it? To sit, to smile, to look at things and really see them, these are the basis of peace work.
Yesterday, we had a tangerine party. Everyone was offered one tangerine. We put the tangerine on the palm of our hand and looked at it, breathing in a way that the tangerine became real. Most of the time when we eat a tangerine, we do not look at it. We think about many other things. To look at a tangerine is to see the blossom forming into the fruit, to see the sunshine and the rain. The tangerine in our palm is the wonderful presence of life. We are able to really see that tangerine and smell its blossom and the warm, moist earth. As the tangerine becomes real, we become real. Life in that moment becomes real.
Mindfully we began to peel our tangerine and smell its fragrance. We carefully took each section of the tangerine and put in on our tongue, and we could feel that it was a real tangerine. We ate each section of the tangerine in perfect mindfulness until we finished the entire fruit. Eating a tangerine in this way is very important, because both the tangerine and the eater of the tangerine become real. This, too, is the basic work for peace.
In Buddhist meditation we do not struggle for the kind of enlightenment that will happen five or ten years from now. We practise so that each moment of our life becomes real life. And, therefore, when we meditate, we sit for sitting; we don't sit for something else. If we sit for twenty minutes, these twenty minutes should bring us joy, life. If we practise walking meditation, we walk just for walking, not to arrive. We have to be alive with each step, and if we are, each step brings real life back to us.
The same kind of mindfulness can be practised when we eat breakfast, or when we hold a child in our arms. Hugging is a Western custom, but we from the East would like to contribute the practice of conscious breathing to it. When you hold a child in your arms, or hug your mother, or your husband, or your friend, breathe in and out three times and your happiness will be multiplied by at least tenfold. And when you look at someone, really look at them with mindfulness, and practise conscious breathing.
At the beginning of each meal, I recommend that you look at your plate and silently recite, "My plate is empty now, but I know that it is going to be filled with delicious food in just a moment."While waiting to be served or to serve yourself, I suggest you breathe three times and look at it even more deeply, "At this very moment many, many people around the world are also holding a plate but their plate is going to be empty for a long time." Forty thousand children die each day because of the lack of food. Children alone. We can be very happy to have such wonderful food, but we also suffer because we are capable of seeing. But when we see in this way, it makes us sane, because the way in front ofus is clear - the way to live so that we can make peace with ourselves and with the world.
When we see the good and the bad, the wondrous and the deep suffering, we have to live in a way that we can make peace between ourselves and the world. Understanding is the fruit of meditation. Understanding is the basis of everything.
Each breath we take, each step we make, each smile we realize, is a positive contribution to peace, a necessary step in the direction of peace for the world. In the light of interbeing, peace and happiness in your daily life mean peace and happiness in the world.
Thank you for being so attentive. Thank you for listening to Avalokitesvara.
Because you are there, the Heart Sutra has become very easy.
If you can start the day without caffeine or pep pills,
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food everyday and be grateful for it,
If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time,
If you can overlook when people take things out on you when, through no fault
of yours, something goes wrong,
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
If you can face the world without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
Then you're probably a dog. :-)
Last modified: 3 Apr 2007