path(ways

       

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In 19th century Suffolk small sickles called ‘hooks’ were hung on stiles and posts at the start of certain well-used paths: those running between villages, for example. A walker would pick up a hook and use it to lop off branches that were starting to impede passage. The hook would then be left at the other end of the path, for a walker coming in the opposite direction. In this manner the path was collectively maintained for general use.


—Robert Macfarlane
The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot

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One does not stand still looking for a path. 

One walks; and as one walks,
a path comes into being.


—Mas Kodani

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Walker, your footsteps 
are the road, and nothing more. 

Walker, there is no road, the road is made by walking. 

Walking you make the road, 
and turning to look behind 
you see the path you never 
again will step upon. 

Walker, there is no road, 
only foam trails on the sea.


—Antonio Machado
proverbs and songs #29

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We are not separated from spirit, we are in it. —Plotinus

 

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God turns you from one feeling to another

and teaches by means of opposites,

so that you will have two wings to fly,

not one.

—Rumi

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The problem is not to find the answer, it’s to face the answer. —Terence McKenna

    

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There'll never be a door. 

You're inside and the keep encompasses the world and has neither obverse nor reverse nor circling nor secret center.


—Jorge Luis Borges (1899 - 1986)
In Praise of Darkness

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Scattered through the ordinary world there are books and artifacts and perhaps people who are like doorways into impossible realms, of impossible and contradictory truth.
 

—Jorge Luis Borges

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thinking of others

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[Man] sees the morning as the beginning of a new day; he takes germination as the start in the life of a plant, and withering as its end. But this is nothing more than biased judgment on his part. 

Nature is one. There is no starting point or destination, only an unending flux, a continuous metamorphosis of all things.

—Masanobu Fukuoka

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As you prepare breakfast, think of others
(do not forget the pigeon”s food)
As you wage your wars, think of others
(do not forget those who seek peace).
As you pay your water bill, think of others
(those who are nursed by clouds).
As you return home, to your home, think of others
(do not forget the people of the camps).
As you sleep and count the stars, think of others
(those who have nowhere to sleep).
As you express yourself in metaphor, think of others
(those who have lost the right to speak).
As you think of others far away, think of yourself
(say: If only I were a candle in the dark).


—Mahmoud Darwish
Think of Others

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thin places

   

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In the point of rest at the center of our being, we encounter a world where all things are at rest in the same way. Then a tree becomes a mystery, a cloud a revelation, each man a cosmos of whose riches we can only catch glimpses. The life of simplicity is simple, but it opens to us a book in which we never get beyond the first syllable.

—Dag Hammarskjöld

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Be the mystery.

In this uncontainable night,

be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,

the meaning discovered there.

And if the world has ceased to hear you,

say to the silent earth: I flow.

To the rushing water, speak: I am.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

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instructions

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Always be drunk.

That's it!
The great imperative!

In order not to feel
Time's horrid fardel
bruise your shoulders,
grinding you into the earth,
get drunk and stay that way.

On what?
On wine, poetry, virtue, whatever.
But get drunk.

And if you sometimes happen to wake up
on the porches of a palace,
in the green grass of a ditch,
in the dismal loneliness
of your own room,
your drunkenness gone or disappearing,

ask the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock,
ask everything that flees,
everything that groans
or rolls
or sings,
everything that speaks,

ask what time it is;

and the wind,
the wave,
the star,
the bird,
the clock
will answer you:

"Time to get drunk!

Don't be martyred slaves of Time,
Get drunk!
Stay drunk!
On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!"


—Charles Baudelaire

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beginning (it is north everywhere)

  

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Long before spring

king of the black cranes

rises one day

from the black

needle’s eye

on the white plain

under the white sky

the crown turns

and the eye

drilled clear through his head

turns

it is north everywhere

come out he says

come out then

the light is not yet

divided

it is a long way 

to the first

anything

come even so

we will start

bring your nights with you

—W.S. Merwin

The Carriers of Ladders, 

Pulitzer Prize for poetry, 1971

 

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May the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great fire,
so that stranger and friend may come and warm himself at it.

And may light shine out of the two eyes of you,
like a candle set in the window of a house,
bidding the wanderer come in out of the storm.

And may the blessing of the rain be on you,
may it beat upon your Spirit and wash it fair and clean,
and leave there a shining pool where the blue of Heaven shines,
and sometimes a star.

And may the blessing of the earth be on you,
soft under your feet as you pass along the roads,
soft under you as you lie out on it, tired at the end of day;
and may it rest easy over you when, at last, you lie out under it.

May it rest so lightly over you that your soul may be out from under it quickly; up and off and on its way to God.

And now may the Lord bless you, and bless you kindly.

Amen

—Scottish blessing

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notes to self

 

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When you slouch, you are trying to hide your heart, protecting it by slumping over. But when you sit upright but relaxed in the posture of meditation, your heart is uncovered. Your entire being is exposed - to yourself, first of all, but to others as well. 

Through the practice of sitting still and following your breath as it goes out and dissolves, you are connecting with your heart. By simply letting yourself be, as you are, you develop genuine sympathy towards yourself. 

When you sit erect, you proclaim to yourself and to the rest of the world that you are going to be a warrior, a fully human being.

—Chögyam Trungpa

Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

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Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.

—William Wordsworth

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how can the sun possibly shine?

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There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,

And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;

And frogs in the pools singing at night,

And wild plum-trees in tremulous white;

Robins will wear their feathery fire

Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;

And not one will know of the war, not one

Will care at last when it is done. 

Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree

If mankind perished utterly;

And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,

Would scarcely know that we were gone.

—Sara Teasdale

Flame and Shadow (1920)

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dharma

  

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The way the dog trots out the front door
every morning
without a hat or an umbrella,
without any money
or the keys to her doghouse
never fails to fill the saucer of my heart
with milky admiration.

Who provides a finer example
of a life without encumbrance—
Thoreau in his curtainless hut
with a single plate, a single spoon?
Gandhi with his staff and his holy diapers?

Off she goes into the material world
with nothing but her brown coat
and her modest blue collar,
following only her wet nose,
the twin portals of her steady breathing,
followed only by the plume of her tail.

If only she did not shove the cat aside
every morning
and eat all his food
what a model of self-containment she
would be,
what a paragon of earthly detachment.

If only she were not so eager
for a rub behind the ears,
so acrobatic in her welcomes,
if only I were not her god.


—Billy Collins

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you, neighbor god

 

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You, neighbor god, if sometimes in the night
I rouse you with loud knocking, I do so
only because I seldom hear you breathe
and know: you are alone.
And should you need a drink, no one is there
to reach it to you, groping in the dark.
Always I hearken. Give but a small sign.
I am quite near.

Between us there is but a narrow wall,
and by sheer chance; for it would take
merely a call from your lips or from mine
to break it down,
and that without a sound.

The wall is builded of your images.

They stand before you hiding you like names.
And when the light within me blazes high
that in my inmost soul I know you by,
the radiance is squandered on their frames.

And then my senses, which too soon grow lame,
exiled from you, must go their homeless ways.


—Rainer Maria Rilke 
Poems from the Book of Hours 

 

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p(raise

  

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Praise the rain, the seagull dive
The curl of plant, the raven talk—
Praise the hurt, the house slack
The stand of trees, the dignity—
Praise the dark, the moon cradle
The sky fall, the bear sleep—
Praise the mist, the warrior name
The earth eclipse, the fired leap—
Praise the backwards, upward sky
The baby cry, the spirit food—
Praise canoe, the fish rush
The hole for frog, the upside-down—
Praise the day, the cloud cup
The mind flat, forget it all—

Praise crazy. Praise sad.
Praise the path on which we’re led.
Praise the roads on earth and water.
Praise the eater and the eaten.
Praise beginnings; praise the end.
Praise the song and praise the singer.

Praise the rain; it brings more rain.
Praise the rain; it brings more rain.

—Jo Harjo

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ask me

 

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Hold me, don't hold me down
Carry me, but keep my feet on the ground

That storm is comin' down hard
I'm your shelter every time it starts
But if you leave me, I'll be movin' on
You'll have a hard time dryin' when the fire is gone

I'll hold ya, I won't hold you down, yeah, yeah
I'll carry ya, but keep your feet on the ground

You're the storm and I'm the Murray-Darling
You keep me goin' every time I'm dry
But if you leave me, I'll be movin' on (I'll live on)
But have a hard time runnin' when the weather is gone

Hold me, don't hold me down
Carry me, but keep my feet on the ground, yeah
I'll hold ya, I won't hold you down
I'll carry ya, but keep your feet on the ground

In so many ways
I just keep pulling
But you're pushing
Me away, me away

Hold me, don't hold me down
Carry me, but keep my feet on the ground
I'll hold ya, I won't hold you down
Carry ya, but keep your feet on the ground, yeah
Oh, hold me, don't hold me down
Love me, but don't let me drown

 

—The Teskey Brothers 

 

know it as it is known/by galaxy and cedar cone

 

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I don't know somehow it seems sufficient

to see and hear whatever coming and going is,
losing the self to the victory
of stones and trees,
of bending sandpit lakes, crescent
round groves of dwarf pine: 
for it is not so much to know the self
as to know it as it is known
by galaxy and cedar cone,
as if birth had never found it
and death could never end it: 
the swamp's slow water comes
down Gravelly Run fanning the long
stone-held algal
hair and narrowing roils between
the shoulders of the highway bridge: 
holly grows on the banks in the woods there,
and the cedars' gothic-clustered
spires could make
green religion in winter bones: 
so I look and reflect, but the air's glass
jail seals each thing in its entity: 
no use to make any philosophies here:
I see no
god in the holly, hear no song from
the snowbroken weeds: Hegel is not the winter
yellow in the pines: the sunlight has never 
heard of trees: surrendered self among
unwelcoming forms: stranger,
hoist your burdens, get on down the road. 


—A. R. Ammons 

Gravelly Run

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no death, no fear

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When you look at the surface of the ocean, you can see waves coming up and going down. You can describe these waves in terms of high or low, big or small, more vigorous or less vigorous, more beautiful or less beautiful. You can describe a wave in terms of beginning and end, birth and death. That can be compared to the historical dimension. In the historical dimension, we are concerned with birth and death, more powerful, less powerful, more beautiful, less beautiful, beginning and end and so on. 

Looking deeply, we can also see that the waves are at the same time water. A wave may like to seek its own true nature. The wave might suffer from fear, from complexes. A wave may say, “ I am not as big as the other waves,” “I am not as beautiful as the other waves," "I have been born and I have to die.” The wave may suffer from these things, these ideas. But if the wave bends down and touches her true nature she will realize that she is water. Then her fear and complexes will disappear.

Water is free from the birth and death of a wave. Water is free from high and low, more beautiful and less beautiful. You can talk in terms of more beautiful and less beautiful, high or low, only in terms of waves. As far as water is concerned, all these concepts are invalid. 

Our true nature is the nature of non-discrimination, of no birth, of no death, of no being and no non-being. We do not have to go anywhere to touch our true nature. We are what we are looking for. 

We can ask a flame: “Flame, where do you come from and where will you go?” Listen to the reply closely. The flame is replying by its presence. The flame is saying: “I do not come from anywhere. I do not go anywhere."

When we look deeply, we see that when all the conditions are sufficient something will manifest. What manifests does not come from anywhere. And when a manifestation ceases, it does not go anywhere.

Manifestation is not the opposite of destruction. It is simply a changing of forms.

We think of our body as our self or belonging to our self. We think of our body as me or mine. But if you look deeply, you see that your body is also the body of your ancestors, of your parents, of your children and of their children. So it is not a “me,” it is not a “mine.” Your body is full of everything else—limitless non-body elements—except one thing; a separate existence.  

Nothing can exist by itself alone. It has to depend on every other thing. That is called inter-being. To be means to inter-be. There is no being; there is only inter-being.

Everything is without a separate self.

Impermanence and no-self are not rules to follow given to us by the Buddha. They are keys to open the door of reality. The Buddha said “My teachings are a finger pointing to the moon. Do not get caught thinking that the finger is the moon. It is because of the finger that you can see the moon.”


—Thich Nhat Hanh
no death, no fear, (treasure)
excerpts

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When I love I become liquid light —Nizar Qabbani

 

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One day, I realized that the world is transitory,
And therefore, I decided not to build a house.

Another day, I realized that I am just a traveller,
And therefore, I decided not to gather possessions.

Next day, I realized that truth is beyond words,
And therefore, I decided not to speak.

Other day, I realized that God dwells in all, 
And therefore, I decided to love all.


—Sw. Chidananda Tirtha 

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the greatest of these

 

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Though I speak with the tongues of angels,
If I have not love...
My words would resound with but a tinkling cymbal.

And though I have the gift of prophesy...
And understand all mysteries...
and all knowledge...

And though I have all faith
So that I could remove mountains,
If I have not love...
I am nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind;
Love tolerates all things,
Aspires to all things.

Love never dies.

While the prophecies shall be done away,
tongues shall be silenced,
knowledge shall fade...
thus then shall linger only
faith, hope, and love...

but the greatest of these...

is love.


—1 Corinthians 13

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that is your name

  

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I guess you are kind of curious as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind.

If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago:  Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.

That is my name.

Perhaps it was raining very hard.

That is my name.

Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was wrong—“Sorry for the mistake,”—and you had to do something else.

That is my name.

Perhaps it was a game you played when you were a child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting in a chair near the window.

That is my name.

Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around.

That is my name.

Perhaps you stared into a river. There was something near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened.

That is my name.

—Richard Brautigan

Watermelon Sugar 

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sit down, be quiet

  

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Make a place to sit down.
Sit down. Be quiet.
You must depend upon
affection, reading, knowledge,
skill — more of each
than you have — inspiration,
work, growing older, patience,
for patience joins time
to eternity. Any readers
who like your poems,
doubt their judgment.

Breathe with unconditional breath
the unconditioned air.
Shun electric wire.
Communicate slowly. Live
a three-dimensioned life;
stay away from screens.
Stay away from anything
that obscures the place it is in.
There are no unsacred places;
there are only sacred places
and desecrated places.

Accept what comes from silence.
Make the best you can of it.
Of the little words that come
out of the silence, like prayers
prayed back to the one who prays,
make a poem that does not disturb
the silence from which it came.


—Wendell Berry
how to be a poet (to remind myself)

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If a poet is anybody, he is somebody to whom things Made matter very little - somebody who is obsessed by Making.

Like all obsessions, the Making obsession has disadvantages; for instance, my only interest in making money would be to make it. Fortunately, however, I should prefer to make almost anything else, including locomotives and roses. It is with roses and locomotives (not to mention acrobats Spring electricity Coney Island the 4th of July the eyes of mice and Niagara Falls) that my poems are competing.

They are also competing with each other, with elephants, and with El Greco.


—E. E. Cummings

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take off from here

   

bower

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There is no point in work unless it pre-occupies you as well as occupies you.

When you are only occupied, you are an empty shell.

A man needs to be independent at his work, so that he can put his own self into it.

When a man puts his own self into his work he is living, not merely working. 

When men wove with their hands and their soul’s attention the cloth they wore, they lived themselves forth, like a tree putting out woven leaves and it made them happy, and the woven cloth of their hands came from them living like leaves from the tree of their life and clothed them with living leaves.

And as with cloth, so with all things, houses, shoes, wagons or cups, men used to put them forth sensitively like boughs, leaves, fruits, flowers from their tree of life, and villages, whole cities lived, lived as true bowers of men.

It will be so again, for man will smash all his machines again at last, and for the sake of clothing himself in his own leaf-like cloth, issued from his life and dwelling in his own bowery house, like a bird in a bush and drinking from the cups that have flowered from his own fingers he will cancel again these machines we have got.

—D.H. Lawrence

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Cultivate a work-lust that imagines its haven like your hands at night, dreaming the sun in the sunspot of a breast. 

You are fasted now, light-headed, dangerous. 

Take off from here. 

And don't be so earnest.

—Seamus Heaney

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