Buoyancy, by Rumi

Buoyancy

Love has taken away my practices

and filled me with poetry.

I tried to keep quietly repeating,

No strength but yours,

but I couldn’t.

I had to clap and sing.

I used to be respectable and chaste and stable,

but who can stand in this strong wind

and remember those things?

A mountain keeps an echo deep inside itself.

That’s how I hold your voice.

I am scrap wood thrown in your fire,

and quickly reduced to smoke.

I saw you and became empty.

This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,

it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,

existence thrives and creates more existence!

The sky is blue. The world is a blind man

squatting on the road.

But whoever sees your emptiness

sees beyond blue and beyond the blind man.

A great soul hides like Muhammad, or Jesus,

moving through a crowd in a city

where no one knows him.

To praise is to praise

how one surrenders

to the emptiness.

To praise the sun is to praise your own eyes.

Praise, the ocean. What we say, a little ship.

So the sea-journey goes on, and who knows where!

Just to be held by the ocean is the best of luck

we could have. It’s a total waking up!

Why should we grieve that we’ve been sleeping?

It doesn’t matter how long we’ve been unconscious.

We’re groggy, but let the guilt go.

Feel the motions of tenderness

around you, the buoyancy.

by Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks

Courage, by David Whyte

Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work; a future.  To be courageous is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences.  To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on.  To be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made.

On the inside we come to know who and what and how we love and what we can do to deepen that love; only from the outside and only by looking back, does it look like courage.

-- from David Whyte's essay "Courage", from the book Consolations

(The word 'courage' comes from the French word 'coeur'.  Heart.)

I Said to the Wanting Creature, by Kabir

I Said to the Wanting Creature

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?
There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!

And there is nobody, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the
soul less thirsty?
In that great absence, you will find nothing.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary
things,
and stand firm in that which you are.
 

I Said to the Wanting Creature, by Kabir, trans. Robert Bly

Cutting Loose, by William Stafford

Cutting Loose

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason,
you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing
a world
where you go where you want to.
Arbitrary, a sound comes, a
reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that
sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past
trouble.
Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path—but that’s
when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here
on earth, again and again.

Cutting Loose, by William Stafford

Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way

Leaves and Blossoms Along the Way

If you're John Muir you want trees to
live among.  If you're Emily, a garden
will do.
Try to find the right place for yourself.
If you can't find it, at least dream of it.

When one is alone and lonely, the body
gladly lingers in the wind or the rain,
or splashes into the cold river, or
pushes through the ice-crusted snow.

Anything that touches.

God, or the gods, are invisible, quite
understandable.  But holiness is visible,
entirely.

Some words will never leave God's mouth,
no matter how hard you listen.

In all the works of Beethoven, you will
not find a single lie.

All important ideas must include the trees,
the mountains, and the rivers.

To understand many things you must reach out
of your own condition.

For how many years did I wander slowly
through the forest.  What wonder and
glory I would have missed had I ever been
in a hurry!

Beauty can both shout and whisper, and still
it explains nothing.

The point is, you're you, and that's for keeps.

-- Mary Oliver
from the collection "Felicity"

paradise, by Teresa Williams

paradise

is the moment
you realize
you've never been
apart from it

it is the bookstore
on Tuesdays   scent of scones
and word blossoms
it is the dahlia    autumn lantern
the warm mug in your hand
it is all this exchanging
of light   hello and goodbye and
how are you

it is the decision you make
to let it all in

the rainbows    the dead crow
the hurt knee
a black cloud in the face
your incapacities    your strengths
hurricanes and earthquakes
even deep down pain
the kind that wants to hide
behind hate

when
everything belongs
paradise
isn't somewhere else

it is here
it is us

it is loving
Life itself.

-- Teresa Williams

The Quiet Power

The Quiet Power

I walked backwards, against time
and that’s where I caught the moon,
singing at me.

I steeped downwards, into my seat
and that’s where I caught freedom,
waiting for me, like a lilac.

I ended thought, and I ended story.
I stopped designing, and arguing, and
sculpting a happy life.

I didn’t die. I didn’t turn to dust.

Instead I chopped vegetables,
and made a calm lake in me
where the water was clear and sourced and still.

And when the ones I loved came to it,
I had something to give them, and
it offered them a soft road out of pain.

I became beloved.

And I came to know that this was it.
The quiet power.
I could give something mighty, lasting,
that stopped the wheel of chaos,

by tending to the river inside,
keeping the water rich and deep,
keeping a bench for you to visit.

Leaves of Grass

This is what you shall do; Love the earth, and sun, and the animals.... dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far.  It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere-- on water and land.

Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then, I contradict myself.
I am large-- I contain multitudes.

-- Walt Whitman

When we give ourselves to our situation we're letting go of preferences and habits and trusting what's in front of us, with faith that it will provide the wisdom we need.  To truly be responsible is to recognize that reality is smarter than we are.

-- from Taking Our Places, by Norman Fischer p. 28

Cutting Loose

Cutting Loose

by William Stafford

 

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason,
you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose
from all else and electing
a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, a sound comes, a
reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that
sound
will tell you where it is and you
can slide your way past
trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path — but that’s
when
you get going best, glad to be lost,
learning how real it is
here
on earth, again and again.

"Today" by Mary Oliver

Today I'm flying low and I'm
not saying a word.
I'm letting all of the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I'm taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I'm traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness.  One of the doors
into the temple.

-- Mary Oliver, from A Thousand Mornings

Hanna Somatics

 A relaxed muscle has absolutely no electrical activity in it.  Full voluntary control of  a muscle is the ability both to contract the entire span of the muscle and to relax it fully to its entire length.

The chronically contracted muscle is like a motor that one cannot turn off.  It continues to run and burn up energy.

This is why muscles with a high tonus are always sore.

-- from Somatics, by Thomas Hanna p.13

No preparation for something else

Our way is not to sit to acquire something; it is to express our true nature.  That is our practice.

If you want to express yourself, your true nature, there should be some natural and appropriate way of expression.  Even swaying right and left as you sit down or get up from zazen is an expression of yourself.  It is not preparation for practice, or relaxation after practice; it is part of the practice.  So we should not do it as if we were preparing for something else.  This should be true in your everyday life.  To cook, or to fix some food, is not preparation, according to Dogen; it is practice.

We should appreciate what we are doing.  There is no preparation for something else.

There is no need to remember what I say; there is no need to understand what I say.  You understand; you have full understanding within yourself.  There is no problem.

-- from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind p. 53-55

Calmness in activity

Calmness of mind does not mean you should stop your activity.  Real calmness should be found in activity itself.  We say, "It is easy to have calmness in inactivity, it is hard to have calmness in activity, but calmness in activity is true calmness."

I do not feel like speaking after zazen.  I feel the practice of zazen is enough.  But if I must say something I think I would like to talk about how wonderful it is to practice zazen.  Our practice is just to keep this practice forever.  This practice started from beginningless time, and it will continue into an endless future.  Strictly speaking, for a human being there is no other practice than this practice.  There is no other way of life than this way of life.  Zen practice is the direct expression of our true nature.

-- from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki p. 46-47

Unexciting way of practice

Zen is not something to get excited about.  Some people start to practice Zen just out of curiosity, and they only make themselves busier.  If your practice makes you worse, it is ridiculous.

Our unexciting way of practice may appear to be very negative.  This is not so.  It is a wise and effective way to work on ourselves.  It is just very plain.

When your mind is calm and ordinary, everyday life itself is enlightenment.

-- Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind p. 58-59

Zen mind- breathing

When we inhale, the air comes into the inner world.  When we exhale, the air goes out to the outer world.  The inner world is limitless, and the outer world is also limitless.  We say "inner world" or "outer world", but actually there is just one whole world.  In this limitless world, our throat is like a swinging door.  The air comes in and goes out like someone passing through a swinging door.

When your mind is pure and calm enough to follow this movement, there is nothing: no "I", no world, no mind nor body; just a swinging door.

-- from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki p. 29

Hiding

Hiding is one of the brilliant and virtuoso practices of almost every part of the natural world: the protective quiet of an icy northern landscape, the held bud of a future summer rose, the snowbound internal pulse of the hibernating bear.  Hiding is underestimated.  We are hidden by life in our mother's womb until we grow and ready ourselves for our first appearance in the lighted world....

What is real is almost always to begin with, hidden, and does not want to be understood by the part of our mind that mistakenly thinks it knows what is happening.  What is precious inside us does not care to be known by the mind in ways that diminish its presence.

Hiding is an act of freedom from the misunderstanding of others.  Hiding is a bid for independence, from others, from mistaken ideas we have about ourselves, from an oppressive and mistaken wish to keep us completely safe, completely ministered to, and therefore completely managed.

Hiding is creative, necessary and beautifully subversive of outside interference and control.  Hiding leaves life to itself, to become more of itself.  Hiding is the radical independence necessary for our emergence into the light of a proper human future.

-- from Consolations, by David Whyte p. 113-115

Help

Help is strangely, something we want to do without, as if the very idea disturbs and blurs the boundaries of our individual endeavors, as if we can not face how much we need in order to go on.  We are born with an absolute necessity for help, grow well only with a continuous succession of extended hands, and as adults depend upon others for our further successes and possibilities in life even as competent individuals.

[As adults] the need for help becomes more subtle, hidden as it is by the illusion that we are suddenly free agents able to survive on our own, the one corner of the universe able to supply its own answers.

To ask for help and to ask for the right kind of help and to feel that it is no less than our due as a live human being; to feel, in effect, that we deserve it, may be the engine of transformation itself.

-- from Consolations, by David Whyte p.107-110

Gratitude

Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given, gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within us and without us.  Gratitude is not necessarily something that is shown after the even, it is the deep, a priori state of attention that shows we understand and are equal to the gifted nature of life.

- from Consolations, by David Whyte p. 89

Besieged

Besieged is how most people feel most of the time: by events, by people, by all the necessities of providing, parenting or participating and even by the creative possibilities they have set in motion themselves, and most especially, a success they have achieved through long years of endeavor.

As creatures we define ourselves through belonging or not belonging, we cannot help but make commitments to people, places and things, which then come looking for us.  Conscious or unconscious, we are surrounded not only by the vicissitudes of a difficult world but even more by those of our own making.

If the world will not go away then the great discipline seems to be the ability to make an identity that can live in the midst of everything without feeling beset.  Being besieged ask us to begin the day not with a to do list but a not to do list, a moment outside of the time-bound world in which it can be reordered and reprioritized.  In this space of undoing and silence we create a foundation from which to re-imagine our day and ourselves.  Beginning the daily conversation from a point of view of freedom and being untethered, allows us to re-see ourselves, to reenter the world as if for the first time.

We find that having people knock on our door is as much a privilege as it is a burden; that being seen, being recognized and being wanted by the world and having a place in which to receive everyone and everything, is infinitely preferable to its opposite.

-- from Consolations, by David Whyte p. 27-30