Who (be quiet) Are You?

“We have not come into this exquisite world

To hold ourselves hostage from love.

~ Hafiz, from ‘We Have Not Come to Take Prisoners’, ‘The Gift’, translated by Daniel Ladinsky

(Photo: ‘Take to the Sky’ by Alex Greenshpun)

As great as the infinite space beyond is the space within the lotus of the heart. Both heaven and earth are contained in that inner space, both fire and air, sun and moon, lightning and stars. Whether we know it in this world or know it not, everything is contained in that inner space.

~ Chandogya Upanishad

(Photo by Anan Suphap)

Silence

Is

Here (hear the heart)

Now

…

(Photo by Alex Greenshpun)

Awake awhile.  

It does not have to be
Forever,
Right now.

One step upon the Sky’s soft skirt
Would be enough.  

Hafiz,
Awake awhile.
Just one True moment of Love
Will last for days.  

Rest all your elaborate plans and tactics
For Knowing Him,
For they are all just frozen spring buds
Far,
So far from Summer’s Divine Gold.  

Awake, my dear.
Be kind to your sleeping heart.
Take it out into the vast fields of Light
And let it breathe.  

Say,
“Love,
Give me back my wings.
Lift me,
Lift me nearer.”  

Say to the sun and moon,
Say to our dear Friend,  

“I will take You up now, Beloved,
On that wonderful Dance You promised.”  

~ Hafiz ~

(Photo by Alex Greenshpun)

And which one is real?
The music in the composer’s ear
or the lapsed piece the orchestra plays?
The world is a blurred version of itself —
marred, lovely, and flawed.
It is enough.  

~ Jane Hirshfield , Of Gravity & Angels

(Thanks to Panhala, Photo by Vladimir Zotov)

Pure joy :)

(Photo by  Manuela Kulpa)

Change rooms in your mind for a day.  

All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.  

Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.  

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting  

While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.  

~Hafiz, from ‘All the Hemispheres’, version by Daniel Ladinsky

(Thanks to Panhala.net Photo by  lukedmillward)

Such a sun emerged from within me
     I was turned inside out in the heavens.

I said to him: O knower of mysteries, 
     tell me when I’ll reach my Beloved.

He said to me: You ignorant fool! 
     Does anyone ever ‘reach’? Never! Never!

You may play your games forever 
     but in the end you’re tired and outplayed.

The world’s atoms are all drunk with love 
     drowned between negation and affirmation.

In the place where the sun casts its light 
     there’s neither life nor death for the atoms.

What’s your final word then, ‘Attar? 
     Who knows this mystery and these allusions? 

~Farid al-Din Attar, from ‘Fifty Poems of Attar’ by Kenneth Avery and Ali Alizadeh

(Photo: by Konstantin Yanistov)

I have a secret
which I have learned how to read inside myself;
if I told it to you,
it would make you laugh.

My heart is naked
and no one can put clothes on it,
and nothing can be put on
that will not immediately fall off.

My secret is ignorant,
it doesn’t sing songs,
no lie,
it has nothing to tell you.

My two eyes
are maps of the planet—
I see everything
and nothing upsets me.

…

besides being no one,
know that I am you
and everybody.

~Thomas Merton, excerpted from “The Secret”

…the lines that touched my heart deeply…

(Photo by Marciej Duczynski)

“You can never love another person unless you are equally involved in the beautiful but difficult spiritual work of learning to love yourself. There is within each of us, at the soul level, an enriching fountain of love. In other words, you do not have to go outside yourself to know what love is. This is not selfishness, and it is not narcissism; they are negative obsessions with the need to be loved. Rather this is the wellspring of love within the heart. Through their need for love, people who lead solitary lives often stumble upon this great fountain. They learn to whisper awake the deep well of love within. This is not a question of forcing yourself to love yourself. It is more a question of exercising reserve, of inviting the wellspring of love that is after all, your deepest nature to flow through your life. When this happens, the ground that has hardened within you grows soft again.

…This makes you independent. You are now able to come close to the other, not out of need or with the wearying apparatus of projection, but out of genuine intimacy, affinity, and belonging. It is a freedom. Love should make you free. You become free of the hungry, blistering need with which you continually reach out to scrape affirmation, respect, and significance for yourself from things and people outside yourself. To be holy is to be home, to be able to rest in the house of belonging that we call the soul.”

~John O’Donohue, from ‘Anam Cara’

Thanks very much to My Inner Edge for this…

(Photo by Maciej Duczynski)

(Photo by magda.indigo)

So what is there to realize?

Peonies bloom on peony trees.
A cat doesn’t become a chicken.
Tulips are tulips, not roses.
Why can’t we realize this true fact?
That to be me is great.
I don’t have to be anyone but me.
I am blooming as I am in my life, just as a peony blooms on a peony tree.
Further, a beautiful peony flower does not worry about when it will wilt and fall to the ground.
It does not compete with the flower next to it;
rather it blooms with its whole self.

~Sensei Ogui
from “Zen Shin Talks”