Who (be quiet) Are You?

(Photographer:  Yang Yankang, Buddhism in Tibet, 2007)

Grace

There is a stillness
simpler than silence
a peace deeper
than calm.
There is a shimmering
in the dark soil,
shades of trees,
in old moss, and the twisted
forms of branches,
that hold us, carry us
and nurture us.
In the flash of the eye,
laughter, or a tear.
No effort needed, no self to seek,
just grace remains.

~Svein Myreng

(Photo by Olga Maleeva)

(Photo by Anima Fotografie)

Urmi7:

Treading along in this dreamlike, illusory world,
Without looking for the traces I may have left;
A cuckoo’s song beckons me to return home -
Hearing this, I tilt my head to see
Who has told me to run backwards;
But do not ask me where I am heading,
As I travel in this limitless world
Where every step I take is my home.

~Eihei Dogen 

Translated by Steven Heine

Dedicated to dear and tender noornalini

{photo by Michele Ferrato}

Thank you my dear….

Look, and it can’t be seen.
Listen, and it can’t be heard.
Reach, and it can’t be grasped.

Above, it isn’t bright.
Below, it isn’t dark.
Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can’t know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.

~Stephen Mitchell’s translation of Laozi, Dao De Jing 14

(Photo by Vadim Trunov)

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born. 

Even with the summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world. 

All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say. 

All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard. 

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.

~David Whyte, from ‘The Winter of Listening’

(Painting by Zou Chuan’an)

If You Seek …

If you seek a heavenly light
I, Solitude, am your professor!

I go before you into emptiness,
Raise strange suns for your new mornings,
Opening the windows
Of your innermost apartment.

When I, loneliness, give my special signal
Follow my silence, follow where I beckon!
Fear not, little beast, little spirit
(Thou word and animal)
I, Solitude, am angel
And have prayed in your name.

Look at the empty, wealthy night
The pilgrim moon!
I am the appointed hour,
The “now” that cuts
Time like a blade.

I am the unexpected flash
Beyond “yes,” beyond “no,”
The forerunner of the Word of God.

Follow my ways and I will lead you
To golden-haired suns,
Logos and music, blameless joys,
Innocent of questions
And beyond answers:
For I, Solitude, am thine own self:
I, Nothingness, am thy All.
I, Silence, am thy Amen!

~Thomas Merton

(Photo : ‘Freedom’ by Andrej Safhalter)

“Wings” by Maria Gorbatova

by Edmondo Senatore

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

~T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets 1: Burnt Norton

(Photo by lucian olteanu)

Things go on and on. Even after their tree

Has splintered and fallen in the night, once

Dawn has come, the birds can do nothing but sing.

~Robert Bly, ‘Bach’s B Minor Mass’

(Photo by vadlen)

We pray for our life of tomorrow,
      Ephemeral life though it be;
This is the habit of our mind
      That passed away yesterday.

~ Ikkyu

(Photo by Jure Kravanja)

On this tree is a bird: it dances in the joy of life.
None knows where it is: and who knows what the burden of its
music may be?
Where the branches throw a deep shade, there does it have its
nest: and it comes in the evening and flies away in the morning,
and says not a word of that which it means.
None tell me of this bird that sings within me.
It is neither coloured nor colourless: it has neither form nor
outline:
It sits in the shadow of love.
It dwells within the Unattainable, the Infinite, and the Eternal;
and no one marks when it comes and goes.
Kabîr says: “O brother Sadhu! deep is the mystery. Let wise men
seek to know where rests that bird.”

~Kabir, trans. by Rabindranath Tagore

(Photo by chiga)