There is Peace Beyond All
There exists something that fits nowhere
and yet is in no way remarkable
and yet is decisive
and yet is outside it all.
There exists something which is noticed just when it is not noticeable
(like silence)
and is not noticed just when it becomes noticeable
for then it is mistaken (like silence) for something else.
See the waves under the sky. Storm is surface
and storm our way of seeing.
(What do I care for the waves or the seventh wave.)
There is an emptiness between the waves:
Look at the sea. Look at the stones of the field.
There is an emptiness between the stones:
They did not break loose—they did not throw themselves here,
They lie there and exist—a part of the rock sheath.
So make yourself heavy—make use of your dead weight,
let it break you, let it throw you, fall down,
let it leave you shipwrecked on the rock!
(What do I care about the rock.)
There are universes, suns, and atoms.
There is a knowledge, carefully built on strong points.
There is a knowledge, unprotected, built on insecure emptiness.
There is an emptiness between universes, suns, and atoms.
(What do I care about universes, suns, and atoms.)
There is an odd viewpoint on everything
in this double life.
There is peace beyond all.
There is peace behind all.
There is peace inside all.
Concealed in the hand.
Concealed in the pen.
Concealed in the ink.
I feel peace everywhere.
I smell peace behind everything.
I see and hear peace inside everything,
monotonous peace beyond everything.
(What do I care about peace.)
~Gunnar Ekelöf, from ‘Variations’, trans. by Robert Bly
(Photo by Martin Rak)
If you ignore its profundity,
you can never practice stillness.
Like the Great Void, it is Perfect and lacks nothing,
nor has any excess.
If you discriminate,
you will miss its suchness.
Cling not to external causes,
nor stay in the Void.
Differentiation ceases if you can be impartial.
Stillness comes when all disturbances are stopped,
clinging to stillness is also a mistake.
If you cling to opposites,
how will you know the One?
~Jianzhi Sengcan Third Patriarch of Zen (僧璨, d. 606), Verses on the Faith In Mind (Xin xin ming - 信心銘)
(Photo by Roman Putincev)
This World
This world
A fading
Mountain echo
Void and
Unreal
Within
A light snow
Three Thousand Realms
Within those realms
Light snow falls
As the snow
Engulfs my hut
At dusk
My heart, too
Is completely consumed
~Ryokan
(Photo by hobopeeba)
We sleep in God’s unconsciousness.
We wake in God’s open hand.
We weep God’s rain.
We laugh God’s lightning.
Fighting and peacefulness
both take place within God.
Who are we then
in this complicated world-tangle,
that is really just the single, straight
line down at the beginning of ALLAH?
Nothing.
We are
emptiness.
* * *
When you are with everyone but me,
you’re with no one.
When you are with no one but me,
you’re with everyone.
Instead of being so bound up with everyone,
be everyone.
When you become that many, you’re nothing.
Empty.
~Rumi
(Photo by Sergey Braga)
Wind and Water and Stone
The water hollowed the stone,
the wind dispersed the water,
the stone stopped the wind.
Water and wind and stone.
The wind sculpted the stone,
the stone is a cup of water,
The water runs off and is wind.
Stone and wind and water.
The wind sings in its turnings,
the water murmurs as it goes,
the motionless stone is quiet.
Wind and water and stone.
One is the other and is neither:
among their empty names
they pass and disappear,
water and stone and wind.
~Octavio Paz
(Photo by Kat08glow)
Earth, mountains, rivers - hidden in this nothingness.
In this nothingness - earth, mountains, rivers revealed.
Spring flowers, winter snows:
There’s no being or non-being, nor denial itself.
~ Saisho (? - 1506),(trans. by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto)
(Photo: by Marcel Buerkle)
Dancing Emptiness
You are the One which is aware
of the awareness of objects and ideas.
You are the One that is even more silent than awareness.
You are the Life which precedes the concept of life.
Your nature is silence and it is not attainable,
It always Is.
You are Emptiness, the ultimate Substance:
removing Emptiness out of Emptiness
leaves only Emptiness because there is nothing beyond It.
Emptiness is between “is” and “is not”
and nothing is out of this Emptiness so it is the Fullness.
To be Free, you need the firm conviction
that you are this Substratum, this Peace, this Emptiness.
All rises from,
dances about in,
and returns to
This.
As Ocean rises as a wave to dance,
so you are this Dancing Emptiness!
~Sri H. W. L. Poonja (Papaji), from ‘Prose and Poetry of Dancing Emptiness’
(Photo: by corneilla)
Original Face is the reality of realities:
Stretch your hand to the winging bird.
Vertical nose, horizontal eyes - and then?
What if your mind is empty?
~Tokugaku
(Photo: by moaan)
Emptiness
where all is possible
silence
where all sound is born
stillness
the birth of all movement
Empty us out of ourselves
Darkness
the keeper of light
mystery
the place of unfoldment
surrender
embracing bold faith
Empty us out of ourselves
Fear
believing we are lost
fear
believing we are separate
fear
forgetting that story is born of mystery
Empty us out of ourselves
Love
returning me to my heart
love
returning you to yours
love
all that is left to hold
Hearing the silence
still in the arms of expansive breath
here among the shards of earth
may all the tears
Empty us out of ourselves.
~Donna Sherman, Ayin
(Photo via www.citypictures.net)
Thanks to the wonderful urmi7
At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by illusion, a point of pure truth, a point or spark which belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal, from which God disposes of our live, which is inaccessable to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.
~Thomas Merton (1915 - 1968)
(Photo: Night flowers … by Dimitar Lazarov)
We can only express our reality negatively, never positively. What we are fundamentally is our absence. And when you ask how can you experience your absence, you cannot experience it, because it is in the absence of the experiencer. Your absence is your wholeness. When obliged to give a description, one could say, “It is a feeling without feeling it.”
-Jean Klein
(photo by -JosephB-)
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