Silence
How can we find our rest in restless things,
In play and dreams to which desire clings?
If happiness you want, then close your eyes;
Silence is gold; and Peace is Paradise.
No heaviness is felt, no noise is heard;
Yet in this naught: God’s Presence and His Word.
~Frithjof Schuon, Road to the Heart, page 96.
(Photo by Alexander S. Kunz)
One and the Same
Spaces
Space
No center, no above, no below
Ceaselessly devouring and engendering itself
Whirlpool space
And drop into height
Spaces
Clarities steeply cut
Suspended
By the night’s flank
Black gardens of rock crystal
Flowering on a rod of smoke
White gardens exploding in the air
Space
One space opening up
Corolla
And dissolving
Space in space
All is nowhere
Place of impalpable nuptials
~Octavio Paz, trans. by Johannes Beilharz
(Photo by Sergei Chubarov)
Enough
Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath,
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.
Until now.
~David Whyte
(Photo by Kathy S. Gillentine)
the past is long gone
from here
there is no way back
how could there be
the present is over too quickly
for feeble desires
to have any effect
except to hide peace
the future races ahead
forever out of reach
of dreamy wishes
and useless plans
and yet when I rest
in the endless now
every need is satisfied
in ways never imagined
~Nirmala, from ‘Gifts With No Giver’
(Photo by Gleb Tarro)
“The truth is that the more ourselves we are, the less self is in us.”
~Meister Eckhart, (from The Transcendent Imperative)
(Photo by Andris Eglitis)
Void is Form
When, just as they are,
White dewdrops gather
On scarlet maple leaves,
Regard the scarlet beads!
Form is Void
The tree is stripped,
All color, fragrance gone,
Yet already on the bough,
Uncaring spring!
~Ikkyu (1394-1481)
(Photo by Jeffrey Sinnock)
Let us say you are aware of a particular body sensation. You feel your body is warm or cold, or you feel a certain emotional state. The moment you are conscious of a perception, you are automatically outside it, meaning there is no longer any involvement or identification with the perceived. In this sense of non-involvement or “letting-be,” you may become aware of silence. But this blank state, this absence of thought, is still an object of which you are aware.
So the question may arise, “To whom does this blank state belong?” When this question comes up, there is a stop. And there comes a spontaneous switch-over from accenting the blank state, the object, to accenting the perceiver, the subject. And as the perceiver is without an image, as the perceiver can never be perceived, you find nothing to refer to. You are totally open, open for a response. You are now at the threshold of being.
~Jean Klein, from The Ease of Being, pp.64-65, Thanks to Sat Sangha Salon.
(Photo by Caras Ionut)
The Secret Sits
We dance around in a ring and suppose.
But the secret sits in the middle and knows.
~Robert Frost, from ‘A Witness Tree’, 1942
(Photo by Natalya Ova)
Only insentient beings hear the sermon of insentient beings;
Walls and fences cannot instruct the grasses and trees to
actualize spring,
Yet they reveal the spiritual without intention, just by being
what they are,
So too with mountains, rivers, sun, moon, and stars.
~Dogen, Translated by Steven Heine, The Zen Poetry of Dogen, 1997, p. 141
(Photo by Kittiwut Chuamrassamee)
Above, below and around you, all is
Spontaneously exisitng, for
There is nowhere which is
Outside Buddha-Mind.
~Huang Po
(Photo: Unpenji, Shikoku, Japan, 2003 - by Michael Kenna)
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)
The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there
~Yasutani Roshi
(Photo by Patrick Zephyr)
O sweet spontaneous
O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
purient philosophers pinched
and
poked
thee
,has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy
beauty .how
oftn have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and
buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true
to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest
them only with
spring)
~ e e cummings (Thanks for this poem to the beautiful peacefulpresence blog)
(Photo by Mieke Boynton)
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