where did you find such
wisdom? – I asked Hafiz, who
said: oh, love, you know!SRM – MM Haiku 63 Day 93
Tag: meditation
Only now
often here before
but never seen like this nor
to be seen thus moreSRM – MM Haiku 58 Day 88
Creative imagination
Whose the artistic
imagination that wrought
starlit universe?SRM – MM Haiku 40 Day 70
In light
heard before seen yet
I knew immediately
she played bathed in lightSRM – MM Haiku 37 Day 67
Allegiances
Allegiances
It is time for all the heroes to go home
if they have any, time for all of us common ones
to locate ourselves by the real things
we live by.Far to the north, or indeed in any direction,
strange mountains and creatures have always lurked –
elves, goblins, trolls, and spiders: – we
encounter them in dread and wonder,But once we have tasted far streams, touched the gold,
found some limit beyond the waterfall,
a season changes, and we come back, changed
but safe, quiet, grateful.Suppose an insane wind holds all the hills
while strange beliefs whine at the traveler’s ears,
we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love
where we are, sturdy for common things.William Stafford
The Way It Is – New & Selected Poems
A few key dates in William Stafford’s life: born in Kansas in 1914. A conscientious objector in World War II. A man whose habit was to write something daily, who would rise at 4.30am to ‘sit and wait’ for what he knew lay within to be written. His volume West of Your City published by Talisman Press in 1960; Allegiances published by Harper in New York in 1970; the author of over fifty books, he died at his home in Oregon in 1993.
William Stafford thoroughly understood that once we have tasted far streams … / found some limit beyond the waterfall, / a season changes, and we come back, changed …
And therein lies our hope for this old world in our own time and season.
Dreadful elves, goblins, trolls and spiders have always existed. Some of them, some of us too, have sought to be ‘heroes’ – fenced around by their and our own ignorance. It is time for all the heroes to go home.
How then may I and we locate ourselves by the real things / we live by – ?
Perhaps – having tasted – it has always to start with me, with what I now clearly see: that instead of kidding myself it’s my job to change the entire world (whoever I am, whatever my place of birth, gender, skin colour, creed or lack thereof, and wherever on earth I think myself called to be the hero, the unsolicited ‘saviour of the world’) my best contribution to that same world will be to allow seasons and experience to change me.
While strange beliefs whine at the traveler’s ears,
we ordinary beings can cling to the earth and love
where we are, sturdy for common things.
Note sturdy. Not wimps without cogniscence of – or willingness sometimes to act upon – right or wrong. Not people who turn blind eyes to goblins and trolls. Not people who do not grieve, or hope, or offer healing or hospitality, or pray, or live and die. But sturdy. Believing in the possibility of being positively changed. Experienced in the quiet and slow methods and the poetry of seasons.
I am grateful for …
click photos to enlarge – a second time to zoom further
… lingers awhile along borders for a translator to savor secretly,
borrowing from both sides, holding
for a moment the smooth round world
in that cool instant of evening before the sun goes downWilliam Stafford
from Walking the Borders
The Way It Is – New and Selected Poems
I write a few lines in my meditation journal each day, and from time to time review what I’ve written – looking for patterns and repetitions. One of the most frequent notes that appears in the ‘I am grateful for …’ sections is what I often describe as ‘nature’s art and light’.
And I realise that the poets I regularly turn to have eyes and ears for the detail in the natural wonders that surround them; some having especial penchant for the sky, or sea, or lakes, or mountains, or sweeping plains, or animals and their particular, chosen, encouraged or given habitats, flora and fauna. I delight in all of these.
But most of all I am entranced by light, always changing, writing, painting, softening, sharpening, defining, reaching, touching, listening – full from earth to sky with metaphor and parable, reaching onwards, upwards, and into the heights and depths of the Universe. And into my soul.
So it was during our after-supper walk this evening. So it was a million aeons ago. So for a million, million more. Meditating in and upon light I stand time and again in awe.
Examine for a while
I have learned from long experience that there is nothing that is not marvellous and that the saying of Aristotle is true – that in every natural phenomenon there is something wonderful, nay, in truth, many wonders. We are born and placed among wonders and surrounded by them, so that to whatever object the eye first turns, the same is wonderful and full of wonders, if only we would examine it for a while.
John de Dondis, 14th century
quoted in J S Collis
The Worm Forgives The Plough, 1973, p170
Plenty of reason to have a good English moan about continuing rainfall today – or to sit down to a meditation session, having first noticed the magnificent, soaring canvas of clouds in every shade and hue of grey on high, and the all-the-more-glorious advent of sunlight from time to time, so that the potatoes in our kitchen garden are both moistened and warmed, beneath the chunter and fuss of thirty or so disgruntled sparrows who don’t appear to like rain much. Or meditation.
Open your eyes gently and focus upon just one wonder for a while, breathed the guide – in the fourteenth century. And I did – on this wet July day in the twenty-first. And as it turned out there was no moaning about the rain. Or anything else.
Questions and no answers
Make no mistake, I only achieve simplicity with enormous effort. As long as I have questions and no answers I’ll keep on writing.
Clarice Lispector
Hour of the Star
There’s no music without depth of silence upon which to paint notes. Often I have shared my love of ‘silent music’ – the spaces in between. Absence of answers, the unfinished, the infinite, the eternal, the questions – are as important to me as expressed chords and symphonies, every bit as important to me as the words I yearn to read, and shape upon my tongue, and set down upon a page, and have engraved upon my heart, occupying my days and nights, my soul-work, my love, my leisure.
It’s not arriving, or the making of judgments, proclamations, speeches or songs that draws me towards the eternal. It’s living with questions that have no trite answers. Writing, reading, making poetry and prayer, long-savouring notes and words, meditating before the great backdrop of silence. Effort. Gratitude. Occasionally glimpsing an Eden of simplicity.
Anchored to the Infinite
The builder who first bridged Niagara’s gorge,
Before he swung his cable, shore to shore,
Sent out across the gulf his venturing kite
Bearing a slender cord for unseen hands
To grasp upon the further cliff and draw
A greater cord, and then a greater yet;
Till at the last across the chasm swung
The cable then the mighty bridge in air!So we may send our little timid thought
Across the void, out to God’s reaching hands—
Send out our love and faith to thread the deep—
Thought after thought until the little cord
Has greatened to a chain no chance can break,
And we are anchored to the Infinite!Edwin Markham
The Shoes of Happiness and Other Poems, 1929
Whether we conceive of the infinite religiously or not, metaphorical bridge-building is, consciously or unconsciously, the stuff of human life – billions, trillions of ‘timid thoughts’ sent out into void and – somehow caught, transformed, transfigured, vivified and made strong enough to reach deeply into present-day aliveness, here and now.
I love to be aware of this bridge-building consciously, daily, awake, in returning again and again to the silent music of meditation. And – joy of joys – anyone can do it, anywhere. Just by sitting quietly. Just by breathing. Threading the deep. Yes, indeed, in The Shoes of Happiness.
Perspective
click image to enlarge
Here’s a photo of my study made earlier today, the sun streaming through the windows, shortly after a snowfall – seen through a kaleidoscopic lens filter – the multi-perspective possibilities through which are infinite. What immense depth lies just beyond what we usually ‘see’. What wonderment, praise and awe are forthcoming when I still myself – even if only very briefly each day – to meditate upon the intricate extra-ordinariness of our life and experience in this world, and the universe in which it spins. I love it. Plain sight, or kaleidoscopic art and reach, this is quite a place to be!
Rumour
Responding to tonight’s tragedy, Berlin Police requested via Twitter that streets be kept clear for emergency services and that people ‘do not spread rumours.’ Good counsel. For as though the incident is not tragic enough, some of the stories we rehearse in our heads are worse.
Tittle-tattle poisons. Abetted by constant media chatter, swept along by an inchoate racket, we struggle with disconnected stories we tell ourselves. Fearful, we know we are living under par and seek quick answers. For the umpteenth time, we imagine apocalypse come upon us.
We must learn to quiet our rumours. Enter the universal gift of meditation – stilling over-active ‘monkey’ minds. Mental chatter is often no more than unconscious shrieking – ungoverned swinging from one thought-branch to another. Conscious observation is required.
Meditation to the rescue! As we learn simply to observe the fantastic tales authored in our heads, we equip ourselves to deal with the actual stories of life. Quietly watching the ticker tape of thoughts that do not require reaction or response preserves energy for those that do.
Meditation trains us in the practice of discernment. Imagined stories teach our brains to live in life’s real stories – but it is only the actual ones we need to act upon, not the ticking ticker tape. We are not required to know, still less to act upon teacher’s passing thoughts on her way to class.
We need not waste energy with rumour. Meditation keeps mental streets clear so that we deal better with real life. Anyone, anywhere, here and now. Universal – neither guru nor joining fee required – meditation affords the gift of quiet consciousness, and befriends it.
Hollowed out
Can even a little peace be breathed into human existence today?
Can a willed intention for light amid the darkness of the present world’s confusion and fear, grief, haplessness and hopelessness make the slightest difference? Do my prayer, contemplation and meditation heal or illuminate anything beyond my soul at all?
I don’t know.
Only that I must pray, contemplate and meditate. The not knowing facilitates kinship with the millions most desperately in need of peace-light (and food, drink, safety and shelter) tonight. And I have a pervading feeling that if hollowed-out humanity were ever able to surrender some of its ‘knowing’ to accepting and tolerant living, we might yet thrive and grow within the embrace of Wisdom – way deeper and beyond the confining walls of religious houses and capitols.
Wishful thinking? OK. But today I heard a seven-year-old girl bombed out of her home and frightened beyond any measure of decency, thanking those who have shown an interest in her story. Yes. I wish. I wish. I wish.
The know-all will make nothing great again, at all.