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I may delete here too eventually. Feeling Amma calling me to make some changes and get really focused on the goal. Goofing off on the Internet - or putting my thoughts and feelings up for validation - is not serving my evolution. Journalling is not really ideal for me in that I spend too much time in my head as it is. I do better to keep up on my sadhana, jump up and down, go running, etc. My hunger for connection on the Internet has been symptomatic of an inner state of disconnect and attachment to an illusion of unlovedness. As I heal that disconnect, these sites pull less on me.

I love you all.

What is, is.

We mistake attachment for love. Love is the center and attachment is in the periphery. Be in the center. — Amma

I'm migrating over here, I think. :)

Hum

What is this dark hum among the roses?
The bees have gone simple, sipping,
that's all. What did you expect? Sophistication?
They're small creatures and they are
filling their bodies with sweetness, how could they not
moan in happiness? The little
worker bee lives, I have read, about three weeks.
Is that long? Long enough, I suppose, to understand
that life is a blessing. I have found them — haven't you? —
stopped in the very cups of the flowers, their wings
a little tattered — so much flying about, to the hive,
then out into the world, then back, and perhaps dancing,
should the task be to be a scout-sweet, dancing bee.
I think there isn't anything in this world I don't
admire. If there is, I don't know what it is. I
haven't met it yet. Nor expect to. The bee is small,
and since I wear glasses, so I can see the traffic and
read books, I have to
take them off and bend close to study and
understand what is happening. It's not hard, it's in fact
as instructive as anything I have ever studied. Plus, too,
it's love almost too fierce to endure, the bee
nuzzling like that into the blouse
of the rose. And the fragrance, and the honey, and of course
the sun, the purely pure sun, shining, all the while, over
all of us.

- Mary Oliver

Love is to live, and life is love. Be love. Be love.

Wanting is not love. Love is to witness unfolding.
Love is beyond wanting. Love is free.

- Parvati, "911-1-LOVE", from her album "Yoga in the Nightclub"

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

- Mary Oliver

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, Words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; Words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

( poem by Mary Oliver )

( a parable by Thich Nhat Hanh )

Non-Duality

The bell tolls at four in the morning.
I stand by the window,
barefoot on the cool floor.
The garden is still dark.
I wait for the mountains and rivers to reclaim their shapes.
There is no light in the deepest hours of the night.
Yet, I know you are there
in the depth of the night,
the immeasurable world of the mind.
You, the known, have been there
ever since the knower has been.
 
The dawn will come soon,
 and you will see
 that you and the rosy horizon
 are within my two eyes.
 It is for me that the horizon is rosy
 and the sky blue.
 Looking at your image in the clear stream,
 you answer the question by your very presence.
 Life is humming the song of the non-dual marvel.
 I suddenly find myself smiling
 in the presence of this immaculate night.
 I know because I am here that you are there,
 and your being has returned to show itself
 in the wonder of tonight's smile.
 In the quiet stream,
 I swim gently.
 The murmur of the water lulls my heart.
 A wave serves as a pillow
 I look up and see
 a white cloud against the blue sky,
 the sound of Autumn leaves,
 the fragrance of hay-
 each one a sign of eternity.
 A bright star helps me find my way back to myself.

I know because you are there that I am here.
The stretching arm of cognition
in a lightning flash,
joining together a million eons of distance,
joining together birth and death,
joining together the known and the knower.

In the depth of the night,
as in the immeasurable realm of consciousness,
the garden of life and I
remain each other's objects.
The flower of being is singing the song of emptiness.

The night is still immaculate,
but sounds and images from you
have returned and fill the pure night.
I feel their presence.
By the window, with my bare feet on the cool floor,
I know I am here
for you to be.

This poem is about an insight related to vijnanavada. It is a difficult poem, fit to be explained in a course on vijnanavada. You are there for me, and I am here for you. That is the teaching of interbeing. The term interbeing was not yet used at that time. Although we think of the Avatamsaka when we hear the term interbeing,the teaching of interbeing also has its roots in vijttanavada, because in vijnanavada, cognition always includes subject and object together. Consciousness is always consciousness of something.

~Thich Nhat Hanh

When Death Comes

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps his purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering;
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was a bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

- Mary Oliver

Morning Poem

Every morning

the world

is created.

Under the orange

sticks of the sun

the heaped

ashes of the night

turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---

and the ponds appear

like black cloth

on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.

If it is your nature

to be happy

you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination

alighting everywhere.

And if your spirit

carries within it

the thorn

that is heavier than lead ---

if it's all you can do

to keep on trudging ---

there is still

somewhere deep within you

a beast shouting that the earth

is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies

is a prayer heard and answered

lavishly,

every morning,

whether or not

you have ever dared to be happy,

whether or not

you have ever dared to pray.

from Dream Work (1986) by Mary Oliver

I'm starting to populate my friends list in a fairly haphazard manner between, um, doing work at the office. If you were on my FL in the other place and aren't on it here, don't assume anything - I probably just didn't get around to you. Feel free to hop on and I'll reciprocate. :)

I am open, ready and willing
to completely release,
through all time and space,
all attachments to impossibilities co-creations.

I AM open, ready, and willing to be completely restructured around the positive possibilities of being me.

I AM.

I AM.

I AM.

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dancing light

Yes, I deleted my LJ

quote that came up today

Hi

Hum

Be love

Wild Geese

Elizabeth Alexander's inaugural poem

The Sun

( poem by Mary Oliver )

The River and the Clouds

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Non-Duality

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Hi

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this one must repeat

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June 2010

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