Quoteslist
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Quotes
Quotes and poems that are beautiful, funny, or poignant, and how people relate to them
Add your own, and add comments on how you connect to quotes!
Goals: Connect people with others who have similar taste in quotes or who liked similar quotes 10 years ago. (Find an older version of yourself!). Wise quotes are wise because they apply to many different human experiences, across people, space, and time. Gather comments from many people on how wise quotes applied to their lives (do this for various wisdom texts, e.g. the Tao Te Ching, the Bible). Connect related wise quotes from across different cultures/times that speak of the same truth in different words
Table of Contents
- Quotes & Poems Lists
- Jacob
- Michael Norman
- Add Your Own Favorites!
- See also: Life Changing Books, Quotes, and More
Quotes & Poems Lists
Jacob
Annotations on “On Work” ~Kahlil Gibran (Graph)
"Work is love made visible." ~On Work, Kahlil Gibran
For to be idle is to... to step out of life's procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
– I think often of the metaphor of surfing —
work is like catching the waves
“The whispering of the hours” — the hours have energy that there is to be channeled — this is the essence of tai chi to me, recognizing that, inside you, outside you, all around you, everywhere, there is energy not your own to be channeled
“It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy,
even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.”
“It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit”
“And all work is empty save when there is love” ~On Work, Kahlil Gibran
He who works with his hands and his head is a craftsman.
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist.” ~Saint Francis of Assisi
“the wind speaks not more sweetly to the giant oaks than to the least of all the blades of grass;
And he alone is great who turns the voice of the wind into a song made sweeter by his own loving.”
As the crickets soft hum is to us, so are we to the trees ~Gary Snyder
When mind is chaotic
Scrabbling for nature
Sometimes I forget that Earth is here just inches below the pavement
~Jacob
[“I have left the world of Right and Wrong and instead focus on what keeps the love flowing.” ~Cristina Casanova, marriage counselor
Everything people say or do is either an expression of love or a cry for love.
Tags:, lifeChanging
I am the creativity
I am the dance step of the paintbrush singing
I am the sculpture of the song
the flame breath of words
giving new life to paper
Yes, I am the creativity that never dies
I am the creativity keeping my people alive
~Alexis De Veaux
“Like needlepoint, the meticulous art, I am pulled through and through, looping back upon myself in an embroidery of endless thread; I spin outward in expanding patterns, amplified as my parts reflect from one another. I write to answer the soft hiss and clack of spinning wool, to keep the wheel rolling, to keep the skein smooth. I write because I am the cloth woven of its own unravelings, circling through the loom to create a changing whole.”
~Ben LaBreche, “Why I Write”
12 neocortex Haloed apes in a circle / Inventing 0 / each moment practicing the presence of God #poem
~Franz Wright
The Only Path to Serenity
Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people’s approval
and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.
~Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
(chapter nine, translation by Stephen Mitchell)
Tags:, lifeChanging
Isn’t it amazing that you don’t have to wait a single moment to start becoming the person you want to become?
Tags:, lifeChanging
“It is…" I trailed off, racking my brain to think how I could describe love without resorting to other, equally abstract terms.
“This is the nature of love," Vashet said. “To attempt to describe it will drive a woman mad. That is what keeps poets scribbling endlessly away. If one could pin it to the paper all complete, all others would lay down their pens. But it cannot be done"
She held up a finger. “But only a fool claims there’s no such thing as love…" ~Wise Man’s Fear #quote #book
“If I threw a rock at a cow and got a chicken, it means something happened.” (Explaining how we know quarks exist) ~Yvan Quinn #Quote #LOL #Physics
Asheville
The place I am right now has a lot to teach – walking on a trail around this lake, seeing the fireflies glimmer in the deepening twilight, listening to children laugh on a white sandy beach as they play in the lake, moving to sit down on a rough hewn wooden bench and stillness is effortless. I wish to find that which is essential to making it so easy to be still here and bring it into my life wherever I go
~Jacob
<>It’s not every day the world composes itself into a poem
I meditate one hour every day, except those days I am too busy. Those days I meditate two hours. ~Gandhi
Comment: To motivate myself to meditate, I ask myself: honestly, can I save more than 20 minutes today by taking 20 minutes to meditate? Can I save more than an hour over the course of the week by taking an hour to meditate?
#lifeChanging
Learning to meditate is like a soldier learning to put down his sword — it’s useless if you simply go and pick it up again when you are done ~Dalal Lama
Tags:, lifeChanging
"I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the dark and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story." ~Tim O’Brian
“There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” ~Henry David Thoreau
Tags:, lifeChanging
Find a happy person and you will find a project
Tags:, lifeChanging
That voice of wisdom small but deep
While standing in line
Tilt to head back and relax the ribs
To keep the connection
To the divine
Tags:, PostTaichi, poem, taichi
On Children ~Kahlil Gibran #poem
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Fantasia #poem
Here in Samarcand they offer emeralds,
Pure as frozen drops of sea-water,
Rubies, pale as dew-ponds stained with slaughter,
Where the fairies fought for a king's daughter
In the elfin upland.
Here they sell you jade and calcedony,
And the matrix of the turquoise,
Spheres of onyx held in eagles' claws,
But they keep the gems as far asunder
From the dull stones as the lightning from the thunder;
They can never come together
On the mats of Turkish leather
In the booths of Samarcand.
Here they sell you balls of nard and honey,
And squat jars of clarid butter,
And the cheese from Kurdistan.
When you offer Frankish money,
Then they scowl and curse and mutter,
Deep in Kurdish or Persan
For they want your heart out and my hand
In the booths of Samarcand.
They would sell your heart's blood separate,
In a jar with a gold brim,
With a text of burning hatred
Coiled around the rim;
They would sell my hand upon a beam of teak wood,
In the other scale a feather curled;
They would sell your heart upon a silver balance
Weighed against the world.
But your heart could never touch my hand,
They could never come together
On the mats of Turkish leather
In the booths of Samarcand.
~Duncan Campbell Scott
Shui diao ge tou
Poet: Su Shi #poem Chinese <>yutong
Redirect and neutralize the forces coming at me,
Inside and out.
Doing battle or dancing
It is my choice
~Jacob
Comment:
It is a fine line
Now I see the value of training the fighting as a way to learn to remain centered
Seeing my own internal stressors as opponents
Instead of engaging with an unproductive and painful process, return to engaging with the flows within me that are leading to healing — the circulation of qi
The flow of qi through the channels from foot to fingertip #best #qigong
Tags:, Poem, Haiku-ish
In the cold as ashok’s garage opens
All I see is peace and excitement and crisp Rochester’s snow
#Poem
The stuff I do automatically,
against my conscious intent,
is a fountain of energy
The ultimate surf to be ridden
Which moves me in spite of myself #Poem
Comment: Surfing is a plainer metaphor than most for what is really going on in the world
Tags:, lifeChanging
Muted muffled time-constrained friendships like our hearts are slowly going deaf
To the eagle
or to Spider-Man,
San Francisco a craggy mountain range
When you listen to the Dalai Lama or anybody and start to empathize with them you start to see their worldview. He brings to an auditorium the feeling that he thinks of the auditorium as another clearing in tibet, each person a disciple. In this way, through his expectations and his reframing of your personal story you are transformed to be as he sees you
Similarly, my mom thinks of everyone as little ones to be taken care of. Perhaps this is how she transforms people
“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.” ~Rumi
[
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/51296/ithaka-56d22eef917ec #poem ithaka ~cavafy @chase
On the Road Home
It was when I said,
“There is no such thing as the truth,”
That the grapes seemed fatter.
The fox ran out of his hole.
You...You said,
“There are many truths,
But they are not parts of a truth.”
Then the tree, at night, began to change,
Smoking through green and smoking blue.
We were two figures in a wood.
We said we stood alone.
It was when I said,
“Words are not forms of a single word.
In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts.
The world must be measured by eye”;
It was when you said,
“The idols have seen lots of poverty,
Snakes and gold and lice,
But not the truth”;
It was at that time, that the silence was largest
And longest, the night was roundest,
The fragrance of the autumn warmest,
Closest and strongest.
~Wallace Stevens
More (uncurated):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/13JE0qnozxGfWkSFD8mn45xwD-hJMFgKrJK8rcOglIDo
Michael Norman
(Note: %%% is the divider between quotes for future programmatic processing)
(from Copy of Michael Norman Quotes Doc – Copy of You Will Lose Everything – Parsed)
You Will Lose Everything
You will lose everything. Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memories. Your looks will go. Loved ones will die. Your body will fall apart. Everything that seems permanent is impermanent and will be smashed. Experience will gradually, or not so gradually, strip away everything that it can strip away. Waking up means facing this reality with open eyes and no longer turning away.
But right now, we stand on sacred and holy ground, for that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realising this is the key to unspeakable joy. Whoever or whatever is in your life right now has not yet been taken away from you. This may sound trivial, obvious, like nothing, but really it is the key to everything, the why and how and wherefore of existence. Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude.
Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar.
~ Jeff Foster%%% #impermanence #presentmoment #gratitude #joy
“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% #lies #trust
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% #dance #bedifferent #beweird
“It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% #funny
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% #morality #darkness
“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%%
Tags:, chaos, dance, creativity, beautiful
“In heaven, all the interesting people are missing.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% #funny
“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% #truth #illusions
“There are no facts, only interpretations.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%%
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% #individuality #integrity #selfawareness
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% #purpose #meaning #endurance #life
“We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once.” ~ Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche%%% #dance #celebrate
“No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life, no one but you yourself alone.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% #individuality #lifepath #journey
“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% #bedifferent #beweird #individuality
“Faith: not wanting to know what the truth is.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche%%% #faith #truth
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~ ROBERT FROST%%%
Tags:, lifepath, journey, bedifferent, beweird, individuality
There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words.
~Thomas Reid%%% #knowledge #communication #problem
A problem well stated is a problem half solved. ~ Charles Kettering%%% #communication #problem
Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is based on the idea of approximation. If a man tells you he knows a thing exactly, then you can be safe in inferring that you are speaking to an inexact man. ~ Bertrand Russell%%% #science #unknowing #knowledge
When you wake up in the morning, tell yourself: The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly. They are like this because they can’t tell good from evil. But I have seen the beauty of good, and the ugliness of evil, and have recognized that the wrongdoer has a nature related to my own — not of the same blood or birth, but of the same mind, and possessing a share of the divine. And so none of them can hurt me. No one can implicate me in ugliness. Nor can I feel angry at my relative, or hate him. We were born to work together like feet, hands, and eyes, like the two rows of teeth, upper and lower. To obstruct each other is unnatural. To feel anger at someone, to turn your back on him: these are obstructions. ~ Marcus Aurelius%%% #morality #humannature #divine #commonhumanity #anger #problem
“It is easier to act yourself into a new way of thinking, than it is to think yourself into a new way of acting.” ~ Millard Fuller%%% #action #thought #change #growth
“For a seed to achieve its greatest expression, it must come completely undone. The shell cracks, its insides come out and everything changes. To someone who doesn't understand growth, it would look like complete destruction.”~ Cynthia Occelli%%% #growth #change #transformation
I have been in love more times than one, thank the Lord.
Sometimes it was lasting whether active or not.
Sometimes it was all but ephemeral, maybe only an afternoon, but not less real for that.
They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,
or anyway beautiful people to me, of which
there are so many.
You, and you, and you, whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe missed.
Love, love, love, it was the core of my life, from which, of course, comes the word for the heart.
And, oh, have I mentioned that some of them were men and some were women
and some—now carry my revelation with you— were trees.
Or places.
Or music flying above the names of their makers.
Or clouds, or the sun which was the first, and the best, the most loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into my eyes, every morning.
So I imagine such love of the world—its fervency, its shining, its innocence and hunger to give of itself—
I imagine
this is how it began.
~ Mary Oliver%%% #love #impermanence #beauty #commonhumanity #heart #purpose
I know, you never intended to be in this world.
But you’re in it all the same.
So why not get started immediately.
I mean, belonging to it.
There is so much to admire, to weep over.
And to write music or poems about.
Bless the feet that take you to and fro.
Bless the eyes and the listening ears.
Bless the tongue, the marvel of taste.
Bless touching.
You could live a hundred years, it’s happened.
Or not.
I am speaking from the fortunate platform
of many years,
none of which, I think, I ever wasted.
Do you need a prod?
Do you need a little darkness to get you going?
Let me be as urgent as a knife, then,
and remind you of Keats,
so single of purpose and thinking, for a while,
he had a lifetime."
~ Mary Oliver%%% #purpose #meaning #beauty #art #gratitude #motivation #blessed
The Summer Day
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
~Mary Oliver%%% #creation #blessed #gratitude #nature #impermanence
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go."
~ Mary Oliver%%% #love #impermanence #letitgo #meaning
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%%% #love #tender #purpose #despair #imagination #opportunity #calling #home
Every year
the lilies
are so perfect
I can hardly believe
their lapped light crowding
the black,
mid-summer ponds.
Nobody could count all of them —
the muskrats swimming
among the pads and the grasses
can reach out
their muscular arms and touch
only so many, they are that
rife and wild.
But what in this world
is perfect?
I bend closer and see
how this one is clearly lopsided —
and that one wears an orange blight —
and this one is a glossy cheek
half nibbled away —
and that one is a slumped purse
full of its own
unstoppable decay.
Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled —
to cast aside the weight of facts
and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking
into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing —
that the light is everything — that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and fading. And I do.
~ Mary Oliver%%% #perfection #purpose #light #meaning #mystery
The heavens allowed me
To settle myself
On a small piece of land
Looking into the distance
Digging far down
I delight in my own freedom
All who come here
Feel the lids fall
From their eyes
This view
Of the world without end
There is nowhere to hide
~ Muso Soseki (1275-1351)%%% #freedom
Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.
Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.
Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.
Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.
All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You.
~ Hafiz%%% #love #unfamiliar #divine #new #happiness #home
Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.
Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,
a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.
~ Rainer Maria Rilke%%% #presence #core #center #peace
What does it mean to have integrity? It means many things, of course, but one criterion is to avoid behavior that readily leads to shame or remorse. The ethical terrain here extends well beyond the question of honesty — but to truly have integrity, we must not feel the need to lie about our personal lives.
To lie is to erect a boundary between the truth we are living and the perception others have of us. The temptation to do this is often born of an understanding that others will disapprove of our behavior. Often, there are good reasons why they would
Lying is, almost by definition, a refusal to cooperate with others. It condenses a lack of trust and trustworthiness into a single act. It is both a failure of understanding and an unwillingness to be understood. To lie is to recoil from relationship.
At least one study suggests that 10 percent of communication between spouses is deceptive. Another has found that 38 percent of encounters among college students contain lies. However, researchers have discovered that even liars rate their deceptive interactions as less pleasant than truthful ones. This is not terribly surprising: We know that trust is deeply rewarding and that deception and suspicion are two sides of the same coin. Research suggests that all forms of lying — including white lies meant to spare the feelings of others — are associated with poorer-quality relationships. ~ Sam Harriss%%% #integrity #honesty #lies #truth #trust #relationships
“Ordinary language is an accretion of lies. The language of literature must be, therefore, the language of transgression, a rupture of individual systems, a shattering of psychic oppression.”
~ Susan Sontag%%% #language #lies #transgression
“Nonage [immaturity] is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) ‘Have the courage to use your own understanding,’ is therefore the motto of the Enlightenment.” ~ Kant 1784%%% #understanding #courage #enlightenment
“If you can’t say it clearly, you don’t understand it yourself.” ~John Searle%%% #understanding #communication
Poets have never used the word balance, for good reason. First of all, it is too obvious and therefore untrustworthy; it is also a deadly boring concept and seems to speak as much to being stuck and immovable, as much as to harmony. There is also the sense of unbalancing that must take place in order to push a person into a new and larger set of circumstances. ~ David Whyte%%% #balance #change #individuality
THE JOURNEY
Above the mountains
the geese turn into
the light again
Painting their
black silhouettes
on an open sky.
Sometimes everything
has to be
inscribed across
the heavens
so you can find
the one line
already written
inside you.
Sometimes it takes
a great sky
to find that
first, bright
and indescribable
wedge of freedom
in your own heart.
Sometimes with
the bones of the black
sticks left when the fire
has gone out
someone has written
something new
in the ashes of your life.
You are not leaving.
Even as the light fades quickly now,
you are arriving.
~David Whyte%%% #freedom #journey #new #change #transformation #selfdiscovery
One of the difficulties of leaving a relationship is not so much, at the end, leaving the person themselves — because, by that time, you’re ready to go; what’s difficult is leaving the dreams that you shared together. And you know that somehow — no matter who you meet in your life in the future, and no matter what species of happiness you would share with them — you will never, ever share those particular dreams again, with that particular tonality and coloration. And so there’s a lovely and powerful form of grief there that is the ultimate of giving away but making space for another form of reimagination.
no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.
“all friendships of any length are based on a continued, mutual forgiveness”
FORGIVENESS is a heartache and difficult to achieve because strangely, it not only refuses to eliminate the original wound, but actually draws us closer to its source. To approach forgiveness is to close in on the nature of the hurt itself, the only remedy being, as we approach its raw center, to reimagine our relation to it. ~ David Whyte%%% #relationships #dreams #grief #reimagine #friendship #seeing #understanding #forgiveness #core #center
The truth is, rarely can a response make something better — what makes something better is connection. ~ Brene Brown%%% #connection #relationships
“Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger.” ~ Martha Nussbaum%%% #incomplete #emotion
“To forgive is to assume a larger identity than the person who was first hurt.” ~ Maria Popova%%% #forgiveness
there are 2 ways to live life: as if nothing is a miracle, or as if everything is a miracle ~ Albert Einstein%%% #miracle #attitude #gratitude
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 the 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 the 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%%% #death #curiosity #commonhumanity #time #eternity #perspective #wonder #love #lifeafterdeath
“Therefore, dear Sir, love your solitude and try to sing out with the pain it causes you. For those who are near you are far away... and this shows that the space around you is beginning to grow vast.... be happy about your growth, in which of course you can't take anyone with you, and be gentle with those who stay behind; be confident and calm in front of them and don't torment them with your doubts and don't frighten them with your faith or joy, which they wouldn't be able to comprehend. Seek out some simple and true feeling of what you have in common with them, which doesn't necessarily have to alter when you yourself change again and again; when you see them, love life in a form that is not your own and be indulgent toward those who are growing old, who are afraid of the aloneness that you trust.... and don't expect any understanding; but believe in a love that is being stored up for you like an inheritance, and have faith that in this love there is a strength and a blessing so large that you can travel as far as you wish without having to step outside it.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet%%% #solitude #growth #understanding #individuality #love #faith #blessing #commonhumanity #strength #internallife
“It is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical will live the relation to another as something alive.” ~ Rilke%%% #relationships #courage #open #willingness
“Lest we forget at least an over the shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology and history (and who is to know where mythology leaves off and history begins - or which is which), the very first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom - Lucifer.” ~ Saul Alinksy%%% #rebellion #radical
...those who are at war with the present have an eye for the seeds of change and the potentialities of small beginnings.%%% #change #beginnings
“If men are to wait for liberty till they become good and wise in slavery, they may indeed wait forever.” ~ Macaulay%%% #liberty #action #waiting
A grievance is most poignant when almost redressed. ~ Eric Hoffer%%%
Give your daughters difficult names.
Give your daughters names that command the full use of tongue.
My name makes you want to tell me the truth.
My name doesn’t allow me to trust anyone that cannot pronounce it right.
~ Warsan Shire%%% #name #truth #trust
“In preparing for battle, I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” ~ General Dwight D. Eisenhower%%% #plan #important
The greatest problems of life are not meant to be solved, they are meant to be outgrown. ~ Carl Jung%%% #growth #change #problem
We are not what happened to us, we are what we choose to become. ~ Carl Jung%%% #past #growth #individuality #overcome #transformation
The sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being. ~ Carl Jung%%% #purpose #existence #light #being
Where love rules, there is no will to power. Where power predominates, love is lacking. ~ Carl Jung%%% #love #power
A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them. ~Carl Jung%%% #overcome #passion #breakthrough
What you resist, persists. ~Carl Jung%%% #
The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely. ~ Carl Jung%%% #acceptance #wholeness
You do not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. ~Carl Jung%%% #enlightenment #consciousness #darkness #light #truth
Shame is a soul eating emotion. ~ Carl Jung%%% #shame #soul
The best political, social, and spiritual work you can do is to withdraw the projection of your shadow onto others. ~ Carl Jung%%% #projection #innerlife #truth
Theologians fail to see that it is not a matter of proving the existence of the light, but of blind people who do not know that their eyes could see. ~ Carl Jung%%% #light #truth #awaken #innereye #consciousness
No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.\n ~ Carl Jung%%% #growth #grounding #roots
I have longed for the
School of the Void,
To learn with my mind of ashes
To sit in Son.
Fame is fragile
As a clay rice-cake steamer
Even after success,
The effort for fame
Has been in vain.
Riches and honors,
Sought uselessly
The poor also have this affliction.
I have left my village home
And sleep calmly under pines.
~ Chin'gak Hyesim (1178-1234)%%% #void #emptiness #fame #success #vanity #escape
Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.
~ Louise Erdrich%%% #life #solitude #lifeworthliving #love #purpose #meaning #yolo
The second awakening is to know how much is enough. Even if you already have something, you set a limit for yourself for using it. So you should know how much is enough.
~ Dogen (1200-1253)%%% #awaken #enough #limits #boundaries
You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there are things to be considered…%%%
Where are you living?
What are you doing?
What are your relationships?
Are you in right relation?
Where is your water?
Know your garden.
It is time to speak your truth.
Create your community.
Be good to each other.
And do not look outside yourself for your leader.
This could be a good time! There is a river flowing now very fast. It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid. They will try to hold on to the shore. They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly. Know the river has its destination. The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle of the river, keep our eyes open, and our heads above the water.
And I say, see who is in there with you and celebrate. At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of all ourselves. For the moment that we do, our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt.
The time of the one wolf is over. Gather yourselves! Banish the word ’struggle’ from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.
~ Hopi Elders' Prophecy, June 8, 2000%%% #questioning #purpose #existential #relationships #truth #community #goodness #leadership #initiative #flow #enlightenment #letgo #uncertainty #growth #journey #attitude #celebrate #empowerment
If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,
Like this.
When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the night sky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this?
If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,
or what "God's fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face close.
Like this.
When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.
Like this?
If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don't try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Like this. Like this.
When someone asks what it means
to "die for love," point
here.
If someone asks how tall I am, frown
and measure with your fingers the space
between the creases on your forehead.
This tall.
The soul sometimes leaves the body, then returns.
When someone doesn't believe that,
walk back into my house.
Like this.
When lovers moan,
they're telling our story.
Like this.
I am a sky where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.
Like this.
When someone asks what there is to do,
light the candle in his hand.
Like this.
How did Joseph's scent come to Jacob?
Huuuu.
How did Jacob's sight return?
Huuuuu.
A little wind cleans the eyes.
Like this.
When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he'll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us.
Like this.
~ Rumi%%% #wonder #mystery #sex #love #miracles #spiritual #intimacy #surprise
I AM WILLING
Dear Ones:
Six months ago this week, Rayya died.
People keep asking me how I’m doing, and I’m not always sure how to answer that. It depends on the day. It depends on the minute. Right this moment, I’m OK. Yesterday, not so good. Tomorrow, we’ll see.
Here is what I have learned about Grief, though.
I have learned that Grief is a force of energy that cannot be controlled or predicted. It comes and goes on its own schedule. Grief does not obey your plans, or your wishes. Grief will do whatever it wants to you, whenever it wants to. In that regard, Grief has a lot in common with Love.
The only way that I can “handle” Grief, then, is the same way that I “handle” Love — by not “handling” it. By bowing down before its power, in complete humility.
When Grief comes to visit me, it’s like being visited by a tsunami. I am given just enough warning to say, “Oh my god, this is happening RIGHT NOW,” and then I drop to the floor on my knees and let it rock me. It’s a full-body experience. To resist it is to be brutalized by it. You just bow down — that’s all you CAN do — and you let this thing roll through your heart and body and mind, in all its vehemence.
How do you survive the tsunami of Grief?
By being willing to experience it, without resistance. By being willing to feel everything. By being willing to accept the unacceptable.
The conversation of Grief, then, is one of prayer-and-response.
Grief says to me: “You will never love anyone the way you loved Rayya.”
And I reply: “I am willing for that to be true.”
Grief says: “She’s gone, and she’s never coming back.”
I reply: “I am willing for that to be true.”
Grief says: “You will never see her walk in the door again.”
I say: “I am willing.”
Grief says: “You will never have access to her wisdom again.”
I say: “I am willing.”
Grief says: “You will never hear that laugh again.”
I say: “I am willing.”
Grief says, “You will never smell her skin again.”
I get down on the floor on my fucking knees, and — and through my sheets of tears — I say, “I AM WILLING.”
I am beginning to understand that Grief is not the same thing as Depression. Depression is unwilling. Grief is a MOVEMENT — catastrophic and mighty — that you ALLOW to rock you and spin you. Depression is refusal to feel. Depression is a refusal to move, or to be moved. Depression is resistance, and resistance is futile.
I am not depressed, in the wake of Rayya’s death. I am DESTROYED, but I am not depressed — but that’s only because I am willing to be destroyed.
I will live on, because I am WILLING. I am willing to take this life on God’s terms, not mine.
Love’s terms, not mine.
Grief’s terms, not mine.
I am willing to surrender to the reality that I will never understand any of this. I am even willing to accept that I may not ever fully heal from the loss of Rayya.
Grief says: “You may never recover from this”
And I say: “I am willing.”
This is the job of the living — to be willing to bow down before EVERYTHING that is bigger than you. And nearly everything in this world is bigger than you. Let your willingness be the only big thing about you.
My friend Martha Beck officiated the commitment ceremony last year for me and Rayya. I will never forget what she said on that day: “True love always liberates the beloved.”
Six months ago, I had to let Rayya go. It wasn’t up to me. It was brutal, and I was willing. I bowed down and wept. God’s will, not mine. But Rayya belonged to God before she belonged to me. She NEVER belonged to me, actually; I just loved her. And true love always liberates the beloved.
I am willing.
Two days ago — on the six month anniversary of Rayya’s death — Martha wrote me a letter. She said, “The spark of absolutely unique, inimitable energy that showed up as Rayya is no longer in form. I can’t wrap my head around it. What is she doing now? What is she BEING now? Death is every bit as common as life, and both utterly baffle me.”
Me, too. I am completely fucking baffled. I don’t understand Life any more than I understand Love or Death or Grief.
But I am willing to be here for the duration of the mystery. I am willing to be rocked by every last tsunami.
I don’t know what Rayya is doing or being now. That is not for me to know. I only know that I will love her forever. And I know what I am doing and what I am being:
I am willing.
Onward ~ Elizabeth Gilbert%%% #acceptance #grief #death #love #mystery #trust #God #allowing
"Cor" is the Latin word for heart. And courage is to speak one's mind by telling all one's heart" ~ Brene Brown%%% #courage #truth
"Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly."
~ Pablo Neruda%%%
Messenger
My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still not half-perfect?
Let me keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy to the moth and the wren,
to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is that we live forever.
~ Mary Oliver%%% #love #nature #aging #wonder #stillness #joy #gratitude #eternallife
“I have already lost touch with a couple of the people I used to be.”
~ Joan Didion%%% #transformation #change #evolve
God will not have his work manifest by cowards. ~ Emerson%%% #courage #God #goodworks
Thomas Merton - Letter to a young activist
https://revsponderings.wordpress.com/2013/10/16/thomas-merton-a-letter-to-a-young-activist/%%% #God #hope #faith #goodworks #trust #truth #service
the wounds have changed me. i am so soft with scars my skin breathes and beats stars. ~ Nayyirah Waheed%%% #wounds #resilience #beauty
i want more ‘men’ with flowers falling from their skin. more water in their eyes. more tremble in their bodies. more women in their hearts than on their hands. more softness in their height. more honesty in their voice. more wonder. more humility in their feet. ~ Nayyirah Waheed%%%
Tags:, vulnerability, men, relationships, truth, wonder, humility, tender, honesty
...can we speak in flowers. it will be easier for me to understand.
~ Nayyirah Waheed%%%%%% #language
If you are softer
Than before
they came
You
have been loved.
~Nayyirah Waheed%%% #love #vulnerability #relationships
It is being honest
About my
pain
That makes me
Invincible.
~ Nayyirah Waheed%%% #truth #honesty #wounds #resilience #strength
“I love myself”
The quietest.
simplest.
Most
Powerful.
Revolution
Ever.
~ Nayyirah Waheed%%% #love #selflove #change #transformation
“i don't pay attention to the
world ending.
it has ended for me
many times
and began again in the morning.”
~ Nayyirah Waheed%%% #overcome #resilience #strength
i walk into
a poem.
and walk out someone else.
~ Nayyirah Waheed%%% #change #transformation #poem
There is the calmness of the lake when there is not a breath of wind. . . . So it is with us. Sometimes we are clarified and calmed healthily, as we never were before in our lives, not by an opiate, but by some unconscious obedience to the all-just laws, so that we become like a still lake of purest crystal and without an effort our depths are revealed to ourselves. All the world goes by us and is reflected in our deeps. ~ Thoreau%%% #innerpeace #calm #obedience #selfawareness #depth
“Whether you like it or not, whether you know it or not, secretly Nature seeks and hunts and tries to ferret out the track in which God may be found.”
~ Meister Eckhart%%% #God #path #journey
Written at Yuan Tan-ch’ui’s Mountain Retreat%%%
An old friend who lives on Tung Mountain
Loves the beauty of valleys and hills.
In green spring, he rests in empty woods
And sleeps though the sun is high.
Pine wind rustles his collar and sleeve;
The deep, rocked pool cleanses heart and ear.
I envy this man who suffers no delusions,
His high pillow wreathed by green clouds.
~ Li Po%%% #nature #beauty #peace #cleanse #delusion
The moon's the same old moon,
The flowers exactly as they were,
Yet I've become the thingness
Of all the things I see!
~ Bunan (1602-1676)%%% #oneness #transformation #change #perspective
"I don't think I have ever seen a day like yesterday, and I am still dazzled by a dazzle that comes at me from all sides and from a source that I am not used to." ~Thomas Merton%%% #wonder #awe #perspective #new
A white flower grows in the quietness. Let your tongue become that flower. ~ Rumi%%% #silence
"Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment." ~ Rumi%%%
"Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~ Rumi%%%
Every child has known God,
Not the God of names,
Not the God of don'ts,
Not the God who ever does anything weird,
But the God who knows only 4 words.
And keeps repeating them, saying
"Come dance with Me... Come dance."
~ Hafiz%%%
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” ~ Marcel Proust%%%
Do not go to the garden of flowers o Friend! go not there;
In your body is the garden of flowers.
Take your seat on the thousand petals of the lotus,
and there gaze on the Infinite Beauty.
I came with my Lord to my Lord's home,
but I lived not with Him and I tasted Him not,
and my youth passed away like a dream.
On my wedding night my women friends sang in chorus,
and I was anointed with the unguents of pleasure and pain.
But when the ceremony was over,
I left my Lord and came away, and my kinsman tried to console me upon the road.
Kabir says "I shall go to my Lord's house with my love at my side;
then shall I sound the trumpet of triumph!”
KABIR says " O Sadhu! hear my deathless words.
If you want your own good, examine and consider them well.
You have estranged yourself from the Creator, of whom you have sprung\nyou have lost your reason, you have bought death.\nAll doctrines and all teachings are sprung from Him, from Him they grow.
Know this for certain, and have no fear.
Hear from me the tidings of this great truth!
Whose name do you sing, and on whom do you meditate?
O, come forth from this entanglement!
He dwells at the heart of all things, so why take refuge in empty desolation?
If you place the Guru at a distance from you, then it is but the distance that you honour
If indeed the Master be far away, then who is it else that is creating this world?
When you think that He is not here, then you wander further and further away,
and seek Him in vain with tears.
Where He is far off, there He is un- attainable.
Where He is near, He is very bliss.
Kabir says" Lest His servant should suffer pain He pervades him through and through."
Know yourself then, O Kabir ;
for He is in you from head to foot.
Sing with gladness, and keep your seat unmoved within your heart.
There is an endless world,
O my Brother!
and there is the Name- less Being, of whom nought can be said.
Only he knows it who has reached that region : it is other than all that is heard and said. No form, no body, no length, no breadth is seen there : how can I tell you that which it is ? He comes to the Path of the Infinite on whom the grace of the Lord descends : he is freed from births and deaths who attains to Him. Kabir says : "It cannot be told by the words of the mouth, it cannot be written on paper : It is like a dumb person who tastes a sweet thing how shall it be ex- plained ?
THE Vedas say that the Unconditioned stands beyond the world of Con- ditions. O woman, what does it avail thee to dispute whether He is beyond all or in all ? 78 KABIR'S POEMS See thou everything as thine own dwell- ing place : the mist of pleasure and pain can never spread there. There Brahma is revealed day and night : there light is His garment, light is His seat, light rests on thy head. Kabir says : " The Master, who is true, He is all light."
THE light of the sun, the moon, and the stars shines bright : The melody of love swells forth, and the rhythm of love's detachment beats the time. Day and night, the chorus of music fills the heavens ; and Kabir says, " My Beloved One gleams like the lightning flash in the sky." Do you know how the moments per- form their adoration ? Waving its row of lamps, the universe sings in worship day and night, There are the hidden banner and the secret canopy :
THE moon shines in my body, but my blind eyes cannot see it : The moon is within me, and so is the sun. The unstruck drum of Eternity is sounded within me ; but my deaf ears cannot hear it. So long as man clamours for the / and the Mine, his works are as naught : When all love of the / and the Mine is dead, then the work of the Lord is done. For work has no other aim than the getting of knowledge : When that comes, then work is put away%%%
To what shore would you cross, O my heart ? there is no traveller before you, there is no road : KABIR'S POEMS 27 Where is the movement, where is the rest, on that shore ? There is no water ; no boat, no boat- man, is there ; There is not so much as a rope to tow the boat, nor a man to draw it. No earth, no sky, no time, no thing, is there : no shore, no ford ! There, there is neither body nor mind : and where is the place that shall still the thirst of the soul ? You shall find naught in that empti- ness. Be strong, and enter into your own body : for there your foothold is firm. Consider it well, O my heart ! go not elsewhere. Kabir says : " Put all imaginations away, and stand fast in that which you are."
THE shadows of evening fall thick and deep, and the darkness of love envelops the body and the mind. Open the window to the west, and be lost in the sky of love ; Drink the sweet honey that steeps the petals of the lotus of the heart. Receive the waves in your body : what splendour is in the region of the sea ! Hark ! the sounds of conches and bells are rising. Kabir says : " O brother, behold ! the Lord is in this vessel of my body.
" I became suddenly revealed in Benares, and Ramananda illumined me ; I brought with me the thirst for the Infinite, and I have come for the meeting with Him. In simplicity will I unite with the Simple One ; my love will surge up. O Gorakh, march thou with His music
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. Kabir says : " O brother Sadhu ! 38 KABIR'S POEMS deep is the mystery. Let wise men seek to know where rests that bird."
O FRIEND, awake, and sleep no more ! The night is over and gone, would you lose your day also ? Others, who have wakened, have re- ceived jewels ; O foolish woman ! you have lost all whilst you slept. Your lover is wise, and you are foolish, O woman ! KABIR'S POEMS 43 You never prepared the bed of your husband : O mad one ! you passed your time in silly play. Your youth was passed in vain, for you did not know your Lord ; Wake, wake ! See ! your bed is empty : He left you in the night. Kabir says : " Only she wakes, whose heart is pierced with the arrow of His music."
If there be lust, how can love be there ? Where there is love, there is no lust. Lay hold on your sword, and join in the fight. Fight, O my brother, as long as life lasts. Strike off your enemy's head, and there make an end of him quickly : then come, and bow your head at your King's Durbar. He who is brave, never forsakes the battle : he who flies from it is no true fighter. In the field of this body a great war goes forward, against passion, anger, pride, and greed : It is in the kingdom of truth, content- ment and purity, that this battle is raging ; and the sword that rings forth most loudly is the sword of His Name. Kabir says : " When a brave knight KABIR'S POEMS 45 takes the field, a host of cowards is put to flight. It is a hard fight and a weary one, this fight of the truth-seeker : for the vow of the truth -seeker is more hard than that of the warrior, or of the widowed wife who would follow her husband. For the warrior fights for a few hours, and the widow's struggle with death is soon ended : But the truth-seeker's battle goes on day and night, as long as life lasts it never ceases
HAVE you not heard the tune which the Unstruck Music is playing ? In the midst of the chamber the harp of joy is gently and sweetly played ; and where is the need of going without to hear it ? If you have not drunk of the nectar of that One Love, what boots it though you should purge yourself of all stains ? The Kazi is searching the words of the Koran, and instructing others : but if his heart be not steeped in that love, what does it avail, though he be a teacher of men ? The Yogi dyes his garments with red : but if he knows naught of that colour of love, what does it avail though his garments be tinted ? 60 KABIR'S POEMS Kabir says : " Whether I be in the temple or the balcony, in the camp or in the flower garden, I tell you truly that every moment my Lord is taking His delight in me
SUBTLE is the path of love ! Therein there is no asking and no not- asking, There one loses one's self at His feet, There one is immersed in the joy of the seeking : plunged in the deeps of love as the fish in the water. The lover is never slow in offering his head for his Lord's service. Kabir declares the secret of this love.
HE is the real Sadhu, who can reveal the form of the Formless to the vision of these eyes : Who teaches the simple way of attain- ing Him, that is other than rites or ceremonies : Who does not make you close the doors, and hold the breath, and renounce the world : Who makes you perceive the Supreme Spirit wherever the mind attaches itself : Who teaches you to be still in the midst of all your activities. Ever immersed in bliss, having no fear in his mind, he keeps the spirit of union in the midst of all enjoy- ments. 62 KABIR'S POEMS The infinite dwelling of the Infinite Being is everywhere : in earth, water, sky, and air : Firm as the thunderbolt, the seat of the seeker is established above the void. He who is within is without : I see Him and none else
WHEN at last you are come to the ocean of happiness, do not go back thirsty. Wake, foolish man ! for Death stalks you. Here is pure water before you ; drink it at every breath. Do not follow the mirage on foot, but thirst for the nectar ; Dhruva, Prahlad, and Shukadeva have drunk of it, and also Raidas has tasted it : The saints are drunk with love, their thirst is for love. Kabir says : " Listen to me, brother ! The nest of fear is broken. Not for a moment have you come face to face with the world : p 66 KABIR'S POEMS You are weaving your bondage of falsehood, your words are full of deception : With the load of desires which you hold on your head, how can you be light ? " Kabir says : " Keep within you truth, detachment, and love
IF God be within the mosque, then to whom does this world belong ? If Ram be within the image which you find upon your pilgrimage, then who is there to know what happens without ? Hari is in the East : Allah is in the West. Look within your heart, for there you will find both Karim and Ram ; All the men and women of the world are His living forms. Kabir is the child of Allah and of Ram : He is my Guru, He is my Pir
THE jewel is lost in the mud, and all are seeking for it ; Some look for it in the east, and some in the west ; some in the water and some amongst stones. But the servant Kabir has appraised it at its true value, and has wrapped it with care in the end of the mantle of his heart. ~Kabir (Songs of Kabir)%%%
\n"When your face is hidden from me, like the moon hidden on a dark night, I shed stars of tears and yet my night remains dark in spite of all those shining stars.\n ~ Jami Epitaph %%%
I never saw a lamp shine more brilliantly
than the lamp of silence.\n ~Bayazid Bastami%%%
I don't know why they say
the horse is a noble animal
and the dove is beautiful
and why no one keeps a vulture.
Why is the clover inferior to the red tulip?
We need to wash our eyes
and view things differently.
We should wash our words
Words should be wind
Words should be rain
We should close the umbrellas
And walk in the rain.
~ Sohrab Sepeheri%%%
Happiness turned to me and said -- 'It is time. It is time to forgive yourself for all of the things that you did not become. It is time to exonerate yourself for all the people you couldn't save, for all the fragile hearts you fumbled with in the dark of your confusion.
It is time, child, to accept that you don't have to be who you were a year ago, that you don't have to want the same things.
Above all else, it is time to believe, with reckless abandon, that you are worthy of me, for I have been waiting for years.
~ Bianca Sparacino%%%
Envision the train station you want to build, imagine it in perfection, and as you build it, know imperfections will arise, but you’ll still create this station that is yours. and is beautiful%%%
What binds souls together and creates harmony is the ability to empathize over pain and yet still decide you will choose joy.%%%
Sometimes when I look at you, I feel I'm gazing at a distant star. It's dazzling, but the light is from tens of thousands of years ago. Maybe the star doesn't even exist anymore. Yet sometimes that light seems more real to me than anything. ~ Murakami %%%
In the spacious temple,
The back door's not barred at night.
Half a gatha composed beside the stream,
A remaining sutra read beneath the moon.
Though I pursued the mundane dust,
I came awake at last.
Those who do not know this truth
Must labor in lifelong toil.
~ Zanning (919-1001)%%%
Last night as I was sleeping I dreamt a marvellous vision
that there was a beehive here in my heart.
And the en bees were making white combs
and sweet honey from my old failures.
~ Antonio Machado%%%
Delusion is a divine curse
that makes someone envious, conceited, malicious,
so that he doesn't know the evil he does
will strike him back.%%%
If he could see his nothingness
and his deadly, festering wound,
pain would arise from looking within,
and that pain would save him.\n ~ Rumi%%%
The Tyger
Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
In what distant deeps or skies.
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?
And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?
What the hammer? what the chain,
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp,
Dare its deadly terrors clasp!
When the stars threw down their spears
And water'd heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?
Tyger Tyger burning bright,
In the forests of the night:
What immortal hand or eye,
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?
~ William Blake%%%
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give\n— yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear:
the darkness around us is deep.
~ William Stafford%%%
"How do I Listen to others? As if everyone were my Master Speaking to me His Cherished Last Words" ~ Hafiz%%%
"Define and narrow me, you starve yourself of yourself..." \n ~ Rumi%%%
A thousand times I have ascertained and
found it to be true:
The affairs of this world are really nothing
into nothing.
Still though, we should dance. ~ Hafiz%%%
One night a man was crying,
Allah! Allah!
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
"So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?”
The man had no answer to that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage.
"Why did you stop praising?"
"Because I've never heard anything back."
"This longing
you express is the return message."
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness
that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs
no one knows the names of.
Give your life
to be one of them.\n ~ Rumi%%%
…And let me talk to you with your silence
that is bright as a lamp, simple as a ring.
You are like the night, with its stillness and constellations…
~ Neruda%%%
'Day and night I guarded the pearl of my soul. Now in this ocean of pearling currents, I've lost track of which is mine'
~Rumi%%%
‘Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing,
falling up into the bowl of sky.
The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling everywhere.
Nothing else to do.
Here’s the new rule: break the wineglass,
and fall toward the glassblower’s breath.’\n ~ Rumi%%%
‘I saw you and became empty.
This emptiness, more beautiful than existence,
it obliterates existence, and yet when it comes,
existence thrives and creates more existence!’\n ~ Rumi%%%
If they be two, they are two so
As stiff twin compasses are two;
Thy soul, the fixed foot, makes no show
To move, but doth, if the other do.
And though it in the center sit,
Yet when the other far doth roam,
It leans and hearkens after it,
And grows erect, as that comes home.
Such wilt thou be to me, who must,
Like th' other foot, obliquely run;
Thy firmness makes my circle just,
And makes me end where I begun.
~ John Donne%%%
An honorable human relationship — that is, one in which two people have the right to use the word “love” — is a process, delicate, violent, often terrifying to both persons involved, a process of refining the truths they can tell each other.%%%
It is important to do this because it breaks down human self-delusion and isolation.%%%
It is important to do this because in doing so we do justice to our own complexity.%%%
It is important to do this because we can count on so few people to go that hard way with us.%%%
It isn’t that to have an honorable relationship with you, I have to understand everything, or tell you everything at once, or that I can know, beforehand, everything I need to tell you.%%%
It means that most of the time I am eager, longing for the possibility of telling you. That these possibilities may seem frightening, but not destructive, to me. That I feel strong enough to hear your tentative and groping words. That we both know we are trying, all the time, to extend the possibilities of truth between us.
The possibility of life between us.
The liar lives in fear of losing control. She cannot even desire a relationship without manipulation, since to be vulnerable to another person means for her the loss of control.
The liar has many friends, and leads an existence of great loneliness.
Lying is done with words, and also with silence.
This is why the effort to speak honestly is so important. Lies are usually attempts to make everything simpler — for the liar — than it really is, or ought to be.
In lying to others we end up lying to ourselves. We deny the importance of an event, or a person, and thus deprive ourselves of a part of our lives. Or we use one piece of the past or present to screen out another. Thus we lose faith even within our own lives.
The unconscious wants truth, as the body does. The complexity and fecundity of dreams come from the complexity and fecundity of the unconscious struggling to fulfill that desire.
The possibilities that exist between two people, or among a group of people, are a kind of alchemy. They are the most interesting thing in life. The liar is someone who keeps losing sight of these possibilities.
When relationships are determined by manipulation, by the need for control, they may possess a dreary, bickering kind of drama, but they cease to be interesting. They are repetitious; the shock of human possibilities has ceased to reverberate through them.
~ Adrienne Rich%%%
“So many days, oh so many days
seeing you so tangible and so close,
how do I pay, with what do I pay?
The bloodthirsty spring
has awakened in the woods.
The foxes start from their earths,
the serpents drink the dew,
and I go with you in the leaves
between the pines and the silence,
asking myself how and when
I will have to pay for my luck.
Of everything I have seen,
it's you I want to go on seeing:
of everything I've touched,
it's your flesh I want to go on touching.
I love your orange laughter.
I am moved by the sight of you sleeping.
What am I to do, love, loved one?
I don't know how others love
or how people loved in the past.
I live, watching you, loving you.
Being in love is my nature.
You please me more each afternoon.
Where is she? I keep on asking
if your eyes disappear.
How long she's taking! I think, and I'm hurt.
I feel poor, foolish and sad,
and you arrive and you are lightning
glancing off the peach trees.
That's why I love you and yet not why.
There are so many reasons, and yet so few,
for love has to be so,
involving and general,
particular and terrifying,
joyful and grieving,
flowering like the stars,
and measureless as a kiss.”
~ Pablo Neruda%%%
I love your lips when they’re wet with wine
And red with a wild desire;
I love your eyes when the lovelight lies
Lit with a passionate fire.
I love your arms when the warm white flesh
Touches mine in a fond embrace;
I love your hair when the strands enmesh
Your kisses against my face.
Not for me the cold, calm kiss
Of a virgin’s bloodless love;
Not for me the saint’s white bliss,
Nor the heart of a spotless dove.
But give me the love that so freely gives
And laughs at the whole world’s blame,
With your body so young and warm in my arms,
It sets my poor heart aflame.
So kiss me sweet with your warm wet mouth,
Still fragrant with ruby wine,
And say with a fervor born of the South
That your body and soul are mine.
Clasp me close in your warm young arms,
While the pale stars shine above,
And we’ll live our whole young lives away
In the joys of a living love.
~ Wilcox%%%%
"Most people don't know there are angels whose only job is to make sure you don't get too comfortable & fall asleep & miss your life."%%%
"Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life."\n %%%
"Anyone can slay a dragon he told me, but try waking up every morning and loving the world all over again. That's what takes a real hero."%%%
"If I love you with all my heart, she said, what will you give me? & then she stopped & said I didn't have to answer that because she was going to do it anyway."%%%
"We sat on the edge of the world & you asked me to tell you why & though a thousand things came to mind, underneath them all was a quiet voice saying, because you remind me of everything there is in this world to love. "%%%
Someday, the light will shine like a sun through my skin & they will say, What have you done with your life? & though there are many moments I think I will remember, in the end, I will be proud to say, I was one of us.%%%
I carry you with me into the world, into the smell of rain & the words that dance between people & for me, it will always be this way, walking in the light, remembering being alive together.
I don’t know who we’ll become in the days ahead, she said. I only know the quiet voice in my heart that says we’ll become it together.%%%
Hay un momento perfectamente quieto antes del amanecer, cuando el sol se prepara & después entra en el mundo oscuro & todo se llena de tanta luz que las dudas de esa noche larga apenas son unas memorias. Es la manera de todas las cosas, así que la noche termina & la luz regresa. La luz siempre regresa.%%%
Someone asked me about you the other day & I said something like she is not too tall & her hair is such & such a color. I said that, because how could I tell them you are like the play of sunlight on water, dancing to music we don’t often hear. Or the song of doves, like the soft sounds a woman makes when she is truly kissed. Or the way people smile at each other when there is nothing to hide. How could I tell them you are the way love looks when it walks through this world of ours? How could I say that to them before I spent a lifetime saying that to you?%%%
this is a story of how one plus one equals something bigger than you can imagine as long as you don’t give up too soon because you didn’t understand the math.%%%
All the times I imagined the future, I never saw you in it, so now when someone asks me what I think will happen, even about the simplest things, I shake my head & say, I don’t know for sure, but leave room for something wonderful.
~Brian Andreas%%%
“Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limit of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence.”%%%
“Human life occurs only once, and the reason we cannot determine which of our decisions are good and which bad is that in a given situation we can make only one decision; we are not granted a second, third, or fourth life in which to compare various decisions.”
“... characters are not born like people, of woman; they are born of a situation, a sentence, a metaphor containing in a nutshell a basic human possibility that the author thinks no one else has discovered or said something essential about.”
The characters in my novels are my own unrealized possibilities. That is why I am equally fond of them all and equally horrified by them. Each one has crossed a border that I myself have circumvented. It is that crossed border (the border beyond which my own "I" ends) which attracts me most. For beyond that border begins the secret the novel asks about. This novel is not the author's confession; it is an investigation of human life in the trap the world has become.%%%
"People usually escape from their troubles into the future; they draw an imaginary line across the path of time, a line beyond which their current troubles will cease to exist."
“loves are like empires: when the idea they are founded on crumbles, they, too, fade away.”%%%
In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine. %%%
And suddenly Tomas grasped a strange fact: everyone was smiling at him, everyone wanted him to write the retraction; it would make everyone happy! The people with the first type of reaction would be happy because by inflating cowardice, he would make their actions seem commonplace and thereby give them back their lost honor. The people with the second type of reaction, who had come to consider their honor a special privilege never to be yielded, nurtured a secret love for the cowards, for without them their courage would soon erode into a trivial, monotonous grind admired by no one.%%%
~Kundera%%%
Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable ~ mary oliver%%%
Seven times have I despised my soul:
The first time when I saw her being meek that she might attain height.
The second time when I saw her limping before the crippled.
The third time when she was given to choose between the hard and the easy, and she chose the easy.
The fourth time when she committed a wrong, and comforted herself that others also commit wrong.
The fifth time when she forbore for weakness, and attributed her patience to strength.
The sixth time when she despised the ugliness of a face, and knew not that it was one of her own masks.
And the seventh time when she sang a song of praise, and deemed it a virtue.~ Gibran%%%
I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet strange, I am ungrateful to these teachers~ Gibran%%%
You see but your shadow when you turn your back to the sun.~ Gibran%%%
“Anxiety is love’s greatest killer… It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you.”~ Gibran%%%
she lives the poetry she cannot write ~oscar wilde%%%
lovely days don’t come to you , you should walk to them ~rumi%%%
With chaste heart, and pure
eyes
I celebrate you, my beauty,
restraining my blood
so that the line
surges and follows
your contour,
and you bed yourself in my verse,
as in woodland, or wave-spume:
earth's perfume,
sea's music.
Nakedly beautiful,
whether it is your feet, arching
at a primal touch
of sound or breeze,
or your ears,
tiny spiral shells
from the splendour of America's oceans.
Your breasts also,
of equal fullness, overflowing
with the living light
and, yes,
winged
your eyelids of silken corn
that disclose
or enclose
the deep twin landscapes of your eyes.
The line of your back
separating you
falls away into paler regions
then surges
to the smooth hemispheres
of an apple,
and goes splitting
your loveliness
into two pillars
of burnt , pure alabaster,
to be lost in the twin clusters of your feet,
from which, once more, lifts and takes fire
the double tree of your symmetry:
flower of fire, open circle of candles,
swollen fruit raised
over the meeting of earth and ocean.
Your body - from what substances
agate, quartz, ears of wheat,
did it flow, was it gathered,
rising like bread
in the warmth,
and signalling hills
silvered,
valleys of a single petal, sweetnesses
of velvet depth,
until the pure, fine, form of woman
thickened
and rested there?
It is not so much light that falls
over the world
extended by your body
its suffocating snow,
as brightness, pouring itself out of you,
as if you were
burning inside.
Under your skin the moon is alive.
~ Neruda%%%
The Last Rains of April
When the silence of night descended
And sleep fell upon all weary souls
Longing to dream
A noise unheard since last the skies were warm
dawned in the distance\n
First came the thunder
Then the lightening
And then the rains
How they fell through the window
Cool and wet to the touch
Rousing in me dreams of my own\n
How I wish that it were you that had awoken me
Like thunder
Like lightening
And how I wish that it were I
That fell upon thee like rain
~ Briana%%%
When I sink my eye into your eyes
I catch a glimpse of a deep dawn
And I see ancient yesterday
And I see what I do not know
And I feel the universe flowing
Between my eye and yours
~ Khalil Gibran%%%
I do not resemble your other lovers, my lady
should another give you a cloud
I give you rain
Should he give you a lantern, I
will give you the moon
Should he give you a branch
I will give you the trees
And if another gives you a ship
I shall give you the journey.\n
~ Nizar Qabbani%%%
When a man is in love
how can he use old words?
Should a woman
desiring her lover
lie down with
grammarians and linguists?
I said nothing
to the woman I loved
but gathered
love's adjectives into a suitcase
and fled from all languages.
~ Nizar Qabbani%%%
Autobiography In Five Short Chapters
Chapter I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost... I am hopeless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.
Chapter II
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in this same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out. \nChapter III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there.
I still fall in... it's a habit... but,
my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately. \nChapter IV
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.
Chapter V
I walk down another street.
~ Portia Nelson%%%
To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded. ~ Emerson%%%
Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan 'Press On' has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. --Calvin Coolidge%%%
Your life is nothing more than a love story between you and God. Every person, every gift, every loss, every pain is sent on your path, for one reason and one reason only. To bring you back to Him. ~Yasmin Mogahed%%%
There are so many kinds of time. The time by which we measure our lives. Months and years. Or the big time the time that raises mountains and makes stars. Or all the things that happen between one heartbeat and the next. It’s hard to live in all those kinds of time. Easy to forget that you live in all of them. ~ Robert Charles Wilson%%%
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always--
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flames are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
~TS Elliot%%%
"The soul has been given its own ears to hear things the mind does not understand." ~Rumi%%%
To have courage for whatever comes in life - everything lies in that.
~ Saint Teresa of Avila%%%
“Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.” ~ Meister Eckhart%%%
Life consists of what man is thinking about all day.\n
~ Emerson %%%
The tree which moves some to tears of joy is in the eyes of others only a green thing that stands in the way. Some see nature as all ridicule and deformity... and some scarcely see nature at all. But to the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.\n
~ William Blake%%%
It is here, my daughters, that love is to be found - not hidden away in corners but in the midst of occasions of sin. And believe me, although we may more often fail and commit small lapses, our gain will be incomparably the greater.
~ Saint Teresa of Avila%%%
“With you, intimacy colours my voice.
even ‘hello’ sounds like ‘come here'.” \n
~ Warsan Shire%%%
“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark."
~ Rabindranath Tagore%%%
The lust for comfort murders the passions of the soul.
~ Khalil Gibran %%%
“The ego hurts you like this: you become obsessed with the one person who does not love you. blind to the rest who do.” \n
~ Warsan Shire%%%
“Run from what's comfortable.
Forget safety.
Live where you fear to live.
Destroy your reputation.
Be notorious.
I have tried prudent planning long enough.
From now on I'll be mad.”\n
~ Rumi%%%
I will only let you touch me
If your hands are so full of intention
that every brush of your palms feels
like you're writing a novel on my skin.
~ Azra T.%%%
It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and persevering courtship. Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment, it will not be created for years or even generations.
~ Khalil Gibran%%%
"Love takes off the masks we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."
~James Baldwin%%%
The happiness of the drop is to die in the river.
~ Sufi Saying%%%
With every breath
I plant the seeds of devotion -
I am a farmer of the heart.
~ Rumi%%%
if you want to win hearts, sow the seeds of Love. If you want heaven, stop scattering thorns on the road.
~ Rumi%%%
You are what you seek.
~ Rumi%%%
When I say the word you, I mean a hundred universes
~ Rumi%%%
I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.
~ Rumi%%%
What is forgiveness?
It's the fragrance that flowers give when they are crushed.
~ Sufi Saying%%%
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
~Kahlil Gibran%%%
Your hearts know in silence the secrets of the days and the nights.
~ Kahlil Gibran%%%
Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.
~ Kahlil Gibran%%%
We are all like the bright moon, we still have our darker side.\n
~ Kahlil Gibran%%%
“Give your weakness to one who helps.”
~ Rumi%%%
"...you can't make homes out of human beings, someone should have already told you that..."
~ Warsan Shire%%%
“Two people who were once very close can without blame or grand betrayal
become strangers. Perhaps this is the saddest thing in the world.”
~ Warsan Shire%%%
"We took such care of tomorrow and died on the way there."
~ Warsan Shire%%%
“Anyone who knows me, should learn to know me again;
For I am like the Moon, you will see me with new face everyday.”
~ Rumi%%%
"What you seek is seeking you."
~ Rumi%%%
"If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it."\n
~ Anaïs Nin%%%
“Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark."
~Rabindranath Tagore%%%
In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter,\nand sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things
the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
~ Kahlil Gibran%%%
From the beginning of my life I have been looking for your face,
but today I have seen it.
Today I have seen the charm, the beauty,
the unfathomable grace of the face that I was looking for.
Today I have found you, and those who laughed and scorned me yesterday\nare sorry that they were not looking as I did.
I am bewildered by the magnificence of your beauty,
and wish to see you with a hundred eyes.
My heart has burned with passion
and has searched forever for this wondrous beauty that I now behold.
I am ashamed to call this love human,
and afraid of God to call it divine.
Your fragrant breath, like the morning breeze,
has come to the stillness of the garden.
You have breathed new life into me.
I have become your sunshine, and also your shadow.
My soul is screaming in ecstasy.
Every fiber of my being is in love with you.
Your effulgence has lit a fire in my heart,
and you have made radiant for me the earth and sky.
My arrow of love has arrived at the target.
I am in the house of mercy, and my heart is a place of prayer.
~Rumi%%%
“I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.”\n
~ Hafiz %%%
Young lovers wisely say,
"Let's try it from this angle,
Maybe something marvelous will happen,
Maybe three suns and two moons
Will roll out
From a hiding place in the body
Our passion has yet to ignite."
Old lovers say,
"We can do it one more time,
How about from this longitude
And latitude -
Swinging from a rope tied to the ceiling,
Maybe a part of God
Is still hiding in a corner of your heart
Our devotion has yet to reveal."
Bottom line:
Do not stop playing
These beautiful
Love
Games.
~ Hafiz%%%
Let us be like
Two falling stars in the day sky.\n
Let no one know of our sublime beauty
As we hold hands with God
And burn\n
Into a sacred existence that defies -
That surpasses\n
Every description of ecstasy
And love.
~ Hafiz%%%
A Barroom View of Love
I would not want all my words
To parade around this world
In pretty costumes,
So I will tell you something
Of the Barroom view of Love.
Love is grabbing hold of the Great Lion's mane
And wrestling and rolling deep into Existence
While the Beloved gets rough
And begins to maul you alive.
True Love, my dear,
Is putting an ironclad grip upon
The soft, swollen balls
Of a Divine Rogue Elephant
And
Not having the good fortune to Die!
~ Hafiz %%%
I saw you dancing last night
on the roof of your house
all alone.
I felt your heart longing for the Friend.
I saw you whirling
beneath the soft bright rose
that hung from an invisible stem in the sky.
So I began to change into my best clothes in hopes of joining you,
even though I live a thousand miles away.
And if you had spun like an immaculate sphere
just two more times, then bowed again so sweetly to the east,
you would have found God and me
standing so near
and lifting you into our arms.
I saw you dancing last night
near the roof of this world
~ Hafiz%%%
Everything is clapping today.
Light,
Sound,
Motion,
All movement.
A rabbit I pass pulls a cymbal
From a hidden pocket
Then winks.
This causes a few planets and I
To go nuts
And start grabbing each other.
Someone sees this,
Calls a
Shrink,
Tries to get me
Committed
For
Being too
Happy.
Listen: this world is the lunatic’s sphere,
Don’t always agree it’s real,
Even with my feet upon it
And the postman knowing my door
My address is somewhere else
~ Hafiz%%%
Running
Through the streets
Screaming,
Throwing rocks through windows,
Using my own head to ring
Great bells,
Pulling out my hair,
Tearing off my clothes,
Tying everything I own
To a stick,
And setting it on
Fire.
What else can Hafiz do tonight
To celebrate the madness,
The joy,
Of seeing God
Everywhere!\n
~ Hafiz%%%
For a brief moment,
I swore,
the moon fell asleep in your eyes,
and dreams became the way the light leaked from your eyelids.
~ Christopher Poindexter %%%
They slipped
briskly
into an intimacy
from which they
never recovered.
~ f scott fitzgerald%%%
Birds fly with wings
I fly without
I break my cup against a stone
I tear my shirt and dig for roots
I rain.
A black tulip mocks my strangeness
The one who teaches me is spring
That show will open soon.
Outside, i grieve
Inside, pure laughter
~ Rumi%%%
alternate names for black boys
1. smoke above the burning bush
2. archnemesis of summer night
3. first son of soil
4. coal awaiting spark & wind
5. guilty until proven dead
6. oil heavy starlight
7. monster until proven ghost
8. gone
9. phoenix who forgets to un-ash
10. going, going, gone
11. gods of shovels & black veils
12. what once passed for kindling
13. fireworks at dawn
14. brilliant, shadow hued coral
15. (I thought to leave this blank
but who am I to name us nothing?)
16. prayer who learned to bite & sprint
17. a mother’s joy & clutched breath ~Danez Smith%%%
If you want to change the world… love a woman-really love her.
Find the one who calls to your soul, who doesn’t make sense.
Throw away your check list and put your ear to her heart and listen.
Hear the names, the prayers, the songs of every living thing-
every winged one, every furry and scaled one,
every underground and underwater one, every green and flowering one,
every not yet born and dying one…
Hear their melancholy praises back to the One who gave them life.
If you haven’t heard your own name yet, you haven’t listened long enough.
If your eyes aren’t filled with tears, if you aren’t bowing at her feet,
you haven’t ever grieved having almost lost her.
If you want to change the world… love a woman-one woman
beyond yourself, beyond desire and reason,
beyond your male preferences for youth, beauty and variety
and all your superficial concepts of freedom.
We have given ourselves so many choices
we have forgotten that true liberation
comes from standing in the middle of the soul’s fire
and burning through our resistance to Love.
There is only one Goddess.
Look into Her eyes and see-really see
if she is the one to bring the axe to your head.
If not, walk away. Right now.
Don’t waste time “trying.”
Know that your decision has nothing to do with her
because ultimately it’s not with who,
but when we choose to surrender.
If you want to change the world… love a woman.
Love her for life-beyond your fear of death,
beyond your fear of being manipulated
by the Mother inside your head.
Don’t tell her you’re willing to die for her.
Say you’re willing to LIVE with her,
plant trees with her and watch them grow.
Be her hero by telling her how beautiful she is in her vulnerable majesty,
by helping her to remember every day that she IS Goddess
through your adoration and devotion.
If you want to change the world… love a woman
in all her faces, through all her seasons
and she will heal you of your schizophrenia-
your double-mindedness and half-heartedness
which keeps your Spirit and body separate-
which keeps you alone and always looking outside yourself
for something to make your life worth living.
There will always be another woman.
Soon the new shiny one will become the old dull one
and you’ll grow restless again, trading in women like cars,
trading in the Goddess for the latest object of your desire.
Man doesn’t need any more choices.
What man needs is Woman, the Way of the Feminine,
of Patience and Compassion, non-seeking, non-doing,
of breathing in one place and sinking deep intertwining roots
strong enough to hold the Earth together
while she shakes off the cement and steel from her skin.
If you want to change the world… love a woman, just one woman .
Love and protect her as if she is the last holy vessel.
Love her through her fear of abandonment
which she has been holding for all of humanity.
No, the wound is not hers to heal alone.
No, she is not weak in her codependence.
If you want to change the world… love a woman
all the way through
until she believes you,
until her instincts, her visions, her voice, her art, her passion,
her wildness have returned to her-
until she is a force of love more powerful
than all the political media demons who seek to devalue and destroy her.
If you want to change the world,
lay down your causes, your guns and protest signs.
Lay down your inner war, your righteous anger
and love a woman…
beyond all of your striving for greatness,
beyond your tenacious quest for enlightenment.
The holy grail stands before you
if you would only take her in your arms
and let go of searching for something beyond this intimacy.
What if peace is a dream which can only be remembered
through the heart of Woman?
What if a man’s love for Woman, the Way of the Feminine
is the key to opening Her heart?
If you want to change the world…love a woman
to the depths of your shadow,
to the highest reaches of your Being,
back to the Garden where you first met her,
to the gateway of the rainbow realm
where you walk through together as Light as One,
to the point of no return,
to the ends and the beginning of a new Earth.
~ Lisa Citore%%%
“I want to see you.
Know your voice.
Recognize you when you
first come 'round the corner.
Sense your scent when I come
into a room you've just left.
Know the lift of your heel,
the glide of your foot.
Become familiar with the way
you purse your lips
then let them part,
just the slightest bit,
when I lean in to your space
and kiss you.
I want to know the joy
of how you whisper
"more”~ Rumi%%%
There are lovers content with longing.
I’m not one of them.
~Rumi%%%
"If I keep a green bough in my heart the singing bird will come."
~ Chinese proverb%%%
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too:
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same:.
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build'em up with worn-out tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings,
And never breathe a word about your loss:
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
~ Rudyard kipling%%%
"The great secret of death, and perhaps its deepest connection with us, is this: that, in taking from us a being we have loved and venerated, death does not wound us without, at the same time, lifting us toward a more perfect understanding of this being and of ourselves." ~ Rilke%%%
“So don't be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don't know what work they are accomplishing within you?”
~ Rainer Maria Rilke%%%
My heart tells me it is distressed with Him,
but I can only laugh at such pretended injuries.
Be fair, You who are the Glory of the just.
You, Soul, free of "we" and "I,"
subtle spirit within each man and woman.
When a man and a woman become one,
that "one" is You.
And when that one is obliterated, there You are.
Where is this "we" and this "I"?
By the side of the Beloved.
You made this "we" and this "I"
in order that you might play
this game of courtship with Yourself,
that all "you's" and "I's" might become one soul
and finally drown in the Beloved.
All this is true. Come!
You who are the Creative Word: Be
You, so far beyond description.
Is it possible for the bodily eyes to see You?
Can thought comprehend Your laughter or grief?
Tell me now, can it possibly see You at all?
Such a heart has only borrowed things to live with.
The garden of love is green without limit
and yields many fruits other than sorrow or joy.
Love is beyond either condition:
without spring, without autumn, it is always fresh.\n ~ Rumi%%%
Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You're covered with a thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quiteness is the surest sign
that you've died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.%%%
The speechless full moon
comes out now.\n ~ Rumi%%%
I would love
to hold you close,
to push away the curls.
I'd look within your eyes
and feel how perfect
is this face.
But I will write this letter
instead
as love harbors
in words.
And if, in reading them,
you should come to know,
your ilk compared
my love is plain,
and stark,
I would say in return
these embers seer me deep
not all poets' pages burn. \n ~ Saba Mirza%%%
Listen for the stream
that tells you one thing.
Die on this bank.
Begin in me
the way of rivers with the sea.
~Rumi%%%
Longing is the core of mystery.
Longing itself brings the cure.
The only rule is, Suffer the pain.%%%
Your desire must be disciplined,
and what you want to happen
in time, sacrificed.
~ rumi%%%%%%
I am dust particles in sunlight.
I am the round sun.
To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.
I am morning mist,
and the breathing of evening.
I am wind in the top of a grove,
and surf on the cliff.
Mast, rudder, helmsman, and keel,
I am also the coral reef they founder on.
I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches.
Silence, thought, and voice.
The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark off a stone, a flickering in metal.
Both candle and the moth crazy around it.
Rose and nightingale lost in the fragrance.
I am all orders of being, the circling galaxy,
the evolutionary intelligence, the lift and the falling away.
What is and what is not.
You who know Jelaluddin,
You are the one in all, say who I am.
Say I am you. ~ Rumi%%%
Through love
Bitter things become sweet.
Through love
Bits of copper turn into .
Through love
Dregs taste like pure wine.
Through love
Pains are healed.\nLove is the cure, for your pain will keep giving birth to more pain until your eyes constantly exhale love as effortlessly as your body yields its scent.\n
This is love: to fly toward a secret sky, to cause a hundred veils to fall each moment. First to let go of life. Finally, to take a step without feet.
Two there are who are never satisfied – the lover of the world and the lover of knowledge.
Remember. The way you make love is the way God will be with you.
If in thirst you drink water from a cup, you see God in it. Those who are not in love with God will see only their own faces in it.
Is it really so that the one I love is everywhere? ~ Rumi %%%
Great lions can find peace in a cage.
But we should only do that
As a last
resort.
So those bars I see that restrain your wings,
I guess you won’t mind
if I pry them open.
~ Rumi%%%
I dwell in Possibility
I dwell in Possibility –
A fairer House than Prose –
More numerous of Windows –
Superior – for Doors –%%%
Of Chambers as the Cedars –
Impregnable of eye –
And for an everlasting Roof
The Gambrels of the Sky –%%%
Of Visitors – the fairest –
For Occupation – This –
The spreading wide my narrow Hands
To gather Paradise
~Emily Dickinson%%%
One.
You know how this ends. There’s nothing you can do to change it, so make peace with it now. Ready your hands for the callus, shred the cloth for bandages, prepare the rosaries.
Two.
When you meet him, outside the grocery, along the boardwalk, beneath the overpass, you will not know what he is. He will be neither be too charming nor too handsome, not thunder, not polish
Three.
The day you fall in love, his mouth will spill your name. He will repeat and repeat. He will not touch you. He will watch your hips, study whatever ample you have, will ask to watch you dance. When you turn to leave, he will use your name like a choke chain.
Four.
He will call you miracle. Your face will unravel. This is his magic. When he begs you promise, say yes.
Five.
When he offers his lips, take them. Take his arms, his throat, take his toes when he offers. Gorge. Swallow everything whole. Gag. Vomit. Swallow more. Do not hesitate. No time for polite, or coy. Take.
Six.
When the minions call you whore, nod.
Seven.
He will tell you of the others. How they went crazy in their sleep awaiting his return. Do not flinch. Do not doubt your thickened fingertips. Stand upright. You promised.
Eight.
When you find him in his room, thrashing the sheets, pressing his palms into the walls, howling, his face a river… close the door. This is how he makes wine. Leave him in his sorcery.
Nine.
When he explains that he cannot love. That he will never be yours alone. When he tells how the meek, the gluttons, the tempted, the proud are his angels, do not mourn. Smile, feed him, wash his hair.
Ten.
He is a king among thieves. The leeches will hollow his skin, the crows reduce him to bones. His own heart will empty him. Allow for the bleed. Be ready with tourniquet and prayer.
Eleven.
In the dry burn of dawn, after the last of the lashes, the thorns and the spittle, when his limp body is laid at your feet, remember the night you loved him, the ember of his eyes and the way the words came like honey.%%%
Twelve.
You were made for this.
~ Jeanann Verlee%%%
Osho Satyakam
http://www.oshoworld.com/osho_talk/talks/enligh25.asp%%%
Mustard Seed
http://www.oshoworld.com/osho_talk/talks/seeds01.asp%%%
The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed....
You are the kingdom of heaven, you are like a mustard seed. Be ready to die, prepare for your death! Of course there will be trembling and fear and apprehension. The jump is going to be difficult. Many times you may come back, many times you will go to the very brink and turn back and escape, because there is an abyss. The seed can only know the abyss, the seed cannot know the tree. There is no way that the seed can witness the sprouting tree -- there is no way. The seed has to die and trust in the unknown -- that it will happen.
If you are ready to die, it happens. Go and sow seeds in the ground: when the tree has come, then dig the ground again and see where the seed is. It will have disappeared, it will not be there. Go and dig in a Buddha, in a Jesus -- you will not find the man, the seed. This is the meaning of Jesus being the son of God, no more the son of Joseph the carpenter -- because the seed came from Joseph the carpenter and Mary, but now the seed has disappeared, the shell has disappeared. This tree never came from the visible, it is from the invisible.
Look at Jesus: the seed is no longer there, only God is there. Be ready to die so that you can be reborn. Drop the mind, the body, the ego, the identity. Suddenly you will find that something new is growing within you: you have become a womb, you are pregnant. And to be spiritually pregnant is the peak of creation, because you are creating yourself through it. Nothing is comparable to it. You may create a great painting or a great sculpture, but nothing is to be compared with when you create yourself, when you "self-create" yourself.
~Osho%%%
When a disciple asks, there is no answer in his mind. He does not know, he simply does not know and that is why he is asking. Remember this: when you ask something, remember well, are you asking because you already have an answer? Are you asking through your knowledge? Then there can be no meeting. Then even if I answer, the answer will never reach you. You are not empty enough to receive the answer. The answer is already there: you are prejudiced, poisoned already.
There are two types of questioning: one is out of knowledge, and then it is useless because then only a debate is possible, not a dialogue. But when you ask out of ignorance, knowing well that you don't know, when you know that you don't know, and ask, you have become a disciple. Now it is not going to be an argument. You are just thirsty and you ask for water; you are hungry and you ask for food. You don't know and you ask; you are ready to receive. A disciple asks knowing well that he doesn't know. When you don't know you are humble\n ~ Osho%%%
There are things which are known only in their wholeness; you cannot dissect them.
They are greater than their parts, this is the problem -- a basic problem for those who are in search of truth. Truth is greater than all the parts joined together. It is not just the sum of the parts, it is greater than the parts. A melody is not just the sum of all the notes, of all the sounds. No, it is something greater. When all the notes meet, a harmony is created, a harmony becomes manifest which was not there in single notes. I am speaking to you: you can dissect my words, they will all be found in a dictionary, but you cannot find me in the dictionary\n ~ Osho%%%
Go sweep out the chamber of your heart.
Make it ready to be the dwelling place of the Beloved.
When you depart out, He will enter it.
In you, void of yourself, will He display His beauties.
~Mahmud Shabistari%%%
Strive to discover the mystery before life is taken from you.
If while living you fail to find yourself, to know yourself,
how will you be able to understand
the secret of your existence when you die?
~ Farud ud-Din Attar%%%
Piousness and the path of love
are two different roads.
Love is the fire that burns both belief
and non-belief.
Those who practice Love have neither
religion nor caste. ~ Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir%%%
Until you become an unbeliever in your own self,
you cannot become a believer in God.
~Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir%%%
The source of my suffering and loneliness is deep in my heart.
This is a disease no doctor can cure.
Only Union with the Friend can cure it.
~ Rabi´a al-Adawiyya%%%
I'd like to taste,
one more time, the rain that arrived
one afternoon and fell just short
of where I stood, so I leaned my face in,
alive in both worlds at once,
not knowing if it would end and not caring.
~ K. Addonizio%%%
Your eyelash will write on my cheek
The poem that has not been thought of.
~ Rumi%%%
I believe in you, my Soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you;
And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat;
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best;
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how once we lay, such a transparent summer morning;
How you settled your head athwart my hips, and gently turn’d over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,
And reach’d till you felt my beard, and reach’d till you held my feet.
Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth;
And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own,
And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own;
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers;
And that a kelson of the creation is love;
And limitless are leaves, stiff or drooping in the fields;
And brown ants in the little wells beneath them;
And mossy scabs of the worm fence, and heap’d stones, elder, mullen and poke-weed.
~ Walt Whitman, Song of myself%%%
The sun once glimpsed God’s true nature
And has never been the same.
Thus that radiant sphere
Constantly pours its energy
Upon this earth
As does He from behind
The veil.
With a wonderful God like that
Why isn’t everyone a screaming drunk?
Hafiz’s guess is this:
Any thought that you are better or less
Than another man
Quickly
Breaks the wine
Glass. ~Daniel Landinsky%%%
Once a group of thieves stole a rare diamond
Larger than a goose egg.
Its value could have easily bought
One thousand horses
And two thousand acres
Of the most fertile land in Shiraz.
The thieves got drunk that night
To celebrate their great haul,
But during the course of the evening
The effects of the liquor
And their mistrust of each other grew to such
An extent
They decided to divide the stone into pieces.
Of course then the Priceless became lost.
Most everyone is lousy at math
And does that to God -
Dissects the Indivisible One,
By thinking, saying,
“This is my Beloved, he looks like this
And acts like that,
How could that moron over there
Really
Be
God.”
~ Hafiz%%%
-
You came to me this morning
And you handled me like meat.
You´d have to live alone to know
How good that feels, how sweet.
My mirror twin, my next of kin,
I´d know you in my sleep.
And who but you would take me in
A thousand kisses deep? -
I loved you when you opened
Like a lily to the heat.
I´m just another snowman
Standing in the rain and sleet,
Who loved you with his frozen love
His second-hand physique -
With all he is, and all he was
A thousand kisses deep. -
All soaked in sex, and pressed against
The limits of the sea:
I saw there were no oceans left
For scavengers like me.
We made it to the forward deck
I blessed our remnant fleet -
And then consented to be wrecked
A thousand kisses deep. -
I know you had to lie to me,
I know you had to cheat.
But the Means no longer guarantee
The Virtue in Deceit.
That truth is bent, that beauty spent,
That style is obsolete -
Ever since the Holy Spirit went
A thousand kisses deep. -
(So what about this Inner Light
That´s boundless and unique?
I´m slouching through another night
A thousand kisses deep.) -
I´m turning tricks; I´m getting fixed,
I´m back on Boogie Street.
I tried to quit the business -
Hey, I´m lazy and I´m weak.
But sometimes when the night is slow,
The wretched and the meek,
We gather up our hearts and go
A thousand kisses deep. -
(And fragrant is the thought of you,
The file on you complete -
Except what we forgot to do
A thousand kisses deep.) -
The ponies run, the girls are young,
The odds are there to beat.
You win a while, and then it´s done -
Your little winning streak.
And summoned now to deal
With your invincible defeat,
You live your life as if it´s real
A thousand kisses deep. -
(I jammed with Diz and Dante -
I did not have their sweep -
But once or twice, they let me play
A thousand kisses deep.) -
And I´m still working with the wine,
Still dancing cheek to cheek.
The band is playing "Auld Lang Syne" -
The heart will not retreat.
And maybe I had miles to drive,
And promises to keep -
You ditch it all to stay alive
A thousand kisses deep. -
And now you are the Angel Death
And now the Paraclete;
And now you are the Savior's Breath
And now the Belsen heap.
No turning from the threat of love,
No transcendental leap -
As witnessed here in time and blood
A thousand kisses deep.
~ Leonard Cohen%%%
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
Write, for example,'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'
The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.
Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.
She loved me sometimes, and I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.
Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.
To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.
What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.
This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.
The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.
Another's. She will be another's. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her inifinite eyes.
I no longer love her, that's certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, is so long.
Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
my soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.
Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.
~ Neruda%%%
I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.
I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
~ Neruda%%%
Between what is said
and not meant
And meant but not said
Most love is lost
~ Khalil Gibran%%%%%%
My body and my mind are in depression because
You are not with me.
How much I love you and want you in my house!
When I hear people describe me as your bride I look sideways ashamed,
because I know that far inside us we have never met.
Then what is this love of mine?
I don’t really care about food, I don’t really care about sleep,
I am restless indoors and outdoors.
The bride wants her lover as much as a thirsty man wants water.
And how will I find someone who will take a message
to the Guest from me?
How restless Kabir is all the time!
How much he wants to see the Guest!
~Kabir%%%
Lift the veil
that obscures
the heart
and there
you will find
what you are
looking for.
~Kabir%%%
Hiding in this cage
of visible matter
is the invisible
lifebird
pay attention
to her
she is singing
your song
~ Kabir%%%
Friend, hope for the Guest while you are alive.
Jump into experience while you are alive!
Think . . . and think . . . while you are alive.
What you call “salvation” belongs to the time
before death.
If you don’t break your ropes while you’re alive,
do you think
ghosts will do it after?
The idea that the should will rejoin the ecstatic
just because the body is rotten—
that is all fantasy.
What is found now is found then.
If you find nothing now,
you will simply end up with an apartment in the
City of the Death.
If you make love with the divine now, in the next
life you will have the face of satisfied desire
So plunge into the truth, find out who the Teacher is,
Believe in the Great Sound!
Kabir says this: When the Guest is being searched for
it is the intensity of the longing for the Guest that
does all the work.
Look at me, and you will see a slave of that intensity.
~ Kabir%%%
What is seen is not the Truth
What is cannot be said
Trust comes not without seeing
Nor understanding without words
The wise comprehends with knowledge
To the ignorant it is but a wonder
Some worship the formless God
Some worship His various forms
In what way He is beyond these attributes
Only the Knower knows
That music cannot be written
How can then be the notes
Says Kabir, awareness alone will overcome illusion
~ Kabir%%%
She had blue skin
And so did he
He kept it hid
And so did she
They searched for blue
Their whole life through
Then passed right by
And never knew
~ Shel Silverstein%%%%%%
Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine
rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding
around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but
vegetables.
When you really look for me, you will see me
instantly --
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.
~Kabir%%%
“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.” ~ Pema Chödrön%%%
"That is why the light of the oni xuma is black. It doesn't explain. It doesn't reveal. Instead of uncovering mysteries, it respects them. It makes them more and more mysterious, more fertile and prodigal. Oni xuma irrigates the unknown territory: that is its way of shedding light. ~Joan Parisi Wilcox%%%
Souls are nourished by offerings. They are nourished by offering themselves, and they become more themselves the more they give of themselves. And ashes turn to water when the thirsty kiss them. ~ Ino Moxo%%%
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage appears, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed
and on the pedestal these words appear:
“My name is Ozymandius, king of kings:
look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
the lone and level sands stretch far away.
~ Percy Bysshe Shelley%%%
Good poetry makes the universe reveal a secret
~Hafiz\n%%%
You have done well
In the contest of madness.
You were brave in that holy war.
You have all the honorable wounds
Of one who has tried to find love
Where the Beautiful Bird
Does not drink.
May I speak to you
Like we are close
And locked away together?
Once I found a stray kitten
And I used to soak my fingers
In warm milk;
It came to think I was five mothers
On one hand.
Wayfarer,
Why not rest your tired body?
Lean back and close your eyes.
Come morning
I will kneel by your side and feed you.
I will so gently
Spread open your mouth
And let you taste something of my
Sacred mind and life.
Surely
There is something wrong
With your ideas of
God
O, surely there is something wrong
With your ideas of
God
If you think
Our Beloved would not be so
Tender.
~ Rumi%%%
"Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder."
~ Rumi%%%%
There’s courage involved
if you want to become truth.
There is a broken-open place in a lover.
Where are those qualities of bravery
and sharp compassion in this group?
What’s the use of old and frozen thought?
I want a howling hurt.
This is not a treasury where is stored;
this is for copper.
We alchemists look for talent
that can heat up and change.
Lukewarm won’t do.
Halfhearted holding back,
well-enough getting by?
Not here.
~ Rumi%%%
Last night as I was sleeping,
I dreamt
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the en bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
~Antonio Machado%%%
You have no idea how hard I've looked
for a gift to bring You.
Nothing seemed right.
What's the point of bringing gold to
The gold mine, or water to the ocean.
Everything I came up with was like
taking spices to the Orient.
It's no good giving my heart and my
soul because you already have these.
So I've brought you a mirror.
Look at yourself and remember me.
~ Rumi%%%
What would make a lover value you
over all lovers they have known?
Tell me about your favorite place to eat,
or the finest meal you ever had.
There is something in caring touch that
your memory has recorded.....
and holds dear,
because it nourishes as few things can.
A sincere wanting and need to artfully
give is inherent in love. And love will get its way;
for it knows patience, and what a strength that is.
The closest thing to amorous play
with God in form
should be the goal of any intimacy between us.
Us, those who seek sacred friendship,
and can gaze at each other in appreciation,
in places we allow few to ever see.
~Hafiz%%%
“In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?” ~Gautama Buddha%%%
Far, very far
Near, very near
I hear your ankle bells.
Why do I lose my self-form in shyness?
How long have I to wait for You
to tie my hands
with your love-cord?
~ Sri Chinmoy%%%
Barren of events,
Rich in pretensions
My earthly life.
Obscurity
My real name.
Wholly unto myself
I exist.
I wrap no soul
In my embrace.
No mentor worthy
Of my calibre
Have I.
I am all alone
Between failure
And frustration.
I am the red thread
Between
Nothingness
And Eternity.
~ Sri Chinmoy%%%
“Keep Searching”
Even though you're not equipped,
keep searching:
equipment isn't necessary on the way to the Lord.
Whoever you see engaged in search,
become her friend and cast your head in front of her,
for choosing to be a neighbor of seekers,
you become one yourself;
protected by conquerors,
you will yourself learn to conquer.
If an ant seeks the rank of Solomon,
don't smile contemptuously upon its quest.
Everything you possess of skill, and wealth and handicraft,
wasn't it first merely a thought and a quest?
~ Rumi%%%
Ghazal 838
if you pass your night
and merge it with dawn
for the sake of heart
what do you think will happen
if the entire world
is covered with the blossoms
you have labored to plant
what do you think will happen
if the elixir of life
that has been hidden in the dark
fills the desert and towns
what do you think will happen
if because of
your generosity and love
a few humans find their lives
what do you think will happen
if you pour an entire jar
filled with joyous wine
on the head of those already drunk
what do you think will happen
go my friend
bestow your love
even on your enemies
if you touch their hearts
what do you think will happen
~Rumi%%%%
Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.
Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.
My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.
My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.
Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.
Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.
~ Neruda%%%
By finding you first and then polishing.
Let me enhance your personality.
I don’t want to change you
I just want to sharpen
what is already there.%%%
“ Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.”
~ Nizar Qabbani%%%
“I hadn’t told them about you, but they saw you bathing in my eyes. I hadn’t told them about you, but they saw you in my written words. The perfume of love cannot be concealed.”
~ Nizar Qabbani%%%
"I closed my mouth and spoke to you in a hundred silent ways."
~ Rumi%%%%%%
Be with those who help your being.
Don't sit with indifferent people, whose breath
comes cold out of their mouths.
Not these visible forms, your work is deeper.
A chunk of dirt thrown into the air breaks to pieces.
If you don't try to fly,
and so break yourself apart,
you will be broken open by death,
when it's too late for all you could become.
Leaves get yellow. The tree puts out fresh roots
and makes them green.
Why are you so content with a love that turns you yellow?
~ Rumi%%%
"The intelligent want self control, children want candy."
~ Rumi%%%%%%
I will not rise
To Praise the sun
Nor revel between
Her slippery lips
Prefer the quiet solace
Of my anonymity
To the sickly sweet
White coming of day.
~ DJ Paul%%%
Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now?
I will tell you all. I will conceal nothing.
When I was three, a little child read a story about a rabbit
who died, in the story, and I crawled under a chair:
a pink rabbit: it was my birthday, and a candle
burnt a sore spot on my finger, and I was told to be happy.
Oh, grow to know me. I am not happy. I will be open:
Now I am thinking of white sails against a sky like music,
like glad horns blowing, and birds tilting, and an arm about me.
There was one I loved, who wanted to live, sailing.
Speak to me. Take my hand. What are you now?
When I was nine, I was fruitily sentimental,
fluid: and my widowed aunt played Chopin,
and I bent my head on the painted woodwork, and wept.
I want now to be close to you. I would
link the minutes of my days close, somehow, to your days.
I am not happy. I will be open.
I have liked lamps in evening corners, and quiet poems.
There has been fear in my life. Sometimes I speculate
On what a tragedy his life was, really.
Take my hand. Fist my mind in your hand. What are you now?
When I was fourteen, I had dreams of suicide,
and I stood at a steep window, at sunset, hoping toward death:
if the light had not melted clouds and plains to beauty,
if light had not transformed that day, I would have leapt.
I am unhappy. I am lonely. Speak to me.
I will be open. I think he never loved me:
he loved the bright beaches, the little lips of foam
that ride small waves, he loved the veer of gulls:
he said with a gay mouth: I love you. Grow to know me.
What are you now? If we could touch one another,
if these our separate entities could come to grips,
clenched like a chinese puzzle… yesterday
I stood in a crowded street that was live with people,
and no one spoke a word, and the morning shone.
Everyone silent, moving… Take my hand. Speak to me.
~ Muriel Rukeyser%%%
When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.
When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.
When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.
When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.
When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.
When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.
Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted my sleep.
~ Robert Pinsky%%%
"Love means to commit oneself without guarantee, to give oneself completely in the hope that our love will produce love in the loved person. Love is an act of faith, and whoever is of little faith is also of little love."
~ Erich Fromm%%%
"Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision."
~ Erich Fromm (The Art of Loving)%%%
"Immature love says: 'I love you because I need you.' Mature love says 'I need you because I love you."
~ Erich Fromm%%%
"Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice."
~ Erich Fromm%%%
“THE KISS
WITH THE TASTE OF GOD ON YOUR LIPS
I LOSE MY BREATH
THEIR GENTLE TOUCH
BREATHES SPIRIT IN ME
AS I RECEIVE ALL THAT YOU ARE
MY LIFE IS RESTORED
SYNCHRONIZING OUR HEARTS AND THE BREATH
WE ALTERNATE
BETWEEN LOVER AND BELOVED
LIPS ENTWINED
WE SIGH IN RELEASE
AS OUR LOVE BECOMES ETHEREAL”
~ Luz Emma Canas Madrigal%%%
The Dowry
As a token of my love
I offer you my heart
My riches are not of this world
They lie in the hereafter
If it is His will
That we part ways
Through indifference or death
Keep it as a reminder
Of His Love For you
In His generosity
He has replaced my heart
With His own
I am grateful for the Love that this is
And the love that it is not
It is through your humanity
That I have come to love myself more
and your divinity
That I have come to Love God more.
~ Luz Emma Canas Madrigal%%%
“A FOOL AM I TO THINK
I CAN EXERCISE WILL
OVER MY HEART
A SLAVE TO LOVE
IS A VICTIM OF LOGIC
A SLAVE TO GOD
FINDS FREEDOM IN SERVITUDE
EXCUSE MY VANITY
FOR ATTEMPTING TO CONTROL
MATTERS OF THE HEART
EXHAUSTED BY MY IGNORANCE
I SUBMIT TO YOUR WILL
MY LOVE
IS AT YOUR SERVICE
IT IS YOU WHO DECIDES
IF MY HEART BEATS
“IT IS YOU WHO DECIDES
WHO IT BEATS FOR”
~ Luz Emma Canas Madrigal%%%
HOVERING ON THE EDGE OF BLISS OR OBLIVION
I FEAR NOT
FOR GOD WILL CATCH ME
THE PURSUIT OF LOVES ECSTASY
KEEPS ME IN BALANCE
OF WHAT IS
AND WHAT WILL BE
I HAVE FAITH IN WHAT WILL COME TO PASS
IT IS ALREADY WRITTEN”
~ Luz Emma Canas Madrigal.%%%
It
Is all
Just a love contest
And I never
Lose.
Now you have another good reason
To spend more time
With
Me.
~Hafiz%%%
This
Sky
Where we live
Is no place to lose your wings
So love, love,
Love.
~Hafiz%%%
Once
In a while
God cuts loose His purse strings,
Gives a big wink to my orchestra,
Does not require
Any more prompting than that
To let
Every instrument inside
Go
Berserk
~Hafiz%%%
When I was the stream, when I was the
forest, when I was still the field,
when I was every hoof, foot,
fin and wing, when I
was the sky
itself,
no one ever asked me did I have a purpose, no one ever
wondered was there anything I might need,
for there was nothing
I could not
love.
It was when I left all we once were that
the agony began, the fear and questions came,
and I wept, I wept. And tears
I had never known
before.
So I returned to the river, I returned to
the mountains. I asked for their hand in marriage again,
I begged – I begged to wed every object
and creature,
and when they accepted,
God was ever present in my arms.
And He did not say,
“Where have you
been?”
For then I knew my soul – every soul
has always held
Him.
~ Meister Eckhart%%%
LOVE DOES THAT
All day long a little burro labors, sometimes
with heavy loads on her back and sometimes just with worries
about things that bother only
burros.
And worries, as we know, can be more exhausting
than physical labor.
Once in a while a kind monk comes
to her stable and brings
a pear, but more
than that,
he looks into the burro's eyes and touches her ears
and for a few seconds the burro is free
and even seems to laugh,
because love does
that.
Love Frees.
~ Meister Eckhart%%%
“Some people want to see God with their eyes as they see a cow, and to love Him as they love a cow – for the milk and cheese and profit it brings them. This is how it is with people who love God for the sake of outward wealth or inward comfort. They do not rightly love God, when they love Him for their own advantage. ”~ Meister Eckhart%%%
“Some people prefer solitude. They say their peace of mind depends on this. Others say they would be better off in church. If you do well, you do well wherever you are. If you fail, you fail wherever you are. Your surroundings don’t matter. God is with you everywhere — in the market place as well as in seclusion or in the church. If you look for nothing but God, nothing or no one can disturb you. God is not distracted by a multitude of things. Nor can we be.”~ Meister Eckhart%%%
If He
let go of my hand, I would
weep so loudly,
I would petition with all my might, I would cause
so much trouble
that I bet God would come to His senses
and never do that
again.
~ Meister Eckhart%%%
All beings
are words of God,
His music, His
art.
Sacred books we are, for the infinite camps in our souls.
Every act reveals God and expands His being.
I know that may be hard
to comprehend.
All creatures are doing their best
to help God in His birth
of Himself.
Enough talk for the night.
He is laboring in me;
I need to be silent
for a while,
worlds are forming
in my heart.
~ Meister Eckhart%%%
The Hope of Loving
What keeps us alive, what allows us to endure?
I think it is the hope of loving,
or being loved.
I heard a fable once about the sun going on a journey
to find its source, and how the moon wept
without her lover’s
warm gaze.
We weep when light does not reach our hearts. We wither
like fields if someone close
does not rain their
kindness
upon
us.
~ Meister Eckhart%%%
‘What is grace’ I asked God.
And He said,
‘All that happens.’
Then He added, when I looked perplexed,
‘Could not lovers
say that every moment in their Beloved’s arms
was grace?
Existence is my arms,
though I well understand how one can turn
away from
me
until the heart has
wisdom.’
~ St John Of the Cross%%%
My soul is a candle that burned away the veil;
only the glorious duties of light I now have.
The sufferings I knew initiated me into God.
I am a holy confessor for men.
When I see their tears running across their cheeks
and falling into
His hands,
what can I say to their great sorrow
that I too have
known.
The soul is a candle that will burn away the darkness,
only the glorious duties of love we will have.
The sufferings I knew initiated me into God.
Only His glorious cares
I now have.
~ St John Of the Cross%%%
What kind of God would He be
if He did not hear the
bangles ring on
an ant’s
wrist
as they move the earth
in their sweet
dance?
And what kind of God would He be
if a leaf’s prayer was not as precious to creation
as the prayer His own son sang
from the glorious depth
of his soul -
for us.
And what kind of God would He be
if the vote of millions in this world could sway Him
to change the divine
law of
love
that speaks so clearly with compassion’s elegant tongue,
saying, eternally saying:
all are forgiven – moreover, dears,
no one has ever been
guilty.
What
kind of God would He be
if He did not count the blinks
of your
eyes
and is in absolute awe of their movements?
What a God – what a God we
have.
~Kabir%%%
Hey brother, why do you want me to talk?
Talk and talk and the real things get lost.
Talk and talk and things get out of hand.
Why not stop talking and think?
If you meet someone good, listen a little, speak;
If you meet someone bad, clench up like a fist.
Talking with a wise man is a great reward.
Talking with a fool? A waste.
Kabir says: A pot makes noise if it's half full,
But fill it to the brim -- no sound.
~ Kabir%%%
I've burned my own house down,
the torch is in my hand.
Now I'll burn down the house of anyone
who wants to follow me.
~ Kabir%%%
still the body
still the mind
still the voice inside
in silence
feel the stillness move
friends
this feeling
cannot be imagined
~ Kabir%%%
There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence ....
(and that is) activism and overwork. The rush and pressure
of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form,
of its innate violence.
To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of
conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands,
to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone
in everything, is to succumb to violence.
The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace.
It destroys our own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the
fruitfulness of our own work, because it kills the root of
inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.
~ Thomas Merton (catholic mystic)%%%
"Come,\nlet's scatter roses
and pour wine in the glass;
we'll shatter heaven's roof
and lay a new foundation.
If sorrow raises armies to shed the blood of lovers,
I'll join with the wine bearer
so we can overthrow them.
With a sweet string at hand,
play a sweet song,
my friend,
so we can clap and sing a song
and lose our heads in dancing"
~Hafiz%%%
Hello.
There didn't need to be more than that.
Lets Play?
Yes, Lets Play!
There didn't need to be more than that.
Skip stones with me?
Skipping happened.
There didn't need to be more than that.
Here, take my shirt to stay warm.
Shirt taken, nothing more than that.
Huddled in the last warmth of sunset
There didn't need to be more than that.
Peer and hold your gaze
See nothing but myself
There couldn't be more than that.
~Gigi%%%
SHIBLI WAS ASKED: ‘WHO GUIDED YOU IN THE PATH?’
SHIBLI SAID: ‘A DOG. ONE DAY I SAW HIM, ALMOST DEAD WITH THIRST, STANDING BY THE WATER’S EDGE. EVERY TIME HE LOOKED AT HIS REFLECTION IN THE WATER HE WAS FRIGHTENED AND WITHDREW, BECAUSE HE THOUGHT IT WAS ANOTHER DOG.‘FINALLY, SUCH WAS HIS NECESSITY, HE CAST AWAY FEAR AND LEAPT INTO THE WATER;AT WHICH THE REFLECTION DISAPPEARED.
‘THE DOG FOUND THAT THE OBSTACLE, WHICH WAS HIMSELF, THE BARRIER BETWEEN HIM AND WHAT HE SOUGHT, MELTED AWAY.‘IN THIS SAME WAY, MY OWN OBSTACLE VANISHED WHEN I KNEW THAT IT WAS WHAT I TOOK TO BE MY OWN SELF. AND MY WAY WAS FIRST SHOWN TO ME BY THE BEHAVIOUR
OF – A DOG.’" ~ Idries Shah%%%
Noise
is a cruel ruler
who is always imposing
curfews,
while
stillness and silence
break open the vintage
bottles
and awake the real
band.
~ Hafiz%%%
Mis manos
abren las cortinas de tu ser
te visten con otra desnudez
descubren los cuerpos de tu cuerpo
Mis manos
inventan otro cuerpo a tu cuerpo.
~Octavio Paz%%%
Niña morena y ágil, el sol que hace las frutas,
el que cuaja los trigos, el que tuerce las algas,
hizo tu cuerpo alegre, tus luminosos ojos
y tu boca que tiene la sonrisa del agua.
Un sol negro y ansioso se te arrolla en las hebras
de la negra melena, cuando estiras los brazos.
Tú juegas con el sol como con un estero
y él te deja en los ojos dos oscuros remansos.
Niña morena y ágil, nada hacia ti me acerca.
Todo de ti me aleja, como del mediodía.
Eres la delirante juventud de la abeja,
la embriaguez de la ola, la fuerza de la espiga.
Mi corazón sombrío te busca, sin embargo,
y amo tu cuerpo alegre, tu voz suelta y delgada.
Mariposa morena dulce y definitiva
como el trigal y el sol, la amapola y el agua.
~ Neruda%%%
After chopping off all the arms that reached out to me;
after boarding up all the windows and doors;
after filling all the pits with poisoned water;
after building my house on the rock of no,
inaccessible to flattery and fear;
after cutting off my tongue and eating it;
after hurling handfuls of silence
and monosyllable of scorn at my loves.
after my name;
and the name of my birthplace;
and the name of my race;
after judging and sentencing myself
to perpetual waiting,
and perpetual loneliness, I heard
against the stones of my dungeon of syllogisms,
the humid, tender, insistent
onset of spring.
~ Octavio Paz%%%
I turn the page of the day,
writing what I'm told
by the motion of your eyelashes.
My hands
draw open the curtains of your being
They clothe you in another nudity
They uncover the bodies of your body
My hands
invent another body for your body
I enter you,
the truthfulness of the dark.
I want proofs of darkness, want
to drink the black wine:
take my eyes and crush them.
A drop of night
on your breast's tip:
mysteries of the carnation.
Closing my eyes
I open them inside your eyes.
Always awake
on its garnet bed:
your wet tongue.
There are fountains
in the garden of your veins.
With a mask of blood
I cross your thoughts blankly:
amnesia guides me
to the other side of life.
~Octavio paz%%%
Suddenly the drunken sweetheart appeared out of my door.
She drank a cup of ruby wine and sat by my side.
Seeing and holding the lockets of her hair
My face became all eyes, and my eyes all hands.
~ Rumi%%%
We don't see things as they are. We see them as we are.
~ Anais Nin%%%
Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
~ Anais Nin%%%
In the pursuit of knowledge:
everyday something is added
in the pursuit of enlightenment:
everyday something is dropped.
~ Lao Tzu%%%
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer.
~Rumi%%%
Keep on knocking
'til the joy inside
opens a window,
look to see who's there.
~Rumi%%%
This place is a dream
only a sleeper considers it real
then death comes like dawn
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought
was your grief
~Rumi%%%
A man goes to sleep in the town
where he has always lived
and he dreams
he's living in another town
in the dream he doesn't remember
the town he's sleeping in his bed in
he believes the reality
of the dream town
the world is that kind of sleep
Humankind is being led
along an evolving course,
through this migration
of intelligences
and though we seem
to be sleeping
there is an inner wakefulness,
that directs the dream
and that will eventually
startle us back
to the truth of
who we are
~Rumi%%%
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground
At night we fall into each other with such grace.
When it's light, you throw me back
like you do your hair.
~ Rumi%%%
Your eyes now drunk with God,
mine with looking at you,
one drunkard takes care of another.
~ Rumi%%%
I lost my world, my fame, my mind --
The Sun appeared, and all the shadows ran.
I ran after them, but vanished as I ran --
Light ran after me and hunted me down.
~Rumi%%%
We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
~Rumi%%%
Today I'm out wandering, turning my skull
into a cup for others to drink wine from.
In this town somewhere there sits a calm, intelligent man,
who doesn't know what he's about to do!
You only need smell the wine
You only need smell the wine
For vision to flame from each void--
Such flames from wine's aroma!
Imagine if you were the wine.
~ Rumi%%%
The grapes of my body can only become wine
After the winemaker tramples me.
I surrender my spirit like grapes to his trampling
So my inmost heart can blaze and dance with joy.
Although the grapes go on weeping blood and sobbing
"I cannot bear any more anguish, any more cruelty"
The trampler stuffs cotton in his ears: "I am not working in ignorance
You can deny me if you want, you have every excuse,
But it is I who am the Master of this Work.
And when through my Passion you reach Perfection,
You will never be done praising my name."
~ Rumi%%%
And to the open-handed the search for one who shall receive is joy greater than giving
~ Gibran%%%
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~jrcole/gibran/prophet/prophet.htm#Giving
To be with someone who has known is contagious -- and truth is not taught, it is caught.
If you are really committed to truth you are bound to become a sannyasin. If your commitment to truth is an inquiry then you will have to learn the ways of learning. And the first thing to learn is to surrender, to trust, to love.%%%
The sannyasin is one who has fallen in love with a person, or a no-person, where he feels a gut feeling: "Yes, it has happened here!"
~OSHO%%%
http://www.oshoworld.com/osho_talk/talks/wisdom28.asp
Sometimes a mule does not know
What is best for itself.
When the mind is confused like that
It secretly desires a master
With a skilled whip
To guide it to those playgrounds
On the earth’s table
Where the Sweet One’s light has
Made life more tasty.
Hafiz always carries such a whip
But I rarely need to use it.
I prefer just turning myself into
The prettiest mule
In town
And making my tail sing
knowing your heart will then
Follow
~Hafiz%%%
You must bet and lose
everything you’ve ever owned
if you truly desire
to become one with your beloved.
~ Rumi%%%
Sadness is but a wall between two gardens.
~Kahlil Gibran%%%
My friend, you and I shall remain strangers unto life,
And unto one another, and each unto himself,
Until the day when you shall speak and I shall listen
Deeming your voice my own voice;
And when I shall stand before you
Thinking myself standing before a mirror.
~ Khalil Gibran%%%
If you love somebody,
let them go, for if they return,
they were always yours. And if they don’t,
they never were.
~ Kahlil Gibran%%%
Beauty is not in the face;
Beauty is a light in the heart.
~ Khalil Gibran%%%
If I accept the sunshine and warmth,
then I must also accept the thunder and lightning.
~ Kahlil Gibran%%%
It is wrong to think that love comes from long companionship and
persevering courtship.
Love is the offspring of spiritual affinity and unless that affinity is created in a moment,
it will not be created for years or even generations.
~ Khalil Gibran%%%
First
The fish needs to say,
"Something ain't right about this
Camel ride -
And I'm
Feeling so damn
Thirsty."
~ Hafiz%%%
When the Day came,
The Day I had lived and died for,
The Day that is not in any calendar,
Clouds heavy with love
Showered me with wild abundance.
Inside me, my soul was drenched.
Around me, even the desert grew green.
~ Kabir%%%
Go Past the thoughts into silence.
Go Past the silence into stillness.
Go Past the stillness into the heart.
Let love consume all that is left of you.
~ Kabir%%%
“I laugh when I hear that
the fish in the water is thirsty.
I laugh when I hear that
men go on pilgrimage to find God.”
~ Kabir%%%
How humble is God?
God is the tree in the forests that
allows itself to die and will not defend itself in front of those
with the ax, not wanting to cause them
shame.
And God is the earth that will allow itself to
be deformed by man’s tools, but He cries; yes, God cries,
but only in front of His closest ones.
And a beautiful animal is being beaten to death,
but nothing can make God break His silence
to the masses
and say,
“Stop, please stop, why are you doing this
to Me?”
How humble is God?
Kabir wept
when I
knew.
~ Kabir%%%
From the solemn gloom of the temple
children run out to sit in the dust,
God watches them play
and forgets the priest.
~ Rabindranath Tagorej%%%
The Definition of Love
Kill and be happy.
Indeed,
This is the definition
Of animal love.
Possess and be happy,
Indeed,
This is the definition
Of human love.
Become one and be happy.
Indeed,
This is the definition
Of divine love.
~ Sri chinmoy%%%
When God and I
Have a private moment,
The first thing He asks me is this:
“My child,
Why are you so slow
In your unconditional surrender
To My will?”
~ Sri chinmoy%%%
No Estés Lejos de Mí
"No estés lejos de mí un sólo día, porque cómo,
porque, no sé decírtelo, es largo el día,
y te estaré esperando como en las estaciones
cuando en alguna parte se durmieron los trenes.
No te vayas por una hora porque entonces
en esa hora se juntan las gotas del desvelo
y tal vez todo el humo que anda buscando casa
venga a matar aún mi corazón perdido.
Ay que no se quebrante tu silueta en la arena,
ay que no vuelen tus párpados en la ausencia:
no te vayas por un minuto, bienamada,
porque en ese minuto te habrás ido tan lejos
que yo cruzaré toda la tierra preguntando
si volverás o si me dejarás muriendo."
~Pablo Neruda%%%
Absence
I have scarcely left you
When you go in me, crystalline,
Or trembling,
Or uneasy, wounded by me
Or overwhelmed with love, as
when your eyes
Close upon the gift of life
That without cease I give you.
My love,
We have found each other
Thirsty and we have
Drunk up all the water and the
Blood,
We found each other
Hungry
And we bit each other
As fire bites,
Leaving wounds in us.
But wait for me,
Keep for me your sweetness.
I will give you too
A rose.
~ Neruda%%%
Carnal apple, Woman filled, burning moon,
dark smell of seaweed, crush of mud and light,
what secret knowledge is clasped between your pillars?
What primal night does Man touch with his senses?
Ay, Love is a journey through waters and stars,
through suffocating air, sharp tempests of grain:
Love is a war of lightning,
and two bodies ruined by a single sweetness.
Kiss by kiss I cover your tiny infinity,
your margins, your rivers, your diminutive villages,
and a genital fire, transformed by delight,
slips through the narrow channels of blood
to precipitate a nocturnal carnation,
to be, and be nothing but light in the dark.
~Neruda%%%
“It is always difficult to give oneself up; few persons anywhere ever succeed in doing so, and even fewer transcend the possessive stage to know love for what it actually is: a perpetual discovery, and immersion in the waters of reality, an unending re-creation.”
~ Octavio Paz%%%
I want you to know
one thing.
You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.
Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.
If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.
If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.
But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine
~Neruda%%%
The difference between a good artist and a great one is
The novice will often lay down his tool
Or brush
Then pick up an invisible club
On the mind’s table
And helplessly smash the easels and
Jade.
Whereas the vintage man
No longer hurts himself or anyone
And keeps on
Sculpting
Light.
~ Hafiz%%%
If I adore You
out of fear of Hell,
Burn me in Hell!
If I adore you
out of desire for Paradise,
Lock me out of Paradise.
But if I adore you
for yourself alone,
Do not deny to me
Your eternal beauty.
~ Rabia al-Basri%%%
O Beloved,
Another Night is passing away,
Another Day is rising
Tell me that
I have spent the Night well
so I can be at peace,
Or that I have wasted it,
so I can mourn for what is lost.
I swear that ever since the first day
You brought me back to life,
The day You became my Friend,
I have not slept
And even if You drive me from your door,
I swear again that we will never be separated.
Because You are alive in my heart.
~ Rabia al-Basri%%%
In Love, nothing exists
between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.
How can you describe
the true form of Something
In whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?
And who lives as a sign for your journey?
~ Rabia al-Basri%%%
Even
After
All this time
The Sun never says to the Earth,
“You owe me.”
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the whole sky.
~ Hafiz%%%
What
Do sad people have in
Common?
It seems
They have all built a shrine
To the past
And often go there
And do a strange wail and
Worship.
What is the beginning of
Happiness?
It is to stop being
So religious
Like That.
~ Hafiz%%%
I caught the happy virus last night
When
I was out singing
beneath the stars.
It is remarkably
contagious -So kiss me.
~ Hafiz%%%
I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:
How are you?
I have a thousand brilliant lies
For the question:
What is Beloved?
If you think that the Truth can be known
From words,
If you think that the Sun and the Ocean
Can pass through that tiny opening
Called the mouth,
O someone should start laughing!
Someone should start wildly Laughing
Now!
~ Hafiz%%%
Throw away
All your begging bowls at God’s door,
For I have heard the Beloved
Prefers sweet threatening shouts,
Something on the order of:
“Hey Beloved,
My heart is a raging volcano
Of love for you!
You better start kissing me -
Or Else!”
~ Hafiz%%%%
Out
Of a great need
We are all holding hands
And climbing.
Not loving is a letting go.
Listen,
The terrain around here
Is
Far too
Dangerous
For
That.
~ Hafiz%%%
A still cup….
For
God
To make Love,
For the divine alchemy to work,
The Pitcher needs a still cup.
Why
Ask Hafiz to say
Anything more about
Your most
Vital
Requirement?
~ Hafiz%%%
Once a man came to me and spoke for hours about
“His great visions of God” he felt he was having.
He asked me for confirmation, saying,
“Are these wondrous dreams true?”
I replied, “How many goats do you have?”
He looked surprised and said,
“I am speaking of sublime visions
And you ask
About goats!”
And I spoke again saying,
“Yes, brother – how many do you have?”
“Well, Hafiz, I have sixty-two.”
“And how many wives?”
Again he looked surprised, then said,
“Four.”
“How many rose bushes in your garden,
How many children,
Are your parents still alive,
Do you feed the birds in winter?”
And to all he answered.
Then I said,
“You asked me if I thought your visions were true,
I would say that they were if they make you become
More human,
More kind to every creature and plant
That you know.”
~ Hafiz%%%
The
Real love
I always keep a secret.
All my words
Are sung outside Her window,
For when She lets me in
I take a thousand oaths of silence.
But,
Then She says,
O, then God says,
“What the hell, Hafiz,
Why not give the whole world
My
Address.”
~ Hafiz%%%
This sky where we live is
no place to lose your wings
So love, love, love.
~ Hafiz%%%
I am trying the best I can
With this crude brush,
the tongue,
To cover you with light.
~ Hafiz%%%
Lucky is the one who realizes the secret of being nobody
for no one gets anywhere by being somebody.
Whatever is not about desirelessness and detachment
is a delusion and will lead but to disillusion.
There is a light on your face
which whispers of the Divine Flame.
With God is my witness you were born from the same.
For the caged bird to reach the perfumed garden
it has to pass through the realm of imagination.
You have to rise above that
which you think human destiny
to fulfill your destiny,
for your covenant is not with man
but with God.
Should you not be allowed yet
to join the Beloved’s caravan
be content if you hear its bells from a distance
in the realm of hearts none but our King rules
the One who by day is the Ruler
and by night the Life bestowing Thief!
~ Jami%%%
Though you are wise, be as a fool;
Though you can see, be as one blind;
Though you can hear, be as one deaf;
Patiently bear with all you meet,
and politely talk to everyone.
This practice surely will lead you
to the realisation of the Truth.
~ Lalla%%%
At
Some point
Your relationship
With God
Will
Become like this:
Next time you meet Him in the forest
Or on a crowded city street
There won’t be anymore
“Leaving.”
That is,
God will climb into
Your pocket.
You will simply just take
Yourself
Along!
~ Hafiz%%%
Your tastes have become refined.
It used to be
If someone stole all your coins
Or locked your sexual pleasure in a room
You could not reach
This world would have no meaning
And a thirst for a hemlock brew
Might arise.
But that was many lives ago.
Now look at yourself:
You are often still a mess
Through these days,
At times,
You weep because
You miss
Him.
~ Hafiz%%%
The small man
Builds cages
For everyone
He
Knows
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.
~ Hafiz%%%
I know the voice of depression
Still calls to you.
I know those habits that can ruin your life
Still send their invitations.
But you are with the Friend now
And look so much stronger.
You can stay that way
And even bloom!…
Learn to recognize the counterfeit coins
That may buy you just a moment of pleasure,
But then drag you for days,
Like a broken man
Behind a farting camel…
O keep squeezing drops of the Sun
From your prayers and work and music
And from your companions’ beautiful laughter
And from the most insignificant movements
Of your own holy body.
Now, sweet one,
Be wise.
Cast all your votes
for dancing…!
~ Hafiz%%%
The path that leads to love
is so Narrow that
Two cannot walk on it
unless they become One.
~ Kabir%%%
Love is
The funeral pyre
Where I have laid my living body.
All the false notions of myself
That once caused fear and pain,
Turned to ash
As I neared the Beloved.
What has risen
From the tangled web of thought and sinew
Now shines with jubilation
Through the eyes of angels
And screams from the guts of
Infinite existence
Itself.
Love is the funeral pyre
Where the heart must lay
Its body.
~ Hafiz%%%
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of it's furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
~ Rumi%%%
I used to live in
A cramped house with confusion
And pain.
But then I met the Friend
And started getting drunk
And singing all
Night.
Confusion and Pain
Started acting nasty,
Making threats,
With talk like this,
“If you don’t stop ‘that’
All that fun
We’re
Leaving.”
~ Hafiz%%%
The heart is
The thousand-stringed instrument.
Our sadness and fear come from being
Out of tune with love.
All day long Love coaxes my lips
To speak,
So that your tears will not stain
His green dress.
It is not that the Friend is vain,
It is just your life we care about.
Sometimes the Beloved
Takes my pen in hand,
For Hafiz is just a simple man.
The other day the Old One
Wrote on the Tavern wall:
“The heart is
The thousand-stringed instrument
That can only be tuned with
Love.”
~ Hafiz%%%
“There are different wells within your heart.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far too deep for that.
In one well
You have just a few precious cups of water,
That "love" is literally something of yourself,
It can grow as slow as a diamond
If it is lost.
Your love
Should never be offered to the mouth of a
Stranger,
Only to someone
Who has the valor and daring
To cut pieces of their soul off with a knife
Then weave them into a blanket
To protect you.
There are different wells within us.
Some fill with each good rain,
Others are far, far too deep
For that.”
~ Hafiz%%%
Noise
Is a cruel ruler
Who is always imposing
Curfews,
While
Stillness and quiet
Break open the vintage
Bottles,
Awake the real
Band.
~ Hafiz%%%
There is no home, unless we find it in ourselves.
~Osho%%%%%%
The life of love is a very insecure life, but tremendously beautiful. Dangerous, adventurous, but the only way to live is to live in danger, and to live in adventure.
~OSHO%%%
Watch the waves in the ocean.
The higher the wave goes,
the deeper is the wake that follows it.
One moment you are the wave,
another moment you are the hollow wake that follows.
Enjoy both–don’t get addicted to one.
Don’t say: I would always like to be on the peak.
Simply see the fact: it is not possible.
It has never happened and it will never happen.
It is simply impossible–not in the nature of things.
Then what to do?
Enjoy the peak while it lasts
and then enjoy the valley when it comes.
What is wrong with the valley?
What is wrong with being low?
It is a relaxation.
A peak is an excitement,
but nobody can exist continuously
in an excitement.
~Osho%%%
When somebody comes and gives, his or her love to you without asking, without demanding anything in return for it, it has a beauty, it is not of this world, it has an unearthly quality to it, it is sacred.
~ Osho%%%
One birth has been given to you
by your parents
The other birth is waiting.
It has to be given
by yourself.
~Osho%%%
STORMS
“It is good to be available to the wind,
to the rain, to the sun,
… because this is what life is.
So rather than becoming worried about it, dance!”
Growth means that you are absorbing something new every day,
and that absorption is possible only if you are open.
Now your windows and doors are open.
Sometimes the rain comes in and the wind comes in,
the sun comes, and life moves within you.
So you will feel a few disturbances:
Your newspaper will start moving in the wind,
the papers on the table will be disturbed,
and if the rain starts coming in your clothes may become wet.
If you have always lived in a closed room,
you will ask, “What is happening?”
Something beautiful is happening.
It is good to be available to the wind,
to the rain, to the sun,
because this is what life is.
So rather than becoming worried about it, dance!
Dance when the storm comes,
because silence will follow.
Dance when challenges come and disturb your life,
because in responding to those challenges
you will be growing to new heights.
Remember, even suffering is a grace.
If one can take it rightly it becomes a stepping stone.
People who have never suffered and
have lived a convenient and comfortable,
life are almost dead.
Their lives will not be like a sharp sword.
It will not even cut vegetables.
Intelligence becomes sharp when you face challenges.
Pray every day to God,
“Send me more challenges tomorrow,
send more storms,”
and then you will know life at the optimum.
~ Osho%%%
Why Love Hurts ?
Love is painful because it creates the way for bliss. Love is painful because it transforms. Love is mutation. Each transformation is going to be painful because the old has to be left for the new. The old is familiar, secure, safe, the new is absolutely unknown. You will be moving in an uncharted ocean. You cannot use your mind with the new’ with the old, the mind is skillful. The mind can function only with the old’ with the new, the mind is utterly useless.
Hence, fear arises, and leaving the old, comfortable, safe world, the world of convenience, pain arises. It is the same pain that the child feels when he comes out of the womb of the mother. It is the same pain that the bird feels when he comes out of the egg. It is the same pain that the bird will feel when he will try for the first time to be on the wing.
It is because of the pain of love, millions of people live a loveless life. They too suffer, and their suffering is futile. To suffer in love is not to suffer in vain. To suffer in love is creative’ it takes you to higher levels of consciousness. To suffer without love is utterly a waste’ it leads you nowhere, it keeps you moving in the same vicious circle.
~ Osho%%%
Friendship is the purest love. It is the highest form of Love where nothing is asked for, no condition, where one simply enjoys giving.
~ Osho%%%
This pain is not to make you sad, remember. That’s where people go on missing….
This pain is just to make you more alert–because people become alert only when the arrow goes deep into their heart and wounds them. Otherwise they don’t become alert. When life is easy, comfortable, convenient, who cares?
Who bothers to become alert?
When a friend dies, there is a possibility. When your woman leaves you alone–those dark nights, you are lonely. You have loved that woman so much and you have staked all, and then suddenly one day she is gone. Crying in your loneliness, those are the occasions when, if you use them, you can become aware. The arrow is hurting:
it can be used. The pain is not to make you miserable, the pain is to make you more aware! And when you are aware, misery disappears.
Love is not a relationship between two persons. It is a state of mind within yourself. If you are loving, you are loving to everybody — not only to persons, but to things as well.
Love moves from you to objects also. Even when you are alone, when no one is there, you are loving.
It is just like breathing.
~ Osho%%%
Fear is never love, and love is never afraid. There is nothing to lose for love. Why should love be afraid?
Love only gives. It is not business, so there is no question of loss or profit. Love enjoys giving, just as flowers enjoy releasing their fragrance. Why should they be afraid ?
~ Osho%%%
God is not a person but only the experience that the whole existence is an alive, phenomenon; it is not matter alone, it is throbbing with life!…that it has a heartbeat.
The moment you know that the universe has a heartbeat, you have discovered God…
~ Osho%%%
He is certainly a great poet, perhaps the greatest that has ever been born on the earth, but he is not a mystic; and there is a tremendous difference between a poet and a mystic. The poet, once in a while, suddenly finds himself in the same space as the mystic. In those rare moments, roses shower over him. On those rare occasions, he is almost a Gautam Buddha – but remember, I’m saying almost.
These rare moments come and go. He’s not the master of those rare moments. They come like the breeze and the fragrance and by the time you have become aware they are gone.
A poet’s genius is that he catches those moments in words. Those moments come into your life too. They are free gifts of existence – or in other words, glimpses to provoke in you a search, to come to a moment when this space will become your very life, your blood, your bones, your marrow. You will breathe it; your heart will beat it. You will never be able to lose it, even if you want to.
The poet is for moments a mystic, and the mystic is a poet forever.
~ Osho%%%
Only those who are ready to become
nobodies
are able to love.
~ Osho%%%
You will love because you have something to give,
not to get something.
~ Osho%%%
You can understand only as much as you have experienced.
~ Osho%%%
Listen only to that which is significant.
Read only that which is meaningful.
Avoid the unnecessary , the irrelevant.
Speak only that which is to the point.
Make your each word your heart.
Don’t just go on saying things
as if your a gramophone record.
~ Osho%%%
When you are different,
the whole world is different.
It is not a question of creating a different world.
It is only a question of creating a different you.
~ Osho%%%
Love is a wine
you have to taste it,
you have to drink it,
you have to become drunk with it,
only then do you know
what it is.
~ Osho%%%
I am not serious,
I am just celebrating.
When I talk to you,
I am not giving you an idealogy, a philosophy, a religion.
I simply want to share
my celebration.
~ Osho%%%
Only in deep silence
something of me enters in you and something of you enters in me…
~ Osho%%%
Love, and yet don’t be lost in it.
Relate, and yet be alone,
utterly alone.
~ Osho%%%
Never hope that the other should change. In every relationship start the change from your side.
~ Osho%%%
I teach you rebellion! Come out of the masses. Stand alone like a lion and live your life according to your own light.
~ Osho%%%
Falling in love you remain a child;
rising in love you mature.
By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being.
Not that you are in love – now you are love.
~ Osho%%%
The real seeker of truth never seeks truth.
On the contrary,
he tries to clean himself of all that is untrue, inauthentic, insincere -
and when his heart is ready, purified, the guest comes.
You cannot find the guest,
you cannot go after him.
He comes to you;
you just have to be prepared.
You have to be in a right attitude.
~ Osho%%%%%%
What you see outside is only a projection,
just as you see a projection of a film on the screen.
There is nothing outside,
you are projecting everything.
~ Osho%%%
The day there is no question and no answer within you, and you are just sitting here empty, you have come home.
~ Osho%%%
The innermost core is witnessing, awareness, watchfulness.
You can call it anything, but it will be another meaning of witnessing.
Truth is pure awareness.
~ Osho%%%
Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand – relax.
If you relax, it comes.
If you relax, it is there.
If you relax, you start vibrating with it.
~ Osho%%%
There is a time to be in love and there is a time to move beyond it. There is a time to be related and enjoy the relationship, and there is a time to be alone. And everything is beautiful.
~ Osho%%%
You are master of your own love, and you can give as much as you want-but you cannot demand love from another person, because nobody is a slave.
~ Osho%%%
When two centers meet, a new thing is created. That new thing is love. And it is just like water; The thirst of many lives is satisfied. Suddenly you become contented. That is the visible sign of love. ~ Osho%%%
LOVE Real
love is something which has nothing to do with filling the inner space.
Just the contrary,
it has something to do with sharing the inner space.
If you are sharing then it is love.
Sharing is the bridge which joins the human to the divine.
Love is the bridge which joins you to the divine.
~ Osho%%%
And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to open. ~ Anais Nin%%%
Love makes no conditions, no ifs, no buts. Love never says, “Fulfill these requirements, then I will love you.”
Love is like breathing:
when it happens you are.
~ Osho%%%
SI TÚ ME OLVIDAS
QUIERO que sepas
una cosa.
Tú sabes cómo es esto:
si miro
la luna de cristal, la rama roja
del lento otoño en mi ventana,
si toco
junto al fuego
la impalpable ceniza
o el arrugado cuerpo de la leña,
todo me lleva a ti,
como si todo lo que existe,
aromas, luz, metales,
fueran pequeños barcos que navegan
hacia las islas tuyas que me aguardan.
Ahora bien,
si poco a poco dejas de quererme
dejaré de quererte poco a poco.
Si de pronto
me olvidas
no me busques,
que ya te habré olvidado.
Si consideras largo y loco
el viento de banderas
que pasa por mi vida
y te decides
a dejarme a la orilla
del corazón en que tengo raíces,
piensa
que en ese día,
a esa hora
levantaré los brazos
y saldrán mis raíces
a buscar otra tierra.
Pero
si cada día,
cada hora
sientes que a mí estás destinada
con dulzura implacable.
Si cada día sube
una flor a tus labios a buscarme,
ay amor mío, ay mía,
en mí todo ese fuego se repite,
en mí nada se apaga ni se olvida,
mi amor se nutre de tu amor, amada,
y mientras vivas estará en tus brazos
sin salir de los míos.
~ Neruda%%%
The
Difference
Between a good artist
And a great one
Is:
The novice
Will often lay down his tool
Or brush
Then pick up an invisible club
On the mind’s table
And helplessly smash the easels and
Jade.
Whereas the vintage man
No longer hurts himself or anyone
And keeps on
Sculpting
Light.
~Hafiz%%%
"IT HAS NOT RAINED LIGHT"
It has not rained light for many days.
The wells in most eyes look drought-stricken.
Thus friends are not easy to find
In this barren place
Where most everyone has become ill
From guarding nothing.
On this primal caravan
Careers and cities can appear real in this
Intense Desert heat,
But I say to my close ones,
"Don't get lost in them,
it has not rained light there for days.
Look, most everyone is diseased
From 'making love' to nothing."
~Hafiz%%%
The Gift
Our
Union is like this:
You feel cold
So I reach for a blanket to cover
Our shivering feet.
A hunger comes into your body
So I run to my garden
And start digging potatoes.
You ask for a few words of comfort and guidance,
I quickly kneel at your side offering you
This whole book -
As a gift.
You ache with loneliness one night
So much you weep
And I say,
Here's a rope,
Tie it around me,
Hafiz
Will be your companion
For life.
~Hafiz%%%
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.
From Essential Rumi
by Coleman Barks%%%
Someone Untied Your Camel
I cannot sit still with my countrymen in chains.
I cannot act mute
Hearing the world's loneliness
Crying near the Beloved's Heart.
My love for God is such
That I could dance with Him tonight without you,
But I would rather have you there.
Is your caravan lost?
It is,
If you no longer weep from gratitude or happiness,
Or weep
From being cut deep with the awareness
Of the extraordinary beauty
That emanates from the most simple act
And common object.
My dear, is your caravan lost?
It is if you can no longer be kind to yourself
And loving to those who must live
With the sometimes difficult task of loving you.
At least come to know
That someone untied your camel last night
For I hear its gentle voice
Calling for God in the desert.
At least come to know
That Hafiz will always hold a lantern
With galaxies blooming inside
And that
I will always guide your soul to
The divine warmth and exhilaration
Of our Beloved's
Tent.
~Hafiz
“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?” ~ Rumi%%%
"The sum of my life is no more than these three words:
I was raw, I got cooked, I got burned."
~Rumi%%%
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about."
~ Rumi%%%
THE SILENT ARTICULATION OF A FACE
Love comes with a knife,
not some shy question,
and not with fears
for its reputation!
I say these things disinterestedly.
Accept them in kind.
Love is a madman, working his wild schemes, tearing off his clothes,
running through the mountains, drinking poison
and now quietly choosing annihilation.
A tiny spider tries to wrap an enormous wasp.
Think of the spiderweb woven across the cave
where Muhammad slept!
There are love stories,
and there is obliteration into love.
You've been walking the ocean's edge,
holding up your robes to keep them dry.
You must dive naked under and deeper under,
a thousand times deeper!
Love flows down!!
The ground submits to the sky and suffers
what comes.
Tell me, is the earth worse
for giving in like that?
Don't put blankets over the drum!
Open completely.
Let your spirit-ear listen to the green dome's passionate murmur.
Let the cords of your robe be untied.
Shiver in this new love beyond all above and below.
The sun rises, but which way
does night go?
I have no more words. Let soul speak with the silent
articulation of a face.
~Rumi%%%
Lift the veil
that obscures the heart
and there you will find
what you are looking for
Open those curtains wide
Your treasure awaits you
Hurt no one
Be not vain
Wealth and beauty
Are fleeting conditions
In the quiet place within
Find a seat
Sit in a way
That nothing stirs
For Kabir it has
Become blissful
The silent drum
Keeps playing.
~ Kabir%%%
Everything is clapping today.
Light,
Sound,
Motion,
All movement.
A rabbit I pass pulls a cymbal
From a hidden pocket
Then winks.
This causes a few planets and I
To go nuts
And start grabbing each other.
Someone sees this,
Calls a
Shrink,
Tries to get me
Committed
For
Being too
Happy.
Listen: this world is the lunatic's sphere,
Don't always agree it's real,
Even with my feet upon it
And the postman knowing my door
My address is somewhere else.
~Hafiz
God
and I have become
like two giant fat people living
in a tiny
boat.
We
keep bumping into
each other
and laughing!
~Hafiz%%%
The
Great religions are the
Ships,
Poets the life
Boats.
Every sane person I know has jumped
Overboard.
That is good for business
Isn't it
~Hafiz%%%
Tripping over Joy
What is the difference
Between your experience of Existence
And that of a saint?
The saint knows
That the spiritual path
Is a sublime chess game with God
And that the Beloved
Has just made such a Fantastic Move
that the saint is now continually
Tripping over Joy
And bursting out in Laughter
And saying, "I Surrender!"
Whereas, my dear,
I'm afraid you still think
You have a thousand serious moves
to make.
~Hafiz
WITH THAT MOON LANGUAGE
Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them:
"love me."
Of course you do not say this out loud;
Otherwise,
Someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about this,
This great pull in us
To connect.
Why not become the one
Who lives with a full moon in each eye
That is always saying,
With that sweet moon
Language,
What every other eye in this world
Is dying to hear.
Hear.
~Hafiz
The way of love is not a subtle argument.
The door there is devastation.
Birds make great sky-circles of their freedom.
How do they learn it?
They fall, and falling, they're given wings.
~Rumi%%%
The minute I heard my first love story,
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere,
they're in each other all along.
Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,
absentminded. Someone sober
will worry about things going badly.
Let the lover be.
~Rumi
Look
Look as long as you can
at the friend you love
No matter whether that friend is moving away from you
or coming back toward you.
~Rumi%%%
Reason is powerless in the expression of Love. Love alone is capable of revealing the truth of Love and being a Lover. The way of our prophets is the way of Truth. If you want to live, die in Love; die in Love if you want to remain alive.
~rumi%%%
What Happens?
What happens when your soul
Begins to awaken
Your eyes
And your heart
And the cells of your body
To the great Journey of Love?
First there is wonderful laughter
And probably precious tears
And a hundred sweet promises
And those heroic vows
No one can ever keep.
But still God is delighted and amused
You once tried to be a saint.
What happens when your soul
Begins to awake in this world
To our deep need to love
And serve the Friend?
O the Beloved
Will send you
One of His wonderful, wild companions ~
Like Hafiz.
~Hafiz
Some Kiss We Want
There is some kiss we want with
our whole lives, the touch of
spirit on the body.
Seawater
begs the pearl to break its shell.
And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild darling!
At night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its
face against mine.
Breathe into me.
Close the language-door and
open the love window.
The moon
won't use the door, only the window.
~Rumi. Translator: Coleman Barks%%%
Dance when you're broken open.
Dance when you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance when you're perfectly free.
Struck, the dancer hears a tambourine inside her,
like a wave that crests into foam at the very top,
Begins.
Maybe you don't hear that tambourine,
or the tree leaves clapping time.
Close the ears on your head,
that listen mostly to lies and cynical jokes.
There are other things to see, and hear.
Music. Dance.
A brilliant city inside your soul!
~ Rumi%%%
En un beso, sabrás todo lo que he callado.\n
~Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) Poeta chileno.%%%
No olvides nunca que el primer beso no se da con la boca, sino con los ojos.
~ O. K. Bernhardt Escritor alemán.%%%
Amar no es mirarse el uno al otro; es mirar juntos en la misma dirección.\n
~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery%%%
La peor forma de extrañar a alguien es estar sentado a su lado y saber que nunca lo podrás tener.\n
~ Gabriel García Márquez (1927-?) Escritor colombiano.%%%
Para mi corazón basta tu pecho,
para tu libertad bastan mis alas.\n
~ Pablo Neruda (1904-1973) Poeta chileno.%%%
Purifica tu corazón antes de permitir que el amor se asiente en él, ya que la miel más dulce se agria en un vaso sucio.\n
~ Pitágoras de Samos (582 AC-497 AC) Filósofo y matemático griego.%%%
En el amor no basta atacar, hay que tomar la plaza.\n
~Ovidio (43 AC-17) Poeta latino.%%%
El verdadero paraíso no esta en el cielo, sino en la boca de la mujer amada.\n
~ Théophile Gautier\n%%%
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living
I want to know what you ache for
and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool
for love
for your dreams
for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon...
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow
if you have been opened by life's betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your
fingers and toes
without cautioning us to
be careful
be realistic
to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure
yours and mine and still stand on the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
"Yes."
It doesn't interest me
to know where you live or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after a night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.
It doesn't interest me who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the center of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments.
~ Oriah%%%
No Te Amo
No te amo como si fueras rosa de sal,
topacio o flecha de claveles
que propagan eñ fuego:
te amo como se aman ciertas cosas oscuras,
secretamente, entre la sombra y el alma.
Te amo como la planta que no florece
y lleva dentro de sí, escondida,
la luz de aquellas flores,
y gracias a tu amor vive oscuro en mi cuerpo
el apretado aroma que ascendió de la tierra.
Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde,
te amo directamente sin problemas ni orgullo:
así te amo porque no sé amar de otra manera,
Sino así de este modo
en que no soy ni eres,
tan cerca que tu mano sobre mi pecho es mía,
tan cerca que se cierran tus ojos con mi sueño.
I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
Secretly, between the shadow and the soul.
I love you as the plant that never blooms
but carries within itself the light of those hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.
I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;
so I love you because I know no other way
than this: where I does not exist, nor you,
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.
~ Neruda%%%
Quítame el pan, si quieres,
quítame el aire, pero
no me quites tu risa.
No me quites la rosa,
la lanza que desgranas,
el agua que de pronto
estalla en tu alegría,
la repentina ola
de plata que te nace.
Mi lucha es dura y vuelvo
con los ojos cansados
a veces de haber visto
la tierra que no cambia,
pero al entrar tu risa
sube al cielo buscándome
y abre para mí todas
las puertas de la vida.
Amor mío, en la hora
más oscura desgrana
tu risa, y si de pronto
ves que mi sangre mancha
las piedras de la calle,
ríe, por que tu risa
será para mis manos
como una espada fresca.
Junto al mar en otoño,
tu risa debe alzar
su cascada de espuma,
y en primavera, amor,
quiero tu risa como
la flor que yo esperaba,
la flor azul, la rosa
de mi patria sonora.
Ríete de la noche,
del día, de la luna,
ríete de las calles
torcidas de la isla,
ríete de este torpe
muchacho que te quiere,
pero cuando yo abro
los ojos y los cierro,
cuando mis pasos van,
cuando vuelven mis pasos,
niégame el pan, el aire,
la luz, la primavera,
pero tu risa nunca
por que me moriría.
~ Neruda
How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans.
~ Neruda%%%
because two bodies, naked and entwined,
leap over time, they are invulnerable,
nothing can touch them, they return to the source.
There is no you, no I, no tomorrow,
no yesterday, no names, the truth of two
in a single body, a single soul,
oh total being…
porque las desnudeces enlazadas
saltan el tiempo y son invulnerables,
nada las toca, vuelven al principio,
no hay tú ni yo, mañana, ayer ni nombres,
verdad de dos en sólo un cuerpo y alma,
oh ser total...
~Octavio Paz%%%
A Lesson In Drawing
My son places his paint box in front of me
and asks me to draw a bird for him.
Into the color gray I dip the brush
and draw a square with locks and bars.
Astonishment fills his eyes:
'… But this is a prison, Father,
Don't you know, how to draw a bird?'
And I tell him: 'Son, forgive me.
I've forgotten the shapes of birds.'
My son puts the drawing book in front of me
and asks me to draw a wheatstalk.
I hold the pen
and draw a gun.
My son mocks my ignorance,
demanding,
'Don't you know, Father, the difference between a
wheatstalk and a gun?'
I tell him, 'Son,
once I used to know the shapes of wheatstalks
the shape of the loaf
the shape of the rose
But in this hardened time
the trees of the forest have joined
the militia men
and the rose wears dull fatigues
In this time of armed wheatstalks
armed birds
armed culture
and armed religion
you can't buy a loaf
without finding a gun inside
you can't pluck a rose in the field
without its raising its thorns in your face
you can't buy a book
that doesn't explode between your fingers.’
My son sits at the edge of my bed
and asks me to recite a poem,
A tear falls from my eyes onto the pillow.
My son licks it up, astonished, saying:
'But this is a tear, father, not a poem!'
And I tell him:
'When you grow up, my son,
and read the diwan of Arabic poetry
you'll discover that the word and the tear are twins
and the Arabic poem
is no more than a tear wept by writing fingers.'
My son lays down his pens, his crayon box in
front of me
and asks me to draw a homeland for him.
The brush trembles in my hands
and I sink, weeping.
~Nizar Qabbani
And when I wake in the morning I know I'll question why- because you
made me drink from the fount of you, and now my thirst for truth has
grown tenfold. However my eyes saw the world before, now I want them
to be gouged from my face. I want to be blinded in the rays of the
setting sun; hazy and blushes red, hues of peach and
Where did you go, what are you thinking, what do your eyes see, what
do your dreams tell you? Are you finding solace in your quest for
truth and meaning? Is your body rested in the night and alert in the
daylight? Where did the time go and how should I tolerate the utter
and profound absence of you? Of all souls there in the world to touch
and be touched, to place a warm hand on my breast, feel the soft
thumping of my heart underneath, you call it by it's name and still I
tremble.
~ EJ Hammond%%%
Would that my life were made bare as my soul does captured in the gaze. %%%
How could one caress a body and not say goodbye, goodnight, good morning? Are not your needs that of any man, any heart, any spirit, yearning to be fed the draught from which the river of life flows freely?%%%
My lips part but no words can escape, hands grasp but no matter can they hold, feet that walk but no distance can they truly carry; dreams that fly me to another world of pure freedom and ecstasy, but as all suns must needs rise, with the waning day in turn falls with the onset of nights black cold. Let me speak, grasp, and walk, and my dreams will rise from the cold like the arctic sun and never set again
~EJ Hammond%%%
Bless us with the first breath of morning. Bless the packet of seeds for the garden, shaking like a shaman’s rattle in prayer. Bless us with spare change in our pockets to give to the homeless, bless us with a heart that has been serviced by the mechanic, bless us with good tires on the icy road. Bless us so that we’re not just covering our own asses, but weeping for the rest of the world. Bless our tears so that they irrigate the land for the starving, that there be no more drought. Bless us with one idea after another that we might sort out the good from the bad, bless us with free lunches and subscriptions, bless us with a winter storm so big that it closes everything down for a week and we find ourselves at the beginning of time. Bless us with water, bless us with light, bless us with darkness, and bless us with language. Bless our tongues that we can speak. Bless our cars so they start. Bless our computers so that they may connect to the internet, and bring us the news of the universe. Bless Robert Bly and Gloria Steinem, bless all the worn-out athletes whose bodies are falling apart, bless the tides twice a day and the moon every month. Bless the sun, bless us as we are blessing you, for this is a two-way street, after all, and we’re in this think together. Bless mass transit, and the first cup of coffee. Sing O ye frost heaves and icy patches, praise the spruce trees all crowded together, the crows in the trees flying heavenward and earthward, flying everywhere in between. Bless the night with its constellations that we have dreamed up. Bless our stories that they may somehow be true, for this is all we have. Bless all creatures great and small and the basket makers who weave together a framework to hold emptiness. Bless the empty spaces that are within our bodies, the vast distances inside each cell. Bless each cell, which is its own universe, ready to divide, split in two, and make more than enough.
~Stuart Kestenbaum%%%
“Only now
do you realize
how quickly
everything
passes
how we
are here for
a blink of God’s eye
how the light passes
by us and through us
how the world
began with a breath
and a cry
earth and sky.”%%%
You know the Beatles could have
afforded another microphone,
but George would always stand
in the middle and step up to
Paul’s when it was time to
join in. Because that’s the way
harmony is, you need to share the
electricity, the voice, the words.
Just the way we do when we drive
in our cars with the radio on,
the windows rolled down with fall in the
air, dead leaves swirling in the wake,
or in the spring, the earth damp and soft,
the air hazy with pollen. We hear
the song that moves us, crank the
radio and sing along, at the top of
our lungs, as if we just joined
the group. In tune out of tune,
country western, rock and roll, we want
to harmonize. A whole country of
would-be stars losing love, finding love
with the radio in different
cars, on different paths, the dark
road rumbling beneath.
~Stuart Kestenbaum%%%
What was it we wanted
to say anyhow, like today
when there were all the letters
in my alphabet soup and suddenly
the ‘j’ rises to the surface.
The ‘j’, a letter that might be
great for Scrabble, but not really
used for much else, unless
we need to jump for joy,
and then all of a sudden
it’s there and ready to
help us soar and to open up
our hearts at the same time,
this simple line with a curved bottom,
an upside down cane that helps
us walk in a new way into this
forest of language, where all the letters
are beginning to speak,
finding each other in just
the right combination
to be understood.
~Stuart Kestenbaum%%%
The light snow started late last night and continued
all night long while I slept and could hear it occasionally
enter my sleep, where I dreamed my brother
was alive again and possessing the beauty of youth, aware
that he would be leaving again shortly and that is the lesson
of the snow falling and of the seeds of death that are in everything
that is born: we are here for a moment
of a story that is longer than all of us and few of us
remember, the wind is blowing out of someplace
we don’t know, and each moment contains rhythms
within rhythms, and if you discover some old piece
of your own writing, or an old photograph,
you may not remember that it was you and even if it was once you,
it’s not you now, not this moment that the synapses fire
and your hands move to cover your face in a gesture
of grief and remembrance.
~Stuart Kestenbaum%%%
DESPUÉS
Luego de haber cortado todos
los brazos que se tendían hacia mí;
luego de haber tapiado
todas las ventanas y puertas;
luego de haber inundado
con agua envenenada los fosos;
luego de haber edificado mi casa en la roca
de un No inaccesible a los halagos y al miedo;
luego de haberme cortado la lengua
y luego de haberla devorado;
luego de haber arrojado puñados de silencio
y monosílabos de desprecio a mis amores;
luego de haber olvidado mi nombre
y el nombre de mi lugar natal
y el nombre de mi estirpe;
luego de haberme juzgado
y haberme sentenciado
a perpetua espera y a soledad perpetua,
oí, contra las piedras de mi calabozo de silogismos,
la embestida húmeda, tierna, insistente,
de la primavera.
~Octavio Paz
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See http://lifechangingthings.jacobcole.net/
- "Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire."
― Pierre Teilhard De Chardin