a myth in the mess

'Psychology regards all symptoms to be expressing the right thing in the wrong way...

Follow the lead of your symptoms for there's usually a myth in the mess, and a mess is an expression of soul.'

- James Hillman

By Pima (Anonymous)
(18th Century)

English version by George Herzog & Brian Swann

here over you ..................here over you
there is light
it moves about
here over you
there is light
the tassels
downward

Heart of the Buddha

By Hsu Yun
(1839 - 1959)

No need to chase back and forth like the waves.
The same water which ebbs is the same water that flows.
No point turning back to get water
When it's flowing around you in all directions
The heart of the Buddha and the people of the world...
Where is there any difference?

“We are witness through which the universe becomes conscious of its own glory.”

- Alan Watts

A land not mine, still

A land not mine, still

By Anna Akhmatova
(1889 - 1966)

English version by Jane Kenyon



A land not mine, still
forever memorable,
the waters of its ocean
chill and fresh.

Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk,
and the air drunk, like wine,
late sun lays bare
the rosy limbs of the pinetrees.

Sunset in the ethereal waves:
I cannot tell if the day
is ending, or the world, or if
the secret of secrets is inside me again.


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[52] From my youth I piled studies upon studies, (from The Shodoka)

By Yoka Genkaku (Yongjia Xuanjue)
(665 - 713)

English version by Robert Aitken



From my youth I piled studies upon studies,
In sutras and sastras I searched and researched,
Classifying terms and forms, oblivious to fatigue.
I entered the sea to count the sands in vain
And then the Tathagata scolded me kindly
As I read "What profit in counting your neighbor's treasure?"
My work had been scattered and entirely useless,
For years I was dust blown by the wind.


Poetry Chaikhana

crows speak scotch broom heat
i carry nothing no keys
all that i have is

heavy leaves raindrops
drags down branch over sidewalk
scrapping umbrella

"There is no past, present or future. Using tenses to divide time is like making chalk marks on water." - Janet Frame

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." - Kurt Vonnegut

"We don't see things as they are, we see things as we are." - Anais Nin

Famous last words:

"So little done. So much to do." - Alexander Graham Bell

"I have not told half of what I saw." - Marco Polo

for Dan

Fall Moon Festival

What will happen when form collides with emptiness,
and what will happen when perception enters non-perception?
Come here with me, friend.
Let's watch together.
Do you see the two clowns, life and death
setting up a play on a stage?
Here comes Autumn.
The leaves are ripe.
Let the leaves fly.
A festival of colors, yellow, red.
The branches have held on to the leaves
during Spring and Summer.
This morning they let them go.
Flags and lanterns are displayed.
Everyone is here at the Full Moon Festival.

Friend, what are you waiting for?
The bright moon shines above us.
There are no clouds tonight.
Why bother to ask about lamps and fire?
Why talk about cooking dinner?
Who is searching and who is finding?
Let us just enjoy the moon, all night.
- Thich Nhat Hanh

When the Day Came

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


Sometimes

Large fingers pushing paint
You're god and you've got big hands
The colors blend... the challenges you give man

Seek my part... devote myself
My small self... like a book amongst the many on a shelf
Sometimes I know, sometimes I rise
Sometimes I fall, sometimes I don't
Sometimes I cringe, sometimes I live
Sometimes I walk, sometimes I kneel
Sometimes I speak of nothing at all
Sometimes I reach to myself, dear god
- Eddie Vedder

no wind, no waves

Odin's Ordeal

by Georg Feuerstein

Nine days.
Nine nights.
Speared by his own hand,
he hung silently
on the tree at world's end.
The cosmic winds were tearing
furiously at his bones.
His mind was spread out infinitely
in the reliquary of time.
He waited breathlessly,
every fiber surrendered,
every flickering thought
hovering in the nowhere
of the ever-present moment.
He, single-eyed Odin,
waited dispassionately
for death to end
and new knowledge to burgeon.
All was as it will be.

"planting daffodils"

By Charlotte Boulay

*******The Friar tells her, drink this
potion and for a time you will be
as dead.***What? she says,
*Are you kidding? Only the earth
knows that faith. But this love is of the earth,
so when she sleeps, it's in darkness,
******a round weight curled in a papery shroud.

This fall, digging little graves, I can smell
******winter approaching like the war
that already rages, not with drumbeats and shots
but more ominously silent, a great lack
of lucidity and grace.****Too soon,
*******deaths have begun:

fruit clipped by frost, a bird limp
by the mailbox in the morning, the flaming
*leaves—don't be distracted; we're blighting
landscapes one by one.
*******It's hard to believe
that everything resurrects itself in time
***some things with more reliability than others.

So is a rooted bulb a record
of a promise kept through winter. This is the truth we only half
believe:**that each hoary, twinned sprout becomes,
in the moment before she sees him,
*Juliet, waking to a clasp of arms,
*******yellow trumpets crying.

The Scripture of the Golden Eternity

Jack Kerouac

22
Stare deep into the world before you as if it were the void: innumerable holy ghosts, buddhies, and savior gods there hide, smiling. All the atoms emitting light inside wavehood, there is no personal separation of any of it. A hummingbird can come into a house and a hawk will not: so rest and be assured. While looking for the light, you may suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true light.

I've burned my own house down

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.

We are the driving ones

By Rainer Maria Rilke
(1875 - 1926)



We are the driving ones.
Ah, but the step of time:
think of it as a dream
in what forever remains.

All that is hurrying
soon will be over with;
only what lasts can bring
us to the truth.

Young men, don't put your trust
into the trials of flight,
into the hot and quick.

All things already rest:
darkness and morning light,
flower and book.

As sunlight is attributed to the moon

By Fakhruddin Iraqi

As sunlight is attributed to the moon, so is the Beloved's form ascribed to the lover; but in truth

each image painted
on the canvas of existence
is the form
of the artist himself.
Eternal Ocean
spews forth new waves.
"Waves" we call them;
but there is only the Sea.

Nonexistence

By Ayn al-Qozat Hamadani
(1098 - 1131)





Nonexistence
within existence
is my Rule
getting lost
in getting lost
my Religion.

Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout ~ Gary Snyder

Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.

I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.

Inside, you are sweet beyond telling…
and the cathedral there, so deeply tall.

~ Rumi
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Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling the potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

- Allan Watts
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