Saturday, March 18, 2023

Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī - Listen to My Pen's Avdvice

 

 

 O Beloved, why do you treat us this way?
For too long we have been ignored and deprived of Your light.


Pilgrim, listen to my pen's advice,for this pearl of wisdom is worth more than all your suffering or your gold.


O Winebringer, bring wine to those drinkers who are mad for more wine,that is, if You have any of last night's good wine left.


But I want to know how are You going to show us Your face.
With the light of the sun and moon reflecting in our eyes?


O philosopher, be sensible and don't speak out against love,
Have you some sort of bone to pick with God?


Aren't you at all afraid of my burning sigh,
Standing there in that cotton coat so close to the flames?


Hafiz, yours is the most beautiful verse I have ever heard.
You must have the Koran and the Bible in your heart, combined!

 


 

 

from  Drunk on the Wine of the Beloved: Poems of Hafiz

PDF DOWNLOAD 

HERE

 

 

Friday, March 17, 2023

Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī - The smile of the wineglass

 

 

 Hair disheveled, smiling lips, sweating and tipsy,
garment torn, singing a love song, glass in hand,
picking a quarrel, chanting a spell,
yesterday at midnight she came and sat by my bed.

She lowered her head to my ear, and whispered, sad-voiced,
“My old lover, are you asleep?”
The lover for whom such a nightfarer’s drink is poured
is an unbeliever of love if he does not worship wine.

Come on, hermit, do not blame those who drink to the dregs,
there was no other gift when God announced His Mastery.
The smile of the wineglass, a girl’s tangled tresses,
have broken many penances, as they broke the penance of Hafiz.

 


 

Monday, March 13, 2023

Darryl Bailey - Let’s Get Real

 

art Agnes Martin

 

 If we consider what we mean when we say “I am existing”, we simply mean that it feels like something is happening now.  We don’t have any other experience of life.  There is only the feeling of something happening now.  Even if we don’t call it anything, it still feels like this immediate happening is happening.

If we consider it more closely, we may realise that we don’t have any way of saying what this happening is.  We have many words for it (awareness, existence, being, self, world, trees, cars, people and so on), labels we’ve been taught to think, words that we’ve been taught to speak, but the labels don’t tell us what this happening is.  They simply point to different portions of the event.

When we are one hour old, we don’t know what this feeling of something happening is and we still don’t know what it is.  We’ve been trained to bark many words for it, but a seal, trained to bark on command, is not explaining existence.  And neither is a person barking labels.

We can get a better sense of what this happening is, if we think the question, “What is there when there is no thinking?”  If we think that question, then, at the end of the question, there is no thinking, but it doesn’t feel like nothingness.  It still feels like something is happening.  Let’s just be this immediate feeling of something happening.

No one is making this happen.  If we sit here, resting, making no effort at all, this happening of the moment still happens.  The process that you are still happens.  We don’t create this happening that we are.

Our “existence” is an occurrence, an action, an event, a movement … moving on its own … happening automatically … becoming something new in each moment.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, thoughts come, urges grow, actions happen.  Action/rest, emotion/calm, clarity/confusion, anxiety/peace … all of this simply happens in whatever way it happens.

Relax.  You will be whatever this moment presents, and you will do whatever you are compelled to do.

We are this unexplainable happening, moving to its unexplainable urges.  There’s no way of saying what this is.  There’s no way of saying why it’s happening the way it’s happening.

It’s an action, a movement, a flowing.  The River of Life.  The Great Spirit.  The Unformed Ocean of Existence.  Call it what you will.

Or perhaps, don’t call it anything.  We don’t have to focus on false names and explanations.  We can simply be this immediate happening.

This is it.  The feeling of what’s happening now.  Just rest …  and flow.  In whatever way you flow.

There’s nothing to be, apart from this immediate occurrence.  Nothing else exists.  There’s nothing to create.  We are created in each moment.  We are this movement, moving spontaneously, automatically.  There is no “self” directing this.  Any urge that arises is not our creation.

Why look for truth in fantasies of name and form, when it is so easily felt in the flowing of this moment?

Everything moves to an inner urge.  Sitting quietly, doing nothing, spring comes, grass grows by itself.  In the same way, we become what we have to be and we do what we have to do.

Like a flower, like a sunrise, like the galaxy itself. We are the wonder of creation, the warm, intimate, unfolding of this moment, always fulfilling its urges.  Not a “world”. Not a “self”, not a “doing”.  Not any of it.



https://www.darrylbailey.net/