Sunday, March 19, 2023

In the Garden of the Beloved - "Where Love Abides"

 

 

 I wander the Wilderness outside the walled villages of religion,
Not because I hold them in disdain, denying their fruitfulness,
For my Heart embraces within each, that which enriches,
And sets aside that which does not.

Nor do I deny the efficacy possible in each village,
For within the constraints of their dogmas and orthodoxies,
There have been, and will always be, those few souls,
Who transcend the letter of the law, Fulfilling its Spirit.

I often encounter fierce villagers standing guard at the gates,
Declaring I, a heretic, may not enter, much less embrace,
For neither do I adhere to, nor abide by their laws,
For theirs is, they say, the way and the truth.

Time and again I have pushed past those militant legalists,
And turning from the road leading to the edifice of law,
Have found my way to The Tavern of The Beloved,
Where, Intoxicated, I have revelled in Love.

Ibn Arabi so Beautifully distilled my many words:

“I profess the religion of Love.
Wherever its caravan turns along the way,
That is the belief, the faith I keep.” 

 


 
https://gardenofthebeloved.com/

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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/

 

 

Saturday, March 11, 2023

The Root of Fear | J. Krishnamurti



“So we are enquiring what is the root of fear, not a particular fear but the root of all fear. The root of fear is time: what I will be, what I have been, what I might not be. Time is the past, the present, and the future. The past modifying itself in the present and continuing in the future. 
Fear of something that has happened psychologically, or physically, last week, or last year, and hoping that it will not continue in the future. So time is a factor of fear. 
The poor man, fear of not being able to find the next meal. You don’t know all that. The fear of having no home, no shelter, no food. And the effect of fear, both on the physical organism, and on the psychological, on the psyche, and the very psyche may be made up of fear. Please understand that.
The psyche, what you are, may be the result of fear. And probably is. So it is important to understand the depth and the meaning of fear. And that is time and thought. 
Time as the future, I might die, I might lose, I might be nobody, I am somebody now – which I doubt – but I want to be somebody in the future, the next day, and so on. So time and thought are the root of fear. And therefore one must ask a much more serious question: whether time and thought has a stop.”

J. Krishnamurti
Talk 2, New York, 1983
 

 

Christiane Singer - A loving look

 


When I look at the other with a loving look, I reveal to them their deep nature, reminding them of their true identity. As it is said in Hakuin's song: "You wander among beggars without remembering who you are." "The look of the one who loves me, the look that sees in me what I am in my depth places me in my royalty, puts me back in the original light."

We often say love is blind, it is seeing. He sees what others don't. He sees behind the appearances, behind all the protections I built up to protect my heart. All my life, I am threatened from everywhere, by my educators, and anyone who wants to impose their views on me. Protecting myself for a lifetime. But the look that loves me melts away all the shells I once hid in order to survive.

And in the end, love is there, of course, to reveal to us that "God is nowhere else but everywhere", that in every being that meets me on this earth, in every look that meets me. Love is there to tell us: in every being I meet, I meet You. This experience of love and passion in our existence, Master Eckhart describes when he makes God say, “There is no room for two in you, I can only come in if you come out.” ". This is what we feel in passion when we are struck out like a tree trunk by lightning, when there is nothing left inside us but that bland, vibrating void. The presence of the other. This absolute experience of the sacred. This mystical experience - since the meeting of man and woman is of the same nature as the meeting of soul and God.

Christiane Singer, good use of crises



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Friday, March 10, 2023

Amoda Maa - The Presence

 


TRUST THE PRESENCE THAT HOLDS IT ALL.

Be courageous enough to meet life from the unknown—without a safety net, without hope, without past, and without future.
 
Without the hope of salvation—without running away from or running toward anything in your mind—you are forced to fall into the open space of being-ness.

And in this openness, you fall out of time and out of imagination, right into the present.
 
In other words, you become present—you become totally available to the essential being-ness of life.

In presence, you and life have collapsed into each other— there is no longer a “future life,” it’s all happening now.

In this eternal now, you and life are one—and when you are one with what is, how can you possibly fear what is?
It’s like fearing your self, and that’s ridiculous—because your self, the being-ness that you already are, never leaves you.

Being-ness is totally dependable—it is always here.

Now you are in touch with a deeper kind of trust—one that is not based on something.

It is no longer a conceptual trust, but one that is inherent in the nature of presence.
 
It is inherent in the nature of life, because life is always what is here in the present—it can’t be anywhere else.

This deeper trust has no meaning to the mind, but complete meaningfulness to your natural state.

And even if you fail, even if life leads you to a seeming dead-end, even if you are handed an unwanted circumstance, even if you don’t get to your desired destination of perfect happiness, even if your heart is broken open over and over again—you will still trust the presence that holds it all.

 


 

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https://www.amodamaa.com/ 

 

 

Tuesday, March 7, 2023

Ḥāfeẓ-e Shīrāzī - Dear one, Why wait

 

 

 In many parts of this world water is
Scarce and precious.

People sometimes have to walk
A great distance

Then carry heavy jugs upon their
Heads.

Because of our wisdom, we will travel
Far for love.

All movement is a sign of
Thirst.

Most speaking really says,
"I am hungry to know you."

Every desire of your body is holy;

Every desire of your body is
Holy.

Dear one,
Why wait until you are dying

To discover that divine
Truth?