art Christiane Vleugels

Rumi - At last

I was going to tell you my story
but waves of pain drowned my voice.
I tried to utter a word but my thoughts
became fragile and shattered like glass.
Even the largest ship can capsize
in the stormy sea of love,
let alone my feeble boat
which shattered to pieces leaving me nothing
but a strip of wood to hold on to.
Small and helpless, rising to heaven
on one wave of love and falling with the next
I don't even know if I am or I am not.
When I think I am, I find myself worthless,
when I think I am not, I find my value.
Like my thoughts, I die and rise again each day
so how can I doubt the resurrection?
Tired of hunting for love in this world,
at last I surrender in the valley of love
and become free.

 art Tayfur Sanliman

Jane Hirshfield - The envoy

 

One day in that room, a small rat.   

Two days later, a snake.

Who, seeing me enter,

whipped the long stripe of his   

body under the bed,

then curled like a docile house-pet.

I don’t know how either came or left.   

Later, the flashlight found nothing.

For a year I watched

as something—terror? happiness? grief?—

entered and then left my body.

Not knowing how it came in,   

Not knowing how it went out.

It hung where words could not reach it.   

It slept where light could not go.

Its scent was neither snake nor rat,   

neither sensualist nor ascetic.

There are openings in our lives   

of which we know nothing.

Through them

the belled herds travel at will,

long-legged and thirsty, covered with foreign dust.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

 
Jane Hirshfield reads two short poems: "Of: An Assay" and "The Envoy."

audio  HERE

 

Text and audio source: Here

 

 

 

 

Ibn Arabi - Her fair quality is overwhelming.

As the full moon appears from the night,
so appears her face amid the tresses.

From sorrow comes the perception of her:
the eyes crying on the cheek;
life the black narcissus
Shedding tears upon a rose.

More beauties are silenced:
her fair quality is overwhelming.

Even to think of her harms her subtlety
(thought is too coarse a thing to perceive her).
If this be so, how can she correctly be seen
by such a clumsy organ as the eye?

Her fleeting wonder eludes thought.
She is beyond the spectrum of sight.

When description tried to explain her, she overcame it.
Whenever such an attempt is made,
description is put to flight.

Because it is trying to circumscribe.

If someone seeking her lowers his aspirations
(to Feel in terms of ordinary love),
-there are always others who will not do so.

 

 

 

Chuck Surface - Tea In The Wilderness

If you've abandoned the walled villages,
Of belief, faith, and dogma,
And Wander, alone, in The Wilderness,
You will not encounter many others there,
Where those requiring “knowledge” fear to go.

There, where even a lean-to or rocky ledge,
Is too much shelter against the Great Mystery,
Where a single word says far too much,
Where the mouth is shut, but the eyes…
Like a child's, are wide open in Wonder.

There, when you chance upon a Wanderer,
Gazing within, Absorbed in their own Vastness,
Unaware of your awareness of them,
You do not intrude upon that Inner Temple,
But quietly set a trap for their Heart.

In a place close by, unseen by them,
You build a fire, and make Tea,
Waiting... ever so patiently to see,
If their Soul can sense the Aroma,
And turn to find, the Wilderness in you.

If they should turn, and come to Drink,
Nothing is spoken of belief, or faith,
For they, like you, have abandoned the known,
And only the song of the birds is heard,
And the rustling of The Unknowable…

Through the leaves of your Souls.

www.GardenOfTheBeloved.com
www.facebook.com/InTheGardenOfTheBeloved

Alice Gardner - The Wedding Feast

When minds rule us
They see a world
Filled with intractable problems
Straining to survive, doubtful to survive
The onslaught of human life.

But Love would rule the world
And then all of what is seen
ALL of This
Becomes Love's invitation to our hearts.

Love invites us to a wedding feast
In every battleground, in every sickness, in every famine
We are being beckoned to embrace
Swirling images of death and destruction.
Becoming our completion
As they are embraced in the Heart
Of the world
In us.

We are both the birthing and the dying at once.
This is a stage, fashioned to discomfort us
To awaken our hearts
Into letting Love take us.

The richness of what we Are
As we include the world
Is only the beginning of what Love would show us.

Without resistance,
We have just gained entrance to the wedding feast
And find with surprise
That we ourselves are the Bride.

http://www.wideawakeliving.com/index.html 

https://www.facebook.com/alice.gardner.984 

 

Jacopone da Todi - No divisions

 

When you no longer love yourself
But love Goodness,
You and your Beloved will become one.
When you love Him, He must love you in return;
In His charity you are drawn to Him
And the two are made one.
This is true union
That admits of no divisions.

Swami Abhishiktananda (Henri Le Saux) - Arunachala

Arunachala is a symbol
and Arunachala is a Reality,
a high-place of the Dravidian land,
all ruddy, aruna, in the rays of the rising sun,
where is worshipped the linga of fire,
the elemental sign of the Living God,
he who appeared to Moses in the burning bush
and on the summit of Mount Horeb,
Fire that burns and Fire that gives light,
Deus Ignis consumens [“God the consuming Fire”]
Lux mundi [“The Light of the world”]
Paramjyoti [“The supreme Light”]
Phos hilaron [“The joyful Light”]
the joyful light of the immortal glory
of the Blessed One,
Bhagavan!

For there at the dawn of lime was standing
the column of fire
of which Brahma could not reach the summit
nor could Vishnu find its foot,
symbol as it was of unfathomable Love--
Anbe Shivam--
which is the very ground of Being.

Later it took the form of a sapphire;
and then, in the evil times of our kaliyuga,
the Linga of fire became stone
for the blessing of mankind,
the sacred Mountain,
achala,
which the Lord set firmly on its foundation
and which is never shaken.

To its caves, age after age, there has come a succession
of those who are hungry for wisdom and renunciation,
whom the Mountain, the divine Magnet,
draws to its bosom,
to teach them in its own silence
the royal path of the supreme Silence,
and how to be established in the Self--
achala, atmanishtha.

From its sides there flow springs
sublimely named--
“The spring of the milk of grace”
“Milk from the breast of the divine Mother”--
where pilgrims come
to bathe and drink.

And finally, from its crest on the great day of Thibam,
when the Sun sinks in the west,
and the full moon of Karttiki
rises above the horizon,
there shoots up the Column of Fire,
which reveals the secret of Light.
hidden in the heart of the Mountain!

From the very Depth of Arunachala's Heart
there sounds a call
to him who speeds towards the Depth
of the Heart of Arunachala;
but he who enters into the Depth
of the Heart of Arunachala,
has lost even his own name
and all that till then he was;
so that henceforth he is only the dweller in the Depth,
the one who lives within the Cave
of the Heart of Arunachala;
he has entered his own Depth,
has been swallowed up in the Self,
having discovered at the deepest centre of himself
the secret of Arunachala.

But for him who at last reaches the Depth
of the Heart of Arunachala,
does there still remain a Depth?
Is there still an Arunachala?
What has become of the Mountain,
rosy-coloured Arunachala?
Where now are the springs
on the sides of Arunachala?
What has happened to the Light,
on the crest of Arunachala?

The caves themselves have vanished,
and with them the hermits of Arunachala;
has not he himself also disappeared,
swallowed up in the Depth
of the Heart of Arunachala,
merged in the Self,
the Unique Arunachala?

Source