Thich Nhat Hanh - Fear

“When you practice looking deeply, you see your true nature of no birth, no death; no being, no non-being; no coming, no going; no same, no different. When you see this, you are free from fear. You are free from craving and free from jealousy. No fear is the ultimate joy. When you have the insight of no fear, you are free. And like the great beings, you ride serenely on the waves of birth and death.”

http://plumvillage.org/about/thich-nhat-hanh/ 

 

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Awareness

“Awareness is from moment to moment, it is not the cumulative effect of self-protective memories. Awareness is not determination nor is it the action of will. Awareness is the complete and unconditional surrender to what is, without rationalization, without the division of the observer and the observed. As awareness is non-accumulative, non-residual, it does not build up the self, positively or negatively. Awareness is ever in the present and so, non-identifying and non-repetitive; nor does it create habit.”

Hafiz - An old sweet beggar

This
Path to God
Made me such
an old sweet beggar.

I was starving until one night
My love tricked God Himself
To fall
into my bowl.

Now Hafiz is infinitely rich,
But all I ever want to do
Is keep emptying out
My emerald filled
Pockets
Upon
This tear stained
World.

 

Wendell Berry - The Silence

Though the air is full of singing
my head is loud
with the labor of words.

Though the season is rich
with fruit, my tongue
hungers for the sweet of speech.

Though the beech is golden
I cannot stand beside it
mute, but must say

"It is golden," while the leaves
stir and fall with a sound
that is not a name.

It is in the silence
that my Hope is, and my aim.
A Song whose lines

I cannot make or sing
sounds men's silence
like a root. Let me say

and not mourn: the world
lives in the death of speech
and sings there.

 

Melissa Studdard - I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast

I Ate the Cosmos for Breakfast from Motionpoems on Vimeo.

 —After Thich Nhat Hanh

It looked like a pancake,
but it was creation flattened out—
the fist of God on a head of wheat,
milk, the unborn child of an unsuspecting chicken
— all beaten to batter and drizzled into a pan.
I brewed my tea and closed my eyes
while I ate the sun, the air, the rain,
photosynthesis on a plate.
I ate the time it took that chicken
to bear and lay her egg
and the energy it takes a cow to lactate a cup of milk.
I thought of the farmers, the truck drivers,
the grocers, the people who made the bag that stored the wheat,
and my labor over the stove seemed short,
and the pancake tasted good,
and I was thankful.

https://melissastuddard.com/ 

Jiddu Krishnamurti - Lost in fear

We carry on like machines with our tiresome daily routine. How eagerly the mind accepts a pattern of existence, and how tenaciously it clings to it! As by a driven nail, the mind is held together by idea, and around the idea it lives and has its being. The mind is never free, pliable, for it is always anchored; it moves within the radius, narrow or wide, of its own center. From its center it dare not wander; and when it does, it is lost in fear. Fear is not of the unknown, but of the loss of the known. The unknown does not incite fear, but dependence on the known does. Fear is always with desire, the desire for the more or for the less. The mind, with its incessant weaving of patterns, is the maker of time; and with time there is fear, hope and death.

— Jiddu Krishnamurti – The Book of Life
(PDF for download at the bottom of this page)
more free downloads HERE

 

Jac O’Keeffe - You cannot know the Self

You cannot know the Self, 

for to know it, you need one to know it 

and then we have two again, 

one who knows something that can be known. 

Self cannot be known. 

Self is absolute knowledge, 

not needing to be known and not knowable by any knower. 

It is absolute, 

not containing qualities or characteristics 

because attributes have their opposite. 

Absolute is Self, Self is absolute.

https://www.jac-okeeffe.com/ 

Mullah Nasrudin - "Nothing"

The Mullah meets a friend on the street:
“Oh,  it’s been a long time….how are you? what are you doing?”

“Oh I am fine, thank you Mullah. Now I’m working at the palace of the Sultan, as the representative of the representative of the tea maker”.

“Ah, i see. And then what will you become?”
“Then I become the representative of  the tea maker”.
“And then?”
“Oh I become the tea maker for the Sultan.”
“And then?”
“I become the secretary”.
“Ah good, and then?”
“And then… I become a minister”.
“And then?”
“Oh Mullah! and then I become the visir”.
“Ah and then?”
“Well, and then I become the Sultan!”

“And then?”

“Mullah! And then, and then nothing!  There is nothing after the Sultan!”

“You see? That is where I’ve already reached”.