Hafiz - Our Eternal Dance

art Reza Badrossama

Come to my house late at night -
Do not be shy.
Hafiz will be barefoot and dancing

I will be
In such a grand and generous mood!

Come to my door at any hour,
Even if your eyes
Are frightened by my light.
My heart and arms are open
And need no rest -
They will always welcome you.

Come in my dear,
From the harsh world
That has rained elements of stone
Upon your tender face.

Every soul
Should receive a toast from us
For bravery!

Bring all the bottles of wine you own
To this divine table - the earth
We share.

If your cellar is empty,
This whole Universe
Could drink forever
From mine!

Let's dine tonite with exquisite music.
I might even hire angels
To play - just for you.

Look!
Hidden beneath your feet
Is a Luminous Stage
Where we are meant to rehearse
Our Eternal Dance!

And what price is the price of my Divine Instruction?
What could I ask of you?

All I could ever want
Is that
You have the priceless company
of Someone
Who can Kiss God,

That you have the priceless gift
Of becoming a servant to the Friend!

Come to my window, dear world -
Why ever be shy?

Look inside my playful Verse,
For Hafiz is Barefoot and Dancing
And in such a Grand and Generous -
In such a Fantastic Mood.

Colin Oliver - Thought-bees

If thoughts were bees,
who would dare to shut them
tight in the hive of the head?

He who shatters
this hive of pretence
with the swift hammer of seeing,

sees no box, no house,
no door to lock.
The spell of images is broken

and the swarm
breaks out
to scatter in the world.

The hive of nothingness
brings to the world
the honey of love,

and thought-bees,
watched by the queen
of the eye, roam free.

poetry chaikhana 

 

Anthony de Mello - Wisdom

“This is what Wisdom means: 

To be changed without the slightest effort on your part, 

to be transformed, 

believe it or not, merely by waking to the reality 

that is not words, 

that lies beyond the reach of words. 

If you are fortunate enough to be Awakened thus, 

you will know why the finest language 

is the one that is not spoken, 

the finest action is the one that is not done 

and the finest change is the one that is not willed.”

via woman on the verge

 

Mark Nepo - Polishing the Heart

The Sufis speak of polishing the heart into a mirror, so that through our love we can reflect the heart of everything. This is one practice that in time can help us make the necessary agreement between our being and our humanness. By its very nature, living in the world creates a film over our heart, while our thoroughness of being and our gestures of love remove that film. There is no arrival in this process. The goal isn’t to stay clean or get dirty, but to stay engaged in the unending transformative cycle of life. And when we can’t summon the effort or courage to clean the film from our heart, there is always the necessary rain by which life will clean and refresh itself. In this way, the work of being and the inevitable friction of becoming are inextricably knit together.

We all film the heart and we all polish the heart. We all move between these points of wakefulness and weariness. All the while, the resources of life wait like a great sea to cleanse us. This is why we polish the heart into a mirror—to open and touch the place within us where all life lives, where all hearts feel, where all things resound through the inlet of our soul. The endless practice here is to live out a constant commitment to aliveness, to stay engaged in the ongoing journey of being filmed over, only to be scoured into a clear vessel, again and again.

http://marknepo.com/ 

 

Wu Hsin - What’s the point?

An imagined entity desires to become an enlightened imagined entity. What’s the point? It is like trying to measure space. Yet, this will continue until such time as the distinction is made between this that I am and that that I appear to be.

Dismount the pendulum of fear and desire. 
That ground beneath you is the Source and Support.

See that you create the space in which the world moves, the time in which it lasts. Come to realize that the world is only sand. You may play with it, you may walk on it, but don’t build your house there. There is no journey, as such. It may not seem so, but we are always back where we started. What we were in essence, and what we will be in essence, 

is what we are in essence.

All thinking is imaginary because the person talking to you is imaginary. There is no self talking to yourself; in fact, there also is no “yourself”. Stay a time in silence. 

Do not accept these words; look for yourself for “yourself”.

The two great delusions are that life is controllable and that there is an entity, me, who can exercise said control. But if we cannot even control the thoughts that appear to us, how can we possibly believe we can control what occurs to us?

Wherever you go, you carry with you the sense of here and now. This is what distinguishes any present experience from memory. It reveals that space and time are in you and not the other way around. Most people are not acquainted with the sense of their being but only with the knowledge of their doing.

Enlightenment is one more concept to add to your collection, yet another idea regarding improving yourself, discovering yourself, or obtaining peace and happiness.

Don’t take life personally. The sun has no care for what passes through the sky.

From the book: Behind the Mind: The Short Discourses of Wu Hsin

Mark McCloskey - Leaving the Shores of Belief

 To leave the safe shores of where we think we are and venture into the wide expanse of the sea of silent awareness itself is a scary proposition. The abyss of eternity is too vast, too unknown, too big for many of us. Yet, leave the shores of tradition, familiarity and belief, is what we must eventually do if we want to be totally and permanently free, 

once and for all.

    To allow for the realization of Pure Silence, the awareness of now, the truth as it is, you must have a fresh unencumbered mind. This means not only surrendering the surface clutter of worries, anxieties, nostalgia, guilt, desires and fantasies (all most difficult to let go of-but let go you must), but (and here's a real biggie - ready or not) you must abandon all your traditional beliefs, your concepts of religion, faith, hope and most especially of God itself. Remember you are realizing that which is permanent, eternal and present now, that which is beyond concept, beyond fabric. We are looking together to see what not only holds the fabric of existence itself together but what allows the seams and stitches to be, what allows their very pattern.

    For most of western humanity, God is merely a concept, a theology, an ideal or some super being, someone to be placated, to be feared, to be worshiped, to be prayed to. I'm sorry but to limit that which is infinite love itself to some vestigial object, to a being, a person, someone or thing we can name, provoke, control or possess is absolute silliness. That which encompasses all being is Pure Silence itself. That which is religion is merely some human words or thoughts about that which is beyond word, thought and worship. Following a religious tradition, what is it that we are  doing? It seems to me that we are merely following somebody else's insights, whether that somebody is called Jesus or Buddha or Krishna or Mohammed. All of these great men, women, deities, whatever, are pointing to something beyond themselves, to something always here and something that is not philosophical or theological, to that which is within all, sustains all and is larger than all and that which is experienced by all.

    To realize Pure Silence now, you must abandon all thoughts for this second, even the beliefs that you have cherished forever. Your beliefs are merely thoughts and what's more they originally were someone else's before they became your own. To see or know or realize that which is infinity itself, we must come absolutely naked. And in that complete, destitute and utter nakedness, perhaps we may come to a simple glimmer of that which is now, that which is you now, that which cannot be named or sublimated into a teaching, 

a prayer or anything else.

    This is a difficult thing to see because we believe in a thing called faith and belief and tradition. We have been told by parents, friends, churches, temples what the truth is. But I offer you, very humbly, the truth cannot be contained by anyone, any thing, any tradition, any belief. Truth, Pure Silence contains all of them. Stop now, stop everything, surrender to this moment of peace, this moment which is total freedom, total bliss. Just for one second, really admit the truth that you know absolutely nothing, that you are absolutely nothing. If you can realize that right now you will taste the freedom, the essence of what every god, every sage, messiah, prophet, teacher, poet, musician and scripture has been pointing to since humanity crawled from the slime. You will taste the freedom that you already are. And no one, no authority, no system can challenge that or take that away from you. Pure Silence is total gift to you right now.

   You are that which is eternal, infinite and love itself. Just breathe that right now in the gentle silence of here.

http://www.puresilence.org/index.htm 

 

Rainer Maria Rilke - Happy are those who know

Happy are those who know:
Behind all words, the Unsayable stands;
And from that source alone, the Infinite
Crosses over to gladness, and us –

Free of our bridges
Built with the stone of distinctions;
So that always, within each delight,
We gaze at what is purely single and joined.

 

Jeff Foster - The Home I never left

I’ve been a ‘successful’ spiritual seeker,
a desperate, failed spiritual seeker,
an enlightened being, a transcendent ‘no-one’,
a pure awareness, an arrogant nonduality teacher
stuck in the (non-existent) ‘impersonal’ void

and Now I’ve gone right back to
being what I always was ---
a human being, engaged with life.

What a fascinating trip it’s been.
And what a relief to wind up back here,
the Home I never left !

http://www.lifewithoutacentre.com/

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Milarepa - Everything

appearance & emptiness
when they’re no different
everything is my view

dream time & wake time
when they’re no different
everything is my meditation

bliss & emptiness
when they’re no different
everything is my activity

now & later
when there’s no difference
everything is naturally real

mind & space
when there’s no difference
everything is dharmakaya

happy & sad
when there’s no difference
everything is guru’s instruction

upset & wisdom
when there’s no difference
everything is the realized state

my mind & buddha mind
when there’s no difference
everything is complete

text found  HERE

Ajahn Sumedho - The Sound of Silence

art Eleftheria Emmanouil

 Somebody referred to the sound of silence as a cosmic hum, a scintillating almost electric background sound. Even though it’s going on all the time we don’t generally notice it but when your mind is open and relaxed you begin to hear it. I found this a very useful reference because in order to hear it, to notice it, you have to be in a relaxed state of awareness. When I describe this people try to find it. They go on a ten-day retreat trying to find the sound of silence and then they say, ‘I can’t hear it, what’s wrong with me?’ They are trying to find this thing. But it’s not a thing you have to find—rather you just open to it: it’s the ability to listen with your mind in a receptive state, which makes it possible to hear the sound of silence. You’re not trying to solve any problems but just listening. You’re putting your mind into a state of receptive awareness. Awareness that is willing to receive whatever is and one of the things you begin to recognize in that is the sound of silence
.
—Ajahn Sumedho, The Anthology, The Sound of Silence, Volume 4

 

Amongst White Clouds

“I’ve lived on cold mountain so many years,
following the way of forests and springs
no one will visit
just clouds floating by.

Grass for a bed
blue sky for a quilt
happy with a rock for a pillow
let the world go about its changes.”

—Hanshan, Tang Dynasty

I WOULD NEVER have really thought that it were possible for the mind literally to stop churning after watching a humble video and yet, Amongst White Clouds has the capacity to do exactly that. Equalled only by the similarly outstanding visual documentary on the eremitic life, Philip Gröning’s Into Great Silence, Edward A. Burger’s powerful meditation on the recluses of the Zhongnan Mountains has the effect of bringing us utterly and completely into presence long after the fading of the final frame.

Inspired by Bill Porter’s seminal book, Road to Heaven, documenting his encounters with living Chinese hermits, Edward A. Burger decided to make his own pilgrimage in search of those who embodied the message of the Buddha. Arriving in Beijing in 1999, he would find in a remote mountain monastery a master, with whom he would study and practise the nondual teachings for the next five years.

Continue reading HERE

 

Dean Fraser - To the Mountain to Freedom

She had journeyed far from the valley below
Through many trials compelled to undergo
Ascent the hardest choice and yet no choice
Listening as she had to her own inner voice
Her focus, her life spent climbing upwards
Often two steps forward, one backwards
Determinedly she continued her endless quest
Grateful to know the mountain, deeply blessed
Looking back she sees obstacles now long gone
She knew they would pass if she only pushed on
Trials and tribulations tested if she’s faint hearted
Immeasurable distance from where she started
Her ascent to the summit, her own path taken
One dimensional existence long since forsaken
And yet the path now also seems to be gone
She pondered with an open mind thereupon
Panic and worry having long since been banished
Looking back every obstacle has now also vanished
Considering her journey in her own mind’s eye
Dawning realization hit her, now she could FLY!

—Dean Fraser, The Mind, Body and Soul Poems

 Read more HERE