Hafiz ~ I known not what this drunkenness is

 

 I known not what this drunkenness is that to us he brought
and who is the Saqi and from where is this wine that he brought?
What tune is this musician playing so skillfully
that in the midst of his song, my friend’s words, he’s brought
You too, grab some wine and take the desert road
For the songbird, sweet-sounding music, has brought
With goodness and joy, let the rose and daffodil arrive
The violet came happily, and purity the jasmine brought
The east wind is Solomon’s hoopoe in bringing us good news
For glad tidings from Sheba’s rose garden it has brought
O heart don’t complain of your state, knotted-up like a bud
for the knot-untying morning breeze, the dawn wind has brought
The cure for our heart’s weakness is the Saqi’s smile
Come—for the healer has arrived, and the remedy he’s brought
I am the disciple of the Magian Pir, don’t worry about me, O Shaykh
For you’ve made the promises, but he’s brought them to pass16
I am amazed at that Turkish warrior
who attacked a poor dervish like me!
Heaven will be Hafez’s servant and work obediently
Now that seeking refuge, to your door, he’s brought

 

 چه مستیست ندانم که رو به ما آورد که بود ساقی و این باده از کجا آورد تو نیز باده به چنگ آر و راه صحرا گیر که مرغ نغمه سرا ساز خوش نوا آورد دلا چو غنچه شکایت ز کار بسته مکن که باد صبح نسیم گره گشا آورد رسیدن گل و نسرین به خیر و خوبی باد بنفشه شاد و کش آمد سمن صفا آورد صبا به خوش خبری هدهد سلیمان است که مژده طرب از گلشن سبا آورد علاج ضعف دل ما کرشمه ساقیست برآر سر که طبیب آمد و دوا آورد مرید پیر مغانم ز من مرنج ای شیخ چرا که وعده تو کردی و او به جا آورد به تنگ چشمی آن ترک لشکری نازم که حمله بر من درویش یک قبا آورد فلک غلامی حافظ کنون به طوع کند که التجا به در دولت شما آورد

Nancy Neithercut ~ Complete as it is

 

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At Buddha at the gas pump

Jed McKenna ~ Enlightenment

 art parablev

 

 

An Interview with Jed McKenna

Q: Enlightenment is usually touted as the greatest of all achievements, as self-perfection, as the highest aim of humanity, the ultimate goal of every search, but you make it seem almost pointless at times.
JM: Well, I wouldn’t want to give the impression that it’s almost pointless. It’s perfectly pointless.
 JM: Awakening to your true nature is like dying; it’s a certainty, inevitable. You’re going to get there no matter what you do, so why rush? Enjoy your life, it’s free. Cosmic Consciousness and Altered States and Universal Mind are the names of rides in this vast and fascinating dualistic amusement park. So are Poverty and Disease and Despair. Enlightenment, though, is not another ride. Enlightenment means leaving the park altogether, but why leave the park? In the park you can be a saint or a yogi or a billionaire or a world leader or a warlord. Be good, be evil. Happiness, misery, bliss, agony, victory, defeat, it’s all here. What’s the big rush? When the time comes to leave the park, you’ll know and you’ll go, but there’s certainly nothing to be gained by it.  
Q: So you encourage seekers to abandon the search.
JM: I’m not trying to encourage or discourage, I’m just trying to express something that is difficult to express and about which virtually virtually everyone with an interest is egregiously misinformed.  
Q: As you say in the book:  “In most cases, the enlightenment being bought and sold is not enlightenment at all, but a state of consciousness so crazy-ass wonderful that you’d have to be an idiot not to want it. So insidiously wonderful, in fact, that its radiance has blinded untold millions of seekers to the fact that it doesn’t exist.”  
Q: Does this seem to capture it?
JM: Essentially. The enlightenment that seems desirable isn’t enlightenment, and that aspect of us which is able to desire enlightenment is unable to achieve it won’t survive its onset. Day destroys night.
 Q: So seeking is doomed to failure?  That’s a matter of context. I look at spiritual seekers and they seem, on the whole, pretty content. Maybe that’s because what they’re really seeking is contentment. Seeking enlightenment is an inherent paradox, but who’s really seeking enlightenment? In the introduction to her book Halfway Up the Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment, Mariana Caplan states:  The reality of the present condition of contemporary spirituality in the West is one of grave distortion, confusion, fraud, and a fundamental lack of education.
JM:Infinity is beautiful; it destroys everything it touches. It annihilates all concepts, all beliefs, all sense of self. No teacher, teaching, book or practice could ever be as effective as simply allowing the thought of infinity to slowly devour you.
All paradox lies with the un-awakened state. The awakened don’t have something that the un-awakened are missing, it’s the other way around. The un-awakened possess massive structures of false belief. They create and maintain these vast realms of past, present and future; of great meaning and importance; of a deep and wide emotional range; all woven together out of sheer nothingness. Something from nothing; that’s the magic, that’s the special state. The un-awakened state is the one that requires such ceaseless dedication and devotion and which seems so fantastically improbable. The awakened state is nothing compared to that.
  Q: That doesn’t sound so good.
JM: I never said it was.
 Q: Are you saying it’s not?  
JM: No. The lifeforce I’m not using to project a false self is now available for much more fun and interesting purposes. It’s a whole different universe once all that petty self crap has been left behind.
This state is a physical condition of your being. It is not some kind of psychological mutation. It is not a state of mind into which you can fall one day, and out of it the next day. You can't imagine the extent to which, as you are now, thought pervades and interferes with the functioning of every cell in your body. Coming into your natural state will blast every cell, every gland, every nerve. It is a chemical change. An alchemy of some sort takes place. But this state has nothing to do with the experiences of chemical drugs. Those are experiences; this is not. 

HERE

 

thanks to Eve Reece

Rumi ♡ Final flight

 

A voice out of this world
calls on our souls
not to wait any more
get ready to move
to the original home

your real home
your real birth place
is up here with the heavens
let your soul take a flight
like a happy phoenix

you've been tied up
your feet in the mud
your body roped to a log
break loose your ties
get ready for the final flight

make your last journey
from this strange world
soar for the heights
where there is no more
separation of you and your home

God has created
your wings not to be dormant
as long as you are alive
you must try more and more
to use your wings to show you're alive

these wings of yours
are filled with quests and hopes
if they are not used
they will wither away
they will soon decay

you may not like
what i'm going to tell you
you are stuck
now you must seek
nothing but the source

 

 

Kahlil Gibran ~ On talking

Kamila Gibran, mother of the artist by himself

 

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts;
And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime.
And in much of your talking, thinking is half murdered.
For thought is a bird of space, that in a cage of words may indeed unfold its wings but cannot fly.

There are those among you who seek the talkative through fear of being alone.
The silence of aloneness reveals to their eyes their naked selves and they would escape.
And there are those who talk, and without knowledge or forethought reveal a truth which they themselves do not understand.
And there are those who have the truth within them, but they tell it not in words.
In the bosom of such as these the spirit dwells in rhythmic silence.

When you meet your friend on the roadside or in the market place, let the spirit in you move your lips and direct your tongue.
Let the voice within your voice speak to the ear of his ear;
For his soul will keep the truth of your heart as the taste of the wine is remembered
When the colour is forgotten and the vessel is no more.

 

 

 

 

Eric Baret ~ The emotion of being

 

"Joy has something expansive that allows to a certain extent to free oneself from a story. When you meet your new lover and you are very happy with him, there are a few moments where you are without history, where you are without lover, where you are without yourself there is only contentment. Then, of course, you attribute that to history.

Joy has this capacity to momentarily break history. That’s why in some traditions, such as Northern Indian Tantra, the focus has sometimes been on the sensory experience of joy, because it can to some extent explode the image. At that time, we ask in the experience to realize that there is no object, that there is no experience of joy, that there is only joy. It’s a very complex, very sophisticated, and very misunderstood technique. It’s a razor-wire technique that’s very dangerous.

In the experience of joy, one turns one’s head and one frees oneself in the instant of the experience, one keeps the expansion without its apparent origin.

On the physiological level, joy is more favorable than sadness. It brings more health than sadness, regardless of the origin. We should not, intellectually, want to free ourselves from joy as we free ourselves from sadness. When you have the joy of a very good champagne, you have to give yourself to that.

A sadness too. Momentarily, we can suggest a sensory approach to sadness, but sooner or later, when there is sadness, we really have to take advantage of it. When there is suffering, you really have to go with it. But it already requires some form of integration.

At first, when a person is depressed, he must learn to live with depression, but later, we will no longer say that: we will say to totally make one with depression. There is no difference with joy.

All emotion refers to the central emotion; there is only one emotion, it is the emotion of being. Joy, sadness, fear are extensions.

That’s why, in the theatre, you see two people cutting their throats, cutting their heads off, and so on. And you come out of there and you think it’s a very beautiful play. One is not bound to the anecdote; beauty is beyond the event. In all operas, it is always dramatic, but it is deeply happy.

That is why in the statuary of the East, we see only death, because death is profoundly happy. Indian music is essentially the râga of separation, jealousy, fear. That of separation is the most important.

All Indian painting is based on separation, because it points to the essence of things. We find the tantric approach, where emotion is the essence of things.

So, if we give ourselves deeply to any emotion, we find the essence of what is behind the emotion. But there has to be a certain orientation, otherwise it is not possible.

Eric Baret
(The Coronation of the Green Dragon)
Le Sacre du Dragon Vert
Almora Editions

 

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