separation shared - togetherness spared - silent intimacy - not knowing - when it began - ~Qt!!-T~/v(T)t.=<YJI;:., ., .,

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TOPICS TOUCHED ON IN THESE PAGES

1. LONGING - yearning, desiring, searching

2. INTIMACY - closeness, togetherness, union

3. REFLECTION - mirroring, recalling, musing

4. CONTEMPLATION - introspective reverie

5. EQUANIMITY - composed mindfulness

6. COMPASSION - empathetic solicitude

7. ABSORPTION - harmonized oneness

~ beckoning - ,. •<a

"' green is a sanctuary"' serene"' refreshing"' profound"'

"'green evokes life "' its beginning "' it transcendence "' its evolution "'

Carbon manifests itself in green and humanity is a manifestation of

carbon's innate desire to organize itself at higher and higher levels of complexity.

The story of green is interwoven in our DNA. We should listen

to it. Especially now that so much green has been slashed and burnt by the poor struggling to grow enough food to

stay alive. Ultimately, our addiction to cheap fossil fuels could

turn green to grey.

What follows, however, is not about the environment.

Rather, simple reflections are presented about things that

seize me: like - forests and trees - lakes and rivers -mountains and canyons in Colorado where I grew up and in

Japan where I fell in love. 111

• trees drip devv on fallen leaves in early morning mist • as suddenly four pavvs pause in moving meditation • softly vvith each step davvn comes breathing in • gently vvith each step davvn goes breathing out • slovvly vvith each step comes the Zendo cat

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overriver rocksby cottonwoodsand meadow larksthe humble Saint Vrain flowsthrough Lyons, Hygiene and old Crane Hollowon its way to lovers lane and Longmont Colorado

ditching our bikes on its grassy bankwe entered the river’s shallow warmthand headed upstream against the flowslipping on moss slick rocks as we went

some of us got killed in Vietnamothers got high in San Franciscoyou got married and never left townI got drafted and never returned

to where the humble Saint Vrain flows

overriver rocksby cottonwoodsand meadow larksthe humble Saint Vrain flowsthrough Lyons, Hygiene and old Crane Hollowon its way to lovers lane and Longmont Colorado

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Then, as now, an lnflnltely loving presence ••• the calming of all fear ••• come closer to the light ••• at the end of the tunnel ••• in a death nearly experienced ••• ever forgiving ••• always comforting ••• ever nurturing ••• always caring ••• desiring only to love ••• totally ••• heart and soul and mind ••• unspoken caveat precluding differentiation of what Is heart ••• what is soul ••• what Is mind ••• what is mine ••• what Is yours ••• just by knocking the door Is opened ••• just by seeking It Is found ••• Could infinite love have been so misunderstood that it had to become flesh? And God so loved the world; became flesh; walked among us; grew a beard ••• and ••• uh infinite love Is really good ••• right? and flesh ••• uh well ••• flesh Is really great ••• right? but ••• masculine? Why couldn't God have had an only begotten daughter? female flesh ••• now that would do ••• women make great friends ••• now head large corporations ••• generally oppose war ••• will lead the world's nations ••• or God willing ••• a female messiah comes ••• "The Daughter of Man" ••• not an avatar but an avatrix ••• not_ y rophet but a prophetess ••• all 1n~a n·111e ••• but worry not ••• for God - r e - has a very big heart and is t9Y a111used by musings such as these ••• it is gooJ9to admit that we really do not know ••• far better Is unabashedly loving what we can never fully understand ••• while best is simply seeking to find ••• knocking for those doors to open ••• for just by knocking the doors are opened ••• and just by seeking are we found •••

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- Meister Eckhart

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The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out.

For if you want the grain, you break the shell. If you wan~ to discover

nature's nakedness, you must destroy its symbols. The farther you go;

the nearer you come to its essence; and, when you come to the One

that gathers all things up into itself, there you must stay. ..

Oogen Zenji

To move close to all things in order to discover their dharma by an

act of your own will is called delusion. To move into the presence of

things such that all dharma are pursing themselves in their own way

is called enlightenment.

Hermann Hesse

Grace, or the Tao, surrounds us always. It is the light and it is God Himself . .

Whenever we are open for a moment, it enters into us, into every child,

into every wise man.

St. Augustine

Love and do what you will.

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Sufi Saying

"Fly, now'', said the bird

"mankind can not bear too much reality."

Albertus Secundus

from the Latin in Herman Hesse's "Oas Glasperlenspiel"

Nothing is harder yet nothing is more necessary, than to speak of certain

things whose existence is neither demonstrable nor probable. The very

fact that serious and conscientious men treat them as existing th ings brings

them a step closer to existence and to the possibility of being born.

from the "Song of Zazen" by Hakuin Zenji

Not knowing how close the Truth is to them,

people look for it far away. What a pity!

Like a man standing in a river

crying out for water to quench his thirst.

Like the son of a very rich man

who lost his way among the poor.

Boris Pasternak

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It's not the earthquake that controls the advent of a different life

but storms of generosity and visions of incandescent souls .

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Prayer of Simplicity

by San Francesco de Assisi

Oh! Signore, fa di me un istrumento della tua Pace: Oh! Sir, make me an instrument of your peace:

Dove 'e odio, fa ch'lo porti I' Amore. Where there is hatred, let me bring love.

Dove 'e offesa, ch'lo porti ii Perdono. Where there is injury, let me bring pardon.

Dove 'e discordia, ch'lo porti l'Unione. Where there is discord, let me bring unity.

Dove 'e dubbio, ch'lo porti la Fede. Where there is doubt, let me bring faith.

Dove • e errore, ch'lo porti la Verita. Where there is error, let me bring truth.

Dove 'e disperazione, ch'lo porti la Speranza. Where there is despair, let me bring hope.

Dove 'e tristezza, ch'lo porti la Gioia. Where there is sadness, let me bring joy.

Dove sono le tenebre, ch'lo porti la Luce, Where there is that darkness, let me bring light.

Oh! Maestro, fa ch'lo non cerchi tanto: Of Master, grant that I may not so much seek:

Ad essere consolato, quanto a consolare. To be consoled ... as to console.

Ad essere compreso, quanto a comprendere. To be understood ... as to understand.

Ad essere amato, quanto a amare. To be loved ... as to love.

Doiche' si · e: For it is by:

Dando ... che si riceve; Giving ... that we receive;

Perdonando ... che si perdonati; Pardoning ... that we are pardoned;

Morando ... che si risuscita a Vita Eterna. Dying ... that we are born to eternal life.

attributed to Socrates

I know that I do not know and in this I am wise.

from the "Tao-Te Ching" of LaoTzu

To know that you do not know is best.

Not to know that you do not know is a serious flaw.

from the film, "Zorba the Greek" based on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis

Damn it, boss, I like you too much not to say it. You've got everyth ing except

one thing, madness! A man needs a litt le madness or else he never really . da·res cut the rope and be free.

. from "The Book of Five Rings" by Miyamoto Musashi

• nurture the ability to see truth in all things

• see what can not be seen with the eye

• do not be negligent; even in trifling matters

• do not engage in useless activit ies ,

Hermann Hesse

Loneliness is the way by wh ich destiny endeavors to lead man to himself.

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From Mosheh ben Maimon i1n1 n lJ. il \Un

called Moses Maimonides I

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Maimonides was appointed court physician to the Grand Vizier

Al Qadi al Fadil and then to Sultan Saladin.

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty

assist the reduced fellow man,

either by a considerable gift

or a sum of money

or by teaching him a trade

or by putting him in the way of business

so that he may earn an honest livelihood

and not be forced to the dreadful alternative •

of holding out his hand for charity. /

-This is the*highest step and summit

of charity's golden ladder.

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From Rabindranath Tagore

I slept and dreamed that life was joy.

I awoke and saw that life was service.

I acted, and behold, service was joy.

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From The Maggid of Mezeritch

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Think of yourself as nothing and totally forget yourself when you pray. ' '

Only have in mind that you are praying for the Divine Presence.

You can then enter the Universe of thought- a state that is beyond time.

Everything in this realm is the same, life and death, land and sea ...

But in order to enter the Universe of thought where all is the same,

you must relinquish your ego and forget all your troubles

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Buddha

It is not life and wealth and power that enslave men, but the cleaving to life and wealth and power.

Albert Einstein

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction.

Leonardo Oa Vinci

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Albert Einstein

Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

Thomas Traherne from "Centuries of Meditations

Love is the true means by which the world is enjoyed: our love to another and another's love to us. We ought, therefore, above all things to get acquainted with the nature of love. For love is the root and foundation of nature: love is the soul of life and its crown of rewards.

Joseph Campbell from "The Power of Myth"

If you follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you , and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say follow your bliss and don't be afraid and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

Koun Yamada Roshi on the practice of Zen

It 's best described as becoming intimate with Something.

Rainer Maria Rilke from "Letters to a Young Poet"

Being an artist means, not reckoning and counting, but ripening like the tree which does not force its sap and stands confident in the storms of spring without the fear that after them may come no summer. It does come. But it comes only to the patient, who are there as though eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly still and wide ... Patience is everything.

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M.K. Gandhi

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul ... It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

The Oalai Lama

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

Ana1s Nin

There are two kinds of freedom in the world ; the freedom of the rich and powerful, and the freedom of the artist and the monk who renounce possessions.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rabbi

Prayer begins at the edge of emptiness.

Khalil Gibran

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.

Shunryu Suzuki

In zazen. leave your front door and your back door open. Let thoughts come and go. Just don't serve them tea.

Blaise Pascal

All human evil comes from- "man's being unable to sit still in a room··.

Umar Khayyam

Of knowledge naught remained I did not know,

Of secrets, scarcely any, high or low;

All day and night for three score and twelve years,

I pondered, just to learn that naught I know.

If with wine you are drunk. be happy,

If seated with a moon-face (beauty). be happy,

Since the end purpose of the universe is nothing-ness;

Hence picture your nothing-ness, then while you are, be happy!

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fi \ Jf(Q)~fJ~n~;t*&it ~t:-r" t-t>~t*Q)Jl<~c«> t;o The flowing river does not cease, yet it is not the same water as before.

Foam floating on stagnant pools, now vanishing, now forming, isn't same for long. ' .

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In the world, people and their dwellings are like that, always changing.

From the H6j 6ki :1i::st~

by Kamo no Chomei 'II ~IY.J

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Give me ecstasy, give me naked wpnder, 0 my Creator! Give birth to the Beloved in me, and let this lover die. Let a thousand wrangling desires become one Love .

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When your chest is free of your limiting ego, Then you will see the ageless Beloved. -You can not see yourself without a mirror; Look at the Beloved, He is the brightest mirror.

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Teilhard de Chardin from "Letters"

Humanity is being taken to the point where it will have to choose between suicide and adoration.

T.S. Eliot

Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow Life is very long

from the "Tao-Te Ching" of Lao Tzu

What is strong and rigid fosters death. What is humble and weak fosters life. If a soldier is rigid, he is undone. If a tree is rigid , it meets its end. Rigidity and strength are ultimately inferior. Humility and weakness are ultimately superior.

Wallace Stevens

There is a poem at the heart of things.

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-John Keats from "Letters"

I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination. What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth.

on Simone Weil's use of language by E.W.F. Tomlin

Just as we build a house or a cathedral with the same kind of stone, so we may use the same common and homely metaphors and images to convey truths on widely separated planes of discourse. And the highest is often best conveyf?d in terms of the lowest.

In exploring the highest reaches of experience, we need a language . as fresh and living as the truths with which we are in contact. For most mystics, this is the language of nerve tips.

. Blaise Pascal

From about half past ten in the evening to about half an hour after midnight. Fire, God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob. Not the god of philosophers and scholars. Absolute Certainty: Beyond reason, Joy. Peace. Forgetfulness of the world and everything but God. The world has not known thee, but I have known thee, Joy! Joy! Joy! Tears of Joy!

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attributed to T.S. Eliot Meister Eckhart I

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Closer than my breath is God to me. I

St. Teresa of Avila •

--It is as if a tiny streamlet enters the sea, from which it will find no way

of separating itself, or as if in a room there are two large windows

through which the light streamed in: it enters in different places but it

all becomes one.

Meister Eckhart from "Tractate 11"

• Oh wonder of wonders! When I think of the union of the soul with

God! ... The divine love-spring surges over the soul sweeping her out of

herself into the unnamed being of her original source ... In this exalted

state she has lost her proper self and is flowing full-flood into the unity

of the divine nature .. Henceforth I shall not speak about the soul, for she has lost her name in the oneness of the divine essence. There it

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is no more called soul: she is called infinite being.

Zen saying

With no bird singing the mountain is yet more still.

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In still souls God sees his own image; he rests in them and they in him. As I have often said, I like best those things in which I see most clearly the likeness of God. Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness. ,

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Henry David Thoreau

It takes a man to make a room silent.

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Taoist Sage

When the moon rises in the Heart of Heaven And a light breeze touches the mirror-like surface of the lake

• That is indeed a moment of pure joy. But few are they who are aware of it.

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Thomas Merton

There is in all ~things an inexhaustible sweetness and purity, a silence that is a fountain of action and joy.

It rises up in wordless gentleness and flows out to me from unseen roots of all created being.

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Mot~er J eresa "via activa" or "works"

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h~aven with .Him at this very mom.~nt. . e~t bei happy with Him now '· , He leqds me beside stilt waters. "' ·.:.. · · i~-:, / · · .. means: Loving as he Loves, Helping as h~.~Fi'elRs, i~ing_a~. ti~ Gives, . -~./ , .. , ·rt~ l~t~r.~S1tly ~ul. . · . . _ ·'. . . ,; _ .. · • -·~ -..,__

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t hours, touching Him 1n His distressin disguise. 1 : ~ . ._ •• • , ,.., /'. ~houg~ I w~I~ throu~~ th.e valley 9f the.shado;v of death, .

; ' - • · • . ~ •. ~~ • c , . I feat no evil for God 1s with me. · . · ,' · . ·~ ,,,· . . .. /' .- ~ .• ,, ~ ·~ ~ ' .... ' .. ~is. rod and ris staff comfort m~. ~ 'ti "· . . f . . . ~ .·-

. -:- r • , . , ' ! 4. 1 · He-prepares a table before me, 1~ the pre8enee 'of my ~nemtes., · . . , -.. ~s;aint C~ara of Assisi; .. · ,., •· _.·: He an6ir)ts my head with oil and n;iy cop ruhs Qver. " r. ~( ~ .......

"via contempliva" or "grace"· ~ · · · • ~ (,,.•,. · • . _ ~ • ., • •.-

4: .. • ' • . Surely, ~oodness an~· ~e~cy ~u. fo~o~ m~ all. the .days 9f my l_ife_ ""

: .'place your rriind befor~ the n;iir;o~ of eterni~y! .~ ~· . ~ ,, . . · ~ . ~n~ I will dwell forever in~je house,.€f~§'~;. · .. : · . .'. - . - ~~· ·. -.. -

• • R_,Ja_c~ your soul in the brillianc. e of ~or\! ! <" -:: ·""· _. · · • . ..,. ... .. · · · . de 4.t'- • ~ '-ti- ·: : .'~

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l=' J· "" .... Meister Eckhar~.' • _ ~l.. , . ·· '•" ·r -.-~ ..• _ ••

PlaGe your heart in the figure of the divine subsi ~! . '. · .. , --~ · : ,.-.;· ·-.

, And tra~sform your entire ,.b~in~ into. the image . : ~ ~- " - ~ · : : -~ ~umil~.i_s like a weil'.11je c1eetlfr·th . well the higher he will stand who ··

of the Godhead _Itself through 9~ntempl~ti.on , , . ! : .. ..,". st~~t'the top. The ctee~r J' dig ·d~wn into humility the more exalted

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Ludwig Wittgenstein

It is not how things are in the world that is mystical, but that it (the world) exists at all. ..

Faru'din Ibrahim Iraqi

He put color and perfume into flowers to feed the song of the nightingale. He tossed our names and titles of glory to the winds and called us fools and the most miserable of all beings. When He found the humble Iraqi on the road, he breathed into his heart the fire of passion.

Greek Myth

Several beautiful children were born to Aphrodite and Aries. Eros, their little son, was appointed god of love. Although nursed with tender solicitude, this second-born child did not grow as other children do, but remained a small, rosy, chubby child, with gauzy wings and roguish, dimpled face. Alarmed for his health, Aphrodite consulted Themis who responded through the oracle,

"Love can not grow without Passion."

j Celia Copleston from T.S. Eliot's "The Cocktail•Party"

' ... whom I loved, or what in me was loving, I do not know

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Ana'is Nin

The sexual life is usually enveloped in 'many layers for all of us poets, writers, artists. It is a veiled woman, half-dreamed.

Nikos Kazantzakis's Alexis Zorba from the novel. "Zorba the Greek"

Do~'t laugh, boss! If a woman sleeps ~lone, it's the fault of us men. God will forgive all sins ... but that sin he will not forgive. Wo~ betide the man who could sleep with a woman and who did not do so! Woe betide the woman who could sleep with a man and did not do so!

Song of Songs 6:3

I found him whom my soul loveth ; I held him, and would not let him go ... I am my beloved's, and my beloved is mine.

from "The Zohar"

No other love is like unto the ecstasy of the moment when spirit cleaves to spirit and becomes one ,...., one love.

Henri

from "

Chandogya Upanishad •

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Where there is creation there is progress. •

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Where there is no creation there is no progress :

Know the nature of creation. -Where there is joy there is creation.

Where there is no joy there is no creation:

Know the nature of joy.

Where there is the Infinite there is joy.

There is no joy in the finite.

An English Myst ic

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