Charles Simic

Pocket Theatre Fingers in an overcoat pocket. Fingers sticking out of a black leather glove. The nails chewed raw. One play is called "Thieves' Market," another "Night in a Dime Museum." The fingers when they strip are like bewitching nude bathers or the fake wooden limbs in a cripple factory. No one ever sees the play: you put your hand in somebody else's pocket on the street and feel the action.

Czeslaw Milosz (1911-2004)

A Song On The End Of The World On the day the world ends A bee circles a clover, A fisherman mends a glimmering net. Happy porpoises jump in the sea, By the rainspout young sparrows are playing And the snake is gold-skinned as it should always be. On the day the world ends Women walk through the fields under their umbrellas, A drunkard grows sleepy at the edge of a lawn, Vegetable peddlers shout in the street And a yellow-sailed boat comes nearer the island, The voice of a violin lasts in the air And leads into a starry night. And those who expected lightning and thunder Are disappointed. And those who expected signs and archangels' trumps Do not believe it is happening now. As long as the sun and the moon are above, As long as the bumblebee visits a rose, As long as rosy infants are born No one believes it is happening now. Only a white-haired old man, who would be a prophet Yet is not a prophet, for he's much too busy, Repeats while he binds his tomatoes: No other end of the world will there be, No other end of the world will there be. Czeslaw Milosz :

Thich Nhat Hanh

“When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That's the message he is sending.”

Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“Never put off till tomorrow what may be done day after tomorrow just as well".

Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

“I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.” ― Pablo Neruda, 100 Love Sonnets

Shih Ching #16

Shih Ching #16 This sweet pear, this great shady tree Don’t you dare prune it, much less cut at it! The good Lord Shao found friendly shade beneath once. This sweet pear, this great shady tree Don’t you dare clip it, much less do damage to it! The good Lord Shao spoke true beneath it often. This sweet pear, this great shady tree Don’t you dare clip, don’t bend a twig of it… Here the good Lord Shao gave honest judgement, always.

Po Chu-i (772-846)

Autumn Rain, A Night of Sleep It’s a late autumn night, cold and quiet. A lone old man at ease here in idleness, I lie down late, after the lamp goes dark, sleep deep and rich amid sounds of rain. Ashes burn all night under the winejar, and incense keeps the quilt-rack warm. Day dawns cold and clear, but I stay put. Frosty leaves crowd the steps with red.

Ram Dass

Man Ray (1890-1976)

Man Ray, La Femme, 1920, Epreuve gélatino-argentique contrecollée sur carton, 38,8 x 29,1 cm, Paris, Centre Pompidou.

Ram Dass

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

They talk of a man betraying his country, his friends, his sweetheart. There must be a moral bond first. All a man can betray is his conscience.

Maya Angelou

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

Joan Miro (1893-1983)

Frank Dietrich

Fyodor Dostoevski

“Lack of originality, everywhere, all over the world, from time immemorial, has always been considered the foremost quality and the recommendation of the active, efficient and practical man.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot

Fyodor Dostoevski (1821-1881)

A Petruk

Hazrat Inayat Khan

If there is something that can be accomplished today, we need not wait for it to be accomplished tomorrow. For life is an opportunity, and desire has the greatest power, and perfection is the promise of the soul. We seek perfection, because perfection is the ultimate aim and the goal of creation. The source of all things is perfect. Our source is perfect, our goal is perfect. And therefore every atom of the universe is working towards perfection, and sooner or later it must arrive at perfection consciously. If it were not so, you would not have read in the Bible, 'Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.'

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)

“Seven Deadly Sins Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Science without humanity Knowledge without character Politics without principle Commerce without morality Worship without sacrifice.” ― Mahatma Gandhi

Wassily Kandinsky (1896-1944)

Kahlil Gibran (1883-1931)

“Let there be spaces in your togetherness, And let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping. For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts. And stand together, yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart, And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.” ― Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Nick Gucker

Mark Gleason

Du Fu (712-770)

In Abbot Zan's Room at Dayun Temple: Four Poems (1) Du Fu My heart is in a world of water and crystal, My clothes are damp in this time of spring rains. Through the gates I slowly walk to the end, The great court the appointed tranquil space. I reach the doors- they open and shut again, Now strikes the bell- the meal time has arrived. This cream will help one's nature strengthen and grow, The diet gives support in my decline. We've grasped each other's arms so many days, And opened our hearts without shame or evasion. Golden orioles flit across the beams, Purple doves descend from lattice screens. Myself, I think I've found a place that suits, I walk by flowers at my own slow pace. Tangxiu lifts me from my sickly state, And smiling, asks me to write a poem.

Zen Buddhism

Ryonen (c.1797)

Ryonen then went to another master, Hakuo. Hakuo refused her for the same reason, saying that her beauty would only make trouble. Ryonen obtained a hot iron and placed it against her face. In a few moments her beauty had vanished forever. Hakuo then accepted her as a disciple. Commemorating this occasion, Ryonen wrote a poem on the back of a little mirror: In the service of my Empress I burned incense to perfume my exquisite clothes, Now as a homeless mendicant I burn my face to enter a Zen temple. When Ryonen was about to pass from this world, she wrote another poem: Sixty-six times have these eyes beheld the changing scene of autumn. I have said enough about moonlight, Ask no more. Only listen to the voice of pines and cedars when no wind stirs.

Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)

There's no reality except the one contained within us. That's why so many people live an unreal life. They take images outside them for reality and never allow the world within them to assert itself.

Vladimir Mayakovsky (c.1917)

Back Home Beat the squares with the tramp of rebels! Higher, rangers of haughty heads! We'll wash the world with a second deluge, Now’s the hour whose coming it dreads. Too slow, the wagon of years, The oxen of days — too glum. Our god is the god of speed, Our heart — our battle drum. Is there a gold diviner than ours/ What wasp of a bullet us can sting? Songs are our weapons, our power of powers, Our gold — our voices — just hear us sing! Meadow, lie green on the earth! With silk our days for us line! Rainbow, give color and girth To the fleet-foot steeds of time. The heavens grudge us their starry glamour. Bah! Without it our songs can thrive. Hey there, Ursus Major, clamour For us to be taken to heaven alive! Sing, of delight drink deep, Drain spring by cups, not by thimbles. Heart step up your beat! Our breasts be the brass of cymbals.

Frank Zappa (1940-1993)

You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927)

The real spirit of renunciation is willingness; and willing renunciation comes when one has risen above the thing one renounces. The value of each thing in life, wealth, power, position, possession, is according to the evolution of man. There is a time in his life when toys are his treasures, and there is a time when he puts them aside. ... There are two different renunciations: one is renunciation, the other is loss. True renunciation is that which a person makes who has risen above something that he once valued; or whose hunger and thirst for the thing are satisfied and it is no more so valuable as it once was; or who perhaps has evolved and sees life differently, no longer as he saw it before. Renunciation in all these cases is a step forward towards perfection. But the other renunciation is one which a person is compelled to make when circumstances prevent his achieving what he wishes to achieve or from getting back what he has lost helplessly; or when, by weakness of mind or body, by lack of position, power, or wealth, he cannot reach the object he desires. That renunciation is a loss; and instead of leading towards perfection it drags man down toward imperfection. ... The final victory in the battle of life for every soul is when he has abandoned, which means when he has risen above, what once he valued most. For the value of everything exists for man only so long as he does not understand it. When he has fully understood, the value is lost, be it the lowest thing or the highest thing. It is like looking at the scenery on the stage and taking it for a palace. Such is the case with all things of the world; they seem important or precious when we need them or when we do not understand them; as soon as the veil which keeps man from understanding is lifted, then they are nothing.

Confucius (551BC-479BC)

Silence is a true friend who never betrays.

P'ang Yun (740-808)

Mind at Peace When the mind is at peace, the world too is at peace. Nothing real, nothing absent. Not holding on to reality, not getting stuck in the void, you are neither holy or wise, just an ordinary fellow who has completed his work.

Gary Snyder

For Lew Welch In A Snowfall Snowfall in March: I sit in the white glow reading a thesis About you. Your poems, your life. The author's my student, He even quotes me. Forty years since we joked in a kitchen in Portland Twenty since you disappeared. All those years and their moments— Crackling bacon, slamming car doors, Poems tried out on friends, Will be one more archive, One more shaky text. But life continues in the kitchen Where we still laugh and cook, Watching snow.

Shakespeare (1564-1616)

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Hazrat Inayat Khan, bowl of saki Feb.18

 

He who expects to change the world will be disappointed, he must change his view. When this is done, then tolerance will come, forgiveness will come, and there will be nothing he cannot bear.

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

Cut While Shaving

It's never quite right, he said, the way people look,
the way the music sounds, the way the words are
written.
It's never quite right, he said, all the things we are
taught, all the loves we chase, all the deaths we
die, all the lives we live,
they are never quite right,
they are hardly close to right,
these lives we live
one after the other,
piled there as history,
the waste of the species,
the crushing of the light and the way,
it's not quite right,
it's hardly right at all
he said.

don't I know it? I
answered.

I walked away from the mirror.
it was morning, it was afternoon, it was
night

nothing changed
it was locked in place.
something flashed, something broke, something
remained.

I walked down the stairway and
into it.

proper thing

always a sucker for a midnight beach and a bottle of "Jordan Valley Rosay"fireworks are good and across the bay the sky explodes, old man in a wheel
chair, drunk on the grass, sleep good soldier the night is over and a new dawn
moves in. with the finite term too, trying to understand she took her life in the
subway, pregnant homeless all the roads crawled over the hill and abortion
was refused as option. the blunt.,the cup,.racket swift to draw into a moonlit
acceptance the abstract hides the shit so good..

Baso and Koji

"When he came to Baso he again said, 'Who is he that is independent of all things?' Baso said, 'When you have drunk all the water in the Yang-tze river, I will tell you.' At this, Koji underwent his great experience and composed another verse:" (Two Zen Classics 263)

 

Zen explained with poem

Without Name and Form

Well versed in the Buddha way,

I go the non-Way

Without abandoning my

Ordinary person's affairs.

The conditioned and

Name-and-form,

All are flowers in the sky.

Nameless and formless,

I leave birth-and-death.

P'ang Yün (龐蘊 Hõ Un)

Zen Poetry

Sharing a Mountain Hut with a Cloud

A lonely hut on the mountain-peak towering above a thousand others;

One half is occupied by an old monk and the other by a cloud:

Last night it was stormy and the cloud was blown away;

After all a cloud could not equal the old man's quiet way.

Kuei-tsung Chih-chih, a monk who lived in a humble hut on Lu-shan (盧山 Rozan)

(Essays in Zen Buddhism – Second Series 352)

"he aptly gives vent to his appreciation of Emptiness; the verse is not to be understood as merely describing his solitary hut where he lived in company with clouds." (Essays in Zen Buddhism – Second Series 351-2)

 

Dogen Zenji (1200-1253)

Zazen

The moon reflected
In a mind clear
As still water:
Even the waves, breaking,
Are reflecting its light.


Commentary by Ivan M. Granger
Zazen is the practice of sitting meditation with Zen -- so let's meditate together...

Moon and water and mind.

The moon reflected
In a mind clear
As still water

Dogen is building on a classic spiritual image: the mind as a lake or pool of water. When the mind is still, it becomes clear, and its calm face reflects the gentle light of heaven (the moon).

This is so much of what meditation practice aims for, settling the mind. Sometimes our meditation is filled with effort, even aggression, attempting to subdue the movements of the mind. Sometimes our meditation is more forgiving, we stop interfering with the mind and simply observe it until, of its own accord, it quiets and calms.

All in order to see clearly the light of the moon.

But so often, with or without effort, that agitated mind just doesn't want to settle. What then, meditators?

Even the waves, breaking,
Are reflecting its light.

Dogen reminds us that, if we learn to really look, we can glimpse the reflected light even in the moving waves of the mind. The mind may move, or it may yet grow still, but the goal is reached.

And so the last of our excuses falls away. We meditate effortlessly, we meditate with effort. We meditate with still mind, and we meditate amidst busy mind. Clarity is still found.

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927)

'The one whom I have called God, whose personality I have recognized, and whose pleasure or displeasure I have sought, has been seeing His life through my eyes, has been hearing through my ears. It was His breath that came through my breathing, His impulse which I felt, and therefore I know that this body which I had thought to be my own is really the true temple of God. I did not realize that this body was the shrine of God.' Not knowing that God experiences this life through man, one is seeking for Him somewhere else, in some person aloof and apart from the world, whereas all the time He is in oneself.

tradition kittycorner from quantum physics

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927) Bowl of Saki; Feb.16, 2014

Spirituality has become far removed from material life, and so God is far removed from humanity. Therefore, one cannot any more conceive of God speaking through a man, through someone like oneself. Even a religious man who reads the Bible every day will have great difficulty in understanding the verse, 'Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.' The Sufi message and its mission are to bring this truth to the consciousness of the world: that man can dive so deep within himself that he can touch the depths, where he is united with the whole of life, with all souls, and that he can derive from that source harmony, beauty, peace and power.

When a person turns for guidance to God, to the inner Being, then all light and all knowledge are his for his guidance. "But," people say, "how can we attach ourselves with the inner Being, so as to have that guidance?" When the mind is fixed upon anything, then the person becomes linked to that, a current is established between him and it. It may be called the guidance of God or the guidance of the Self. If we look within, God is nearer to us than our mind and our body, because He is that life in which as is said in the Bible, we live and move and have our being.

Charles Bukowski (1920-1994)

Bluebird

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

Anna Swir (1909-1984)

I Knocked My Head against the Wall

By Anna Swir 1909–1984

As a child
I put my finger in the fire
to become
a saint.


As a teenager
every day I would knock my head against the wall.


As a young girl
I went out through a window of a garret
to the roof
in order to jump.


As a woman
I had lice all over my body.
They cracked when I was ironing my sweater.


I waited sixty minutes
to be executed.
I was hungry for six years.


Then I bore a child,
they were carving me
without putting me to sleep.


Then a thunderbolt killed me
three times and I had to rise from the dead three times
without anyone’s help.


Now I am resting
after three resurrections.

Li Po (701-762)

Alone And Drinking Under The Moon

Amongst the flowers I
am alone with my pot of wine
drinking by myself; then lifting
my cup I asked the moon
to drink with me, its reflection
and mine in the wine cup, just
the three of us; then I sigh
for the moon cannot drink,
and my shadow goes emptily along
with me never saying a word;
with no other friends here, I can
but use these two for company;
in the time of happiness, I
too must be happy with all
around me; I sit and sing
and it is as if the moon
accompanies me; then if I
dance, it is my shadow that
dances along with me; while
still not drunk, I am glad
to make the moon and my shadow
into friends, but then when
I have drunk too much, we
all part; yet these are
friends I can always count on
these who have no emotion
whatsoever; I hope that one day
we three will meet again,
deep in the Milky Way.

Li Po :

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

Kandinsky (1866-1944)

Han Shan (c.750)

You find a flower half-buried in leaves,
And in your eye its very fate resides.
Loving beauty, you caress the bloom;
Soon enough, you'll sweep petals from the floor.

Terrible to love the lovely so,
To count your own years, to say "I'm old,"
To see a flower half-buried in leaves
And come face to face with what you are.

“This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” ― Alan Wilson Watts

Kandinsky (1866-1944)

Wherever a person goes there he takes his influence, thereby creating harmony or inharmony in the atmosphere. As a person who is drunken feels most delighted to see another person also drunken in the same way as he, and enjoys his company and offers him a drink, so the inharmonious person creates inharmony, and so the harmonious person spreads the vibrations of harmony, tuning the whole atmosphere to the pitch of his soul. Hazrat Inayat Khan