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A bower, filled with flowering trees, offers privacy, secrecy, a place for lovers to meet. Like a garden, a bower is a place where things grow, a place of life. It is the opposite of death, which is the state of nonspirituality. The trees of the bower are rooted in the earth, yet they reach upward toward the sky. What grows in our spiritual bower feeds us through its "fruitfulness" and brings beauty, the awareness of harmony to our consciousness. The flowers represent the spiritual qualities that have opened within us, which in turn cause us to open to the Divine.
Like a garden, the bower is a place of contemplation and rest. It is a place where we give ourselves permission to simply be, to settle into the present moment.
This bower, then, is the space we create within ourselves, through loving devotion, through patient spiritual practice, through the cultivation of that which is best and most true within us. It comes alive within us. It becomes a space we ourselves enter -- we create it it within ourselves and then we enter into it. There we grow silent and still, we find refuge from the world. And there we wait. The perfume of the bower draws the Beloved to our side. At least that's how it appears to the limited perspective of the soul. The truth is closer to this: As we wait, the pure perfume surrounds us, we breathe it in, it finally clears our head and heart, and we see for the first time -- that the Beloved's shining "moon-like" face has been there all along.
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Ammons, A. R. Poetics |
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Angelou, Maya Caged Bird |
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Angelou, Maya On the Pulse of Morning |
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Attar, Farid ud-Din The Simurgh |
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Aurobindo Tree |
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ben Kallir, Eleazar Epithalamium |
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ben Yose, Yose In Praise of God (from Avoda) |
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Berry, Wendell Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front |
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Berry, Wendell Sabbaths 1999, VII |
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Berry, Wendell The Wild Geese |
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Berry, Wendell The Wish to Be Generous |
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Blake, William Auguries of Innocence |
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Bradstreet, Anne There is a path no vulture's eye hath seen (from The Vanity of All Worldly Things) |
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Chinook (Anonymous) Teach us, and show us the Way |
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Colonna, Vittoria da I live on this depraved and lonely cliff |
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cummings, e. e. i carry your heart with me |
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cummings, e. e. i thank You God for most this amazing |
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Feuerstein, Georg Odin's Ordeal |
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Feuerstein, Georg Our Worded Universe |
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Feuerstein, Georg Squaring the Circle |
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Gibran, Kahlil Giving |
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Gibran, Kahlil The Vast Man |
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Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von Gray, my friend, is every theory, (from Faust) |
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Govindasvami Holy sixth day |
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Granger, Ivan M. Lime |
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Granger, Ivan M. Adi Atman 3: 2 AM |
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Han-shan (Cold Mountain) I spur my horse past the ruined city; |
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Hanh, Thich Nhat Padmapani |
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Hawaiian (Anonymous) He kanaenae no Laka / A Prayer of Adulation to Laka |
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Hayati, Bibi Is it the night of power |
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Heschel, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Intimate Hymn |
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Hirshfield, Jane Metempsychosis |
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Hirshfield, Jane Tree |
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Holderlin, Friedrich Remembrance |
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Ikkyu (Sojun, Ikkyu) Form in Void |
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Iqbal, Allama Muhammad To the Saqi (from Baal-i-Jibreel) |
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Jacobsen, Rolf Moon and Apple |
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Jacobsen, Rolf The Silence Afterwards |
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Jakushitsu A Visit to Hattoji Temple |
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Jayadeva When spring came, tender-limbed Radha wandered (from The Gitagovinda) |
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Jeffers, Robinson Rock and Hawk |
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Kabir I have attained the Eternal Bliss |
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Kerouac, Jack The Scripture of the Golden Eternity |
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Krishnamurti, Jiddu I Am All |
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Krishnamurti, Jiddu Song of the Beloved (from The Immortal Friend) |
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Lalan The moon is encircled by moons |
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Lee, Li-Young Praise Them |
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Leon, Luis de The Life Removed |
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Machado, Antonio Songs |
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Mahadevi, Akka You are the forest |
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Meher Baba The Beloved's Poem on His Dhuni |
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Merton, Thomas A Practical Program for Monks |
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Merton, Thomas Aubade -- The City |
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Merton, Thomas Stranger |
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Merton, Thomas The Sowing of Meanings |
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Merwin, W. S. Finding a Teacher |
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Milosz, Czeslaw Love |
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Neruda, Pablo Tell me, is the rose naked |
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O'Donohue, John For Freedom |
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Oliver, Mary Can You Imagine? |
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Oliver, Mary In Blackwater Woods |
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Oliver, Mary This World |
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Po, Li You ask why I make my home in the mountain forest |
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Pope, Alexander Solitude: An Ode |
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Ramsay, Jay By Loch Arrow |
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Ramsay, Jay In the Aber Valley |
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Ramsay, Jay In the End: The Beginning |
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Reninger, Elizabeth Deer |
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Rilke, Rainer Maria The Man Watching |
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Rilke, Rainer Maria The Second Elegy (from The Duino Elegies) |
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Rosenstock, Gabriel I create silences (from Uttering Her Name) |
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Rosenstock, Gabriel not the slaked thirst of Bayazid (from Uttering Her Name) |
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Rosenstock, Gabriel snake unwinding (from Uttering Her Name) |
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Rosenstock, Gabriel the grace showered on me (from Uttering Her Name) |
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Rumi, Mevlana Jelaluddin come |
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Rumi, Mevlana Jelaluddin Sacrifice your intellect in love for the Friend: |
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Ryokan Reply to a Friend |
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Sanai, Hakim Meditation |
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Snyder, Gary Regarding Wave |
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Soseki, Muso Beyond the World |
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Stevens, Wallace Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird |
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Symeon the New Theologian The Light of Your Way |
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Szekely, Edmond Bordeaux God Speaks to Man |
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Szymborska, Wislawa Among the Multitudes |
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Szymborska, Wislawa Miracle Fair |
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T'ao Ch'ien Unsettled, a bird lost from the flock |
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Tagore, Rabindranath He's there among the scented trees (from The Lover of God) |
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Takahashi, Shinkichi A Wood in Sound |
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Teasdale, Sara Dew |
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Tiruvalluvar Love |
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Tolkien, J. R. R. Sam's Song of Strength |
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Tolkien, J. R. R. Upon the hearth the fire is red |
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Tsoknyi Rinpoche (Tsoknyi Gyatso, Ngawang) Sometime go outside and sit |
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Tukaram Can water drink itself? |
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Vaughan, Henry The Night |
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Vivekananda Kali the Mother |
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Wei, Wang Living in the Mountain on an Autumn Night |
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Wei, Wang Stone Gate Temple in the Blue Field Mountains |
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Wei, Wang Temple Tree Path |
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Whitman, Walt [2] Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes (from Song of Myself) |
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Yeats, William Butler Sailing to Byzantium |
