Poetry Chaikhana Blog

Ivan M. Granger June 27th, 2008

Every man who is aware of his secret
by Sarmad

English version by Dr. Zahurul Hasan Sharib

Every man who is aware of his secret
He becomes concealed even from the skies.
The mullah says that Ahmad went to the heavens
Sarmad says that the heavens were inside Ahmad!

/ Photo by beggs /

Every man who is aware of his secret
He becomes concealed even from the skies.

Isn’t that a great opening half to this quatrain? When we become aware of the secret contained within us, the ego self disappears. What most people think of when they call you a person becomes “concealed… even from the skies.”

The mullah says that Ahmad went to the heavens
Sarmad says that the heavens were inside Ahmad!

These closing lines are saying something interesting too. Islamic religious tradition (taught by the mullahs or spiritual leaders) tells of the Mi’raj when the Prophet Mohammed (Ahmad) journeys to the Dome of the Rock / Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and from there ascends into the heavens, where he converses with other prophets and, ultimately, God.

Sarmad, with the mystic’s instinct, turns this inward, declaring that the Mi’raj was not an external journey, but a journey within, for “the heavens were inside Ahmad!” This declaration makes the journey to heaven available to us all; we may not all be prophets, but we all can discover the same heavenly core within ourselves.

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Ivan M. Granger June 27th, 2008

Divine purpose moves through you.

The only question is
whether you pretend to fight it.

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Ivan M. Granger June 25th, 2008

Love
by Thomas Traherne

      O nectar! O delicious stream!
O ravishing and only pleasure! Where
      Shall such another theme
Inspire my tongue with joys or please mine ear!
      Abridgement of delights!
      And Queen of sights!
O mine of rarities! O Kingdom wide!
O more! O cause of all! O glorious Bride!
      O God! O Bride of God! O King!
      O soul and crown of everything!

      To Danae’s pleasing fruitful womb.
      His Ganymede! His life! His joy!
Or He comes down to me, or takes me up
      That I might be His boy,
And fill, and taste, and give, and drink the cup.
      But those (tho’ great) are all
      Too short and small,
Too weak and feeble pictures to express
The true mysterious depths of Blessedness.
      I am His image, and His friend,
      His son, bride, glory, temple, end.

— from Poetry for the Spirit: Poems of Universal Wisdom and Beauty, Edited by Alan Jacobs

/ Photo by alicepopkorn /

This poem by Traherne is almost breathless in its ecstatic exclamations. Though highly structured in meter and rhyme, he just barely seems to be able to get the words onto the page.

The first verse is an overwhelm of bliss and images: nectar, a stream, a kingdom, a king, a bride, a crown.

Why does Traherne start his poem with descriptions of “nectar,” a “delicious steam” that more than anything else can “inspire my tongue with joys”? The ecstatic state is often interpreted by the sense-mind as a beautiful, rich sweetness on the upper palette and at the back of the throat, accompanied by a warmth in the belly. Because there is also a humming in the inner ear and often a visual awareness of a glowing gold or white color (”golden rain”), this experience is often compared to honey or a heavenly ambrosia. The experience is also accompanied by a blissful giddiness and, sometimes, a trembling or other body movements that can mimic drunkenness, so mystics also refer to this subtle liquid as wine: “And fill, and taste, and give, and drink the cup.”

In Christian symbolic language, the King, of course, is Christ, or more generically the personal aspect of God. The Bride is the purified individual soul that joins with the Divine and discovers ecstasy in holy union.

In the second verse, Traherne lists what he had been seeking all his life, what he imagined God to be: endless power, love, glory, beauty… the source of everything. But the next verse moves out of the conceptual to a revelation of what he has actually experienced. And he is flabbergasted to discover that as rich as his mental concepts of the Divine had been, the direct experience is greater still. “Did my ambition ever dream / Of such a Lord, of such love!” Love, true divine love that rejects nothing and embraces everything is just a philosophical idea until it is actually felt — and then you realize the idea hardly hinted at the reality. This is accompanied by a sense of wholeness and bliss that descends upon the awareness, “Joys down from Heaven on my head do shower.”

The final verse is the most personal. Traherne sees himself as Danae impregnated by the divine golden shower, as Ganymede the beloved cupbearer of heaven. God has descended to him, or has lifted him up; he can’t tell, he doesn’t care. The divine living source of everything has, in the most intimate way, touched and claimed him.

But even these descriptions “tho’ great” can’t do justice to the reality. There are no satisfactory words for “The true mysterious depths of Blessedness.” The best he can do to put this relationship into words is to suggest that he now recognizes himself as a reflection of the Divine, an intimate, a vessel, a completed work: “I am His image, and His friend, / His son, bride, glory, temple, end.”

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Ivan M. Granger June 25th, 2008

The goal of the ego is not perfection.

It’s ultimate goal is to fade away
in order to reveal the inherent perfection
already present.

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Ivan M. Granger June 23rd, 2008

If one His praise of me would learn,
by Saadi

English version by Edward B. Eastwick

If one His praise of me would learn,
      What of the traceless can the tongueless tell?
      Lovers are killed by those they love so well;
No voices from the slain return.

— from The Gulistan of Sadi: The Rose Garden, Translated by Edward B. Eastwick

/ Photo by HAMED MASOUMI /

I love that line, “What of the traceless can the toungeless tell?”

There is actually a lot being said in these few lines, all circling around the wordlessness of true lovers of God. Why is it that lovers are “tongueless”? Why is it that lovers are “killed,” and the voices of the “slain” don’t return?

Sacred poetry often portrays death from an upside-down perspective in which death is sought with an enthusiasm that can, at times, sound almost suicidal. Without understanding of this imagery, it can sound as if every mystic and saint has some strange death wish.

In deep ecstasy, the sense of individuality, the sense of “I” thins and can completely disappear. Though you may still walk and breathe and talk, there is no “you” performing these actions. The separate identity, the ego, disappears, to be replaced by a vast, borderless sense of reality — the “traceless.” Suddenly, who you have always thought yourself to be vanishes and, in its place, stands a radiant presence whose boundaries are no longer perceived in terms of flesh or space.

It is this experience, this complete shedding of the limited body of the ego, that is the death so eagerly sought by mystics throughout time. This is what Saadi means by his statement, “Lovers are killed by those they love so well.”

This same death of the ego leads to a space beyond words. With the small self no longer in the way of true perception, reality is finally perceived as a unified wholeness. The mind ceases to cut its perception of reality into manageable little pieces. Everything, absolutely everything is recognized as part of that single wholeness. And that’s where words fail. Words can only ever apply to fragments of reality, particles of meaning. But in the lover’s vision of Oneness, words are no longer big enough to contain what is witnessed.

What then can one say? Lover’s fall silent. They are toungeless. In this sacred ‘death,’ one has no voice. Some mystics literally fall silent and cease to speak in awe of such Unity, while others may speak and write and sing… but inwardly they too are spacious, clear, silent. The use of words becomes at most a game, incapable of truly conveying the lover’s awe and praise. One can only hope that this game of words and incomplete meanings will point the way for others, that they too may one day find themselves toungeless.

Nuff said…

Saadi Iran/Per (1207? - 1291) Timeline Muslim / Sufi

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Ivan M. Granger June 23rd, 2008

Once you have gathered enough silence,
silence gathers you.

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Ivan M. Granger June 20th, 2008

[1056] There is a Zone whose even Years
by Emily Dickinson

There is a Zone whose even Years
No Solstice interrupt –
Whose Sun constructs perpetual Noon
Whose perfect Seasons wait –

Whose Summer set in Summer, till
The Centuries of June
And Centuries of August cease
And Consciousness — is Noon.

— from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson, Edited by Thomas H. Johnson

/ Photo by Bohman /

I know we just had a poem by Emily Dickinson last week, but I couldn’t pass up this poem on the summer solstice.

Light is one of the primary metaphors in sacred poetry, suggesting the Divine not framed within a mental concept. But for genuine mystics, this light is not a mere concept; it is directly experienced.

This sense of light is more than a brightness one might experience on a sunny afternoon. This light is perceived as being a living radiance that permeates everything, everywhere, always. This light is immediately understood to be the true source of all things, the foundation on which the physicality of the material world is built.

And Consciousness — is Noon.

This is the light of the true mystics.

Have a beautiful solstice — the time of year to celebrate the fulness of the light which sustains all life.

Emily Dickinson US (1830 - 1886) Timeline Secular or Eclectic Christian : Protestant

More poetry by Emily Dickinson

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Ivan M. Granger June 20th, 2008

Each one of us does not exist
except as an empty field
in which God meets God.
We are the flash of self-recognition
that lights the face of the Divine.

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Ivan M. Granger June 20th, 2008

The summer solstice is upon us, one of the cardinal points of the year’s cycle. Time to celebrate the light at its peak, internalize it as the days inevitably grow shorter once again…

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Ivan M. Granger June 18th, 2008

Millennium blessing
by Stephen Levine

There is a grace approaching
that we shun as much as death,
it is the completion of our birth.

And that is what we sing about.

— from Breaking the Drought: Visions of Grace, by Stephen Levine

/ Photo by Stoker Studios /

There is a grace approaching
that we shun as much as death,
it is the completion of our birth.

The lines of this poem are deceptively simple. It’s one of those poems that is easy to read and then move on with the rest of the day…

It does not come in time,
      but in timelessness
when the mind sinks into the heart
and we remember.

…But the words trail after you, quietly ringing at the back of your thoughts, gently haunting the comfort of our routines and routine relationships with the world.

It is an insistent grace that draws us
to the edge and beckons us to surrender
safe territory and enter our enormity.

These are words that lead us to silence. What else is there to say?

And there is nothing left to say
but we are That.

And that is what we sing about.

Stephen Levine US (1937 - ) Secular or Eclectic

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Ivan M. Granger June 18th, 2008

This is part one of a series of short videos from an informal poetry reading by Stephen Levine. An insightful, intimate talk, and poetry from his new collection of poetry.

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Ivan M. Granger June 16th, 2008

Dawn of Wisdom
by Georg Feuerstein

I searched and searched
but then I ceased
and simply stood
still as a man
facing the Sun
in morning’s climb
across the sky.
Then wisdom dawned
time after time
and filled my mind.

— from Transparent Leaves from the Tree of Life: Metaphysical Poems, by Georg Feuerstein

/ Photo by ewen and donabel /

I thought we’d shift gears this week, and read some poetry by contemporary writers — people better known to us as mystics and seekers than poets.

I first came across the writings of Yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein when I picked up his encyclopedic blue “phone book” called the Yoga Tradition, one of the best books I’ve found in English surveying the rich philosphies, writings, practices, traditions, and expressions of Yoga throughout its ancient history. I still keep that book by my bed today, something to reach for and read a short chapter on a warm summer evening before drifting off to sleep. Or early in the morning…

I searched and searched
but then I ceased
and simply stood
still as a man
facing the Sun…

Have a beautiful day today!

Georg Feuerstein (1947 - ) Yoga / Hindu Secular or Eclectic

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Ivan M. Granger June 16th, 2008

Deep spiritual unfolding
may feel unbearably slow,
at times painful or terrifying,
– but what else is worth any effort?

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Ivan M. Granger June 16th, 2008

It’s about time for another post on poetry in the movies, don’t you think?

I didn’t expect much the when I first saw the movie In Her Shoes. The movie trailers made it look, well, silly. I was surprised to discover a movie with depth, a comedy-drama with insight into the tensions between close siblings, with insight into the ways early traumas can shape the way we grow into adulthood, the way we develop self-destructive patterns — and ways we can finally recognize a greater wholeness in ourselves.

And poetry plays a central part in that journey…

Here is the text of the e.e. cummings poem from this video clip:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear;and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

–

Another powerful poem highlighted in the movie is Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art”:

The art of losing isn’t hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan’t have lied. It’s evident
the art of losing’s not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

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Ivan M. Granger June 13th, 2008

You are Christ’s Hands
by Teresa of Avila

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
      no hands but yours,
      no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
      Christ’s compassion to the world
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about
      doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.

— from The Essential Mystics: Selections from the World’s Great Wisdom Traditions, Edited by Andrew Harvey

/ Photo by batega /

Let’s round out our series on women’s voices in sacred poetry with this selection by St. Teresa of Avila.

I haven’t been able to confirm whether or not this beautiful poem was actually composed by Teresa of Avila or not. It is popularly attributed to her, but it is not included or even mentioned in The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, which I assume has all of her known writings. It may be similar to the popular Prayer of St. Francis, which is a profound prayer-poem, but not actually composed by St. Francis of Assisi.

Whether this was composed by Teresa of Avila herself or by an anonymous Christian poet, this is one of my favorite prayer-poems. It is a prayer of supreme spiritual maturity. It is not someone imploring Christ to come and fix everything in the external way imagined by so many fundamentalist sects; rather, it recognizes the presence of the Divine within each of us and our sacred responsibility to embody that compassion and service to the world. Each one of us is the vehicle through which Christ (or Ishwara, or however you name the personal form of the Divine) sends blessings. Our job is to get out of the way and let that sacred current flow through us unhindered.

“Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now…”

Teresa of Avila Spain (1515 - 1582) Timeline Christian : Catholic

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Ivan M. Granger June 13th, 2008

Security and comfort exist
only for the ego.
The Self is boundless,
invulnerable,
free!

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Ivan M. Granger June 13th, 2008

It’s been a long, hard couple of months with all of the health challenges I’ve been going through. While I can’t yet say that my health and energies have returned to “normal,” they are at a level where I can resume limited work and many daily activities.

Over the past few weeks I have received so many touching notes, often mentioning your prayers, healing energies, and good wishes. And I have truly felt your supportive thoughts as I worked my way through the most difficult days.

Also, your many generous contributions are helping in so many ways, by bridging the gap in lost income (due to limited ability to work at my day job), helping me to pay for doctors’ visits, and other health care support. For that too, thank you from my heart.

/ Photo by CarbonNYC /

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