Video: Rumi - If you can’t go to sleep
Ivan M. Granger July 29th, 2008
Rumi, recited by Sina, with music by Hamoon Tehrani. A nice visual meditation…
Archive for July, 2008
Nagarjuna - Change
Ivan M. Granger July 29th, 2008
Change
by Nagarjuna
English version by Stephen Batchelor
If something has an essence–
How can it ever change
Into anything else?
A thing doesn’t change into something else–
Youth does not age,
Age does not age.
If something changed into something else–
Milk would be butter
Or butter would not be milk.
Were there a trace of something,
There would be a trace of emptiness.
Were there no trace of anything,
There would be no trace of emptiness.
Buddhas say emptiness
Is relinquishing opinions.
Believers in emptiness
Are incurable.
— from Verses from the Center: A Buddhist Vision of the Sublime, by Nagarjuna / Translated by Stephen Batchelor
/ Photo by Idol /
Several challenging statements here about essence and change, but I particularly want to focus on the final stanza:
Buddhas say emptiness
Is relinquishing opinions.
Believers in emptiness
Are incurable.
Clearly, sunyata or “emptiness” is what Nagarjuna wants us to come to terms with. Why then does he throw it back in our faces with the statement that “Believers in emptiness / Are incurable”?
One must meet reality without a mental overlay of projection and assumption. “Belief” is the intense clinging to an assumption of what something means. Belief, in other words, is a sort of mental insistence that things are a certain way and fit into a certain framework — all without truly knowing. That approach can help in the early stages of seeking, but it becomes a major stumbling block further along the journey. Belief becomes a barrier to knowing.
Belief always has something of yourself mixed in it. Belief is a swirling mix of what others have taught and your own limitations of mind, experience, and ego. To know truth, we must remove our ourselves from the process of perception.
Belief may initially point us in a good direction, but that’s when the work starts: We must actually make the journey. And all along the way, we must constantly test what we notice and test ourselves against those initial beliefs. Untested belief becomes brittle, and ever more opaque.
Yet so many refuse to loosen their grip on belief in order make the actual journey and test their beliefs against direct perception. It’s easier — and, for the ego, safer — to believe, rather than to know. This is why those who “believe” in emptiness (or Nirvana or Heaven or God) are “incurable.”
It’s a troubling teaching given by masters and mystics everywhere: Always better to know than to believe.
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Nagarjuna |
The best we can imagine
Ivan M. Granger July 29th, 2008
We are always doing the best we can imagine.
The problem is that we aren’t always doing
the best we CAN.
Unleash the imagination!
Hildegard von Bingen - Antiphon for the Trinity
Ivan M. Granger July 28th, 2008
Laus Trinitati / Antiphon for the Trinity
by Hildegard of Bingen
English version by Barbara Newman
To the Trinity be praise!
God is music, God is life
that nurtures every creature in its kind.
Our God is the song of the angel throng
and the splendor of secret ways
hid from all humankind,
But God our life is the life of all.
— from Symphonia: A Critical Edition of the Symphonia armonie celstium revelationum, by Hildegard of Bingen / Translated by Barbara Newman
/ Photo by millicent_bystander /
This beautiful song of praise by Hildegard von Bingen expresses so much of her mysticism. She sees Life flowing and flowering through all life. And she declares that life to be unquestionably divine!
For Hildegard, there is a divine outpouring or radiance. That expression of God in and through all things is also perceived as music, as harmony.
“God is music, God is life…” God is the rhythm of existence — and we are part of its thrum!
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Hildegard of Bingen |
We become what we love…
Poetry Photos
Ivan M. Granger July 28th, 2008
I periodically get asked where I find the photos that accompany the poems on the blog and in the poem emails. Did I take them all myself? (No, I’m not that talented behind the lens.) Did I pay to access a stock photography catalog? (Nope.)
Actually, I find almost all of the photos on Flickr, through their Creative Commons section. These are basically photos people post and make available for free, as long as you attribute them.
You’ll notice that beneath each photo I use, I include a reference to the photographer’s name with a link that leads to their Flickr pages.
Once I’ve selected the poem for the day, I imagine visual images that might compliment the words well, and then start searching through Flickr. Some real treasures in there, even though most photos are by amateurs. Often I end up selecting a photo that has little to do with my original idea. I’m just as curious as you to discover which image will ultimately accompany the selected poem…
Mahendranath Battacharya - Screening its face amongst lotus stalks
Ivan M. Granger July 25th, 2008
Screening its face amongst lotus stalks
by Mahendranath Battacharya
English version by Rachel Fell McDermott
Screening its face amongst lotus stalks
the golden bird
contented
limbs listless with love
eyes open
sleeps on the flower with v, s, s, and s
emblazoned on its petals.
In a flower bud above
reigns the mantra “ram.”
Repeat “ram! ram!”
and fan the flames red;
surround the swan with heat.
Let no obstacle stand in your way;
get to work –
you are young and fresh.
Break this fake sleep and snap out of your dreams;
then the storms of this world won’t concern you.
Oh soul, whip up the wind; let the bird fly
flower to flower
towards Her mate in the sahasrara.
When that happens the five elements in you
earth, water, fire, wind, and ether
will dissolve, and you’ll be free
to merge in the Supreme.
— from Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal, Translated by Rachel Fell McDermott
/ Photo by g.naharro /
This poem by Mahendranath Battacharya is a stunning example of the beautiful and technically precise language that emerges from the Tantric Kundalini tradition of Yoga. But the meaning might not be obvious at first glance…
First, what is the “swan”, the “golden bird”? It is the awakening Kundalini Shakti, the spiritual force that typically lies dormant at the base of the spine. The Kundalini is more commonly described with serpent imagery, as a sleeping snake curled around an egg in the seat. But when it awakens, it rises up, or flies up. This is why you’ll get unusual imagery of winged serpents among various spiritual traditions, or sometimes snakes that turn into birds or birds that hold snakes in their mouths. The Kundalini is experienced as being serpent-like when it is dormant, and bird-like when it is awakened and rises.
In this poem, the “golden bird” at first is “Screening its face among the lotus stalks…” The lotus flower is a common Hindu metaphor for the chakras, or subtle energy centers, primarily located along the spine. Mahendranath Battacharya describes the Kundalini as “screening its face among the lotus stalks,” meaning it is initially hidden from conscious awareness. It is there and very much alive, but constant sensory input overwhelms the chakras, in effect hiding the Kundalini from notice.
Hidden and unnoticed, the Kundalini “sleeps on the flower with v, s, s, and s / emblazoned on the petals.” The repetition of the letter S doesn’t make as much sense in English, but it is a reference to the three Sanskrit variations of hard s, soft sh, and hard sh. In Kundalini Yoga, these four Sanskrit letters are visualized as being inscribed on the “petals” of the base chakra. In other words, this is both a technical and poetic way of saying that the Kundalini force lays dormant in the base chakra and must be awakened.
Video: Blue Beauty
Ivan M. Granger July 24th, 2008
A reminder of the world we all share. Notice that there are no borders. Borders and nations, all those walls that seem to govern our lives — they are all imaginary. But this living earth beneath our feet, the ocean of air that flows around us and through us and over us, now they are real and remind us of our shared life.
Fakhruddin Iraqi - The world but seems to be
Ivan M. Granger July 23rd, 2008
The world but seems to be
by Fakhruddin Iraqi
English version by William Chittick and Peter Lamborn Wilson
The world but seems to be
yet is nothing more
than a line drawn
between light and shadow.
Decipher the message
of this dream-script
and learn to distinguish time
from Eternity.
— from Fakhruddin Iraqi: Divine Flashes (Classics of Western Spirituality) , by William Chittick / Nasr Seyyed Hossein
/ Photo by tanakawho /
There is actually quite a bit being said in this brief poem that gets into both the mystical experience of reality and also certain aspects of Muslim theology.
First, consider the picture Iraqi has drawn for us: We have light and shadow — together making a whole or a circle — and a line drawn between them. The line divides the circle, the wholeness, into two semi-circles. Those semi-circles each have the shape of a bow… two bows.
The image of two bows is important in Islam. In the Quran, the Prophet Mohammed is said to have ascended to heaven where he drew near to God, “two bow’s length away.” The significance of the distance of two bows has been endlessly debated and contemplated in the Muslim world.
So here, Iraqi is expanding on the mystical explanation given by the Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi that the two bows represent the two aspects of reality: light and shadow, the Bow of Necessary Being and the Bow of Possible-Existence. When the two bows are joined, reality is seen in its wholeness, and one can draw near to the face of God.
This image also suggests that the world itself is not a stable, fixed reality. It does not truly exist in its own sense. It is simply a meeting point between the light and the dark. Just as the present moment is the meeting point between the past and the future. But, if you steady your mind and expand your vision, you can truly discern that line of meeting — and then it no longer divides the two halves; it joins them. It is then that the whole vision comes upon you and you “learn to distinguish time [the separated pieces] / from Eternity [the wholeness].”
In the text of his “Divine Flashes,” Iraqi follows this poem with a note and another brief poem:
Break the code of this line and know beyond all doubt that
All is nothing,
nothing.
All is He,
all is HE.
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Fakhruddin Iraqi
Iran (? - 1289) Timeline |
Whittle yourself down
Ivan M. Granger July 23rd, 2008
Whittle yourself down
to the question at your core.
Let that empty ache
lead you to ecstasy!
Video: Closer Than Close
Ivan M. Granger July 22nd, 2008
This is a brief clip from a documentary available on DVD entitled “Closer Than Close” about the modern search for spiritual meaning. The narrator gives us a quiet, unembellished description of his moment of awakening into nondual awareness. I haven’t yet seen the full movie, but I’m curious…
Li Po - The birds have vanished into the sky
Ivan M. Granger July 21st, 2008
The birds have vanished into the sky,
by Li Po
English version by Sam Hamill
The birds have vanished into the sky,
and now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.
— from Endless River: Li Po and Tu Fu: A Friendship in Poetry, Translated by Sam Hamill
/ Photo by Ryan McD /
One way to read Li Po’s poem is that the birds are chattering thoughts. They represent the movement within that leads to the misperception of separation without. But thoughts can soar so high, reach such elevated levels, that they vanish in the sky of mind.
The clouds are obstructions of awareness, limiting the perception of the untainted vast mind. And, with the birds, clouds too “drain away” in deep stillness.
(Yet, even when clouds are thick and heavy, even when birds flit about in their busyness, the sky itself, original mind, contains it all and remains pure and still beyond the obstructions.)
The mountain is that which is eternal, fixed, both rooted in the earth and touching the heavens. Watching this “mountain” of eternal presence long enough, in deep stillness you find that you are nowhere to be seen. You are surprised to discover that everything you reflexively called “me” was never really there in the first place, and “only the mountain remains.” The “mountain” is finally recognized as your true Self, your only self, eternal. Effortlessly, you bridge heaven and earth by your very nature. And only That remains.
OR –
You can ignore all of that, and just step into this serene sketch of a quieting landscape.
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Li Po |
Stop asking, How do I get there from here?
Ivan M. Granger July 21st, 2008
Stop asking, How do I get there from here?
Few are fully here.
The question is: How do I get here from there?
Thomas Merton - In Silence
Ivan M. Granger July 16th, 2008
In Silence
by Thomas Merton
Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Be silent, they try
to speak your
name.
Listen
to the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?
Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.
Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.
O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you
speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.
“I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?”
/ Photo by icelight /
Although I’ve found this poem posted on several websites on the Internet, I haven’t been able to track down the book it was originally published in. And most of my books are neatly packed up in boxes at the moment. Does anyone happen to know which book this poem can be found in?
Be still.
Listen to the stones of the wall.
Or should we just say it is found in silence?
…
I love the questions that impregnate this poem.
Be silent, they try
to speak your
name.
Does your name have any inherent meaning?
Are you your name?
When people call your name, are they calling you, or some idea of you?
If you are not your name, what is the purpose of a name?
If you are not your name, what then do you call yourself?
Listen
to the living walls.
Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?
This is more than a question, really, almost an insistent demand: Who are you? Who are you?
But the question isn’t tossed to the busy, thinking mind, which has a thousand quick answers. Merton insists on silence. Remove the background of environment, society, relationship, even thoughts about yourself. THEN ask the question, Who are you? WHO are you?
Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet).
If love does not rule your heart…
Ivan M. Granger July 16th, 2008
If love does not rule your heart,
all activity is just the spinning of wheels.
Yoka Genkaku (Yongjia Xuanjue) - From my youth I piled studies upon studies (from The Shodoka)
Ivan M. Granger July 14th, 2008
[52] From my youth I piled studies upon studies, (from The Shodoka)
by Yoka Genkaku (Yongjia Xuanjue)
English version by Robert Aitken
From my youth I piled studies upon studies,
In sutras and sastras I searched and researched,
Classifying terms and forms, oblivious to fatigue.
I entered the sea to count the sands in vain
And then the Tathagata scolded me kindly
As I read “What profit in counting your neighbor’s treasure?”
My work had been scattered and entirely useless,
For years I was dust blown by the wind.
/ Photo by Bacteriano /
This verse is a powerful and devastating reminder for the seeker:
In sutras and sastras I searched and researched,
Classifying terms and forms, oblivious to fatigue.
I entered the sea to count the sands in vain…
Study of sacred scriptures (”sutras and sastras”), sacred traditions — even sacred poetry — can too often become a “vain” and “useless” act when we are merely “classifying terms and forms.” When devotion is absent, when we ourselves in our essential presence are absent, the study of even sacred things devolves into a sort of spiritual materialism. Our study becomes a mere accumulation of data that allows us to proclaim, ‘I have read this, I have memorized that. Look how hard I have worked to understand… I have acquired it; it is MINE. Surely I am now more spiritual and closer to God, closer to truth.’ But what do we really have?
We are challenged by the question: “What profit in counting your neighbor’s treasure?”
In studying sacred teachings and traditions, we are essentially studying spiritual truth as perceived and taught by others. That spiritual truth is “your neighbor’s treasure.” The goal is not to endlessly classify and categorize what others have said. The goal is to receive the treasure for yourself! Continue Reading »
Video: Robert Bly Reads Antonio Machado
Ivan M. Granger July 12th, 2008
Robert Bly reads one of my favorite poems by Antonio Machado…
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!—
that a spring was breaking
out in my heart.
I said: Along which secret aqueduct,
Oh water, are you coming to me,
water of a new life
that I have never drunk?
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!—
that I had a beehive
here inside my heart.
And the golden bees
were making white combs
and sweet honey
from my old failures.
Last night, as I was sleeping,
I dreamt — marvelous error!—
that a fiery sun was giving
light inside my heart.
It was fiery because I felt
warmth as from a hearth,
and sun because it gave light
and brought tears to my eyes.
Last night, as I slept,
I dreamt — marvelous error!—
that it was God I had
here inside my heart.
| Times Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado Translated by Robert Bly |
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