Poetry Chaikhana Blog

Every Shaped Thing
by Ivan M. Granger

Sighing,
every shaped thing
turns
heavenward.

I can only
point
up.”

— from Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey, by Ivan M. Granger

/ Photo by hsld /

It has been a little while since I have featured one of my own poems, so here is one for you today…

I wrote this poem when I lived on the island of Maui years ago. I was standing outside with a scattered forest of eucalyptus and wattle trees in front of me, with Haleakala volcano to my back. I was standing there in a state of deep meditation, when I opened my eyes — and I just saw how everything is reaching, turning, pointing heavenward. The material world, when objectified becomes a confusing tangle of desire objects; but when seen truly, quietly, it acts as a great signpost guiding us, pointing out the direction.

All of creation — every person, every thing, even every idea, “every shaped thing” — is just a reflection of the divine radiance present everywhere.

Whenever we desire a thing… or person or experience, we artificially deify it, the desire and mental fixation becoming a low form of worship. We may tell ourselves, “I want this, I want that,” but what we unknowingly crave is not the thing itself, but that spark of the Eternal barely glimpsed within it. The desired object becomes a “gilded god” — false in the sense that it is not truly the wholeness we seek; but also, like an “idol” or icon, when approached sincerely and openly, material creation embodies something essential: it points to the Divine which it reflects.

No individual can ever gather enough objects of desire to satisfy desire. Every time we acquire that desired object or experience — a new job, a new lover, money, an ice cream sundae — there is a fleeting sense of satisfaction… and then it’s gone. And we’re already feeling desire again and looking for the next object to hang the desire on. We’re looking for the next thing that sparkles. But it is not the object we actually seek, it is that shine. And that shine is the spark of the Divine.

When we learn to see in gold the glimmer of the sun, then we see that everything shines — everything! — ourselves included. And then we are truly satisfied.

Ivan M. Granger US (1969 – ) Secular or Eclectic Yoga / Hindu : Advaita / Non-Dualist

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Nirvana Shatakam
by Shankara

English version by Ivan M. Granger

I am not mind, not intellect, not ego, not thought.
I am not the ears, the tongue, the nose or the eyes, or what they witness,
I am neither earth nor sky, not air nor light.

Truly, I am Shiva, pure awareness.
Shivo Ham! Shivo Ham!

/ Photo by energy /

This is one of the most important poems by the great Hindu philosopher-saint, Shankara. These lines are a distillation of Advaita Vedanta, the vision of non-dual reality. This is the realization that when we truly see and know, we recognize that underlying and supporting the complex diversity of creation is a single Unity. And within that Unity, even the individual is in no way separate or different from that vast Divine. This is why Shankara keeps returning to his refrain:

I am knowledge and bliss.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

You might ask, why Shiva? If all is One, why then identify with just one god from among the many gods in the Hindu pantheon?

Some schools of Advaita Vedanta do tend to avoid the theistic language of gods and, instead, speak only of the Self — the immense Self that is at once the heart of every individual and also the heart of all Being.

But when adherents of Advaita do speak of Gods, they usually speak of Shiva. Shiva is the favored god of meditators, yogis, ascetics, those on on the path of gnosis. Shiva is seen as pure Being, the fountain of all being. When Shankara repeats, “I am Shiva!” he is declaring that he finds no separation between his individual self and the center of all selves.

I am…

Shankara says “I am” throughout. By reading this poem, we enter into his realization. We take on his awareness. His declaration of what he is and is not becomes our own.

I am not mind, not intellect, not ego, not thought…

Much of this poem is a list of what Shankara realizes we are not.

This is an expression of the ancient practice of neti neti — not this, not that. It is a spiritual examination of everything, while slowly recognizing that no single thing contains us.

We are not the mind or intellect. We are not the senses or the organs through which we perceive the world. We are not the elemental building blocks of the body or the mind.

He also states we are not the qualities or preferences of the personality. The things that tug at us or that repel us, they are not what we are, they are not fundamentally real either. Relationships, family, even life and death — none of these things define us or truly tell us who we are.

Shankara has basically negated everything: the body, the mind, desires and fears, relationships, even the hope for liberation itself. What then is left? That’s the question that resonates throughout. Surface ideas of identity would say that nothing remains and one has hit a dead end. Not so. Something remains. When all the rest has been swept aside, something remains. All the things you thought you were can be lost, yet you fundamentally remain. Beneath it all there has always been that glowing Self, steady, aware, at rest, blissful, invulnerable. And it says simply, “I am.”

Free from doubt, I am formless.
With knowledge, in knowledge, I am everywhere, beyond perception.
I am always the same. Not free, not trapped — I am.

In celebration, we can sing with Shankara –

I am knowledge and bliss.
I am Shiva! I am Shiva!

Truly, I am Shiva, pure awareness.
Shivo Ham! Shivo Ham!

Shankara India (788 – 820) Timeline Yoga / Hindu : Advaita / Non-Dualist

More poetry by Shankara

Looking, Walking, Being
by Denise Levertov

“The World is not something to
look at, it is something to be in.”
– Mark Rudman

breathing to sustain
looking,
walking and looking,
through the world,
in it.

— from Poems: 1960-1967, by Denise Levertov

/ Photo by Amizyolaroid /

Okay, let’s start off with those wonderful lines:

Looking’s a way of being: one becomes,
sometimes, a pair of eyes walking.

This poem is a response to the Mark Rudman quote, “The World is not something to / look at, it is something to be in.” Denise Levertov answers that looking IS being.

The eyes
dig and burrow into the world.
They touch…

I suspect that Rudman was discouraging passivity and lack of presence, but Levertov, I think, is getting at something deeper still. Humans, all beings, in fact, are fundamentally beings of awareness. Each individual is a point of perception, a viewpoint in the universe. We are, each of us, “a pair of eyes walking.”

We are present through perception, not action. Yes, action and interaction can be a powerful way to force us to pay attention, but it is also common to use action to shut down the awareness. Whether in movement or in stillness, the real goal is to keep the eyes open and feel fully with the heart and with the gut. We want to do more than look, but to see, see deeply, to see what is ignored and glossed over, to “dig and burrow in the world.”

Even in complete stillness, truly seeing is one of the most profound actions we can engage in. I’ve seen people brought to tears by a gentle gaze in the eyes. This is what the soul craves, to be seen, to be recognized, to be truly acknowledged. This is true not just of the human soul, but of the world soul. I think of this when Denise Levertov writes of how the world “looks at one looking.”

And language? Rhythms
of echo and interruption?
That’s
a way of breathing.

We forget that language is built of breath. We see the written word and we read it silently. Words become mental concepts, tools of the intellect. But words are not fundamentally discrete units of meaning. They flow and stop and flow again, as the breath does. Words aren’t inherently meaningful; they are the ornaments that accompany the flow of awareness.

Words affect breath. Thoughts affect breath. Breath guides awareness.

…breathing to sustain
looking…

Breath, too, is communion. Through the breath, we bring the outside world inside us, inside the body, inside the awareness. The boundary between self and the world is bridged by the breath. Through breath, we touch, we feel, we internalize, we connect, we participate, we come alive. Through breath we move and we see.

…walking and looking,
through the world,
in it.

Denise Levertov US (1923 – 1997) Timeline Secular or Eclectic : Beat Jewish

More poetry by Denise Levertov

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.

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 FirenzeLotus22 /

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. Let’s spend some time together unlocking its meaning, and I think you’ll see what a profound poem this is…

Screening its face amongst lotus stalks
the golden bird…

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 rests in the base chakra and must be awakened.

In a flower bud above
reigns the mantra “ram.”
Repeat “ram! ram!”

The mantra “ram” is often associated with the third chakra at the solar plexus. This chakra is commonly described as being the seat of the will and the gateway to the higher realms of awareness. It is a sort of energetic ‘traffic cop’ — when the third chakra is sluggish, it tends to keep the energies of the lower chakras bottled up, but when it is cleansed and invigorated it starts calling to the lower chakras, ‘Wake up!’ and to the Kundalini, it urges, ‘Rise! Rise!’ So, when Mahendranath Battacharya tells us to repeat “ram! ram!” he is saying to awaken that third chakra, which in turn warms and rouses the Kundalini.

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.

But, of course, to do this, we must shake off our spiritual sluggishness. We must “get to work” and purify the mind, stretch the awareness, cleanse our energies. Yet, what else is all of our life force for? We have vitality, we are “young and fresh;” we should put it to good use! We must break the “fake sleep and snap out of [our] dreams” of limited perception and the false sense of self.

Oh soul, whip up the wind; let the bird fly
            flower to flower
towards Her mate in the sahasrara.

Mahendranath Battacharya urges us to “let the bird fly / flower to flower / towards Her mate in the sahasrara.” That is, we must let the Kundalini Shakti awaken and rise from chakra to chakra along the spine until it reaches the sahasrara or crown chakra. This is where the union occurs between the Divine Feminine (the awakened Kundalini Shakti) and the Divine Masculine (the Heavenly Spirit or Father Sky recognized in the crown center). When the two merge, we are finally One, and the Supreme is perceived within and without everywhere!

…and you’ll be free
            to merge in the Supreme.

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A Psalm
by Thomas Merton

When psalms surprise me with their music
And antiphons turn to rum
The Spirit sings: the bottom drops out of my soul.

While God sings by himself in acres of night
And walls fall down, that guarded Paradise.

— from Selected Poems of Thomas Merton, by Thomas Merton

/ Photo by Admond /

I apologize that it has been several days since our last poem email. I was floored by another bout of chronic fatigue, leaving me barely enough energy to keep up with the essentials of my day job. But I think I’m rebounding now. And I’m glad to be back with you all…

When psalms surprise me with their music
And antiphons turn to rum
The Spirit sings: the bottom drops out of my soul.

How about that for an opening? I love that phrase: “the bottom drops out of my soul.”

The first two-thirds of this poem are an ecstatic meditation on the mystic’s experience of union. A flooding of love and joy. A sense of profound clarity. An awareness of universal harmony amidst the kaleidoscopic multiplicity. An inner music. A giddy feeling of drunkenness.

But the tone of Merton’s poem shifts near the end.

And I go forth with no more wine and no more stars
And no more buds and no more Eden
And no more animals and no more sea:

There is a deflation in his final few stanzas. The riotous sense of life is replaced by emptiness.

I can’t quite decide if he is suggesting the return to mundane awareness, or its opposite — moving beyond to a state of utter stillness, where all of creation opens into a cavernous spaciousness, where no ‘thing’ remains, no boundary exists, only scintillating awareness in the substratum of existence.

While God sings by himself in acres of night
And walls fall down, that guarded Paradise.

Sometimes the question is more interesting than the answer. So let’s let that question mark hover in the air.

Have a beautiful weekend!

Thomas Merton US (1915 – 1968) Timeline Christian : Catholic

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Interrelationship
by Thich Nhat Hanh

You are me, and I am you.
Isn’t it obvious that we “inter-are”?
You cultivate the flower in yourself,
so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself,
so that you will not have to suffer.

I support you;
you support me.
I am in this world to offer you peace;
you are in this world to bring me joy.

— from Call Me by My True Names: The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh, by Thich Nhat Hanh

/ Photo by jmurawski /

This poem by the great modern Buddhist teacher and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh was written during a retreat for psychotherapists held in Colorado in response to someone else’s statement, “You are you, and I am me, and if by chance we meet, that’s wonderful. If not, it couldn’t be helped.”

This is a brief meditation on the Buddhist teaching of “inter-being.” Within the nondual awareness cultivated in Buddhism, especially the Zen Buddhism taught by Thich Nhat Hanh, nothing exists separately of everything else. Everything, ourselves included, is recognized as being a meeting point of shifting forces, environment, time, and perception. It is only in that touching, that interaction, that forms arise and individuals are said to exist. Remove those forces, and individual beings and objects cannot exist. In this sense, as individuals we are not spots that occupy space on the blank field of creation, rather we are empty spaces that are only suggested by the confluence of various forces. Discover that empty space, and you discover the eternal, blissful Void that is the true Self — void of form and “thingness,” but filled with life and awareness.

To return to Thich Nhat Hanh’s poem, as individuals with a certain body form and name and history, we exist only in the perception of each other. This is how he can pose the question, “Isn’t it obvious that we ‘inter-are’?”

By cultivating pure and compassionate awareness within ourselves, we transform those who perceive us, for their perception of us is a part of what they are composed of. And the more we “transform the garbage” in ourselves, the less that garbage shows up in those around us.

In this way of inter-being, the more we discover peace, the more we offer peace; the more we find joy, the more we bring joy.

Thich Nhat Hanh Vietnam/France/US (1929 – ) Buddhist : Zen / Chan

More poetry by Thich Nhat Hanh

The angels have bowed down to you and drowned
by Farid ud-Din Attar

English version by Afkham Darbandi and Dick Davis

The angels have bowed down to you and drowned
Your soul in Being, past all plummet’s sound –
Do not despise yourself, for there is none
Who could with you sustain comparison;
Do not torment yourself — your soul is All,
Your body but a fleeting particle.
This All will clarify, and in its light
Each particle will shine, distinctly bright –
As flesh remains an agent of the soul,
You soul’s an agent of the sacred Whole.
But “part” and “whole” must disappear at last;
The Way is one, and number is surpassed.
A hundred thousand clouds above you press;
Their rain is pure, unending happiness;
And when the desert blooms with flowers, their scent
And beauty minister to your content;
The prayers of all the angels, all they do,
All their obedience, God bestows on you.

— from The Conference of the Birds, Translated by Afkham Darbandi / Translated by Dick Davis

/ Photo by N3T1O /

Isn’t that a striking opening couplet?

The angels have bowed down to you and drowned
Your soul in Being, past all plummet’s sound…

We are drowned, but in Being, in the Real. We are past sound, in a place of soundlessness. And we find ourselves dropping through great depths, measuring like a plummet weight. Perhaps we are even going beyond our ability to measure.

When we are finally confronted with the vision of Being, when the soul is “drowned” so that the Eternal utterly surrounds and fills us, we are brought to a place of utter stillness and silence. This is not so much an absence of sound as it is a pristine quietness of the awareness. You may still be conscious and coherent, but there is no vibration in the mind. It is as if the entire audience of a concert hall has fully settled down, no whispers, no coughs, no shuffling in the seats, complete silence and attention, finally ready to hear the symphony in all its subtlety and beauty.

But “part” and “whole” must disappear at last;
The Way is one, and number is surpassed.

But let’s back up for a moment… Why are the angels bowing down to you? In Islamic tradition, God insists that the angels bow down to his new creation — Adam, humanity. The angel Iblis (Satan) refuses, and this is what sparks his rebellion.

This story is confusing and even a bit shocking. Christianity, especially Catholicism, views angels as being much higher in the heavenly hierarchy than humanity, so why would God insist that they bow down to humans? Satan’s refusal sounds kind of reasonable, given the obvious imperfections of humanity.

Here is one possible way to understand the story: Human beings exist on many levels. At our spiritual core, we are fundamentally one with the Eternal. When we see this clearly, to bow down is to honor God. But the nature of Satan/Iblis is to see only the outer rind of creation. In Adam he sees only the limited physical body and the fallible ego personality, and refuses to bow.

Satan’s initial failure is not exactly malice or even willfulness, it is blindness. All of the other failures follow from not seeing clearly.

Coming back to our poem, this is why Attar tells us not to belittle ourselves in our own minds–

Do not despise yourself, for there is none
Who could with you sustain comparison;
Do not torment yourself — your soul is All,
Your body but a fleeting particle.
This All will clarify, and in its light
Each particle will shine, distinctly bright –
As flesh remains an agent of the soul,
You soul’s an agent of the sacred Whole.

He is saying not to get caught in Iblis’s blindness, which leads to disappointment and hatred. Instead, recognize that we are each, at our center, part of the Whole, an expression of that immense Being of light and bliss and unity. This is our true nature and our true Self.

What’s more, no action, no thought can sever us from that Being. The worst we can do is blind ourselves, and reinforce the delusion of separation. We can go down dark paths in life and do terrible things, but that doesn’t really change our nature, it just mars the surface. No matter how lost an individual has become, there is always a path back to the Heart, and that is never tarnished.

And when the desert blooms with flowers, their scent
And beauty minister to your content;
The prayers of all the angels, all they do,
All their obedience, God bestows on you.

Farid ud-Din Attar Iran/Persia (1120? – 1220?) Timeline Muslim / Sufi

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Love
by Czeslaw Milosz

English version by Robert Hass

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills.
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.
Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.
It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.

— from The Collected Poems, by Czeslaw Milosz

/ Photo by Timo /

Another delightful poem by Czeslaw Milosz. Reading this, I immediately settle and grow still.

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.

This seems like such a gentle way to conceive of dethroning the narcissistic self. It doesn’t need to be about great effort or a violent overthrow within the consciousness, we just need a shift in perspective. We just need to broaden our vision. Then we can see the many things of existence. When we gently, honestly compare this human being that we each are against everything else, we develop a much more humble sense of self. And we begin to see how we actually fit within the community of the many; we discover our interconnectedness.

And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills.

The false sense of superiority, centrality, and separation are such a strain on the heart, that when we finally see our relationship within existence clearly, the contraction in the chest eases, the heart relaxes and expands, and we are finally capable of discovering what love means in its most natural, unrestricted sense.

A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

We come to live in the community of being.

And when we stop trying to make our lives and every encounter somehow reflect back to us our own self-importance, we begin to relate to ourselves and everything as an expression of the universal impulse toward ripeness:

Then he wants to use himself and things
So that they stand in the glow of ripeness.

We don’t have to have an intellectual understanding of these things, we don’t need to label it according to religion or philosophy.

It doesn’t matter whether he knows what he serves:
Who serves best doesn’t always understand.

Opening, seeing, and serving, these are enough.

Czeslaw Milosz Poland (1911 – 2004) Timeline Secular or Eclectic Christian : Catholic

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Poetry
by Pablo Neruda

English version by Anthony Kerrigan

And it was at that age… Poetry arrived
in search of me. I don’t know, I don’t know where
it came from, from winter or a river.
I don’t know how or when,
no, they were not voices, they were not
words, nor silence,
but from a street I was summoned,
from the branches of night,
abruptly from the others,
among violent fires
or returning alone,
there I was without a face
and it touched me.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.

— from Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems, by Pablo Neruda / Translated by Anthony Kerrigan

/ Photo by futurowoman /

The autobiography of a poet and his art.

And it was at that age… Poetry arrived
in search of me.

It isn’t that he sought poetry but, rather, that poetry sought him. He was simply watching the world. In watching, he lost himself–

there I was without a face
and it touched me.

–and poetry came to him.

Every art beneath its surface craft is about seeing. And true seeing requires selflessness. (I use seeing in the widest sense of deep perception. Music and hearing fit comfortably within my definition of “seeing” too.) The ego-self always — always — colors and fogs our vision. Deep art requires stepping free from the ego’s blinders, to see honestly and fully. The ancient schools would say, only when we see — without self — do we have something to say. Only then is the artist ready.

and something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire

The path of the artist is also the path of awakening.

Egolessness, spiritual awakening, and art… This raises an obvious question: Why then do so many great artists embody just the opposite, exhibiting immense egos and imbalanced lives? Not everyone is taught to approach their art as a path of clarity and awakening, but there is still the artist’s desperate need to see beyond the limits of the ego. The result is that each artist develops his or her own unique way to lurch briefly free from ego to catch those pure moments of inspiration and vision.

and suddenly I saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open,
planets,
palpitating planations,
shadow perforated,
riddled
with arrows, fire and flowers,
the winding night, the universe.

But such an aggressive, chaotic approach becomes traumatic for the awareness, and the individual must then counterbalance by reinforcing the ego once again. This also explains why too many visionaries and artists turn to drink and other narcotics: to cope with these violent swings of consciousness.

Better to learn meditation and stillness and patience. Most of all, one must know the naked self. That’s how to stand whole before the immense vision.

Actually, you don’t just stand there, you step into it — a fulfillment, an overflowing, an expansion, a merging.

And I, infinitesimal being,
drunk with the great starry
void,
likeness, image of
mystery,
I felt myself a pure part
of the abyss,
I wheeled with the stars,
my heart broke free on the open sky.

That mystery then seeks you out, your arm, your hand, and the pen it holds.

and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom…

Pablo Neruda Chile (1904 – 1973) Timeline Secular or Eclectic

More poetry by Pablo Neruda

frosty morning
by Gabriel Rosenstock

frosty morning
      a robin bares his breast
            to the whole world

— from Where Light Begins: Haiku, by Gabriel Rosenstock

/ Photo by ahisgett /

A frosty morning here in Colorado. Time to fill my lungs with the crisp air. The world awaits.

Gabriel Rosenstock Ireland (1949 – ) Secular or Eclectic Primal/Tribal/Shamanic : Celtic

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Waiting
by Dorothy Walters

The jeweled cloud sways overhead,
waiting.
Meanwhile, our cells are turning to air,
finer and finer arrangements of light.

— from Marrow of Flame : Poems of the Spiritual Journey, by Dorothy Walters

/ Photo by razvan.orendovici /

In these few brief lines, the poet seems to be exploring how spiritual transformation is also a physical transformation down to the cellular level. Our bodies become “finer and finer arrangements of light…” What a great line! I imagine the body as a shimmering web of filaments and cells, somehow elevated, made lighter, subtler, and vivified by the infusion of new awareness so the body’s network reorganizes itself into ever more artistic patterns of itself.

You’ll find intimations of this idea in various sacred traditions. The body of light. The body of bliss. Having a new body in Christ. The Kabbalist’s Merkava. The perfected body in alchemy. The shaman’s body. The adamantine body in Yoga and Buddhism. The Taoist’s immortal body.

What most mystics speak of with these terms is that the body has been recollected into the full awareness: It is whole, complete. The body knows itself and knows it is alive. It finally feels the stream of life running through it. Most importantly, the body becomes a vehicle capable of participating in the greater wholeness of divine union.

Meanwhile, our cells are turning to air,
finer and finer arrangements of light.

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awakened
by Matsuo Basho

English version by Gabriel Rosenstock

awakened
      as ice bursts
            the water jar

— from Haiku Enlightenment, by Gabriel Rosenstock

/ Photo by Clearly Ambiguous /

Ooh, I like this haiku. Don’t you?

It’s got sound to it– You can hear the jar crack and burst from the expanding ice.

We’ve got the natural element of water. Water in transformation, becoming ice.

And that very human moment of being startled awake, the transitional space between sleep and wakefulness.

All of that’s just reading this haiku on the most literal, surface level.

We can, if we choose, catch suggestions of enlightenment. Something within is transforming, expanding, bursting its container. The event awakens us.

—

The Poetry Chaikhana emails will resume after the New Year.

Have a magical Solstice tonight, the turning of the year from darkness back to light. Have a wonderful Christmas (if you celebrate it). And may the new path of the new year bring you new eyes and a renewed heart.

Much love to everyone!

Matsuo Basho Japan (1644 – 1694) Timeline Buddhist : Zen / Chan

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I always hope you feel free to read a different meaning in a poem than I do. Sometimes what I write only relates indirectly to the poem, when some phrase or image sends me off on my own rambling tangent. My observations on these poems should not be read as the single, absolute meaning. It is not even necessarily intended to reflect the original author’s meaning. I believe a poem, like a dream, has layers of meaning — and that meaning can shift over time and from differing perspectives. My commentary is offered in order to suggest a starting point for you to begin your own exploration into the poem’s meaning. So, please, weigh anything I say against your own reading of the poem and your own life experience — and then let me know what you think!

Nativity
by Li-Young Lee

In the dark, a child might ask, What is the world?
just to hear his sister
promise, An unfinished wing of heaven,
just to hear his brother say,
A house inside a house,
but most of all to hear his mother answer,
One more song, then you go to sleep.

each must make a safe place of his heart,
before so strange and wild a guest
as God approaches.

— from Book of My Nights, by Li-Young Lee

/ Photo by giovanni_giusti /

How about another poem for the Christmas season today?

Maybe we should first ask, just what does this poem have to do with the Nativity anyway? What does it have to do with the traditional scene of the Christ child lying in a manger?

The poem starts with a question asked in the dark by a child: What is the world? The responses he gets are beautiful and soothing, but also fleeting. There is something haunting about asking such a question in the darkness.

So, back to the Nativity. In the Nativity, we discover the pure spark of light that is the Christ child, surrounded by the vast emptiness of the night. The Nativity is an image of light in the darkness. A small child, vulnerable, humble, poor, a tiny point of existence, surrounded by the immensity of the night… but with the promise that the light will increase until it floods the world with its light. (It’s no accident that Christmas occurs near the Winter Solstice, when the world is plunged in darkness and awaits the rebirth of the sun.)

Li-Young Lee, asking his question into the night, feels that smallness. The boy first asking the question is small, the man grown feels small too. Even the question itself seems ready to be swallowed up in the dark. But it isn’t. The question persists. It persists and grows and shines.

The question is alchemical. It causes the child to become aware of existence. As he grows, he notices the process of coagula et solve of existence, the way life both gathers together and then dissolves. He discovers “earth and duration,” but also the “immense good-bye.” Though they seem opposites, one flows into the other. And from their living, dynamic tension, the mind is stretched open. And the heart, broken and warmed, broken and warmed, it too opens.

That question — What is the world? — haunting the nights and the years, working its quiet alchemy, becomes an invitation and a challenge in the awareness, coaxing us to make of the heart the true manger:

each must make a safe place of his heart,
before so strange and wild a guest
as God approaches.

Li-Young Lee US (1957 – ) Secular or Eclectic

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Change
by Nagarjuna

English version by Stephen Batchelor

If something has an essence–
How can it ever change
Into anything else?

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.

Nagarjuna India (150? – 250?) Timeline Buddhist

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The Face of God
by Hekhalot Hymns (Anonymous)

English version by T. Carmi

Lovely face, majestic face,
      face of beauty, face of flame,
the face of the Lord God of Israel
      when He sits upon His throne of glory,
      robed in praise upon His seat of splendour.
His beauty surpasses
      the beauty of the aged,
His splendour outshines
      the splendour of newly-weds
            in their bridal chamber.

Happy the King
      who has such servants,
and happy the servants
      who have such a King.
Happy the eye
      that sees
      and feeds
      upon this wondrous light –
            a wondrous vision
            and most strange!

— from The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, Edited by T. Carmi

/ Photo by PugnoM /

Something today in honor of Hanukkah…

This song inspired by the face of God strongly hearkens back to the Aaronic or Priestly Blessing from the Torah (Numbers 6:24 – 27):

The LORD bless you and keep you:
The LORD make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you:
The LORD lift up his face upon you, and give you peace.

There are several strong images of Merkavah mysticism in this ancient song. We have a few references to the “wheel of the chariot.” The word Merkavah can be literally translated as “chariot” or “chariot of light.” It is the vehicle that mediates between the awareness of the devout mystic and the heavenly realms. This wheel imagery also evokes Ezekiel’s vision of a heavenly wheel, often seen as a fundamental vision of the Merkavah by Jewish mystics.

The Merkavah is sometimes also described as the shining “seat of the Most High.” Someone looking for yogic parallels might see the Merkavah as representing the scintillating crown chakra.

In Jewish and early Christian mysticism, we often get enigmatic references to the “bridal chamber.” The bridal chamber is the place of union between the king or bridegroom (God) and the servant or bride (purified individual consciousness). It is in the bridal chamber that the two become one as “newly-weds” and experience the bliss of union. The bridal chamber, in other words, is the holy of holies within the soul, the meeting ground between the Eternal and the individual.

I love the line, “Whoever looks at Him / immediately melts away.” According to a translator’s note, the literal phrase is something like “Whoever looks at him is emptied like a ladle.” What a beautiful metaphor for how, overcome with the vision of God, the ego-self pours into that vastness. It suggests release, emptiness, purification, while at the same time a merging with the immense vision of the Divine.

This is language that could just as easily have come to us from a Buddhist work.

The song continues with the lines:

Those who serve Him today
      no longer serve Him tomorrow;
those who serve Him tomorrow
      no longer serve Him afterwards;

It is not that mystics at this stage stop serving God; rather, that there is no separate individual left to do the serving. Their “faces are charred” — the separate identity is lost in the splendor of the vision. And when their “eyes grow dim,” it is not that they go blind in the literal sense; instead, the normal vision of multiplicity is lost. This radiant vision of oneness is described by many mystics as a sort of blindness. You may see the surface and form of things, but beneath it all is only the one radiance.

I’m also fascinated by the lines:

those on the right
      now stand again to the left,
those on the left
      now stand again to the right,
those in front
      now stand again in back,
those in back
      now stand again in front.

We’ve got a total reversal that also suggests a total unity. Opposites flip and become the other until no sense of polarity can remain. You find similar lines in the great Gnostic work the Gospel of Thomas. Everything is flipped, reversed, to be set back into proper order.

And near the end:

He who sees the one says,
      ‘That is the other’.
And he who sees the other says,
      ‘That is the one’.
For the visage of the one
      is like the visage of the other;
and the visage of the other
      is like the visage of the one.

These lines suggest to me the merging of the ego-self and the endless multiplicity of the universe into the divine unity, until the “other / is like the visage of the one.”

And continuously we return to the vision of mysterious, soul-nourishing light:

Happy the eye
      that sees
      and feeds
      upon this wondrous light –
            a wondrous vision
            and most strange!

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For Freedom
by John O’Donohue

As a bird soars high
In the free holding of the wind,
Clear of the certainty of ground,
Opening the imagination of wings
Into the grace of emptiness
To fulfill new voyagings,
May your life awaken
To the call of its freedom.

As the embrace of the earth
Welcomes all we call death,
Taking deep into itself
The right solitude of a seed,
Allowing it time
To shed the grip of former form
And give way to a deeper generosity
That will one day send it forth,
A tree into springtime,
May all that holds you
Fall from its hungry ledge
Into the fecund surge of your heart.

— from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, by John O’Donohue

/ Photo by Kaysse /

A blessing poem for us all by John O’Donohue. Here at the end of the year, this poem of freedom, death and reawakening, of renewed vision, renewed possibility, and renewed self… feels deeply right today.

Wow. This is one of those poems where every time I re-read a line with the idea of writing some commentary, I get drawn in so deeply that I read all the way to the end again, whispering several times “Ohh, that’s nice!” along the way.

There isn’t much to comment on here, really. The meaning isn’t particularly obscure. Reading these lovely lines doesn’t fire any of those chatty parts of my brain: the meditator’s ‘Aha!’ corner, the esoteric nerd, the historian, the editor. When that happens, I often fall back on plucking a few choice lines from the poem, holding them up to you, and saying something rather feeble, like, “Aren’t these wonderful words?”

As a bird soars high
In the free holding of the wind…

But even that fails me with this poem, because it isn’t just a few isolated lines. Each phrase that grabs my attention pours into the next line and the next, until I have half the poem reproduced.

Clear of the certainty of ground…

May your life awaken
To the call of its freedom.

So I’ll just say reread this poem, savor it, let the words and ideas settle on you and in you like a healing balm, restoring breath and self and the courage to let go in order to step forward and profoundly be.

May all that holds you
Fall from its hungry ledge
Into the fecund surge of your heart.

Sending much love to everyone!

John O’Donohue Ireland (1956 – 2008) Timeline Christian : Catholic Secular or Eclectic

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