Poetry Chaikhana Blog

Moon and clouds are the same
by Wu Men (Hui-k’ai)

English version by Stephen Mitchell

Moon and clouds are the same;
mountain and valley are different.
All are blessed; all are blessed.
Is this one? Is this two?

— from The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry, by Stephen Mitchell

/ Photo by mikelehen /

The world, all of life, is like one of those games of visual perspective. Do we see mountains and a valley, or do we see mountains-and-valley? It is all one continuity, but with our mind we separate them into distinct objects of perception. Where is the point of separation? We become so convinced by our own mental concepts of distinction that we hardly ever think to search for the borderline that separates things. Put on your hiking boots and go find the exact point at which mountain becomes valley, always asking yourself, “Is this one? Is this two?”

It is both one and two. In two there is identity and capacity, but in one there is unity and rest.

All are blessed; all are blessed.

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Odin’s Shaman Song (from Eldar Edda)
by Eldar Edda (Anonymous)

I know I hung on the gust-beat gallows
      nine full nights,
gashed with a stake and given to fire-see,
      myself to myself,
on that ash-tree of which none know
      from where the roots rise.

Runes you will find, fateful signs
      that the king of singers coloured
and the great gods have made,
good strong staves good stout staves
carved by a god-ruling spirit.

— from Technicians of the Sacred: A Range of Poetries from Africa, America, Asia, Europe & Oceania, Edited by Jerome Rothenberg

/ Photo by schizoform /

There are several things that are fascinating to me about this poetic excerpt.

First, the Odin myth-story has several striking parallels with the Gospel stories of Christ. Here, Odin is crucified on a tree. No one offers him comfort and he is “gashed with a stake.” He is hung for nine days, a tripling of the three days of Christ’s entombment. Through his suffering upon the tree, Odin receives several divine gifts, including wisdom and mastery of runes and words (or “the Word”).

The Christian parallel goes even deeper if you think about it. For most of the time of Christ’s ministry, he teaches in parables, stories with hidden inner meanings. Yet it is only after the sharing of the wine at the Last Supper and his death and resurrection that Christ deems his disciples ready for the unveiled teachings. It is only then that Christ speaks freely.

Similarly, Odin receives his divine gifts when he “got a drink of precious mead / sprinkled as from the heart.” This falls very much in line with the metaphor that appears in poetry and sacred language throughout the world, sometimes called ambrosia or amrita or “the mystic’s wine,” a subtle esoteric elixir that is tasted during deep spiritual communion.

It is this “precious mead” itself that bears the gift of wisdom and words, not the craft of words or oratory, but the ability to let truth pour unhindered from the deepest silence and translate that flow into words. This drink is the initiating substance that bestows the gift of prophecy and true poetry…

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What is Tao?
by Lu Tung Pin

English version by T. C. Lai

What is Tao?
It is just this.
It cannot be rendered into speech.
If you insist on an explanation,
This means exactly this.

/ Photo by legends2k /

What is Tao?
It is just this.

I remember the first time I tried to find my way through the Tao Te Ching as a teenager. There was undeniably something beautiful and poetic about it, but it was so infuriatingly vague! What is “the Tao”? Calling it the Way doesn’t help. Are we talking about God? Something else? Other Taoist writings were the same: taunting me with endless non-definitions. (I was an Aries kid; I wanted clear goals I could aggressively pursue!)

It took me years to begin to appreciate this approach…

It cannot be rendered into speech.

There’s a real dilemma at the heart of religion and spiritual endeavor. The Eternal, the Whole cannot be adequately held by such small containers as words. Yet we humans are instinctively communicators and word-makers. What are the sages and saints to do with what they witness? How do they render the Eternal comprehensible to others and inspire new seekers? Describe the profound love and bliss and unity, and we naturally name it Mother. Convey the immensity and power, we name it Father. Or we say Beloved. Or Friend. Or Child.

All of these are valid ways to begin to form a notion of the Eternal. Through these words we as individuals can form a relationship to this vast Reality. And through this relationship we can be drawn into deeper awareness, into deeper opening, and into our own direct encounter… at which point we realize how inadequate all words are.

The problem arises when the mystics are no longer heard or are relegated to history, when too few people have their own direct wordless encounter. Then we end up with entire religions stuck at the level of words. No matter how sacred and truth-filled those words may be, words are always incomplete. Words alone are soon taken literally, and then true knowledge is lost. Not knowing what is real, religion becomes embalmed, self-protective, sectarian, and sometimes violent.

The wounds of religion are healed through compassion and through direct perception. Instead of forcing meaning, we settle into ourselves and come to see things as they are.

If you insist on an explanation,
This means exactly this.

Have a beautiful, vaguely defined day!

Lu Tung Pin China (755 – 805) Timeline Taoist

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Mindful
by Mary Oliver

Every day
      I see or hear
            something
                  that more or less

of the world,
      the ocean’s shine,
            the prayers that are made
                  out of grass?

— from Why I Wake Early, by Mary Oliver

/ Photo by Loyal O.A.K. /

Every so often I come across a poem by Mary Oliver I haven’t read in a few years, and rereading it I get to say, “Wow!” once again.

Read this poem a few times. Each statement just rings in the air.

Sometimes I can appreciate a poem more fully when I read it as if the line breaks weren’t there, allowing me to really take in the meaning and imagery (then, when I reread with awareness of the line breaks once again, I can insert the sense of rhythm and stillness they imply)…

Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight…

that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light.

Mm.

It was what I was born for — to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world –

That’s such a great line, isn’t it? “To lose myself inside this soft world.”

to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation.

Think about what she is saying. There is a fundamental delight to the encounters and experiences of each day — but we must continuously “instruct” ourselves in it. Each time we recognize that joy, we are learning. The opposite is also true: each time we ignore it, we are forgetting.

Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant — but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations.

I think this is poems true epiphany. The delight she speaks of, the magic in the day, is not discovered through having some sort of extraordinary experience. It is, surprisingly, in “the ordinary, the common,” the eventless moments.

How do we see? The title tells us — through being Mindful. Through paying attention. Through stillness of mind, accompanied by relaxed, open awareness. It is then that the day’s delight reveals itself and we come to see even the most mundane moment for the immense landscape truly it is.

Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these –

The day is teaching us. Are we being a good scholar? Are we drinking in the joy given to us? It is there, when we are mindful:

the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?

Have a beautiful day, noticing the untrimmable light of the world! (Oh, and happy blue moon too!)

Mary Oliver US (1935 – ) Secular or Eclectic

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Arunachala
by Arthur Osborne

I sought to devour Thee:
Come now and devour me,
Then there will be peace, Arunachala.

Now that at last I know
All this a magic show,
Let it dissolve in Thee, Arunachala!

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

/ Photo by mrbichel /

Arthur Osborne was one of the early Western seekers to write about Ramana Maharshi, one of the most loved and respected nondualist sages of India in the early 20th century. Ramana Maharshi’s ashram was (and still is) at the foot of Arunachala Hill, which, since ancient times, has been an important sacred site in southern India. For many devotees, Arunachala is considered an embodiment of the god Shiva.

So, when Arthur Osborne addresses this poem to Arunachala, he is addressing the mountain, the guru, and the God.

Arunachala!

There is something lost, I think, in Western forms of religion that tend to divide the divine from the land. In many cases, to address God in a mountain or a lake or a tree is considered blasphemous. Then add to that the modern worldview which further objectifies the land, defining it as inert matter, a possession, a subjugated source of wealth and resources.

Imagine how profoundly our lives — and our spirituality — can open up when we relate to the Divine, not just in a safely distant, hard-to-imagine heavenly otherworld, but also right here, in front of us, below us, all around us, materially. God in the air we breathe, God in the stream running along the edge of town, God in the solid ground beneath our feet.

In this way, all the world becomes sacred space, alive, inviting communion with every touch. We are no longer alien creatures in a sterile world. We are embraced by the immensity of life on all levels.

There is a disturbing intensity to this poem.

I sought to devour Thee:
Come now and devour me,
Then there will be peace, Arunachala.

Do these first lines seem shocking? Actually, we find this sort of imagery in many expressions of sacred poetry. One way to understand what is being said is that the spiritual seeker usually starts by attempting piece together a perfect concept of the Eternal. We read every book, study with every teacher, in the hopes of formulating a rock-solid definition of God. But this approach is, in effect, an attempt to contain the limitless Eternal within the limiting confines of the human mind… while keeping the ego-self intact. It is an attempt to “devour” God, and it is doomed to fail.

The mature spiritual aspirant comes to recognize that success is not in containing the Eternal, but in consciously merging with It. This is is what it means to be “devoured” instead by God. You can say that when the drop of water falls back into the ocean, it has been devoured.

But it doesn’t just happen. It requires preparation, and a courageous invitation:

You bade me give all for you –
Take now the giver too,
Survive alone, Arunachala!

The final two verses speak about a “deception”:

Let now the deception end.
There was no lover or friend
Apart from Thyself, Arunachala!

Now that at last I know
All this a magic show,
Let it dissolve in Thee, Arunachala!

There is an appearance of things, a “magic show” that suggests believable reality, but that ultimately “dissolves.” Here Osborne is evoking the nondualist vantage point where all apparent duality and separation is seen to be unreal. We typically relate to all of reality through the subject-object relationship, self-other, witness-observed. This even permeates the fundamental spiritual relationship: lover-Beloved, devotee-God. Nondualism points out that, at the moment of realization, even that relationship between the individual and the Divine falls away and the unity of reality is seen as it is. There is always and only the Divine. Everything else was just a magic show of light and shadow and shape.

There is only the mountain. There is only Arunachala.

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Let’s Take Yunus Emre
by Yunus Emre

English version by Jennifer Ferraro & Latif Bolat

Let’s be companions, the two of us.
      Let’s go to the Friend, my soul.

            and go to the Friend, my soul.

— from Quarreling with God: Mystic Rebel Poems of the Dervishes of Turkey, Translated by Jennifer Ferraro / Translated by Latif Bolat

/ Photo by worak /

I like this image of calling to the soul to become a traveling companion on the road to the Friend.

Let’s go to the Friend, my soul.

It’s humorous when you think about it. The soul is already a part of yourself, why should you have to coax it? You might even say that the soul is yourself, something closer to your real self. Wouldn’t the soul already be on the journey to the Friend, perhaps already at the Friend’s door?

And what other part of the self is speaking? It would seem to be the surface, social sense of self, the named self, the little self, the ego, the nafs. You get the feeling that the self doing the speaking is the actually the hesitant one, trying to convince itself. There’s a sort of self-teasing here, a bit of bravado while gathering courage for the journey.

We all need a nudge, and the best nudge comes from within.

And, oh yes–

Let’s take Yunus Emre with us

Yunus Emre Turkey (1238 – 1320) Timeline Muslim / Sufi

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i thank You God for most this amazing
by e. e. cummings

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)

— from E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962, by e. e. cummings

/ Photo by Shahram Sharif /

i thank You God for most this amazing
day:for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

I first read this thirty years ago, and I still get shivers reading those opening lines.

The delightfully anarchic poetry of e. e. cummings is more than poetic art, there is something of the mystic experience in it, as well. This poem is a good example.

The two parenthetical verses hint that he is describing much more than simply the natural joy of a beautiful day. There is something truly magical going on here…

He uses Biblical, ecstatic phrasing when he proclaims “(now the ears of my ears are awake and / now the eyes of my eyes are opened).” He isn’t just saying this, he seems to breathlessly shout it out to the “great happening illimitably earth.” This is seeing the inner nature of things, as they are in their true essence. This is not just seeing; he is seeing, not with the eyes, but with the “eyes of my eyes.” Perceiving in this way, we invite the outside in, as if we are ingesting it, integrating it into ourselves. Every experience becomes vivifying nutrition for the soul.

In this new awareness, we perceive not only the living day all around us, we also recognize ourselves for the first time. It is a radical awakening, a new life, a birth of Self —

i who have died and am alive again today.

Have an amazing day!

e. e. cummings US (1894 – 1962) Timeline Secular or Eclectic

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The Sum of Perfection
by John of the Cross

English version by Ivan M. Granger

Creation forgotten,
Creator only known,
Attention turned inward
In love with the Beloved alone.

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

/ Photo by bran.deann. /

Where else is the mystic path stated so succinctly yet so completely? These four lines by St. John of the Cross contain all the instructions necessary.

Creation forgotten…
Attention turned inward

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, one of the foundational scriptures of yogic practice, speaks of pratyahara or ‘sense withdrawal’ as an essential practice. This leads to dharana or ‘concentration,’ which matures into dhyana (meditation) and finally samadhi (divine union). Done deeply, sense withdrawal and concentration are profound practices, but they sound so… effortful, don’t they? Almost severe. ‘Concentration’ reminds me of studying for college exams. At least in English translation, these words don’t convey quite the right tone. It does not have to be a strain; the attention can simply turn and glide inward. My experience is that this is the natural tendency of the awareness, anyway, we just have to stop pushing it to the exterior all the time. Sense withdrawal and concentration don’t require a harsh act of force so much as trust: trust to release the constant fixation on outer reality, trust that what we discover in the spacious silence within is just as real and delightful.

Half a world away, in Catholic Spain, St. John of the Cross is telling us the same thing. Forget creation, at least for the moment. Turn inward.

Doing this, creation is seen as having no fundamental reality of its own; it is only an expression or emanation of God. It is like watching a movie. The movie may seem real while we are caught up in the story, but if we pause, look around the auditorium, we can see that the movie is actually streaming through the darkness in a funnel of light. It’s source is really the projector.

Creator only known.

Remembering this on every level, one is only aware of the Creator. Creation itself then becomes simply a reflection of the Divine. Knowing only the Creator, the Divine fills all of perception — that is true meditation.

Seeing through the insubstantial nature of mundane reality, one is filled with ecstatic, uncontainable love and bliss. This is not a surface happiness directed at exterior objects or people, but for all of creation and, more fundamentally, for the immense life that brings that creation into existence.

In love with the Beloved alone.

The original Spanish verse has a fluid, chant-like rhythm that’s difficult to reproduce in English translation:

Olvido de lo criado,
memoria del Criador,
atencion a lo interior
y estarse amando al Amado.

(My translation of this poem appears both in my collection of poems and translations, Real Thirst, but is also included in For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics, edited by Roger Housden. Roger Housden’s contemplative collections of poetry are always worth reading.)

John of the Cross Spain (1542 – 1591) Timeline Christian : Catholic

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The moon has shone upon me
by Vidyapati

English version by Edward C. Dimock, Jr. and Denise Levertov

The moon has shone upon me,
the face of my beloved.
O night of joy!

Vidyapati says, Your luck is great;
may this return of love be blessed.

— from In Praise of Krishna: Songs from the Bengali, Translated by Edward C. Dimock, Jr. / Translated by Denise Levertov

/ Photo by akshay moon /

Last night I was reading a passage from the Bhagavad Gita:

Thinking and living deep in me,
[the wise] enlighten one another
by constantly telling of me
for their own joy and delight.

This same passage is translated differently in different English renditions, but I rather like this verson by Barbara Stoler Miller. Contemplating the eternal, living deep in the divine reality. Singing songs, recalling stories, “telling” of God, in pure delight. A wonderful reminder of how we enlighten one another…

–

So I thought I’d follow up with a poem of Krishna today. While the Bhagavad Gita is primarily in the form of a dialog between Krishna (God) and Arjuna (the warrior disciple), this poem by Vidyapati is from the perspective of Radha (the soul) after a night of passion (meditation and divine union) with Krishna (God).

The moon has shone upon me,
the face of my beloved.
O night of joy!

The beauty of God is often compared with the moon, the gentle, meditative light of enlightenment.

Joy permeates all things.
My life: joy,
my youth: fulfillment.

Joy! Why is that so many people view religion as being about rules, moral correctness, theological or ritual orthodoxy? There is a reason sacred poets like Vidyapati draw parallels between divine union and sexual union — the sacred experience is one of delight! Joy! Bliss! A sense of self-unification, of wholeness, of utter fulfillment!

And, unexpectedly, there is an intense physicality to moments of spiritual opening. It’s not just something that is ethereal or mental, that delight is profoundly physical, as well, as if every cell in your body has awakened and is ready to sing out.

So enough grim ideas of rules and belief systems. Let’s talk about the joy that is ready to awaken in us instead…

Today my house is again
home,
      today my body is
my body.

Through such bliss, we discover what it truly means to be present, at home — here.

The god
of destiny smiled on me.
No more doubt.

And all the ways we’ve stretched and contorted the intellect in an attempt to understand deeper reality, attempting to construct a reality based on concepts, that entire effort falls away. Endlessly accumulating and cataloging every description of honey can in no way compare to the truth tasting it for yourself. We don’t eradicate doubt through careful cross-referencing of information. We open, we taste, and then we know.

Vidyapati says, Your luck is great;
may this return of love be blessed.

Notice that this union is a “return of love.” It is a reciprocation. You could say that there is a magnetic law at work here. The individual soul (Radha) must first be filled with love for the divine (Krishna). When the soul’s love is profound, focused, all-consuming, it becomes an invitation, a beacon. So doing, we magnetically draw to us the response: Union. Joy. That knowing taste.

Tomorrow is the full moon, a good time to recite song by which we may enlighten each other.

Have a beautiful day!

Vidyapati India (1340? – 1430) Timeline Yoga / Hindu : Vaishnava (Krishna/Rama)

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The Point of the Circle
by Shah Nematollah Vali

The point appeared in the circle
And was not;
But it was the dot
That the circle begot.

I said the whole world was His dream;
Then I saw His dream was He.
Sweeter than the words of our guide,
Nimatullah knows no other words.

— from Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the Early Mystics to Rumi, Translated by Mahmood Jamal

/ Photo by Lady-bug /

I like the geometric meditations of this poem.

When I was in high school I loved geometry. Something about the visual, spacial nature of geometry just clicked for me. This poem reminds me of the way I’d get lost in geometrical contemplations on hot afternoons in the classroom…

The point appeared in the circle
And was not;
But it was the dot
That the circle begot.

The point appears
As a circle, as it revolves…

In geometry, a point has no dimension. It has no diameter, no depth. It does not really exist in space; it is really only an idea. Yet when you start to move it, its trail creates a line. Move it around another point, you create an arc. Continue describing that arc, and its end will eventually meet its beginning, and form an endless circle.

From nothing, something has taken form. From the point, a circle emerges. It is the existence of the circle that proves the existence of the point. The point is not-being; the circle is being.

Here’s another image: A circle encloses a limited area. We can calculate the area with the formula pi * the radius squared. Yet, although the area is limited and specific, you can still fit an infinite number of points within the circle. Since a point does not take up space but can still have a location, its possibilities within the circle are unlimited. Let’s expand and meditate on this for a moment. Imagine that you are that point and the circle is your life. Your life has a limited number of years to it, a limited number of places you can go, people you will meet, experiences you will have. Being human, we instinctively rebel against that feeling of limitation. But within the limited area of our personal circle, the possibilities are without limit. So, is our limited life really limited?

These are the sorts of things nerdy teenaged Ivan used to daydream about in geometry class…

I said the whole world was His dream;
Then I saw His dream was He.

Shah Nematollah Vali Iran/Persia (1330 – 1431) Timeline Muslim / Sufi

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Here I see no-one
by Colin Oliver

Here I see no-one
      to cast, on the petals of
            this rose, this shadow.

— from Stepping Into Brilliant Air, by Colin Oliver

/ Photo by audreyjm529 /

Didn’t we have another rose poem recently? Here’s one more for our collection…

I really like this haiku by the British nondualist poet Colin Oliver, but you may need to read it more than once to finally recognize what he’s implying.

Like most haiku, these lines use a simple image of nature that works literally and, at the same time, hints at a more transcendent meaning. The rose here can be read as a rose, but we might also see the rose as the awakened heart.

The poet says he sees “no-one to cast … this shadow.” Well, the shadow, of course, is cast by himself. But there is no one there. He is speaking from the nondualist perspective in which the Self is recognized as being everywhere, but the individual self, the little self that dwells within the body is found to be imaginary, a phantom, unreal.

The rose, in other words, can be recognized as the seat of the true, undivided Self. There may be the appearance of a separated identity that seems to cast a shadow upon it — yet, on further investigation, nothing is there to cast the shadow. The rose is all. The shadow is merely an illusion.

A few other random notes…

That beginning word — “Here” — is so strong that it stops us before we’ve taken our first step and roots us in the present moment.

Let me also say, from a purely esthetic point-of-view, I love how the language is constructed so we end up with that pairing in the last line:

this rose, this shadow

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There is no place for place!
by Hakim Sanai

English version by Ivan M. Granger

There is no place for place!
How can a place
house the maker of all space,
or the vast sky enclose
      the maker of heaven?

Tell me, if the one you seek
is placeless,
why put your shoes on?
The real road
is found by polishing, polishing
      the mirror of your heart.

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

/ Photo by alicepopkorn /

I’ve always loved these verses, but this morning it’s the middle verse that especially stands out to me–

He told me:
“I am a homeless treasure.
The world was made
to give you a place to stand
      and see me.”

Mystics, through direct perception, often declare that there is a fundamental unity in existence. There is no real separation between beings. There is no separation between the individual and the Eternal.

But this raises a dilemma in the minds of some philosophers: In a reality where all is One, why then does the perception of separation and multiplicity emerge? Is that simply a false vision, a delusion, or does it serve a divine purpose, even if temporary? In other words, why does that externalized reality (“the world”) come into being?

One way this question is answered is to look at the journey of the individual human consciousness from birth, through individuation, to mature adulthood and, finally, hopefully, to wisdom and enlightenment. As newborn infants we don’t imagine ourselves to be separate from mother. There is hardly any self at all. Or, rather, self is so open that it is not a “self” in the normal sense. There is only Mother. And the wider reality is only the perception of sensation. This is a form of unity, but it is immature. This initial unity does not yet allow us to effectively interact with the wider, complex reality and embody our full potential.

Next, separation and individuation begins to occur. The toddler discovers a powerful word: “No!” A sense of self emerges. This is also when “the world” emerges. Wider reality becomes something outside ourselves, outside the self, separate. We get the dynamic of self and object, self and other.

That self-object dynamic is essential. It allows for interaction. It allows for experimentation and experience and growing comprehension. We gain a vantage point through which to perceive and understand reality. We gain a place to stand and to see.

As profound and necessary as this relationship with reality is, it is ultimately limited. It works well for the basic need of all beings to figure out how to survive and socially connect and reproduce. But it is an incomplete picture, and it leaves us incomplete in ourselves. Even when, as mature adults, we learn the skills of the world, there is more. And we know it.

The wise woman or man is dedicated to continuing the maturation of the awareness, rediscovering that primal unity while integrating it with the hard-learned lessons of the world. This leads to true spiritual maturity, with vision and a place to stand, yet consciously connected to all things.

We need the world. We need a place to stand, so we can look and see. Eventually we once more see the One in the patterns of the many.

Then the idea of place falls away. Place only has meaning amidst the many, when seeking some segment of reality. But, when, in our full maturity, we seek the blissful vision of the Whole Reality, what meaning does place have anymore?

There is no place for place!
How can a place
house the maker of all space…?

Enough running about from place to place; we are on a journey to the placeless. Let’s kick off our shoes, sit down, and begin the quiet work of polishing that most secret center until we truly see, and know, and are lost in the vision…

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Fasting
by Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi

English version by Coleman Barks

There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox
is stuffed full of anything, no music.
If the brain and belly are burning clean
with fasting, every moment a new song comes out of the fire.
The fog clears, and new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.
Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.
When you’re full of food and drink, Satan sits
where your spirit should, an ugly metal statue
in place of the Kaaba. When you fast,
good habits gather like friends who want to help.
Fasting is Solomon’s ring. Don’t give it
to some illusion and lose your power,
but even if you have, if you’ve lost all will and control,
they come back when you fast, like soldiers appearing
out of the ground, pennants flying above them.
A table descends to your tents,
Jesus’ table.
Expect to see it, when you fast, this table
spread with other food, better than the broth of cabbages.

— from The Illuminated Rumi, Translated by Coleman Barks

/ Photo by bennylin0724 /

I featured this poem and commentary a couple of years ago, but I thought it would be appropriate to send it out again today in honor of my Muslim friends who are beginning Ramadan, the holy month of fasting and rededication…

There’s hidden sweetness in the stomach’s emptiness.
We are lutes, no more, no less. If the soundbox
is stuffed full of anything, no music.

Fasting is something we’re not too comfortable with in the affluent West. Even though all religious traditions, including Christianity and Judaism, have rich, ancient traditions of fasting, we often don’t have a real sense of what spirituality has to do with food — or its avoidance. We tend to take a rather intellectual approach to spirituality. Even in modern New Age teachings, we have the notion that all we have to do is change our thinking and transformation occurs. But the results of that approach are often spotty. One reason is that mind is much more than thoughts, and transforming the mind requires deeper work. Thoughts are built on ingrained energetic patterns. For real transformation to occur, we have to get down to those foundational patterns. Very often this requires not merely changing one’s thoughts, but tunneling beneath them. This is the purpose of deeper spiritual practice.

Fasting is a simple, universal, and powerful way to clear the mind and confront those more fundamental energies in the awareness.

But why? What does food have to do with any of this? We are not two things, a mind separate from a body, or even a mind that inhabits a body. The mind and body interpenetrate one another. If your body is injured, that physical pain demands attention, affecting the awareness. The state of the body impacts the clarity and focus of the mind. Feeding the body pure, healthy foods in general, and periodically allowing it to rest from the tiring work of digestion can profoundly free up energies for the awareness to tap into.

Here’s something else you won’t hear much: Food is a drug. Every food is a narcotic. Does that sound bizarre to you? I don’t mean that normal foods are literally hallucinogenic. But every single thing you put into your mouth, affects consciousness in some way. We use food to control emotions. We use food to shift moods and change awareness. Think of the instinct to grab a pint of ice cream from the freezer after a terrible breakup. Everything, even a salad, affects consciousness in some way. The resulting psychic shift after eating something can be relatively positive or relatively negative. It can help us to feel solid and grounded or expanded and open. It can tantalize the senses and flood us with feelings of satiation or leave us frustrated. None of this is necessarily bad, but we must understand how profoundly food affects awareness, and utilize food wisely… and sometimes not to consume food at all.

A fascinating thing happens when you fast as part of a spiritual practice: After you ease past the initial psychic tension and your body moves through any initial discomforts — the mind naturally settles and grows quiet. So much of the agitation of the mind arises from the foods we eat.

Recognizing this, food and fasting become an important part of spiritual practice.

The fog clears, and new energy makes you
run up the steps in front of you.

The first few times I tried to do just a one day fast, I was frankly terrified. I knew intellectually that a healthy human body can go for days without food, no problem. Many times in the past I had forgotten to eat breakfast, and it was no big deal, but on a day when I intentionally decided to fast, I’d be sweating and panicky by mid-morning. It took me a while to understand that fasting, even a mild fast, is a confrontation with death. It is the willingness to temporarily abandon that constant hunt to satisfy every desire by attempting to slough off the fundamental hunger for food. How do you just have a desire and sit with it, without attempting to immediately satisfy it? That’s a pretty frightening question, when you really ask it.

With a little practice, you discover that what we often assume is physical hunger is actually mental hunger. For well-fed Westerners, it can take days, literally days, for true physical hunger to arise. The hunger we feel when we miss a couple of meals is really just mental habit, the reflexive desire to use food in order to regulate consciousness and control emotion. Follow that reflex to its root, and we find it originating from the ever-fearful ego, which is endlessly attempting to reinforce its fragile construction of a limited self inside a limited world by keeping the mind perpetually agitated.

Fasting, used carefully, with balance, and as part of a larger spiritual practice, becomes a way to help identify and unseat the despotic ego.

This is why fasting is practiced in all religions. And you don’t even have to have a religious “faith.” Just try it sometime, for a day, for half a day, wrestle your way through, and see what happens in you.

Be emptier and cry like reed instruments cry.
Emptier, write secrets with the reed pen.

Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi Afghanistan & Turkey (1207 – 1273) Timeline Muslim / Sufi

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The Rose
by Ummi Sinan

English version by Jennifer Ferraro and Latif Bolat

I dreamt I came to a magnificent city
      whose palace was the rose, rose.
The crown and throne of the great sultan,
      his garden and chambers
            were the rose, rose.

Oh Ummi Sinan, heed the mystery
      of the sorrow of nightingale and rose.
Every cry of the forlorn nightingale
            is for the rose, the rose.

— from Quarreling with God: Mystic Rebel Poems of the Dervishes of Turkey, Translated by Jennifer Ferraro / Translated by Latif Bolat

/ Photo by Jay Khemani /

Can’t you smell the perfume of roses in the air after reading this poem?

Ummi Sinan gives us a vision where all the world is filled with roses. A world made of roses. Not just roses, but “the rose” — The Rose.

In Sufi mystical language the Rose is often used as an image of God, and the heart — God as the true Heart of Being.

The rose unfolds in a gentle circling that invites one to yield inward. The rose is a symbol of lovers and of union. The rose resonates strongly with the gently awakened heart.

The rose grows from a bush of thorns yet reveals a delicate inner beauty and shares an intimate, sweet wine-like fragrance, symbolic of how the soul emerges from the tribulations of worldly difficulty and, in so doing, recognizes its innate beauty.

When Ummi Sinan recognizes the Rose everywhere, it is the mystic’s recognition that God has taken up residence within the heart (or, rather, that the Divine presence has finally been recognized there) — and it’s the further recognition that all of creation is somehow within the awakened heart. Everything encountered is encountered in the heart.

Let’s get a little more specific with some of the sacred imagery here…

Ummi Sinan gives us an image of “the white rose and the red rose” that grow “coupled in one garden.” This is an important pairing of colors that appears in esoteric traditions all over the world, in Sufism, in western alchemy, as a sign of rank in the Catholic Church, painted on Hindu and Buddhist temples. The colors white and red represent the masculine and feminine energies on all levels — white is male and red is female. The white represents purity, essence, divine spirit; the red is the power of manifestation and awakening life. So when Ummi Sinan tells us of a white rose and a red rose that are “coupled” in the divine garden, he is giving us an image of the fundamental polarities in natural, eternal balance in the divine garden. Recognizing this harmony on all levels is a prerequisite to entering the rose garden.

In the closing lines, Sinan reminds himself (and us) to “heed the mystery / of the sorrow of the nightingale and rose.” In Sufi poetry, the nightingale is said to sing such an enchanting, mournful song because it is hopelessly in love with the rose. The rose is the Beloved, the Heart of hearts, and the nightingale is its lover, the seeker — the Sufi. “Every cry of the forlorn nightingale / is for the rose, the rose.” Every yearning in the world, every cry of longing and desire in the world is really the crying out of creation for the Beloved. It is the crying out for the intoxication of unity.

The wheel turns round as the water flows.
Its power and its stillness
are the rose, rose.

—

You can hear this Sufi song performed on Latif Bolat’s website.

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inside the koan clear mind
by Ikkyu (Ikkyu Sojun)

English version by Stephen Berg

inside the koan clear mind
gashes the great darkness

— from Crow With No Mouth: Fifteenth Century Zen Master Ikkyu, Translated by Stephen Berg

/ Photo by Phil South /

This is a startling poem. It feels almost violent. Perhaps a better word is “fierce.” There is a fierce impulse behind enlightenment.

I had a fascinating discussion with a few friends last night about the necessity of fierceness on the spiritual path. This isn’t something people acknowledge often enough. Don’t misunderstand me, our spirituality should be healing, to ourselves and to others. It should awaken understanding and compassion and profound love. It should help us to recognize balance, and to live with a deepening sense of harmony.

But let’s be blunt: Such things are not achieved through passivity. Every single person with a dedication to the life of the heart must be a fighter.

We humans are creatures of shared trance. Every time we step into a room of people, we choose whether or not to join the reality that has spontaneously formed within the group. Most of the time we join it without realizing we’ve even signed up.

Depending on the group, joining the collective mindset is not always a bad thing. But joining in without awareness or will is.

On the spiritual path, first we must learn to rebel. Without that instinct to reject what feels wrong or limiting, we stay stuck. Despite the insistence of our institutions, no great soul has ever been an unquestioning follower of rules or assumed reality.

But this form of rebellion can quickly become a trap. In rejecting things, it’s easy to become isolated and to let the heart cool to those who do not meet the ideals we’ve fought for. We have plenty of lost, lonely rebels in the world.

This is where the spiritual aspirant truly needs fierceness. To continue to open, we must recognize that real rebellion is directed against those habits within ourselves that snag us, that make us vulnerable to being hooked unawares by the shared trance around us. We so cherish those addictive secret aspects of ourselves that we imagine we will become unlike everything we assume we are… surely we will die.

It is easy to fight against others, but it is terrifying to struggle against painful qualities within ourselves. Can you imagine anyone moving through this phase without fierceness?

Instead of violently trying to “fix” the world around us — and failing — we polish, polish, polish ourselves. To transform from the inside out takes fierceness. To see takes fierceness. To know what we know, and to know we know it, takes fierceness. To feel fully takes fierceness. To speak takes fierceness. To be present, well, that takes the greatest fierceness of all.

That’s when we no longer need to reject or control the world; we glow in its midst.

Ikkyu (Ikkyu Sojun) Japan (1394 – 1481) Timeline Buddhist : Zen / Chan

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Unbreakable, O Lord
by Mirabai

English version by Jane Hirshfield

Unbreakable, O Lord,
Is the love
That binds me to You:
Like a diamond,
It breaks the hammer that strikes it.

O my Beloved –
Return.

— from Holy Fire: Nine Visionary Poets and the Quest for Enlightenment, Edited by Daniel Halpern

/ Photo by spoon /

A bit of bhakti by Mirabai for us today…

We humans are curious creatures, moved by emotions, yet frightened by their unmanageability. Emotions are messy, so we try to control them, even suppress them. But life without feeling becomes life without meaning. Intellect and will, divorced from emotion, leave us cold and bone dry, like a frost-damaged tree with too little sap.

One of the great insights of the bhakti masters: Emotional energy is the great, untapped resource in our spiritual lives. Don’t fight it, harness it! Direct it! Awaken passion! Let it carry you with giddy speed into the arms of the Beloved.

In delight, feel the nearness of the Beloved. In sorrow and loss, feel the ache that returns your gaze to the Beloved. Let every emotion charge you, magnetize you, tune you to that sweet presence that is ever near.

When the flames of love are fanned to full force, the lover is no longer seeking to “possess” the Beloved; rather, the lover is lost in the Beloved’s beauty…

Like the bird
That gazes all night
At the passing moon,
I have lost myself dwelling in You.

Suddenly, there are not two, but One. Union. Yoga.

Mirabai India (1498 – 1565?) Timeline Yoga / Hindu : Vaishnava (Krishna/Rama)

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a star
by Gabriel Rosenstock

a star
a tree
and the longing in between

réalta
crann
is an tnúthán eatarthu

/ Photo by Adam Lines Photography /

Wow.

I won’t mar this perfect, ultra-short haiku with my own words. Let’s let the longing linger…

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

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