Poetry Chaikhana Blog

Take Refuge in Silence
by Kalidas (Lawrence Edwards)

All sound arises out of Silence
      and dissolves into Silence.
All thought arises out of Silence
      and dissolves into Silence.
The universe arises out of Silence
      and dissolves into Silence.
Suffering arises out of Silence
      and dissolves into Silence.
The unbounded spaciousness of Silence,
      filled with the clear light of Awareness,
      dissolves the roots of pain and sorrow.
Take refuge in Silence and know
      unshakable joy.

/ Image by Cristopher Sardegna /

Life has been very full for me in recent years. Several significant life challenges, the sort that feel like life and death in the moment. Adding to that, financial responsibilities have made it necessary for me to keep high work hours in my day job through it all. I had hoped, following my move to Oregon a couple of years ago, to connect more to the local poetry and spiritual communities and also to publish more books for the Poetry Chaikhana. But it was not to be as simple as that.

I have been reconnecting with the Divine Feminine lately, and the Mother can be comforting, nurturing, abundant, but at the same time She sometimes says, “You’ve got some work to do so get to it! Let that be your worship for now.”

Learning to strategically walk the cliff’s edge of action and exhaustion, refining that skill, that too is a form of worship, when dedicated to the needs of others.

Breathing hard can be a sign we are on our path. A well-walked journey sometimes requires us our all, and then some. It is often in those moments of total dedication that we find the greatest opening and spaciousness. When the activity in our lives overwhelms and we are not quite keeping up, we might just shift our perspective and recognize that we are not that activity, that we are not even the person engaged in the activity. And then it becomes a dance.

Having said all that, this song of Silence speaks to me. Everything emerges from a great Silence, an eternal Stillness. And returns again. This is not speculation, it can be directly experienced. This is the unbounded spaciousness. We say silence or stillness or spaciousness or Nirvana, but it is not empty in the way we think of the term. It is empty of “thingness” but this underlying Reality is, in fact, full. This divine Silence is rich with life, the source of all life. It is filled with awareness. When we return to that state, we are flooded with an unshakable joy. We might call it the healing embrace of the Divine Mother.

It is in this Silence that balance is restored and we rediscover our true nature.

Whether your life is noisy or quiet, may we all find time to restore ourselves in Silence.

Sending love! Have a beautiful day!

Recommended Books: Kalidas (Lawrence Edwards)

Kali’s Bazaar: Gifts of Devotion to the Divine, Buddhist Wisdom, and Kundalini Yoga Tantra	The Soul’s Journey: Guidance from the Divine Within	Kundalini Rising: Exploring the Energy of Awakening

Kalidas (Lawrence Edwards) US (1952 – ) Yoga / Hindu : Shakta (Goddess-oriented) Secular or Eclectic

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Remember gratitude.

On Those Words “I am for My Beloved”
by Teresa of Avila

English version by Megan Don

Already I gave myself completely,
and have changed in such a way
That my Beloved is for me
and I am for my Beloved.

He pierced me with an arrow
laced with the herbs of love
and my soul became one
with her Creator;
I no longer want another love,
since I have given myself to my God,
That My Beloved is for me
and I am for my Beloved.

— from The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology), Edited by Ivan M. Granger

/ Image by stevekc /

Happy Valentine’s Day! I thought this meditation on love and the soul’s yielding to the Beloved was just right.

I was sent this poem directly by the translator, Megan Don. She is the author of Meditations with Teresa of Avila — a truly beautiful collection of contemplations inspired by the writings of Teresa of Avila.

According to Megan Don, this poem by Teresa of Avila was written about her well-known mystical experience of feeling her heart being pierced with a rapturous love by an angel. This sacred moment inspired Bernini to craft his spiritually erotic sculpture, The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa.

A few of my own thoughts:

Saints and mystics the world over speak of the heart being touched, pierced, opened. They speak of being surprised by love. The problem is, we hear the world “love” and “heart” and we think of the simple sweetness of Valentine’s Day cards. We aren’t encouraged to develop a real concept of what these great souls are attempting to communicate.

When the mind settles and the soul waits in vulnerable readiness, the most amazing thing happens: the heart blooms. The heart opens and expands. Effortlessly, the heart reaches out, with a wider span than we imagined possible, embracing all of creation. We become flooded with something beyond feeling or emotion; there is a sense of finally recognizing our full nature within the heart. We immediately know that we have returned home, that we have rediscovered the seat of our being.

Within this awareness, when we focus inward, we are enraptured, filled with bliss, a sense of wholeness and joy that is beyond words. When focused outward, we have become an embodiment of love. Love pours through us and fills everything we perceive.

Amidst this love, the barriers to our empathy collapse and we also begin to feel all the world’s struggling hopes and suffering and surging life — yet it is all somehow part of a larger tapestry of beauty.

Think about these things. Consider what it means to have one’s heart “pierced” by the Divine. How can we, in full honesty, say, “I gave myself completely,” and “I am for my Beloved”? What is the weakness or vulnerability that the “gentle hunter” leaves us in? What does it mean to be “changed with new life”? The big question: What is the real experience that allows us to say, “my soul became one / with her Creator”?

Have a beautiful Valentine’s Day, at home within the heart.

Recommended Books: Teresa of Avila

The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology)	Poetry for the Spirit: Poems of Universal Wisdom and Beauty	Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women	For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics	All Saints: Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for Our Time
More Books >>

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

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

About True Seekers
by Farid ud-Din Attar

English version by Sholeh Wolpé

Wayfarer, know that in the battlefield of pain,
love may come with annihilation.
You whose existence is mingled
with nonexistence,
you whose joys are mingled with grief,
if you don’t experience some ups and downs,
how will you ever know relief?

All that I had won and lost,
I threw away into black waters.
I disappeared, became lost, void.
I became a shadow without a single atom,
a drop of water that had joined the ocean.
Good luck finding that droplet.
Such loss of self is not for all,
but I joined the eternal union
and there are many like me.
Who in the world, from a dust mote to the moon,
wouldn’t want to be lost this way?

— from The Conferences of the Birds, by Attar / Translated by Sholeh Wolpé

/ Image by Fernando Rodrigues /

I have been thinking this morning of the meandering road that has been the Poetry Chaikhana. I first set up the Poetry Chaikhana website in 2004. That’s twenty years! During those twenty years I have expanded the library of online poetry to include several hundred poets from around the world and throughout history. In the early days I often sent out five or six poem emails a week! That’s when the “daily poem” was truly a daily poem. I eventually shifted to three a week and finally settled into the current rhythm of one poem email (almost) every week. (I still catch myself wanting to refer to it as the “daily poem” and have to pivot to “poem email.”)

But it’s just hitting me today: Twenty years! There are young adults today who were not even born when I started the Poetry Chaikhana online. On the Internet, anything older than five years seems lost in the mists of prehistory. There are two possible explanation for the Poetry Chaikhana’s survival over these twenty years… One is, obviously, ancient aliens. The other explanation is you, the Poetry Chaikhana community. Your steady support and comments and, yes, even prayers year after year, through my own personal ups and downs, through the evolving online landscape, your purchase of books, your donations, your poetry suggestions, the stories you’ve shared of your own personal journeys — all of that together is why the Poetry Chaikhana is still here today.

At this moment I am feeling immense gratitude for you all. This is my opportunity to say thank you to all of you!

It is poems like this that still make me say, Wow! I have to share this with all the mad lovers out there!

What are you doing?
Rise up like a true seeker.
Set fire to reason
and flare into a mad lover.

Even the poems that are dark and challenging, especially them. The ones I have to gird up to read, where it takes all my courage just to take a quick honest look–

If you hesitate over this alchemy,
at least come and take a quick look.I disappeared, became lost, void.
I became a shadow without a single atom,
a drop of water that had joined the ocean.
Good luck finding that droplet.
Such loss of self is not for all,
but I joined the eternal union
and there are many like me.

— in order to arrive precisely at the Self of selves.

Who in the world, from a dust mote to the moon,
wouldn’t want to be lost this way?

Have a beautiful day!

Recommended Books: Farid ud-Din Attar

Poetry for the Spirit: Poems of Universal Wisdom and Beauty	The Drunken Universe: An Anthology of Persian Sufi Poetry	Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish & Hebrew Poems	Perfume of the Desert: Inspirations from Sufi Wisdom	The Conferences of the Birds
More Books >>

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

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There is an inner perfection
the same for everyone.
The psyche may go through the motions,
but its journey is done.