Poetry Chaikhana Blog

Via Negativa
by R. S. Thomas

Why no! I never thought other than
That God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within, the place where we go
Seeking, not in hope to
Arrive or find. He keeps the interstices
In our knowledge, the darkness
Between stars. His are the echoes
We follow, the footprints he has just
Left. We put our hands in
His side hoping to find
It warm. We look at people
And places as though he had looked
At them, too; but miss the reflection.

— from Through Corridors of Light: Poems of Consolation in Time of Illness, Edited by John Andrew Denny

/ Image by tanakawho /

This is a haunting poem, yet lovely and uplifting at the same time. God is a kind of a ghost in this poem, a tangible absence.

…God is that great absence
In our lives, the empty silence
Within…

And that is really the poet’s point. So often we struggle to imagine what God is, the qualities and awareness associated with that immense… Something. But this poem is a meditation on the Via Negativa, that is, the recognition that the Eternal is not a “thing” at all. Every definition or description or quality we attach to the Divine is necessarily a limitation on the Divine Nature and, therefore, incomplete. To turn God into an object that can be described is to make God a subset of Existence, when the Eternal is the Whole of Existence and beyond. The idea behind the Via Negativa is that God cannot be adequately conceptualized by the limited human intellect with attributes of a limited physical reality, and so God is best discovered through negation. In other words, God is all-encompassing, and therefore perceived as a sort of vibrant Absence, a sort of haunting Presence within the empty spaces of our perception…

…He keeps the interstices
In our knowledge, the darkness
Between stars. His are the echoes
We follow…

That ache we universally feel, that absence can feel to the soul like an existential betrayal inherent within reality. Most of us reflexively turn from that feeling and run from it, endlessly distracting our awareness so we don’t feel it so painfully. But, ultimately, that’s not very effective, and it is never satisfying.

We put our hands in
His side hoping to find
It warm.”

This is, of course, a reference the story in the Gospels when “doubting” Thomas would not believe that the risen Christ stood before him until he could touch the wounds in Christ’s side. Here the poet sees that wound as another representation of that hauntingly empty space, which reveals itself to be both real and also divine. There is a void we all sense and mostly try to ignore. When we no longer recoil and instead reach out to touch that emptiness, we hope to feel warmth, life, presence within the apparent absence — and we do.

–

Mystics encourage us to look deeper, to fully encounter that “great absence,” to sit with it. Eventually we discover to our surprise that that terrible void is, in truth, filled with immense life and an indescribable bliss. Our very being flows from that immense and spacious No-Thing-Ness. If we name It, if we describe or define It, that my help our understanding up to a point, but if we cling too tightly to those names and descriptions, we limit our full awareness and vision. This is the truth of the Via Negativa.

Recommended Books: R. S. Thomas

For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics	Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds	R. S. Thomas: Selected Poems	R. S. Thomas (Everyman Poetry)	R. S. Thomas: Collected Poems 1945-1990
More Books >>

R. S. Thomas Wales (1913 – 2000) Timeline Christian

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Effortlessly
by Mechthild of Magdeburg

English version by Jane Hirshfield

Effortlessly,
Love flows from God into man,
Like a bird
Who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.
Thus we move in His world
One in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.
As the Source strikes the note,
Humanity sings —
The Holy Spirit is our harpist,
And all strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound.

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

/ Image by ac4photos /

Effortlessly,
Love flows from God into man,
Like a bird
Who rivers the air
Without moving her wings.

Isn’t that image wonderful? The words themselves flow through us, like gentle music. That opening affirmation is so lovely that it’s easy to miss importance of the next few lines:

Thus we move in His world
One in body and soul,
Though outwardly separate in form.

When we discover that total integration of self, when every aspect of body and soul recognizes itself as a harmonious unity, the sense of the effortful self disappears. Our actions and movement through the world flow without friction. We normally take it for granted, the presence of a constant resistance in every action. What is that resistance? It is the fingerprint of the ego as it declares through each effort, “I am here! I did this!” It is a declaration of separation. But instead, when we are overcome with love and wholeness, the ego fades, no separation is seen, and we, in turn, flow.

Think of it this way: Just as swimmers shave their bodies to eliminate the constant drag of body hair in order to glide through the water, shedding the ego through love allows us to glide with surprising ease through the world. This is how saints and masters manage to act with such natural grace of spirit.

And all strings
Which are touched in Love
Must sound.

=

The Catholic Church has elected a new pope, who has taken the name Leo XIV. The previous pope, Francis, was a much-needed voice of compassion when it came to questions of global poverty, immigrants and refugees, the suffering of occupied and colonized peoples, and the desperate needs of the environment. It remains to be seen if the new pope will oppose the regressive factions within the Vatican and live up to the historical moment.

Ultimately, of course, we should not wait for perfect popes or presidents or prime ministers. It is ourselves we truly wait for. The goal is always to allow Love to flow into ourselves and through ourselves into the world until, one-by-one we light up and discover the underlying Unity. With so much threat and uncertainty in the world, it is easy to see and feel only that onslaught. But in complete disregard for our own fears, there yet remains that glowing, blissful Oneness beneath. The more we recognize and nurture it in ourselves and the more we help others to do the same, the more the world can let go of its terrible dramas and awaken to its inherent heavenly nature. It may take great striving to get there, but when it happens, it happens — effortlessly.

Have a beautiful day! Sending love to you all.

Recommended Books: Mechthild of Magdeburg

Poetry for the Spirit: Poems of Universal Wisdom and Beauty	Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women	The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry	German Mystical Writings: Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Jacob Boehme, and others	The Mystic in Love: A Treasury of Mystical Poetry
More Books >>

Mechthild of Magdeburg Germany (1207 – 1297) Timeline Christian : Catholic

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I am praying again, Awesome One
by Rainer Maria Rilke

English version by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

I am praying again, Awesome One.

Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God — spend them however you want.

— from Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, by Rainer Maria Rilke / Translated by Joanna Macy

/ Image by Klara Kulikova /

I am praying again, Awesome One.

I like that opening line. Personal, honest, no pretense of formula.

I’ve been scattered in pieces…

Scattered, disjointed, plundered, befouled. Feeling this way, how does one ever feel whole again?

I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.

The first thing I would say is that the solution is not to return to a time when things were good or normal. Crises only arise when problems have been ignored. This is true on a personal, spiritual level, and it is true on the societal level.

So when we look back on a time in our lives when things felt more “right,” the first thing to do is to notice what we missed or ignored. Be willing to see what was not right about it. What were our secrets? What was our pain? Who suffered and was kept silent?

The first step is not to fix the brokenness. It is to feel the brokenness. It is to see it. As this poem does. If we are broken, let us see it and feel it. All of it.

Of course, to do so means the destruction of our cherished heroic self-story. But there is a strange magic that happens when we let that story fall apart and finally look into the shadows. Hidden in those hurt and hurtful corners is so much of ourselves. We can’t be complete without them. They may seem ugly or shameful. We may not know how to welcome them back into a healthy and functional sense of being. But it is all us.

All of those shadowy fragments, in ourselves, in society, they are the missing pieces that complete us. The failures we don’t want to admit in ourselves, they are the key to our success. The path to wholeness is through the brokenness, not away from it.

But how does one integrate it all? How does one atone for the hurts caused, heal the hurts received? No problem can ever be solved at the same level on which it was created. We need to step past the ego and the repeating justifications of the calculating mind in order to invite a higher level of intelligence. We might think of this as calling upon God or a Higher Power or simply a higher awareness within ourselves. We don’t have to know at the level of the intellect, but we have to be honest with ourselves, humble, courageous and open. Then watch what happens.

As the poet says with his own words of courage and humility:

Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God — spend them however you want.

Recommended Books: Rainer Maria Rilke

The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry	Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke	The Soul is Here for its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures	Rilke’s Book of Hours: Love Poems to God	In Praise of Mortality: Rilke’s Duino Elegies & Sonnets to Orpheus
More Books >>

Rainer Maria Rilke Germany (1875 – 1926) Timeline Secular or Eclectic

More poetry by Rainer Maria Rilke

Teach us, and show us the Way
by Chinook (Anonymous)

We call upon the earth, our planet home, with its beautiful depths and soaring
heights, its vitality and abundance of life, and together we ask that it

Teach us, and show us the Way.

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

/ Image by Oppo Find x5 Pro /

I have been engaged in quite an act of rebellion lately: I have been gardening.

Just a small garden, a few vegetables and flowers.

And I’ll be honest, gardening doesn’t come naturally to me. I was raised in small apartments by a single mother who was often at work. Gardening wasn’t an activity handed down to me. I tend to be more of a person of fire and air than of earth. So rolling up my sleeves and digging in the dirt is not always my first instinct in the springtime.

But the gardeners among you know what I am still learning, that the earth speaks to us through the garden. It becomes a conversation. I speak to the weeds as I pull them, thanking them for the green impulse they brought and apologizing for their removal. Words of welcome and gentle encouragement to the strawberries and marigolds as I pat them into place and pour water around them.

Earth and water. Air and sun. And growing green life. These bring the soul back to rest.

While gardening is often a solitary, meditative act, I am surprised by how often it brings me back into connection with my community. As an inexperienced gardener, I bring my questions to the woman across the street whose yard is filled with tulips and daffodils and green sprouts waiting to reveal themselves. And we are talking about life. The rhythms of the year and the movements of the clouds.

Later in the year, I hope to have a few extra butternut squash, Perhaps my wife and I can share them with our neighbor (as I know she will come by with more than one box of potatoes and tomatoes for us). Or maybe I will bring something from my garden over to my cousin’s house. Next year, if I plan early enough for a larger garden, perhaps I will have extra to bring to one of the local homeless shelters.

Who knew that putting your knees on the ground and digging your fingers into the soil could reconnect us with the world? It brings us back into the rhythms of life and community. It returns us to ourselves.

Some might say that is a dangerous thing.

Others would say, community, the earth, life, these speak to us. They remind us of important truths. Let’s listen. Let us ask them to teach us, and show us the Way.

Recommended Books: Chinook (Anonymous)

The Essential Mystics: Selections from the World’s Great Wisdom Traditions

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It is difficult to get the news (from Asphodel That Greeny Flower)
by William Carlos Williams

      It is difficult
to get the news from poems
      yet men die miserably every day
            for lack
of what is found there.

— from The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams: Volume II 1939-1962, by William Carlos Williams

/ Image by Brad Starkey /

I was recently reminded of this poem by the wonderful Kim Rosen, author of Saved by a Poem. I call it a poem, but it is actually an excerpt from a much longer poem, yet these few lines stand alone.

With so much uncertainty about us, with suffering on the rise, it is natural to amp up our anxieties in response, wanting to “make things right” but without really knowing what to do. It can become a cycle of fear and feeling betrayed, of loud words, louder thoughts, and halting action followed by inaction and numbness.

Poetry can seem unimportant, even frivolous.

These aren’t times for simple answers, but I would suggest that the answers are not found in keeping ourselves perpetually plugged in to the recitations of horrors and outrages fed to us through the headlines. We need to remain aware of what is happening in our world, yes, but the news is often not the best source of our news. The real news requires an act of awareness. And connection. Connection with our communities. Importantly, connection with the vulnerable and outliers in our society. Connection, most importantly, with ourselves. And with nature, which is always our home ground.

The more we nurture these forms of connection, the more we remember what is real and what is important. Through these connections we understand what is actually happening. We also get a better sense of what we can and should do about it. We are reminded that the most powerful actions are not always grand gestures on a global stage; instead, it is often our seemingly small acts of kindness and genuine connection that truly resonate in the world.

But it is never simply about action. Action without awareness is just movement. Awareness is the key. Seeing what is truly happening, the entire picture, the expanse and the overlooked valleys, this requires awareness. Knowing when to act, how to act, and when to simply glow in the world, this requires awareness.

What we call the news is not primarily a medium of full-bodied awareness. That is why, though it is difficult, we should do our best to get our news from poems.

      It is difficult
to get the news from poems
      yet men die miserably every day
            for lack
of what is found there.

Sending love to you all!

William Carlos Williams US (1883 – 1963) Timeline Secular or Eclectic

More poetry by William Carlos Williams

Once More Turn Me to Gold
by Dorothy Walters

(for Kabir)

Every cell,
each bone and covering.
Let me shine
like a golden coin
spinning in the summer sun,
a yellow leaf
that falls to earth
in early autumn, late spring.
Let me be a beacon for all
yearning to pass this way,
to become pure,
like the alchemist’s dream,
the cabalist’s desire.
Let me be dipped
in liquid gold,
now luminous,
radiant as the sun,
complete at last.

— from The Goddess Speaks: Poems of Ecstasy and Transformation, by Dorothy Walters

/ Image by Chu Son /

I have been thinking about Dorothy Walters recently. She was a close friend for many years. We met initially through our parallel work, both of us in different ways being early explorers of poetry and spirituality on the Internet. She published a blog of her poetry and Kundalini experiences while, at the same time, quietly connecting one-on-one with those who reached out to her, seeking to better understand their own private spiritual experiences. She soon came across my work with the Poetry Chaikhana and emailed me, beginning a correspondence.

At the time, she lived in San Francisco, but she had strong ties to Boulder, Colorado, where I lived. She had been a professor at the University of Colorado for many years before retirement, and she decided to return to the area. This serendipitous move allowed us to become closer friends.

My wife and I would regularly meet Dorothy on a Sunday morning and go out to brunch together. We had wonderful, far ranging conversations that returned again and again to the spiritual journey, seasoned with plenty of laughter. It was always a treat to meet with this sweet, elderly woman who often wore a knitted cap, eyeglasses with Chinese characters engraved around the rims, and draped herself in wild colors.

I wonder how many people in Boulder knew what a treasure they had shuffling around the downtown, occasionally popping into discussions on lucid dreaming or poetry readings.

In her final years, a wonderful, dedicated group of people worked together to make sure that her few basic necessities and health care were taken care of. She passed away in 2023, well into her nineties.

For many, she was seen as a spiritual teacher. There were times when I saw her that way too, but more as an inspiration, a template of how to be an elder in the world — quiet, yet active, unconventional, playful, caring, engaged, always touching people’s lives for the better. As I begin to enter my elder years, I hope to embody my own version of those uplifting energies she brought to those around her.

Mostly, however, I thought of Dorothy Walters as a friend, a friend who still sometimes shows up to whisper in my ear.

Recommended Books: Dorothy Walters

The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology)	This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World	Marrow of Flame : Poems of the Spiritual Journey	The Ley Lines of the Soul: Poems of Ecstasy and Ascension	Diamond Cutters: Visionary Poets in America, Britain & Oceania
More Books >>

Dorothy Walters US (1928 – 2023) Timeline Secular or Eclectic

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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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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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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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I know the truth
by Marina Tsvetaeva

English version by Elaine Feinstein

I know the truth — give up all other truths!
No need for people anywhere on earth to struggle.
Look — it is evening, look, it is nearly night:
what do you speak of, poets, lovers, generals?

The wind is level now, the earth is wet with dew,
the storm of stars in the sky will turn to quiet.
And soon all of us will sleep under the earth, we
who never let each other sleep above it.

— from Tsvetayeva: Selected Poems, by Marina Tsvetaeva / Translated by Elaine Feinstein

/ Image by Niko Tsviliov /

I return to this poem regularly, and it brings me to a halt each time. There is such a mature, weary compassion in these lines.

The question is not whether we will live or die. We all live (though we may not always feel as if we do). And we all die (though we may discover that death is not what we imagined).

The real question is, while we move and act upon the earth, do we ease the suffering of others or add to it? Will we let each other rest above the earth, or only beneath it?

Life and death are a given. It is what we do along our journey between those two road markers that matters.

The whole while the earth says, “Is not every beautiful thing yours already?” And the night sky, for all its immense movement, is completely at peace. So what has humanity lost sight of?

Recommended Books: Marina Tsvetaeva

Women in Praise of the Sacred: 43 Centuries of Spiritual Poetry by Women	Tsvetayeva: Selected Poems	Tsvetaeva	Milestones	A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind of Marina Tsvetaeva
More Books >>

Marina Tsvetaeva Russia (1892 – 1941) Timeline Secular or Eclectic

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may my heart always be open to little
by e. e. cummings

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile

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

/ Image by Dan Bojorquez /

I want to start by addressing the fires still raging in Southern California. I was an adolescent in the LA area, not far from where many of the fires are now burning. I no longer have family in the area and I haven’t been back in many years, but I have history there, formative moments associated with those places. I carry the imprint of the land with me. So, even from a distance, the fires feel personal.

To all of you affected more directly by the fires, my heart goes out to you and your communities.

The rhythms of the world feel as if they have shifted. The hills surrounding LA have always been prone to fires, but never with such destruction and size. Just as many areas have always been vulnerable to hurricanes, but never with such size and ferocity and frequency. It feels as if few places on the planet are truly stable and reliable these days, requiring us to dig deep to discover an inner source of security while becoming supremely flexible in dealing with a shifting landscape — all while trying to help and ease suffering where we can. I guess our work is laid out for us…

Now, on to today’s poem–

Boy… e.e. cummings.

Any commentary or thoughts you want to share? Me, I’m not sure I want to touch this one! Anything that betrays too much of a fixed reading of this poem feels misplaced. (“for whenever men are right they are not young”)

far better to roll wordlets with otherthan meanings
and let them pool slow in the honey-glad heart

I think I’ll just reread the poem…

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple

Be well making your way through this perilous, wondrous world.

Recommended Books: e. e. cummings

E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962	73 Poems	1 x 1 [One Times One]	50 Poems	95 Poems
More Books >>

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

More poetry by e. e. cummings

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.

/ Image by Mael Balland /

Happy New Year!

What is Tao?
It is just this.

I remember the first time I tried to navigate 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? A path or a practice? Something else? Other Taoist writings were the same, taunting me with endless non-definitions. (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 their perceptions? 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.

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, undefined day!

Recommended Books: Lu Tung Pin

The Secret of the Golden Flower: The Classic Chinese Book of Life	The Eight Immortals of Taoism: Legends and Fables of Popular Taoism	Tales of the Taoist Immortals	Tao of Health, Longevity, and Immortality: The Teachings of Immortals Chung and Lu

Lu Tung Pin China (755 – 805) Timeline Taoist

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The Fountain
by John of the Cross

English version by Willis Barnstone

How well I know that flowing spring
      in black of night.

O living fountain that I crave,
in bread of life I see her flame
      in black of night.

— from To Touch the Sky: Poems of Mystical, Spiritual & Metaphysical Light, Translated by Willis Barnstone

/ Image by John Wilson /

As we enter the Christmas season, my thoughts turn to one of my favorite Christian poets, John of the Cross. This is a relatively simple poem, but it touches on several key themes in John of the Cross’s writings: a dark night, unknowing, and a fountain.

In this poem, John of the Cross is speaking of a secret fountain as if it is a divine, living being — and it is. This isn’t merely a poetic metaphor, it is a description of actual mystical experience rendered into the language of poetry.

Mystics throughout the world and in all traditions describe an awareness of a flowing of water, a water that is alive. Coming into contact with that water, touching it, drinking it, feeling it flow inside you and all around you, quickens a new sense of life within. Everything, yourself included, is suddenly seen as radically alive in a way that could not have been imagined before. It is this water that is the foundational “stuff” of the manifest world, all things are formed of it and exist within it.

Accompanying this is a sense of a rising up and overflowing of energy — a fountain. This is felt as originating in the seat, beginning to spread out in the solar plexus, flowing generously in the heart, and anointing the crown with a glistening light.

John of the Cross refers to this fountain as “she,” equating it with the Holy Spirit in Christian tradition.

And why is this fountain always discovered “in black of night”? Night, the dark night of the soul, is fundamental to the mystical language developed by John of the Cross. One way to understand it is as the disorienting space of initiation, when the awareness has released its identification with material creation, and waits uncertainly for the Divine. Understood this way, the night is the spiritual threshold. It is within this psychic emptiness that we discover the fountain.

May this Christmas, Solstice, Hanukkah, New Year be one of healing and renewal. May we all rediscover the spiritual light amidst the dark of winter. Sending love to you all.

Recommended Books: John of the Cross

The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology)	Poetry for the Spirit: Poems of Universal Wisdom and Beauty	Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey	To Touch the Sky: Poems of Mystical, Spiritual & Metaphysical Light	For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics
More Books >>

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

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For a New Beginning
by John O’Donohue

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

johnodonohue.com

/ Image by Shermeee /

A poem for a new beginning–

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening

Isn’t this a wonderful reminder of hope and new pathways?

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,

We might read these lines as poetically phrased wish fulfillment, but there is a deeper insight here. This is the underlying technique, consciously or unconsciously, mostly unconsciously, that we bring anything into existence. We feel an emptiness or a void or a yearning. It be energetically charged until it magnetically draws to itself its own fulfillment. The more we can befriend that aching space in ourselves and our lives, the more we can nurture it and enliven it, until it magically flips from emptiness to fullness and manifestation.

Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.

I like that this poem is kind to the phases of our lives when we feel stuck or reluctant to change and explore. Yet, at the same time, it recognizes that the safety of familiar routine can be a seductive illusion.

When I was young I actively undermined any routines I found in myself, convinced that they led to a sort of psychic numbness and lack of deep fulfillment. I think there was truth in that perspective, but there was also self-cruelty in that approach and it led to instability. Once I came to see that, I worked very hard, sometimes painfully, at the cultivation of routine, and began to find unexpected life nourishment there. The crucial element, I think, is that those routines should be consciously selected rather than imposed on us by societal expectation or unexamined habit.

And we can’t fall into the seductive idea that we are those routines or happiness depends on them. Routine creates essential structure, but endless stasis is death. Life and growth require change. Regular encounters with the new and the unknown reinvigorate the soul.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk

New avenues can sometimes be frightening, occasionally bringing genuine peril, so one shouldn’t be brash or blind to the situation. But a certain boldness is natural to our nature when we come to know ourselves. We need awareness, dynamism, creativity, a diversity of life skills — all wrapped in a vital joy. Then even the perils themselves serve to accentuate the magic and wonder of each stage of the journey.

Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

Sending love, courage, and new rhythms…

Recommended Books: John O’Donohue

To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings	Echoes of Memory	Eternal Echoes: Celtic Reflections on Our Yearning to Belong	Beauty: The Invisible Embrace	Wisdom of the Celtic World (Audio CD)
More Books >>

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

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Give Me
by Khwaja Abdullah Ansari

English version by Andrew Harvey

O Lord, give me a heart
I can pour out in thanksgiving.
Give me life
So I can spend it
Working for the salvation of the world.

— from Perfume of the Desert: Inspirations from Sufi Wisdom, by Andrew Harvey / Eryk Hanut

/ Image by Cristian Bernal /

Something for us today as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, a contemplation of heart and service and true thanksgiving.

There is something so simple and profound… and universal in this prayer-poem. These words were given to us by a devout Muslim Sufi, but they could as well have been spoken by a Hindu satyagrahi, a Catholic liberation theologian, a Buddhist peace worker, a Protestant homeless advocate, or any sincere soul striving to awaken the Divine within themself and the world.

Notice that Sheikh Ansari gives us two parallel statements, and they balance each other.

The first statement–

O Lord, give me a heart
I can pour out in thanksgiving.

–addresses our interior state. It is a prayer that we are “given” a heart, or that we may recognize our heart, awakening it. It is a prayer of centering, of coming to know the center of one’s being… and allowing that self to flow.

That flow naturally expresses itself through gratitude, thanksgiving. The flow of the heart is a gift we pour out into the world. It is the offering of one’s self.

So, first he asks for self-recognition, centering, and a gratitude which can be shared with the world.

Next–

Give me life
So I can spend it
Working for the salvation of the world.

–the poet turns that awareness outward through action. He requests life, but not for selfish reasons, not because he thinks is only that earthly life; he asks for life that he may be of service.

Now, that phrase “working for the salvation of the world,” may make some of us cringe. The term “salvation” has been abducted by rigid religious literalists, equating salvation with subscribing to their specific belief systems. But, despite what is thundered from the pulpits and the minbars, salvation has little to do with belief or which group one joins. It is about healing, the easing of pain, the renewal of hope, and a deepening relationship with truth. On a social level, this is best expressed through selfless, nonjudgmental service. On the spiritual level, working for salvation is about humbly peeling away the obstructions that keep individuals and the world as a whole from recognizing their inherent beauty and heavenly potential.

On a certain level, service in the world is a sort of religious ritual, an outward enactment of an inner process. We may help one person or a hundred or a thousand, but suffering continues in the world. The numbers game leads to discouragement. But with each kind act, small or large, we give away a little more ego, we open our eyes a little more, we feel a little more connected, and more and more we come to discover that serene, heavenly Self at rest within.

Ansari seems to be saying to us, when we discover beauty within, it naturally flows out of us into the world. And when we pour ourselves out for the healing of the world, we find wholeness within.

Recommended Books: Khwaja Abdullah Ansari

Poetry for the Spirit: Poems of Universal Wisdom and Beauty	Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the Early Mystics to Rumi	Perfume of the Desert: Inspirations from Sufi Wisdom	Ibn ‘Ata’ Illah the Book of Wisdom/Kwaja Abdullah Ansari Intimate Conversations	Munajat: The Intimate Invocations
More Books >>

Khwaja Abdullah Ansari Afghanistan (1006 – 1088) Timeline Muslim / Sufi

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Let nothing disturb you
by Teresa of Avila

English version by Ivan M. Granger

(Lines written on a bookmark found in Teresa of Avila’s Breviary)

Of all things
God alone
fills all.

/ Image by Jonny Gios /

If you’ve been wondering what’s been up with me lately, I have, of course, been aware of world events lately, paying attention to the shifting energetic pathways that are unfolding and, on a more personal level, I have been especially busy with my day job as a computer programmer. But also, in my quiet moments, I have been reading. I have been re-reading Thoreau’s Walden.

Walden was a defining book for me. Reading it at about age 20, when I was struggling because, standing at the threshold of adulthood, I saw little I valued in the academic and career paths open to me at the time. I was out of sync with the world. I had immense, unnamed ambitions of an inner nature while being jostled about by a world that was excessively busy with its own ends, but largely empty. In that dark moment, I came across Thoreau, and I finally found a companion, someone who gave me permission think my own thoughts and see the world my own way. We need examples, those who inspire, yes, but also those who are clear seeing curmudgeons to call out stupidity and cruelty masquerading as unquestioned convention.

Thoreau taught me to seek the essential.

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

He also taught me to be a fighter, to examine and overturn every cherished truth in society.

He gave me the courage to be unique.

Rereading Thoreau today, I realize that he is crankier than I remembered, and I don’t as readily agree with every critique he lays before society, but his voice, like an American prophet, still resonates. His words still ring through the lengthening years.

But man’s capacities have never been measured; nor are we to judge of what he can do by any precedents, so little has been tried.

Maybe I’ll find a way to share more of my thoughts on Walden in future Poetry Chaikhana emails. I’m nurturing a few ideas.

Have the writings of Thoreau meant something to you? Which other writers or books have been transformative to you at key points in your life?

=

Something for us today by the great Catholic saint and reformer, Teresa of Avila.

I like that this selection, unlike more formally composed poems and songs, feels jotted down by St. Teresa, personal notes to herself, poetic reminders from herself to herself, to be seen each time she refers to her book of daily prayers.

Simple observations on the relationship between one’s self, “all things” — the world, the externalized world, the world of people and things and experiences — and God.

All things pass;
God remains.

Everything we can separate out and label within the mind, every “thing,” is inherently transitory. Even the most concrete fixture of the landscape or in society eventually changes and disappears.

This recognition is often terrifying to the little self. What can we call a certainty? With everything coming into and out of existence and continuously changing in the process, can we even know what a thing is before it is something else or gone completely? Since we so often define ourselves by the things in our lives, how can we safely know who or what we are?

Fear becomes the continuous experience of the small self.

Let nothing disturb you;
Feel no fear.

Yes, all things pass. Nothing remains the same. Even who we imagine ourselves to be changes. But when we recognize the rightness of this, that there is, in fact, a flow to existence, then we can relax and let go of that fear.

Patience and steadiness
Achieve all things.

I particularly like these lines. As an Aries child, full of fire and bursts of erratic action, I was just as likely to bloody my head against the wall as achieve my half-formed goals. The long lesson of adulthood has been, for me, the cultivation of patience and steadiness. The truth of this line is not as transactional as stating that persistent action eventually pays off — though that is often the case. The deeper truth, I find, is that steady action, steady purpose, cultivates a steadiness of mind, regardless of outcome. When the mind is steady, it is less easily unsettled by things shifting around us. When the mind is steady, it more naturally settles into stillness. When we are steady, we settle into oneness with God.

When you are at one with God,
Nothing is found
      to be missing.

We find this statement by mystics throughout the world’s traditions. In God we find all things.

It is the final line explains it to me:

Of all things
God alone
fills all.

I’m sure you’ve had this happen to you before: There was something you desperately wanted, a promotion at work, a new lover, some prized object, anything, and then you got it and — you felt deflated. It was nice for a moment or a week, and then you felt nothing. Worse than nothing, you had poured so much energy into attaining this yearned for thing, and then it betrayed you by not fulfilling its promise of joy and satisfaction. That’s just it. Everything — every thing we can call a “thing” — is not only constantly changing and disappearing, it is also empty. One empty thing leaves us empty. Ten empty things still just leaves us empty, A really huge empty thing just leaves us feeling hugely empty.

God alone fills all. Fulfillment is found only in the Eternal.

That doesn’t mean everyone should abandon their house and take religious vows. And, of course, so many of the people and even things in our lives can bring us a certain amount of fulfillment and meaning. But it is not really having that person or thing in our lives that fills us up. When we really look, we see that each relationship or thing that is meaningful to us is acting as a sort of metaphor or outer representation of something already within ourselves. That person or experience or thing mirrors back to us something about ourselves that shines. We use the outer “thing” as permission to witness our own inner light. In other words, whether in the smile of a beloved spouse, the achievement of a hard earned goal, or the glory of a rosy sunset spread across the ocean, it is the light of the Divine we see, and that is when we come back to ourselves, and that is what fills us up, returning us to wholeness.

Have a beautiful day!

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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I feel this yen
by Hafiz

English version by Erfan Mojib & Gary Gach

I feel this yen
To tell you
Of my heart

Why do they leave
Only to return again
?

— from Hafiz’s Little Book of Life, Translated by Erfan Mojib / Translated by Gary Gach

/ Image by Jon Butterworth /

Even though he is greatly beloved, I don’t feature Hafiz as often as his status might merit. The main reason for that is because, frankly, there is a lot of confusion in the English-speaking world about what is and is not genuine Hafiz poetry.

The confusion arises because of Daniel Ladinsky’s popular book of poetry, The Gift. Ladinsky’s books put me in an awkward spot. I really like the poetry from Ladinsky’s books… but, well, they aren’t actually by Hafiz. Ladinsky’s The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master actually contains no lines of poetry written by the great Sufi poet Hafiz!

Daniel Ladinsky seems to acknowledge this in his introduction to the book, when he writes, “I feel my relationship to Hafiz defies all reason… I had an astounding dream in which I saw Hafiz as an Infinite Fountaining Sun (I saw him as God), who sang hundreds of lines of his poetry to me in English, asking me to give that message to ‘my artists and seekers.’”

You might say that Ladinsky’s poetry is “inspired by” Hafiz. Or, if you prefer a broader interpretation, you could say Ladinsky channels Hafiz. But his “translations” are not the historical writings of Hafiz. From the more limited scholar’s definition, these are poems by Daniel Ladinsky, not Hafiz.

So here’s what I do: I enjoy Ladinsky’s playful, profound poetry, but I look to other books to savor the historical poetry of Hafiz that Sufis and seekers have delighted in for centuries…

These snippets that I am featuring today are genuine lines of Hafiz poetry, however. The collection I found them in Hafiz’s Little Book of Life is an inspired, mischievous sampler of lines from Hafiz, often just one or two couplets per page, inviting you to open to any page to see what the poet has to say to you in the moment — a practice common with Hafiz poetry in many parts of the Persian-speaking world.

I love the images of these lines–

My words are veiled
The way the rose
Emerges from a bud

They suggest the way deep meaning is hidden within simple words, the way all of reality, really, holds such life within it, just waiting to blossom into fullness within our awareness.

Where is the mystic
Who understands
The language
Of
The lilies
?

Why do they leave
Only to return again
?

Recommended Books: Hafiz

The Gift: Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master	Music of a Distant Drum: Classical Arabic, Persian, Turkish & Hebrew Poems	Islamic Mystical Poetry: Sufi Verse from the Early Mystics to Rumi	Love’s Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition	The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia, with Lectures by Inayat Khan
More Books >>

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