Poetry Chaikhana Blog

What I Have Learned So Far
by Mary Oliver

Meditation is old and honorable, so why should I
not sit, every morning of my life, on the hillside,
looking into the shining world? Because, properly
attended to, delight, as well as havoc, is suggestion.
Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.

Be ignited, or be gone.

— from New and Selected Poems, by Mary Oliver

/ Image by Hamed Saber /

This, to me, is an interesting poem, the way it wrestles with that age-old question of spirituality: faith or works, jnana or karma… or, as she bluntly frames it, indolence or action.

Does the seeking of wisdom lead one into such an internalized state that one abandons the world to its confusion and suffering? Even when we awaken profound compassion within ourselves, is compassion enough without action to back it up? Ultimately the question boils down to, is enlightenment a good in and of itself, or does it only fulfill itself through service?

Different traditions and teachers give us different answers. Many teachers will say that trying to “do good” without first achieving some measure of inner clarity cannot achieve its full potential. Some even say that spiritual opening has a natural resonance; the enlightened are like radio transmitters, apparently doing little, apparently silent, they broadcasting powerful waves into the world. There is even an argument that action, no matter how well intentioned, is empty and unstable without true insight, while there can be seeming inaction that shakes the universe.

Others say that spirituality and compassion without heartful action is anemic at best, that the physical and social world are themselves part of our spiritual landscape, that we must embody our spirituality on that level too. This criticism can go so far as to say that spirituality in a cave is easy, spirituality in the world is hard; that’s where we truly prove our awakening love. They argue that action always exists, even the avoidance of action is action. One must always seek to express the inner state with outer action. And for the spiritually minded, that action must be in the form of compassionate service to a struggling world.

Mary Oliver seems to finally favor the latter philosophy:

Can one be passionate about the just, the
ideal, the sublime, and the holy, and yet commit
to no labor in its cause? I don’t think so.

Me? I have a fiery nature, and I like a statement like Mary Oliver’s. I see too much passivity in good-hearted people, myself included sometimes.

But I don’t ultimately see a great conflict with any of these philosophies. The universe is a big universe, with endless pathways for the human spirit to travel. The more we unfetter our enlightened selves, the more we naturally embody the fullness of who we are.

For some, that resolves itself into a profound stillness that is outer as well as inner. And do they not ring out from their mountaintops and closets? Do we not, on some level, hear them and ring out a little more ourselves?

For others, stillness and love seeks a pathway of expression through action and service. The healing way they use their hands, the same two hands we all possess — doesn’t it make our own fingers itch for movement?

Recommended Books: Mary Oliver

New and Selected Poems	Why I Wake Early	Dream Work	House of Light	Thirst: Poems
More Books >>

Mary Oliver US (1935 – 2019) Timeline Secular or Eclectic

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Primary Wonder
by Denise Levertov

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.
And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng’s clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.

— from Denise Levertov: Selected Poems, by Denise Levertov

/ Image by ryoung /

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions…

We all wrestle with this, the demands of daily life, of work and family, all our plans and hopes and fears, the need to order everything every moment. In the midst of it all we struggle to remember that “quiet mystery.” Balancing a life in this world with that wide open wonder, it can feel like too much to achieve at times. The demands of the day sometimes demand our all. Yet it is the wonder and the mystery that fills our our lives and gives them meaning.

When “problems” fill the day, then those problems are the day’s worship. The most mundane and seemingly meaningless effort, when approached with a sense of service and a questing heart, becomes an act of beauty. And when we finally come exhausted to a quiet moment, we are ready to fall silent before the mystery. Too tired to maintain our pretenses, we rest in awe.

And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me…

Recommended Books: Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov: Selected Poems	Poems of Denise Levertov: 1960-1967	Breathing the Water	The Great Unknowing: Last Poems	Candles in Babylon
More Books >>

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

More poetry by Denise Levertov

Medusa
by Ivan M. Granger

Medusa says –

I still wait
for some bold, tired
      wild child of mine,
determined to die
seeing what’s reflected
in my unblinking eye.

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

/ Image by Emanuello Brigant /

Something to honor the Divine Goddess (and Halloween!) today–

Every now and then I awake early, before the sun. Observing the nighttime before dawn, its embodiment of mystery, the unknown, vastness. Night brings both peace and fear. It does not distract us from ourselves. Whatever we bring with us into the night we must confront…

I read a lot of Greek mythology in my childhood. I loved the fantastical adventures, the heroes, the monsters, the convoluted relationships of the gods. I was fascinated that so many common words and phrases have their origins in the names and stories of Greek myths. It connected me with the Greek ancestry I have through my father.

And I also had the vague, semi-formed idea that there was something deeper being said in these myth stories.

I discovered something several years back that struck me: Medusa, the quintessential monster of Greek mythology, was originally a much loved Goddess. Her name comes from the Greek word “metis” (related to the Sanskrit “medha”) meaning “wisdom.” Her worship is thought to have originated in North Africa and been imported into early Greek culture. She was black-skinned, wore wild, matted hair (with, of course, snakes), stood naked, wide-eyed, and embodied the mystery of woman, the wisdom of the night, the truths too profound or terrible to face in the daylight.

Medusa is, in effect, a Mediterranean version of the Bengali Goddess Kali.

Medusa was eventually subsumed into the safer, patriarchal worship of Athena, who carries Medusa’s head upon her shield.

This discovery inspired me to look at the figure of Medusa more deeply, more reverently. What is the wisdom that terrifies? Why the snakes? Why the petrifying open-eyed stare? And how does such a bringer of terrible wisdom feel about being rejected by her children as a “monster”?

So I hide
Behind this hissing curtain
Of hair.

One way to understand the snakes about Medusa’s head is as the awakened Kundalini energy, having risen from the base of the spine to the skull — something well-understood in the Mediterranean mystery schools of the ancient world. This vital, snake-like energy is the Goddess energy. Medusa, the Goddess, is the Snake Mother.

(The more monstrous aspect of Medusa can also be understood as a rageful expression of the Kundalini, the Divine Feminine energy, when it is repressed in society. A society that does not respect the strength and mystery of Woman, that does not allow the feminine energy to move freely, that society is lost in a state of calcifying fear. Too many societies see only the terrible Gorgon when looking at the Divine Mother.)

In my poem, Medusa has formed of this feminine life-energy a curtain, a veil that hides Her Face from a world not ready to bear witness to Her. This curtain is the veil of illusion that creates an artificial sense of separation between the world and the Divine.

And the curtain does indeed hiss. When you are quiet and your thoughts settle, we begin to hear a soft sound seeming to issue from the base of the skull. Initially, it sounds like a creaking or crackling noise, a white noise, a sort of a hissing. The deeper we go into silence, the more the sound resolves itself. Eventually, we recognize it permeating our whole body and all things.

We must pass through this hissing curtain in order to meet the deep truth waiting for us on the other side.

I still wait
For some bold, tired
      Wild child of mine,
Determined to die
Seeing what’s reflected
In my unblinking eye.

Medusa’s eye does not blink. This is partly what is so terrifying about her gaze. She stares boldly out and sees Reality as it is. She sees it plainly, fearlessly, and without interruption. There is no pause for interpretation or “filtering.” Medusa’s truth is raw. She is the Divine Mother who sees all of Her Creation in every living instant.

Looking in Medusa’s eye, what is it that we see reflected? Our own self, of course. And this truly is shattering, for we see the truth about ourselves. We see the unreality of the little self, the social self, the ego self we imagine ourselves to be. That little self is a phantom, a mental creation only.

Medusa, in her shattering wisdom, does not protect us from this realization. Her love will not allow us to struggle on with such a false notion holding us back from our true nature.

Seeing this truth, we die. The little self dies.

But, in dying to the little self, our true nature suddenly shines forth. The real Self, which is one with the Divine, emerges. Every aspect of ourselves that felt broken and that we labored so long to fix, is suddenly made whole. In fact, we realize that nothing was ever broken in the first place. That sense of incompleteness was the result of denying the vastness we already are while clinging to the illusion of the little self.

This is Medusa’s gift to Her children. This is Her terrible wisdom. It is the truth that blesses us through death, and then gives us greater life than we had previously imagined possible.

–

Halloween, Samhain, el Dia de los Muertos. The ancestors speak to us at this time, as do our fears. In this season we face the darkness, the unknown. We rediscover the hard truths we’ve exiled and encounter the possibilities we haven’t yet dreamed.

As a child, Halloween was always one of my favorite holidays. I loved the masks and costumes, toying with notions of self and identity, a game of hide-and-seek with the world. I loved the season, the chill breeze and thick sweaters, bare branches with a few bright leaves, the brilliant daylight, bold and brief, streaming through. And, I have to admit, I loved the giddy, creeping sense of death… along with the whispered question of what might lay beyond it.

Spirits, magic, monsters, and nighttime, they evoked in me a childish delight in the sense that there was something more to the world than seen in the daylight, something hidden, secret, another reality in the shadows. I felt the holiday tugging at me, my goosebumps an invitation into secret worlds…

It is said that at this time of year the veil between this world and the Otherworld thins, when we can reconnect with the spirits of our forerunners, when we can gain unexpected insight. It is a time of magic and reconnection and stepping into the unknown.

This is the time of year when the light of summer and the harvest season recedes, the days grow shorter, and the darkness of winter takes ascendance. This is the good darkness that balances the year. With darker, shorter, colder days, we are less active and turn inward. It summons us back to the cave of the self. In this internal, inturning time we gain insight and strength and, through endurance, find ourselves renewed and ready for the new light to come in springtime. This darkness is the time of spiritual practice that prepares us for the renewed light and life of springtime. For only in darkness does new life gestate. Only in darkness do our eyes learn to see.

Let’s honor those who came before us and made a way for us in the world. Let’s discover the unknown possibilities yet available to us. And let’s celebrate the good darkness — along with the hidden light and life we discover there!

Recommended Books: Ivan M. Granger

The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology)	This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World	Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey	For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics	Diamond Cutters: Visionary Poets in America, Britain & Oceania
More Books >>

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

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Who Knows What is Going On
by Juan Ramon Jimenez

English version by Robert Bly

      Who knows what is going on on the other side of each hour?

      I was thinking of the greatness of what was human,
and found myself in the divine.

— from The Winged Energy of Delight, Translated by Robert Bly

/ Image by Pramod Tiwari /

Who knows what is going on on the other side of each hour?

Isn’t that just a wonderful opening line? It’s one of those profound, enigmatic statements that can trip you up full stop, making the rest of the poem an afterthought.

But what is the poet saying? I think he’s encouraging us to not bring our assumptions to each experience in life. We have to encounter each experience, each hour, as it is, not as we expect it to be. This is why he turns our expectations on their head with lines like:

This rose was poison.

That sword gave life.

Every single moment holds its secret and is pregnant with surprise…

How many times the sunrise was
there, behind a mountain!

To approach life without the false certainty of what each experience holds requires a supreme humility. More than that, it requires courage, especially when things seem dark or hopeless. It requires us to cherish the unexpected possibilities of each encounter more deeply than our own accumulating history. It requires a silence of mind, a sense of wonder, and a restoration of our inherent innocence. And a boldness. But, when we truly learn to live this way, magic happens! We open ourselves and, in turn, the common things we encounter open themselves to us, revealing hidden worlds within…

I was thinking of the greatness of what was human,
and found myself in the divine.

Recommended Books: Juan Ramon Jimenez

The Winged Energy of Delight	The Soul is Here for its Own Joy: Sacred Poems from Many Cultures	News of the Universe: Poems of Twofold Consciousness	Invisible Reality	Time and Space: A Poetic Autobiography
More Books >>

Juan Ramon Jimenez Spain (1881 – 1958) Timeline Secular or Eclectic

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Credentials
by Daniel Berrigan

I would it were possible to state in so
few words my errand in the world: quite simply
forestalling all inquiry, the oak offers his leaves
largehandedly. And in winter his integral magnificent order
decrees, says solemnly who he is
in the great thrusting limbs that are all finally
one: a return, a permanent riverandsea.

So the rose is its own credential, a certain
unattainable effortless form: wearing its heart
visibly, it gives us heart too: bud, fullness and fall.

— from Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings (Modern Spiritual Masters), by Daniel Berrigan / Edited by John Dear

/ Image by Proseuche /

I have featured this poem before, but I find myself reading it again on this chilly October morning.

In this poem we are given a couple of images to illustrate how we should understand ourselves and be in the world. In other words, what are our credentials? By what authority and quality do we come into the world and act in the world?

Like the oak tree, we should offer our leaves “largehandedly,” giving fully of ourselves and our very nature to the world. And, in winter, in bareness, the essential form that we are comes through. By not holding back our true nature, by being fully ourselves, even when when the world demands all of us, that is when we “return” and recognize that we are part of a grand, harmonious unity, “a permanent riverandsea.”

We are our own credentials. Our credentials, our spiritual stamp of approval, is there within us, in our most natural form. I hear in the words of this Catholic priest and activist the question, how do we properly embody our “errand in the world”? How do we make it so our actions are not mere pretense? How do we instead come to embody the spirit which comes into the world through us in such a way that there is no division between being and expression?

Like the rose, we must unfold, be as we are, allowing our innermost heart to become visible, to be seen, to let its beauty be present in the world, bringing healing to the world and to ourselves. Effortless. Full. Strong. Guileless. Self-sacrificing.

So the rose is its own credential, a certain
unattainable effortless form: wearing its heart
visibly, it gives us heart too: bud, fullness and fall.

Have a beautiful day, with a blossoming heart.

Recommended Books: Daniel Berrigan

Daniel Berrigan: Essential Writings (Modern Spiritual Masters)	Prayer for the Morning Headlines: On the Sanctity of Life and Death	And the Risen Bread: Selected and New Poems 1957-1997	Tulips in the Prison Yard: Selected Poems of Daniel Berrigan	Prison Poems: Selected Poems of Daniel Berrigan

Daniel Berrigan US (1921 – 2016) Timeline Christian : Catholic

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An Exquisite Truth
by Hsu Yun

This is an exquisite truth:
Saints and ordinary folks are the same from the start.
Inquiring about a difference
Is like asking to borrow string
when you’ve got a good strong rope.
Every Dharma is known in the heart.
After a rain, the mountain colors intensify.
Once you become familiar with the design of fate’s illusions
Your ink-well will contain all of life and death.

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

/ Image by Alain Bonnardeaux /

I like what that opening statement says:

This is an exquisite truth:
Saints and ordinary folks are the same from the start.

Whether we’re talking about inspired reformers or shining examples of enlightenment, our instinct is to elevate great souls as unique phenomena. We assume they are somehow other than us. But the liberating and challenging truth is that saints are the same as everyone else. The only difference, if we want to call it a difference, is that they don’t cloak their nature as most of us have learned to do. We all have that same steady glow within us. A saint is simply someone who doesn’t damp it down.

Understood this way, the spiritual journey is not one of crushing effort to acquire virtues, to build wisdom, and to learn love. We already have all of that in abundance. The only work necessary is to let go of the assumptions that keep our true nature hidden.

Once you become familiar with the design of fate’s illusions
Your ink-well will contain all of life and death.

I think these are the lines I respond to most. I don’t know about you, but I spent so much of my life as a teenager and young adult feeling disappointed with where I found myself in the world. I wanted something profound, adventurous, bursting with meaning. Instead, I had a very ordinary lower middle-class American upbringing. I sabotaged my college education and decided to search for something deeper. Most of that search was a painful flailing about, but it did bring me adventures, both internal and external. I lived on Maui for several years. I lived high up in the Rocky Mountains. I’ve been homeless. I’ve had friends in wheelchairs, friends with wealth. I’ve known hippies and bikers and techies and farmers.

While all of that makes for good stories, that ache for something extraordinary just fell away the moment I first settled into a sense of spiritual opening. With that dawning of peace, I also found rest… and a profound sense of self-acceptance. It wasn’t that I had somehow changed into someone new and extraordinary. Instead, I felt profoundly myself for the first time, profoundly my ordinary self. And I can’t describe how blissful that recognition of ordinariness is. I no longer felt the constant need to struggle after the extraordinary; the simple and the plain stood revealed as a stunning work of art filling every day.

These lines by Hsu Yun about “fate’s illusions” remind me of how I spent the first three decades of my life struggling against my circumstances to find a fate with meaning, only to discover that the struggle was unnecessary. All I had to do was open my eyes. In every corner of the world, in every life, great and humble, the entire mystery of life and death can be found.

After a rain, the mountain colors intensify.

Recommended Books: Hsu Yun

The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology)	A Drifting Boat: Chinese Zen Poetry	A Pictoral Biography of the Venerable Master Hsu Yun	Empty Cloud: The Autobiography of Chinese Zen Master, Hsu Yun

Hsu Yun China (1839 – 1959) Timeline Buddhist : Zen / Chan

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A ghost in the mirror is the mind
by P’ang Yun (Layman P’ang)

English version by Ivan M. Granger

A ghost in the mirror is the mind:
Not there, yet not unreal.
When the mind is as it is,
      the world too simply is.
Grasping neither reality nor emptiness,
you are neither holy nor wise,
just an ordinary man done with his work.

/ Image by Peter Schulz /

When the mind is as it is,
      the world too simply is.

This is such a lovely statement that seems to feed so naturally into a serene state, but it is also saying something very powerful that overturns our common assumptions.

Most often we imagine that if our lives and society and the world as a whole would just settle down, then perhaps we could experience peace. And so we turn all of our efforts outward, trying to force a sense of peace in the world. That doesn’t usually work so well, does it?

It can get to the point that turning inward, prayer, meditation can feel like a betrayal, as if we are abandoning the outer world to chaos, while we selfishly seek a separate sense of peace.

But the strange truth is that we don’t create a peaceful environment and then experience peace. The reality is the reverse. We discover peace within, and only then can begin to build it outwardly. More surprising still is that we come to see that the “world” outside of ourselves as but a reflection of our own inner state. When we discover peace within, the world comes naturally to rest as well. Does that mean problems in the world disappear? No. But we recognize the peace that underlies even those problems, and we begin to see new ways to coax that peace to the surface. At peace, in peace, we invite peace.

Grasping neither reality nor emptiness,

just an ordinary man done with his work.

We no longer feel the need to do something to validate our existence; we undeniably are. No work remains to be done. One may still be active in the world, but there is no “work” behind it, simply the dance of stillness, presence, and flow. Observers may disagree, but you understand that all that seemed important about your identity has trickled away, and you have become unremarkable, purely as you are — an ordinary fellow, alive in this extraordinary world.

Recommended Books: P’ang Yun (Layman P’ang)

This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World	The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry	Haiku Enlightenment: New Expanded Edition	The Sayings of Layman P’ang: A Zen Classic

P’ang Yun (Layman P’ang) China (740? – 808) Timeline Buddhist : Zen / Chan

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To the utterly at-one with Siva
by Devara Dasimayya

English version by A. K. Ramanujan

To the utterly at-one with Siva
there’s no dawn,
no new moon,
no noonday,
nor equinoxes,
nor sunsets,
nor full moons;

O Ramanatha.

— from Speaking of Siva, by A K Ramanujan

/ Image by whologwhy /

To the utterly at-one with Siva…

That line stops me in my tracks each time I read it. Do you have the same reaction?

there’s no dawn,
no new moon,
no noonday…

Time and the phenomenal experiences that move through time are seen as glimmerings on the surface of the immense, still sea of the Eternal. Days and seasons, action and reaction exist only for the unsettled ego-self. For the true Self, which is “utterly at-one with Siva,” there is only Siva, there is only the Eternal. Dawn and sunset, new moon and full moon, time and motion, all of these are simply Siva’s ornaments fluctuating in timelessness.

This is another way of saying there is no separation in Reality. The new moon pours into the full moon, the glow of dawn naturally builds to noon’s blaze and fills the sunset with its sleepy glory. They are not separate objects or events, but a single continuity witnessed from different perspectives. They are one. They are shifting glimmerings upon the surface of the Eternal.

Truly realizing this, we recognize that wherever we are is the holiest place in the universe: right here, right now. There is no fundamental difference or distance between the ground under our feet and the most sacred pilgrimage spot. They are the same, part of the same continuity of existence. Your “front yard / is the true Benares.”

===

Ask yourself:
Are you one who seeks
or one who finds?

A few days ago I pulled a copy of my book Gathering Silence from the bookshelf and I have begun reading it again.

Regardless of belief,
everyone is agnostic
until gnosis.

Maybe saying I have been reading it is not the right description, since it isn’t a book meant to be read page after page front to back. Rather, I have been finding quiet moments to open to a random page and then reading the sayings that come up.

Love and compassion are effortless.
The soul is exhausted by its effort
to stop the natural outpouring
of the living heart.

While The Longing in Between, with it’s collection of poems and commentaries and personal stories, has always been my best selling book, Gathering Silence, with its short poetic statements and lovely collages by Rashani Réa, is among the more overlooked of my publications. Yet, for me, this is one of my strongest works. It sings to me somehow.

Enough deals and half-measures!
Hand everything over
to that divine ember
burning in your chest!

Each time I leaf through its pages, I have the strange experience of not always recognizing the author.

How can you settle into yourself
without
self-acceptance?

I regularly find myself thrown into deep contemplation by the words I find within its pages and wonder who wrote them.

What the heart recognizes
as liberation,
the ego sees
as theft.

I like to think Gathering Silence finds its audience in its own time.

We don’t take the final step.
It takes us.

Have a beautiful day!

Recommended Books: Devara Dasimayya

Speaking of Siva

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Every Shaped Thing
by Ivan M. Granger

Sighing,
every shaped thing
turns
heavenward.

I can only
point
up.”

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

/ Image by Anne Nygard /

It has been a while since I featured one of my own poems. I have been thinking again about wealth and desire and accumulation, and this poem returned to me.

I wrote this poem when I lived on Maui years ago. I had just finished a meditation and stepped outside to gaze at the forest of eucalyptus trees. Slowly looking around, I saw how everything is reaching, turning, pointing heavenward. The material world, when objectified can become a confusing tangle of solidity, separation, and objects of desire, but in that moment, with my mind at rest and my eyes clear, the world danced before me, filled with a golden light. And I saw that while the world hides the Eternal, at the same time it ardently reveals it.

In that pure moment it was clear to me that everything is giddy with its own inner light. Consciously or unconsciously, everything is always orienting itself toward the light from which it draws its own life. All of creation — every person, every thing, even every idea, “every shaped thing” — is just a reflection of the divine radiance present everywhere.

That beauty, that luminosity is both the snare and the key for us as souls active within the material world.

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

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

When we learn to see in gold the glimmer of the sun, then we see that everything shines — everything! — ourselves included. It is not possessing that object or experience that we desire, it is that we ache to recognize and participate in that glow. And everything glows. Recognizing this is when the heart is truly satisfied and comes to rest.

Recommended Books: Ivan M. Granger

The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology)	This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World	Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey	For Lovers of God Everywhere: Poems of the Christian Mystics	Diamond Cutters: Visionary Poets in America, Britain & Oceania
More Books >>

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

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No use fretting over gold, beauty or fame;
by Loy Ching-Yuen

English version by Thomas Cleary

No use fretting over gold, beauty or fame;
Nurturing these, how can we calm
Our fluttering heart?
Non attachment brings deep truth,
And a truthful nature brings immortality.
Empty your heart,
Sit quietly on a mat.
In meditation we become one with All;
Tao billows like the vapors
In a mountain valley,
And its supernatural power wafts into our soul.

/ Image by Jan Canty /

A reminder to us all from a modern Taoist master to keep our life priorities straight. I like this poem’s calm clarity.

Fretting over “gold, beauty or fame…” What does that get us? Even if we succeed and attain wealth or attention, it is tainted by the ingrained habit of fretting. The satisfaction we hoped for slips away almost immediately. And each of those things will inevitably shift and recede in the cycles of time anyway — and we know it, so acquisition is tainted by the fear of loss. Having poured so much life energy into their pursuit, there is no peace or enjoyment, just a “fluttering heart.”

No use fretting over gold, beauty or fame;
Nurturing these, how can we calm
Our fluttering heart?

The human soul recoils from loss. The sticky self, having grown attached to the objects of its desires, views their loss as a loss of some part of itself. Because of attachment, each loss is perceived as a death. Yet this is a fluid world, a world of comings and goings. To the self that endlessly identifies with external things, it is a world of a thousand small deaths. Amidst the constant fear of death, the truth of one’s eternal nature is lost.

Empty your heart,
Sit quietly on a mat.
In meditation we become one with All

The solution, Loy Ching-Yuen reminds us, is in non-attachment:

Non attachment brings deep truth,
And a truthful nature brings immortality.

Non-attachment here does not necessarily mean renunciation, becoming a monk or living in a mountain cave somewhere. Non-attachment means non-identification. A person, an experience, or an object may be important, and is therefore to be cherished. But our fundamental identity remains settled within the heart. External movements do not tug at our sense of self. We can witness reality as it is from the supreme security of our true nature.

Loss and death have no claim on us. This is Loy Ching-Yuen’s immortality.

And it is naturally so. It doesn’t even require work on our part. We must simply, quietly watch the process happen.

Tao billows like the vapors
In a mountain valley,
And its supernatural power wafts into our soul.

Recommended Books: Loy Ching-Yuen

The Essential Mystics: Selections from the World’s Great Wisdom Traditions	The Book of the Heart: Embracing the Tao	The Supreme Way: Inner Teachings of the Southern Mountain Tao

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The Way It Is
by Lynn Ungar

One morning you might wake up
to realize that the knot in your stomach
had loosened itself and slipped away,
and that the pit of unfilled longing in your heart
had gradually, and without your really noticing,
been filled in — patched like a pothole, not quite
the same as it was, but good enough.

And in that moment it might occur to you
that your life, though not the way
you planned it, and maybe not even entirely
the way you wanted it, is nonetheless —
persistently, abundantly, miraculously —
exactly what it is.

— from Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems, Edited by Phyllis Cole-Dai / Edited by Ruby R. Wilson

/ Image by Dmitry Ganin /

I love this poem. It speaks from a place of gentle awareness of one’s self and one’s life.

One morning you might wake up
to realize that the knot in your stomach
had loosened itself and slipped away…

I think there is a tendency toward self dissatisfaction, something feels wrong, incomplete, imperfect. This is especially true for those of us who see ourselves on a spiritual journey. Perhaps we even use that feeling as motivation on our spiritual journey. It can be needed fuel.

But the years teach us that that feeling becomes a trap, a form of self-cruelty. Our lives can feel like a series of disappointments. Worse, we see ourselves as failures. And no amount of religious or spiritual practice seems to fix that feeling.

The thing is, there is no perfect “fix” for the feeling. Yes, the way we live in the world, the way we cultivate our inner awareness, these help, but they don’t fully untangle that Gordion knot. You know what does? Restful, non-reactive, non-judgmental self-awareness. Pausing from all our efforts and just noticing who we are, what we are, what our lives are.

When we do that, a surprising thing happens: We begin to see an underlying wholeness, even when there is no obvious reason for it to be there.

And in that moment it might occur to you
that your life, though not the way
you planned it, and maybe not even entirely
the way you wanted it, is nonetheless —
persistently, abundantly, miraculously —
exactly what it is.

All the anxieties and harsh judgments we have held in our bodies just somehow dissipate. All the mental projections of what we wanted but didn’t get or what we got but didn’t want, drop like a shadow screen before our eyes and we see things simply as they are. It may not fit the grand heroic story we have held in the mind for so long, but what is actually there is telling its own story, a story of fullness.

Let’s pay attention to that story. Let it bring healing.

=

I know there are terrible tragedies unfolding in the world right now. Find some quiet moments — and radiate love into the world. Don’t try to mentally solve the world’s problems in that moment. Don’t react or tighten up in anger. Just radiate love.

Don’t even “radiate” love, since that might imply that you are pushing love out from some limited personal reservoir. The love is there, already, and in abundance. Allow it through. Step aside in your quiet moments and let the love flood through you into the the parched world. See what magic it can accomplish.

Sending love to you all!

Recommended Books: Lynn Ungar

Bread and Other Miracles	Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems	Blessing the Bread: Meditations

Lynn Ungar US (Contemporary) Christian Secular or Eclectic

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I find you, Lord, in all Things and in all
by Rainer Maria Rilke

English version by Stephen Mitchell

I find you, Lord, in all Things and in all
my fellow creatures, pulsing with your life;
as a tiny seed you sleep in what is small
and in the vast you vastly yield yourself.

The wondrous game that power plays with Things
is to move in such submission through the world:
groping in roots and growing thick in trunks
and in treetops like a rising from the dead.

— from Ahead of All Parting: The Selected Poetry and Prose of Rainer Maria Rilke, Translated by Stephen Mitchell

/ Image by Ben Fredericson /

This is a poem I have featured before, but I found myself reading it this morning and decided that it was a good one to share with you again…

and in the vast you vastly yield yourself.

Isn’t that a magical line? In the second verse Rilke is really saying something of deep insight about about what real power is:

The wondrous game that power plays with Things
is to move in such submission through the world…

The “power” he is talking about is obviously not power over, not the domination of the warlord or the predator. Following on his first verse, we can read power as the power of the “Lord, in all Things.” It is the power of life itself, awareness, presence. Rilke’s use of the word “power,” makes us question the assumptions of common language: Perhaps this gentle presence is real power, rather than the fleeting assertion of force and fear.

This real power plays a game in the world of things. It expresses its power through submission, rather than control. Like water, it yields and so finds its destination. It allows, and so fulfills its purpose. It is supremely humble, and so is humbly present everywhere, in all things, without prejudice or rejection. It rises from the lowest to the highest, vivifying everything it touches–

groping in roots and growing thick in trunks
and in treetops like a rising from the dead.

This power flowing through us and all our “fellow creatures” binds us all with the same life. You’ll notice, it is not even our life at all. Rilke says “your life,” the Lord’s life. It is something we participate in, a current we ride as it flows through us and the world, but it is not our own. Rilke is hinting at a larger vision in which there is only one Life flowing through a million “Things.”

Hildegard von Bingen, the great medieval mystic, called this the viriditas or greening power of God.

Too much of our relationship with the natural world is built on ideas of separation and domination. Such foolishness can only ever harm us. When we see clearly, we see as Rilke does that we are part of the same shared Life. To harm the natural world is to rebel against God. Is that language too religiously loaded? Reread Rilke’s poem, and then think about it.

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

Every Day as Wide as a Field
by Naomi Shihab Nye

1

And there were so many more poems to read!
Countless friends to listen to.
We didn’t have to be in the same room—
the great modern magic.
Everywhere together now.
Even scared together now
from all points of the globe
which lessened it somehow.
Hopeful together too, exchanging
winks in the dark, the little lights blinking.
When your hope shrinks
you might feel the hope of
someone far away lifting you up.
Hope is the thing…
Hope was always the thing!
What else did we give each other
from such distances?
Breath of syllables,
sing to me from your balcony
please! Befriend me
in the deep space.
When you paused for a poem
it could reshape the day
you had just been living.

/ Image by Tito Rollis /

A poem today by the wonderful Palestinian-American poet, Naomi Shihab Nye.

Standing outside
staring at a tree
gentles our eyes

Aren’t those wonderful opening lines?

I encourage you to say the lines out loud. Standing. Staring. That alliteration, with the “st-st.” And a secondary level of alliteration with the use of the “t” sound in nearly every word of these first few lines. We can play with the lines on our tongue. St-anding. St-aring. Out-side. T-ree. Gent-les.

And then we remember to pay attention to the words, what they are saying.

She gives us permission to pause and gaze at a tree. It “gentles” our eyes. That line works on two levels. Looking at the tree makes our gaze and, more generally, our awareness gentler — somehow kinder to the world and to ourselves, at ease, at peace. But it also suggests that contemplating a tree tames the eyesight and, by extension, the mind. Do we let the eyes go wild and slice up reality into parcels that the erratic mind can then choose to latch onto or ignore? By resting with a patient green neighbor, we train the mind to cease its evasions and grasping, taming it to encounter the present moment.

Minds stretching

beyond the field
become
their own skies

We expand. The world around us opens.

Words can become windows. A poem a doorway.

Look through a word
swing that sentence
wide open

We just have to quiet down, so we can notice which phrases want to open for us — then we step through.

Kneeling outside
to find
sturdy green

glistening blossoms
under the breeze
that carries us silently

The second section of the poem seems to step back and give is a broader sense of what she is saying:

And there were so many more poems to read!
Countless friends to listen to.

Poetry. Friends. Poems as friends. Friends speaking to us through poetry, through space, through time.

Coming together, a shared community which invites us to join in. When we feel disconnected, words of wisdom, words of kindness, words of vision reconnect us.

Hope is the thing …
Hope was always the thing!

Shared hopes. Or, when hope eludes us, shared fears. The whole human experience. Sharing allows us to recognize ourselves in each other. Seeing deeply into another, we come to know ourselves more fully.

That’s where real transformation happens. When we allow ourselves to slip into the awareness of our shared being, as a good poem invites us to do, doors open in us.

When you paused for a poem
it could reshape the day
you had just been living.

=

A reminder to myself: Ivan, challenge yourself to connect with and protect vulnerable outsiders in your community. Learn to balance inner peace with a fiery voice and firm action. Raise good trouble. Upset the people you have to. Kindle a kind heart.

More poetry by Naomi Shihab Nye

What Was
by Ala al-Dawla Simnani

English version by David and Sabrineh Fideler

Once I was here,
but now “I” am not:

If I have any body —
If I have any soul —
then, without question,
      it could only be you.

— from Love’s Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition, Translated by David Fideler / Translated by Sabrineh Fideler

/ Image by Imad Alassiry /

With the headlines filled with war and mass traumas, the playing out of the death urge on the global stage, it is often difficult to select a poem for the Poetry Chaikhana. Certainly there are many great poems on war and death, but those have general not been the focus of the of the Poetry Chaikhana. I tend to highlight poems of individual mystical awakening, that flash of insight, the flood of bliss, the overwhelming sense of wholeness and harmony. Should we even try to make room for such poems in a time of upheaval and fear?

I think the answer is that our spiritual journey must incorporate the fullness of this human experience, even war, even injustice. This doesn’t mean that we accept what is cruel or harmful or increases suffering, but we cannot pretend that it is not playing out in the moment. We can do our best to see it honestly for what it is, why it is there, and begin to nurture mature and patient remedies — first within ourselves and individuals, then allowing ourselves to become medicine for the wider world. Be distrusting of solutions that are quick or external. Balance is always found at the center point, within. This is true for societies and cultures as much as for individuals.

Today I feature a poem not of war but of spiritual selflessness by a Persian Sufi poet, that is by a poet from Iran.

Once I was here,
but now “I” am not

Do you feel it? That sense of “I” and “me” how thin and intangible they are when you really look?

We spend most of our life energy asserting that this thing, this “me” is IMPORTANT. The problem is that that “me” is not real. The more we look for it, the more it retreats. When we finally corner it, it simply fades away, dispelled like a trick of light. What are we left with?

There is a self, but it is not a limited or selfish self. To some it borders on blasphemy to call this real Self a self at all, implying some personal possession of something so all-inclusive. Some prefer to call this center of being not “me,” but You — the Friend, the ever-present Beloved. While the “me” struts and shouts and grabs, it cannot make of itself a real and lasting thing. But that You remains, always there, waiting patiently for the braggart self to tire of its own voice and step aside.

In the way of your love,
nothing was left —
neither body nor soul.

Everything we thought we owned, everything we ascribed to that “me,” even the body itself, they all cease to be limited objects of the mind when the me itself is recognized as unreal. Body, self– these are seen, not as things that “I” am or possess, but as part of a fluid continuum of the greater You. Everything stops being things, and is, instead, a grand embodiment of the Eternal.

If I have any body —
If I have any soul —
then, without question,
      it could only be you.

Have a beautiful day enrobed in the Beloved.

Recommended Books: Ala al-Dawla Simnani

Love’s Alchemy: Poems from the Sufi Tradition	The Throne Carrier of God: The Life and Thought of ‘Ala’ Ad-Dawla As-Simnani

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Bewildered
by Kahlil Gibran

This would I have you remember in remembering me:
That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined.
Is it not your breath that has erected and hardened the structure of you bones?
And is it not a dream which none of you remember having dreamt, that builded your city and fashioned all there is in it?
Could you but see the tides of that breath you would cease to see all else,
And if you could hear the whispering of the dream you would hear no other sound.

— from The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran

/ Image by Cody Black /

I hadn’t read this poem by Kahlil Gibran in some time. His words have a rare quality of directly confronting our self-doubts and fears, and then elevating us with such gentleness. He manages to rearrange our reflexive view of things in a way that is almost playful yet without discounting soul’s fears. That’s the transformative medicine of some poetry.

Rereading the words I originally wrote more than ten years ago to accompany this poem, they still fit–

It’s been a difficult week for a lot of people. Some weeks, vulnerabilities just get triggered, and life’s solid certainties fade and shift about. If it’s been that sort of week for you, don’t take it too personally. It’s going about. Sometimes we’re just being reminded to breathe, to allow the dream to reshape itself. When we listen for the breath, we participate in its rhythm. And from that soft rhythm our world is daily reborn.

That which seems most feeble and bewildered in you is the strongest and most determined.

Have a beautiful day!

Recommended Books: Kahlil Gibran

The Prophet	The Beloved: Reflections on the Path of the Heart	Broken Wings	Jesus the Son of Man	Kahlil Gibran: His Life & World
More Books >>

Kahlil Gibran Lebanon/US (1883 – 1931) Timeline Christian Secular or Eclectic

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My daily activity is not unusual
by P’ang Yun (Layman P’ang)

English version by Satyavayu

My daily activity is not unusual;
I just remain in spontaneous harmony.
Not grasping or rejecting,
nothing left to assert or oppose.
What use are fancy titles
and expensive clothes of vermilion and purple?
This entire mountain is free
of even a speck of dust.
Supernatural powers and miraculous activity:
fetching water and carrying firewood

/ Image by Alexander Klimm /

Something quiet today. A reminder to us of the magic found in our ordinary moments.

My daily activity is not unusual;
I just remain in spontaneous harmony.

When the mind comes to rest and ceases to kick up its own dust, we can finally, perhaps for the first time, see reality in its most beautiful, clear form.

This entire mountain is free
of even a speck of dust.

That’s when the miraculousness of each moment reveals itself.

Supernatural powers and miraculous activity:
fetching water and carrying firewood

So much beauty awaits us just beneath the disruptions of the mind. Whatever work we have before us, even when difficult or frightening, in whatever world we find ourselves moving through, let us set aside time to quiet down and truly see. We can deny the truth. We can cover it over with busyness and cruelty. But don’t be fooled. Heaven is barely held in by the surface rind of reality.

Recommended Books: P’ang Yun (Layman P’ang)

This Dance of Bliss: Ecstatic Poetry from Around the World	The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry	Haiku Enlightenment: New Expanded Edition	The Sayings of Layman P’ang: A Zen Classic

P’ang Yun (Layman P’ang) China (740? – 808) Timeline Buddhist : Zen / Chan

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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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