Oct 31 2025
dispell
Consensus reality
is a facade
of words.
Dis-spell it.
Oct 17 2025
Juan Ramon Jimenez – Who Knows What is Going On
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?
How many times the sunrise was
there, behind a mountain!
How many times the brilliant cloud piling up far off
was already a golden body full of thunder!
This rose was poison.
That sword gave life.
I was thinking of a flowery meadow
at the end of a road,
and found myself in the slough.
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
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Juan Ramon Jimenez
Spain (1881 – 1958) Timeline |
Oct 09 2025
Daniel Berrigan – Credentials
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
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Daniel Berrigan |
Oct 09 2025
Use everything
Use everything:
Joy, fear, success, suffering.
A seeker doesn’t have the luxury
to waste their journey in pursuit
of easy, grand experiences.
Sep 26 2025
Hsu Yun – An Exquisite Truth
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.
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Hsu Yun
China (1839 – 1959) Timeline |
Sep 26 2025
Love everyone and everything
Love everyone and everything
with the last ounce of your being.
Love all until you are shattered
by love
and only love remains.
Sep 12 2025
Layman P’ang – A ghost in the mirror
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,
Enlightened awareness is not a game of carefully constructed definitions. It is not a feat of the intellect, which tends to separate and categorize perceived reality. Even at its most subtle and incisive, when the intellect tries to separate the real from the non-real, it is setting up a filter upon the awareness.
When the mind is truly at peace, not only have thoughts come to a rest, but more importantly those unconscious mental filters no longer pre-sift our perception of reality.
The poet seems to be describing a trail for us to follow, a path found precisely where existence meets Nirvana, and we must gracefully walk between the two.
Without clinging to either “reality” or “emptiness,” the whole and unfiltered vision comes upon us.
Engulfed by this truth, we are not “wise” or “holy” — those are further categories. No, we just are. We are not this or that, we are.
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)
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| 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 | |
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P’ang Yun (Layman P’ang)
China (740? – 808) Timeline |
Sep 05 2025
Devara Dasimayya – To the utterly at-one with Siva
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;
his front yard
is the true Benares,
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
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| Speaking of Siva | ||||
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Devara Dasimayya
India (10th Century) Timeline |
Aug 22 2025
Ivan M. Granger – Every Shaped Thing
Every Shaped Thing
by Ivan M. Granger
Sighing,
every shaped thing
turns
heavenward.
Your altar
cannot seat
the thousand thousand
idols.
Holding them,
what do you have?
Each gilded god
says:
“I am
impoverished
by the sun.
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
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Ivan M. Granger
US (1969 – ) |
Aug 22 2025
God technology
Religion is not a fixed collection
of beliefs and rituals.
Religion, properly understood,
is a living technology
for experiencing God.
Aug 08 2025
Loy Ching-Yuen – No use fretting
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
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| 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 | ||
| Loy Ching-Yuen |
Aug 08 2025
compassion & self-awareness
Compassion
isn’t so much a virtue
as it is a form of
self-awareness.
Aug 01 2025
Lynn Ungar – The Way It Is
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!
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| Bread and Other Miracles | Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness Poems | Blessing the Bread: Meditations | ||
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Lynn Ungar
US (Contemporary) |