Poetry Chaikhana Blog

The vast flood
by Ikkyu

English version by R. H. Blyth

The vast flood
Rolls onward
But yield yourself,
And it floats you upon it.

— from Zen and Zen Classics, by R. H. Blyth

/ Image by bimjo /

This short poem feels like it is saying a lot.

The vast flood
Rolls onward

Day after day, experience after experience, terrors and tragedies, joys and victories, everything — life. It can feel like an onslaught. Most of us learn to dampen down the awareness in order to cope and mimic those around us.

Yet even with dimmed senses we feel overwhelmed.

But yield yourself,
And it floats you upon it.

This is the liberating wisdom of surrender.

Most of our intense efforts in life, whether directed toward work, family, even spirituality, are about trying to control the flow of life. We want to master the flood, bring it under our will. We want to tame it so we can be safe.

But it never really works.

This lifelong effort is like a duck on a great river who imagines he controls the current by the action of his paddling feet. When he happens to face downstream — Amazing! The river goes just where he commanded! When he turns left or right, he imagines that he needs to increase his effort and improve his technique to get the river flowing where he wants. And when he turns upstream — Calamity! He has lost control of the river.

Or… he can just sit on top of the river and let its current carry him.

Yielding ourselves to this great river, no longer imagining that we control it, we can finally begin to discover its true nature and direction — and beauty. We come to see its flow as a unifying harmony and not a threat. Importantly, we notice our natural buoyancy. We are built to float upon it.

Recommended Books: Ikkyu (Ikkyu Sojun)

Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter	Haiku Enlightenment: New Expanded Edition	The Poetry of Zen: (Shambhala Library)	Crow With No Mouth: Fifteenth Century Zen Master Ikkyu	Zen and Zen Classics
More Books >>

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

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The smallest thing,
properly gazed upon with the whole self,
unmasks itself as the Beloved.

The night’s journey
by Abu al-Hasan al-Shushtari

English version by Stephen Hirtenstein

You who look in the mirror.
      Do you see whom you see there?
Is the looker someone other than you,
      or a reflection of your fantasy?
Turn your glance toward the glance itself,
      for it holds wisdom concealed from the others.
When day breaks, may people
      praise the night’s journey.

/ Image by Rishab Dharmani /

I am just beginning to discover and explore the poetry of al-Shushtari. He is a fascinating poet and mystic who, like ibn Arabi, was from Andalusia, that is, Spain when it was under Muslim rule. He was a Sufi who taught a radically unified vision of reality in which only God exists. Everything one might perceive, every person, every place, even finally oneself, is really just a passing phenomenon within the single reality that is God. We might say his poetry and teachings were a sort of non-dualism that can be compared in some ways to other non-dualist traditions, such as Advaita in India.

In fact, these lines sound like statements that could have been made by the famous 20th century Hindu Advaita teacher, Ramana Maharshi.

You who look in the mirror.
      Do you see whom you see there?
Is the looker someone other than you,
      or a reflection of your fantasy?

I think the real power of this short selection is in the lines:

Turn your glance toward the glance itself,
      for it holds wisdom concealed from the others.

At first it sounds like a riddle that can’t be solved, almost a Zen koan (another non-dualist tradition). How can you “turn your glance toward the glance itself”?

Let’s back up for a moment and contemplate the image al-Shushtari has given us. We are looking in a mirror gazing at the face — our own face — reflected back at us. But is it our face? Reach out to touch your face and your fingers hit hard glass. It is a reflection, after all, a play of light on a reflective surface. It is not actually our face, but an image that represents our face. So is it really our face or a “fantasy,” a semblance? When we finally see through the illusion and recognize that the reflection is not actually our face we have to then accept that we have never seen our own face, and we never will.

The more deeply we work with this fundamental psychic dilemma, our certainty about who or what we are begins to slip. We cannot see ourselves, but– we can see ourselves seeing. We think of ourselves as this eye perceiving the world, this face fronting the world, this body interacting with the world. What if, instead, we are life moving through this body? What if we are this magical act of seeing happening through the eye? When we stop looking at the face in the mirror, saying, “That is me,” and begin to notice the one looking through us our identity radically shifts and we come to know ourselves for the first time. We open to reality in was previously unimaginable and see everything as a living, glowing, blissful interconnectedness. And only That is real. The pretense drops and everything “else” is seen as a play of appearance within that light — like a face reflected in the mirror.

When day breaks, may people
      praise the night’s journey.

Have a beautiful day!

==

There is not a lot of information available in English about al-Shushtari right now. You can probably find the book Songs of Love and Devotion, by Lourdes Maria Alvarez. There is also a very good video about al-Shushtari on Filip Holm’s YouTube channel Let’s Talk Religion: https://youtu.be/Te-ohX1qfHs?si=QNClire3DaPJlZ_a. I highly recommend his channel for a broad exploration of religious and mystical thought from various cultures.

Recommended Books: Abu al-Hasan al- Shushtari

Abu al’Hasan al-Shushtari: Songs of Love and Devotion

Abu al-Hasan al- Shushtari Spain (1212 – 1269) Timeline Muslim / Sufi

More poetry by Abu al-Hasan al- Shushtari

Not suppression.
Not separation.
Integration.

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

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

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

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

/ Image by Shahram Sharif /

It is the summer solstice. A gorgeous morning here in Oregon, a day that inspires me to step outside and feel utter gratitude for simply being…

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

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

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

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

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

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

i who have died and am alive again today.

Have an amazing day!

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

When we don’t practice gratitude,
the world around us seems alien and unwelcoming,
and we shut down in self-protection.

Gratitude opens us to reality.

Smaller than the smallest mote
by Tukaram

English version by Ivan M. Granger

Smaller than the smallest mote,
All embracing as the heavens,
I finally see the world as it is —
All appearance but a dream.
Realizing the true nature of things,
I drop my mask like a snake shedding its skin.
I leave the three-fold nature of things behind me,
as I pass beyond them.
Miraculously, this dull clay has been shaped, formed into a lamp
      and begins to shine!
Filled with that radiance, I Tuka
Live to light the world.

/ Image by Alejandro /

I am rebounding from the oral surgery, but it went well. I already notice the difference of no longer carrying the hidden weight of a dental infection in the body. That endless dance of balance with the body and the light that shines through it…

I like this short abhang by the great Vishnu devotee, Tukaram.

I finally see the world as it is —
All appearance but a dream.

The experience of sudden opening is very much like waking up. We thought we saw clearly within our dream, but then we surprise ourselves by actually opening our eyes.

It is as if we have been drifting through life in a dream state and just not known it. Nothing around us has changed, but we finally, truly see things as they are. The dream-like barrier of mental filters and projections that has stifled our perception for so long falls away like a heavy blanket. We blink, look around, and are surprised to realize we’ve been in a sort of half-seeing trance all our life… and now we are awake.

Realizing the true nature of things,
I drop my mask like a snake shedding its skin.

Not only do we see the world through a filter upon the awareness, we also raise this same veil across our own faces. We mask ourselves — from ourselves, from others, most of all, from the Divine. We hide ourselves and become aliens within our own being.

Real spiritual opening occurs when we become honest and humble with ourselves (“smaller than the smallest mote”), when we drop our games and evasions, when we allow ourselves to be naked. That is when we truly come to know ourselves. The reality is more stunning than we imagined: In that supreme humility, we discover that we are immense, boundaryless beings. We finally see that we are “all embracing as the heavens.”

Miraculously, this dull clay has been shaped, formed into a lamp
      and begins to shine!

Alive to this new, ageless sense of self, one is bathed in light, filled with light. Light pours through you. Somehow, miraculously, this dense body has been refashioned into a vessel through which that light shines.

Filled with that radiance, I Tuka
Live to light the world.

Recommended Books: Tukaram

Poetry for the Spirit: Poems of Universal Wisdom and Beauty	Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey	Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West	Says Tuka: Selected Poetry of Tukaram	Wild Poets of Ecstasy: An Anthology of Ecstatic Verse
More Books >>

Tukaram India (1608 – 1649) Timeline Yoga / Hindu : Vaishnava (Krishna/Rama)

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The final key
to the final door
is finally found within yourself.
This is the rule.

The Lake Isle of Innisfree
by William Butler Yeats

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

— from The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats, by William Butler Yeats

/ Image by hideraldo dwight leitao /

A few days ago I was standing beneath a tree covered in late spring blossoms. Standing there enveloped in the perfumed shade, I slowed down enough to hear the hum of the bees who were contentedly at work among the tree’s flowers. As I listened more deeply, the the beesong surrounded me until it seemed as if I felt it vibrating within my body.

I thought of this poem by Yeats and his bee-loud glade… a portrait of peace.

I love the rhythms of this poem. To really appreciate it, you need to say it aloud and slowly. Let it roll off the tongue.

Yeats paints with his words, running them together like brushstrokes in watercolor.

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made:
Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

What stands out more is how Yeats awakens our sense of hearing against a background of silence:

…the bee-loud glade.

I hear the lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore

And finally–

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

To me, this is a poem about quiet, slowing down, and listening with all our senses.

In the beauty of this rustic scene, we discover something of the eternal in the sounds and rhythms of the world around us.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow

Recommended Books: William Butler Yeats

The Oxford Book of English Mystical Verse	Holy Fire: Nine Visionary Poets and the Quest for Enlightenment	The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats	Byzantium	The Secret Rose
More Books >>

William Butler Yeats Ireland (1865 – 1939) Timeline Secular or Eclectic Primal/Tribal/Shamanic : Celtic

More poetry by William Butler Yeats

Action proceeds from stillness.

The Place of Rest
by AE (George William Russell)

The soul is its own witness and its own refuge.

Where the last anguish deepens — there
The fire of beauty smites through pain:
A glory moves amid despair,
The Mother takes her child again.

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

/ Image by Karsten Winegeart /

Several of those phrases resonate in my mind:

Unto the deep the deep heart goes…

…the unwounding vast…

And what a beautiful evocation of the mystic’s inner quiet:

It seeks a deeper silence still;
It folds itself around with peace,
Where thoughts alike of good or ill
In quietness unfostered cease.

But I think the final verse it what especially draws my interest:

Where the last anguish deepens — there
The fire of beauty smites through pain:
A glory moves amid despair,
The Mother takes her child again.

At a certain point, the courage to face pain becomes central to spiritual awakening. This is not where we grit our teeth and endure, but we must relax into it. We must allow ourselves to truly feel that pain, to yield to it… to accept it. Here’s why: The inner pain we all experience is ultimately recognized as the illusory perception of one’s separation from the Eternal. But that pain itself is the doorway to reunion. It is only by looking straight at the illusion that we begin to see through it. By allowing oneself to become completely vulnerable to our pain, to surrender to it, the mystic finds the pain transformed into the blissful touch of the Beloved.

For this reason, mystics and saints describe the pain as being “sweet” or joyful or beautiful… and the path to escape from pain — “there / The fire of beauty smites through the pain.”

Unto the deep the deep heart goes…

Recommended Books: AE (George William Russell)

The Longing in Between: Sacred Poetry from Around the World (A Poetry Chaikhana Anthology)	Wild Poets of Ecstasy: An Anthology of Ecstatic Verse	Collected Poems of George William Russell	By Still Waters: Lyrical Poems Old and New	The Nuts of Knowledge: Lyrical Poems Old and New
More Books >>

AE (George William Russell) Ireland (1867 – 1935) Timeline Secular or Eclectic

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Absolutism is not an expression of faith,
it is a symptom of a lack of faith.

Within This Body
by Tulsi Sahib

English version by Ivan M. Granger

Within this body
breathes the secret essence.
Within this body
beats the heart of the Vedas.

Realize this, and you’ve found your freedom
      (while teachers trapped in tradition
      know only the mirage
            in the mirror).

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

/ Image by vaticanus /

This poem really cuts right through the delusion of fundamentalism on the one hand—

Seers and sages perfectly parrot
the scriptures and holy books,
      blinded by knowledge.

–and being overly enamored with spiritual practices and rituals, on the other–

Their pilgrimage,
      and fasting,
      and striving
            but delude.

This is not to say that one should not study sacred texts or that we should ignore the value of spiritual practices. The problem is that it’s easy to forget what their true purpose is. Sacred writing, sacred striving, they are signposts that remind us to turn inward and discover the true heart that shines with the light of the universe.

Within this body
breathes the secret essence.
Within this body
beats the heart of the Vedas.

Within this body
shines the entire Universe,
      so the saints say.

If we just memorize words or pray in the mountains, even if we do it perfectly, we are idolizing the trappings of spirituality, without understanding, without making the real journey. This is one of the reasons why there is so much anger among fundamentalists in all the world’s traditions — they push to fit into an externalized idea of what it means to be perfect, yet they are not transformed, and they secretly know it.

Despite their perfect practice,
they discover no destination.

Unable to face the pain of that failure, they externalize it, and blame the imperfections of the world around them for holding them back. That pain becomes anger at the outer world, and that anger is reflexively attributed to God. Then that angry God is imagined to punish by withholding heaven from the individual until the whole world rigidly falls into order. The more desperate these individuals become for release from spiritual pain, the more violently they try to enforce their vision upon society in the hopes that they will finally appease God and find freedom.

So sad, when all that is necessary is to slip through that pain, let go of the ego’s self-importance, and discover the immense joy quietly glowing deep within. No one and nothing else holds us back.

Only the saints
who know the body’s heart
have attained the Ultimate, O Tulsi.

So Tulsidas is reminding us: Study, yes, and strive. But always more important is to yield and open and finally settle into the secret shining heart that awaits discovery. Those are the true fundamentals.

Realize this, and you’ve found your freedom

…Okay, Ivan will now step down from his soapbox. Have a wonderful weekend, and remember to take some sweet quiet time to settle within.

Recommended Books: Tulsi Sahib

Real Thirst: Poetry of the Spiritual Journey	Songs of the Saints from the Adi Granth	Songs of the Saints of India	Tulsi Sahib: Saint of Hathras

Tulsi Sahib India (1763 – 1843) Timeline Yoga / Hindu : Vaishnava (Krishna/Rama) Sikh

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A true seeker is only satisfied
with direct perception.

Is there anyone in the universe
by Ramakrishna

English version by Lex Hixon

Is there anyone in the universe,
among heavenly or earthly beings,
who can understand what Kali is?
The systems of all traditions
are powerless to describe Her.
Is Mother a feminine being
or greater than Being itself?

Not even Shiva, prince of yogis,
can focus upon Her dancing Feet
without falling into trance.
Yet the worthless lover
who sings this mad song
aspires to conscious union with Her
during waking, dream, and deep sleep.

— from Great Swan: Meetings with Ramakrishna, by Lex Hixon

/ Image by Chobist /

Happy Mother’s Day. It is worth remembering today that Mother’s Day was originally created as a day of international peace as a reminder to us all that every single person on all sides of every conflict has a mother who loves them. It was hoped that remembering this would make war difficult to justify.

It is also worth remembering today that we are all children of the Divine Mother.

In Hindu tradition and metaphysics, the Goddess represents many aspects of the Divine. The iconography we find in Hinduism gives us a fascinating kaleidoscope of meaning. The Goddess can represent Mother, the Great Source, the Void/Womb from which all are born, Manifestation, Creation, Vibration, Speech, Song, the Arts, Beauty, Darkness, Mystery, all of the World (and all its Illusions). But with birth, also comes death, with manifestation, also comes dissolution; anything with a beginning also has an end. Only the eternal is eternal. So the Goddess, Mother and Manifester, is also sometimes portrayed as Destroyer. She is Life and Death both. She is the Power that brings all into being, animates and enlivens the universe, and also draws it back into non-being. But even in Her fiercest aspect, the Mother Goddess is loving. For Her, death is merely the death of illusion and the return to Self.

This poem — I call it a poem, but it is more of an ecstatic utterance by the great Ramakrishna — plays with a particular descriptive challenge in the representations of Kali. On the one hand, Kali is a Goddess, often paired with the God Shiva. A popular representation of the two is with Shiva lying prone on the ground, while Kali dances upon his breast, slaying demons. It can be a disturbing image to people not familiar with the iconography of Kali. But what is it saying, and how does it fit in with the philosophy of this gentle, greatly revered Hindu saint, Ramakrishna?

Hinduism often expresses the fundamental polarity of Male and Female in images of the divine couple, the God and Goddess paired together. Within this God-Goddess dichotomy, the masculine aspect of the Divine usually represents transcendent spirit, while the feminine expresses manifestation, power, and action. So prone Shiva represents the transcendent, which is inactive, but which holds the divine potential. Kali dances upon his breast, representing that potential coming into manifestation. Through Her sheer power, Kali destroys the demons that represent illusion and disharmony.

But, just as this God-Goddess pairing represents different facets of the Divine, any God or Goddess can simultaneously be understood to embody the whole of the Divine. In this way, Kali can both be an aspect and also the Absolute.

And this is what Ramakrishna is teasing us with here. Is Kali the consort of Shiva? Is She the feminine aspect of God, or God entire?

Is Mother a feminine being
or greater than Being itself?…

Is Mother simply a Goddess?
Does She need a male consort
to protect or complete Her?

Even within Hinduism and its rich, varied depictions of the Feminine aspect of the Divine, there is still a tendency to elevate the Male forms, such as Shiva. Ramakrishna seems to delight in overturning convention. To him, one must simply follow the Mother and, as She reveals more and more of Her nature — her manifestation, her play of illusions and revelations — our vision of Her expands to encompass the All. To Ramakrishna, the Goddess is Mother and Consort, but She is equally the Totality itself. He taunts us to untangle that conundrum through our own direct perception.

Whether we are talking about Kali or Saraswati or Cerridwen, Mother Mary or Shekinah, let us not forget to honor the feminine in the Divine — and in our world, and in ourselves.

=

I should mention that there is some question about the attribution for this poem. I know that Ramakrishna often quoted Ramprasad, but the source I found this in seems to be attributing it directly to Ramakrishna, though the attribution is not specific. In the same book, the author mentions how Ramakrishna would often break into spontaneous song, making up lyrics as insight and inspiration flooded through him, but also sometimes interweaving famous lines from Ramprasad and others, as well. So the truth is, I don’t know for certain who the poet is. This poem could be by Ramprasad (though I haven’t come across another version of this attributed to Ramprasad), or it could include a few lines by Ramprasad, or it could be entirely original to Ramakrishna. I’d love to hear if you know any more about these verses.

Recommended Books: Ramakrishna

Poetry for the Spirit: Poems of Universal Wisdom and Beauty	Kali: The Black Goddess of Dakshineswar	Great Swan: Meetings with Ramakrishna	The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna	The Condensed Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna
More Books >>

Ramakrishna India (1836 – 1886) Timeline Yoga / Hindu : Shakta (Goddess-oriented)

Continue Reading »

As long as you have compassion
you can’t be far off course.

Looking for your own face
by Farid ud-Din Attar

English version by Coleman Barks

Your face is neither infinite nor ephemeral.
You can never see your own face,
only a reflection, not the face itself.

What you most want,
what you travel around wishing to find,
lose yourself as lovers lose themselves,
and you’ll be that.

— from The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia, with Lectures by Inayat Khan, Translated by Coleman Barks

/ Image by Noah Buscher /

I like this idea of searching for one’s own face — something so central to our identity but which we can never see directly.

You can never see your own face,
only a reflection, not the face itself.

How then can we see our own face?

We seek its reflection constantly, everywhere. All the world becomes a mirror showing ourselves back to us.

But our vision is unclear, distorted, veiled…

So you sigh in front of mirrors
and cloud the surface.

The ego within us covers our self-perception with a thin film, so we think we are seeing ourselves, but we see only a vague shadow of our true nature behind the ego’s haze.

In some traditions, this is represented by the compulsion of the breath, its continuous inflow and outflow perpetually disrupting true, still perception. Some yogic and Sufi techniques seek to profoundly quiet the breath and the rhythms of the body so that the vision of Reality may come through undistorted:

It’s better to keep your breath cold.
Hold it, like a diver does in the ocean.
One slight movement, the mirror-image goes.

Most people try to shape the story they tell about themselves. Seekers try to shape themselves. But if we are wise, we shape neither story nor self; we lose ourselves, instead. We let the disrupting ego-self melt away in the fires of our fierce love for the Beloved.

What you most want,
what you travel around wishing to find,
lose yourself as lovers lose themselves,
and you’ll be that.

In the search for our true face, a reflection will never satisfy. No journey. We won’t ever properly see our faces by looking outside of ourselves. To know our true face, we inhabit ourselves, instead.

Have a beautiful day — and always remain true to your heart’s instinct to open, even in tumultuous times.

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

Continue Reading »