_ananda_

Semper Eadem

'You're like some rock the sea is swallowing -
what is it that brings on these moods of yours?'
Nothing mysterious: the ordinary pain
of being alive. You wouldn't understand,

though it's as obvious as that smile of yours:
an open secret. Nothing ever grows,
once the heart is harvested... You ask
too many questions. No more talking now,

my prying ignoramus, no more words,
however sweet your voice. You call it Life,
but Death is what binds us, and by subtler bonds...

Come here. The only lie that comforts me
is the refuge of those lashes - let me sink
into the silent fiction of your eyes!


-Charles Baudelaire

translation - Richard Howard

Listen, O drop, give yourself up without regret,
and in exchange gain the Ocean.
Listen, O drop, bestow upon yourself this honor,
and in the arms of the Sea be secure.
Who indeed should be so fortunate?
An Ocean wooing a drop!
In God's name, in God's name, sell and buy at once!
Give a drop, and take this Sea full of pearls.

- Mathnawi IV, 2619-32

Question: "Brahman is real. The world is illusion" is the stock phrase of Sri Sankaracharya. Yet others say, "The world is reality." Which is true?

Sri Ramana Maharshi: Both statements are true. They refer to different stags of development and are spoken from different points of view. The aspirant starts with the definition, that which is real exists always. Then he eliminates the world as unreal because it is changing. The seeker ultimately reaches the Self and there finds unity as the prevailing note. Then, that which was originally rejected as being unreal is found to be a part of the unity. Being absorbed in the reality, the world also is real. There is only being in Self-realisation, and nothing but being.

Fire burning in a hill
The lines are rocky rough
Red angels wait to pick remains
The cindered shoulder
Of confused men
Seperate from their awe
With grey desire
He looks out mad
His soft grey indigo eyes
Indigo eyes ...
Asking

His heaven is uncovered not
A black tree blocks his way
His way is skating round a dome
(His way is in dismay)
The playmate sings
Like Orphee in some thunder world
Asking to be bathed in light
To be exemplified

With grey desire he looks out mad
His soft grey indigo eyes

Saw his past
He had dug for trust
With blind infected hands
And wondered as the hurt bit hard
Why the sacred weren't at hand
Only when his ears were deaf
To the angels light burst waves
Only when his ears were deaf
Did life turn from fog to fog
But not evil but estranged
But not evil but estranged

Indigo eyes, Indigo eyes
Indigo eyes, Indigo eyes

With grey desire
He looks out mad
His soft grey
Indigo eyes
Indigo eyes

~Peter Murphy

Rest in Natural Great Peace


When I meditate, I am always inspired by this poem by Nyoshul Khenpo:

Rest in natural great peace
This exhausted mind
Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thought,
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves
In the infinite ocean of samsara.
Rest in natural great peace.


Above all, be at ease, be as natural and spacious as possible. Slip quietly out of the noose of your habitual anxious self, release all grasping, and relax into your true nature. Think of your ordinary emotional, thought-ridden self as a block of ice or a slab of butter left out in the sun. If you are feeling hard and cold, let this aggression melt away in the sunlight of your meditation. Let peace work on you and enable you to gather your scattered mind into the mindfulness of Calm Abiding, and awaken in you the awareness and insight of Clear Seeing. And you will find all your negativity disarmed, your aggression dissolved, and your confusion evaporating slowly like mist into the vast and stainless sky of your absolute nature.


– Sogyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying (HarperSanFrancisco )

A man who moves with the earth will necessarily experience days and nights. He who stays with the sun will know no darkness. My world is not yours. As I see it, you all are on a stage performing. There is no reality about your comings and goings. And your problems are so unreal!
Q: We may be sleep-walkers, or subject to nightmares. Is there nothing you can do?
M: I am doing: I did enter your dreamlike state to tell you -- "Stop hurting yourself and others, stop suffering, wake up".
Q: Why then don't we wake up?
M: You will. I shall not be thwarted. It may take some time. When you shall begin to question your dream, awakening will be not far away.

~*~

I'm re-reading "I am That" at the moment, so I'll probably be posting random bits that strike me for one reason or another.

Tonight I discovered this site. It's sort of whimsical and sweet and it made me happy. I had to steal these wonderful quotes.

~*~

I read once that the ancient Egyptians had fifty words for sand & the Eskimos had a hundred words for snow. I wish I had a thousand words for love, but all that comes to mind is the way you move against me while you sleep & there are no words for that.

You're the strangest person I ever met, she said & I said you too & we decided
we'd know each other a long time.

She said she usually cried at least once each day not because she was sad, but
because the world was so beautiful & life was so short.

In the end, I think that I will like that we were sitting on the bed, talking &
wondering where the time had gone.

For a long time she flew, only when she thought no one else was watching.

if there is any secret to this life i live, this is it: the sound of what
cannot be seen sings within everything that can. and there is nothing more to it
than that

finally has figured out there aren't enough quiet little British films around to protect her from the real world

~ Brian Andreas (Story People)

~*~

When you think your chance is passing by
When you blow your moon away
I'll bleed like the reed
Fall with your knife
It's here I'll be with you

Cast away your existence entirely,
for it is nothing but weeds and refuse.
Go, clear out your heart’s chamber;
arrange it as the abiding-place of the Beloved.
When you go forth, He will come in,
and to you, with self discarded,
He will unveil His beauty.


~Mahmud Shabistari

English version by Florence Lederer


Thanks sasha_khan

It's an absolutely beautiful night here...one of those summer nights where the air is so warm and soft it feels like a caress on your skin. And there is the most delicious smell in the air...something like a mixture of rain and flowers, but very subtle, nothing cloyingly sweet or heavy...it's a very clean fresh smell. If the ground wasn't so wet I think I'd just sleep outside in the yard tonight.

I spend a lot of time wishing I lived somewhere else...I long for actual seasons, for fall especially...and for a spring that is an actual rebirth...to be able to watch everything come to life again after the winter. But lately I've realized there are some things I would miss terribly. Like the rain. Summer is the rainy season here and a few weeks ago, after weeks and weeks of drought, the rains finally started and it has been heaven. I love watching the skies get dark in the afternoon and the thunder and lightning and heavy downpours...and then watching the sun come out again...and there are always rainbows. And now everything is so beautiful and lush and green...ahh, I would miss the rain so much. I feel so happy tonight, for no reason at all.

I've become slightly obsessed lately with this beautiful performance of Megami from One Life, One Death Cut Up...whenever I watch this concert I end up getting stuck on this song and playing it over and over.

Be silent, that without this tongue the heart may speak; when
I hear the speech of the heart, I feel ashamed of this speech.

Hello. How are you all? I'm doing really well. I haven't been around for a couple of months because my computer isn't working and I'm not sure when I'll be able to fix it. It just refused to turn on one day for some reason. I've kind of been enjoying my time away from the computer, but I do miss LJ and reading everyone's posts. I hope everyone is ok. Take care~

Oh thou, who givest sustenance to the universe
From whom all things proceed
To whom all things return
Unveil to us the face of the true spiritual sun
Hidden by a disc of golden light
That we may know the truth
And do our whole duty
As we journey to thy sacred feet

Well I said
"Lily, Oh Lily I don't feel safe
I feel that life has blown a great big hole
Through me"
And she said
"Child, you must protect yourself
I'll show you how with fire"

Gabriel before me
Raphael behind me
Michael to my right
Uriel on my left side
In the circle of fire

I said
"Lily, Oh Lily I'm so afraid
I fear I am walking in the Veil of Darkness"
And she said
"Child, take what I say
With a pinch of salt
And protect yourself with fire"

Gabriel before me
Raphael behind me
Michael to my right
Uriel on my left side
In the circle of fire

"The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created--created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination."
- John Schaar

borrowed from proud_snapist

Importune Me No More

attributed to Elizabeth I, late 1500's

When I was fair and young, and favor graced me
Of many was I sought their mistress for to be
But I did scorn them all, and answered them therefore
Go, go, seek some otherwhere importune me no more

How many weeping eyes I made to pine with woe
How many sighing hearts, I have no skill to show
Yet I the prouder grew and answered them therefore
Go, go, seek some otherwhere importune me no more

Then spake fair Venus' son, that proud victorious boy,
Who said "Fine dame, in consequence that you have been so coy
I will pluck thy plumes therefore you shall say no more
Go, go, seek some otherwhere importune me no more!"

Eftsoones he spake these words, such change grew in my breast
That neither night nor day since then, I could take any rest
Then Lo! I did repent that I had spoken before
Go, go, seek some otherwhere importune me no more

Go, go, seek some otherwhere importune me no more

One moon is reflected in many waters;
All the water-moons are from the one moon.

from The Shodoka

Striving to leave the wilderness
You become part of what's wild.
Striving to cease grasping
Is, itself, grasping.


Hsu Yun

Spirit is so mixed with the visible world that giver,
gift, and beneficiary are

one thing. You are the grace raining down; the grace
is you. Creation is

a clear, flat, fast-moving creek, where qualities reflect.
Generations rush by, while

the stars stay still, without a splash. When you lose your
appetite for food, you'll

be given other nourishment. There's well-being that is not
bodily and beings

that live on fragrance. Don't worry about losing animal
energy. Go the way of love

and ask provisions. Love more the star region reflected,
less the moving medium.


version by Coleman Barks

The song that I came to sing remains unsung to this day.
I have spent my days in stringing and in unstringing my instrument.
The time has not come true, the words have not been rightly set;
only there is the agony of wishing in my heart.
The blossom has not opened; only the wind is sighing by.

~Rabindranath Tagore