After experience had taught me that all things which frequently take place in ordinary life are vain and futile, and when I saw that all the things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save in so far as the mind was affected by them; I determined at last to inquire whether there was anything which might be truly good, and able to communicate its goodness, and by which the mind might be affected to the exclusion of all other things; I determined, I say, to inquire whether I might discover and attain the faculty of enjoying
throughout eternity continual supreme happiness. . . .
‘The Improvement of the Intellect’, Spinoza
Indeed, no lover seeks union without his beloved seeking him.
But the love of lovers makes their bodies into bowstrings,
while the love of beloveds makes them happy and plump.
When the lightning of love for the loved one flashes in *this* heart,
know that there is also love in *that* heart.
When love for God has doubled in your heart,
without doubt God has love for you.
You have never heard one hand clapping without the other.
The thirsty man laments, “Oh sweet water!”
The water also laments, “Where is the drinker!”
This thirst in our souls is the attraction of the Water -
we belong to It and It belongs to us.
Jalaluddin Rumi’s Mathnawi, book 3, vv. 4393-4399,
from “The Sufi Path of Love,” translated by W. C. Chittick, p.209.
The Second Coming
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Tags: second coming, yeats
Great knowledge is broad and encompassing
Small knowledge is detailed and meticulous
Great talk is powerful and forceful
Small talk is endless and argumentative
In their sleeping hours their spirits are restless
In their waking hours their bodies are agitated
When they deal with others they get entangled
The entire day they plot and scheme
Some speak deliberately
Some set traps with words
Some are secretive
Small fears make them apprehensive
Great fears make them panic
When they speak, their words are like arrows shot out
Seeking others’ weak spots to cause damage
When they keep quiet, it is as if they have sworn an oath
Looking for opportunities to achieve victory
When they fail, it is like Autumn or Winter
We can say that they decline day after day
When they are trapped in this situation
They cannot return to their true nature
When they are obstructed as if bound
We can say that they wither and shrivel
The heart that is nearing death
Cannot regain life and vitality
Joy, anger, sadness, happiness
Worry, regret, change, horror
Impetuous, undisciplined, unruly, pretentious
Like sound coming out of holes,
Or fungus growing out of humidity
Day and night they clash before us
Yet they do not know the root cause
Enough! Enough!
Once they understand this,
Will they then comprehend the principle of life?
Without it, I cannot exist
Without me, there is no one to appreciate it
Therefore I am close to it
But I do not know what governs it
There must be a supreme ruler
But I cannot discern any trace of it
I can believe it exists from its actions
But I cannot see its shape
It has existence, but no physical form
To Love is to reach God.
Never will a Lover’s chest
feel any sorrow.
Never will a Lover’s robe
be touched by mortals.
Never will a Lover’s body
be found buried in the earth.
To Love is to reach God.
~Rumi
Translated by: Shahram Shiva
http://rumi.net
Tags: rumi
From: ‘Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras’
When an event or object in the external world is recorded by the
senses, a thought-wave is raised in the mind. The ego-sense
identifies itself with this wave…This false identification is the cause of all
our misery (because we cling to pleasant, yet transient,
thought-waves, and shrink from unpleasant, yet unavoidable,
thought-waves)…The real Self, the Atman, remains forever outside
the power of thought-waves, it is eternally pure, enlightened and
free — the only true, unchanging happiness…
THE jewel is lost in the mud, and all are seeking for it;
Some look for it in the east, and some in the west;
some in the water and some amongst stones.
But the servant Kabir has appraised it at its true value,
and has wrapped it with care in the end of the mantle
of his heart.
~Kabir
Trans. Rabindranath Tagore
“It was all very well to say `Drink me,’ but the wise little Alice was not going
to do THAT in a hurry. `No, I’ll look first,’ she said, `and see whether it’s
marked “poison” or not’; for she had read several nice little histories about
children who had got burnt, and eaten up by wild beasts and other unpleasant
things, all because they WOULD not remember the simple rules their friends had
taught them: such as, that a red-hot poker will burn you if you hold it too
long; and that if you cut your finger VERY deeply with a knife, it usually
bleeds; and she had never forgotten that, if you drink much from a bottle marked
`poison,’ it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.”
From ‘Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland’
by Lewis Carroll
In difficult times , it is only bodhichitta that heals. When inspiration has become hidden, when we feel ready to give up, this is the time when healing can be found in the tenderness of pain itself. This is the time to touch the genuine heart of bodhichitta. In the midst of loneliness, in the midst of fear, in the middle of feeling misuderstood and rejected is the heartbeat of all things, the genuine heart of sadness.
From ‘When Things Fall Apart’ by Pema Chodron
Tags: bodhichitta, pema chodron
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope,
for hope would be hope for the wrong thing;
Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing;
There is yet faith;
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
~T S Eliot
