I Am

Self-consciousness

Gill Washington Buddhist Writings, I Am, Meditation , , , , 0 Comment

From: Buddhism without Beliefs

by Stephen Batchelor

Self-consciousness is at once the most obvious and central fact of my life and the most elusive. If I search for my self in meditation, I find it is like trying to catch my own shadow. I reach for it, but there’s nothing there. Then it reappears elsewhere. I glimpse it from the corner of my mind’s eye, turn to face it, and it’s gone. Each time I think I’ve pinned it down, it turns out to be something else: a bodily sensation, a mood, a perception, an impulse, or simply awareness itself.

I cannot find the self by pointing my finger at any physical or mental trait and saying: “Yes, that’s me.” For such traits come and go, whereas the sense of “I” remains constant. But neither can I put my finger on something other than these traits that-however ephemeral and contingent they may be-nonetheless define me.

The self may not be something, but neither is it nothing. It is simply ungraspable, unfindable. I am who I am not because of an essential self hidden away in the core of my being but because of the unprecedented and unrepeatable matrix of conditions that have formed me. The more I delve into this mystery of who I am (or what anything is), the more I just keep going. There is no end to it, only an infinite trajectory that avoids falling into the extremes of being and nonbeing. This trajectory is not only the center, which is free from this duality, but the central path itself.

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How to Talk With a Mountain

Gill Washington Elaine Maria Upton, I Am, Poems, Spirituality , , , , , , , 0 Comment

By Elaine Maria Upton

Anthropomorphism has its place. It’s
a starting point, at least. So, I’ll say
if i have eyes, then a mountain has eyes,
and whatever happens after that
is poetry, where i become lost,
and there are no conditions, no
consequences. There’s only the mountain,

Mother, inside, around, leaping, plunging down.
The hips of the mountain where wombs
curl inside wombs, generations of granite, coal,
and sequoyah, woodpeckers and eagles
and sparrows. Cedar and pine plunge
their roots into the Mountain Mother.
They cannot escape her. They are her,
and in their knotted wrestling in the ground,
through ages, they return, return, return……

She rains from inside, and curls to clouds.
The clouds embrace her. She is clouds.
She is the light of birch bark, carved to sail
on her soothing rivers. The nimble, nibbling deer.

She is King, Queen, priest, choirs and silence.
Always she reigns, with absolute rule,
and her rule is bounty and blessing.
She is the daughter of Sun, the son
of Moon, and waxes, heaves, cries, folds,
sings. She sings and there is silence. I AM

the Mountain. I go into these hills
as into mySelf. Ground hogs, moles,
mushroom, moss, hawk, and helix-
spiral of flower and cone, cicadas
are my messengers. Leaves fallen
from trees are my skin. Gray wolves
are my solitude. Brown bears, my wisdom,
Buffalo rising from my bowls, rushing

through Air of plains, urging the sleeping
Earth, are my Fire. Unearthed, Everest,
Blanc, Kilimanjaro, Shasta, Shambala,
I climb to clouds, copulate in crystal bed
of snow, promiscuous with all the stars,
am the clouds, the Star, am what is beyond,
unseen, unseen, Un/Seen, un/Born
before the blossom and chatter of Spring.

Watery springs gossip sweet news, gurgling
falling from my throat, calling,
calling, calling: come, always, I Am
here; I Am/Mountain all around, above,
below, within. Come, there is nowhere to go….
I AM/singing , the Sound that is always here…

2 March 1999
Hyde Park, everywhere

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Silence ll

Gill Washington Elaine Maria Upton, God, I Am, Poems , , , , , , 0 Comment

By Elaine Maria Upton

Silence is not a lack of words.
Silence is not a lack of music.
Silence is not a lack of curses.
Silence is not a lack of screams.
Silence is not a lack of colors
or voices or bodies or whistling wind.
Silence is not a lack of anything.

Silence is resting, nestling
in every leaf of every tree,
in every root and branch.
Silence is the flower sprouting
upon the branch.

Silence is the mother singing
to her newborn babe.
Silence is the mother crying
for her stillborn babe.
Silence is the life of all
these babes, whose breath
is a breath of God.

Silence is seeing and singing praises.
Silence is the roar of ocean waves.
Silence is the sandpiper dancing
on the shore.
Silence is the vastness of a whale.
Silence is a blade of grass.

Silence is sound
And silence is silence.
Silence is love, even
the love that hides in hate.

Silence is the pompous queen
and the harlot and the pimp
hugging his purse on a crowded street.

Silence is the healer dreaming
the plant, the drummer drumming
the dream. It is the lover’s
exhausted fall into sleep.
It is the call of morning birds.

Silence is God’s beat tapping all hearts.

Silence is the star kissing a flower.

Silence is a word, a hope, a candle
lighting the window of home.

Silence is everything –the renewing sleep
of Earth, the purifying dream of Water,
the purifying rage of Fire, the soaring
and spiraling flight of Air. It is all
things dissolved into no-thing–Silence
is with you always…..the Presence
of I AM

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I Would I Might Forget That I am I

Gill Washington George Santayana, I Am, Poems, Spirituality , , , 0 Comment

By George Santayana

I would I might forget that I am I,
And break the heavy chain that binds me fast,
Whose links about myself my deeds have cast.
What in the body’s tomb doth buried lie
Is boundless; ’tis the spirit of the sky,
Lord of the future, guardian of the past,
And soon must forth, to know his own at last.
In his large life to live, I fain would die.
Happy the dumb beast, hungering for food,
But calling not his suffering his own;
Blessed the angel, gazing on all good,
But knowing not he sits upon a throne;
Wretched the mortal, pondering his mood,
And doomed to know his aching heart alone.

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O Martyred Spirit

Gill Washington George Santayana, I Am, Love, Poems, Spirituality , , , 0 Comment

By George Santayana

O MARTYRED Spirit of this helpless Whole,
Who dost by pain for tyranny atone,
And in the star, the atom, and the stone,
Purgest the primal guilt, and in the soul;
Rich but in grief, thou dost thy wealth unroll,
And givest of thy substance to thine own,
Mingling the love, the laughter, and the groan
In the large hollow of the heaven’s bowl.
– Fill full my cup; the dregs and honeyed brim
I take from thy just hand, more worthy love
For sweetening not the draught for me or him.
What in myself I am, that let me prove;
Relent not for my feeble prayer, nor dim
The burning of thine altar for my hymn.

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The time has come…

Gill Washington Death, I Am, Love, Poems, Rumi, Spirituality, Sufism , , , 0 Comment

By Rumi

the time has come
to break all my promises
tear apart all chains
and cast away all advice

disassemble the heavens
link by link
and break at once
all lovers’ ties
with the sword of death

put cotton inside
both my ears
and close them to
all words of wisdom

crash the door and
enter the chamber
where all sweet
things are hidden

how long can i
beg and bargain
for the things of this world
while love is waiting

how long before
i can rise beyond
how i am and
what i am

Ghazal 1591 Translated by Nader Khalili

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