Allspirit

Category: Sorrow

  • About This Mind

    By Ajahn Chah

    About this mind… In truth there is nothing really wrong with it. It is intrinsically pure. Within itself it’s already peaceful. That the mind is not peaceful these days is because it follows moods. The real mind doesn’t have anything to it, it is simply (an aspect of) Nature. It becomes peaceful or agitated because moods deceive it. The untrained mind is stupid. Sense impressions come and trick it into happiness, suffering, gladness and sorrow, but the mind’s true nature is none of those things. That gladness or sadness is not the mind, but only a mood coming to deceive us. The untrained mind gets lost and follows these things, it forgets itself. Then we think that it is we who are upset or at ease or whatever.

    But really this mind of ours is already unmoving and peaceful… really peaceful! Just like a leaf which is still as long as no wind blows. If a wind comes up the leaf flutters. The fluttering is due to the wind — the “fluttering” is due to those sense impressions; the mind follows them. If it doesn’t follow them, it doesn’t “flutter.” If we know fully the true nature of sense impressions we will be unmoved.

    Our practice is simply to see the Original Mind. So we must train the mind to know those sense impressions, and not get lost in them. To make it peaceful. Just this is the aim of all this difficult practice we put ourselves through.

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  • Winter Stars

    By Sara Teasdale

    I went out at night alone;
    The young blood flowing beyond the sea
    Seemed to have drenched my spirit’s wings —
    I bore my sorrow heavily.
    But when I lifted up my head
    From shadows shaken on the snow,
    I saw Orion in the east
    Burn steadily as long ago.

    From windows in my father’s house,
    Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,
    I watched Orion as a girl
    Above another city’s lights.

    Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,
    The world’s heart breaks beneath its wars,
    All things are changed, save in the east
    The faithful beauty of the stars.

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  • Unending Love

    By Rabindranath Tagore

    I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
    In life after life, in age after age, forever.
    My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
    That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
    In life after life, in age after age, forever.

    Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it’s age old pain,
    It’s ancient tale of being apart or together.
    As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
    Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
    You become an image of what is remembered forever.

    You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
    At the heart of time, love of one for another.
    We have played along side millions of lovers,
    Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
    the distressful tears of farewell,
    Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

    Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
    The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
    Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
    The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours –
    And the songs of every poet past and forever.
    From Selected Poems, Translated by William Radice

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  • I wonder if I know him

    By Rabindranath Tagore

    I wonder if I know him
    In whose speech is my voice,
    In whose movement is my being,
    Whose skill is in my lines,
    Whose melody is in my songs
    In joy and sorrow.
    I thought he was chained within me,
    Contained by tears and laughter,
    Work and play.
    I thought he was my very self
    Coming to an end with my death.
    Why then in a flood of joy do I feel him
    In the sight and touch of my beloved?
    This ‘I’ beyond self I found
    On the shores of the shining sea.
    Therefore I know
    This ‘I’ is not imprisoned within my bounds.
    Losing myself, I find him
    Beyond the borders of time and space.
    Through the Ages
    I come to know his Shining Self
    In the life of the seeker,
    In the voice of the poet.
    From the dark clouds pour the rains.
    I sit and think:
    Bearing so many forms, so many names,
    I come down, crossing the threshold
    Of countless births and deaths.
    The Supreme undivided, complete in himself,
    Embracing past and present,
    Dwells in Man.
    Within Him I shall find myself –
    The ‘I’ that reaches everywhere.

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