beauty

Eagle Poem

Gill Washington Joy Harjo, Poems, Prayer , , , , , 0 Comment

By Joy Harjo

To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can’t see, can’t hear
Can’t know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren’t always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon, within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.

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Ryonen’s Clear Realization

Gill Washington Spirituality, Zen, Zen Stories , , , , , , 0 Comment

From: Zen Flesh, Zen Bones

Edited by Paul Reps

The Buddhist nun known as Ryonen was born in 1797. She was a granddaughter of the famous Japanese warrior Shingen. Her poetical genius and alluring beauty were such that at seventeen she was serving the empress as one of the ladies of the court. Even at such a youthful age fame awaited her.

The beloved empress died suddenly and Ryonen’s hopeful dreams vanished. She became acutely aware of the impermanence of life in this world. It was then that she desired to study Zen. Her relatives disagreed, however, and practically forced her into marriage. With a promise that she might become a nun after she had borne three children, Ryonen assented. Before she was twenty-five she had accomplished this condition. Then her husband and her relatives could no longer dissuade her from her desire. She shaved her head, took the name of Ryonen, which means to realize clearly, and started on her pilgrimage. She came to the city of Edo and asked Tetsugyu to accept her as a disciple. At one glance the master rejected her because she was too beautiful.

Ryonen then went to another master, Hakuo. Hakuo refused her for the same reason, saying that her beauty would only make trouble. Ryonen obtained a hot iron and placed it against her face. In a few moments her beauty had vanished forever.

Hakuo then accepted her as a disciple. Commemorating this occasion, Ryonen wrote a poem on the back of a little mirror:

In the service of my Empress I burned incense to perfume my exquisite clothes, Now as a homeless mendicant I burn my face to enter a Zen temple.

When Ryonen was about to pass from this world, she wrote another poem:

Sixty-six times have these eyes beheld the
changing scene of autumn.
I have said enough about moonlight,
Ask no more.
Only listen to the voice of pines and cedars
when no wind stirs.

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Reflecting Whatever

Gill Washington Ajahn Sumedho, Buddhist Writings, Spirituality , , , , , , 0 Comment

Excerpted from  Intuitive Awareness

By Ajahn Sumedho

Consciousness is like a mirror; it reflects. A mirror reflects – it doesn’t just reflect the beautiful or the ugly. If you really look into a mirror, it’s reflecting whatever: the space, the neutrality, everything that is in front of it. Usually you can only notice the outstanding ones, the extremes of beauty or ugliness. But to awaken to the way it is, you’re not looking at the obvious, but recognising the subtlety behind the extremes of beauty and ugliness. The sound of silence is like a subtlety behind everything that you awaken to, because you don’t notice it usually if you’re seeking the extremes.

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Of Man’s Perfection in Love

Gill Washington Love, Poems, Spirituality , , , 0 Comment

Jacopone Da Todi

O minstrel, raise thy plaintive melody,
and let thy song be tender to my soul:
upon the subtle ninefold modes of love
display the secrets of a lover’s heart.
One moment parted from the Friend, I die:
revive my heart with thy life-giving stream
that I may come into the lovers’ ring
and grace the lovers’ circle. Let me pass
one moment from the world, and for an hour
I will not heed my selfhood: being lost
to this false being, let me swiftly move
to realms of drunkenness where, like the drunk,
I will commence the dance, and raise the cry
of yearning love – for truly I do yearn
for my Beloved – standing in the field
of high ambition. I will shake my wings
like sacrificial bird, and fly at last
from empty word to true reality.
Then will I tell in order, each by each,
the beauty of the Friend, the lover’s love.

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To E.

Gill Washington Poems, Sara Teasdale, Spirituality , , , 0 Comment

By Sara Teasdale

I have remembered beauty in the night,
Against black silences I waked to see
A shower of sunlight over Italy
And green Ravello dreaming on her height;
I have remembered music in the dark,
The clean swift brightness of a fugue of Bach’s,
And running water singing on the rocks
When once in English woods I heard a lark.

But all remembered beauty is no more
Than a vague prelude to the thought of you —
You are the rarest soul I ever knew,
Lover of beauty, knightliest and best;
My thoughts seek you as waves that seek the shore,
And when I think of you, I am at rest.

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Winter Stars

Gill Washington Dreams, Poems, Sara Teasdale, Sorrow, Spirituality , , , 0 Comment

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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Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Gill Washington Poems, Spirituality, Wallace Stevens , , 0 Comment

By Wallace Stevens

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.

III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.

IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.

V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.

VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?

VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.

IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.

X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.

XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.

XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.

XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

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