Allspirit

Tag: mountain

  • Good Spiritual Friend

    “A good spiritual friend who will help
    us to stay on the path, with whom we can
    discuss our difficulties frankly, sure of
    a compassionate response, provides an
    important support system which is often
    lacking. Although people live and practice
    together, one-upmanship often comes between
    them.

    A really good friend is like a mountain
    guide. The spiritual path is like climbing a
    mountain: we don’t really know what we will
    find at the summit. We have only heard that
    it is beautiful, everybody is happy there,
    the view is magnificent and the air unpolluted.
    If we have a guide who has already climbed
    the mountain, he can help us avoid falling
    into a crevasse, or slipping on loose stones,
    or getting off the path. The one common antidote
    for all our hindrances is noble friends and
    noble conversations, which are health food for
    the mind.”

    ~ Ayya Khema

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  • The Body is Too Slow for Me

    By Rumi

    Toward the gardens,
    Toward the orchards,
    I am going.
    If you want to stay here,
    Stay here –
    I am going!
    My day is dark without His Face,
    Toward that bright flame
    I am going.

    My soul is racing ahead of me.
    It says, The body is too slow for me –
    I am going.

    The smell of apples arises
    from the orchard of my soul.
    One whiff and I am gone –
    Toward a feast of apples
    I am going.

    A sudden wind won’t blow me over.
    Toward Him, like a mountain of iron,
    I am going.

    My shirt is ripped open
    with the pain of loss.
    Searching for a new life,
    with my head held high,
    I am going.

    I am fire, though I seem like oil –
    Seeking to be the fuel of His fire,
    I am going.

    I appear as a steady mountain
    Yet bit by bit,
    Toward that tiny opening
    I am going.

    From: A Garden Beyond Paradise: The Mystical Poetry of Rumi

    Ode 1668 Version by Jonathan Star
    from a translation by Shahram Shiva

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  • Two Look at Two

     

    Robert Frost

    Love and forgetting might have carried them
    A little further up the mountain side
    With night so near, but not much further up.
    They must have halted soon in any case
    With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was
    With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness;
    When they were halted by a tumbled wall
    With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this,
    Spending what onward impulse they still had
    In One last look the way they must not go,
    On up the failing path, where, if a stone
    Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself;
    No footstep moved it. ‘This is all,’ they sighed,
    Good-night to woods.’ But not so; there was more.
    A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them
    Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
    She saw them in their field, they her in hers.
    The difficulty of seeing what stood still,
    Like some up-ended boulder split in two,
    Was in her clouded eyes; they saw no fear there.
    She seemed to think that two thus they were safe.
    Then, as if they were something that, though strange,
    She could not trouble her mind with too long,
    She sighed and passed unscared along the wall.
    ‘This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?’
    But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait.
    A buck from round the spruce stood looking at them
    Across the wall as near the wall as they.
    This was an antlered buck of lusty nostril,
    Not the same doe come back into her place.
    He viewed them quizzically with jerks of head,
    As if to ask, ‘Why don’t you make some motion?
    Or give some sign of life? Because you can’t.
    I doubt if you’re as living as you look.”
    Thus till he had them almost feeling dared
    To stretch a proffering hand — and a spell-breaking.
    Then he too passed unscared along the wall.
    Two had seen two, whichever side you spoke from.
    ‘This must be all.’ It was all. Still they stood,
    A great wave from it going over them,
    As if the earth in one unlooked-for favour
    Had made them certain earth returned their love.