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#1457 - Tuesday, June 10, 2003 - Editor: Jerry
Father Nicholas Porter http://www.emmanuelchurch.ch/11Jun01/who.html
Tim Gerchmez
NDS
"Summer's Innocence" --
Peter Kater
http://home.attbi.com/~shs82web/innocence.html
P'ang Yün
Being as Is
Food and clothes sustain
Body and life;
I advise you to learn
Being as is.
When it's time,
I move my hermitage and go,
And there's nothing
To be left behind.
from Allinspiration list
Nichita Stanescu
The Eleventh Elegy
Entry into spring labors
Heart greater than the body, leaping
from all sides at once
and collapsing from all sides
back onto the body
like a storm of lava,
heart, content greater than form, this is
knowledge of self, this is
why matter is born from itself, struggling,
so that it is able to die.
Only he who knows himself dies.
Only he who is his own witness
is born.
I should run, I told myself,
but first I should
turn my soul
towards my motionless ancestors,
withdrawn into the towers of their bones,
like marrow, motionless
as things brought to an end.
I can run because they are in me.
I will run, because only what
is motionless within
can move,
only he who is alone within
has company; and knows that his heart, unseen,
will more strongly collapse
towards its own
center
or,
broken up into planets, allow itself to be touched
by animals and plants,
or,
stretched out, lie under pyramids
as if behind a foreign chest.
II.
Everything is simple, so simple that
it becomes incomprehensible.
Everything is close, so
close that
it draws back behind the eyes
and cannot be seen.
Everything is so perfect
in the spring
that only by surrounding it with myself
am I aware of it,
as I am aware of the sprouting of grass, a knowledge
confessed by words to the mouth,
confessed by the mouth to the heart,
by the heart to its core
which within itself is motionless,
like the earth's core
stretching all around itself
an infinity of gravitation's arms,
embracing everything at once
in such a strong embrace
that movement escapes through its arms.
Vicki Woodyard
NDS
Silence
There is a silence that falls
upon the soul when it has said
too much. All of the anger and bitterness has been expressed.
Remorse has now reared its ugly head. God, I didn't know that
I had so much anger in me. Cancer is a curse. It can bring
forth blessings, but it is a curse for me right now. My
husband is weak and sick and I am sick and tired. All of my
best hopes and resolves have vanished like smoke and I am in
need of renewal. But from where will it come when no one can
take my place in my soul? I must live in my own being and
somehow find rest and renewal there.
I have trod the halls of too many
hospitals to be
well-disposed towards them. I have cried too many tears to
believe they will lead to burdens being lifted. I am a
psalmist for the insanely grief-stricken mind. Writing flows
from deep within like the tears that I have been shedding for
days. But anger is a mask for grief and I am grieving like
hell. For normalcy, for hope, for optimism and an end to
serving the suffering body.
It is a good thing that
paragraphs like these are written in
water and wind like all other transitory emotions. These
words, too, shall pass. Things get better and things get
worse. The nondual soul who witnesses the personal suffering
is always silent. It is the bird that never sang a note.
Vicki Woodyard
http://www.bobwoodyard.com
Question: Men of the
world that we are, we have some kind of grief or
another and do not know how to get over it. We pray to God and
still
are not satisfied. What can we do?
Sri Ramana Maharshi: Trust God.
Questioner: We surrender, but still there is no help.
Sri Ramana Maharshi: Yes. If you have surrendered, you must be
able
to abide by the will of God and not make a grievance of what may
not
please you. Things may turn out differently from the way they
look
apparently. Distress often leads men to faith in God.
Questioner: But we
are worldly. There is the wife, there are the
children, friends and relatives. We cannot ignore their existence
and
resign ourselves to Divine will, without retaining some little of
personality in us.
Sri Ramana Maharshi: That means you have not surrendered as
professed
by you. You must only trust God.
Surrender to Him and abide by His will whether He appears or
vanishes. Await His pleasure. If you ask Him to do as you please,
it
is not surrender but command to Him. You cannot have Him obey you
and
yet think that you have surrendered. He knows what is best and
when
and how to do it. Leave everything entirely to Him. His is the
burden; you have no longer any cares. All your cares are His.
Such is
surrender. This is Bhakti (devotion).
Or, enquire to whom these questions arise. Dive deep in the Heart
and
remain as the Self. One of these two ways is open to the
aspirant.
from the I Am list
Anna Kamienska
A Prayer That Will Be Answered
Lord let me suffer
much
and then die
Let me walk through silence
and leave nothing behind not even fear
Make the world continue
let the ocean kiss the sand just as before
Let the grass stay green
so that the frogs can hide in it
so that someone can bury his face in it
and sob out his love
Make the day rise brightly
as if there were no more pain
And let my poem stand clear as a windowpane
bumped by a bumblebee's head
(translated by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanaugh)
from Panhala