What I Must Tell Myself - David Whyte

[.....]

I have only this breath
and this presence
for my wings
and they carry me
in my body
whatever I do
from one hushed moment
to another.

I know my innocence
and I know my unknowing
but for all my successes
I go through life
like a blind child
who cannot see,
arms outstretched
trying to put together
a world.

[.....]

Watching the geese
go south I find
that
even in silence
and
even in my home
alone
without a thought
or a movement
I am part
of a great migration
that will take me to another place.

[.....]

When one things dies all things
die together, and must live again
in a different way,
when one thing
is missing everything is missing,
and must be found again
in a new whole
and everything wants to be complete,
everything wants to go home
and the geese travelling south
are like the shadow of my breath
flying into the darkness
on great heart-beats
to an unknown land where I belong.

David Whyte
Excerpts from - "What I Must Tell Myself"
From: The House of Belonging

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Be ahead of all parting - Rilke

Be ahead of all parting, as if it had already happened,
like winter, which even now is passing.

For beneath winter is a winter so endless
that to survive it at all is a triumph of the heart.

Be forever dead in Eurydice - more, gladly arise
into seamless life...
Here among the disappearing, in the realm of the transient,
be a crystal cup that shatters as it rings.

Be. And know as well the need to not be;
know the great void where all things begin,

the infinite source of your most intense vibration,
so that you may give it your perfect assent
and come to completion now.

To all that has run its course, and to the vast unsayable
numbers of beings abounding in Nature,
add yourself gladly...

Rainer Maria Rilke

Sonnets to Orpheus II, 13

I combined the translations of Stephen Mitchell,
Joanna Macy and Anita Barrows

With thanks to Being Silently Drawn

~

Eurydice was Orpheus' wife, but is also
a reference to the underworld in Greek Mythology.

When it is one-sided - Hermann Hesse

I have found a thought, Govinda, which you'll again regard
as a joke or foolishness...

It says: The opposite of every truth is just as true!

That's like this: any truth can only be expressed and put into
words when it is one-sided.  Everything is one-sided which can
be thought with thoughts and said with words, it's all one-sided,
all just one half, all lacks completeness, roundness, oneness.

When the exalted "Gotama" [Gautama] spoke in his teachings
of the world, he had to divide it into "Sansara" [Samsara] and
Nirvana, into deception and truth, into suffering, [and freedom
from suffering, into "enlightened"and "unenlightened"].  It cannot
 be done differently, there is no way for him who wants to teach.

But the world itself, what exists around us and inside of us,
is never one-sided.

A person or an act is never entirely "Sansara" [Samsara] or
entirely Nirvana, a person is never entirely holy or entirely
sinful.  It does really seem like this, because we are subject to
deception and the confines of time, which causes us to adhere
to one fixed belief and does not account for the fullness of truth.
Every entity carries in it the potential for its opposite and so the
world is considered complete.  And so we must love the world
in its completeness...

...love, oh Govinda, seems to me to be the most important thing
of all.

Hermann Hesse
From: Siddartha

via - The Beauty We Love

[brackets mine]

~

Photo - Yin-Yang Mandala

Bleeding Enso

I was inspired today by Genju’s post over at 108zenbooks on the Enso. So I thought I’d give it a try. (Please see her post for a more complete explanation of the meaning and significance of the Enso.) From my own brief research the Enso is a Zen symbol of completeness, wholeness, infinity, the universe, the absolute, the cyclical nature of existence, and the true nature of existence. It is considered to be a form of meditation showing the expressive movement of the spirit of the person painting at that moment.

I have never done an Enso before, although I have been strangely soothed by viewing them. I saw Genju’s post as an opportunity to play, to be creative, as well as a way to possibly peek into the reflection of where my spirit is at the moment…

The first few I tried, I knew I was “trying” - trying to make the circle complete – trying to get the circle “right” – because I knew how it was “supposed” to look. Mind was trying to control, and they looked “contrived.” It wasn’t until I got to this one – the 5th “try” – that the mind at least partially let go of trying, and the stroke became more expressive of the “spirit” within. I was using a clean make-up brush, watered down acrylic paint, and different kinds of scrap paper that I had. When I got to this one I had switched to a pad of wax coated paper that I used to practice folk art painting on a long time ago – to get the strokes just right before messing up a piece of wood. Always trying to get it “right.” :)

In the Enso pictured here, the original circle was not complete. It started out as a big blob of paint at the top left and ended with hardly a wisp of paint at the end. Then something unexpected happened. I picked up the piece of paper to look at it. The paint literally began to bleed – to run. At first I was a bit panicked: a - this isn’t supposed to be happening - kind of feeling. But I relaxed, became curious and just let it run, turning the paper with the flow. Ah - still trying to control! :) Or – looked at another way - maybe just spontaneously letting life turn the way it does – adjusting and adapting… As the paint flowed a “bridge” appeared between the beginning and the end of the original stroke, and tendrils dripped into the center. I watched mesmerized as redness oozed its way around the circle, and the tendrils just kept going till they ran out of paint. Something inside deeply resonated with it, and I *felt* the reflection of what was expressed in the moment: not quite complete, not finished, not fully "enlightened" – in fact, rather raw and bleeding – life energy running everywhere; even though I keep *trying* to bridge that gap – to keep turning life around so “I” will finally feel complete. Yep – the Enso pretty much sums it up…

I don’t know if this is a” true” Enso, as I get the sense one is not supposed to play with them, or alter them in any way. They are just supposed to be a single brush stroke. But here it is – my “first” (5th) Enso… Something about it fascinates me – being able to peek into the nature of how “spirit” speaks to me, without self-analysis… I like the expressiveness of the movement, watching it unfold, seeing where it all goes – on paper that is. Every day life, not so much… :) The Enso reminds me, however, that even in the midst of the messiness and woundings of life, we are already whole and complete in our true nature. We are embraced just the way we are, even if things are not precise and clean… Wonderfully soothing isn’t it? :)

Thank you Genju for the inspiration and call to creativity!

~*~