seeing

Not "Revelation" - 'tis - that waits, 

But our unfurnished eyes -  

Emily Dickinson

Photo:  Peter Bowers

being to timelessness as it's to time

being to timelessness as it's to time,

love did no more begin than love will end; 

where nothing is to breathe to stroll to swim

love is the air the ocean and the land

(do lovers suffer?all divinities 

proudly descending put on deathful flesh:

are lovers glad?only their smallest joy's

a universe emerging from a wish)

love is the voice under all silences,

the hope which has no opposite in fear;

the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:

the truth more first than sun more last than star

-do lovers love?why then to heaven with hell.

Whatever sages say and fools,all's well

e.e. cummings 

photo:  Peter Bowers

Instrument of Peace by the Canadian Tenors

River Time

Have you also learned that secret

from the river; that there is

no such thing as time?

That the river is everywhere at the

same time, at the source and at

the mouth, at the waterfall, at the

ferry, at the current, in the ocean

and in the mountains, everywhere

and that the present moment only exists for

it, not the shadow of the past nor

the shadow of the future?

Hermann Hesse

Siddhartha 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Strange

The little river twittering in the twilight, 

The wan, wandering look of the pale sky, 

this is almost bliss.  

And everything shut up and gone to sleep, 

all the troubles and anxieties and pain

gone under the twilight. 

Only the twilight now, and the soft "Sh!" of the 

river.

That will last forever.

And at last I know my love for you is here; 

I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight, 

It is large, so large, I could not see it before, 

Because of the little lights and flickers and

interruptions, 

Troubles, anxieties and pains.

You are the call and I am the answer, 

You are the wish,  and I am the fulfillment, 

You are the night, and I am the day.

What else - it is perfect enough.

It is perfectly complete, 

You and I, 

What more-- ?

Strange, how we suffer in spite of this.

D.H. Lawrence

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Love Frees

All day long a little burro labours, sometimes 

with heavy loads on her back and sometimes

just with worries

about things that bother only

burros.

And worries, as we know, can be more

exhausting

than physical labour.

Once in a while a kind monk comes

to her stable and brings

a  pear, but more 

than that, 

he looks into the burro's eyes and touches her

ears 

and for a few seconds the burro is free

and even seems to laugh, 

because love does 

that.

Love frees.

Meister Eckhart

I wish I could speak like music

I wish I could speak like music.  I wish I could put

the swaying splendor of fields into words so that

you could hold Truth against your body and dance.

I am trying the best I can with this crude brush, 

the tongue, to cover you with light.  I wish I could

speak like divine music.  I want to give you the

sublime rhythms of this earth and sky's limbs

as they joyously spin and surrender, surrender

against God's luminous breath.  Hafiz wants you

to hold me against your precious body and dance, 

dance.

Hafiz

And What is Time?

And an astronomer said, Master, what of Time: 

And he answered:  

You would measure time the measure-

less and the immeasurable.

You would adjust your conduct and even

direct the course of your spirit according to

hours and seasons.

Of time you would make a stream upon 

whose bank you would sit and watch its

flowing.

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's 

timelessness.

And knows that yesterday is but today's

memory and tomorrow is today's dream.

And that that which sings and contem-

plates in you is still dwelling within the 

bounds of that first moment which scat-

tered the stars into space.

Who among you does not feel that his

power to love is boundless?

And yet who does not feel that very love, 

though boundless, encompassed within the

centre of his being, and moving not from 

love thought to love thought, nor from 

love deeds to other love deeds?

And is not time even as love is, undivided

and spaceless? 

Kahlil Gibran

In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars

of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon

and fulfillment,

the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders

of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is

nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned

in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side

is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world

you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it

against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.





Mary Oliver

beloved

The real beloved is your beginning and end.

When you find that one, 

You'll no longer expect anything else.

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Stand Firm

I said to the wanting-creature inside me:

What is this river you want to cross?

There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.

Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?

There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.

There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.

There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!

And there is no body, and no mind!

Do you believe there is some place that will make the

soul less thirsty?

In that great absence you will find nothing.

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;

there you have a solid place for your feet.

Think about it carefully!

Don't go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this:  just throw away all thoughts of 

imaginary things, 

and stand firm in that which you are.  

Kabir

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Where we began

Though we are often driven by sorrow,

To seek the end of sorrows,

It is the desire for Love and Love Itself,

That in the end brings us to Freedom.

For when all  hope is lost,

And only Despair remains.

When all paths have failed,

And all efforts proven vain.

Then we sit alone, defeated, with nothing left.

Nothing, that is...

Except what moved us at the onset.

Our Own Shining Heart, our Own Inherent Love.  

We wander for countless ages.

In the heartbreak of giving and receiving,

Until, when grasping is exhausted,

We simply rest as the Love we Are.

The Kingdom of Heaven is Within.

Not in perfection or attainment, 

Not in doing thusly, or understanding profoundly.

Simply Here, where we began.

As we are.

Here.

Now.

Right where we began.

Chuck Surface

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Lying beside my wife

Once when I was awake and lying beside

my wife, she whispered in her sleep, "Hafiz, 

I love you."

I don't think I would trade having heard her

soul speak that way, even for all of heaven

saying the same thing.

But is there a difference?  I think loving is

always God, showing us It is here, as much

as the formless can reach into our world. 

Hafiz

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Go Deeper

Go deeper
Past thoughts into silence.
Past silence into stillness.
Past stillness into the heart.
Let love consume all that is left of you.





Kabir
image via:

http://anateresabarboza.blogspot.ca

waiting

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope,

for hope would be hope for the wrong thing.

And wait without love.  For love would be love, 

of the wrong thing. 

Yet there is faith.

But the faith and the hope and the love, are all in the waiting.

And the darkness shall be the light

and the stillness the dancing.

T.S.Eliot

 Photo:  Peter Bowers

  

Anyone Can Sing

Anyone can sing.  You just open your mouth,

and give shape to a sound.  Anyone can sing.

What is harder, is to proclaim the soul,

to initiate a wild and necessary deepening: 

to give the voice broad, sonorous wings

of solitude, grief, and celebration, 

to fill the body with the echoes of voices

lost long ago to bravery, and silence,

to prise the reluctant heart wide open, 

to witness defeat, to suffer contempt, 

to shrink, lose face, go down in ignominy,

to retreat to the last dark hiding-space

where the tattered remnants of your pride

still gather themselves around your nakedness, 

to know these rags as your only protection

and yet still open -  to face the possibility

that your innermost core may hold nothing at all, 

and to sing from that - to fill the void

with every hurt, every harm, every hard-won joy

that staves off death yet honours its coming, 

to sing both full and utterly empty, 

alone and conjoined, exiled and at home, 

to sing what people feel most keenly

yet never acknowledge until you sing it. 

Anyone can sing.  Yes.  Anyone can sing.    

William Ayot

Photo:  Peter Bowers

I Write of That Journey

I remember how my mother would hold me.

I would look up at her sometimes and see her weep.

I understand now what was happening.

Love so strong a force

it broke the cage, 

and she disappeared from everything

for a blessed

moment.

All actions have evolved 

from the taste of flight; 

the hope of freedom

moves our cells

and limbs.

Unable to live on the earth, Mira ventured out alone in the sky - 

I write of that journey

of becoming as 

free as

God.

Don't forget love; 

it will bring all the madness you need

to unfurl yourself across

the universe.

Mira 

From:  Love Poems from God

Daniel Ladinsky 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

dew light

Now in the blessed days of more and less

when the news about time is that each day

there is less of it I know none of that 

as I walk out through the early garden

only the day and I are here with no

before or after and the dew looks up

without a number or a present age.  

W.S. Merwin 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

No Path

There is No Path that Goes all the Way 

Han Shan

Not that it stops us looking

for the full continuation.

The one line in the poem

we can start and follow

straight to the end.  The fixed belief

we can hold, facing a stranger

that saves us the trouble 

of a real conversation.

But one day you are not

just imagining an empty chair

where your loved one sat.

You are not just telling a story

where the bridge is down

and there's nowhere to cross.

You are not just trying to pray

to a God you imagined

would keep you safe.

No, you've come to the place

where nothing you've done

will impress and nothing you 

can promise will avert

the silent confrontation.

The place where

your body already seems to know

the way, having kept

to the last, its own secret

reconnaissance.

But still, there is no path

that goes all the way,

one conversation leads 

to another, 

one breath to the next

until

there's no breath at all, 

just

the inevitable 

final release

of the  burden.

And then, 

wouldn't your life

have to start 

all over again

for you to know

even a little 

of who you had been? 

David Whyte

Sweet Darkness

When your eyes are tired

the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone, 

no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark 

where the night has eyes

to recognize its own.

There you can be sure

you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home

tonight.

The night will give you a horizon

further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.

The  world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness

to learn

anything or anyone 

that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

David Whyte

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Love After Love

The time will come 

when, with elation

 you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door, in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here.  Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine.  Give bread.  Give back your heart

to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored

for another, who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from  the bookshelf, 

the photographs, the desperate notes, 

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit.  Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

Photo:  Peter Bowers

For The Senses

May the touch of your skin

Register the beauty

Of the otherness

That surrounds you.

May your listening be attuned

To the deeper silence

Where sound is honed

To bring distance home.

May the fragrance

Of a breathing meadow

Refresh your heart

And remind you you are

A child of the earth

And when you partake 

Of food and drink, 

May your taste quicken 

To the gift and sweetness

That flows from the earth.

May your inner eye

See through the surfaces

And glean the real presence

Of everything that meets you.

May your soul beautify

The desire of your eyes

That you might glimpse

The infinity that hides

In the simple sights

That seem worn

To your usual eyes.  

John O'Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers

still here...

My dear octogenarian father looks at me from across the restaurant table with those eyes, pregnant with a lifetime of reflections, and says, "Strange how it all ... turns out... so unexpected..."

"How do you mean, dad?"

"You go through life, doing this and that... you have children, they grow up... you work, you make money, you lose money, you retire... they take everything away from you... but... well... I'm still... we're still... here... aren't we, son... ?

Still here, dad.   Still here.





Jeff Foster

Gently...

Last night

I begged the wise one to tell me

the secret of the world.

Gently, gently he whispered, 

"Be quiet, 

The secret cannot be spoken, 

It is wrapped in silence." 

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers

rise and fall

Let the waves of the universe rise 

and fall as they will. 

You have nothing to gain or lose. 

You are the ocean.

Ashtavakra Gita

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Love is...

Love is something that is new, fresh, alive.

It has no yesterday and no tomorrow.

It is beyond the turmoil of thought.

It is only the innocent mind which knows what love is, 

and the innocent mind can live in the world which is not innocent.  

To find this extraordinary thing which man has sought

endlessly through sacrifice, through worship,

through relationship, through sex,

through every form of pleasure and pain, 

is only possible when thought

comes to understand itself

and comes naturally to an end.

Then love has no opposite,

then love has no conflict.   

J. Krishnamurti 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

You are the only student you have

You are the only

 faithful student you have.

All the others leave eventually.

Have you been making yourself shallow

with making others eminent?

Just remember, when you're in union, 

you don't have to fear

that you'll be drained. 

The command comes to speak,

and you feel the ocean 

moving through you.  

Then comes, Be silent, 

as when the rain stops, 

and the trees in the orchard

begin to draw moisture

up into themselves. 

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers

barriers

Your task is not to seek for love, 

but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself

that you have built against it.

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers

love letters

Every day, priests minutely examine the Law

and endlessly chant complicated sutras.

Before doing that, though, they should learn

how to read the love letters sent by the wind

and rain, the snow and moon. 

Ikkyu 

photo:  Peter Bowers

big question

There will be marriage, there will be children,

there will be earning money to maintain a family;

all this will happen in the natural course of events, 

for destiny must fulfill itself; you will go through it without resistance,

facing tasks as they come, attentive and thorough,

both in small things and big. 

But the general attitude will be of affectionate detachment,

enormous goodwill, without expectation of return,

constant giving without asking.

In marriage you are neither the husband nor the wife; 

you are the love between the two.

You are the clarity and kindness that makes everything orderly and happy.

It may seem vague to you, but if you think a little,

you will find that the mystical is most practical,

for it makes your life creatively happy.

Your consciousness is raised to a higher dimension,

from which you see everything much clearer and with greater intensity.

You realize that the person you became at birth

and will cease to be at death is temporary and false.

You are not the sensual, emotional and intellectual person,

gripped by desires and fears.  Find out your real being.

What am I?

is the fundamental question of all philosophy and psychology.

Go into it deeply.

Nisargadatta

Their Secret Was

A married couple used to come see me once in

a while.  Among the many I knew who were wed,

they appeared the most happy.

One day I said to them, "What marital advice

could you offer to others that might help them

achieve the grace you found?"

And the young woman blushed and so did her

husband; so I did not press them to answer.

But I knew.

Their secret was this:  That once every day, for 

an hour, they treated each other as if they were 

gods and would, with all their heart, do anything, 

anything, their beloved desired.

Sometimes that just meant holding hands and

walking in a forest that renewed their souls.

Rumi

translation:  Daniel Landinsky

the same as everything

We are the same as plants, as trees, as other people, 

as the rain that falls. 

We consist of that which is around us.

We are the same as everything. 

Buddha

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Beside the Waterfall

At dawn

the big dog - 

Winston by name - 

reached down

into the leaves - tulips and willows mostly - 

beside the white 

waterfall, 

and dragged out, 

into plain sight, 

a fawn, 

it was scarcely larger

than a rabbit, 

and thankfully,

it was dead.

Winston

looked over the

delicate, spotted body and then

deftly

tackled

the beautiful flower-like head,

breaking it and

breaking it off and

swallowing it.

All the while this was happening

it was growing lighter.

When I called to him

Winston merely looked up.

Grizzled around the chin

and with kind eyes,

he, too, if you're willing

had a face like a flower; and then the red sun

which had been raising all the while anyway,

broke

clear of the trees and dropped its wild, clawed light

over everything. 

Mary Oliver

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Do you think I know what I'm doing?

Do  you think I know what I'm doing? 

That for one breath or half-breath that I belong to myself? 

As much as a pen knows what it's writing, 

or the ball can guess where it's going next? 

Rumi

photo:  Peter Bowers

Wildflowers

You have travelled up ten thousand steps in search of the dharma.

So many long days in the archives, copying, copying, copying. 

The gravity of the Tang and the profundity of the Sung

make heavy baggage.  

Here ! I've picked you a bunch of wildflowers.

Their meaning is the same

but they're much easier to carry.

Xu Yun 

mysteries, yes

Truly, we live with mysteries too marvelous 

to be understood. 

How grass can be nourishing in the 

mouths of lambs.

How rivers and stones are forever

in allegiance with gravity.

while we ourselves dream of rising. 

How two hands touch and the bonds

will never be broken.

How people come, from delight or the 

scars of damage, 

to the comfort of a poem.

Let me keep my distance, always, from those

who think they have the answers.

Let me keep company always with those who say

"Look!" and laugh in astonishment, 

and bow their heads.

Mary Oliver

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Long Life

For example, what the trees do

not only in lightening storms

or the watery dark of a summer's night

or under the white nets of winter

but now, and now, and now - whenever

we're not looking.  Surely you can't imagine

they don't dance, from the root up, wishing

to travel a little, not cramped so much as wanting

a better view, or more sun, or just as avidly

more shade - surely you can't imagine they just 

stand there, loving every 

minute of it, the birds or the emptiness, the dark rings

of the years slowly and without a sound

thickening, and nothing different unless the wind, 

and then only in its own mood, comes

to visit, surely you can't imagine

patience, and happiness like that. 

Mary Oliver

Photo:  Peter Bowers