by presence

The teacher teaches by presence.

The language of presence is

more powerful than all the verbalizations

from all the languages from the world put together.

It is the eloquence of existence.

If you allow life to become your teacher, it teaches.

But if you turn to books

and want to know whether it be duality or non-duality,

one god or many, one creator, or two, etc.,

if you turn to books and theories,

if you want to dig into the past and base your perception on that,

then the opportunity to live first hand would be missed.

Vimala Thakar

photo:  Peter Morgan

unending love

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…

In life after life, in age after age, forever.

My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs

That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,

In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it's age-old pain,

It's ancient tale of being apart or together,

As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,

Clad in the light of a pole-star piercing the darkness of time:

You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount

At the heart of time, love of one for another.

We have played along side millions of lovers, shared in the same

Shy sweetness of meeting, the same distressful tears of farewell-

Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you,

The love of all man’s days both past and forever:

Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.

The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours 

And the songs of every poet past and forever. 

Rabindranath Tagore

Photo:  Peter Bowers

blessed are those who know nothing for certain

blessed are those who know nothing for certain,

whose curiosity keeps them beyond the claws of conclusion,

who seek as an impulse of wonderment rather than for gain,

who question everything the pundits proclaim as truth;

whose questions deliver them, willingly or not,

to the fiery face of the Unnameable, and

who find the courage to keep a “yes” alive in spite of terror;

who come back speechless and trembling with gratitude

blessed are those for whom the encounter enlivens a capacity

and a willingness to hold both hands out to the world

(one to hold grief, the other, gratefulness)

for their heart knows the two as one;

who, without choice, stand naked in knowingness;

whose fulfilment is refreshed with every breath;

who are quietly content (which is not to say inert or passive)

in spite of all that life appears to heave at them

blessed are those who know these contented ones,

who count them among their friends and neighbours,

who seek them out for their simple wisdom, knowing

they have nothing to spin or sell – nothing to bestow

other than their crazy head-shaking heart-healing joy:

innocent – ingenious – immanent

miriam louisa

with thanks:  Echoes From Emptiness

in timelessness and nowhere

Home again. But what was home? 

The fish has vast ocean for home. 

And man has timelessness and nowhere. 

"I won't delude myself with the fallacy of home," he said to himself.

 The four walls are a blanket I wrap around in,

 in timelessness and nowhere, to go to sleep.

D.H. Lawrence
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

V.

I do not know which to prefer,

The beauty of inflections

Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.





Wallace Stevens
Photo:  Peter Bowers