In praise of silence

In praise of silence, the less said the better.

However.....let it be said that this is it.  Nothing fancy.  Nothing extraordinary.

The it that this is may be decorated differently moment to moment, now as the furnishings provided by the senses, now as the furnishings provided by the mind.  But the decorations themselves are simply hung on the invisible fabric of this that is all there is.

Perhaps keeping silence is better -  but it must be said that we LOVE the decorations - even to the exclusion of this that makes them visible.  Just the other day I was captivated by.....  And then there was.....   What is captivating now?

Perhaps the less said the better, so we become captivated by silence, ever present in spite of the words, in spite of the story, in spite of ourselves  - silence that interpenetrates all noise and its absence, all image, all sensation - silence that underlies not only the presence of content but the absence of content as well, even presence itself swallowed by silence.....

.....in praise of silence.  That's all.






Joan Ruvinsky
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Thanking

I think as long as you are a human being
there is thanking, gratitude for being,
not for being human,
but for being
what you fundamentally are.
Thanking for the sake of thanking.





Jean Klein

Photo:  Peter Bowers

In our consciousness of time

In our consciousness of time
we are doomed to the past.
The future we may dream of
but can know it only after
it has come and gone.
The present too we know
only as the past. When
we say, "This now is
present, the heat, the breeze,
the rippling water," it is past.
Before we knew it, before
we said "now," it was gone.

If the only time we live
is the present, and if the present
is immeasurably short (or
long), then by the measure
of the measurers we don't
exist at all, which seems
improbable, or we are
immortals, living always
in eternity, as from time to time
we hear, but rarely know.

You see the rainbow and the new-leafed
woods bright beneath, you see
the otters playing in the river
or the swallows flying, you see
a beloved face, mortal
and alive, causing the heart
to sway in the rifts between beats
where we live without counting,
where we have forgotten time
and have forgotten ourselves,
where eternity has seized us
as its own. This breaks
open the little circles
of the humanly known and believed,
of the world no longer existing,
letting us live where we are,
as in the deepest sleep also
we are entirely present,
entirely trusting, eternal.

Is it concentration of the mind
our unresting counting
that leaves us standing
blind in our dust?
In time we are present only
by forgetting time.





Wendell Berry
Leavings
Photo:  Peter Bowers

out beyond ideas

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field.  I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn't make any sense.

Rumi

Prayer

Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.

Galway Kinnell
Photo:  Peter Bowers