happiness

What we really want to do is serve happiness.

We want everyone to be happy, never unhappy even for a moment.

We want the animals to be happy. The happiness of every living thing is what we want.

We want it very much but we cannot bring  it about.

We cannot make even one individual happy.

It seems that this thing that we want most of all is out of our reach.

But we were born to serve happiness and we do serve it.

The confusion is due to our lack of awareness of real happiness. 

Happiness is pervasive.

It is everywhere. And everywhere the same.

And it is forever.

When people are really happy they say: 'This will last forever even after death', and that is true.

When we are unhappy it is because something is covering our minds and we are not able to be aware of happiness. When the difficulty is past we find happiness again.

It is not that happiness is all around us. That is not it at all. 

It is not this or that or in this or that.

It is an abstract thing.

Happiness is unattached. Always the same. It does not appear and disappear. It is not sometimes more and sometimes less. It is our awareness of happiness that goes up and down.

Happiness is our real condition.

It is reality.

It is life.

…

When we see life we call it beauty. It is magnificent - wonderful.

We may be looking at the ocean when we are aware of beauty but it is not the ocean. We may be in the desert and we say that we are aware of the 'living desert' but it is not the desert.

Life is ever present in the desert and everywhere, forever.

By awareness of life we are inspired to live.

Life is consciousness of life itself.

Agnes Martin

prepared for a lecture at the University of New Mexico, Santa Fe 1979

Agnes Martin, Paintings, Writings, Remembrances, Arne Glimcher

Photo: Peter Bowers

between each word

A poem written three thousand years ago

about a man who walks among horses

grazing on a hill under the small stars

comes to life on a page in a book

and the woman reading the poem

in her kitchen filled with a gold metallic light

finds the experience of living in that moment

so vividly described as to make her feel known

to another, until the woman and the poet share

not only their souls but the exact silence

between each word.  And every time the poem is read,

no matter her situation or her age,

this is more or less what happens.

Jason Shinder

Photo:  Peter Bowers

unforeseen

Always in big woods when you leave familiar ground and step off 
alone into a new place there will be, 

along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread. 

It is the ancient fear of the unknown, and it is your first bond 

with the wilderness you are going into.

You are undertaking the first experience, not of the place,
but of yourself in that place. It is an experience of our essential loneliness,
for nobody can discover the world for anybody else.
It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves
that it becomes a common ground and a common bond,
and we cease to be alone.

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long, but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch, very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.





Wendell Berry
The Unforeseen Wilderness: Kentucky’s Red River Gorge
photo:  Peter Bowers

travel

Mercy, there have been revelations.
Grace, there has been realization. Still, you must
travel the path of time and circumstance.

The further you go, the more it comes back to paying attention.
The rough skin of the tallowwood, the trade routes of lorikeets, a sky lifting
behind afternoon clouds. Staying close to the texture of things.

People can go before you and talk all they want,
but only one thing makes sense: the way the world enters
and finds its voice in you: the place you are free.





Andrew Colliver

with thanks: Poetry Chaikhana

what we do

Let the beauty we love be what we do

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground 

~

There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground, 

there are a thousand ways to go home again.

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers