Without Willing

Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own

and says, "My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body."

Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate.

Learn how it happens that one watches without willing, 

rests without willing, becomes angry without willing, 

loves without willing. 

Hippolytus of Rome 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

sitting quietly

Sitting quietly, doing nothing, 

Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

from the Zenrin Kushu

a 15th century anthology of Zen,

Taoist, and Buddhist teachings

love everything

All action is prayer.

All trees are desire-fulfilling.

All water is the Ganga.

All land is Varanasi.

Love everything.

Neem Karoli Baba

Photo:  Kathleen Knipp

capturing the living poem

Peter Bowers is a self-taught photographer.

Whether in a canoe or on skis he is called

by the early morning light or the shadows of dusk.

He enjoys the changing elements of mist and snow and

the shapes and textures of the living landscape.

His images invite the viewer into the stillness and solitude

of wild places, capturing the sensory experience in a visual language.

Come to the Orchard in Spring

Come to the orchard in Spring.

There is light and wine, and sweethearts

in the pomegranate flowers.

If you do not come, these do not matter.

If you do come, these do not matter.

Rumi

Photo:  Peter Bowers

A Morning Offering

I bless the night that nourished my heart

To set the ghosts of longing free

Into the flow and figure of dream

That went to harvest from the dark

Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me

Welcomes the wonder of this day,

The field of brightness it creates

Offering time for each thing

To arise and illuminate.

I place on the alter of dawn:

The quiet loyalty of breath,

The tent of thought where I shelter,

Waves of desire I am shore to 

And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today

To the invisible geography

That invites me to new frontiers,

To break the dead shell of yesterdays,

To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today

To live the life that I would love,

To postpone my dream no longer

But do at last what I came here for

And waste my heart on fear no more.

John O'Donohue

Photo:  Peter Bowers

my medicine

When the wind blows

that is my medicine

When it rains

that is my medicine

When it hails

that is my medicine

When it becomes clear after a storm

that is my medicine

Holy Woman Poem

Photo:  Peter Bowers

being lived

And yet, though we strain against the deadening grip

of daily necessity,

I sense there is this mystery:

All life is being lived.  

Who is living it then?

Is it the things themselves,

or something waiting 

inside them,

like an unplayed melody

in a flute?

Is it winds blowing over the waters?

Is it the branches that signal to each other?

Is it flowers

interweaving their fragrances,

or streets 

as they wind through time...

Rainer Maria Rilke

singing

I  believe in all that has never yet been spoken.

I want to free what waits within me

so that what no one has dared to wish for

may for once spring clear

without my contriving.

If this is arrogant, God, forgive me,

but this is what I need to say.

May what I do flow from me like a river,

no forcing and no holding back,

the way it is with children.

Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,

these deepening tides moving out, returning, 

I will sing you as no one ever has,

streaming through widening channels

into the open sea.

Rainer Maria Rilke

Photo:  Peter Bowers

First hand

At some point you will have put down the words down.

Put the maps down.

Close the sacred books.

Look up.

Stop being enthralled by the journeys

of your spiritual heroes

At some point, you will have to get up,

open your door and walk out into the 

sunlight of your Being and feel its light and 

its warmth on your own skin.

Firsthand.

No longer satisfied by catching a glimpse of it

through the windows of another's experience;

but stand in its full and glorious light,

naked and vulnerable and

in holy surrender with the story of your life

with all its twists and turns and tortured tales

lying pink and belly-up under the dome

of the disinterested sky:

with thanks to:

Wonder, silence, gratitude

how could you not love something like that?

how could you not love something that

never leaves you

regardless of how often you ignore it?

that's always self-shining -

never needing flint or switch or fuel?

that never changes

regardless of the vicissitudes of your daily experience?

that never takes sides

whatever person, team or nation you're supporting,

whatever idea or opinion you hold?

that never breaks apart 

even though your life appears to?

that never minds

n-e-v-e-r  m-i-n-d-s

that you spend your life running around looking for it

while it's in your face the whole time?

how could you not love something like that?

something you can never escape,

and that's so immanent

you are forced to accept it

as your own true identity?

how could you not then love 

Y O U R S E L F ?

and everything arising

- thoughts, perceptions, memories, feelings - 

within that inconceivable Self?

how could you not love that immensity which precedes

and includes all existence?

how could you not kneel at your own feet 

in awe?

how could you pretend that your enlightened

heart-driven passion

was not the Great Passion of That

which holds the planets in their orbit?

how could you ignore the urge to pour

your energy and attention

into whatever opens your heart?

how?

miram louisa

this unlit light

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Fire

Set your life on fire.

Seek those who fan your flames.

Who gets up early to discover the moment the light begins?

What was whispered to the rose to break it open

last night was whispered to my heart.

You've gotten drunk on so many kinds of wine.

Taste this.  It won't make you wild.

It's fire.

Give up, if you don't understand by this time that 

your living is firewood.

Set your life on fire.

Seek those who fan your flames.

The lamps are different, 

But the Light is the same.

To change, a person must face the dragon of his

appetites with another dragon, the life-energy of

the soul.

What is the body?

That shadow of a shadow of your love, that

somehow contains the entire universe.

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some

momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and attend them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently

sweep your house empty of its furniture, still, 

treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet

them at the door laughing, and invite them in.

Sorrows are the rags of old clothes and jackets

that serve to cover, and then are taken off.

That undressing, and the beautiful naked body

underneath, is the sweetness that comes after grief.

You haven't dared yet lose faith - so how can 

faith grow in you?

Gamble everything for love, if you're a true human being.

If these poems repeat themselves, then so does Spring.

Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi

With thanks to  Love Is A Place

Photo:  Peter Bowers