to begin with, the sweet grass

1.

Will the hungry ox stand in the field and not eat

  of the sweet grass?

Will the owl bite off its own wings?

Will the lark forget to lift its body in the air or

  forget to sing?

Will the rivers run upstream?

Behold, I say - behold

the reliability and the finery and the teachings

  of this gritty earth gift.

2.

Eat bread and understand comfort.

Drink water, and understand delight.

Visit the garden where the scarlet trumpets

  are opening their bodies for the hummingbirds

who are drinking the sweetness, who are

  thrillingly gluttonous.

For one thing leads to another.

Soon you will notice how stones shine underfoot.

Eventually tides will be the only calendar you believe in.

And someone's face, whom you love, will be as a star

both intimate and ultimate,

and you will be both heart-shaken and respectful.

And you will hear the air itself, like a beloved, whisper:

oh, let me, for a while longer, enter the two

beautiful bodies of your lungs.

3.

The witchery of living

is my whole conversation

with you, my darlings

All I can tell you is what I know.

Look, and look again.

This world is not just a little thrill for the eyes.

It's more than bones.

It's more than the delicate wrist with its personal pulse.

It's more than the beating of the single heart.

It's praising.

It's giving until the giving feels like receiving.

You have a life - just imagine that!

You have this day, and maybe another, and maybe

  still another.

4.

Someday I am going to ask my friend Paulus,

the dancer, the potter,

to make me a begging bowl

which I believe

my soul needs.

And if I come to you,

to the door of your comfortable house

with unwashed clothes and unclean fingernails,

will you put something into it?

I would like to take this chance.

I would like to give you this chance.

5.

We do one thing or another; we stay the same, or we

  change.

Congratulations, if

  you have changed.

6.

Let me ask you this.

Do you think that beauty exists for some

  fabulous reason?

And, if you have not been enchanted by this adventure -

  your life -

what would do for you?

7.

What I loved in the beginning, I think, was mostly myself.

Never mind that I had to, since somebody had to.

That was many years ago.

Since then I have gone out from my confinements,

  though with difficulty.

I mean the ones that thought to rule my heart.

I cast them out, I put them on the mush pile.

They will be nourishment somehow (everything is nourishment

somehow or another.)

And I have become the child of clouds, and of hope.

I have become the friend of the enemy, whoever that is.

I have become older and, cherishing what I have learned,

I have become younger.

And what do I risk to tell you this, which is all I know?

Love yourself.  Then forget it.  Then, love the world.

Mary Oliver

Evidence

photo:  Peter Bowers

natural and simple

Once you realize that the road is the goal and that you are always on the road, not to reach a goal, but to enjoy its beauty and its wisdom, life ceases to be a task and becomes natural and simple, in itself an ecstasy.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Photo:  Peter Bowers

with thanks: Love is a Place

first breath

As soon as she is born - she, 

he - the moment the newborn breathes

for the first time, taking, from the general

supply, some air, pulling it down

half her length, into the base of the

lobe which had first existed as a mattery

idea, and then had become the folded

lung, which lay in blue wait;

as soon as the sky

is drawn in, like a

petal expanding, in fast motion,

opening into the new being -

oxygen, where it had never been,

taking the neonate's bluish shade

back into the empyrean;

as soon as she's taken the good of one breath, 

and given back the rest - look,

she is dying. I mean she is living - for a time,

maybe ninety years - but she

is on her way, now, to that ending.

She had never died at all, until now,

never before been offered the human work.

Sharon Olds

Photo:  Peter Bowers

with thanks Love is a Place

the teachers

Owl in the black morning,
   mockingbird in the burning
      slants of the sunny afternoon
         declare so simply

to the world
   everything I have tried but still
      haven't been able
         to put into words,

so I do not go
   far from that school
      with its star-bright
         or blue ceiling,

and I listen to those teachers,
   and others too -
      the wind in the trees
         and the water waves -

for they are what lead me
   from the dryness of self
      where I labor
         with the mind-steps of language -

lonely, as we all are
   in the singular,
      I listen hard
         to the exuberances

of the mockingbird and the owl,
   the waves and the wind.
      And then, like peace after perfect speech,
         such stillness.





Mary Oliver
Photo:  Peter Bowers

practice

 

Once someone asked a well-known Thai meditation master, "In this world where everything changes, where nothing remains the same, where loss and grief are inherent in our very coming into existence, how can there be any happiness? How can we find security when we see that we can't count on anything being the way we want it to be?" The teacher, looking compassionately at this fellow, held up a drinking glass which had been given to him earlier in the morning and said, "You see this goblet? For me, this glass is already broken. I enjoy it, I drink out of it. It holds my water admirably, sometimes even reflecting the sun in beautiful patterns. If I should tap it, it has a lovely ring to it. But when I put this glass on a shelf and the wind knocks it over or my elbow brushes it off the table and it falls to the ground and shatters, I say,  'Of course.' But when I understand this glass is already broken, every moment with it is precious. Every moment is just as it is and nothing need be otherwise."

When we recognize that, just as that glass, our body is already broken, that indeed we are already dead, then life becomes precious and we open to it just as it is, in the moment it is occurring. When we understand that all our loved ones are already dead - our children, our mates, our friends - how precious they become. How little fear can interpose, how little doubt can estrange us. When you live your life  as though you're already dead, life takes on new meaning. Each moment becomes a whole lifetime, a universe unto itself.  

When we realize we are already dead, our priorities change, our heart opens, our mind begins to clear of the fog of old holdings and pretendings. We watch all life in transit and what matters becomes instantly apparent: The transmission of love, the letting go of obstacles to understanding, the relinquishment of our grasping, our hiding from ourselves. Seeing the mercilessness of our self-strangulation, we begin to come gently into the light we share with all beings. Taking each teaching, each loss, each gain, each fear, each joy, as it arises and experiencing it fully, life becomes workable...

If our only spiritual practice were to live as though we were already dead, relating to all we meet, to all we do, as though it were our final moments in the world, what time would there be for old games or falsehoods or posturing? If we lived our life as though we were already dead, as though our children were already dead, how much time would there be for self-protection and the re-creation of ancient mirages? Only love would be appropriate, only the truth.

Stephen and Ondrea Levine

Excerpt: Who Dies?

Photo:  Peter Bowers

 

at the seven-mile ranch, comstock, texas

I live like I know what I'm doing.

When I hand the horses a square of hay,

when I walk the road of stones 

or chew on cactus pulp,

there's a drumming behind me,

the day opens up to let me pass through.

I know the truth,

how always I'm following each small sign that appears.

This sheep that materialized behind a clump of cenizo bushes

knows I didn't see him till he raised his head.

Out here it's impossible to be lonely.

The land walking beside you is your oldest friend,

pleasantly silent, like already you've told the best stories

and each of you knows how much the other made up.

Naomi Shihab Nye

Photo:  Peter Bowers

with thanks: A Year of Being Here

attention

"Well... ...That's what you always forget, isn't it? I mean, you forget to pay attention to what's happening. And that's the same as not being here and now."

Aldous Huxley,  Island

If this were the last time we met in this world 

what would I wish I had said     or done?

I know death is always somewhere in the neighborhood

for someone as old as I,

just as I know, no matter how much I might beg,

God would never forbid you might die.

There is no perfect word to speak,

no perfect deed to perform.

When after today I have left or am left,

if I am never to see you again,

then I just want to be fully here    now,

to be fully awake while we may.

There will be time for sleep after today.

Ron Stone

Photo: Peter Bowers

with thanks: A Year of Being Here

a path in the woods

I don't trust the truth of memories

because what leaves us

departs forever

There's only one current of this sacred river

but I still want to remain faithful

to my first astonishments

to recognize as wisdom the child's wonder

and to carry in myself until the end a path

in the woods of my childhood

dappled with patches of sunlight

to search for it everywhere

in museums in the shade of churches

this path on which I ran unaware

a six-year old

toward my primary mysterious aloneness

Anna Kamienska

Photo:  Peter Bowers

something that happens right now

    

I haven't told this before. By our house on the plains before I was born my father planted a maple. At night after bedtime when others were asleep I would go out and stand beside it and know all the way north and all the way south. Air from the fields wandered in. Stars waited with me. All of us ached with a silence, needing the next thing, but quiet. We leaned into midnight and then leaned back. On the rise to the west the radio tower blinked - so many messages pouring by. 

    A great surge came rushing from everywhere and wrapped all the land and sky. Where were we going? How soon would our house break loose and become a little speck lost in the vast night? My father and mother would die. The maple tree would stand right there. With my hand on that smooth bark we would watch it all. Then my feet would come loose from Earth and rise by the power of longing. I wouldn't let the others know about this, but I would be everywhere, as I am right now, a thin tone like the wind, a sip of blue light - no source, no end, no horizon. 

William Stafford

The Way It Is

Photo:  Peter Bowers

funny

What's it like to be human

asked the bird

I don't know really

It's to be prisoner in your own skin

but crave infinity

to be captive of a crumb of time

but reach for eternity

to be hopelessly uncertain

and a fool of hope

to be a crystal of frost

and a handful of heat

to breathe in air

to choke without words

to be on fire

and have a nest of ashes

to eat bread

but feast on hungers

to die without love

but love beyond death

That's funny said the bird

flying lightly up into the sky

Anna Kamienska

Astonishments

Photos:  Peter Bowers

breath

 

    Breath, you invisible poem! 

    Pure, continuous exchange

    with all that is, flow and counterflow

    where rhythmically I come to be.

    

    Each time a wave that occurs just once

    in a sea I discover I am.

    You, innermost of oceans,

    you, infinitude of space.

    

    How many far places were once

    within me. Some winds

    are like my own child.

    

    When I breathe them now, do they know me again?

    Air, you silken surround,

    completion and seed of my words.

    

    

    

    

    

    Rainer Maria Rilke

    Sonnets to Orpheus

    Part Two I

    Trans. Anita Barrows & Joanna Macy

    Photo:  Peter Bowers

utopia

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here

with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,

sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:

the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned

and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.

Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.

Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,

and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches

turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave

and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

Wislawa Szymborska

Photo:  Peter Bowers