Listening

What is the deep listening?  Sama is

a greeting from the secret ones inside

the heart, a letter.  The branches of 

your intelligence grow new leaves in

the wind of this listening.  The body

reaches a peace.  Rooster sound comes,

reminding you of your love for dawn.

The reed flute and singer's lips:  

the knack of how spirit breathes into

us becomes as simple and ordinary as 

eating and drinking.  The dead rise with

the pleasure of listening.  If someone 

can't hear a trumpet melody, sprinkle

dirt on his head and declare him dead.  

Listen and feel the beauty of your

separation, the unsayable absence.  

There's a moon inside every human being.

Learn to be companions with it.  Give

more of your life to this listening.  As 

brightness is to time, so you are to

the one who talks to the deep ear in 

your chest.  I should sell my tongue

and buy a thousand ears when that

one steps near and begins to speak.

Rumi

Translated by Coleman Barks

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Expressing the Inexpressible

We struggle, through Love,

To express in words, concepts, and metaphor,

That which cannot be expressed.

For this Grace can only be communicated

Through wordless Benediction,

Heart to Heart,

If you can fall, for just one moment,

From head to Heart,

From concept to Experience…

And allow yourself to be “Meditated”.

Chuck Surface

Photo:  Peter Bowers

listening

We cannot precisely say what this listening is, because it is not a function. It is without intention. Being free from intention also means being free from concentration.  In both we are looking for a target, looking for a result, but in listening we are simply open, directionless.

In listening there is no grasping, no taking.  All that is listened to comes to us.  The relaxed brain is in a state of natural non-function, simply attentive without any specific direction.  We can never objectify listening, because that would mean to put it in the frame of space and time.  It is listening to oneself.

In listening to oneself there is no outside and no inside.  It is silence, presence.  In this silence-presence there is total absence of oneself as being somebody.

In listening we are not isolated.  We are only isolated when we live in objects, but free from objects we live our essence where there is no separation.  In listening there is not a you and not another.  Call it love.





Jean Klein
The Book of Listening
Photo:  Peter Bowers

wind in the pine trees

No writing on the solitary, meditative dimensions of life can say anything

that has not already been said better by the wind in the pine trees. 

These pages seek nothing more than to echo the silence and peace 

that is “heard” when the rain wanders freely among the hills and forests.

But what can the wind say when there is no hearer?

 There is then a deeper silence:

 the silence in which the Hearer is No-Hearer. 

That deeper silence must be heard before one can speak truly of solitude.

Thomas Merton 

Mercy

A dragon was pulling a bear into its terrible mouth.
A courageous man went and rescued the bear.
There are such helpers in the world, who rush to save
anyone who cries out. Like Mercy itself,
they run toward the screaming.

And they can't be bought off.
If you were to ask one of those, "Why did you come
so quickly?" he or she would say, "Because I heard
your helplessness."

Where lowland is,
that's where water goes. All medicine wants
is pain to cure.

And don't just ask for one mercy.
Let them flood in. Let the sky open under your feet.
Take the cotton out of your ears, the cotton
of consolations, so you can hear the sphere-music.

Push the hair out of your eyes.
Blow the phlegm from your nose,
and from your brain.

Let the wind breeze through.
Leave no residue in yourself from that bilious fever.
Take the cure for impotence,
that your manhood may shoot forth,
and a hundred new beings come of your coming.

Tear the binding from around the foot
of your soul, and let it race around the track
in front of the crowd. Loosen the knot of greed
so tight on your neck. Accept your new good luck.

Give your weakness
to one who helps.

Crying out loud and weeping are great resources.
A nursing mother, all she does
is wait to hear her child.

Just a little beginning-whimper,
and she's there.

God created the child, that is your wanting,
so that it might cry out, so that milk might come.

Cry out! Don't be stolid and silent
with your pain. Lament! And let the milk
of loving flow into you.

The hard rain and wind
are ways the cloud has
to take care of us.

Be patient.
Respond to every call
that excites your spirit.

Ignore those that make you fearful
and sad, that degrade you
back toward disease and death.








Rumi
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Lord Krishna to Arjuna

Creatures rise and creatures vanish;
I alone am real, Arjuna,
looking out, amused, from deep
Within the eyes of every creature.

I am the object of all knowledge,
Father of the world, its mother,
Source of all things, of impure and
Pure, of holiness and horror.

I am the goal, the root, the witness,
Home and refuge, dearest friend,
Creation and annihilation,
Everlasting seed and treasure.

I am the radiance of the sun, I
Open or withhold the rainclouds,
I am Immortality and
Death, am being and non-being.

I am the Self, Arjuna, seated
in the heart of every creature.
I am the origin, the middle,
And the end that all must come to.








The Bhagavad Gita
Stephen Mitchell translation
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Web

Intricate and untraceable
weaving and interweaving,
dark strand with light:

designed, beyond
all spiderly contrivance,
to link, not to entrap:

elation, grief, joy, contrition, entwined;

shaking, changing,

forever

forming,

transforming:

all praise,

all praise to the

great web.






Denise Levertov
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Learn by little the desire for all things

Learn by little the desire for all things
which perhaps is not desire at all
but undying love which perhaps
is not love at all but gratitude
for the being of all things which
perhaps is not gratitude at all
but the maker's joy in what is made,
the joy in which we come to rest.





Wendell Berry
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Cutting Loose

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason,
you sing. For no reason, you accept
the way of being lost, cutting loose from
all else and electing a world
where you go where you want to.

Arbitrary, sound comes, a reminder
that a steady center is holding
all else. If you listen, that sound
will tell where it is, and you
can slide your way past trouble.

Certain twisted monsters
always bar the path—but that's when
you get going best, glad to be
lost, learning how real it is
here on the earth, again and again.





William Stafford
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Fullness

This is fullness.

That is fullness.

From fullness springs fullness.

Take fullness from fullness and

only fullness remains.

Om peace, peace, peace.

Om purnam-adah purnam-idam

Purnaat purnam-udachyate

Purnasya purnam-aadaaya

Purnam-eva-avashishyate

Om shanti shanti shanti

Invocation Brhadarayaka Upanishad

photo:  Peter Bowers

The Friend

In the old days, my Baba said,
True teachers, gurus, murshids,
Did not sit “in front of” groups, elevated above,
But were simple people… simple…
Always sitting “across from” a simple friend.

They were fellow Lovers of The Beloved,
In whose Hearts Her Flame was alight,
And in relationship with whom,
The ember in one's own Heart would ignite,
And one would become, in time… “like them”.

This is, after all, the point, is it not?

This was an intimate spiritual relationship,
Not seeing from a distance, seldom,
Over the heads of a crowd,
Not being “taught” in words and concepts,
But a Mystical Illumining of Grace…

Heart to Heart.

The guru, the murshid, the teacher,
Took tea with a friend, and chatted,
And together they bathed in the Presence,
That Illumined both their Hearts,
One aflame, the other igniting.

Things were said, questions asked, in this simplicity,
That would not be uttered in a crowd of strangers,
Revelations of the Heart's deepest Longing,
Questions utterable only in the Intimacy of Friendship,
And answers…

Born of a Heart Fulfilled.

It did not matter, my Baba said,
Whether the teacher, the guru, the murshid,
Was brilliant, of diamond-like mind,
Eloquent, and inspiring of speech,
Beautiful for the eyes to behold…

Or a drooling idiot.

All that was required, he said,
Was their Presence,
Which had become, over time,
Through Love, Longing, and inward turning,
Indistinguishable, inseparable from…

Her Timeless Presence.

Two simple Friends,
Two simple ones,
Two Lovers of The Beautiful Mystery,
Taking Tea, chatting, as only Friends can do;
Sipping… Sipping…

Vanishing in The Tea.
In this way, this Ancient Way, my Baba said,
The Flame in one, ignited the ember in the other,
And in time, when that ember burst into Flame,
Another teacher, guru, murshid was born,
A Simple friend, a Fellow Lover…

Of That for which “Love“ is a wholly inadequate word.

Two things he oft' repeated:
“Slowly, slowly; She is doing everything.”
And, more often even than that,
“Remain always, a simple man.”

For the old days are now.





Chuck Surface
Photo:  Peter Bowers

Humility

            I can see humility
            Delicate and white
            It is satisfying
            Just by itself

            And Trust
            absolute trust
            a gift
            a precious gift

            I would rather think of humility than
                        anything else.

            Humility, the beautiful daughter
            She cannot do either right or wrong
            She does not do anything
            All of her ways are empty
            Infinitely light and delicate
            She treads an even path
            Sweet, smiling, uninterrupted, free


       


             Agnes Martin
             Photo:  Peter Bowers