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~ Rupert Spira

Starting here, what do you want to remember? How sunlight creeps along a shining floor? What scent of old wood hovers, what softened sound from outside fills the air? Will you ever bring a better gift for the world than the breathing respect that you carry wherever you go right now? Are you waiting for time to show you some better thoughts? When you turn around, starting here, lift this new glimpse that you found; carry into evening all that you want from this day. This interval you spent reading or hearing this, keep it for life -- What can anyone give you greater than now, starting here, right in this room, when you turn around? ~ William Stafford from The Way It Is: New & Selected Poems

~ Rumi version by Coleman Barks

Being humble is right for you now. Don't thrash around showing your strength. You're naked in the bee-house! It doesn't matter how powerful your arms and legs are. To God, that is more of a lie than your weakness is. In his doorway your prestige and your physical energy are just dust on your face. Be helpless and completely poor. And don't try to meet his eye! That's like signing a paper that honors yourself. If you can take care of things, do so! But when you're living at home with God, you neither sew the world together with desires nor tear it apart with disappointments. In that place existence itself is illusion. All that is, is one. ~ Hakim Sanai English version by Coleman Barks shoes by Van Gogh  with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

I don't know why so much sweetness hovers around us. Nor why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoons, Nor why the earth mutters so much about its children. We'll never know why the snow falls through the night, Nor how the heron stretches her long legs, Nor why we feel so abandoned in the morning. We have never understood how birds manage to fly, Nor who the genius is who makes up dreams, Nor how heaven and earth can appear in a poem. We don't know why the rain falls so long. The ditchdigger turns up one shovel after another. The herons go on stitching the heavens together. We've never heard about the day we were conceived Nor the doctor who helped us to be born, Nor that blind old man who decides when we will die. It's hard to understand why the sun rises, And why our children are mostly fond of us, And why the wind blows the curtains in the afternoon. ~  Robert Bly  from Talking Into the Ear of a Donkey

. And one of the elders of the city said, Speak to us of Good and Evil. And he answered: Of the good in you I can speak, but not of the evil. For what is evil but good tortured by its own hunger and thirst? Verily when good is hungry it seeks food even in dark caves, and when it thirsts it drinks even of dead waters. You are good when you are one with yourself. Yet when you are not one with yourself you are not evil. For a divided house is not a den of thieves; it is only a divided house. And a ship without rudder may wander aimlessly among perilous isles yet sink not to the bottom. You are good when you strive to give of yourself. Yet you are not evil when you seek gain for yourself. For when you strive for gain you are but a root that clings to the earth and sucks at her breast. Surely the fruit cannot say to the root, "Be like me, ripe and full and ever giving of your abundance." For the fruit giving is a need, as receiving is a need to the root. You are good...

Instead of conditioning the next moment with troubled thoughts, you surrender your investment in them; now the next moment is open, untroubled, and free.  There is no need to judge the world around you; you simply allow it to be what it is.  If the situation calls for a response from you, fine; you respond, not from defensiveness or judgment, but from the natural ease of your presence.  In the quiet mystery of surrendering your thoughts, you have released any fixity of belief or position-taking, and you are welcomed by openness, quiet, and a most subtle joy - a lightness of being.  In surrendering something of no real value, you have gained the world.  In the openness of unknowing, you are completely safe and innocent. ~ Pir Elias Amidon from Free Medicine  art by Dali

. Surely that thing which you fight you become. If I am angry and you meet me with anger what is the result? More anger. You have become that which I am. If I am evil and you fight me with evil means then you also become evil, however righteous you may feel. If I am brutal and you use brutal methods to overcome me, then you become brutal like me. And this we have done for thousands of years. Surely there is a different approach than to meet hate by hate. If I use violent methods to quell anger in myself then I am using wrong means for a right end, and thereby the right end ceases to be. In this there is no understanding; there is no transcending anger. Anger is to be studied tolerantly and understood; it is not to be overcome through violent means. Anger may be the result of many causes and without comprehending them there is no escape from anger. We have created the enemy, the bandit, and becoming ourselves the enemy in no way brings about an end to enmity. We have to understand the c...

When people see things as beautiful, ugliness is created. When people see things as good, evil is created. Being and non-being produce each other. Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short define each other. High and low oppose each other. Fore and aft follow each other. Therefore the Master can act without doing anything and teach without saying a word. Things come her way and she does not stop them; things leave and she lets them go. She has without possessing, and acts without any expectations. When her work is done, she takes no credit. That is why it will last forever. ~ Lao Tzu from the Tao Te Ching translation by j.h.mcdonald

There are two types on the path, those who come against their will, the blindly religious, and those who obey out of love. The former have ulterior motives. they want the midwife near because she gives them milk. The others love the beauty of the nurse. The former memorize the prooftexts of conformity and repeat them. The latter disappear into whatever draws them to God. Both are drawn from the source. Any motion is from the mover. Any love from the beloved. ~ Rumi from Rumi - The Book of Love translations by Coleman Barks  

Not until a person dissolves, can he or she know what union is There is a descent into emptiness. A lie will not change to truth with just talking about it. *** Longing is the core of mystery Longing itself brings the cure. The only rule is, Suffer the pain. Your desire must be disciplined, and what you want to happen in time, sacrificed. ~ Rumi from The Soul of Rumi translations by Coleman Barks

Forget the suffering You caused others. Forget the suffering Others caused you. The waters run and run, Springs sparkle and are done, You walk the earth you are forgetting. Sometimes you hear a distant refrain. What does it mean, you ask, who is singing? A childlike sun grows warm. A grandson and a great-grandson are born. You are led by the hand once again. The names of the rivers remain with you. How endless those rivers seem! Your fields lie fallow, The city towers are not as they were. You stand at the threshold mute.  By Czeslaw Milosz version by Robert Hass