Mindful

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for -
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world -
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant -
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these -
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean's shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

Mary Oliver

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down,
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

~ Mary Oliver

Balsekar on Surrender . . .

It is a curious fact that one's chances
of survival are best when there is no
anxiety to survive. There is a special
effectiveness or power of virtuality
that is available to those who do not
exhaust and dissipate themselves with
anxiety. The subtlety, however, is that
anxiety also includes any positive effort
to eliminate anxiety--and this is precisely
where true understanding comes into
its own by accepting wholeheartedly
whatever life brings without resistance or
recoil.

One day ...

... I will
say
the gift I once had has been taken.

The place I have made for myself
belongs to another.
The words I have sung
are being sung by the ones
I would want.

Then I will be ready
for that voice
and the still silence in which it arrives.

And if my faith is good
then we'll meet again
on the road
and we'll be thirsty,
and stop
and laugh
and drink together again

from the deep well of things as they are.

~ David Whyte ~

deep thanks to Joe Riley

to Panhala

Year after year

I dug in the earth
looking for the blue of heaven
only to feel
the pile of dirt
choking me
until once in the dead of night
I tripped on a broken brick
and kicked it into the air
and saw that without a thought
I had smashed the bones
of the empty sky

~Muso Soseki

I am all hollowed out now

Like a reed.
I gave everything for this.
And still I laughingly wonder:
How could it have been so cheap?

Adyashanti

The Beat Speak

The taste
of rain
-- Why kneel?
Jack Kerouac

Done Dead !!

HE WHO KNOWS THIS KNOWS

You are wise.
You play and work and meditate.

But still your mind desires
That which is beyond everything,
Where all desires vanish.

Striving is the root of sorrow.

But who understands this?

Only when you are blessed
With the understanding of this teaching
Will you find freedom.

-Ashtavakra Gita 16:2-3

There is someone I know . . .

who is gonna enjoy this . . .

THIS . . .

Fourteen billion years ago,

something came from nothing. The energy and intelligence
that initiated that explosion is the same energy that is driving
this whole process right now. It is what I call the evolutionary
impulse or creative principle. And at the leading edge of
development, that same evolutionary impulse emerges
in human awareness as the spiritual impulse, the urge to
become more conscious. It is experienced as the
mysterious longing to develop spiritually, the ecstatic
compulsion to become more awake and more aware.
That impulse is what I call the authentic self. And
anybody who experiences this authentic self will
realize, upon reflection, that it is a completely
different part of the self than the ego. The ego
and the authentic self are parallel lines that never meet.

The ego is full of unresolved issues and unfulfilled desires,
deeply fearful and ambivalent about the very fact of being
alive. But the authentic self is only interested in creating
the future. And that part of your self and that part of my
self is not self-conscious and is not afraid of life. In the
authentic self, there's not a trace of ambivalence. There's
no hesitation. There's no doubt. There's no existential
confusion. And it's not a choice that needs to be made.
The authentic self, in you and in me, once we awaken
to it, is already completely committed. Absolute conviction
is inherent in the nature of the authentic self, and that is
why when any one of us awakens to that self, we experience
an intoxicating joy and confidence, a fearless passion and
pure doubtless conviction about being here and doing things
right in order to create a better future. Why? Because we
recognize that that is the very reason we are here.

Andrew Cohen

A New Best Apple

In, of all places, Albertson's looking for apples, not the
season for domestic apples, and in the low supply
found a name I was unfamaliar with, Jazz. Picked up
a few, and sometime later at first bite, to my supprise,
I was eating a very very wonderful apple. Crisp, not as
sweet as last Fall's pick, The Honey Crisp, but with more
complexity.
Sticker says the apple is from ENZA, a New Zealand company
that brought the Fuji to us a few years ago, also the Pink
Lady, and the Braeburn's along with others. Matter of fact,
Jazz is a cross between Royal Fala and Braeburn, and get
this, Jazz even has it's own cool web site.

"You have a purpose

only as long as you are not complete;
until then completeness, perfection, is
the purpose. But when you are complete
in yourself, fully integrated within and
without, then you enjoy the universe;
you do not labor at it."
~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Amelie Mauresmo

CHAMPION
WIMBLEDON LADIES SINGLES
2006

The state of the fasting mind or NO-MIND is by
no means a condition of idiotic vacuity but precisely
the opposite; a state of perfect, natural virtuosity,
intelligence and spontaneous power.

~ Ramesh S. Balsekar

We look but don't see it

and call it indistinct
we listen but don't hear it
and call it faint
we reach but don't grasp it
and call it ethereal
three failed means to knowledge
we weave into one
with no light above
with no shade below
too fine to be named
returning to nothing
this is the formless form
the immaterial image
this is the waxing waning
we meet without seeing its face
we follow without seeing its back
holding onto this very Way
we rule this very realm
and discover its ancient past
this is the thread of the Way.
TaoteChing #14
translated by Red Pine

Our journey had advanced --

Our feet were almost come
To that odd Fork in Being's Road --
Eternity -- by Term --

Our pace took sudden awe --
Our feet -- reluctant -- led --
Before -- were Cities -- but Between --
The Forest of the Dead --

Retreat -- was out of Hope --
Behind -- a Sealed Route --
Eternity's White Flag -- Before --
And God -- at every Gate --
~ Emily Dickinson

The Right and the Ten Commandments

Julie Blackmon

I'm so taken with this artist.
Hard to choose among many images, but this one I blew up to screen size (17")
and it's just breathtaking.

PLEASE GO HERE . . .