Life photo of Brooklyn men - 1947
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STEFAN
The_Other_Syntax
It is not my intention to have anyone remember all the transistorized
thinking in this book, but I highly recommend memorizing the italic
[CAPS] lines below. They are simple enough to stay with you and
will work in any mental crisis. Keep them handy in your mind.
One of my psychedelic excursions had gotten off to a bad start, and I
was sinking into a really satanic bummer. As I looked about me at
people turning evil, shrunken, colorless, old, and weird, I suddenly
thought,
"WELL, WHAT DID YOU THINK IT WAS THAT NEEDED TO BE LOVED?"
And just like that, the doors opened and I was in paradise.
Thaddeus Golas
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GILL EARDLEY
allspirit
Praise to the emptiness...
Praise to the emptiness that blanks out existence.
Existence:
This place made from our love for that emptiness!
Yet somehow comes emptiness,
this existence goes.
Praise to that happening, over and over!
For years I pulled my own existence out of emptiness.
Then one swoop, one swing of the arm,
that work is over.
Free of who I was, free of presence, free of
dangerous fear, hope,
free of mountainous wanting.
The here-and-now mountain is a tiny piece of a piece
of straw
blown off into emptiness.
These words I'm saying so much begin to lose meaning:
Existence, emptiness, mountain, straw:
Words and what they try to say swept
out the window, down the slant of the roof.
trans barks/moyne
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When all thoughts
Are exhausted
I slip into the woods
And gather
A pile of shepherd's purse.
Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
~Ryokan
from "Dewdrops on a Lotus Leaf" translated by John Stevens
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reflected trees photo
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SUFI_POETRY
There You Are
You're inside every kindness. When
a sick person feels better, you're
that, and the onset of disease too.
You're sudden, terrible screaming.
Some problems require we go for help:
when we knock on a stranger's door,
you sent us. Nobody answers: it's
you! When work feels necessary, you
are the way workers move in rhythm.
You are what is: the field, the players,
the ball, those watching. Someone
claims to have evidence that you do
not exist. You're the one who brings
the evidence in, and the evidence
itself. You are inside the soul's
great fear, every natural pleasure,
every vicious cruelty. You are in
every difference and irritation.
Someone loves something; someone else
hates the same. There you are.
Whatever eyes see, what anyone wants
or not: political power, injustice,
material possessions, those are your
script, the handwriting we study.
Body, soul, shadow. Whether reckless
or careful, you are what we do. It's
absurd to ask your pardon. You're
inside repentance, and sin! The wonder
of various jewels, agate, emerald.
How we are during a day, then at night,
you are those moods and qualities.
The pure compassion we feel for each
other. Every encampment has a tent
where the leader is and also the wide
truth of your imperial tent overall.
(Rumi - "The Soul of Rumi" - Coleman Barks)
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DAN BERKOW
Consciousness_Is_All
Noumenon?
Having posted so much meaningless talk on this site,
I feel I must acknowledge that it was my part in
this dream to provide meaningless chatter.
There is nothing moving in shadow except
various shades.
The light that casts the shadow won't be
found hiding under a bushel basket,
or in a pail full of holes.
I've tried to place the ocean in a pail full
of holes, and sought to capture the sun
under a basket.
Meanwhile, there is nowhere it is not ...
Pointing to that which is never absent,
by that which is never present ...
I am the ultimate in absurdity ...
Peace,
Dan
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CINDY
allspirit
We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our
opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.
Chuang Tzu (c 369 BC-286 BC, Chinese Philosopher)
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ALTON SLATER
MillionPaths
Sri Ramana: Instead of enquiring...
...Kitchenmate, Subbalakshmi Amma, was keen on meditation and would ply
Ramana with questions. Once she asked him about the nature of the Self. Ramana
advised, "Abide in the Self, free from thoughts instead of enquiring about the nature
of the Self."
She would fret and fume about the absence of time to meditate because of
excessive kitchen work. Ramana told her "If you identify yourself with the body,
you are bound to dualities. Work will appear difficult. Even if we free ourselves
from work, would the mind cease to wander? It does not let us sleep in peace. It
keeps wandering as in dreams."
Timeless in Time Natarajan
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VIORICA WEISSMAN
MillionPaths
Turn your love warm
Your face is beautiful,
but your loving is cold.
Your tongue is tired of saying
sacred words over and over ,
and your fingers, you've worked them
to the nub copying texts,
but the rage stored inside you
has found no way to leave.
----------------------------
Lalla , Naked Song
tr : Coleman Barks
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SUSIE ROCK
from Hafiz
A Hafiz interpretation by Eric Ashford.
Ghazal 31
OPEN YOUR OWN DOOR
Those who pray in the open
with ecstatic smiles or righteous thunder
may behave, in their own hearts,
like frightened children
when the spotlight of self importance
sits alone with the Alone.
It's a marvel to me,
that those who would teach of Love
or demand repentance for our lack of love
waste their time with all this holy belching.
They make a great wind of piety
while the heart goes starving.
They should open their own door.
This Day of Judgment they bellow of
is a counterfeit wind.
They repeat the word God and there is no digestion,
only an indigestion they would give others for truth.
Their Judgment forever locks them out
of the remedy of this surrendered moment.
Hafiz is a puppet to God's freedom;
a cup of wine flowing in Her Tavern.
Dervishes scatter glass beads and diamonds to all equally
and if you see any difference
you cannot dance through that open door.
Some preachers flaunt their poverty and call it gold,
and those who have nothing in them but false gold
run to any guru to buy and exchange pig poop
thinking it manna from heaven.
Open the Tavern door of your heart dear friend.
There is an angel inside
distilling your wine
from the original juice of Adam.
God's beauty kills her lovers
so that the lover inside the lover
can leap out laughing from the invisible world.
Don't keep begging for crumbs at a poor man's table
when a millionaire of love
is pouring gold into you in every moment.
Keep sweeping false gold away
from the threshold of the heart
and get empty enough
to receive what is truly yours.
Go deep enough to drown
in that place where the Beloved lives.
For the heart of the shallow
is a pond full of desperate swimmers
who still believe they can breathe for themselves.
God is hard to see
when the heart is hard of hearing.
The clang and clatter of this world's jewels
turns all prayer to bartering.
There is a great amusement and amazement in heaven
for the angels all know that you had won the gift of Love
long before you came to this market place.
Love says, "Angels are talking about Hafiz' verse
and signing his name for every lover to remember himself."
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A Hafiz interpretation by Eric Ashford.