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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3750, Saturday, December 19, 2009, Editor: Mark
Mameen
Be infinitessimal under that sky, a creature
even the sailing hawk misses, a wraith
among the rocks where the mist parts slowly.
Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed
by circumstance, how great reputations
dssolve with infirmity and how you,
in particular, live a hairsbreadth from losing
everyone you hold dear.
Then, look back down the path as if seeing
your past and then south over the hazy blue
coast as if present to a wide future.
Remember the way you are all possibilities
you can see and how you live best
as an appreciator of horizons,
whether you reach them or not.
Admit that once you have got up
from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clean air
toward that edge and taken the path up high
beyond the ordinary, you have become
the privileged and the pilgrim,
the one who will tell the story
and the one, coming back
from the mountain,
who helped to make it.
- David Whyte, from River Flow
words do not come
there is no need for profound utterances or
deep truths
here is an ordinary evening
why spoil it with dramatic overstatement
the silence amidst the noise
the gem at the core
of every experience
is polished by simple attention
into shining magnificence
- Nirmala, from Gifts with No Giver: a love affair with truth
When you are attentive to something you are fixed on the object
but when you are simply in attention you are free from all
grasping.
- Jean Klein from I Am
Little Summer Poem Touching the Subject of Faith
Every summer
I listen and look
under the sun's brass and even
into the moonlight, but I can't hear
anything, I can't see anything -
not the pale roots digging down, nor the green stalks muscling
up,
nor the leaves
deepening their damp pleats,
nor the tassels making,
nor the shucks, nor the cobs.
And still,
every day,
the leafy fields
grow taller and thicker -
green gowns lofting up in the night,
showered with silk.
And so, every summer,
I fail as a witness, seeing nothing -
I am deaf too
to the tick of the leaves,
the tapping of downwardness from the banyan feet -
all of it
happening
beyond any seeable proof, or hearable hum.
And, therefore, let the immeasurable come.
Let the unknowable touch the buckle of my spine.
Let the wind turn in the trees,
and the mystery hidden in the dirt
swing through the air.
How could I look at anything in this world
and tremble, and grip my hands over my heart?
What should I fear?
One morning
in the leafy green ocean
the honeycomb of the corn's beautiful body
is sure to be there.
- Mary Oliver, from West Wind: Poems and Prose Poems
Reality
In love, nothing exists between heart and heart.
Speech is born out of longing,
True description from the real taste.
The one who tastes, knows;
the one who explains, lies.
How can you describe the true form of Something
In whose presence you are blotted out?
And in whose being you still exist?
And who lives as a sign for your journey?
- Rabia al Basri