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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3723, Monday, November 23, 2009, Editor: Mark
There's a great space in which this moment takes place, There's a
great silence that is listening to the thoughts.
- Adyashanti, posted to Mystic_Spirit
When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at
the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives
may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests his beauty
on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of
wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of the still water. And I feel above me
the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest
in the grace of the world, and am free.
- Wendell Berry
SQUIRRELLY
When I was younger my idea
of how to spend
a sweltering summer afternoon
was to sit cross-legged under a tree
with my back against the trunk
reading a poetry book
in the shade catching
whatever breeze there was
But the squirrels had other ideas
When one thought
I had hung around long enough
it would start eating acorns
right above me
dropping the inedible parts
on me & my book so I would
move to another tree
There the same thing would happen
until I had used up all the trees
& it was time to go home
Telling a friend about this recently
he said I had it all wrong
The squirrels weren't telling me to move
just letting me know another being was present
& that I should read the poetry aloud
- Steve Toth, posted to Distillation
You are the music while the music lasts.
- T.S. Eliot
Where Does the Dance Begin, Where Does It End?
Don't call this world adorable, or useful, that's not it.
It's frisky, and a theater for more than fair winds.
The eyelash of lightning is neither good nor evil.
The struck tree burns like a pillar of gold.
But the blue rain sinks, straight to the white
feet of the trees
whose mouths open.
Doesn't the wind, turning in circles, invent the dance?
Haven't the flowers moved, slowly, across Asia, then Europe,
until at last, now, they shine
in your own yard?
Don't call this world an explanation, or even an education.
When the Sufi poet whirled, was he looking
outward, to the mountains so solidly there
in a white-capped ring, or was he looking
to the center of everything: the seed, the egg, the idea
that was also there,
beautiful as a thumb
curved and touching the finger, tenderly,
little love-ring,
as he whirled,
oh jug of breath,
in the garden of dust?
-Mary Oliver, from Why I Wake Early
The Naked Sun
Those who live in Union become pregnant
with the feelings and words of invisible forms!
Their amazed mouths open.
Their eyes withdraw.
Children are born of the illumination.
We say "born," but that's not right.
It only points to a new understanding.
Be quiet and let the Master of Speech talk.
Don't try to dress up your own nightingale-song
to sell to this Rose!
Be all ear.
This pregnancy!
So subtle and delicious,
the way ice in July reminds us of winter,
the way fruit in January tells of summer generosity.
That's how the naked Sun
embraces all the orchard-brides at once.
- Rumi, Mathnawi VI, 1810-1822, version by Coleman Barks
from This Longing, posted to Sunlight