Happiness and Unhappiness
I’m feeling the need for a little Jane Hirshfield today.
Late Self-Portrait by Rembrandt
by Jane Hirshfield
The dog, dead for years, keeps coming back in
the dream.
We look at each other there with the old joy.
It was always her gift to bring me into the
present–
Which sleeps, changes, awakens, dresses,
leaves.
Happiness and unhappiness
differ as a bucket hammered from gold differs
from one of pressed tin,
this painting proposes.
Each carries the same water, it says.
But Not the Mountain
Today feels like a day for a Jane Hirshfield poem:
Vilnius
For a long time
I keep the guidebooks out on the table.
In the morning, drinking coffee, I see the spires:
St. Petersburg, Vilnius, Vienna.
Choices pondered but not finally taken.
Behind them–sometimes behind thick fog–the mountain.
If you lived higher up on the mountain,
I find myself thinking, what you would see is
more of everything else, but not the mountain.
What Reminds You
“In the name of daybreak, the eyelids of morning, the wayfaring moon and the night when it departs….I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred, but offer myself humbly, as a guardian of nature, a healer of misery, a messenger of wonder and an architect of peace.” — Diane Ackerman
***
I highly recommend taking some kind of vows every day. They don’t have to be as poetic as these. (Mine aren’t.) They just have to be intentionally made.
I also recommend setting up some kind of sacred/honored space where you can make these vows. It doesn’t have to have a buddha statue, of course. Just whatever reminds you of your deepest values.
This is a photo of my sacred space.
The framed pictures are of my teachers: Mirabai Bush, Lila Kate Wheeler and Phillip Moffitt. The bowl holds some of my treasured retreat mementos: pebbles from various meditation centers I’ve attended; a shell from the beach where I made my own, personal Bodhisattva vows; a tiny buddha left on my cushion by a fellow retreatant whose name I never knew. The color photo is of Guan Yin, the statue we have here at the St. Louis Art Museum, which seems almost sentient to me, and to which I pay a visit whenever I can. Next to Guan Yin is a little brass case that holds colored sand distributed by Tibetan monks who had used it to create — and which later they destroyed — an elaborate mandala at the City Museum. It was given to me by a neighbor in an apartment building I used to live in, who had the delightful habit of spontaneous generosity, and who (not surprisingly) was deeply endowed with an amazing array of fabulous friends.
Leaving Familiar Ground
For today I offer this from Wendell Berry:
“Always in the big woods, when you leave familiar ground and step off alone into a new place, there will be, along with the feelings of curiosity and excitement, a little nagging of dread.
“It is the ancient fear of the unknown, and it is your first bond with the wilderness you are going into. What you are doing is exploring. You are undertaking the first experience, not of the place, but of yourself in that place.
“It is an experience of essential loneliness, for nobody can discover the world for anyone else. It is only after we have discovered it for ourselves that it become a common ground and a common bond, and we cease to be alone.”
The Gravity of Our Lives
The retreat was great and I have a lot I’d like to share from it, but I haven’t quite gotten through my emails and other must-dos just yet, so for today let me post this poem, written by one of our sangha members:
Our Little Differences
by Dave Wilson
We all want the same thing — well not exactly, not precisely — and surely not in the same way.
But against the face of all there is and isn’t, our little differences have no say, hold no sway.
So often it’s easy to miss just how much there is, especially when there is so much made of so little.
So little looks so much until the same thing is no longer the same, and you can’t tell the ends from the middle.
It’s the gravity of our lives that weigh us down, pulling us away from each other, daring us to run away from its weight.
It seems so heavy around the moment, but in the moment, there is no pull — gravity wanes and forgets itself — if only we sit and wait.
Let’s give in to the ends and their ends
And try turning every way the middle bends.
Remember the World
For today, this poem, by Joy Harjo (from her collection How We Become Human):
Remember
by Joy Harjo
Remember the sky that you were born under,
know each of the star’s stories.
Remember the moon, know who she is.
I met her in a bar once in Iowa City.
Remember the sun’s birth at dawn,
that is the strongest point of time.
Remember sundown
and the giving away to night.
Remember your birth
how your mother struggled
to give you form and breath. You are evidence of
her life, and her mother’s, and hers.
Remember your father. He is your life also.
Remember the earth whose skin you are:
red earth, black earth, yellow earth, white earth
brown earth, we are earth.
Remember the plants, trees, animal life
who all have their tribes, their families,
their histories, too.
Talk to them, listen to them.
They are alive poems.
Remember the wind.
Remember her voice.
She knows the origin of this universe.
I heard her singing Kiowa war dance songs
at the corner of Fourth and Central once.
Remember that you are all people
and that all people are you.
Remember that you are this universe
and that this universe is you.
Remember that all is in motion,
is growing, is you.
Remember that language come from this.
Remember the dance that language is, that life is.
Remember.
What the World Offers
For today:
The Old Poets of China
by Mary Oliver
Wherever I am, the world comes after me.
It offers me its busyness. It does not believe
that I do not want it. Now I understand
why the old poets of China went so far and high
into the mountains, then crept into the pale mist.
I Profess the Uncertain
Today seems like a good day for this…but I can’t be sure:
I Profess the Uncertain
by Jane Hirshfield
I profess the uncertain
with gratitude
a man with large hands
and large feet
first looks at a pencil
then brings it close to his ear
he listens
the day lives briefly
unscented
shaken with worn-heel glimpses
becomes a shambling palace
with walking fishes
a yellow-roofed kindness
the almost untenable premise
that between counting one and two
nothing is lost
One Power
For today:
A Hand Holds One Power
by Jane Hirshfield
A hand holds one power,
whose exercise requires the hand be empty.
Patience Comes to the Bones
Last week I posted (here) about realizing that the attribute of patience is….well, let me just say: not my strong suit.
I’ve been especially aware of this lately….as all of a sudden it seems, I’ve been deluged with projects/tasks/responsibilities….several which appear to me in states of quasi-crisis.
The result of which is that I haven’t been posting as frequently as I would like.
Even now, as I’m typing, I feel the need to rush.
So….
I take a deep breath.
And offer this for today:
Patience
by Mary Oliver
What is the good life now? Why,
look here, consider
the moon’s white crescent
rounding, slowly, over
the half month to still another
perfect circle–
the shining eye
that lightens the hills,
that lays down the shadows
of the branches of the trees,
that summons the flowers
to open their sleepy faces and look up
into the heavens.
I used to hurry everywhere,
and leaped over the running creeks.
There wasn’t
time enough for all the wonderful things
I could think of to do
in a single day. Patience
comes to the bones
before it takes root in the heart
as another good idea.
I say thins
as I stand in the woods
and study the patterns
of the moon shadows,
or stroll down into the waters
that now, late summer, have also
caught the fever, and hardly move
from one eternity to another.