An Arabic Poem

                                      "Fill life with yourself, do not let boredom

smash it on the rocks of oblivion.

Take any old moment, and transform it

into a special moment.

Scent your every gesture

with the fragrance of attention.

And let the light of the memory of You

reflect in your eyes.

And then, when you speak, do not throw

your words away like rotten fruit,

but say them with the same awareness

as a wizard casting spells.

When you move,

do so without dragging your weight,

crushed by the rhythm of automatic action.

Compose your body and understand

that even simply caressing someone

can become a miracle if it is generated

by the elegance of attention.

Become a dam to all those thoughts

that herald problems and not solutions.

Thought is food, and the mind is a mouth.

Remove the filth that marks your face,

cleanse your lips with the water of memory,

and feed only on flowers and pomegranates.

Stop making life an escape from fear.

Sit still and silent until the watchdog

of the emotions allows you to pass.

Realize that your every word,

action, thought and emotion

is a form of the infinite specter,

a wave arising from the centre of the lake,

a distant echo that forever reverberates

among the eternal resounding rocks."

Rainer Maria Rilke

God speaks to each of us as he makes us,

then walks with us silently out of the night.

These are the words we dimly hear:

You, sent out beyond your recall,

go to the limits of your longing.

Embody me.

Flare up like flame

and make big shadows I can move in.

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.

Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Don’t let yourself lose me.

Nearby is the country they call life.

You will know it by its seriousness.

Give me your hand.

- Rainer Maria Rilke

Beauty Captured

"My soul is a candle that burned away the veil; 

only the glorious duties of light I now have."  

"I did not have to ask my heart what it wanted,

because of all the desires I have ever known 

just one did I cling to

for it was the essence of all desire:

to hold beauty in my soul's arms."

~ St. John of the Cross

Traveling Far Without Going Far From Home

This is a beautiful article, and an exhibit perhaps worth the "pilgrimage" to New York to see ... 
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/19/arts/design/19asian.html

... honoring the developing Buddha in us all, the importance of pilgrimage  and the art of "traveling far without going far from home."

Yesterday I decided to make the "aim" to slow my life down ... Today I already see how leaving time allows something higher to enter. This article, which I relished reading in some of that reclaimed time, reminded me that we need to journey far from home on a regular basis, if only in the privacy of our mind and heart. There is no room for this developing pilgrimage when we are caught in a whirlwind of tasks, plans, and relentless responsibilities. We become what we feed ourselves, as someone very wise once said, we need to leave time to feed the soul.


Jennie

Lao Tsu

She Stays in the Center


After talking for awhile, 
it is natural to become silent.


The windstorm does not last all morning. 
Heavy rains do not fall all day.


Movement and stillness alternate. 
Silence and sound follow each other.


Only human beings try to make things last forever. 
In so doing, they precipitate change.


Trying to hold onto their riches,
they lose them.


Trying to hold onto their successes,
they unexpectedly fail.


Trying to keep their virtue perfect,
their desires take them by surprise.


The Taoist knows 
that everything that happens has a purpose.


So when something comes, she accepts it.
When it leaves, she lets it go.


She learns to trust life,
so life does not abuse her.


Even when the winds of change 
are whirling around her,


she stays in the center,
in the eye of the hurricane,


where everything is quiet
and completely still.

Rodney Collin

When true self-remembering comes, one does not want to alter oneself; 

one somehow rises above their weaknesses and one's own. 

There can be no blame anywhere. 

One swallows what is, and becomes free.

Rainer Maria Rilke

... I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can,  to have patience with everything unresolved  in your heart and to try to love the questions  themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.  Don't search for the answers, which could not be  given to you now, because you would not be able  to live them. And the point is to live everything.  Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday  far in the future, you will gradually,  without even noticing it, live your way  into the answer. --from Letters to a Young Poet (1903)