Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay.  Want more 

of everything ready-made.  Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery 

any more.  Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you.  When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.

 

So, friends, every day do something

that won’t compute.  Love the Lord.

Love the world.  Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

Denounce the government and embrace

the flag.  Hope to live in that free

republic for which it stands.

Give your approval to all you cannot 

understand.  Praise ignorance, for what man

has not encountered he has not destroyed.

 

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium.  Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into mold.

Call that profit.  Prophesy such returns.

 

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years.

Listen to carrion – put your ear

close, and hear the faint chattering 

of the songs that are to come.

Expect the end of the world.  Laugh.

Laughter is immeasurable.  Be joyful

though you have considered all the facts.

So long as women do not go cheap

for power, please women more than men.

Ask yourself: Will this satisfy

a woman satisfied to bear a child?

Will this disturb the sleep

of a woman near to giving birth?

 

Go with your love to the fields.

Lie easy in the shade.  Rest your head

in her lap.  Swear allegiance

to what is nighest your thoughts.

As soon as the generals and the politicos

can predict the motions of your mind,

lose it.  Leave it as a sign 

to mark the false trail, the way

you didn’t go.  Be like the fox

who makes more tracks than necessary, 

some in the wrong direction.

Practice resurrection.

 

Wendell Berry

 

 

One day 

Yanguan called to his assistant,

“Bring me the rhinoceros fan.”The assistant said,

“It is broken.” Yanguan said, “In that case,

bring me the rhinoceros.”

 

Why,

sometimes I’ve believed

as many as six impossible things

before breakfast.

 

The Red Queen

 

We sometimes think

of consciousness as a lamp, making

a golden cone of light on the surface of a desk.

Outside the yellow circle everything is dark and unknown.

The usual way of approaching things is to try to extend the yellow

circle into the darkness. Or perhaps to drag objects in from the dark.

That is working out of what you can conceive of, the bright area of what

you already know. This koan takes things the other way. Here you depend on

what is unknown and inconceivable to sustain you. Most of life is inconceivable;

even your left hand can’t be fully conceived of though it can be very useful.

And if you try hard to conceive of what your hand does, it won’t play

the piano very well. The inconceivable is the source of all that

comes into being. This koan is not about making what is

unknown, known. Instead it as exercise in relying on

and making friends with the inconceivable,

using a casual event to start an

exploration into the

unlit realms.

 

John Tarrant

 

 

long life

honey in the heart

 

Martin Prechtel

 

 

…We

drove her aqua

Ford convertible into the country

with a sack of red apples. It was a perfect day

with her sun-brown legs and we threw ourselves into

the future together seizing the day. Fifty years later we hold each

other looking out the windows at birds, making dinner, a life

to live day after day, a life of dogs and children and the

far wide country out by rivers, rumpled by

mountains. So far the days keep

coming. Seize the day gently

as if you loved

her.

 

Jim Harrison

 

 

A sea-cow, a dugong, finds a special pearl
and brings it up on land at night. By the light it gives off
the dugong can graze on hyacinths and lilies.

The excrement of the dugong is precious ambergris
because it eats such beauty. Anyone who feeds on Majesty
becomes eloquent. The bee, from mystic inspiration,
fills its rooms with honey.

So the dugong grazes at night in the pearl-glow.
Presently, a merchant comes and drops black loam
over the pearl, then hides behind a tree to watch.

The dugong surges about the meadow like a blind bull.
Twenty times it rushes at nothing, passing the mound
where the pearl is.

So Satan couldn’t see
the spirit-center inside Adam.

God says, Descend,
and a huge pearl from Aden gets buried under dirt.
The merchant knows,
but the dugong doesn’t.

Every clay-pile with a pearl inside
loves to be near any other clay-pile with a pearl,
but those without pearls cannot stand to be near
the hidden companionship.

Remember the mouse on the riverbank?
There’s a love-string stretching into the water
hoping for the frog.

Suddenly a raven grips the mouse and flies off.
The frog too, from the riverbottom,
with one foot entangled in the invisible string,
follows, suspended in the air.
Amazed faces ask, “When did a raven ever go underwater and catch a frog?”

The frog answers, “This is the force of Friendship.”
What draws friends together
does not conform to Laws of Nature.
Form doesn’t know about spiritual closeness.
If a grain of barley approaches a grain of wheat,
an ant must be carrying it. A black ant on black felt.
You can’t see it, but if grains go toward each other,
it’s there.

A hand shifts our birdcages around.
Some are brought closer. Some move apart.
Do not try to reason it out. Be conscious
of who draws you and who not.

Gabriel was always there with Jesus, lifting him
above the dark-blue vault, the night-fortress world,
just as the raven of longing carries the flying frog.

 

Jalal al-din Rumi