No mud, no

lotus.

 
Thich Nhat Hanh

 

ronan donovan

 

It is

an unavoidable fact

of life that inferior influences

sometimes prevail: improperly motivated

people ascend to power, there is injustice and conflict

and poverty, and spiritual life in general descends into darkness

and decay.  While these difficult times are inevitable — and the arrival

of this hexagram indicates that this is such a time — this does

not mean that we have to stagnate personally as well. 

By turning inward and realigning ourselves

with proper principles, we initiate

the return to light, truth

and progress.

 

The image

of P’i is of heaven

moving away from the earth. 

When this happens, the inferior qualities

in ourselves and in others come to the surface and

seek expression.  It is unlikely now that you can affect what

others do and say or that your activities will bear much fruit.  While

it is natural to feel anxious and disappointed about this state of

affairs, it is essential to disengage from these inferior

emotions now.  To indulge in them is to

abandon  your superior self and

plunge into a state of

disintegration.

 

What is

wise now is to accept

that external progress is unlikely. 

Turn your attention inward and examine your

own thoughts and attitudes for inferior influences

and departures from the principles of the Sage. 

By withdrawing into solitude and refining

your higher nature, you continue

to grow while all else around

you stagnates.

 

from The I Ching, or Book of Changes

Hexagram 12, P’i Standstill (Stagnation)

 

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natalia jakubek / requiem

 

I have studied

and become intimate with

 the speed of darkness. It’s so fast it’s

always here. When the light withdraws

the dark comes from no place. It always lives

with us. Your heart and brain are black.

They never see the true light except in violence

or autopsy. Of course the brain can cast

its own blinding light that we wait for in a poem,

at least blinding to us. In our trances the loves

of long ago enter the room unescorted, silent

perhaps from the black bottom of the ocean

where we all die in perfect darkness, a sense

of whirling that recedes back to the time

the ocean swallowed the smallest stars

then heated us into our early life.

Darkness is always there,

it only stands

revealed.

 

Jim Harrison

 

 

If you find yourself half naked

and barefoot in the frosty grass, hearing,

again, the earth’s great, sonorous moan that says

you are the air of the now and gone, that says

all you love will turn to dust,

and will meet you there, do not

raise your fist. Do not raise

your small voice against it. And do not

take cover. Instead, curl your toes

into the grass, watch the cloud

ascending from your lips. Walk

through the garden’s dormant splendor.

Say only, thank you.

Thank you.

 

 

 

In

a life properly lived,

you’re a river. You touch things lightly

or deeply; you move along because life herself moves,

and you can’t stop it; you can’t figure out a banal game plan

applicable to all situations; you just have to go

with the “beingness” of life,

as Rilke would

have it.

 

Jim Harrison