Life is a dream,
the years pass by like flowing waters.
Glamour and glory are transient as autumn smoke;
what tragedy — for with the sun set deeply in the
west, still there are those lost among
paths of disillusionment.
Our heart
should be clear as ice.
Forget all the worldly nonsense.
Sit calmly, breathe quietly, heart bright
and spotless as an empty mirror.
This is the path to
the buddha’s
table.
Polish what you polish
until it is like gold that has been refined
a hundred times; anything that is done in a hurry
is not deeply developed. Do what you do like
a thousand pound catapult; one who
pops off too easily does not
much.
Your
spiritual light
can be compressed into
a pinpoint, or it can flood and
wash the known and unknown universe.
The principal task of a master is to respect
the oneness of her spiritual light with
all spiritual light and to care for
it accordingly.
Where is
the best place to do this?
In quiet simplicity.
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Wei wu Wei Ching as part of a
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book.
Rumi
advised me to keep my spirit
up in the branches of a tree and not
peek out too far, so I keep mine in the very tall
willows along the irrigation ditch out back,
a safe place to remain unspoiled by
the filthy culture of greed
and murder of the
spirit.
People
forget their spirits
easily suffocate so they must
keep them far up in tree branches where
they can be summoned any moment. It’s better
if you’re outside as it’s hard for spirits to get into houses
or buildings or airplanes. In New York City I used to reach
my spirit in front of the gorilla cage in the children’s zoo in
Central Park. It wouldn’t come in the Carlyle Hotel, which
was too expensive for its taste. In Chicago it won’t
come in the Drake, though I can see it out the
window, hovering over the surface of Lake
Michigan. The spirit above anything
else is attracted to humility.
If I slept in the streets
it would be under
the cardboard
with me.
A horse strays
into a cave of lions. You move
deeper into your desire for sex, for art
and wealth. There will come a time when your
life is a blank, but has there ever really been a time
when human beings were not cared for? For thousands
of years we had no identity, yet we managed to arrive
in this amazing moment, this brightly conscious
lifespan. Who gave us such restlessness
to know and be?
