Posts Tagged → happiness

trying to take the place of god

this is how it ends

 

If people don’t love life,

they won’t fear death, and threatening

them with it won’t work. If people have lives worth

living, then the threat of death is meaningful,

and they’ll do what is right

to avoid it.

 

Killing

should be the province

of the great executioner alone.

Trying to take his place and kill is like

cutting wood in the place of the

master carpenter: chances

are you’ll hurt your

own hand.

 

The Tao te Ching of Lao Tzu,

Chapter 74

 

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jim harrison: i believe

now that I have you I’ll never forget what I owe you

 

I believe in steep drop-offs, the thunderstorm across the lake

in 1949, cold winds, empty swimming pools,

the overgrown path to the creek, raw garlic,

used tires, taverns, saloons, bars, gallons of red wine,

abandoned farmhouses, stunted lilac groves,

gravel roads that end, brush piles, thickets, girls

who haven’t quite gone totally wild, river eddies, 

leaky wooden boats, the smell of used engine oil,

turbulent rivers, lakes without cottages lost in the woods,

the primrose growing out of a cow skull, the thousands

of birds I’ve talked to all of my life, the dogs

that talked back, the Chihuahuan ravens that follow

me on long walks. The rattler escaping the cold hose,

the fluttering unknown gods that I nearly see

from the left corner of my blind eye, struggling

to stay alive in a world that grinds them underfoot.

 

Jim Harrison

he met the world in darkness and in light

 

the locusts who descend and eat crops

“now we terminate those who oversee the nuclear weapons, my lord”

 

I have said to the

crude-minded Fakhruddin Razi

and the dull King Khwarazmshah and

several other joyless philosophers, With your way

you leave behind the beauty of flowers and peacefulness

and walk steadily into darkness. You ignore the obvious miracles

in favor of smoke and ghosts. The false self of ego makes your

decisions. You feel confused and blocked, but wisdom

knows that this material world is a door to spirit.

Specific actions are required, and careful

attention must be given

to friendship.

 

We live in a place where

thorns and poisonous plants grow wild,

but fruit trees, roses, and vegetables need tending.

The diligent farming work is virtue. Fakhruddin and Khwarazmshah

disagree. They’re like the locusts who descend and eat crops rather than help

them grow. I wrap myself like Muhammad in this robe of torso, limbs,

and face, this splendid covering of phenomenal existence,

where I grow toward some destiny I know not,

only that I must live fully here

to reach the next.

 

Bahauddin, father of Rumi

the drowned book

 

daniel chatard