You
could become a
great horseman and help
to free yourself and this world though
only if you and prayer become sweet lovers.
It is a naive man who thinks we are not engaged in a
fierce battle, for I see and hear brave foot soldiers
all around me going mad, falling on the ground
in excruciating pain. You could become a
victorious horseman and carry your
heart through this world like a
life-giving sun though only
if you and God become
sweet lovers.
This world
is an open sky and also a dustbin,
giving life to some and death to others;
the outcomes are not controlled
by this world.
Press
your finger into the world
and put it to your nose. You may smell
sweetness, or you may smell dung.
Discernment is possible in
these matters.
True hearts
stay awake if love is possible. The
others have no need for beauty, nor hope of
it. If you are holding gold in your hand,
don’t imagine ways to turn it
into mud.
☯️
The Old Fool wears
second-hand clothes and fills his belly
with tasteless food, mends holes to make a
cover against the cold, and thus the myriad affairs
of life, according to what comes, are done. Scolded, the
Old Fool merely says, “Fine.” Struck, the Old Fool falls
down to sleep. “Spit on my face, I just let it dry;
I save strength and energy and give you no
affliction.” Paramita is his style; he
gains the jewel within.
Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch
🪷
Forget the body.
Let go of sensations
and obsessions and objects.
Do non-doing to the point that thoughts
cease to arise. Releasing mental constructs and
emotional entanglements, you’ll begin
to flow as a sage. Then let go
of that notion on top
of everything
else.
the lion that was vic chesnutt, may he rest in peace
Darkness
has been given as
a nightshirt to sleep in.
Remember how human beings
were composed from water and dust
for blood and flesh with oily resins heated
in fire to make a skeleton. Then the soul, the divine
light, was breathed into human shapes. The work now is
to help our bodies become pure light. It may look like
this is not happening. But in a cocoon every bit
of worm-dissolving slime becomes silk.
As we take in light, each part
of us turns to
silk.
We
made the night
a darkness, but we bring
shining dawnlight out of that.
In the same way the mound of your
grave will bloom with resurrection. Sufis
and those on the path of the heart use darkness
to go within. During the night vigil the universe
is theirs. With all the kings and sultans and
their learned counselors asleep, everyone
is unemployed, except those wakeful
few and the divine
presence.
In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.
—Bertolt Brecht
There will be prayer, too,
but to a different god,
and dread will lurk
in the songs we sing.
Doom in the timpani
no matter what the tune,
the tune a variation
on the theme of doom.
We will sing in the dark
and try to forgive
and try not to dwell
on the lives we lived.
The music we play
will be a funeral song,
the poetry we speak,
that ancient tool
we used to believe
was the vital spark,
or if not the spark,
will be the match we strike
again and again
in the darkest dark.
The greater your love,
the greater your moral. If we are forced
to be virtuous according to a certain principle,
a certain regulation, certain laws or rules, then that
is not real virtue. It must come from the depths
of our heart; our own heart must
teach us the true moral.
