Body Intelligence (2)

Elephant and Rider, Indian, circa 1640
Metropolitan Museum of Art

There are guides

who can show you the way.

Use them.

But they will not satisfy your longing.

Keep wanting the connection with presence

with all your pulsing energy.

The throbbing vein

will take you further

than any thinking.

Muhammed said, Do not theorize

about essence. All speculations

are just more layers of covering.

Human beings love coverings.

They think the designs on the curtains

are what is being concealed.

Observe the wonders as they occur around you.

Do not claim them. Feel the artistry

moving through, and be silent.

Body Intelligence (1)

Three Capetian French scholars

consulting an astrolabe, ca. AD 1200

Your intelligence is always with you,

overseeing your body, even though

you may not be aware of its work.

If you start doing something

against your health, your intelligence

will eventually scold you.

If it had not been so lovingly close by,

and so constantly monitoring,

how could it rebuke?

You and your body's intelligence

are like the beauty and precision

of an astrolabe.

Together, you calculate how near

existence is to the sun.

Your intelligence is marvelously intimate.

It is not in front of you or behind,

or to the left or the right.

Now, my friend, try to describe how near

is the creator of your intelligence.

Red

Red with shyness, the red

that became all the rosegarden reds.

The red distance,

red of the stove boiling water,

red of the mountain turning bloodred,

a mountain holding rubies secretly inside.

Do I love more you

or your modesty?

My Worst Habit

My worst habit is I get so tired of winter

I become a torture to those I'm with.

If you are not here, nothing grows.

I lack clarity. My words

tangle and knot up.

How to cure bad water? Send it back to the river.

How to cure bad habits? Send me back to you.

When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools,

dig a way out through the bottom

to the ocean. There is a secret medicine

given only to those who hurt so hard

they can't hope.

The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.

Look as long as you can at the friend you love,

no matter whether that friend is moving away from you

or coming back toward you.

Red Shirt

 

 Portrait of the Boy Eutyches

Egyptian, A.D. 100-150

Has anyone seen the boy who used to come here?

Round-faced troublemaker, quick to find a joke, slow

to be serious. Red shirt,

perfect coordination, sly,

strong muscles, with things always in his pocket.

Reed flute, ivory pick, polished

and ready for his talent.

You know that one.

Have you heard stories about him?

Pharoah and the whole Egyptian world

collapsed for such a Joseph.

I would gladly spend years getting word

of him, even third- or fourth-hand.

* * * 

This reading is poignant for me today,

partly because of the recent triumphs in Egypt.

Today is also the 15th anniversary of the day

my redheaded (not redshirted) brother passed away at age 47;
except for the flute, every word of the first stanza is true of him!

He visited the pyramids at Giza in 1969
and took some beautiful photographs of them and the Sphinx.
I wish I had one here to scan and show you.


Bennett Williams Hart
b. June 28, 1948 d. February 24, 1996 

When I Am with You

 The Moonrise, Mamaroneck, by Edward J. Steichen

When I am with you, we stay up all night.

When you are not here, I can't go to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias.

And the difference between them.

The Grasses

The same wind that uproots trees

makes the grasses shine.

The lordly wind loves the weakness

and the lowness of grasses.

The axe doesn't worry how thick the branches are.

It cuts them to pieces. But not the leaves.

It leaves the leaves alone.

The motion of the body, the inhaling-exhaling,

comes from the spirit, now angry, now peaceful.

Wind destroys, and wind protects.

There is no reality but God,

says the completely surrendered sheikh,

who is an ocean for all beings.

The levels of creation are straws in that ocean.

The movement of the straws comes from an agitation

in the water. When the ocean wants the straws calm,

it sends them close to shore. When it wants them

back in the deep surge, it does with them

as the wind does with the grasses.

Dark Sweetness

The ground turns green. A drum begins.

Commentaries on the heart arrive in seven volumes.

The pen puts its head down

to give a dark sweetness to the page.

Planets go wherever they want.

Venus sways near the North Star.

The moon holds on to Leo.

The host who has no self is here.

We look into each other's eyes.

A child is still a child

even after it has learned the alphabet.

Solomon lifts his morning cup to the mountains.

Sit down in this pavilion,

and don't listen to religious bickering.

Be silent as we absorb the spring.

Imagining Is Like

Imagining is like feeling around

in a dark lane, or washing

your eyes with blood.

You are the truth

from foot to brow. Now,

what else would you like to know?

Talking through the Door (2)

Sala de los Secretos, The Alhambra Palace
(Whispering Chamber)
Granada, Spain
Photo from Wiki Commons

Then you asked, Where have you been most comfortable?

In the palace.

What did you see there?

Amazing things.

Then why is it so desolate?

Because all that can be taken away in a second.

Who can do that?

This clear discernment.

Where can you live safely?

In surrender.

Is there no threat of disaster?

Only what comes in your street,

inside your love.

Now silence. If I tell you more of this conversation,

those listening would leave themselves.

There would be no more door,

no roof or windows either.

Talking through the Door (1)

Patio de los Arrayanes, The Alhambra
Granada, Spain
Photo from Wiki Commons


You said, Who's at the door?

I said, Your slave.

You said, What do you want?

To see you and bow.

We talked through the door. I claimed

a great love and that I had given up

what the world gives to be in that love.

You said, Such claims require a witness.

I said, This longing, these tears.

You said, Discredited witnesses.

I said, Surely not.

You said, Who did you come with?

This majestic imagination you gave me,

Why did you come?

The musk of your wine was in the air.

What is your intention?

Friendship.

The Worm's Waking

This is how a human being can change.

There is a worm

addicted to eating grape leaves.

Suddenly, he wakes up,

call it grace, whatever, something

wakes him, and he is no longer a worm.

He is the entire vineyard,

and the orchard too, the fruit, the trunks,

a growing wisdom and joy

that does not need to devour.

The Seed Market

Can you find another market like this?

Where, with your one rose

you can buy hundreds of rose gardens?

Where, for one seed you get a whole wilderness?

For one weak breath, the divine wind?

You have been fearful of being absorbed

in the ground, or drawn up by the air.

Now your waterbead lets go

and drops into the ocean, where it came from.

This giving up is not a repenting.

It is a deep honoring of yourself.

When the ocean comes to you as a lover,

marry, at once, quickly for God's sake.

Don't postpone it. Existence has no better gift.

No amount of searching will find this.

A perfect falcon, for no reason,

has landed on your shoulder, and become yours.

Whoever's Calm and Sensible

There is a light seed grain inside.

You fill it with yourself, or it dies.

I'm caught in this curling energy. Your hair.

Whoever's calm and sensible is insane.

Love's Confusing Joy

If you want what visible reality

can give, you are an employee.

If you want the unseen world,

you are not living with your truth.

Both wishes are foolish,

but you'll be forgiven for forgetting

that what you really want is

love's confusing joy.

Happy Valentine's Day

Escaping to the Forest

The Dream, by Henri Rousseau

 

Some souls have gotten free of their bodies.

Do you see them? Open your eyes for those

who escape to meet with other escapees,

whose hearts associate in a way they have

of leaving their false selves

to live in a truer self.

I don't mind if my companions

wander away for a while.

They will come back like a smiling drunk.

Thirsty ones die of their thirst.

A nightingale sometimes

flies from a garden

to sing in the forest.

Evolutionary Intelligence

This groggy time we live, this is what it is like:

A man goes to sleep in the town

where he has always lived, and he dreams

he is living in another town.

He believes the reality of the dream town.

The world is that kind of sleep.

The dust of many crumbled cities

settles over us like a forgetful doze,

but we are older than those cities.

We began as a mineral. We emerged into plant life

and into the animal state. Then into being human,

and always we have forgotten our former states,

except in early spring when we almost

remember being green again.

Humankind is being led along an evolving course,

through this migration of intelligences,

and though we seem to be sleeping,

there is an inner wakefulness that directs the dream.

It will eventually startle us back

to the truth of who we are.

The Water You Want

Someone may be clairvoyant, able to see

the future, and yet have very little wisdom.

Like the man who saw water in his dream,

and began leading everyone toward the mirage.

I am the one with heart-vision.

I have torn open the veil.

So they set out with him inside the dream,

while he is actually sleeping

beside a river of pure water.

Any search moves away from the spot

where the object of the quest is.

Sleep deeply wherever you are on the way.

Maybe some traveler will wake you.

Give up subtle thinking, the twofold, threefold

multiplication of mistakes.

Listen to the sound of waves within you.

You are dreaming your thirst,

when the water you want

is inside the big vein on your neck.

Water and the Moon

There is a path from me to you

that I am constantly looking for

so I try to keep clear and still

as water does with the moon.

The One Thing You Must Do

There is one thing in this world which you must never forget to do.

If you forget everything else and not this, there is nothing to worry

about, but if you remember everything else and forget this, then you

will have done nothing in your life.

It is as if a king has sent you to some country to do a task, and you

perform a hundred other services, but not the one he sent you to do.

So human beings come to this world to do particular work. That

work is the purpose, and each is specific to the person. If you don't

do it, it's as though a knife of the finest tempering were nailed into a

wall to hang things on. For a penny an iron nail could be bought to

serve for that.

Remember the deep root of your being, the presence of your lord.

Give your life to the one who already owns your breath and your

moments. If you don't, you will be like the one who takes a precious

dagger and hammers it into his kitchen wall for a peg to hold his

dipper gourd. You will be wasting valuable keenness and foolishly

ignoring your dignity and your purpose.

A Pilgrimage to a Person

When you are not with close friends,

you are not in the presence.

It is sad to leave the people you travel with.

How much moreso those who remind you of God.

Hurry back to the ones protecting you.

On every trip, have only one objective,

to meet those who are friends

inside the presence.

If you stay home, keep the same purpose,

to meet the innermost presence

as it lives in people.

Be a pilgrim to the kaaba inside a human being,

and Mecca will rise into view on its own.

I Honor Those

I honor those who try

to rid themselves of any lying,

who empty the self

and have only clear being there.

Unfold Your Own Myth

Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?

Who finds us here circling, bewildered, like atoms?

Who, like Jacob blind with grief and age,

smells the shirt of his lost son

and can see again?

Who lets a bucket down and brings up

a flowing prophet? Or like Moses goes for fire

and finds what burns inside the sunrise?

Jesus slips into a house to escape enemies,

and opens a door to the other world.

Solomon cuts open a fish, and there's a gold ring.

Omar storms in to kill the prophet

and leaves with blessings.

But don't be satisfied with stories, how things

have gone with others. Unfold

your own myth, so everyone will understand

the passage, We have opened you.

Start walking toward Shams. Your legs will get heavy

and tired. Then comes a moment of feeling

the wings you've grown, lifting.

Throat-Song

The Nightingale, by Grace Ndirtu, 32-second video here

Let your throat-song

be clear and strong enough

to make an emperor fall full-length,

suppliant, at the door.

Someone Digging in the Ground

May Picture, by Paul Klee

An eye is meant to see things.

The soul is here for its own joy.

A head has one use: for loving a true love.

Legs: to run after.

Love is for vanishing into the sky. The mind,

for learning what men have done and tried to do.

Mysteries are not to be solved. The eye goes blind

when it only wants to see why.

A lover is always accused of something.

But when he finds his love, whatever was lost

in the looking comes back completely changed.

On the way to Mecca, many dangers: thieves,

the blowing sand, only camel's milk to drink.

Still, each pilgrim kisses the black stone there

with pure longing, feeling in the surface

the taste of the lips he wants.

This talk is like stamping new coins. They pile up,

while the real work is being done outside

by someone digging in the ground.

The Freshness

When it's cold and raining,

you are more beautiful.

And the snow brings me

even closer to your lips.

The inner secret, that which was never born,

you are that freshness, and I am with you now.

I can't explain the goings,

or the comings. You enter suddenly,

and I am nowhere again.

Inside the majesty.

Lightning

Lovers Walking in the Snow (Crow and Heron)

Suzuki Harunobu (Japanese, 1725–1770)

This is no ordinary friendship.

I attend your banquet as wine attends.

Like lightning, I am an expert at dying.

Like lightning, this beauty has no language.

It makes no difference

whether I win or lose.

You sit with us in a congregation of the dead,

where one handful of dirt says,

I was once a head of hair.

Another, I was a backbone.

You say nothing.

Love comes in, I can deliver you

from yourself in this moment.

Now lover and beloved grow quiet.

My mouth is burning with sweetness.

As Much as a Pen Knows

Do you think that I know what I'm doing?

That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself?

As much as a pen knows what it's writing,

or the ball can guess where it's going next.