Poems & Passages
A time to be slow by John O'Donohue
This is the time to be slow,
lie low until the bitter weather passes.
Try, as best you can,
not to let the wire brush of doubt scrape from your heart
all sense of yourself and your hesitant light.
If you remain generous, time will come good;
and you will find your feet again on fresh pastures of promise,
Where the air will be kind and blushed with beginning.
A passage from Swami Buaji
(Said to be 116 years old)
Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity of the appetite, for adventure over the love of ease.
This often exists in older adults more than in children. But youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees. It is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.
Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.
Asking Directions in Paris by Ellen Bass
Pardon, Oú est le Boulevard Saint Michel? You pronounce the question carefully.
And when the Parisian stops, shifting her small sack of groceries, lifting her manicured hand, you feel a flicker of accomplishment.
But beyond that, all clarity dissolves, for the woman in the expensive shoes and suit exactly the soft gray of clouds above the cathedral, does not say to the right, to the left, straight ahead, phrases you memorized from tapes as you drove around your home town or mumbled into a pocket Berlitz on the plane, but relays something wholly unintelligible, some version of:
On the corner he is a shop of jewels in a fountain and the hotel arrives on short feet. You listen hard, nodding, as though your pleasant disposition, your willingness to go wherever she tells you, will make her next words pop-up from this ocean of sound, somewhat the way a dog hears its name.
If you're brave enough, or very nervous, you may even admit you don't understand. And though evening's coming on and her family's waiting, her husband lighting another cigarette, the children setting the table, she repeats it all again, with another gesture of her lovely hand, from which you glean no more than you did the first time.
And as you thank her profusely and set off full of doubt and groundless hope, you think this must be how it is with destiny: God explaining and explaining what you must do, even willing to hold up dinner for it, and all you can make out is a few unconnected phrases, a word or two, a wave in what you pray is the right direction.
A Poem By Dawna Makova
I will not die an unlived life I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire. I choose to inhabit my days, to allow my living to open me, to make me less afraid, more accessible, to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise. I choose to risk my significance; to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom and that which came to me as blossom, goes on as fruit.
RELAX by Ellen Bass (Abridged)
Bad things are going to happen.
Your tomatoes will grow a fungus and your cat will get run over. Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream melting in the car and throw your blue cashmere sweater in the drier.
The other cat-the one you never really liked-will contract a disease that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth every four hours.
No matter how many vitamins you take, how much Pilates, you'll lose your keys, your hair and your memory.
There's a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger. When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine and climbs half way down. But there's also a tiger below.
And two mice-one white, one black-scurry out and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice. She looks up, down, at the mice. Then she eats the strawberry.
So here's the view, the breeze, the pulse in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you'll get fat, slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel and crack your hip. You'll be lonely.
Oh taste how sweet and tart the red juice is, how the tiny seeds crunch between your teeth.
A Poem By Tsoknyi Rinpoche
Sometime go outside and sit, In the evening at sunset, When there's a slight breeze that touches your body, And makes the leaves and the trees move gently.
You're not trying to do anything, really. You're simply allowing yourself to be, Very open from deep within, Without holding onto anything whatsoever.
Don't bring something back from the past, from a memory. Don't plan that something should happen. Don't hold onto anything in the present. Nothing you perceive needs to be nailed down.
Simply let experience take place, very freely, So that your empty, open heart Is suffused with the tenderness of true compassion.
A Poem By Chanie Gorkin
(Read from top to bottom, then read from bottom to top)
Today was the absolute worst day ever And don't try to convince me that There's something good in every day Because, when you take a closer look, This world is a pretty evil place. Even if Some goodness does shine through once in a while Satisfaction and happiness don't last. And it's not true that It's all in the mind and heart Because True happiness can be attained Only if one's surroundings are good It's not true that good exists I'm sure you can agree that The reality Creates My attitude It's all beyond my control And you'll never in a million years hear me say Today was a very good day
A Poem By Tukaram (c.1608-1649)
I was meditating with my cat the other day and all of a sudden she shouted, "What happened?"
I knew exactly what she meant, but encouraged her to say more - feeling that if she got it all out on the table she would sleep better that night.
So I responded, "Tell me more, dear" and she soulfully meowed…
"Well, I was mingled with the sky. I was comets whizzing here and there. I was the sun's heat, hell, I was galaxies. But now look I am landlocked in fur."
To this I said, "I know exactly what you mean." … what to say about conversation between mystics?
A Poem By Tukaram (c.1608-1649)
I was invited to a fancy event and when I got there one of the guests said, "Tukaram, your shirt is on backwards and so are your pants, and it looks like your hair never heard the word comb, and your shoes don't match."
I replied, "Thanks, I noticed all that before leaving, but why try to fool anyone."
