“More to Me Than Time Allows to Be”

Tags

age, Consciousness, death, inspiration, Philosophy, poetry, self transformation, spiritual practice, spirituality

By Tian Xu Tong

I wrote this years ago, a kind of declaration for a state of being with which I passionately identified, although it seemed so beyond what I or anyone could reach at the time:

Epitaph for a Tombstone

I am compressed within my skin like a time bomb.

There is more to me than time allows to be.

When the end comes I’ll explode like an atom.

It is my end to explore infinity.

It seemed at the time I wrote it that there was so much I wanted to do and explore, and yet I wasted so much time on trivial things, that I feared my end would come before actualizing even a fraction of my potential. I could not accept that such would be the end of me. Surely this keenly felt unlived life would burst through the shell of being into something infinitely elastic, and all that I was or was meant to be would be realized eventually.

Now that my end of days have grown so much nearer, that sense of there being more to me than time allows to be has not diminished. But I think of it somewhat differently. That escape into an ever-expansive sense of self no longer seems to lie upon a birth-death or time-space axis but within the here and now which defies such limitations.

That smallness of being which so ill-fits us, which pinches and punishes, which we all in this present life seem heir to, does not define us and has little in reality to do with us. It’s but an ill-shaped mind-box that seems to contain us but never really can.

It’s as if this limited life which seems to bind us is like a box with four sides. Before and behind us are Birth and Death, and on either side are I and Other. Below is the Ground of Being which supports us. But there is no lid above. It is open to the Wonder or Mystery of Being, enticing us to rise beyond the strictures of time and space, birth and death, I and Other. Inviting us to explore what lies beyond this small sense of self; and so we do, each following our bliss. Through exploration of the sciences or creative arts, or by pursuing the ideals of freedom, equality, justice, service, selfless love, and the common good, we rise somewhat out of our smaller selves into something more expansive.

But until those opposing walls of birth and death, time and space, and I or Other collapse, we are still confined within a smaller, ill-fitting sense of being. We can slip in and out of that box, but cannot escape it altogether. Death is not the door that frees us. Mind is.

Rising to a higher, more expansive sense of self that identifies both with the Ground of Being that supports us, and the Wonder of Being that surrounds us, we find our freedom. There the restrictive walls that would bind us collapse for lack of identity.

All the great spiritual teachings point in that direction. Not toward something outside or apart from us, but toward a more expansive identity : the Kingdom of God, Enlightenment, the Tao. All lie within a higher consciousness or understanding of being.

We know this, it is not new. Nor is it far away. We all taste it, hear it, glimpse it in rarified moments even within this limited sense of self.

When one student asked the sage to show him this higher reality we sometimes call God, the master said, “There, do you not smell it?” as their feet crushed the sweet arbutrus beneath them.

Nothing is hidden. We all catch that whiff of the infinite in humble and exquisite ways along our journey within.

But perhaps this is all too esoteric. Here’s something more concrete.

The other day we all learned how President Trump had contracted Covid. Not a fan of Trump and angry at how he had been been downplaying the disease in a way that appeared to cost thousands of lives, I was not sympathetic. I thought this was his just dessert. I even felt a bit gleeful since he had been mocking Biden about wearing a mask only a few days previously. I hoped he would experience more than mild symptoms so that he would have more compassion for others who had suffered, and not come away saying it wasn’t so bad after all, nothing to worry about to his followers.

Yet thinking this way felt uncomfortable, like putting on shoes a size too small. They pinched. But I couldn’t quite lift my thought away from such feelings, thinking them justified.

The next morning during my spiritual practice my thought completely shifted as I once again began to identify with this higher sense of self, where I and Other melted away. I felt this deep empathy and sympathy toward the president. Not toward his plight contracting Covid. But rather toward the plight we all share when confined within this small, tight, pinched sense of identity. I thought of what he could be, and actually is, when those four walls of restriction fall away and he too experiences that more expansive sense of self where there is no I or Other.

I remembered what his niece, Mary Trump, had written about his upbringing, how he’d been shaped to be the boastful, selfish, egotistical man he seems to be, how his values and sense of self had been warped. Each of us have similar life experiences that shape and limit us, that we all need to outgrow. Perhaps this Covid experience will help him. Perhaps not. Either way it wasn’t my business.

My business was to lift my own sense of self beyond the thought-patterns that had so pinched the day before. To experience the deep sympathy that rises from the ground of being and unites us all. To once again savor that sweet wonder that lifts us beyond ourselves.

It’s not so esoteric after all.

Grieving for America, and Getting Past It

Tags

2020 presidential election, America, faith, Fear, grief, inspiration, Mary Oliver, patriotism, poetry, Politics, pride, Starlings in Winter, the United states, USA

Worldphoto.org

I found this quote by Mary Oliver in a recent blog post and it struck a chord.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it

— Mary Oliver, from “Starlings in Winter”

So many of us have been grieving and fearing for our country of late, with the upcoming election and all the uncertainty and chaos it promises.

Feeling so keenly the need to get past this grief and fear I eagerly sought out the full poem to see what wisdom or encouragement Oliver’s “Starlings in Winter” might impart. Not surprisingly, I was not disappointed.

Starlings in Winter

Chunky and noisy,
but with stars in their black feathers,
they spring from the telephone wire
and instantly

they are acrobats
in the freezing wind.
And now, in the theater of air,
they swing over buildings,

dipping and rising;
they float like one stippled star
that opens,
becomes for a moment fragmented,

then closes again;
and you watch
and you try
but you simply can’t imagine

how they do it
with no articulated instruction, no pause,
only the silent confirmation
that they are this notable thing,

this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin
over and over again,
full of gorgeous life.

Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it;

I feel my boots
trying to leave the ground,
I feel my heart
pumping hard. I want

to think again of dangerous and noble things.
I want to be light and frolicsome.
I want to be improbable beautiful and afraid of nothing,
as though I had wings.

What I read in this poem is a metaphor, not so much for what is happening in our country today that makes us grieve, but for what is so resilient and beautiful about who we are as a people, as a nation, and why we will survive even this.

The starlings and the miraculous murmurations they create in flight are a symbol for the principles upon which this nation was founded and our messy history in striving to live up to those principles, to create a more perfect union.

Like the starlings we are “chunky and noisy, but  with stars” in our eyes as well as on the back of our flag.  We created and continue to create this miraculous, exceptional, “notable thing”, this republic, this democracy, these United States. And we did so during the wintry blasts of protest and rebellion against an authority we no longer wished to follow. We did so as acrobats, flying through the uncertainty of the times, “dipping and rising” across time and space, through decades of challenges, “fragmented for a moment” and then reuniting again and again.

Like the poet’s narrator, I “simply cannot imagine how they did it,” our forefathers and foremothers, how “in the freezing wind,” through “the theater of time” they created what we have today, this “silent confirmation” of a miracle,  “this notable thing,” this free-flowing, ever-changing but endurable nation.

Even now, during these challenging times, this “leafless season” of Covid, this “ashy city” of race riots, this chaotic election where our democracy itself appears to be in peril, even now what makes us great is that this “notable thing” we still are, still endures. Still is viable.

“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by what is right with America.” –President Bill Clinton

I believe this in my bones, and with all my “heart, pumping hard.” What lifts me past the turmoil of the times, past the grief that seems so prevalent, is the remembrance of and faith in this “this notable thing, this wheel of many parts, that can rise and spin over and over again, full of gorgeous life.” Full of purpose and promise.

One man, one administration, one season of cold wintry blasts, one chaotic election— even one devastating defeat—will not defeat us. Will not diminish this “notable” nation that stands out unique in all of history. This “city upon a hill,” as another President called us.

It’s not hope but faith in who and what we are, for all our faults, that moves me past grief, beyond fear.

“There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by what is right with America.”  We will right this.

David Whyte, Putting Down the Weight of Aloneness

Tags

aloneness, Creative Nonfiction, David Whyte, Everything is Waiting for You, inspiration, life, poetry

Henri Matisse

I’ve long been a fan of David Whyte’s poetry and this one is no exception. It seems it may have been written especially for these times, when so many of us find ourselves cocooned in our homes, feeling alone, cut off from everything.

And yet, even here, all alone, he writes, is this “swelling presence” of the everyday and ordinary, this “chorus” of the mundane that surrounds us. This “conversation” with kettles and cooking pots, doors and stairs is a grand symphony that accompanies our solo voice. Yet these intimate and animate objects, like a constant companion that comforts and supports, just waiting for our interplay, go almost unnoticed.

My elbow leans lazily on my desk and my hand cradles the mouse as I stop to stare at this brilliant invention before me. Then I lean back in my chair and continue typing thoughts into cyberspace. The wall clock behind me waits patiently for my wayward glance, ticking out the seconds so it can tell me the exact time when I need to know.

Yes, everything, everything is just waiting for me. Somehow these objects and I are woven together, seamlessly creating this life we share. We are never alone if only we would look and see.

Everything is Waiting For you

by David Whyte

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.

Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.

Links to more poetry by Whyte

Something in this Sleeping Earth

Opened at Last

Melt into that Fierce Heat of Living

 

To Live Content With Small Things

Tags

inspiration, meditation, poems, poetry, quotations, spiritual

A few pebbles for the pond . . . . 

To live content with small things;
To seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion;
To be worthy, not respectable;
To listen to stars and birds, and to babes with an open heart;
To bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasion, hurry never –
In a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious grow up through the common.  — William Henry Channing

love is the voice under all silences,
the hope which has no opposite in fear;
the strength so strong mere force is feebleness:
the truth more first than sun more last than star
— e.e.cummings

We sit together,
the mountain & I
. . .  until only the
mountain remains.
— Li Po

“Vast Emptiness, Vastly Full”

Tags

Blogging, Buddhism, D. E. Harding, Derek Walcott, inspiration, Love After Love, On Having No Head, personal, Philosophy, poetry

There are a few refrains that I turn to again and again when I want to get a clearer sense of who I am beyond what appears in a mirror or an ordinary, limited sense of self.

Some are from Buddhist or Taoist texts that I’ve written about or alluded to on these pages:

“Able to be the mother of the world”

“Not-two” Or “Not-I”

“Oh so delicious!”

Some are from poems I wrote to capture a particular state of mind where I was “there”–Not-I.

“I am clean, uncluttered space . . .”

“Drifting mindless round the bend, bursting out, bursting in.”

“Vast emptiness, vastly full” is another refrain I turn to that helps me to move beyond a constrictive sense of self to something that feels freer and truer.

It comes from the book On Having No Head, Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious by D. E. Harding. Some excerpts follow.

The best day of my life—my rebirthday, so to speak—was when I found I had no head. This is not a literary gambit, a witticism designed to arouse interest at any cost. I mean it in all seriousness: I have no head.

It was eighteen years ago, when I was thirty-three, that I made the discovery. Though it certainly came out of the blue, it did so in response to an urgent enquiry; I had for several months been absorbed in the question: what am I?

. . . . What actually happened was something absurdly simple and unspectacular: I stopped thinking . . . . Reason and imagination and all mental chatter died down. For once, words really failed me. Past and future dropped away. I forgot who and what I was, my name, manhood, animalhood, all that could be called mine. It was as if I had been born that instant, brand new, mindless, innocent of all memories. There existed only the Now, that present moment and what was clearly given in it. To look was enough. And what I found was khaki trouser legs terminating downwards in a pair of brown shoes, khaki sleeves terminating sideways in a pair of pink hands, and a khaki shirtfront terminating upwards in—absolutely nothing whatever! Certainly not in a head.

It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything—room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.

. . . .  I seemed to stop breathing altogether . . . .  alone and unsupported, mysteriously suspended in the void . . .  utterly free of “me”, unstained by any observer. Its total presence was my total absence, body and soul. Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.

. . . . [I]t felt like a sudden waking from the sleep of ordinary life, an end to dreaming. It was self-luminous reality for once swept clean of all obscuring mind. . . . . In short, it was all perfectly simple and plain and straightforward, beyond argument, thought, and words . . . . the sensation of having dropped an intolerable burden.

I’ve had that sensation of being “vast emptiness, vastly full” and it feels more real, more “me”, than my ordinary sense of self. The full-blown experience doesn’t last long, but the sense of it, the memory, the feel of it when I enter those words vast emptiness, vastly full is heady. It takes me somewhat out of myself and into a sense of being that is freer and fuller. And truer. It brings me home to myself.

Which is probably why I love that poem Love After Love by Derek Walcott so much.

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.

. . . . Feast on your life.

“What I Regret Most, Failures of Kindness” – Graduation Speech Goes Viral

Tags

Advice, George Saunders, Graduation, Hayden Carruth, inspiration, Kindness, life, Love, poetry, Regret, speech

With graduation season upon us, I thought I’d re-share the most inspiring graduation speech I ever read. One by the acclaimed writer George Saunders that went viral several years ago. Below is a slightly altered version of my original post as well as the poem by Hayden Carruth that inspired his speech.

It’s not often you get major writers speaking of such mundane and seemingly trite things as “regrets” and “kindness” to students graduating from ivy-league schools. But that’s what Saunders spoke about at Syracuse University in 2013.

You can read the whole speech HERE.

Saunders starts out with this amazing statement:

What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.

Those moments when another human being was there, in front of me, suffering, and I responded…sensibly. Reservedly. Mildly.

Then he lists sensible ways to learn how to be kind:

Education is good; immersing ourselves in a work of art: good; prayer is good; meditation’s good; a frank talk with a dear friend; establishing ourselves in some kind of spiritual tradition – recognizing that there have been countless really smart people before us who have asked these same questions and left behind answers for us.

Because kindness, it turns out, is hard – it starts out all rainbows and puppy dogs, and expands to include…well, everything.

But not to worry, he says, because kindness, hard as it is, becomes easier as we grow older. As life kicks us around a bit we learn to become more kind, because we realize how much we need it, and depend upon it, and want it for our loved ones.

Most people, as they age, become less selfish and more loving. I think this is true. The great Syracuse poet, Hayden Carruth, said, in a poem written near the end of his life, that he was “mostly Love, now.”

And so, a prediction, and my heartfelt wish for you: as you get older, your self will diminish and you will grow in love. YOU will gradually be replaced by LOVE.

Wow. To be replaced by love. I can’t think of a more worthwhile goal to strive toward for anyone starting off in life. Or winding down, for that matter.

Here is Carruth’s poem.

Testament

by Hayden Carruth

So often it has been displayed to us, the hourglass
with its grains of sand drifting down,
not as an object in our world
but as a sign, a symbol, our lives
drifting down grain by grain,
sifting away — I’m sure everyone must
see this emblem somewhere in the mind.
Yet not only our lives drift down. The stuff
of ego with which we began, the mass
in the upper chamber, filters away
as love accumulates below. Now
I am almost entirely love. I have been
to the banker, the broker, those strange
people, to talk about unit trusts,
annuities, CDs, IRAs, trying
to leave you whatever I can after
I die. I’ve made my will, written
you a long letter of instructions.
I think about this continually.
What will you do? How
will you live? You can’t go back
to cocktail waitressing in the casino.
And your poetry? It will bring you
at best a pittance in our civilization,
a widow’s mite, as mine has
for forty-five years. Which is why
I leave you so little. Brokers?
Unit trusts? I’m no financier doing
the world’s great business. And the sands
in the upper glass grow few. Can I leave
you the vale of ten thousand trilliums
where we buried our good cat Pokey
across the lane to the quarry?
Maybe the tulips I planted under
the lilac tree? Or our red-bellied
woodpeckers who have given us so
much pleasure, and the rabbits
and the deer? And kisses? And
love-makings? All our embracings?
I know millions of these will be still
unspent when the last grain of sand
falls with its whisper, its inconsequence,
on the mountain of my love below

Poetry in the Time of Corona

Tags

coronavirus, inspiration, life, poem, poetry

John Singer Sargent

Leaf shadows thrown by the morning sun against a creamy wall.

Soft, sensuous folds of a warm blanket tossed across my knees.

My grandmother’s hands wrapped around a mug as I sip sweet coffee.

So much I fail to see in the time of corona.

Or seeing, fail to note,

Or noting, fail to feel

What once I felt.

Poetry all around me.

— April 30, 2020

“Love is a Language Few Practice, But All Speak”

Tags

civil rights, Jonathan Bachman, Love, peacful protest, photography, poem, poetry, police brutality, Tracy K. Smith

Unreast in Baton Rouge

By Traci K. Smith

           after the photo by Jonathan Bachman
Our bodies run with ink dark blood.
Blood pools in the pavement’s seams.

Is it strange to say love is a language
Few practice, but all, or near all speak?

Even the men in black armor, the ones
Jangling handcuffs and keys, what else

Are they so buffered against, if not love’s blade
Sizing up the heart’s familiar meat?

We watch and grieve. We sleep, stir, eat.
Love: the heart sliced open, gutted, clean.

Love: naked almost in the everlasting street,
Skirt lifted by a different kind of breeze.

More about the photo and incident that inspired this poem.

Finding Our Place in the Family of Things

Tags

Despair, inspiration, Mary Oliver, Nature, poem, poetry, Solace, Wild Geese

I often turn to the poetry of Mary Oliver when seeking solace, when trying to negotiate a path through the cares and sorrows of this world and its grace and beauty.

“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine,” she says, simply.

As if she and me and despair are old friends. As if despair, with all its sharp, broken edges is as common as grass, as remarkable as wild geese shrieking across the sky. Just another thing among the many that make up a life.

Not to be avoided. And not to let drown out the other voices that call to us, or whisper up from deep within.

Here’s one of my favorites.

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things

Letters From Beyond the Grave on Memorial Day

Tags

David Whyte, death, inspiration, Memorial Day, poems, poetry, renewal, Rilke, spirituality

While neither of these poems have anything in particular to do with remembering those who have given their lives to defend our freedoms, they are reminders that death is not an ending but another beginning. So my heartfelt prayer for them is that they fell into the arms of that great Mothering and are being nurtured and renewed there.

Farewell Letter to My Son

She wrote me a letter
after her death
and I remember
a kind of happy light
falling on the envelope
as I sat by the rose tree
on her old bench
at the back door,
so surprised by its arrival
wondering what she would say,
looking up before I could open it
and laughing to myself
in silent expectation.

Dear son, it is time
for me to leave you.
I am afraid that the words
you are used to hearing
are no longer mine to give,
they are gone and mingled
back in the world
where it is no longer
in my power
to be their first
original author
not their last loving bearer.
You can hear
motherly
words of affection now
only from your own mouth
and only
when you speak them
to those
who stand
motherless
before you.

As for me I must forsake
adulthood
and be bound gladly
to a new childhood.
You must understand
this apprenticeship
demands of me
an elemental innocence
from everything
I ever held in my hands.
I know your generous soul
is well able to let me go
you will in the end
be happy to know
my God was true
and I find myself
after loving you all so long,
in the wide,
infinite mercy
of being mothered myself.

P.S. All your intuitions are true.

By David Whyte

To Leave One’s Own Name Behind

Of course, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to give up customs one barely had time to learn,
not to see roses and other promising Things
in terms of a human future; no longer to be
what one was in infinitely anxious hands; to leave
even one’s own first name behind, forgetting it
as easily as a child abandons a broken toy.
Strange to no longer desire one’s desires. Strange
to see meanings that clung together once, floating away
in every direction. And being dead is hard work
and full of retrieval before one can gradually feel
a trace of eternity. – Though the living are wrong to believe
in the too-sharp distinctions which they themselves have created.
Angels (they say) don’t know whether it is the living
they are moving among, or the dead. The eternal torrent
whirls all ages along in it, through both realms
forever, and their voices are drowned out in its thunderous roar

By Rainer Maria Rilke
from Duino Elegies, The first Elegy
translation by Stephen Mitchell

I found both of these poems and the photo by Edward Steichen on Beauty We Love, a wonderful source of inspiration I turn to often.