Spiritual Poems

In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty, how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest,
where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do,
and that sight becomes this art.

by Rumi

The Valley Wind

Living in retirement beyond the World,
Silently enjoying isolation,
I pull the rope of my door tighter
And stuff my window with roots and ferns.
My spirit is tuned to the Spring-season:
At the fall of the year
There is autumn in my heart.
Thus imitating cosmic changes,
My cottage becomes a Universe.

~Lu Yun translated by Arthur Waley

No past.
No future.

Open Mind.
Open Heart.

Complete attention.
No reservations.

That's all.

~Scott Morrison

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"The Holy Longing"
Johann Wolfgang Goethe

Tell a wise person, or else keep silent.
Because the massman will mock it right away.
I praise what is truly alive,
what longs to be burned to death.

In the calm water of the love-nights,
where you were begotten, where you have begotten,
a strange feeling comes over you
when you see the silent candle burning.

Now you are no longer caught
in the obsession with darkness,
and a desire for higher lovemaking
sweeps you upward.

Distance does not make you falter,
now, arriving in magic, flying,
and finally, insane for the light,
you are the butterfly and you are gone.

And so long as you haven't experienced
this: to die and so to grow,
you are only a troubled guest
on the dark earth.

~translated by Robert Bly

On the road

My friend, the traveler
Remember
We are here,
Hidden under various disguises,
Posted
As guards, guides and companions
Along your life's journey,
Waiting
To give you assistance
To extend a helping hand
To provide succor.

We are
But a reflection of your virtues
Manifesting in time
Of necessity.
Savings
Placed by your forgotten
Selfless deeds
In the inexhaustible
Divine
Treasure-house.
Yours for the taking
When the need arises.

We are
The friend
Of friends
Whose face is always hidden
Yet ever revealed
In the silent smile
Of your heart,
In the caress of the wind,
In the soothing coolness of spring water.

And the secret is
That
Forgetting yourself
You too
Are one
Of
Us.

_()_
yosy

Keep your heart clear and transparent
And you will never be bound.
A single disturbed thought, though,
Creates ten thousand distractions.
Let myriad things captivate you
And you'll go further and further astray.
How painful to see people
All wrapped up in themselves.

~Ryokan

This dharma as it has been directly entrusted
by buddha ancestors.
Now that you have realized it
you must guard it mindfully.

Snow heaped in a silver bowl,
a heron fading into the bright moon.
Similar but unequal.
Place them side by side
and you will see which is which.

The meaning is not in words.
Inquiring students seek further.
Moving forward creates pitfalls.
Avoidance leads to a standstill.

Faced with a great wall of fire,
turning your back on it and touching it are both wrong.
Expressing it in colorful words
only stains it.

Midnight is bright,
dawn brings no dew.
Things are truth itself
to be used for removing delusion.
This is not created
and yet not inexpressible.

As form and image face each other
in a bright mirror,
you are not it
but it is you.

It is like a baby
perfectly possessing five freedoms:
Not coming, not going,
not rising, not staying...

And goo goo wa wa -
words that are not words.
In the end nothing is grasped
because speech is not precise.

In the double-split hexagrams
the particular and the general integrate.
When the lines are closed they become three,
and its final change makes five.

A blade of zhi grass has five flavors,
A vajra has five points.
Within the general, something marvelous lies.
Drumming and singing go together.

Penetrating the source, penetrating the paths.
Here is a short path, here is a long path.
If you miss it, that's a good sign.
Don't neglect it.

What is natural and inconceivable
belongs neither to delusion nor enlightenment.
Causes and conditions right at this moment
shine completely in silence.

So minute that it penetrates any space.
So enormous that it exceeds all bounds.
The slightest difference
puts it out of tune.

Because the basic teachings of sudden and gradual
have been set up,
the Zen school has become divided.
These ways have become standard.
Even though you master such teachings
the truth keeps on escaping.

You may sit still but waver inside -
a tied up horse, or a cowering rat.
The Ancient Teacher pitied us
and transmitted the dharma.

Because of our delusions
we say black is white.
When delusions disappear
understanding reveals itself.

If you wish to conform to the old ways,
take a lesson from the past.
People trying to attain the buddha way
by gazing for ten eons at a tree
are like a tiger with tattered ears
or a hobbled horse.

A greedy mind sees
rare treasures.
A surprised mind sees
raccoons and white bulls.

Legendary bowman Yi with his skill
shoots the mark a hundred paces away.
When arrowheads meet head-on,
is it only a matter of skill?

Right when a wooden man sings
a stone woman gets up and dances.
It's not within the reach of knowledge
nor does it admit ideas.

Retainers serve their lord;
children obey their father.
Without obedience there is no respect;
without service there is no civic virtue.

Conceal your practice, work inside.
Be ignorant, look foolish.
Just keep on doing it.
This is called host with host.

From: Essential Zen eds. Kazuaki Tanahashi & Tensho David Schneider

Ghazal 107
by Hafiz

May your goodness always increase
And your smiling face never cease
In our head the thought of your love
Every day is on the increase.
Every cedar and every spruce
From your height may you hear their pleas
The eye not intrigued by thee
Its tear drops a bloody disease.
Your eye for mesmerizing hearts
Is a magician and master-tease.
Wherever a heart is longing for thee
Impatiently shears its own fleece.
The beauty of all the lovers
Beside your swan is ugly geese.
The heart that is out of love’s lease
From the circle of union release.
Hafiz’s soul, your ruby lips ease
Away from base lips, if you please.

The Stairway of Existence
by Hafiz

We
Are not
In pursuit of formalities
Or fake religious
Laws,

For through the stairway of existence
We have come to God's
Door.

We are
People who need to love, because
Love is the soul's life,

Love is simply creation's greatest joy.

Through
The stairway of existence,
O, through the stairway of existence, Hafiz

Have
You now come,
Have we all now come to
The Beloved's
Door.

I Am Mad

I am mad with love
And no one understands my plight.
Only the wounded
Understand the agonies of the wounded,
When the fire rages in the heart.
Only the jeweller knows the value of the jewel,
Not the one who lets it go.
In pain I wander from door to door,
But could not find a doctor.
Says Mira: Harken, my Master,
Mira's pain will subside
When Shyam comes as the doctor.



- Mirabai

Do not go to the garden of flowers!
Do not go to the garden of flowers!
O Friend ! go not there;
In your body is the garden of flowers.

Take your seat on the thousand petals of the lotus,
and there gaze on the Infinite Beauty.


Kabir

One with the River,
by Guthema Roba

I’m one with the river

The river that snores

The river that moans. The river that roars…

Every sound of its roar is my breath.

Its rise and its fall is a sign of life

In the depth of my bone

It is the color of my curiosity.

My courage and my cowardice.

Every bit of its flow is my hope, my strength

Tears of my bliss, whisper of my love.

Magic of creativity. My singing age.
I’m one with a mountain.

Every part of its rise

And every minute of its silence

Is my song that’s not sang yet.

My denied freedom, my hushed liberty.

Every speechless stone is my deep sleep.
I’m one with the Sun, with the Sky, with the Moon, the galaxies.. the milky way…

Their every twinkle, their every stare,

Their every frown, their every smile

Their every caress is my wakefullness.

Their divine warmth is my longing for newness.

I’m one with the woods

Every single wood is the renewal of my physical body

The song of the beasts in the wood is my heartbeat,

The shade of every single tree is my serenity

I’m one with a meadow, with the moors

Every single blade of leaves is my flesh under my skin

Every single grass is my blood cell.

The flowers in the grass are laugher and sorrow in my heart.

Every road that crosses the meadow

Is part of me that sings with light.

My presence. The awareness of the Now
I’m one with a farmer.

His bellowing bulls, his bleating sheep

His frolicking horses and kicking mules

Are the age of innocence.

The cord between a cow and the calf

And the milk in between is immortal tenderness

Of my mother.

The serene thatched, lonely houses

Are my purple moments

when I meet the formless, the ageless. The nameless

I’m one with the winds.

Every sound of its whistle

Is the poem I am composing.

Every groan of its might is

The message in this poem

And every sigh of its fury is my suppressed feelings.

I’m one with the earth.

Her hills and her gorges are my silent tongue.

Every speck of her dust is my beautiful death

My buried intensities. My spent hours, my evenings.

Light enters me through your smile

And it departs from me though your sobs

And it returns to me again through your silence

Through everyone of you,

I learn how to live

And through everyone of you

I practice the art of dying.

The House Was Quiet and the World Was Calm,
by Wallace Stevens

The house was quiet and the world was calm.
The reader became the book; and summer night

Was like the conscious being of the book.
The house was quiet and the world was calm.

The words were spoken as if there was no book,
Except that the reader leaned above the page,

Wanted to lean, wanted much to be
The scholar to whom his book is true, to whom

The summer night is like a perfection of thought.
The house was quiet because it had to be.

The quiet was part of the meaning, part of the mind:
The access of perfection to the page.

And the world was calm. The truth in a calm world,
In which there is no other meaning, itself

Is calm, itself is summer and night, itself
Is the reader leaning late and reading there.

Live your Briliance,
by Mary Pat Nally


Brilliance
Lies ahead
Begging to be claimed
To be held
To be honored

A lighthouse
A flame
A star

Leading the way
for each of us
To see
The brilliance
that lies within
each of us

The love
The compassion
The gentle hand
That holds an inner knowing

A connection
Between us

A connection
that touches hearts
across the world

For, In the Divine
We all
Are one

THE TRUE SUFI
Rumi

What makes the Sufi? Purity of heart;
Not the patched mantle and the lust perverse
Of those vile earth-bound men who steal his name.
He in all dregs discerns the essence pure:
In hardship ease, in tribulation joy.
The phantom sentries, who with batons drawn
Guard Beauty's place-gate and curtained bower,
Give way before him, unafraid he passes,
And showing the King's arrow, enters in.

R. A. Nicholson

'Persian Poems', an Anthology of verse translations
edited by A.J.Arberry, Everyman's Library, 1972