I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
 
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
 
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
 
After days of labor, 
mute in my consternation, 
I hear my song at last, 
and I sing it. As we sing
the day turns, the trees move.
 
         From Sabbaths 
         By Wendell Barry, 1979
​

 
When you were talking about the straitjacket
I had a flash
 
I was in one and a great magician--
 
Houdini, maybe--
Or maybe God disguised as Houdini--
 
was about to teach me to escape
 
I knew with utter certainty
that his first word would be
 
“Relax”
 
Jack McCarthy
 

​Relax
Ellen Bass
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.
Your husband will sleep
with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling
out of her blouse. Or your wife
will remember she’s a lesbian
and leave you for the woman next door. 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. Your parents will die.
No matter how many vitamins you take,
how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys,
your hair and your memory. If your daughter
doesn’t plug her heart
into every live socket she passes,
you’ll come home to find your son has emptied
the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,
and called the used appliance store for a pick up—drug money.
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.

​To Learn From Animal Being
 
Nearer to earth’s heart,
Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.
 
We who are ever
Distanced and distracted
By the parade of bright
Windows thought opens:
Their seamless presence
Is not fractured thus..
 
Stranded between time
Gone and time emerging,
We manage seldom
To be where we are:
Whereas they are always
Looking our from 
The here and now.
 
May we learn to return
And rest in the beauty
Of animal being
Learn to lean low,
Leave our locked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us. 
 
May we enter 
Into lightness of spirit 
And slip frequently into
The feel of the wild.
 
Let the clear silence
Of our animal being
Cleanse our hearts
Of corrosive words.
 
May we learn to walk 
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness
So that our minds
Might be baptized
In the name of the wind
And the light and the rain. 
 

​Love Dogs
 
One night a man was crying,
            "Allah, Allah!"
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
         "So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?"
The man had no answer for that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage,
            "Why did you stop praising?"
“Because I've never heard anything back."
"This longing you express 
is the return message."
 
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.
Give your life to be one of them.

1: Dharma talks and guided meditations by Thich that Hahn  

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yl6l48zst4ofjiv/AACDBRdtiGHJvDwX0VJIkhrma?dl=0


2: Guidance in Jhanas 

http://www.leighb.com


​

Hiroshima of My Heart
 
forever alone
no floor
no arms
falling 
empty
love is delusion
connection a trap
everything died
no time
forever
alone
flies buzz 
endless blistering
 afternoons
no wonder
enlightenment
is 
annihilation
stopping
ceasing to 
exist 
and just 
fucking
be 
done 
with 
it
 

"Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing:  the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not.  And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.  I am impermanence itself in a rapidly changing human form that appears solid.  I fear to see what I am:  an ever-changing energy field.  I don't want to be that.  So good practice is about fear.  Fear takes the form of constantly thinking, speculating, analyzing, fantasizing.  With all that activity we create a cloud cover to keep ourselves safe in make-believe practice.  True practice is not safe; it's anything but safe.  But we don't like that, so we obsess with our feverish efforts to achieve our version of the personal dream.  Such obsessive practice is itself just another cloud between ourselves and reality.  The only thing that matters is seeing with an impersonal searchlight:  seeing things as they are.  When the personal barrier drops away, why do we have to call it anything?  We just live our lives.  And when we die, we just die.  No problem anywhere."
--Charlotte Joko Beck,  Everyday Zen
​