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Showing posts with label Poem. Show all posts

What Hurts the Soul?

23:14 | Labels: Poem, rumi

Mysore, India

We tremble, thinking we're about to dissolve

into nonexistence, but nonexistence

fears even more that it might be given human form!

Loving God is the only pleasure. Other delights

turn bitter. What hurts the soul?

To live without tasting the water of its own essence.

People focus on death and this material earth.

They have doubts about soul water.

Those doubts can be reduced! Use night

to wake your clarity. Darkness and the living water

are lovers. Let them stay up together.

When merchants eat their meals

and sleep their dead sleep,

we night-thieves go to work.

- Rumi (Translated by Coleman Barks)

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Come With Light and Thunder

23:20 | Labels: Poem, Tagore

“When the heart is hard and parched up,

come upon me with a shower of mercy.

When grace is lost from life,
come with a burst of song.

When tumultuous work raises its din on all sides
shutting me out from beyond,
come to me, my lord of silence, with thy peace and rest.

When my beggarly heart sits crouched, shut up in a corner,
break open the door, my king, and
come with the ceremony of a king.

When desire blinds the mind with delusion and dust,
O thou holy one, thou wakeful,
come with thy light and thy thunder.”

(Rabindranath Tagore)

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No Expectations

21:43 | Labels: Poem, rumi

A spirit that lives in this world

and does not wear the shirt of love,

such an existence is a deep disgrace.

Be foolishly in love,

because love is all there is.

There is no way into presence

except through a love exchange.

If someone asks, But what is love?

answer, Dissolving the will.

True freedom comes to those

who have escaped the questions

of freewill and fate.

Love is an emperor.

The two worlds play across him.

He barely notices their tumbling game.

Love and lover live in eternity.

Other desires are substitutes

for that way of being.

How long do you lay embracing a corpse?

Love rather the soul, which cannot be held.

Anything born in spring dies in the fall,

but love is not seasonal.

With wine pressed from grapes,

expect a hangover.

But this love path has no expectations.

You are uneasy riding the body?

Dismount. Travel lighter.

Wings will be given.

Be clear like a mirror

reflecting nothing.

Be clean of pictures and the worry

that comes with images.

Gaze into what is not ashamed

or afraid of any truth.

Contain all human faces in your own

without any judgment of them.

Be pure emptiness.

What is inside that? you ask.

Silence is all I can say.

Lovers have some secrets

that they keep.

(Rumi)

** Thank you Anna for passing this one along. I greatly appreciate it. **

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His Day is Done

20:41 | Labels: Nelson Mandela, Poem, Video, Youtube

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Tagore

06:16 | Labels: Poem, Tagore

Banyan Tree 400 years - Mysore, India

I seem to have loved you in numberless forms, numberless times…
In life after life, in age after age, forever.
My spellbound heart has made and remade the necklace of songs,
That you take as a gift, wear round your neck in your many forms,
In life after life, in age after age, forever.

Whenever I hear old chronicles of love, it’s age old pain,
It’s ancient tale of being apart or together.
As I stare on and on into the past, in the end you emerge,
Clad in the light of a pole-star, piercing the darkness of time.
You become an image of what is remembered forever.

You and I have floated here on the stream that brings from the fount.
At the heart of time, love of one for another.
We have played along side millions of lovers,
Shared in the same shy sweetness of meeting,
the distressful tears of farewell,
Old love but in shapes that renew and renew forever.

Today it is heaped at your feet, it has found its end in you
The love of all man’s days both past and forever:
Universal joy, universal sorrow, universal life.
The memories of all loves merging with this one love of ours -
And the songs of every poet past and forever.

(Rabindranath Tagore)

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I Rise

05:43 | Labels: Maya Angelou, Poem

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

(Maya Angelou)

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Split The Sack

12:35 | Labels: Poem, rumi

Why does the soul not fly

when it hears the call?

Why does a fish, gasping on land,

but near the water,

not move back into the sea?

What keeps us from joining the dance

the dust particles do?

Look at their subtle motions

in sunlight.

We are out of our cages

with our wings spread,

yet we do not lift off.

We keep collecting rocks and broken bits

of pottery like children

pretending they are merchants.

We should split the sack

of this culture

and stick our heads out.

Look around.

Leave your childhood.

Reach your right hand up

and take this book from the air.

You do know right from left, don't you?

A voice speaks to your clarity.

Move into the moment of your death.

Consider what you truly want.

Now call out commands yourself.

You are the king. Phrase your question,

and expect the grace of an answer.

(Rumi)

Thank you, Anna! xo

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The Breeze

02:00 | Labels: Poem, rumi

For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself.

From within, I couldn’t decide what to do.
Unable to see, I heard my name being called.
Then I walked outside.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

(Rumi)

translated by Coleman Barks

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When We Pray Alone

06:53 | Labels: Poem, rumi

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Just Give Me This . . .

04:18 | Labels: Laruga Yoga, Poem, Taiwan, teaching, travel

Just give me this:

A rinsing out, a cleansing free

Of all my smaller strivings

So I can be the class act God intended,

True to my purpose,

All my energy aligned behind my deepest intention.

And just this:

A quieting down,

A clearing away of internal ruckus,

So I can hear the huge stillness in my heart

And feel

How I pulse with all creation,

Part and parcel of Your great singing ocean.

And this too:

A willingness to notice and forgive the myriad times

I fall short,

Forgetting who I am,

What I really belong to.

So I can start over,

Fresh and clean,

Like sweet sheets billowing in the summer sun,

My heart pierced with gratitude.

--Belleruth Naparstek

Emptying. Over the course of the last several months I've had to empty myself. Painful, scary, liberating all at the same time. When I empty, what I cling to becomes evident. What doesn't serve me becomes clear. When I empty of all that is unnecessary I see what is then worth holding on to, and IT is what is holding me. Grace. God. Love. Whatever you want to call it . . . What a welcome release that is.

As my trip in Taiwan starts to wind down I am reminded how honored I am to be able to do what I do. I have worked with some of the most warm hearted people imaginable and truly I have learned so much from the experience. A part of me will always be tied to this island nation. Always. And, I have the people who inhabit it to thank.

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Look to This Day!

14:31 | Labels: inspiration, Poem

Taiwan

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Incandescent brilliance

01:06 | Labels: Poem

I sat alone on a block of stone

On the banks of the Ganges.

Mother Ganges blessed me.

I meditated on OM and its meaning–

The Word that is the symbol of Brahman.

The little personality was lost.

The mortal limit of the self was loosened.

But there was infinite extension.

I entered into the Nameless beyond;

I realized the unity of bliss.

No words can describe the thrill of joy,

The mystic experiences,

The supreme and divine height of felicity!

The little “I” fused into the incandescent brilliance.

Two become one now,

It was all Tejomaya Ananda–

One mass of transcendental light bliss.

- Sri Swami Sivananda

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Unchartered

06:47 | Labels: Poem, rumi

Taken in Mysore, India

You sit here for days saying,

This is strange business.
You’re the strange business. You have the energy of the sun in you, but you keep knotting it up at the base of your spine.
You’re some weird kind of gold that wants to stay melted in the furnace, so you won’t have to become coins.

So don’t be timid.
Load the ship and set out.
No one knows for certain whether the vessel will sink or reach the harbor.
Just don’t be one of those merchants who won’t risk the ocean!

Work in the invisible world at least as hard as you do in the visible.

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to. Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings. Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.

This talk is like stamping new coins. They pile up, while the real work is being done outside by someone digging in the ground.

- Rūmī

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There is One Thing

12:25 | Labels: Poem, rumi

Taken in Mysore, India

THERE IS ONE THING

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 no 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.

- Rumi

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our-yoga

About Me

blog archive

What Hurts the Soul?

Come With Light and Thunder

No Expectations

His Day is Done

Tagore

I Rise

Split The Sack

The Breeze

When We Pray Alone

Just Give Me This . . .

Look to This Day!

Incandescent brilliance

Unchartered

There is One Thing