The first verse of the Tao Te Ching is one to be returned to, again and again ... The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and …
Poetry
Dream-Veil World
Dance Dream-veil world: who wove thee thus, As thou, in thine enthralling splendor, Piercest the naught? Who conceived this dream— Now victorious, now shattered and dispelled? Dream-veil space and time: now joy, now grief; The veil dances, moves and whirls, Covers and uncovers Māyā’s naked self— O golden radiance of Infinity! ~ Frithjof Schuon * …
Trailing Clouds of Glory
Ode on Intimations of Immortality There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it hath been of yore;— Turn wheresoe'er I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the …
Ways of Flying
Swallows How from the doldrums of the day they tumbled; only swallows skimming treetops. Yet no wheeling eagle could compete with this sudden squall of sickle wings, roller coasters sprung from nowhere, or conjured from the air itself, pouring in from everywhere like rain. No ordered flock, but schools of comets spinning tails of flame. Arsonists lighting the sodden woodlands, and the …
… and is filled …
Hymn to the Nameless One Now as the year swings down, and the darkness encloses even the smallest bird, the largest animal, and we too enter the hour when everything is falling once more into the twilight of not knowing, what we ask is that you be with us, not as a pillar of fire nor a blaze across the heavens, but like water at rest in a pitcher which catches the morning …
Some Kiss
There is some kiss we want There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of Spirit on the body. Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell. And the lily, how passionately it needs some wild Darling! At night, I open the window and ask the moon to come and press its face against mine. Breathe into me. Close the language-door, and open the love-window. The moon …