Be Lost in the Call
Lord, said David, since you do not need us,
why did you create these two worlds?
Reality replied: O prisoner of time,
I was a secret treasure of kindness and generosity,
and I wished this treasure to be known,
so I created a mirror: its shining face, the heart;
its darkened back, the world;
The back would please you if you've never seen the face.
Has anyone ever produced a mirror out of mud and straw?
Yet clean away the mud and straw,
and a mirror might be revealed.
Until the juice ferments a while in the cask,
it isn't wine. If you wish your heart to be bright,
you must do a little work.
My King addressed the soul of my flesh:
You return just as you left.
Where are the traces of my gifts?
We know that alchemy transforms copper into gold.
This Sun doesn't want a crown or robe from God's grace.
He is a hat to a hundred bald men,
a covering for ten who were naked.
Jesus sat humbly on the back of an ass, my child!
How could a zephyr ride an ass?
Spirit, find your way, in seeking lowness like a stream.
Reason, tread the path of selflessness into eternity.
Remember God so much that you are forgotten.
Let the caller and the called disappear;
be lost in the Call.
~ Rumi
"Harmony neither acts nor reasons;
Love acts, but without reason;
Justice acts to serve reason;
But ritual acts to enforce reason.
When the Way is lost, there remains harmony;
When harmony is lost, there remains love;
When love is lost, there remains justice;
And when justice is lost, there remains ritual."
--Tao Te Ching
What after all is one night?
A short space,
especially when the darkness dims so soon,
and so soon a bird sings,
a cock crows,
or a faint green quickens, like a turning leaf,
in the hollows of the wave.
Night, however, succeeds to night.
The winter holds a pack of them
in store
and deals them equally,
evenly,
with indefatigable fingers.
They lengthen; they darken.
Some of them hold aloft clear planets,
plates of brightness.
The autumn trees,
ravaged as they are,
take on the flesh of tattered flags
kindling in the doom
of cool cathedral caves
where gold letters on marble pages
describe death in battle
and how bones bleach and burn
far away in Indian sands.
The autumn trees
gleam in the yellow moonlight,
in the light of harvest moons,
the light which mellows the energy of labour,
and smooths the stubble,
and brings the wave
lapping blue
to the shore.
~Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse
At dawn I left the mountain,
And alone, lost my way;
In and out, up and down,
While a heavy mist made brook
And mountain green and purple
Brightening everything.
I passed pines and oaks which ten
People could not circle.
I tread pebbles barefoot in swift moving
Water, its ripples purify the ear,
While a soft breeze blew.
What if I spent my old age here,
And never went back home?
- Han Yu
When you correctly attain your original nature, both Buddha and Patriarchs are no longer of any use to you.
Light fades away in heaven and earth
When the sun and moon grow dark
Yet, dharma has many depths of meaning, and people have different capacities to receive it. Therefore it is necessary to adopt different kinds of skillful means.
- So Sahn (1520-1604)
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dammit, i just love an obscure lesson that might not be real clear until much later
