meditation poetry

Out of hiding

Someone said my name in the garden,
while I grew smaller
in the spreading shadow of the peonies,

grew larger by my absence to another,
grew older among the ants, ancient

under the opening heads of the flowers,
new to myself, and stranger.

When I heard my name again, it sounded far,
like the name of the child next door,
or a favorite cousin visiting for the summer,

while the quiet seemed my true name,
a near and inaudible singing
born of hidden ground.

Quiet to quiet, I called back.
And the birds declared my whereabouts all morning.

by Li-Young Lee

Looking for a monk and not finding him

I took a small path leading
up a hill valley, finding there
a temple, its gate covered
with moss, and in front of
the door but tracks of birds;
in the room of the old monk
no one was living, and I
staring through the window
saw but a hair duster hanging
on the wall, itself covered
with dust; emptily I sighed
thinking to go, but then
turning back several times,
seeing how the mist on
the hills was flying, and then
a light rain fell as if it
were flowers falling from
the sky, making a music of
its own; away in the distance
came the cry of a monkey, and
for me the cares of the world
slipped away, and I was filled
with the beauty surrounding me.

by Li Po

~

This is meditation:
not trying to get anywhere
but being your True Self.

by Jeff Foster

Meditation

In meditation, you are dismantling the Core Addiction: To destinations. To futures. To 'another moment'. Therefore, in meditation, do not seek a particular experience! Bow to your present experience. However uncomfortable, however intense, however unexpected or inconvenient, it is LIFE! Simply let what comes, come. And let what goes, go. Don't try to push away what comes. It's already here and it will pass. Don't try to cling to what goes. The leaving is natural. Bless the leaving too. Be the wide open space for every thought, every feeling, every sensation, every urge. Be the awareness of it all. Be the ocean, allowing the waves. Be the sky, allowing all the clouds of thought and feeling.

In a world of quick fixes, instant gratification, on-demand entertainment and pain relief, it takes courage to stay with our discomfort, our boredom and our uncertainty, even for a moment. Meditation is a brave act, then, an insurrection against dehumanising forces of mindless pleasure-seeking. It takes courage to turn from easy “fixes” for the human condition and meet ourselves in all our outrageous, messy glory! In our pain, inside the very wound we tried to run from, we may end up finding the very thing we were seeking. Our authentic selves.

by Jeff Foster

~

Meditation is the breaking
of the addiction to
any other moment except
the one you inhabit.

Meditation can be uncomfortable
because you are going through
withdrawal.

Your attention is in the Now.
You feel the urge to escape.
The restlessness, the desire for more,
the resistance to being where you are.

It takes courage to remain.
But the remaining is what heals.
And you eventually discover:

There is no greater joy
than being with yourself.

by Jeff Foster

A thousand prostrations

Palms together and bow at the waist,
follow gravity down to the knees
and forward, till forehead touches floor,
palms lifted above the ears, lowered,
then slowly rise. Outside warblers call.
Sunlight dims and brightens in dusty
blocks across the hardwood floor; forehead
warms with contact, cooling as you stand.
More than just continuing until
the difference between warm and cool makes
no difference, or until you forget
how far you’ve counted, that you’re counting,
even that you’re bowing: going on
till you’re bowing even when you’re not.

by Allen Hoey

A place to sit

Don’t go outside to see flowers.
My friend, don’t bother with that excursion.
Inside your body there are flowers.
One flower has a thousand petals.
That will do for a place to sit.
Sitting there you will have a glimpse of beauty
inside the body and outside of it,
before gardens and after gardens

by Kabir

~

We can make our minds so like still water
that beings gather about us,
that they may see, it may be
their own images,
and so live for a moment
with a clearer, perhaps even fiercer life,
because of our quiet

by W.B. Yeats

Egrets

Where the path closed
down and over,
through the scumbled leaves,
fallen branches,
through the knotted catbrier,
I kept going. Finally
I could not
save my arms
from the thorns; soon
the mosquitoes
smelled me, hot
and wounded, and came
wheeling and whining.
And that’s how I came
to the edge of the pond:
black and empty
except for a spindle
of bleached reeds
at the far shore
which, as I looked,
wrinkled suddenly
into three egrets –
a shower
of white fire!
Even half-asleep they had
such faith in the world
that had made them –
tilting through the water,
unruffled, sure,
by the laws
of their faith not logic,
they opened their wings
softly and stepped
over every dark thing.

by Mary Oliver

A cedary fragrance

Even now,
decades after,
I wash my face with cold water –

Not for discipline,
nor memory,
nor the icy, awakening slap,

but to practice
choosing
to make the unwanted wanted.

by Jane Hirshfield

An open sky

After all
the prayers
have been said,
and the tears shed
and the uncomfortable silences,
when we cannot respond,
endured
there remains
the soft, tender sorrow
that time does not heal.
And in that sorrow,
Fatah,
an opening
to the genuine sadness
of being alive ---
open to
the absolute necessity
of letting go
of everyone
and everything
we love.
we can close off
this deep sadness
or open
our tender hearts
so wide
that our heart
becomes as an
open sky ---
no borders,
nor boundaries,
just
an open sky.

by Rumi

Love dervishes

It takes the courage of inner majesty
to stand in this doorway, where there’s

no celebrating good fortune, where talk
of luck is embarrassing. However your

robe of patches fits is right. If you
are God’s light, keep moving east to

west as you have been. Don’t pretend
something other than truth. Measuring

devices don’t work in this room where
the love dervishes meet. No tradition

grows here and no soup simmers! We sit
in pure absence without expectation.

by Rumi