Receptivity

Prayer is about becoming receptive
It’s about learning the art of relaxation
rather than learning the strategies of how to conquer our reality.

Truth is not going to be a conquest, it is going to be total surrender.
Its about becoming a host, it’s about opening up.
It’s about being receptive so that the wind can come in,
the rain can come in, and the sun can come in.

And just hidden behind the wind, the rain and the sun comes the Guest.
And the guest does not come from the outside, it arises within you.
God is the guest, you are the host.

You become a welcome,
You become a prayer,
You become an invitation,
And the host is waiting, always waiting
You are waiting, with tears in your eyes, and with tremendous trust in your heart.

Osho

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Guardians of His Beauty

We are the guardians of His Beauty.

We are the protectors
Of the Sun.

There is only one reason
We have followed God into this world:

To encourage laughter, freedom, dance
And love.

Let a noble cry inside of you speak to me
Saying,

“Hafiz,
Don’t just sit there on the moon tonight
Doing nothing –

Help unfurl my heart into the Friend’s Mind,
Help, Old Man, to heal my wounded wings!”

We are the companions of His Beauty
We are the guardians
Of Truth.

Every man, plant and creature in Existence,
Every woman, child, vein and note
Is a servant of our Beloved –

A harbinger of joy,
The harbinger of
Light.

~ Hafiz ~

(The Subject Tonight is Love — versions by Daniel Ladinsky)

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The Grasp Of Your Hand

The Grasp Of Your Hand

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.

Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but
for the heart to conquer it.

Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved,
but hope for the patience to win my freedom.

Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling
Your mercy in my success alone; but let me find
the grasp of Your hand in my failure.

from the book, The Heart of God, Tagore

 

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Worker of the Universe

Worker Of The Universe

It is only the revelation of You as the Infinite
that is endlessly new and eternally beautiful in us
and that gives the only meaning to our self when
we feel Your rhythmic throb as soul-life, the whole
world in our own souls; then are we free.

O Worker of the universe! Let the irresistible
current of Your universal energy come like the
impetuous south wind of spring; let it come
rushing over the vast field of human life. Let our
newly awakened powers cry out for unlimited
fulfillment in leaf and flower and fruit.

– from the book, The Heart of God selected and edited by Herbert F. Vetter. Charles E. Tuttle Co. Inc.

 

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I Am Here

 

I am Here to embrace all of It,
with empty hands and holy trembles.

The one flesh Buddha/Christ/Mother/Tao
has been wounded and torn,
caressed and loved throughout eons,
still it remains unnamed and untouched, without blemish.
As do you and i dear friends.

Here — Now — we are holding hands,
as we pass through incalculable birthings and deathings
to an awareness that nothing ever happened.

It has been said that ‘the line between
the profound and the profane is as thin as fishing line’,
But how can we know?
For the One that carries us swallowed the line,
as we bit the hook that dangles us
between and beyond time and space–
with its knowings that crumble to unknowing…

It is Here the head does bow,
as the heart gives thanks to Grace and her wild ways.
United in freedom and inexpressible Love,
every song a prayer to know Itself as This.

I am Here to embrace all of It…..

 

 

with love and honor

sparrow

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Prayer for the Dying

A Prayer for the Dying
Let them struggle to understand until there is only confusion,
and in the center of that confusion show them their inherent clarity.
Make them courageous by taking away all of their hope,
and let them weep until their stomachs hurt,
until their tears melt into laughter.
Love them by destroying them.
And when they are more alone than ever,
show them an intimacy they cannot imagine.
Make them suffer until they are exhausted from fighting You,
make their pain great enough so that all their concepts turn to ash.
Let them never know what they are looking for,
but make them keep looking anyway,
as if their lives depended on it.
Give them time to read their books and listen to their teachers,
give them time to build up mountains of knowledge,
give them certainty and pride and a sense of security.
And then let their books rot,
and turn their teachers into hypocrites,
and make them doubt and forget everything they’ve learned.
Everything.
And make them stand alone, facing You,
naked and without protection,
and let them tremble,
let them piss and shit themselves with fear,
let all facades fall away.
And then let them into the great secret,
that they are loved beyond words,
in their nakedness, in their failure, in their ignorance,
in everything they were running away from.
That they are you.
That your face is their face.
That nothing ever happened at all.

Jeff Foster

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Searching for the Dharma

You’ve traveled up ten thousand steps in search of the Dharma.
So many long days in the archives, copying, copying.

The gravity of the Tang and the profundity of the Sung
make heavy baggage.

Here! I’ve picked you a bunch of wildflowers.
Their meaning is the same
but they’re much easier to carry.

Xu Yun

(Empty Cloud: The Autobiography of the Chinese Zen Master)

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What’s In the Temple

What’s In the Temple?

In the quiet spaces of my mind a thought lies still, but ready to spring.
It begs me to open the door so it can walk about.
The poets speak in obscure terms pointing madly at the unsayable.
The sages say nothing, but walk ahead patting their thigh calling for us to follow.
The monk sits pen in hand poised to explain the cloud of unknowing.
The seeker seeks, just around the corner from the truth.
If she stands still it will catch up with her.
Pause with us here a while.
Put your ear to the wall of your heart.
Listen for the whisper of knowing there.
Love will touch you if you are very still.

If I say the word God, people run away.
They’ve been frightened–sat on ‘till the spirit cried “uncle.”
Now they play hide and seek with somebody they can’t name.
They know he’s out there looking for them, and they want to be found,
But there is all this stuff in the way.

I can’t talk about God and make any sense,
And I can’t not talk about God and make any sense.
So we talk about the weather, and we are talking about God.

I miss the old temples where you could hang out with God.
Still, we have pet pounds where you can feel love draped in warm fur,
And sense the whole tragedy of life and death.
You see there the consequences of carelessness,
And you feel there the yapping urgency of life that wants to be lived.
The only things lacking are the frankincense and myrrh.

We don’t build many temples anymore.
Maybe we learned that the sacred can’t be contained.
Or maybe it can’t be sustained inside a building.
Buildings crumble.
It’s the spirit that lives on.

If you had a temple in the secret spaces of your heart,
What would you worship there?
What would you bring to sacrifice?
What would be behind the curtain in the holy of holies?

Go there now.

Tom Barrett

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The Sacraments

I once spoke to my friend, an old squirrel, about the Sacraments –
he got so excited

and ran into a hollow in his tree and came
back holding some acorns, an owl feather,
and a ribbon he had found.

And I just smiled and said, “Yes, dear,
you understand:

everything imparts
His grace.”

Saint Francis of Assisi

(Love Poems From God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West by Daniel Ladinsky)

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Fresh

To move
Cleanly.
Needing to be
Nowhere else.
Wanting nothing
From any store.

To lift something
You already had
And set it down in
A new place.

Awakened eye
Seeing freshly.

What does that do to
The old blood moving through
Its channels?

~ Naomi Shihab Nye ~

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