Who has the magic to make the sun

appear every morning?

Who makes that bird on the elegant tree chirp?

Breath, pulse, music, dew, sunset,

the burning ambers of the fall.

There is unfathomable joy in all that.

Life is a stream.

It flows on its own.

No one knows why we are here.

Stop trying to figure out the great mystery.

The tea in front of you is getting cold.

Drink it.

Enjoy every drop of it.

And dance.

Dance until there is no more dancer,

it is the dance without dancer.

This is how great mystics dance.

by Anam Thubten Rinpoche

I love the invitation in this poem to both be full of wonder at the big questions, but also to dive into the magic of the here and now – the tea in front of you that’s getting cold. I feel a sense of freedom and celebration, of wholeheartedness in the words of the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Anam Thubten Rinpoche. What if we didn’t have to cling to everything quite as much as we might habitually do, if things were not as much of a big deal? If we could remain connected to a bigger perspective that can celebrate the unfolding of each moment, even when it’s a challenging one? No need to figure everything out and instead experiencing it directly…

Of course this way of relating to what’s here may be more accessible in some moments than in others. I’ve recently had the opportunity to immerse myself in a weeklong retreat where it felt much closer than in parts of my daily life where I get triggered in habitual patterns. But there are these moments of spaciousness in practice, in nature, on the dance floor… and as someone who loves dancing, I really relate to the invitation to dance till there is no more dancer!

PS Our Level 3 and 4 courses – Insight and Wisdom – are exploring the kind of freedom this poem alludes to…

Photo by ken chan on Unsplash

Rare are those moments
And thoroughly hidden

Searching hardly
Pays off, but
Finding does

The art is to live 
So that it comes to pass

That clarity, now and then

by Martin Bril
translated from Dutch by Kristine

This poem, by the Dutch writer and poet Martin Bril, has been hanging in my mum’s bathroom for years, and when I was looking for a poem with the theme of ‘clarity’, it came to mind. But in Dutch of course! So this is my attempt at translating it, which of course is harder than it seems…

It’s always struck a chord with me, that sense of finding rather than searching for, and creating the conditions rather than engineering the thing itself. It reminds me of Rob Nairn’s instructions for meditation: a bit like letting yourself fall asleep, not trying too hard because that only makes it more illusive.

I remember a teaching he gave on Holy Isle, where one participant, a well-spoken English gentleman, asked a question about what he called ‘actual meditation’, which I think we could translated as ‘moments of crystal clarity’. What enabled it to happen? Rob started to speak and then turned the question back to the gentleman, what did he think it was enabled by? “The grace of God”, said he without missing a beat, and for once the ever eloquent Rob only nodded.

The art is to live so that it comes to pass…

PS … but we can help the chances of that happening through training in mindfulness! There’s a new course in-depth course for beginners or refreshers starting soon…

Photo by Katherine McCormack on Unsplash

Breathe.
Breathe into every space.
Feel every sensation.

The joyful warmth
of shared love
and the vast emptiness
that sometimes echoes around our hearts.

The excited clarity
of inspired thought
as well as that clustered maze
inside our heads.

That deep spread of satisfaction
at the end of a good day
and the tight knots
that curl into the pit of our belly.

Breathe.
It’s your body.
This is the field of your experience.
This your true home.
This is where you belong.

by Jane O’Shea

A simple but powerful poem by the New Zealander word lover and conversations facilitator Jane O’Shea. It looks like she’s got a few beautiful looking book offerings (as well as a generous offering of other poems) on her website here.

I can really relate to the contrasting experiences that live in this body, often at the same time. And staying in touch with those multilayered truths feels like an important thing in the practice of equanimity and keeping an even keel in the face of ups and downs, sensations I enjoy and those I’d rather get rid of, preferences met and not met.

The way the poem ends with appreciating the body as ‘the field of your experience’, reminds me of a conversation I recently had about the difference between focussing either on our half full/half empty cup, or the possibilities that come with having a cup in the first place which can be experienced as half full or half empty. I find this way of relating really helpful in navigating the mixed bag of experience: simply coming back to gratitude for this cup, this vessel that carries me through life while allowing me to experience the whole range of sorrows and joys… ‘this is your true home, this is where you belong’!

Photo by Kamal Rajit on Unsplash

by Juan Ramón Jiménez

The Spanish Juan Ramón Jiménez lived a turbulent life if you are to believe what is summarised here, during which he wrote prolifically and received the Nobel prize for his poetry two years before his death in 1958. I wonder what led to his writing of these words, and whether his awareness of this ‘I’ who would remain standing when he died was a fleeting one or an abiding experience…

For myself, the poem feels like a reminder to not get too caught up in whatever I’m doing or believing, and to tune into what Annie Lighthart called ‘the second music‘. That slight shift in perspective that can make such a difference in how any given moment is experienced, making it wider, more poignant and more alive than the mono-experience of the autopilot and doing-mode. The poem reads almost like a koan: who is that one? Unanswerable perhaps, but a fruitful reflection nonetheless… thank you Juan!

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash.

If you’d like to read more poems by this author, why not check out their selected poems, translated by Robert Bly here.

by Anne Spencer

I was touched by this little poem, with its gratitude and emerging sense of presence which feels joyful or even triumphant to me. And curious, what was in Anne Spencer’s mind when she wrote it? This question doesn’t always come up for me when reading a poem, but I certainly wondered reading this one.

To me (and that is after a bright windy day of wandering on the moor with Finbar’s six year-old delighted pausing at every other flower, little stream, poll of grasses or heather), the earth’s language is all that grows and was born from the earth. The poem acknowledges that it was hard to bring it to me – it took immeasurable time to evolve from single celled organisms to the rich biodiversity we know now. And even with it all here, I might not actually receive it when I’m caught up in the virtual world of my thinking… but we have the possibility of ‘feeling seeing smelling touching’ it, bringing us into being mode awareness and realising we’re here, we’re present and alive.

I do realise that this is a very mindfulness-inspired reading of this poem written long ago in a country far away with a culture different from mine. So I was really interested in reading a bit about Anne Spencer’s life (long live Wikipedia) as one of the first celebrated African American female poets, about her love for gardening and her civil rights activism for equality and educational opportunities. And I also came across what looks like a poetry club discussing it, with different people giving their own interesting interpretation and understanding of it.

Yet all this is our human language, overlaying the simple reality of life being right here to see and smell and touch, inviting presence and gratitude in this moment. Earth, I thank you – I am here!

Photo by Rowan Heuvel on Unsplash