noticing Archives - Mindfulness Association

Clarity – Martin Bril

Kristine Mackenzie-Janson — Sat, 30 Mar 2024 13:44:52 +0000

What we want:
Moments
Of lucidity
Or better yet: of crystal clarity

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

Adrift – Mark Nepo

Fay Adams — Mon, 27 Nov 2023 12:34:57 +0000

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

by Mark Nepo

This poem, by American spiritual writer and poet Mark Nepo, seems to gift me with a bunch of images, like a bunch of flowers, incredibly beautiful but already dying. Together the images describe something luminous, essential and heart breaking. By the end of the poem, it feels like my experience has been given voice in the most tender and accurate way. This is why I love to reread this particular poem and receive the bunch of flowers again each time.

These days my practice feels like it surfs the juxtaposition of impermanence and loss, with wonder and beauty a lot. In the coexistence of these two lies the sacredness of living. The holiness relies on the beauty and the impermanence coming as a coexistent duo. My heart is stretched, seasoned, shattered and growing by feeling this reality as true.

What gift does this poem give you?

Ps. If you’d like to turn towards the beauty, wonder and poignancy of your own life, check out our Wonder of the Everyday course. It begins in January giving you an opportunity to reimagine your unique and precious life as it is, rather than reaching for some other life and rejecting the one you have.

Photo by Emily Wang on Unsplash

The Patience of Ordinary Things – Pat Schneider

Kristine Mackenzie-Janson — Wed, 26 May 2021 12:17:28 +0000

It is a kind of love, is it not?
How the cup holds the tea,
How the chair stands sturdy and foursquare,
How the floor receives the bottoms of shoes
Or toes. How soles of feet know
Where they’re supposed to be.
I’ve been thinking about the patience
Of ordinary things, how clothes
Wait respectfully in closets
And soap dries quietly in the dish,
And towels drink the wet
From the skin of the back.
And the lovely repetition of stairs.
And what is more generous than a window?

by Pat Schneider

An invitation to notice and appreciate the world around us and look for its goodness. From this poem, as well as some others by her I came across, it seems clear that the American poet and author Pat Schneider found it in many places, before she died not long ago at the ripe old age of 86. Her website (which now appears offline) offered her range of books, but also a little video of her and her husband reading their poetry and talking about how they met, which gave me a little window into their life that spoke of goodness too…

Easy to overlook the steady presence of the ordinary things around us, but a wonderful source of quiet joy when we wake up to it. As Pema Chodron said: mindfulness is loving the details of our lives… and how wonderful to feel they love us back!

PS. Settling the mind helps us surf the waves of life and be awake to the many ordinary sources of goodness in it. If you’d like to practice together with others, you’re very welcome to join the free daily sits!

Photo by Orlova Maria on Unsplash

The Wonder Is – Jaan Kaplinski

Kristine Mackenzie-Janson — Sun, 24 May 2020 08:00:32 +0000

The washing never gets done.
The furnace never gets heated.
Books never get read.
Life is never completed.
Life is like a ball which one must continually
catch and hit so that it won’t fall.
When the fence is repaired at one end,
it collapses at the other. The roof leaks,
the kitchen door won’t close, there are cracks in the foundation,
the torn knees of children’s pants …
One can’t keep everything in mind. The wonder is
that beside all this one can notice
the spring which is so full of everything
continuing in all directions – into evening clouds,
into the redwing’s song and into every
drop of dew on every blade of grass in the meadow,
as far as the eye can see, into the dusk.

by Jaan Kaplinski
Translated from Estonian by Jaan Kaplinski, Sam Hamill and Riina Tamm

I love discovering new poems and poets – a whole new treasury of words waiting to be discovered. The Estonian poet, philosopher and cultural critic is the most recent one (thank you Katherine!), prolific and widely translated and loved. In fact, Anthony Wilson who collected a book full of Lifesaving Poems declared Jaan Kaplinski to be his desert island poet, which surely is high praise… so I’ll be reading more from him before long!

But for today, here’s a little gem of very recognisable never-endingness (is it just me or does lockdown life bring this to the foreground even more than normal?), opening out into what Thich Nhat Hanh called the miracle of mindfulness. Yes, all these never ending uncompleted tasks are there, but that’s not all, we can look up into the brightness of the world around us. And such joys that reveals: ‘as far as the eye can see, into the dusk’. Let’s keep noticing and looking…

Photo by Jan Kopřiva on Unsplash

Let’s remake the world – Gregory Orr

Kristine Mackenzie-Janson — Sun, 21 Apr 2019 08:00:17 +0000

Let’s remake the world with words.
Not frivolously, nor
To hide from what we fear,
But with a purpose.

Let’s,
As Wordsworth said, remove
“The dust of custom” so things
Shine again, each object arrayed
In its robe of original light.

And then we’ll see the world
As if for the first time.
As once we gazed at the beloved
Who was gazing at us.

by Gregory Orr

There’s something hopeful about this poem, about the possibility to remake the world, start afresh, look again. As we’re moving into the fullness of springtime and the celebration of Easter, I’m curious about what might be revealed when I play with the intention to remove some of ‘the dust of custom’… and how I can bring a fresh openness and tenderness to meeting my loved ones, myself, and the world around me. Let’s find out! Gregory Orr is promising something precious…

Photo by Jenna Lee on Unsplash