I wake earlier, now that the birds have come And sing in the unfailing trees. On a cot by an open window I lie like land used up, while spring unfolds. Now of all voyagers I remember, who among them Did not board ship with grief among their maps? Till it seemed men never go…
These days when I listen deeply to another I imagine holding a beautiful bowl in my lap. Often I chose a large Tibetan singing bowl. At other times only knotty wood will do. I embrace the round receptacle And simply hold it, A safe container That others can fill with their truth, Even when the…
with the stone face. The stone heart stone hands stone feet. See in between she has also stone and does not speak. She is acting her part in the dialogue like the wind listening to wind or the wind listening to stone. Stone on wind. Wind on stone. I think you are almost sisters. I…
I want a word that means okay and not okay, a word that means devastated and stunned with joy. I want the word that says I feel it all, all at once. The heart is not like a songbird singing only one note at a time, more like a Tuvan throat singer able to sing…
It’s like the scent of rain after a month of drought, the way it rises up and fills the lungs, quiets the body and gentles the mind – that’s what it’s like when, after grasping and spinning and reaching and clenching at last, exhausted with my own fear, I lay my hand on my own…
I asked my mother where she kept her love and she answered: My love is a golden bird in a crystal cage and that cage is perched on the head of a fat boa coiled at the top of a tree and that tree is surrounded by scorpions and tigers and bears. So I went…
My friend and I snickered the first time we heard the meditation teacher, a grown man, call himself honey, with a hand placed over his heart to illustrate how we too might become more gentle with ourselves and our runaway minds. It’s been years since we sat with legs twisted on cushions, holding back our…
And a woman spoke, saying, Tell us of Pain. And he said: Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain. And could you keep your heart in wonder at…
Sometimes you don’t get to be a Buddha. Sometimes you just have to break. And feel. You have to lose your precious ‘spiritual awakening’. You just have to be a human being, feeling. Sometimes old pain resurfaces. Old fear. Sorrow. Trauma. The searing ache of the abandoned child. The rage of a forgotten universe. And…