there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?

by Charles Bukowski

This poem came to me in one of those moments that stand out as transcendent. I was bumbling along in my day, and then out of nowhere there was a moment that seemed luminous and timeless, before the bumbling along resumed. Have you had any such moments?

In this case I was standing in a bookshop, listening to the poem being read to me by the shop keeper. We had been chatting about poetry and I’d asked him what his favourite poem of the moment was. Reading me Bluebird was his answer. I listened rapt, and heard the words in his voice, with his feeling coming through them. It brought tears to my eyes, for all the bluebirds within us all, usually hidden beneath the layers of toughness and self-protection. But paradoxically, in that moment, our two bluebirds were both ‘singing a little’ in the sharing of the poem and I knew we were both hearing them.

Moments like this are truly ‘poetic’. What I mean by this is that perhaps there is a poetry to life, if we have the presence to be there for it, the eyes to see it and the heart to appreciate it. Basho, the Japanese haiku poet said ‘Seen truly all things are poetic’. I wonder about seeing with poetic eyes, the eyes that don’t pass over life and instead fully receive the mystery, wonder and teaching in everything. And this may include all the feels – from the gritty realism of a city backstreet to the serenity of a moonrise, from cooking at home in the kitchen, to an overwhelmingly sacred moment like meeting your newborn.

Perhaps there is a great risk to living poetically – the same risk as the one that would allow the bluebird to be free and seen. It is undefended and this is scary, even terrifying. And yet it’s what we all long for. Let’s embrace this contradiction and start where we are – in loving the poetry of our defended selves, like Charles Bukowski does.

Ps. If you’d like to engage with poetry mindfully and experiment with living life poetically check out these two Mindfulness Meets Mystical Poetry opportunities: a online day retreat on 4^th July and a 6 week evening course beginning in November.

Photo by Vijayalakshmi Nidugondi on Unsplash

You hear me again, as words
from the depths of me
rush toward you in the wind.

I’ve been scattered in pieces,
torn by conflict,
mocked by laughter,
washed down in drink.

I am a house gutted by fire
where only the guilty sometimes sleep
before the punishment that devours them
hounds them out into the open.

I am a city by the sea
sinking into a toxic tide
I am strange to myself, as though someone unknown
had poisoned my mother as she carried me.

It’s here in all the pieces of my shame
that now I find myself again.
I yearn to belong to something, to be contained
in an all-embracing mind that sees me
as a single thing.
I yearn to be held
in the great hands of your heart–
oh let them take me now.

Into them I place these fragments, my life,
and you, God — spend them however you want.

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Original Language German, English version by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

I’m conscious as I write that there are times in our lives where we can engage easily with positive ideas such as those often expressed in this blog, and there are times when this feels so very far away from where we are. At those times it can feel like the rest of the world are on another planet that is worlds away. It’s a very lonely place to be. Perhaps this poem is for those who feel this loneliness and devastation. It’s a gift from Rilke for anyone living one of those times now, from a man who knows that place.

The poem is incredibly creative and vivid in how it describes the feeling of this. A heartbreaking description of despair and the journey of compassion. The scattered pieces remind me of the story of the Tibetan Buddhist deity of compassion Chenrezig (Avolakiteshvara) and his moment of shattering into a thousand pieces at the foot of the mythical Mount Meru. After witnessing the suffering of countless multitudes of beings for eons, so it is said, Chenrezig was devastated and his body literally shattered. In the poem the brokenness, the scattering, the toxic, gutted and torn self is conveyed as the starting point, a ground zero – and also the ground of the prayer. In the story of Chenrezig he shapeshifts. His thousand shattered pieces become 1000 arms with an eye in the palm of each of his hands making him a supercharged force for compassion in the world.

On a more personal level Rilke is suggesting that, rather than clinging to a sense of self that is broken, perhaps we can surrender, placing the fragments of our broken self in the great hands of the Awesome One (or whatever name you choose).

For me it is the last few lines that pierce my heart. A feeling I know as compassion floods in. Deeply painful yet utterly and exquisitely human, a humble unbearably tender love that looks raw reality in the eye. I know how important it is to let myself feel this.

Questions are openings, beginnings and possibilities. Here are some questions that you may like to sit with:

Could you imagine placing the fragments of your life in the great hands of a Universal Heart?

Could you find yourself again, amongst the pieces of your shame?

Could you imagine letting go so deeply, that you allow the truth of your lack of control over yourself and your life to be as it is?

And from here, might a different kind of possibility for choice and action then come into view?

Ps. If you feel drawn towards compassion practice and have a previous training in mindfulness you may like to join our next Level 2 Responding with Compassion course.

If you’d like to connect with poetry in a mindful way there are two upcoming opportunities available. Mindfulness Meets Mystical Poetry 6 week course and Mystical Poetry for Slow Time retreat day.

The image is a detail from here.

Spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.

by Matsuo Bashō, translated by Nobuyuki Yuasa

What a simple set of words by the 17th-century Japanese haiku master Bashō, and yet what a world they open into! A world of effortlessness, of non-doing, maybe even of no doer. Which seems very appealing in the face of busyness and the sense of things being hard work at times. But obviously, striving for effortlessness will only get me further away from it. What does seem to help, is occasionally dropping the question in: could I do less? or: can I use less effort? Can I trust the grass growing by itself, a little bit more? This may not exactly be transcending the ‘doer and deed’ as described in Buddhist teachings, but it can make a surprising difference.

Shall we sit for a while, quietly, doing nothing – and see what happens?

PS if you’d like to sit together quietly, doing approximately nothing, there’s a new level 1 mindfulness course starting soon… because although it’s simple, it’s not always easy, and it helps to do it together!

Photo by Валерия on Unsplash

name.
Listen
to the living walls.

Who are you?
Who
are you? Whose
silence are you?

Who (be quiet)
are you (as these stones
are quiet). Do not
think of what you are
still less of
what you may one day be.

Rather
be what you are (but who?)
be the unthinkable one
you do not know.

O be still, while
you are still alive,
and all things live around you

speaking (I do not hear)
to your own being,
speaking by the unknown
that is in you and in themselves.

“I will try, like them
to be my own silence:
and this is difficult. The whole
world is secretly on fire. The stones
burn, even the stones they burn me.
How can a man be still or
listen to all things burning?
How can he dare to sit with them
when all their silence is on fire?”

by Thomas Merton

There’s something about this poem, by American Trappist monk Thomas Merton (1915-1968), that helps me to feel a sense of stillness and silence that is fathoms deep. There is groundedness (the stones seem to take me there) and there is also mystery (the stones speaking, the Unknown). But then, all of a sudden, in the last stanza, there is a raging fire. What a contrast! I’d like to attempt to reveal to you, and to myself in the writing, what this means to me.

To begin with, I’m fascinated by the phrases in brackets, which seem to be speaking with another voice, maybe from within the poet. Is it the cynical, unbelieving, reticent part of him? Or maybe he’s taking account of the reticent response that could come from the reader. One of my responses to the poem was indeed something like: “Stones speaking? World on fire? I don’t get it. This is all too ‘poetic’ for me! Stones don’t speak!”

Merton’s answer to someone in this position is an encouragement to trust yourself to be able to leave the literal meaning of the words behind and to listen beyond the words – in short to be mindful. To ‘let the words become transparent to the depths that lie beyond’, as priest Simon Small beautifully puts it when speaking about the art of contemplation. When I listen to the poem like this, this is what happens: I’m taken into silence and stillness with a solid, ancient feel. But there’s a voice that keeps questioning. Then I’m on the edge of the unknown and need to release the voice and dare ‘to be my own silence’. I do so, and a sense of the wild wonder of existence roars in and is within and all around me. I give myself to the feel of this awesomeness.

For a long time, I’ve not really understood the last stanza and have even missed it out when sharing the poem because I was attached to the stillness and didn’t want the fire! But I think I’m getting there with it now after pondering, observing my response to it and allowing the words to become transparent to the depths beyond. Perhaps when you’re still enough, you can, on occasion, feel the incredibly intense wonder of existence as if it were like a fire – the creative and destructive force of life. This reminds me of T.S. Elliot’s famous lines ‘And so the darkness shall be the light and the stillness the dancing’.

This poem is a journey. As many poems are. This is where it took me. I wonder where it might take you?

Ps. If you feel attracted towards receiving the wisdom of the world’s poets both ancient and contemporary and you’d like to experiment with how mindfulness can enable a deeper experience of it, come along to the next Mindfulness meets Mystical Poetry 6 week course starting in late May, or to a day long retreat in July (both online). Both are open to all.

Photo by David Bayliss on Unsplash

If I were brave enough, I’d tell you how my heart
has raged for love, stretched thin as a high wire.
If I were brave enough, I’d tell you
how my body has been fighting to stay upright
on every precipitous downhill the city
throws at it. If I were brave enough,
I’d climb into your lap and weep with longing.
All I can say is that any attempt at beauty and hope
is land-mined with failure.
And so the dangerous track-making begins.
Wending our way through,
there are possible clutches at sunlight, at windows, at yes.
We are each of us inches from death.
We are each of us inches from life.
We are each of us inches from each other.

by Maya Stein

What does it mean, make an alliance with anguish? Making it your ally? Or even: to ally with it? That definitely sounds counterintuitive at first, yet it immediately makes me curious. What would happen if I tried more of that, rather than the habitual wrestling with anguish, trying to avoid or somehow conquer it?

Poet, writing guide and adventuress Maya Stein talks about what she would do if she were brave enough – daring to be more truthful, more vulnerable, risking the many varieties of failure. It inspired me to make my own list: if I were brave enough, I would… and yes, if I didn’t mind anguish as much, more choices would open up and I might inch my way closer to beauty and hope, to life and the important others in it…

But then of course, the question of how arises. How do I make an alliance with anguish? I guess that’s where the dangerous track-making begins, one step and one moment at the time, aware of the risk of the landmines of failure. And: maybe failure isn’t the end of everything, maybe that would just mean some more anguish which I can also be with, breathe with…

Although mindfulness is usually associated with becoming more calm and peaceful, it definitely also supports me towards living more courageously. Sitting undilutedly with myself, especially for longer periods in a retreat context, has undoubtedly required and further grown my braveness. Chogyam Trungpa said that “ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself.” So here is to more practice!

PS. I love reading about brave and inspiring people, as if their courage and ability to think out of the box could be contageous somehow. Reading a bit about Maya’s adventures was definitely inspiring, and it made me wonder what adventures I could provide for myself…
And if you feel ready for an adventure in mindfulness and discovering what that can bring you, we have a four level pathway plus a number of themed courses to choose from!

Photo by Valentina Stanoaie on Unsplash