A Vineyard

Listen all you vegan monks, teatotalers and non-dualists,
there's a vineyard in my heart, planted by the Beloved,
with grapes too purple and delicious for the pure.
Here I age the wine that made God tipsy
before he sang your Name of light.
This vintage I give for free to anyone with an empty cup.
You won't get a formal invitation, only my lips and eyebrows,
making silent provocative gestures.
Every night the barrel inside me gets filled
with an ancient bewilderment.
Both you and your shadow could drink here
and reconcile your separation.
Whatever the opposite of bowing is,
that's what you've been doing too much of.
You don't need books or healing herbs,
just some callouses on your knees.
Why don't you enter the tavern of oblivion
and observe with a single glittering eye how you sleep?
After one cup, you won't remember why you were angry.
After the second, it won't matter which side you're on.
Wherever you thought you'd get by refraining
from what makes lovers crazy,
you'll get there quicker by drinking another cup of this!

Doing Silence

It's not enough to be an activist. You have to do nothing too.

It is so important to honor silence! During a very stressful time in the world, when tension, antagonism, disconnection abound, we need to imbibe the power of Silence and give it to the world for grounding and stability. Most of us focus too much on what happens in silence - the changing forms that arise in formless space, the sounds coming and going, the chaos - but we don't attend to the spaciousness in which it's all happening. Silence may embrace chaos, but the Silence that contains it is creativity, nourishment, and peace. Have you ever shifted the background to the foreground, and honored Silence itself?

Please honor pure Silence until it solidifies into a jewel, shining out of your breastbone, sparkling deep in your center, flooding your heart with pulsations of pure Presence, the Presence of divine Being. This is an essential practice for sanity during chaotic times. Do it not just for yourself, but to bring peace to the whole environment.

And please don't underestimate the profound effect of letting this shift happen for short moments, repeated often during the day. Don't try to sustain it: just a moment can flood the world with the grace of Silence. Then it can grow wider. The Infinite gets its foot in the door through tiny cracks.

The Path of No Return

The Beloved asked, "What secret have you learned here?"
I answered, "Joy is made of tears, emptiness of diamonds."
The Beloved asked, "Did you arrive by returning?"
I answered, "I gave up returning and not returning,
I gave up bowing to the Master and not bowing to the Master,
I gave up Jesus, Amitabha, Govinda,
and surrendered to the womb who mothered them all.
I gave up giving up
and continued to walk my path of daily meditation."
Then the Beloved smiled silently and dissolved, 
returning to the way-less door-less Light.

Painting by Klaus Ostendorf

Immigrant as Sacred Guest

"Not every wanderer is lost." ~Tolkien. 
"Now if you’re lost enough to find yourself…" ~Robert Frost

Today our nation seems plagued with Xenophobia: fear of foreigners.  Xenos is Greek for alien. Yet in ancient times, xenos was not a term of derision, but a sacred word. Indeed, the fundamental law binding civilization together was the law of hospitality, the welcoming of perfect strangers. "Do not oppress the alien, for you have the heart of a stranger, you yourselves were strangers in the land of Egypt.”  (Exodus 22:21)

In Leviticus 23 we hear this law hospitality made tangible as food:  “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field... Leave some for the poor and for the alien residing among you.” Be a little sloppy in your harvest. Or be extravagant in paying taxes!

The Hebrew word for alien, “gur”, is central to Biblical community. In Jesus’ time too, refugees from surrounding nations wandered through Palestine, uprooted and literally "dirt poor." They were called, Yom ha’Eretz, "People of the Land." Jesus not only ministered to them, he identified with them. In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, Jesus tells his disciples, "Be a wanderer.” And he certainly was: “Foxes have dens, birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” (Matthew 8:20)

In the Greek world, from the dawn of literature, we hear the same call to embrace the wandering alien. In Homer’s Odyssey (1:145), Telemachus welcomes a homeless beggar: “Greeting, stranger, here in our house find royal welcome. First eat and drink, then tell us your story.” Who is this stranger in disguise? Athena, Goddess of civilization.

The Greeks remind us that God is “Zeus Xenios,” God of Strangers. Homer writes, “The God of Strangers guards all guests: for strangers are sacred.” Likewise, a Hindu proverb declares: “Athithi devo bhava,” the stranger is God. In Persian tradition, when a stranger knocks, one greets them with the words, “Mehman habibe khoda ast,” the guest is God's friend.

Christian scripture advises us, “Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers; for thereby some have entertained angels unaware.” (Hebrew 13:2) And Hebrews 11:13 declares, “We confess that we are strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”

Confessing this, we embrace the immigrant as the image of our own liminality. The word liminal is from the Latin "līmen," meaning threshold. It describes the disorientation we feel moving through a rite of passage, or crossing a border from one world to another. Descending from the mount Sinai, Moses set up the tabernacle of God’s law in the Tent of Meeting. There the wandering tribe would gather for guidance. Wherever these nomads camped, they set up this tent containing the Arc, not at the center of their encampment, but at the edge, on the borderline of wilderness! Later, God called Jesus and the Prophets to that liminal borderland to hear “the voice crying in the wilderness.”

Tibetan Buddhism calls this borderland the "Bardo," between death and rebirth. But the Bardo can be any transition to a new expanded life. We must all identify with the immigrant, for we all pass over borders, Bardos, to become fully human. As life-pilgrims we are vulnerable, yet vulnerability is our strength: the very glue that bonds us as a covenant community.

Most Americans come from immigrant stock. But in the deeper sense, we’re all wayfaring strangers. What does it mean to be "a soul"? It means that we witness the world as other. The very power of consciousness is a celebration of otherness and alienation. Our creative life is a longing to overcome this alienation, to touch the other, to touch the earth. Consciousness is estrangement. Yet that very estrangement is the source of love. Our love is consciousness reaching through its estrangement to atone, to be at-one. 

Immigration reform begins with Self-Knowledge. Who is not a stranger in a strange land, looking for work? Our true work is serving our fellow traveler, hand in hand, helping each other cross border after border on our way to the boundless heart.

Xenophobia? Yes, some Americans fear the stranger. Because the homeless wanderer is the very image of our own pilgrim soul.

Rumi & Shams

For a Rumi to be, there must be a Shams.

How easily we forget that St. Francis of Assisi was not just a flower child. He was a deeply disciplined practitioner of daily prayer, surrendered to his Master Jesus. How easily we forget that Buddhist poets who spoke of spontaneous satori were profoundly absorbed in meditation practices of 'Zen,' a word which comes from the Chinese 'Chan,' which comes from the Sanskrit 'Dyan,' which is the seventh limb of Astanga Yoga, meaning 'Meditation.'

How easily we quote Rumi's most ecstatic verses, forgetting that he was devoted to the feet of his guru, Shams, from whom he received initiation; that he and his master were embroiled in the religious disputes of their age, committed for life and for death. Rumi spent his life in exile because of his beliefs; his master, Shams, was murdered by his rivals.

How easily we smell the rose blossom, and forget that it has been deeply rooted in one place for a long time, humbly grateful for its daily watering.

Your Nudity

Your nudity, this land of wild
forgotten gardens gone to seed,
wheaten undulations, mountains
rilled by rivers of time to muted
softness, your body as it is today,
honed by disciplines of ancient
yearning to this salt sweet chiaroscuro.
If I were a poet I would amber you
in words. If I were a singer I would
turn you on a rhythmic lathe to rhyme.
If I were an artist I would layer you
outrageously in tints of amaranth
and fuchsia, capturing your evening
glow over the sea. If I were a virtuoso
I would lean your brown swollen cello,
balanced on one foot, against my body
for a kiss of resonant emptiness,
striking your tautest string like that,
plucking the lower, the darker tone,
like this...  But I am a lover.

Garden of Opposites

I was a seed drifting in the breeze with no soil to call home. Then I fell into the garden of opposites and germinated in the ground of paradox. I rooted in Mother Sky where the moon gave birth to the sun. My flowers burst open in fiery subterranean rivers of stone. Consciousness itself became a crystal more solid than anything it could witness. I was bound to eternal freedom.

Sacred Distance

How cruel to imagine that there is no sacred distance
between us.
Otherwise we are ruthlessly One, and love is
impossible.
Distance is an ocean of delight, therefor let us praise
the distance,
and swim through it with our whole flesh.

(Picture: Ariadne in Naxos, Evelyn de Morgan, 1877)

The Discipline of Non-Resistance

 

A hawk attacked a serpent who was sunning on a rock. Repeatedly the hawk aimed its beak at the serpent and dived down. Each time the hawk attacked, the serpent languidly and effortlessly rolled its body, and the hawk missed its mark. Over and over again the hawk attacked with intense concentration, while the serpent merely followed its nature, lounging in the sunlight, rolling ever so slightly, this way and that. Finally, the hawk broke its neck against the naked stone. The serpent continued to luxuriate in a pool of afternoon sunlight. 

Non-resistance would seem to be the opposite of discipline. But non-resistance is the final discipline, the most radical form of activism.

Awareness is contracted and over-shadowed by whatever it resists. This contraction of awareness is ego. Ego is nothing but the naturally-expanded, already-liberated, sparkling clarity of awareness contracted and self-limited by resisting some form that arises within it.

In meditation, non-resistance is the purest practice: not resisting any unpleasant form that arises, and not clinging to any pleasant form that arises. For clinging is also a form of resistance, resistance to the loss of passing pleasure.

Whatever arises, let it go. This conscious act of non-clinging returns to the subject all the energy that was invested in the object. The act of non-resistance solidifies the observer in diamond-like freedom. The way is an open hand, not a clenched fist. 

This action-less act of non-resistance also makes renunciation effortless. When we "give up" something or someone to whom we have formed a painful bondage, we are really not giving up any thing at all, because what binds us is not the object but our identification with it. We have projected the excitement of our own consciousness onto the object to give it an aura of glamor. We do not need to reject the object, but simply to rest in the Self, allow our own projected glamor to return and settle as pure consciousness. This requires no effort, only understanding. In fact, this act of effortless renunciation actually increases our energy, because it restores to the Self what we gave away to another. And bringing the energy home to our own center is not hard, since the experience of pure consciousness is more blissful than the experience of any external object.

Therefor, the act of non-resistance is ten thousand times more energizing than any act of control, concentration, or self-denial. The instant I stop resisting, I am liberated: awareness returns to its natural clarity, self-luminosity, and ceaseless expansion.

Is there a practice of non-resistance outside of meditation, in our activity? Here too, dynamic non-resistance is the mother of all practices. Action performed when the mind is in the space of non-resistance is ten thousand times more powerful than any act of resistance.

Action in non-resistance gains the power of the void. It is infused with the infinite silence of the vacuum, where all quantum particles of the universe arise. Such action is a wave that incorporates the ocean of consciousness.

On the other hand, an action performed by the clenched fist of resistance is only a contracted droplet of the ocean, empowered by ego alone. Such weak action receives no cosmic support.

When we resist our so-called enemy, we only feed the enemy's energy. By taking sides in conflict, we increase the polarizing energy. Jesus called us to love our enemy and practice non-resistance. Why? Not to save the enemy, but to save our own awareness from resistance, contraction, and egotism. Jesus calls us to be serpents, not hawks.

"Be ye therefor wise as serpents and gentle as doves." ~Matthew 10:16

Heart Work

What a tragedy to waste our life imitating someone else's work, no matter how great, instead of doing our own, however humble. Life has given each one of us a Gift to share. No one else in the world can give it.

This earth would not be complete without your small but essential Gift. Your duty is not to worry about how "great" it is, but to share it unconditionally. That is the secret of joy.

Let us not define our work as others define work, or measure its value by status or income. Our work may be a global business enterprise, or a gentle smile. It may be the Gift of listening, or the simple act of being present, and letting a troubled heart feel heard. Our work may be our children. Our work may be food for the hungry, or singing to feed souls. The work may be a single poem, a single painting, one well-thrown pot, after a lifetime of practice. We abandon it to the earth, for others to find.

How do we know our Gift, our Dharma, our own unique Heartwork?

Plunging into it 100%, there doesn't seem to be any doer. When most busy, we appear quite calm, but inwardly we are on fire. The task is self-nourishing. It feeds us with energy, like play. As we work, the difference between mind and heart dissolves. Focused on the small, we feel vastly expanded inside. And when we are lost in the humblest detail, angels from the farthest corners of the universe bend over our shoulders, whispering, "Yes!"