Just as the heart becomes carefree in a place of green, growing plants,

Goodwill and kindness are born when our souls enter happiness.

Let the beauty we love be what we do.

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Intellectuals try not to drown, while the whole purpose of love is drowning

The Minute I Heard My First Love Story

 

The minute I heard my first love story

I started looking for you,

not knowing how blind that was.

 

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.

They're in each other all along.

 

Music Master

 

You that love lovers,

this is your home.  Welcome!

 

In the midst of making form.

love made this form that melts form,

with love for the door,

soul for the vestibule.

 

Their dance is our dance.

 

We rarely hear the inward music,

but we're dancing to it nevertheless,

directed by the one who teaches us,

the pure joy of the sun,

our music master.

               ~

 

You may have lived many years in a city,

But as soon as you fall asleep,

Another city rears in your mind,

Full of its own good and evil

And your own city - the one you lived in for years -

Vanishes completely from your memory.

You do not say, "I am a stranger here; this is not my city."

You think you have always lived there.

You think you were born and bred there.

 

Are you amazed, then, that your soul

Does not remember its ancient home?

How could you remember?

She is wrapped in the sleep of this world

Like a star shrouded by the clouds,

And she has tramped through so many cities,

And the dust that darkens her vision

Has not yet been swept away.

Only Breath

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu,

Buddhist, Sufi, or zen. 

Not any religion or cultural system. 

I am not from the East or the West,

not out of the ocean or up from the ground,

not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all.

I do not exist, am not an entity of this world or next,

did not descend from Adam and Eve or any origin story. 

My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. 

Neither body or soul. 

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one

and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner,

only that breath breathing human being.

 

                           ~

 

 

"I tried to find him on the Christian Cross, but He was not there;

I went to the Temple of the Hindus and to the old pagodas,

but I could not find a trace of Him anywhere.

I searched on the mountains and in the valleys

but neither in the heights nor in the depths was I able to find Him.

I went to the Caaba in Mecca, but He was not there either.

I questioned the scholars and philosophers, but He was beyond their understanding.

I then looked into my heart and it was there where He dwelled that I saw Him;

He was nowhere else to be found."

The Guest House

This being human is a a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house empty of furniture.

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. 

 

            ~