Of Interest
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The Guest House
This being human is 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 its 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.
-- Rumi
This being human is 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 its 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.
-- Rumi
A Brief for the Defense
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
-Jack Gilbert
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.
-Jack Gilbert
STORY WATER
A story is like water
that you heat for your bath.
It takes messages between the fire
and your skin. It lets them meet,
and it cleans you!
Very few can sit down
in the middle of the fire itself
like a salamander or Abraham.
We need intermediaries.
A feeling of fullness comes,
but usually it takes some bread
to bring it.
Beauty surrounds us,
but usually we need to be walking
in a garden to know it.
The body itself is a screen
to shield and partially reveal
the light that's blazing
inside your presence.
Water, stories, the body,
all the things we do, are mediums
that hide and show what's hidden.
Study them,
and enjoy this being washed
with a secret we sometimes know,
and then not.
RUMI
A story is like water
that you heat for your bath.
It takes messages between the fire
and your skin. It lets them meet,
and it cleans you!
Very few can sit down
in the middle of the fire itself
like a salamander or Abraham.
We need intermediaries.
A feeling of fullness comes,
but usually it takes some bread
to bring it.
Beauty surrounds us,
but usually we need to be walking
in a garden to know it.
The body itself is a screen
to shield and partially reveal
the light that's blazing
inside your presence.
Water, stories, the body,
all the things we do, are mediums
that hide and show what's hidden.
Study them,
and enjoy this being washed
with a secret we sometimes know,
and then not.
RUMI
Simple Life
By J. Krishnamurti
Simple life does not consist in the mere possession of a few things
but in the freedom from possession and non-possession,
in the indifference to things that comes with deep understanding.
Merely to renounce things in order to reach greater happiness,
greater joy that is promised, is to seek reward which limits thought
and prevents it from flowering and discovering reality.
To control thought-feeling for a greater reward, for a greater result,
is to make it petty, ignorant and sorrowful. Simplicity of life
comes with inner richness, with inward freedom from craving,
with freedom from acquisitiveness, from addiction, from distraction.
From this simple life there comes that necessary one-pointedness
which is not the outcome of self-enclosing concentration
but of extensional awareness and meditative understanding.
Simple life is not the result of outward circumstances;
contentment with little comes with the riches of inward understanding.
If you depend on circumstances to make you satisfied with life
then you will create misery and chaos, for then you are a plaything
of environment, and it is only when circumstances are transcended
through understanding that there is order and clarity.
To be constantly aware of the process of acquisitiveness,
of addiction, of distraction, brings freedom from them
and so there is a true and simple life.
~ J. Krishnamurti
from The Collected Works Volume III Ojai
8th Public Talk 2nd July, 1944
By J. Krishnamurti
Simple life does not consist in the mere possession of a few things
but in the freedom from possession and non-possession,
in the indifference to things that comes with deep understanding.
Merely to renounce things in order to reach greater happiness,
greater joy that is promised, is to seek reward which limits thought
and prevents it from flowering and discovering reality.
To control thought-feeling for a greater reward, for a greater result,
is to make it petty, ignorant and sorrowful. Simplicity of life
comes with inner richness, with inward freedom from craving,
with freedom from acquisitiveness, from addiction, from distraction.
From this simple life there comes that necessary one-pointedness
which is not the outcome of self-enclosing concentration
but of extensional awareness and meditative understanding.
Simple life is not the result of outward circumstances;
contentment with little comes with the riches of inward understanding.
If you depend on circumstances to make you satisfied with life
then you will create misery and chaos, for then you are a plaything
of environment, and it is only when circumstances are transcended
through understanding that there is order and clarity.
To be constantly aware of the process of acquisitiveness,
of addiction, of distraction, brings freedom from them
and so there is a true and simple life.
~ J. Krishnamurti
from The Collected Works Volume III Ojai
8th Public Talk 2nd July, 1944
Ultimately the body will rebel. Even if it can be temporarily pacified with the help of drugs, cigarettes or medicine, it usually has the last word because it is quicker to see through self-deception than the mind. We may ignore or deride the messages of the body, but its rebellion demands to be heeded because its language is the authentic expression of our true selves and of the strength of our vitality. - Alice Miller, "The Body Never Lies".