The Seer

In Japan, it’s rumored, they’ve replaced the impersonal and unhelpful computer Error Messages with Haiku poetry.

Haiku poetry has strict construction rules. Each poem has three lines and 17 syllables: five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, five in the third.

Haikus are used to communicate a timeless message often achieving a wistful, yearning and powerful insight through extreme brevity — the essence of Zen.

1. A crash reduces
   Your expensive computer
   To a simple stone.

2. The Web site you seek
   Cannot be located but
   Countless more exist.

3. A thousand flower petals
   Writher in the wind —
   Disk C: not found.

4. Three things are certain:
   Death, taxes, and lost data.
   Guess which has occurred?

5. With searching comes loss
   And the presence of absence:
   Your novel not found.

6. Yesterday it worked
   Today it is not working
   Windows is like that.

7. Login incorrect.
   Only perfect spellers may
   Enter this system.

8. Having been erased,
   The document you’re seeking
   Must now be retyped.

9. Program aborting:
   Close all that you have opened.
   You ask far too much.

10. . Chaos reigns within.
    Reflect, repent, and reboot.
    Order shall return.

This place is a dream
only a sleeper considers it real
then death comes like dawn
and you wake up laughing
at what you thought
was your grief

A man goes to sleep in the town
where he has always lived
and he dreams
he’s living in another town
in the dream he doesn’t remember
the town he’s sleeping in his bed in
he believes the reality
of the dream town
the world is that kind of sleep

Humankind is being led
along an evolving course,
through this migration
of intelligences
and though we seem
to be sleeping
there is an inner wakefulness,
that directs the dream
and that will eventually
startle us back
to the truth of
who we are”

~ Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi (1207 – 1273), from: The Essential Rumi, Trans. Coleman Barks.

“. . . at this season, the blossom is out in full now,
there in the west, early.
It’s a plum tree; it looks like apple blossom but it’s white, and looking at it,
instead of saying “Oh that’s nice blossom” …
Last week looking at it through the window when I’m writing,
I see it is the whitest, frothiest,
blossomest blossom that there ever could be,
and I can see it.
Things are both more trivial than they ever were,
and more important than they ever were,
and the difference between the trivial and the important doesn’t seem to matter.
But the nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous,
and if people could see that, you know.
There’s no way of telling you; you have to experience it,
but the glory of it, if you like, the comfort of it, the reassurance …
not that I’m interested in reassuring people — bugger that.
The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.”

~ British playwright, Dennis Potter, on the the wonder that arose in him, facing his iminent death.

When the path ignites a soul,
there’s no remaining in place.

The foot touches ground,
but not for long.

The way where love tells its secret
stays always in motion,
and there is no you there, and no reason.

The rider urges his horse to gallop,
and so doing, throws himself
under the flying hooves.

In love-unity there’s no old or new.
Everything is nothing.
God alone is.

For lovers the phenomena-veil is very transparent,
and the delicate tracings on it cannot
be explained with language.

Clouds burn off as the sun rises,
and the love-world floods with light.

But cloud-water can be obscuring,
as well as useful.

There is an affection that covers the glory,
rather than dissolving into it ….

There is a seeing of the beauty
of union that doesn’t actively work
for the inner conversation.

Your hand and feet must move,
as a stream streams, working
as its Self, to get to the ocean.
Then there’s no more mention
of the search.

Being famous, or being a disgrace,
who’s ahead or behind, these considerations
are rocks and clogged places
that slow you. Be as naked as a wheat grain
out of its husk and sleek as Adam.

Don’t ask for anything other
than the presence.

Don’t speak of a “you”
apart from That.

A full container cannot be more full.
Be whole, and nothing.”

~ Hakim Sanai (1044?-1150?) From The Hand of Poetry: Five Mystic Poets of Persia, Trans. Coleman Barks

Only
That Illumined
One
Who keeps
Seducing the formless into form
Had the charm to win my
Heart.
Only a Perfect One
Who is always
Laughing at the word
Two
Can make you know
Of
Love.

~ by Hāfez. From: Laughing at the Word Two

Khwāja Šamsu d-Dīn Muhammad Hāfez-e Šīrāzī — Persian lyric poet (1325-1389). Even today, his collected works are to be found in the homes of most Iranians.

I cannot be awake
for nothing looks to me
as it did before,

Or else I am awake
for the first time,
and all before
has been a mean sleep.

~ Walt Whitman

For wisdom is quicker to move than any motion;
She is so pure, she pervades and permeates all things.
She is a breath of the power of God,
Pure emanation of the glory of the almighty
So that nothing impure can find its way into her.
For she is a reflection of the eternal light,
untarnished mirror of God’s active power
and image of his goodness.

~ Wisdom 7:24-26 New Jerusalem Bible

I turn around and round
The self
Like a dog
Chasing its own tail.
Trying to sniff out
My very soul.
My senses lead me
Astray
Most of the time.
>My hearing wasted
On the song of birds.
My taste sense wasted
On many hardened bones.
My eyes hardened
By the chase of many fleeting
Things.
But yesterday I think,
When I was circling yet
Again,
I caught the scent
Of a thought.
Unlike the other thoughts.
It simply told me
Stop.

~ Corina Bardasuc

Our apparently objective experience consists of thoughts, sensations and perceptions — that is, the mind, body and world.

When Awareness ‘takes the shape’ of thinking, it seems to become a thought. When it ‘takes the shape’ of sensing, it seems to become a body and when it ‘takes the shape’ of perceiving, it seems to become an object, other or world.

When thinking comes to an end, the apparently objective part of it (the thought part) disappears but its substance, Awareness, remains. In that timeless moment (timeless because the mind is not present) Awareness tastes itself as it is, unmediated through the apparent objectivity of thought. This experience is known as Understanding.

When sensing comes to an end, the apparently objective part of it (the sensation or body part) disappears but its substance, Awareness, remains, knowing itself as Love or Happiness. And when perceiving comes to an end, the object, other or world disappears but their substance, Awareness, remains, knowing itself as it is, unveiled by the appearance of objects. That is the experience known as Beauty.

In other words, Understanding, Love, Happiness and Beauty are all different names for one and the same experience, the presence of Awareness, the knowing of our own Being.

The paths through Understanding and Love (the paths of Jnana and Bhakti) are well documented but the path through perceiving is less often mentioned. The path of perceiving or the Way of Beauty is the way of the artist. It’s a path through which it becomes clear, and the means through which it is expressed, that the substance of all perceptions is made out of Awareness.

Although all seeming objects are made out of Awareness, it is not, at a relative level, the function of all objects to reveal this. For instance, the purpose of a kettle is to boil water, not to reveal the true nature of experience.

However, there is one category of objects, which are made specifically with the intention of revealing the true nature of experience and such an object is what we call a work of art. The function of a work of art is not simply to point towards, but actually to reveal the true nature of experience. As Cezanne said, to ‘give us a taste of Eternity.’

Like the words of the teaching, such objects come pregnant with their origin, the silence and love from which they originate and, as such, are tremendously powerful. So, Beauty is the experience through which we come to know and feel that all seeming things are made out of That which knows them.

Keats was right. ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty.’ The experience of Truth and Beauty are one and the same experience. ‘That is all ye know on earth.’ The mind (which is the expression of Truth) and the world (which is the expression of Beauty) are one. That is, the apparent ‘knower’ and the apparently ‘known’ are one.

Whether we recognize it or not, this is always our experience. It is, as Keats says, ‘all ye know on earth’ — the knowing of our own Being in and as all seeming things. ‘…and all ye need to know.’ Yes, this knowledge alone, if deeply considered and made one’s own and subsequently applied to all circumstances, is all that is required to lead a sane, happy and loving life. Keats was rather more economical with his words than I am!

The great artists of the past, of whom Keats was one, were perhaps the vehicles through which this knowledge was communicated most powerfully in our culture but it is not their provenance alone.

This experiential knowledge of the true nature of experience is, in fact, known by all but sometimes seemingly forgotten. However, it is never far from the surface and even in popular culture — music, fashion etc. — we see this same longing for Love, Beauty and Happiness, all of which are simply variations of our longing to return to the true nature of our most intimate being.

When this Love, Beauty and Happiness is seemingly veiled by the appearance of the ‘I’ entity, it cries out all the more loudly. All around us in our culture we hear these ‘love cries’ all desperately searching in the wrong place for what lies at their heart.

~ To read the complete interview: >>>Click Here

~ by Rupert Spira

And so
there is only One
all else is illusion
construction in mind
there is nothing happening here
there is only
One Being Awareness

stillness silence perfection
and in the stillness
a breathing perhaps
as if
there is only One
breathing

and all this is that breathing
all this is That
we are That
we are that One
yet not -
not even we are One
because there is no we
only One

I Am That
And That is All

and That is the Brilliance
which all this is -
life death love anguish
compassion understanding healing
light

the Brilliance within
where the Heart opens and there is
Nothing
no self no one
only aching beauty
and overwhelming gratitude

Outpouring

~ To hear the complete poem by the ‘david carse‘ thing, from the book: Perfect Brilliant Stillness, read by the ‘terence stamp’ thing: >>>

href="http://vimeo.com/14902122">Click Here.