A little Rumi...

And the call went out...

Something Sang

The lute began...
My heart snapped its chains.
Something sang
from the strings—
—"Wounded crazy one... come!"

--Rumi

And spoke of forgiveness...

Come, Come Whoever You Are

Come, come, whoever you are——Wanderer; worshiper; lover of leaving——What does it matter?
Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a hundred times——Come, come gain, come.

--Rumi

And opened the door...

The beauty of the heart
is the lasting beauty:
its lips give to drink
of the water of life.
Truly it is the water,
that which pours,
and the one who drinks.
All three become one
when your talisman is shattered.
That oneness you can't know
by reasoning.

--Rumi

"A little overflowing word"...

A little overflowing word

by Emily Dickinson

A little overflowing word

That any, hearing, had inferred

For Ardor or for Tears,

Though Generations pass away,

Traditions ripen and decay,

As eloquent appears --

winter has arrived...

A Buddhist Still Life... mirrors

what is, simply is...

"The mirror is thoroughly egoless and mindless. If a flower comes it reflects a flower, if a bird comes it reflects a bird. It shows a beautiful object as beautiful, an ugly object as ugly. Everything is revealed as it is. There is no discriminating mind or self­consciousness on the part of the mirror. If something comes, the mirror reflects; if it disappears the mirror just lets it disappear ... no traces of anything are left behind. Such non-attachment, the state of no-mind, or the truly free working of a mirror is compared here to the pure and lucid wisdom of Buddha."

(Zenkei Shibayma, On Zazen Wason, Kyoto, 1967, p. 28) 
[Found in Zen and the Birds of Appetite by Thomas Merton]

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A Buddhist Still Life... weeding

"Pulling out the weeds we give nourishment to the plant. We pull the weeds and bury them near the plant to give nourishment."
The weeds of our lives entangle, starve, and choke-out the flowers we are striving to be. We are the weeds; we are the flower; we are the choking-out, and we are growing. As we tend our gardens and pull our weeds, we need to remember that the weeds should not be rejected, just as we should not reject ourselves, but rather we should bury our weeds near our flower selves so that they might continue to serve each other...

"When we see a part of the moon covered by a cloud, or a tree, or a weed, we feel how round the moon is. But when we see the clear moon without anything covering it, we do not feel that roundness the same way we do when we see it through something else."
The weeds of our selves can offer us perspective of the whole. We are so round, so whole, and the weeds and clouds of our lives only serve to show us that...

"For Zen students a weed, which for most people is worthless, is a treasure. With this attitude, whatever you do, life becomes art."
Accepting the weeds of our selves along with the fullness of the whole is the work of every day, of every moment, while walking, while sitting, while working. We practice this that we might rediscover our beginner selves, to be, and to love, and to be loved...

"But we must not be attached... We must have beginner's mind, free from possessing anything, a mind that knows everything is in flowing change. Nothing exists but momentarily in its present form and color. One thing flows into another and cannot be grasped. Before the rain stops we hear a bird. Even under the heavy snow we see snowdrops and some new growth. In the East I saw rhubarb already. In Japan in the spring we eat cucumbers." 

Quotes from Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, by Shunryu Suzuki