What if our religion was each other? / If our practice was our life? / If prayer was our words? / What if the Temple was the Earth? / If forests were our church? / If holy water—the rivers, lakes / and oceans? / What if meditation was our relationships? / If the Teacher was… Continue reading Ganga White
O, hereWill I set up my everlasting rest,And shake the yoke of inauspicious starsFrom this world-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last!Arms, take your last embrace! and, lips, O youThe doors of breath, seal with a righteous kissA dateless bargain to engrossing death! — William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act V, Scene iii
I can’t say I was ever lost, but I was bewildered once for three days. — Daniel Boone
On the end of tender green stalka flame a flower. I love nothing but gardens.I fear nothing but myself I am no gardener. Ican be quoted aflame afire a friend to fearfallen away, alone burning. — Bin Ramke, from “Grass Fires,” Wake (University of Iowa Press, 1999)
IT is easier to write an indifferent poem than understand a good one. There is, indeed, a certain low and moderate sort of poetry that a man may well enough judge by certain rules of art; but the true, supreme, and divine Poetry is above all the rules of reason. Whoever discerns the beauty of… Continue reading Michel de Montaigne
I stared at a tree against duskTill it was a girlStanding beside a country roadShucking cane with her teeth.She looked up & smiled& waved. Lost in what hurts,In what tasted good, could sheEver learn there’s no loveIn sugar? — Yusef Komunyakaa, from “Sugar,” Magic City (Wesleyan University Press, 1992)
First we feel. Then we fall. — James Joyce, Finnegans Wake.( Faber and Faber November 4, 2002) Originally published May 4th 1939.
When life descends into the pitI must become my own candlewillingly burning myselfto light up the darkness around me. — Alice Walker from By the Light of my Father’s Smile. (Random House; 1st edition September 14, 1998)
There are as many kinds of kisses as there are people on earth, as there are permutations and combinations of those people. No two people kiss alike—no two people fuck alike—but somehow the kiss is more personal, more individualized than the fuck. — Diane di Prima, Memoirs of a Beatnik. (Penguin Books; First Printing edition… Continue reading Diane di Prima
Time present and time pastAre both perhaps present in time futureAnd time future contained in time past.If all time is eternally presentAll time is unredeemable. — T.S. Eliot, from “Burnt Norton,” The Four Quartets. (Faber & Faber 1959) Originally published 1943.
The Vale of Soul-Making 