Untitled by Gabrielle Harrington

“When you’re an aspiring master of pronoia, you see the cracks in the facades as opportunities; inspiration erupts as you careen over bumps in the road: you love the enticing magic that flows from situations that other people regard as rough or crooked “That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal,” wrote poet Charles Baudelaire, “from which it follows that irregularity-that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment-is an essential part and characteristic of beauty.”

Wabi-sabi is a Japanese term that refers to a captivating work of art with a distinctive flaw that embodies the idiosyncratic humanity of its creator. An aqua groove in an otherwise perfectly green ceramic pot may give it wabi-sabi. A skilled blues singer who for a moment intentionally wails out of pitch may be expressing wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi is rooted in the idea that perfection is a kind of death.

”The essence of Wabi-sabi is that true beauty, whether architecture, or visual art, doesn’t reveal itself until the winds of time have had their say. Beauty is in the cracks, the worn spots, and the imperfect lines”-(Todd Dominey)

“The great lessons from the true mystics, from the Zen Monks, is that the sacred is in the ordinary, that it is to be found in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, friends, and family, in one’s back yard and that travel may be a flight from confronting the sacred. To be looking every where for miracles is a sure sign of ignorance that everything is miraculous (Abraham Maslow,  Religions, Values and Peak Experiences)

“If you love the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the ocean of delusion -(Un chi the Taosit Classics translated by Thomas Cleary)

“We want God in all the ways that are not the ways of God, in what we hope is indestructible, or unmoving. But God is fragile, a bare smear of pollen, that scatter of yellow dust from the tree that tumbled over in a storm of grief and planted itself again – (Deena Metzger, Prayers for a Thousand Years edited by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon)

Excerpts from Robert Breszny’s Pronoia

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Kent Bond 28 by Kent Bond

“My Zen teaching has deepened to encourage people to really plunge into the world, into life. I want them to enter life, to embody their practice, tend it with their hearts. To attend to life, to this body, is to love it and bless it. Particularly we need to find a way to bless our wounds and the darkness we
find ourselves in. It takes patience to bless our wounded-ness,
because we haven’t been taught a respect for it. But if you
do bless your body, you notice that you find what is right for
you. You have the kind of pains that are right for you, as well
as the kind of joys that are yours, the experiences that you
have honestly earned.

When we listen to our bodies, our bodily wisdom grows. We
can feel the body’s urge to move and honor its cycles of rest,
we can meditate and dance, we can respect its need for solitude, we can allow its lively senses, and we can know its pleasures and limitations. Instead of fearing our body, its losses and strange vulnerability, we honor it. When the mandala of awakening includes rather than excludes the body, our gifts can flower and our heart remains free.

Rabbi Nachman of Bratzlav tried to get his disciples to understand that:
“If you never want to see the face of hell, when you come
home from work every night, dance with your kitchen
towel, and if you’re worried about waking up your family,
take off your shoes.”
—-
Hakuin Zenji wrote in his ancient Song of Zazen,
“All beings by nature are Buddha, as ice by nature is water. How sad that
people ignore the near and search for truth afar like someone in
the midst of water crying out for thirst. . . . Truly, is anything miss-
ing now? Nirvana is right here, before our eyes; this very place is
the pure Lotus Land; this very body, the Buddha.”

Excerpts from After the Ecstasy the Laundry by Jack Kornfield

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The Secret Life of Red by Linaji

Reading at Koloa Hong Wan JI practice  05/27/2010

As I descend into basement shadows, I am washed in red.
Smoothness is not a choice on the earthly plane.

As light reveals, so also shadows are spawned.

With this I must learn to rock my ignorance to sleep to await its hungry cry.

I must feed my insincerity its milky gruel.

I must give my meanness rapt attention.

I must dine with my shallowness and play chess with my incompetence.

I must massage my cruelty’s neck and let my coldness share my bed.

I must serve tea to my gloom and warm my fear’s cold feet, while tucking in my weakness for the night.

I must play cards with my animal passions and wrap my ugliness in my favorite silken robe.

I must sing to my conceit and pick up my naivete and hold it close in my arms.

All these folk live in my house, as they must.

I must honor their darkness for in it they help make the light shine.

With this, all at once and in balance, the wholeness of soul can be truly found.

Happy is the house where all sleep warm.

Where no one must lie in the basement, damp alone and afraid-
and enraged at the one who locked the cellar door

All those many years before.

— Unknown

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Rumi

A friend of Joseph’s came to visit him after returning from a long journey.

“What present have you brought me?” Joseph asked

What could I bring you,” the friend replied that you don’t already have??”

But” he added, because you are so beautiful, and nothing exists in all the world more beautiful than you, I have brought you a mirror, so you can know the joy at every moment of seeing your own face.”

Is there anything that God doesn’t have already that you could give Him?

Is there anything that God could need that you could possible provide?

All you are here for, and the entire meaning of the Path of Love, is to bring before God a heart bright as a mirror, so God can see His own face in it.

A Rumi story from the Rumi card book

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Dragon Taming by Bill Brouard

Finally I am coming to the conclusion
that my highest ambition is to be what I already am.
that I will never fulfill my obligation
to surpass myself
unless I first accept myself.
and if i accept myself fully, in the right way,
I will have already have surpassed myself.

— Thomas Merton

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Reading at Anara SPA 03/08/2010

—-  Yogi Amrit Desai (Gerudev)

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Breathe by Linaji

The time will come

When,
With elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door,
in your own mirror,

And each will smile at the other’s welcome,
And say, sit here, Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

Give wine, Give bread, Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you
All your life, whom you ignored for another
Who knows you by heart.

Take down the letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit
Feast on your life.

— Derek Walcott

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There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.  The world will not have it.  It is not your business to determine
How good it is
Nor how valuable it is;
Nor how it compares with other expressions.  It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
You do not even have o believe in yourself or your work.  You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate YOU.
Keep the channel open…
No artist is pleased…
There is no satisfaction whatever at any time.  There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others

Martha Graham to Agnes Demille

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Passion's Core by Linaji

Just when I doubted myself,
Just when I ’bout gave up
A light shone thru.

Scathes my lack of intention
Attacks my dullard fears
Presses me on
And pulls the reigns of attention
Back from unconscious years.

Un-zips my eyes
Sore from looking the other way
Unfurls my feelings
And they sing out a chorus of
Doris Day.
Ohhh I don’t like to sing quite like that!
I say…
I want some blues
I want some tears,

But this force of light before me
Will have non e of my deep seated fears.

Its pinnacle of truth goes straight to
My utter zone
My heart is beating loud
My lips produce a smile
That’s been lonely           ‘
A laugh that got lost in the crowd.

From Dark to Light
I am back again,
No world of inequality,
I know that my worth is

One breath One thought away
One Word
One Peace
One Me.

—Linaji

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On Edges….

Through the disciplined precision of our efforts, we’ll come again and again to our edge—the difficult places beyond which we’ve previously been unable to move. Through the willingness to soften and surrender to what is, we learn that we can gradually move beyond that edge. It is only through this interplay of hard and soft, of effort and letting be, of will and willingness, that we learn to our amazement that we can emerge from the lifelong tunnel of fear that constitutes our substitute life into the nitty-gritty reality of our genuine one.
—Ezra Bayda

On aging…

Are my boots old?
Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and
Still not half perfect?

Let me keep my mind on what matters
Which is my work—

Which is mostly standing still
And learning to be
Astonished—

—Mary Oliver

On Anger…

You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger. ~ Buddha
A man once cursed the Buddha to his face. The Buddha only smiled. The man became even more incensed and asked, “Why don’t you respond?” The Buddha replied, “If someone refuses a gift, it must be taken back by the one who offered it.
” The Buddha then recited this verse:
“For those with no anger,  How can anger arise?”

When you practice deep looking and master yourself, you dwell in peace, freedom, and safety.
When you understand the roots of anger in yourself and in the other,
your mind will enjoy true peace, joy, and lightness.

You become the doctor who heals himself and heals the other”.
— Thich Nhat Hahn

On Being your authentic self…..

“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.”
—– e.e. Cummings

On perceptions and reality…

“All the ways that we hold back and shut down, all the ways that we cling and grasp, all our habitual ways of limiting and solidifying our world become very clear to us, and it’s unnerving”
At that painful point, we usually want to make the teacher wrong or make ourselves wrong or do anything that is habitual and comforting to get ground back under our feet.
“But when we make an unconditional commitment to hang in there, we do not run away from the pain of seeing ourselves—and this is a revolutionary thing to do and it transforms us. But how many of us are ready for this?
One has to gradually develop the trust that it is ultimately liberating to let go of strongly held assumptions about reality”.

—-Pema Chodron

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