SUN BU'ER

Spirit and energy should be clear as the night air;
In the soundless is the ultimate pleasure all along.
Where there’s reality in illusion
Is illusion in reality,
For the while playing with magical birth
In the silver bowl.

GRAHAM GOULDMAN
“East, West”

East, west
Over the ocean
Perpetual motion
Traveling around

No rest
Singing and playing
Night out and day in
Doing the rounds

What a great life this must seem!

Swelled joints
Everything classy
Nothing is tacky
Only the best

Lush girls
Older and dying
Sighing and crying
“This is success!”

What a great life this must seem!

But when I hear your voice
Singing out
The Bells Of Home
Are ringing out
And I feel all alone
(And I think of my home)

Cold times
A wind through the houses
The bleakness arouses
A longing to leave

Time flew
I wanted to see you
Somehow I could not do
Because of success

What a strange life this can be!

But when I hear your voice
Singing out
The bells of home
Are ringing out
And I feel all alone
(And I think of my home)

DAISAKU IKEDA

How exhilarating it is to stand tall, walk with a buoyant step and be flexible in one’s actions! How attractive to those we meet are our sparkling eyes and vibrant voices! This is the principle of the true entity of all phenomena. Your fresh and vital appearance eloquently attests to the greatness of faith, and you will find that you naturally cultivate a sphere of friendship and understanding among those around you.

GUY DAVENPORT
Every Force Evolves a Form

A work of art is a form that articulates forces, making them intelligible.

SAMUEL BECKETT
All That Fall

Let us halt a moment and let this vile dust fall back upon the viler worms.

ROBERT J. SAWYER

It’s the fear of god - the threat of divine punishment and the promise of divine reward - that keeps in line those too unsophisticated to work out questions of morality on their own.

T'AO CH'IEN

I built my hut within where others live,
But there is no noise of carriages and horses.
You ask how this is possible:
When the heart is distant, solitude comes.
I pluck chrysanthemums by the eastern fence
And see the distant southern mountains.
The mountain air is fresh at dusk.
Flying birds return in flocks.
In these things there lies a great truth,
But when I try to express it, I cannot find the words.

DŌGEN

Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.

JOHN KEATS
“The Human Season”

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness—to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.                   

ZBIGNIEW HERBERT - 
“From The Top Of The Stairs”

Of course
those who are standing at the top of the stairs
know
they know everything

with us it’s different
sweepers of squares
hostages of a better future
those at the top of the stairs
appear to us rarely
with a hushing finger always at the mouth

we are patient
our wives darn the sunday shirts
we talk of food rations
soccer prices of shoes
while on saturday we tilt the head backward
and drink

we aren’t those
who clench their fists
brandish chains
talk and ask questions
in a fever of excitement
urging to rebel
incessantly talking and asking questions

here is their fairy tale -
we will dash at the stairs
and capture them by storm
the heads of those who were standing at the top
will roll down the stairs
and at last we will gaze
at what can be seen from those heights
what future
what emptiness

we don’t desire the view
of rolling heads
we know how easily heads grow back
and at the top there will always remain
one or three
while at the bottom it is black from brooms and shovels

sometimes we dream
those at the top of the stairs
come down
that is to us
and as we are chewing bread over the newspaper
they say

- now let’s talk
man to man
what the posters shout out isn’t true
we carry the truth in tightly locked lips
it is cruel and much too heavy
so we bear the burden by ourselves
we aren’t happy
we would gladly stay
here

these are dreams of course
they can come true
or not come true
so we will
continue to cultivate
our square of dirt
square of stone

with a light head
a cigarette behind the ear
and not a drop of hope in the heart

e. e. cummings
“what if a much of a which of a wind”

what if a much of a which of a wind
gives the truth to summer’s lie;
bloodies with dizzying leaves the sun
and yanks immortal stars awry?
Blow king to beggar and queen to seem
(blow friend to fiend: blow space to time)
-when skies are hanged and oceans drowned,
the single secret will still be man

what if a keen of a lean wind flays
screaming hills with sleet and snow:
strangles valleys by ropes of thing
and stifles forests in white ago?
Blow hope to terror; blow seeing to blind
(blow pity to envy and soul to mind)
-whose hearts are mountains, roots are trees,
it’s they shall cry hello to the spring

what if a dawn of a doom of a dream
bites this universe in two,
peels forever out of his grave
and sprinkles nowhere with me and you?
Blow soon to never and never to twice
(blow life to isn’t; blow death to was)
-all nothing’s only our hugest home;
the most who die, the more we live

D. H. LAWRENCE from a letter to Cynthia Asquith, 1913

I like to write when I feel spiteful. It is like having a good sneeze.

CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA from The Myth of Freedom

If we wish to pick flowers from a tree, we must first cultivate the roots and trunk, which means that we must work with our fears, frustrations, disappointments, and irritations, the painful aspects of life. We must see the truth of suffering, the reality of dissatisfaction. We cannot ignore it and attempt to examine only the glorious, pleasurable aspects of life. If one searches for a promised land, a Treasure Island, then the search only leads to more pain.

HALLDÓR LAXNESS from Christianity Beneath The Glacier

Bishop: No verifying! If people tell lies, that’s as may be. If they’ve come up with some credo or other, so much the better! Don’t forget that few people are likely to tell more than a small part of the truth: no one tells much of the truth, let alone the whole truth. Spoken words are facts in themselves, whether true or false. When people talk they reveal themselves, whether they’re lying or telling the truth.

Embi: And if I find them out in a lie?

Bishop: Never speak ill of anyone in a report. Remember, any lie you are told, even deliberately, is often a more significant fact than a truth told in all sincerity.

HERMAN HESSE from Narcissus and Goldmund

We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other’s opposite and compliment.

JOHN KEATS - “Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition“

The church bells toll a melancholy round,
Calling the people to some other prayers,
Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
More harkening to the sermon’s horrid sound.
Surely the mind of man is closely bound
In some black spell; seeing that each one tears
Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs,
And converse high of those with glory crown’d
Still, still they too, and I should feel a damp, –
A chill as from a tomb, did I not know
That they are dying like an outburnt lamp;
That ’tis their sighing, wailing ere they go
Into oblivion; – that fresh flowers will grow,
And many glories of immortal stamp.

MAURICE SENDAK

Art has always been my salvation. And my gods are Herman Melville, Emily Dickinson, Mozart. I believe in them with all my heart. And when Mozart is playing in my room, I am in conjunction with something I can’t explain — I don’t need to. I know that if there’s a purpose for life, it was for me to hear Mozart.

WILLIAM FAULKNER from As I Lay Dying

When something is new and hard and bright, there ought to be something a little better for it than just being safe, since the safe things are just the things that folks have been doing so long they have worn the edges off and there’s nothing to the doing of them that leaves a man to say, That was not done before and it cannot be done again.

EDMUND WHITE from City Boy - My Life in New York in the 1960s and 70s

I was lucky to live in New York when it was dangerous and edgy and cheap enough to play host to young, penniless artists. That was the era of “coffee shops” as they were defined in New York—cheap restaurants open round the clock where you could eat for less than it would cost to cook at home. That was the era of ripped jeans and dirty T-shirts, when the kind of people who are impressed by material signs of success were not the people you wanted to know.

HAROLD PINTER from No Man’s Land

I have known this before. The door unlocked. The entrance of a stranger. The offer of alms. The shark in the harbour.

WILLIAM CARLOS WILLIAMS - “Portent”

Red cradle of the night,
    In you
          The dusky child
Sleeps fast till his might
  Shall be piled
Sinew on sinew.

Red cradle of the night,
   The dusky child
Sleeping sits upright.
   Lo how
                   The winds blow now!
   He pillows back;
The winds are again mild.

When he stretches his arms out,
Red cradle of the night,
   The alarms shout
From bare tree to tree,
   Wild
             In afright!
Mighty shall he be,
Red cradle of the night,
   The dusky child!!

ZA PALTRÜL RINPOCHE - “Longing for the Mountains of Solitude”

Fooled in samsara town—
the endless cycle of countless chores,
preoccupations of a delusory world—
this boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

Hassled by monastery life—
the hustle of duties and communal dues,
pursuits of pointless distraction—
This boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

Whomever I look at, I see at death’s threshold;
whatever I think on, I sense denial of dying,
grasping at the deathless; in this courtyard of death,
this boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

Whomever I meet with manifests clinging and repulsion;
whomever I talk to brings deception and lies;
faced by companions without virtuous conduct,
this boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

Behold, beings in the three realms are fooled by afflictions;
the beings of the six realms are led astray;
delusion engenders the birth of suffering for all;
this boy’s mind longs for mountains of solitude.

By the blessings of the undeceiving guru and the Jewels,
may I attain and persevere in solitude;
by the force of a place of seclusion,
may I attain a mystic’s isolation
of body, speech, and mind.

May I be blessed by the mountains of solitude.

SAMUEL BECKETT from The Unnamable

For it is difficult to speak, even any old rubbish, and at the same time focus one’s attention on another point, where one’s true interest lies, as fitfully defined by a feeble murmur seeming to apologize for not being dead. And what it seemed to me I heard then, concerning what I should do, and say, in order to have nothing further to do, nothing further to say, it seemed to me I only barely heard it, because of the noise I was engaged in making elsewhere, in obedience to the unintelligible terms of an incomprehensible damnation.

HAROLD PINTER from Old Times

Memory can be a funny thing, full of selfish needs and manipulative fictions.

WANG WEI - “Fields and Gardens by the River Qi”

I dwell apart by the River Qi,
Where the Eastern wilds stretch far without hills.
The sun darkens beyond the mulberry trees;
The river glistens through the villages.
Shepherd boys depart, gazing back to their hamlets;
Hunting dogs return following their men.
When a man’s at peace, what business does he have?
I shut fast my rustic door throughout the day.

UNTITLED
Anna Yausheva, 2009

TANZEN
Anna Yausheva, 2009

SID
Anna Yausheva, 2009

NEIL GAIMAN

You have to finish things — that’s what you learn from. You learn by finishing things.

WALPOLA RAHULA from What The Buddha Really Taught

The question has often been asked; Is Buddhism a religion or a philosophy? It does not matter what you call it. Buddhism remains what it is whatever label you may put on it. The label is immaterial. Even the label ‘Buddhism’ which we give to the teachings of the Buddha is of little importance.

In the same way Truth needs no label: it is neither Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, nor Moslem. It is not the monopoly of anybody. Sectarian labels are a hindrance to the independent understanding of Truth, and they produce harmful prejudices in men’s minds.

W. H. AUDEN - “September 1, 1939″

I sit in one of the dives
On Fifty-second Street
Uncertain and afraid
As the clever hopes expire
Of a low dishonest decade:
Waves of anger and fear
Circulate over the bright
And darkened lands of the earth,
Obsessing our private lives;
The unmentionable odour of death
Offends the September night.

Accurate scholarship can
Unearth the whole offence
From Luther until now
That has driven a culture mad,
Find what occurred at Linz,
What huge imago made
A psychopathic god:
I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.

Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.

Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong.

Faces along the bar
Cling to their average day:
The lights must never go out,
The music must always play,
All the conventions conspire
To make this fort assume
The furniture of home;
Lest we should see where we are,
Lost in a haunted wood,
Children afraid of the night
Who have never been happy or good.

The windiest militant trash
Important Persons shout
Is not so crude as our wish:
What mad Nijinsky wrote
About Diaghilev
Is true of the normal heart;
For the error bred in the bone
Of each woman and each man
Craves what it cannot have,
Not universal love
But to be loved alone.

From the conservative dark
Into the ethical life
The dense commuters come,
Repeating their morning vow;
“I will be true to the wife,
I’ll concentrate more on my work,“
And helpless governors wake
To resume their compulsory game:
Who can release them now,
Who can reach the deaf,
Who can speak for the dumb?

All I have is a voice
To undo the folded lie,
The romantic lie in the brain
Of the sensual man-in-the-street
And the lie of Authority
Whose buildings grope the sky:
There is no such thing as the State
And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.