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Old men ought to be explorers
here or there does not matter

we must be still and still moving
into another intensity
for a further union, a deeper communion
through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
the wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
of the petrel and the porpoise.

In my end is my beginning.
 

~ T. S. Eliot
excerpt from East Coker V
Four Quartets


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Four Quartets



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via whiskey river 
image via ELEMENOP


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if you want ...

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If you want to become whole, let yourself be partial.

If you want to become straight, let yourself be crooked.

If you want to become full, let yourself be empty.

If you want to be reborn, let yourself die.

If you want to be given everything, give everything up.

—Tao Te Ching

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The Deer

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You never know.

The body of night opens

like a river, it drifts upward like white smoke,

like so many wrappings of mist.

And on the hillside two deer are walking along

just as though this wasn't

the owned, tilled earth of today

but the past.

I did not see them the next day, or the next,

but in my mind's eye -

there they are, in the long grass,

like two sisters.

This is the earnest work. Each of us is given

only so many mornings to do it -

to look around and love

the oily fur of our lives,

the hoof and the grass-stained muzzle.

Days I don't do this

I feel the terror of idleness,

like a red thirst.

Death isn't just an idea.

When we die the body breaks open

like a river;

the old body goes on, climbing the hill.

–Mary Oliver

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Here I am trying to live, or rather,
I am trying to teach the death within me how to live.

—Jean Cocteau



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nirvana

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via the lifting of the veil


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I Ask Percy How I Should Live My Life

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Love, love, love, says Percy.

And hurry as fast as you can
along the shining beach, or the rubble, or the dust.

 

Then, go to sleep.
 

Give up your body heat, your beating heart.
 

Then, trust.

~ Mary Oliver

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thank you, wait - what?

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Children's Talk from Plum Village Online Monastery on Vimeo.

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The Day My Son Died

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The doctor came to tell us that he had died I thought it was just for that day, so I went to bed early and slept well.

But the next morning I heard them talking downstairs; apparently he had still died (even though the doctor wasn’t calling to tell us today).

So it’s gonna be a few days, I figured; we might as well have a funeral. We drove hundreds of miles in dozens of cars finding and losing the way ‘round and ‘round standing ‘round and ‘round, crying, listening, crying listening standing and standing around.

But when it was over he had still died so there was nothing to do but drive home. It took hours and then the refrigerator had broken down. We soon fixed it but he had still died.

And every night after that I slept as long as I could to give him a chance to not have died.

But in the morning they were always downstairs and when I asked if he had still died the answer was always, "Yes."

And so it went into a week and then it went into two weeks. Eventually it went into months.

And it kept going.

It wouldn’t stop.

It kept on having happened.

No matter what I did, it refused to not have happened.

Even if I wrote in my diary about it

Even if I wrote a poem about it

Even if I forgot about it,

IT didn’t forget about it.

Not for a second was it caught off guard.

It was as stubborn as the music of the spheres.

It just wouldn’t let bygones be bygones.

To this day it has happened.

It insists on having happened.

It will never tire of having happened.

Nothing will distract it from having happened.

It was more than one day. It was more than one week.

It was more than months. It was more than years.

And it knew it – ALL the time                 

~ Marion Cohen

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Intro to Yale Course on the nature of Death (Philosophy)

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Metaphysics, values and the nature of death ...

 Many of these lectures are to be found in the sidebar here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2J7wSuFRl8&feature=related

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