fork in the road

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The experience of the gap between the cessation of one moment and the arising of the next is nothing less than the “moment of truth” that will determine our direction and shape our future experience.

In Tibetan, we say that in each moment we are at a fork in the road.

Whichever fork or direction we take, it is important to realize that all appearances are, ultimately speaking, aspects of the nature of our own mind. They do not exist in a manner that is independent of our minds.


—Dzogchen Ponlop

Mind Beyond Death

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johnsparker
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I am involved

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No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
 
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
 
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
 
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
 
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.

Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.


–John Donne

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Robert Mapplethorpe
Waves (Left, Center, Right) 1980
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It Was Like This: You Were Happy

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It was like this:
you were happy, then you were sad,
then happy again, then not.

It went on.
You were innocent or you were guilty.
Actions were taken, or not.

At times you spoke, at other times you were silent.
Mostly, it seems you were silent—what could you say?

Now it is almost over.
Like a lover, your life bends down and kisses your life.

It does this not in forgiveness—
between you, there is nothing to forgive—
but with the simple nod of a baker at the moment
he sees the bread is finished with transformation.

Eating, too, is a thing now only for others.

It doesn’t matter what they will make of you
or your days: they will be wrong,
they will miss the wrong woman, miss the wrong man,
all the stories they tell will be tales of their own invention.

Your story was this: you were happy, then you were sad,
you slept, you awakened.
Sometimes you ate roasted chestnuts, sometimes persimmons.


–Jane Hirshfield
for J.S.

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words

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Pantheist, excerpt

 

 

 

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Yea, I am one with all I see,

With wind and wave, with pine and palm;

Their very elements in me

Are fused to make me what I am.

Through me their common life-stream flows,

And when I yield this human breath,

In leaf and blossom, bud and rose,

Live on I will….

There is no Death.


–Robert Service

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your homecoming will be my homecoming

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your homecoming will be my homecoming-
my selves go with you,only i remain;
a shadow phantom effigy or seeming
(an almost someone always who’s noone)
a noone who,till their and your returning,
spends the forever of his loneliness
dreaming their eyes have opened to your mourning

feeling their stars have risen through your skies:
so,in how merciful love’s own name,linger
no more than selfless i can quite endure
the absence of that moment when a stranger
takes in his arms my very lifes who’s you
-when all fears hopes beliefs doubts disappear.
Everywhere and joy’s perfect wholeness we’re.


–E. E. Cummings

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transformed into arrows

 

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Transformed into arrows
let's all go, body and soul!
Piercing the air
let's go, body and soul,
with no way of return,
transfixed there,
rotting with the pain of striking home,
never to return.

One last breath! Now, let's quit the string,
throwing away like rags
all we've had for decades
all we've enjoyed for decades
all we've piled up for decades,
happiness,
the lot.
Transformed into arrows
let's all go, body and soul!

The air is shouting! Piercing the air
let's go, body, and soul!
In dark daylight the target is rushing towards us.
Finally, as the target topples
in a shower of blood,
let's all just once as arrows
bleed.

Never to return!
Never to return!

Hail, arrows, our nation's arrows!
Hail, Warriors! Spirits of the fallen!


–Ko Un
Brother Anthony translation

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