The Red Poppy

The great thing
is not having
a mind. Feelings:
oh, I have those; they
govern me. I have
a lord in heaven
called the sun, and open
for him, showing him
the fire of my own heart, fire
like his presence.
What could such glory be
if not a heart? Oh my brothers and sisters,
were you like me once, long ago,
before you were human? Did you
permit yourselves
to open once, who would never
open again? Because in truth
I am speaking now
the way you do. I speak
because I am shattered.

Louise Gluck

looking at the ephemeral butterfly. looking at the ephemeral world through the holes on its wings.

an insignificant puddle, muddy water and rotting leaves - they were once beautiful, green, then yellow and now... or were they? were they beautiful or are they still ... incredibly, intensely, impossibly ... beautiful?

when i notice the sky's reflection, the water is no longer muddy. when i see the still vibrant colors, the leaves are no longer rotting.

did the puddle suddenly change its appearance? or did i open my mind to its beauty?

resting mind.
quiet after storm? calm before tempest?

Coming empty-handed,
going empty-handed –
that is human.
When you are born, where do you come from?
When you die, where do you go?
Life is like a floating cloud
which appears.
Death is like a floating cloud
which disappears.
The floating cloud itself
Originally does not exist.
Life and death, coming and going,
are also like that.
But there is one thing
which always remains clear.
It is pure and clear,
not depending on life and death.

Then what is the one
pure and clear thing?

~ancient Zen poem

" madness is what i'll talk to you about - madness burdened with memories and with eyes like everyone else's, though in my story the eyes are like those of a smiling child trembling with fear.

you'll ask: is a madman who knows he's mad really mad? or: in a mad world, isn't the madman who is aware of his madness the only sane person?....if you had to describe a madman, how would you portray him?...

....how can we talk about madness except by using the specific language of those who carry it within themselves? what if i told you that within each of us, whether in good health or bad, there is a hidden zone, a secret region that opens out onto madness? one misstep, one unfortunate blow of fate, is enough to make us slip or flounder with no hope of ever rising up again.

..."

elie wiesel "a mad desire to dance", tr. by catherine temerson ("un desir fou de danser")

as i listened to an excellent lecture, in a discussion on anger tree, i thought that I would not list the fruits of the tree as all the negative feelings. personally, when listening to an angry person, even if this person is directing his or her anger at me particularly, i feel compassion, along with other feelings [mentioned by the participants of the workshop]. just wanted to add, that compassion is one of the valued, unusual, under-appreciated responses to anger.

When people speak badly about you, you should respond in this way: Keep a steady heart and do not reply with harsh words. Practice letting go of resentment, and accept that another's hostility is the spur to your understanding. Be kind, adopt a generous standpoint, treat your enemy as a friend, and suffuse your world with affectionate thoughts, far-reaching and widespread, limitless and free from hate.

Buddha

Yesterday - Charles Aznavour

Yesterday when I was young
The taste of life was sweet as rain upon my tongue
I teased at life as if it were a foolish game
The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame

The thousand dreams I dreamed
The splendid things I planned I always built, alas
On weak and shifting sand
I lived by night and shunned the naked light of day
And only now I see how the years ran away

Yesterday when I was young
So many drinking songs were waiting to be sung
So many wayward pleasures layed in store for me
And so much pain my dazzled eyes refused to see

I ran so fast that time and youth at last ran out
I never stopped to think what life was all about
And every conversation I can now recall concerned itself with me
And nothing else at all

Yesterday the moon was blue

And every crazy day brought something new to do
I used my magic age as if it were a wand
And never saw the waste and emptiness beyond

The game of love I played with arrogance and pride
And every flame I lit too quickly, quickly died
The friends I made all seemed somehow to drift away
And only I am left on stage to end the play

There are so many songs in me that won't be sung
I feel the bitter taste of tears upon my tongue
The time has come for me to pay
For Yesterday When I was young...

"He was by divine choice only a poet and often unhappy but with him one had the feeling that he was catching every minute as it flew and turning it upside down to expose its happy side."

Lawrence Durrell "Alexandria Quartet. Justine"

Karela is a bitter vegetable widely used in cuisines across Asia. The taste is bitter. Very bitter. It is eaten raw, stuffed with green mango or few other things, fried with spices, pickled, boiled. 

An unexpected perk to the brave who bites into it is the sweet, crunchy, very refreshing aftertaste. It leaves one wishing for more. It keeps me going to the Indian store on the delivery days to buy the freshest one possible. I developed my own way of choosing the ones I want from the box of many, different in size, ripeness and the color. After choosing a few, I then begin to look for my favourite one, the karela that is ripe and soft. The one with yellowish undertones in its greenness. I open this one at home right away or save for a student to see. 

Life is karela. Bitter, very bitter. It is lived raw, stuffed with green mango or few other things, fried with spices, pickled, boiled.  It takes just a few bites into the bitter flesh to learn about the refreshing, clean, sweet aftertaste. To recognize the sweetness in the bitter even before biting into it. To make the biting all the more wanted, experienced to the fullest, sweet and happy.

The opened one, with crimson red seeds inside is like a boat. A boat that sails amidst the gentle or fierce waves of life. Look at it, feel it, draw it, write a poem about it. Live it one moment at a time.

"The meaning of life is to love others as we love ourselves and to serve others"

Amma  (Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, Hindu spiritual leader)

If you never experience both happiness and sorrow,

You will never know the difference between the two.

                                                              Tibetan Proverb

Wei Wu Wei

Why are you unhappy?

Because 99.9 per cent

Of everything you think,

And of everything you do,

Is for yourself —

And there isn't one.

— Ask The Awakened

the Door

I am standing in front of the imaginary door. This door consoles me when I think that I can not go on anymore...with whatever "terrible" things that happen to me...

On my side of the door there is me and passions that eat me up alive sometimes, there is work and everyday routine, that drives me crazy sometimes - making me just plain happy other times.

Behind the door is the cessation, the end of what I think bothers me. There is calm of no thinking and no deciding. There is turbulence of my inner world, there is torment of having opened that door and entering, of knowing that I opened it too soon.

On the door there is a magical screen. I see happenings in the world around me, the happy and the sad events. I see other people, animals, plants going about their daily, hourly lives. Since it is the magical screen, I don't have to hear, feel or smell what I see. I can taste, though, taste life as it is - as bitter and as spicy, sour taste of grief, sweet of skies and cold of rushing rivers.

Watching life as it happens this moment or thinking about what I just saw that already changed for the next thing... Watching and tasting all that arouses a powerful urge in me - to stay on this side and turn around and look for those that I might help if only a little bit.

I know there are many doors like that in the world. As many as there are people.

from Henry Miller

"everybody becomes a healer the moment he forgets about himself"

to be happy

I can accept and tolerate anybody. I can't accept myself.

My student told me this today during a quiet moment before class. She brought me her favourite book to read, showed me a self-made book of her poems and ....she talked to me.

I can't accept myself.

Accepting myself would mean tolerating my beliefs, looks, actions... Who creates all those?
My looks are given to me at birth, there is little I can do to change them besides staying "in shape"...
My beliefs develop as I grow in my lifetime..
My actions result from my choices and bring consequences, immediate or long term...

My student is in pain because she can not accept herself.

I thought that a person who needs reassurance in such matters would likely believe someone he or she trusts as one trusts a Teacher. Connecting to my student as a teacher would give me a tremendously rare chance to truly relieve her suffering.

It is important for some of us to know that we are OK.
Some of us developed an idea that it is not important whether or not one is OK, because being good means being yourself in the only way that it is possible to be oneself: to be born and grow absorbing beliefs and choosing actions.

Acceptance without exception.

"To accept others and not to accept oneself" is not so different from "to accept oneself and not to accept others".

A person knowing, believing that one is same as others and others are same as one,
will truly accept others as oneself and oneself as others.

As a teacher I need to point out to my student that we are all basically the same.

I will start from this.

I will start tomorrow.
.

Helping others and ourselves is a lighthouse.

No matter how dark the depression, there is a candle that lights the way out.
This candle, or lantern, shows us the way to go. It takes us along the path step by step.

Seeing other people's pain at a time when we are in pain ourselves is crucial to overcoming our own tough times. It is tempting to say, that since each moment of our life is unique, we can only pay undivided attention to one thing at a time, so it's up to us, whether we decide to see someone else's pain or our own.

It seems though that in dealing with one's own depression two aspects need to be attended to.
First one is feeling our own pain. Feeling this pain to the fullest, acknowledging it, respecting it.
I tell myself at times like these: "So that's how it feels."
Second one is opening our eyes to pain of others. Is it someone in my family, my neighbourhood? Is it a homeless person in a city, or someone starving in Darfur?

Feeling own pain helps us move towards healing.
Seeing other's pain hopefully moves us to feel compassion and to help them.
Helping others puts our own pain out of the spotlight. This, in turn helps us work on the "solution" of our problems.

When going gets tough, why not look around for those who have it tougher?

Helping others and ourselves is a lighthouse for travelers on depression's dark roads.

stand up comedian ?

These are all synonyms : clown, joker, comedian, fool, jester, entertainer, slapstick comedian, comic, mess about, wit, buffoon, artiste, humorist...

Those who identify with one of these, tell me - which one of these are you?

(just a joke, folks)

Always wanted to figure out how do clowns, comedians etc manage to be happy all the time?

Are they really, really happy and thus make all around laugh?

Are they laughing because they can't help it, whether or not they are happy?

Did their parents want them to become jesters, so here they are?

My feeling is, that clowns carry the world on their shoulders, making us laugh in our happy and not so happy moments, helping us see the way through life laughing :)

Hope and Fear

We hope, we hope, we hope.
We hope when we rise
We hope when we shower
And when we work
We hope when we party,
We hope when we meet,
on vacation, in a dream
We hope while raising kids
We hope looking in a mirror
We hope mindfully
We hope habitually, not realizing it.

We fear the day will not unfold as we'd like
We fear our expectations at work will not materialize
We fear the party will not go as we planned
We fear a good relationship will not last forever
and a bad one will be painful to end
We fear aging and loneliness
We fear consciously
We fear subconsciously
We fear, we fear, we fear

Imagine living beyond hope and fear that comes with it.

Flowing with what happens.

Having wishes

while staying free of expectations.

Planning future

without getting uptight about the outcome.

Acting out of generosity

rather then desire of reward.

Can we give it a try?