Poems Batch 4

Here are a few new poems and some old ones gathered from other posts.

Gazing at the child

That inhabits

Your sleeping face

~~~

Through the window, winter

A falling snowflake

Shakes the house

~~~

The Waterfall

Chaos and bedlam

No droplet misplaced

Pandemonium

Cacophony

Every splash harmony

Even the moment

Of thunderous impact

Silent water

Gives silent birth

To silent spray

The waterfall

Is the water

Is the rocks

Is the trees

The waterfall

Writes this

Reads this

Is this

Is just

A waterfall

~~~

Take heart!

Every moment

A second chance

~~~

My cowardice is in vain

There is nowhere

To hide

~~~

Paddling down the rapids

No time to reflect

On skilful strokes

~~~

In a dreamless sleep

The Rocky Mountains

Stride across the prairies

~~~

Countless cries

One voice

Can’t ignore

~~~

Who is asking this question?

What wants to know?

An ancient tree blooms

~~~

Thinking about thinking about thinking

Ripples on the pond

Where the frog jumped in

~~~

When I fell

You stopped

To help me up

~~~

Morning stretch

Reach out

And touch the moon

You can find other poems at Some Poems, Some More Poems and Another Batch of Poems

Homecoming

Photo courtesy of Marjon Hollander

No matter how far you have gone down the wrong road, turn back!

~ Turkish proverb

Twice in the past week, dharma friends have told me they are making changes in their lives partly because of reading this blog. The first time it happened, I was humbled; the second time was like being hit by a sandbag. Perhaps I was overreacting, but I got choked up and mildly terrified at the same time.

The idea of returning home as an aspect of practice had been percolating on the back burner for a while.  Last week just pushed it to the front.

I think of it as coming back to a path or a state from which we have strayed. Not that straying is necessarily bad - we are the sum total of our strayings, and a little wiser for each one.

Returning home can range between a minor course correction, as in mindfulness practice or zazen when we return to the the present from a daydream, and a 180 degree life-changing about face.

The variations are endless. Here are a few that occurred to me, in no particular order:

• walking past someone in distress, then going back to help
• saying "I'm sorry"
• letting go of a grudge
• forgiving a debt
• doing or saying something kind that you have been putting off, no matter how belated it is
• returning something you stole
• forgiving yourself, no matter what you did
• quitting smoking
• allowing yourself to cry
• deciding to eat a healthy or ethical diet
• cuddling after a fight
• coming out
• deciding to watch TV, then changing your mind and going for a walk
• picking up litter you dropped
• going into rehab or an AA meeting
• sitting down to meditate after deciding to go to bed
• asking for help when you don't want to

Each time, our two old friends, the fruits of practice: wisdom and compassion, seem to play a part. Wisdom to realize we have strayed, and compassion to motivate us with the courage to make the change.

The distance we go down wrong roads varies. There is a saying in recovery circles that some people realize they are riding on a garbage truck, figure out where it's going, and jump off, while others ride it all the way to the end. I suspect that as our practices progress, the distances we tend to stray before returning will become shorter, and more and more, we will see a road leading the wrong way, and just pass it up.

I'm avoiding Zen questions like "are we not home already?" or venturing into places where words don't belong, but I do have a question:

So long as one sentient being is suffering, can we ever truly be home?

Smart People on Dumb Animals

I've already told you what I think about how we treat our mute cousins.

Here is what some really great minds had to say:

Abraham Lincoln:

I am in favor of animal rights as well as human rights. That is the way of a whole human being.

Thomas Edison:

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

Mohandas Gandhi:

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body.

Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy:

A human can be healthy without killing animals for food.  Therefore if he eats meat he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite.

Albert Schweitzer:

There slowly grew up in me an unshakable conviction that we have no right to inflict suffering and death on another living creature, unless there is some unavoidable necessity for it.

Leonardo da Vinci:

The time will come when men such as I will look upon the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men.

Henry David Thoreau:

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race, in its gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals, as surely as the savage tribes have left off eating each other when they came in contact with each other.

Albert Einstein:

Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:

You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity.

Plutarch:

But for the sake of some little mouthful of meat, we deprive a soul of the sun and light, and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy.

Plato:

The gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies they are the trees and the plants and the seeds.

Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple:

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than blacks were made for whites, or women for men.

Cardinal John Henry Newman:

Cruelty to animals is as if humans did not love God.

Sir Paul McCartney:

If slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.

Sir Ian McKellen:

Although he's a vegetarian, I couldn't find any quotes by him on the subject. This one will have to do instead: "I'm Gandalf and Magneto - get over it!"

Franz Kafka:

Now I can look at you in peace; I don’t eat you anymore.

George Bernard Shaw:

Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.

Fred Rogers:

I don't want to eat anything that has a mother.

And on the subject of kindness to animals, let's not forget to be kind to the often mistreated animal wearing our clothes!