And something started in my soul,
fever or forgotten wings,
and I made my own way,
deciphering
that fire,
and I wrote the first faint line,
faint, without substance, pure
nonsense,
pure wisdom
of someone who knows nothing,
and I suddenly saw
the heavens
unfastened
and open.

Pablo Neruda

Walker, your footsteps
are the road, and nothing more.
Walker, there is no road,
the road is made by walking.
Walking you make the road,
and turning to look behind
you see the path you never
again will step upon.
Walker there is no road,
only foam trails on the sea.

Antonio Machado, "Proverbs and songs #29,"
Translated by Willis Barnstone
From Jim Harrison
"In Search of Small Gods"

And you wait, keep waiting for that one thing
which would infinitely enrich your life:
the powerful, uniquely uncommon,
the awakening of dormant stones,
depths that would reveal you to yourself.

In the dusk you notice the book shelves
with their volumes in gold and in brown;
and you think of far lands you journeyed,
of pictures and of shimmering gowns
worn by women you conquered and lost.

And it comes to you all of a sudden:
That was it! And you arise, for you are
aware of a year in your distant past
with its fears and events and prayers.

- Rilke Poems

society
Eddie vedder
Good music; the video is disturbing.
I need to get the sound track, then
maybe I will stop bugging you
with this.

How then was this spiritual training to be given? I made the children memorize and recite hymns, and read to them from books on moral training. But that was far from satisfying me. As I came into closer contact with them I saw that it was not through books that one could impart training of the spirit. Just as physical training was to be imparted through physical exercise even so the training of the spirit was possible only through the exercise of the spirit. And the exercise of the spirit entirely depended on the life and character of the teacher. The teacher had always to be mindful of his p's and q's, whether he was in the midst of his boys or not. It is possible for a teacher situated miles away to affect the spirit of the pupils by his way of living. It would be idle for me, if I were a liar, to teach boys to tell the truth. A cowardly teacher would never succeed in making his boys valiant, and a stranger to self- restraint could never teach his pupils the value os self-restraint. I saw therefore that I must be an eternal object-lesson to the boys and girls living with me. They thus became my teachers, and I learnt I must be good and live straight, if only for their sakes.
(Training of the Spirit)from Gandhiji's Autobiography

Guaranteed - 2nd single from the movie Into The Wild. Winner of a Golden Globe for Best Original Song in a Motion Picture! Music/Lyric: Eddie Vedder
Cool song; I have just got finished reading"Into the Wild".
I haven't seen the movie yet. I don't watch too many movies,
but I am going to look for the soundtrack.
anyway, I really like Pearl Jam.
Eddie Vedders great.
(click here for song)

It's peculiar and unnerving in a way to see so many young people walking around with cellphones and iPods in their ears and so wrapped up in media and video games. It robs them of their self-identity. It's a shame to see them so tuned out to real life. Of course they are free to do that, as if that's got anything to do with freedom. The cost of liberty is high, and young people should understand that before they start spending their life with all those gadgets.
Bob Dylan

Rolling Stone #1078 (14 May 2009), p. 45

Sometimes you say things in songs even if there's a small chance of them being true. And sometimes you say things that have nothing to do with the truth of what you want to say and sometimes you say things that everyone knows to be true. Then again, at the same time, you're thinking that the only truth on earth is that there is no truth on it. Whatever you are saying, you're saying in a ricky-tick way. There's never time to reflect. You stitched and pressed and packed and drove, is what you did.

Bob Dylan

Alice laughed.
"There's no use trying,"
she said: "one can't believe impossible things."
"I daresay you haven't had much practice,"
said the Queen.
"When I was your age,
I always did it for half-an-hour a day.
Why, sometimes I've believed as
many as six impossible things before breakfast."
Lewis Carroll (Through the Looking Glass)

Tim Burton's set to release "Through the looking glass"
March 2010. (click to see trailer)

Father's
Solstice
The longest
Day.
The Druidic masterpiece,
Hewn stone aligned to weave light,
The living tapestry of time.
My physics is rusty,but I believe
That Einstien said that a ray of light
traveling through the universe
would eventually end up where it began.
This would seem to describe a circle.
Oroborus devours itself endlessly.
Hungry for more of itself.

Times gravity circles our life.
Life, hungry Life, wants more of itself.

I hope you are eating well Jim, to celebrate this day
You river born water snake,
I hope you have many more skins to shed,
Before circling back to your beginning.
Odin hung from the tree for
Many days and
Gave
an eye for his
Vision.
Was it worth it?
Your runes carved in stone,
enough to warm
even a
Cold Mountain.
I hope you have a
Castanada sunrise,
on a path with a
Heart.

The only
advice
I can give
to aspiring
writers is
don't do it
unless you're
willing to give
your whole
life to it.
Red wine
and garlic
also helps.

Jim Harrison

We feel poetry as we feel the closeness of a woman, or as we feel a mountain or a bay. If we feel it immediately, why dilute it with other words, which no doubt will be weaker than our feelings?

Jorge Luis Borges

Stephen Mitchell
Tao Te Ching

Your true home is in the here and the now.
It is not limited by time, space,
nationality, or race.
Your true home is not an abstract idea.
It is something you can touch
and live in every moment.
With mindfulness and concentration,
the energies of the Buddha,
you can find your true
home in the full
relaxation of your
mind and body in
the present moment.
No one can take it away from you.
Other people can occupy your country,
they can even put you in prison,
but they cannot take away
your true home
and your
freedom.

Thich Nhat Hanh

A small brass bowl called a Fear Cup.
Engraved with filigree geometric
patterns and some verses
from the Koran arranged
in the form of a flower.
Fill it with water and
leave it outside under
the stars for a night.
Then drink the
water while
praying
that it will alleviate
the pain and cure you.
—John Berger, Hold Everything Dear

The way you put the book together is also like composing tesserae — you’ve got pieces and fragments of documents, from Lao Tzu’s poetry to federal regulations, letters to your brother, newspaper clippings and single sentences of epiphany.


People could be put off by this book, thinking, “Where are the chapters and headings?” But I wanted to put together a book based on faith, and unmoor the whole thing. Headings are contrivances anyway, so what would happen if I created one long, moving narrative? The text becomes its own mosaic.



And the mosaic, or lattice, is a fundamental pattern in nature — it’s a natural way molecules come together, it’s the way honeybees construct their hives, and the way dirt cracks when it dries.


And our lives are a mosaic. We think they are linear and compartmentalized, but we can also see our lives as a pattern filled with such beauty amidst the brokenness. When I look back at the eight years of constructing this book, I couldn’t have imagined how all of these pieces fit together. Nor could my father, when he first read this book. He was really startled. He said, “How can you have prairie dogs in the same book as a discussion of Rwandan genocide survivors?” To me it’s all the same. It’s not that you compare the plight of prairie dogs to the plight of genocide survivors, but recognize the regard with which we view the natural world is, I believe, the regard with which we view each other.


The impulse to exterminate a species is the same impulse that tries to exterminate a certain type of people. In my mind, it’s about cruelty, arrogance and prejudice. But now we are moving toward a heightened regard for the equality of all life. I believe we as a species are evolving toward a very different consciousness that truly will be sustainable. It’s like the land ethic of Aldo Leopold. He said community could be defined to encompass all life forms: plants, animals, rocks, rivers and human beings. It’s that kind of dignity and empathy that, in my mind, creates a grace we are hungry for.

Terry Tempest Williams

The leaf and his body were one. Neither possessed a separate permanent self. Neither could exist independently from the rest of the universe.

Thich Nhat Hanh

You have seen the blossoms among the leaves;
tell me, how long will they stay?
Today they tremble before the hand that picks them;
tomorrow they wait someone's garden broom.

Wonderful is the bright heart of youth,
but with the years it grows old.
Is the world not like these flowers?
Ruddy faces, how can they last?

The collected songs of Cold Mountain.
Translated by Red Pine.

In 2001 I traveled to a remote uninhabited island on the rainy, wind-swept coast of southern Chile. More than one hundred miles from other people, I built a shelter and lived alone for a year to explore the physical, emotional and spiritual effects of deep wilderness solitude. Here, through words, photographs, and videos, you can experience what it's like to live alone in the wilderness.

Solitude is sometimes dark and difficult, but there is deep joy abiding in the flickering stillness. Moments when, as unexpected gift, boundaries and buffers dissolve and All is, as it always was, sacred and alive. Solitude can remind us there is no true spiritual freedom except through surrender to our own lives just as they are - here and now - in each moment.
Robert Kull
author of Solitude: Seeking Wisdom In Extremes
New dimensions radio interview

23-year-old
Japanese savant
named Satoshi Kamiya.
Unaided by software,
he recently produced
what is considered the pinnacle
of the field,
an eight-inch-tall Eastern dragon
with eyes,
teeth,
a curly tongue,
sinuous whiskers,
a barbed tail,
and a thousand
overlapping scales.
The folding alone took 40 hours,
spread out over several months.
(link here)

Ten-thousand pages burn to ash.
Ground with sweet wine's reddest grapes.
With mortar and pestle's volcanic stone,
obsidian handled brush's flaming tip,
gently graces this page with
Love
And stirs the embers of my heart.

Not here and now but now and here.
If you don't know the difference
is a matter of life and death, get down
naked on bare knees in the snow
and study the ticking of your watch.

Jim Harrison

The Swan Will Fly Away All Alone,
Spectacle of the World Will Be a Mere Fair
As the Leaf Falls from the Tree
Is Difficult to Find
Who Knows Where it Will Fall
Once it is Struck with a Gust Of Wind
When Life Span is Complete
Then Listening to Orders, Following Others, Will Be Over
The Messengers of Yama are Very Strong
It's an Entanglement with the Yama
Servant Kabir Praises the Attributes of the Lord
He Finds the Lord Soon
Guru Will Go According to His Doings
The Disciple According to His

- Kabir

Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet a warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,I am given unimaginable gifts;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.

A Spell to Create Pronoia,
by psychotherapist Jennifer Welwood

Through Lakota eyes
Jim Harrison

1. Eat well, of course, avoiding the ninny diets and mincing cuisines that demonize appetite and make unthinkable a tasty snack of hog jowls. We’re all going to die. Might as well enjoy a little fat along the way. (In a 1971 “false memoir” called “Wolf,” written while Harrison was convalescing from a fall off a cliff, he suggested curing heartbreak by broiling a two- to three-pound porterhouse, eating it with your hands, followed by a hot bath in which you consume the best bourbon you can buy until the bottle is empty. Then sleep for a day. Ladies and gentlemen, this works.)

2. Pursue love and sex, no matter discrepancies of desire and age. Romance is worth the humbling. Doing it outdoors on stumps, in clearings and even swarmed by mosquitoes is particularly recommended.

3. Welcome animals, especially bears, ravens and wolves, into your waking and dream life. An acceptance of our common creaturedom is essential not just to the health of the planet but to our ordinary happiness. We are mere participants in natural cycles, not the kings of them.

4. Rather than lighting out for territory, we ought to try living in it.

5. And finally, love the detour. Take the longest route between two points, since the journey is the thing, a notion to which, contaminated by the Zen-fascist slogans of advertising (“just do it!”), we all pay lip service but few of us indulge.

Jim Harrison

Five rules for zestful living.

Extracted from "Returning to Earth" NY Times review.

People perform a vast number of complex practices
hoping to gain spiritual merit as countless as the grains
of sand on the riverbed of the Ganges:
but you are essentially already perfect in every way.
Don’t try and augment perfection with meaningless practice.
If it’s the right occasion to perform them, let practices happen.
When the time has passed, let them stop.
If you are not absolutely sure that mind is the Buddha,
and if you are attached to the ideas of winning merit from spiritual practices, then your thinking is misguided and not in harmony with the Way.
To practice complex spiritual practices is to progress step by step:
but the eternal Buddha is not a Buddha of progressive stages.
Just awaken to the one Mind,
and there is absolutely nothing to be attained.
This is the real Buddha.

Huang Po

Bad Dreams

One day you will look back and laugh at yourself.

You’ll say, “ I can’t believe I was so asleep!

How did I ever forget the truth?

How ridiculous to believe that sadness and sickness

Are anything other than bad dreams.”

Rumi