Salafi and Sufi

"If Salafis are calling you a Sufi and Sufis are calling you a Salafi,

then you are in a good place to be"

... Hamza Yusuf Hanson

But In Ourselves

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

... Julius Caesar, William Shakespeare

Whoever Brought Me Here Will Have To Take Me Home

All day I think about it,

then at night I say it.

"Where did I come from,

and what am I supposed to be doing?"

I have no idea.

My soul is from elsewhere,

I'm sure of that.

This drunkenness

began in some other tavern.

When I get back around to that place,

I'll be completely sober.

Meanwhile, I'm like a bird

from another continent, siting in this aviary.

The day is coming when I fly off,

but who is it now in my ear, who hears my voice?

Who says words with my mouth?

Who looks out with my eyes? What is the soul?

I cannot stop asking.

If I could taste one sip of an answer,

I could break out of this prison for drunks.

I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.

Whoever brought me here will have to take me Home.

... Mevlana Rumi

For Nothing

Earth a flower

A phlox on the steep

slopes of light

hanging over the vast

solid spaces

small rotten crystals;

salts.

Earth a flower

by a gulf where a raven

flaps by once

a glimmer, a color

forgotten as all

falls away.

A flower

for nothing;

an offer;

no taker;

Snow-trickle, feldspar, dirt.

... Turtle Island, Gary Snyder

Made A Beggar Of Me ...

A beggar smiled at me and offered me alms,

In a dream last night, my heart sprang with delight.

His beauty and grace which shone from his tattered,

Presence took me by storm until I woke at dawn.

His poverty was riches, it covered my body in silk.

In that dream I heard the beckoning sighs of lovers.

I heard soft cries of agonized joy saying: "Take this,

Drink and be complete!" I saw before me a ring,

Jeweled in poverty and then it nested on my ear.

From the root of my surging soul a hundred tremors,

Rose as I was taken and pinned down by the surging sea.

The heaven groaned with bliss and made a beggar of me.

... Mevlana Rumi

Butterflies

I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days - three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain ...

... John Keats

Make Me Pure

Garden Of Love

I laid me down upon a bank,

Where Love lay sleeping;

I heard among the rushes dank

Weeping, weeping.

Then I went to the heath and the wild,

To the thistles and thorns of the waste;

And they told me how they were beguiled,

Driven out, and compelled to the chaste.

I went to the Garden of Love,

And saw what I never had seen;

A Chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

And the gates of this Chapel were shut

And "Thou shalt not," writ over the door;

So I turned to the Garden of Love

That so many sweet flowers bore.

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tombstones where flowers should be;

And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars my joys and desires.

... William Blake

Only To The Door

Belief brings me close to You:

but only to the door.

It is only by disappearing into

Your mystery

that I will come in.

... Hakim Sanā'ī Ghaznavi

Where Is The Life We Have Lost In Living?

'where is the life we have lost in living?
where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
where is the knowledge we have lost in information?'

... T S Eliot

As If We Never Said Goodbye

But Still Bless Me Anyway...

"Nothing's lost forever. In this world, there is a kind of painful progress. Longing for what we've left behind, and dreaming ahead"

"I've lived through such terrible times and there are people who live through much worse. But you see them living anyway. When they're more spirit than body, more sores than skin, when they're burned and in agony, when flies lay eggs in the corners of the eyes of their children - they live. Death usually has to take life away. I don't know if that's just the animal. I don't know if it's not braver to die, but I recognize the habit; the addiction to being alive. So we live past hope. If I can find hope anywhere, that's it, that's the best I can do. It's so much not enough. It's so inadequate. But still bless me anyway. I want more life"

... Angels In America, Tony Kushner

Live Like We're Dying

Our hearts are hungry for a food that won’t come

And we could make a feast from these crumbs

And we’re all staring down the barrel of a gun

So if your life flashed before you, what would you wish you would’ve done?

Well, if your plane fell out of the skies

Who would you call with your last goodbyes?

Should be so careful who we left out of our lives

And when we long for absolution, there’ll be no one on the line

Yeah… we gotta start lookin’ at the hands of the time we’ve been given here

If this is all we got then we gotta start thinking

If every second count on a clock that’s ticking

Gotta live like we’re dying

We only got 86 400 seconds in a day

To turn it all around or to throw it all away

We gotta tell ‘em that we love ‘em while we got the chance to say,

Gotta live like we’re dying

Cinema Paradiso: Love Theme

For The Sake Of Those In Need

It was Mary's painful need that made the infant Jesus

begin to speak from the cradle.

Whatever grew has grown for the sake of those in need,

so that a seeker might find the thing he sought.

If God Most High has created the heavens,

He has created them for the purpose of satisfying needs.

Wherever a pain is, that's where the cure goes.

wherever poverty is, that's where provision goes.

Wherever a difficult question is,

that's where the answer goes;

wherever a ship is, water goes to it.

Don't seek the water; increase your thirst,

so water may gush forth from above and below.

Until the tender-throated babe is born,

how should the milk for it

flow from the mother's breast?

... Mathnawi, Mevlana Rumi

The Scarlet Letter

"Who is to say what is a sin

in God's eyes?"

"How close they are,

love and hate.

We're no less bound by one

than the other"

... The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Twilight Saga: New Moon

"Nothing lingered here. Nothing more than the memories that I could have called back whenever I wanted to, if I was ever willing to endure the corresponding pain—the pain that had me now, had me cold. There was nothing special about this place without him. I wasn't exactly sure what I'd hoped to feel here, but the meadow was empty of atmosphere, empty of everything, just like everything else"

"As much as I struggled not to think of him, I did not struggle to forget. I worried—late in the night, when the exhaustion of sleep deprivation broke down my defenses—that it was all slipping away. That my mind was a sieve, and I would someday not be able to remember the precise color of his eyes, the feel of his cool skin, or the texture of his voice. I could not think of them, but I must remember them. Because there was just one thing that I had to believe to be able to live—I had to know that he existed. That was all. Everything else I could endure. So long as he existed"

"Before you, Bella, my life was like a moonless night. Very dark, but there were stars—points of light and reason... And then you shot across my sky like a meteor. Suddenly everything was on fire; there was brilliancy, there was beauty. When you were gone, when the meteor had fallen over the horizon, everything went black. Nothing had changed, but my eyes were blinded by the light. I couldn't see the stars anymore. And there was no more reason for anything"

"After all the thousand times I’ve told you I love you, how could you let one word break your faith in me? I could see it in your eyes, that you honestly believed that I didn’t want you anymore"

Sophie's Choice

The film that made me love Meryl Streep for the first time, and after all these years, still remain one of the best movies ever.

I Could Not Stop For Death

Because I could not stop for Death,

He kindly stopped for me;

The carriage held but just ourselves

And Immortality.

We slowly drove, he knew no haste,

And I had put away

My labor, and my leisure too,

For his civility.

We passed the school, where children strove

At recess, in the ring;

We passed the fields of gazing grain,

We passed the setting sun.

Or rather, he passed us;

The dews grew quivering and chill,

For only gossamer my gown,

My tippet only tulle.

We paused before a house that seemed

A swelling of the ground;

The roof was scarcely visible,

The cornice but a mound.

Since then 'tis centuries, and yet each

Feels shorter than the day

I first surmised the horses' heads

Were toward eternity.

... Emily Dickinson

There Is A Holiness To The Heart's Affections...

"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness"

"I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of imagination - what the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth - whether it existed before or not - for I have the same idea of all our passions as of love: they are all, in their sublime, creative of essential beauty"

"For myself I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form: I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I almost wish we were butterflies and liv'd but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain"

“I had such a dream last night. I was floating above the trees, with my lips connected to that of a beautiful figure”

"Was it a vision, or a waking dream?

Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?"

"Here Lies One Whose Name Was Writ In Water"

... John Keats (1795-1821)

I love Keats ...

I Am Vertical

But I would rather be horizontal.

I am not a tree with my root in the soil

Sucking up minerals and motherly love

So that each March I may gleam into leaf,

Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed

Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,

Unknowing I must soon unpetal.

Compared with me, a tree is immortal

And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,

And I want the one’s longevity and the other’s daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,

The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.

I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.

Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping

I must most perfectly resemble them—

Thoughts gone dim.

It is more natural to me, lying down.

Then the sky and I are in open conversation,

And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:

Then the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

... Sylvia Plath

The Most Difficult Task That Has Been Entrusted To Us

"It is also good to love: because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being: that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation..."

... Letters To A Young Poet, Letter 7, Rainer Maria Rilke

Change

If you knew that you would die today,

Saw the face of God and love,

Would you change?

Would you change?

If you knew that love can break your heart

When you're down so low you cannot fall

Would you change?

Would you change?

How bad, how good does it need to get?

How many losses? How much regret?

What chain reaction would cause an effect?

Makes you turn around,

Makes you try to explain,

Makes you forgive and forget,

Makes you change?

Makes you change?

Make Me An Instrument Of Your Peace

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace;

where there is hatred, let me sow love;

where there is injury, pardon;

where there is doubt, faith;

where there is despair, hope;

where there is darkness, light;

and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,

grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;

to be understood, as to understand;

to be loved, as to love;

for it is in giving that we receive,

it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,

and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.

Of Becoming

Nietzsche's account of the eternal return presupposes a critique of the terminal or equilibrium state. Nietzsche says that if the universe had an equilibrium position, if becoming had an end or final state, it would already have been attained. but the present moment, as the passing moment, proves that it is not attained and therefore that an equilibrium of forces is not possible. But why would equilibrium, the terminal state, have to have been attained if it were possible? By virtue of what Nietzsche calls the infinity of past time. The infinity of past time means that becoming cannot have started to become, that it is not something that has become. But, not being something that has become it cannot be a becoming something. Not having become, it would already be what it is becoming - if it were becoming something. That is to say, past time being infinite, becoming would have attained its final state if it had one. And, indeed, saying that becoming would have attained its final state if it had one is the same as saying that it would not have left its initial state if it had one. If becoming becomes something why has it not finished becoming long ago? If it is something which has become then how could it have started to become? "If the universe were capable of permanence and fixity, and it there were in its entire course a single moment of being in the strict sense it could no longer have anything to do with becoming, thus one could no longer think or observe any becoming whatever." This is the view that Nietzsche claims to have found "in earlier thinkers." Plato said that is everything that becomes can never avoid the present then, as soon as it is there, it ceases to become and is then what it was in the process of becoming. "But each time I encountered this thought from antiquity," Nietzsche comments, "it was determined by other, generally theological, ulterior motives." By persisting in demanding how becoming could have started and why it has not yet finished, the philosophers of antiquity are false tragics, invoking hubris, crime and punishment. With the exception of Heraclitus, they did not face up to the thought of pure becoming, nor the opportunity for this thought. That the present moment is not a moment of being or of present "in the strict sense," that it is the passing moment, forces us to think of becoming, but to think of it precisely as what could not have started, and cannot finish, becoming.

How does the thought of pure becoming serve as a foundation for the eternal return? All we need to do to think this thought is to stop believing in being as distinct from and opposed to becoming or to believe in the being of becoming itself. What is the being of that which becomes, of that which neither starts nor finishes becoming? Returning is the being of that which becomes (Revenir, l'etre de ce qui devient). "That everything recurs is the closest proximation of a world of becoming to a world of being - high point of meditation." This problem for the meditation must be formulated in yet another way; how can the past be constituted in time? How can the present pass? The passing moment could never pass if it were not already past and yet to come - at the same time as being present. If the present did not pass of its own accord, if it had to wait for a new present in order to become past, the past in general would never be constituted in time, and this particular present would not pass. We cannot wait, the moment must be simultaneously present and past, present and yet to come, in order for it to pass (and to pass for the sake of other moments.) The present must coexist with itself as past and yet to come. The synthetic relation of the moment to itself as present, past and future grounds it relation to other moments. The eternal return is thus an answer to the problem of passage. And in this sense it must not be interpreted as the return of something that is, that is "one" or the "same." We misinterpret the expression "eternal return" if we understand it as "return to the same." It is not being that returns but rather the returning itself that constitutes being insofar as it is affirmed of becoming and of that which passes. It is not some one thing which returns but rather returning itself is the one thing which is affirmed of diversity or multiplicity. In other words, identity in the eternal return does not describe the nature of that which returns but, on the contrary, the fact of returning for what it differs. This is why the eternal return must be thought of as a synthesis; a synthesis of time and its dimensions, a synthesis of diversity and its reproduction, a synthesis of becoming and the being which is affirmed in becoming, a synthesis of double affirmation. Thus the eternal return itself does not depend on a principle of identity but on one which must, in all respects, fulfill the requirements of a truly sufficient reason.

Why is mechanism such a bad interpretation of the eternal return? Because it does not necessarily or directly imply the eternal return. Because it only entails the false consequences of a final state. This final state is held to be identical to the initial state and, to this extent, it is concluded that the mechanical process passes through the same set of differences again. The cyclical hypothesis, so heavily criticised by Nietzsche, arises in this way. Because we cannot understand how this process can possibly leave the initial state, reemerge from the final state, or pass through the same set of differences again and yet not even have the power to pass once through whatever differences there are. The cyclical hypothesis is incapable of accounting for two things - the diversity of co-existing cycles and, above all, the existence of diversity within the cycle. This is why we can only understand the eternal return as the expression of a principle which serves as an explanation of diversity and reproduction, of difference and its repetition. Nietzshce presents this principle as one of his most important philosophical discoveries. He calls it will to power. By will to power "I express the characteristic that cannot be thought out of the mechanistic order without thinking away this order itself."

... Nietzsche And Philosophy, Gilles Deleuze

The Fruits Are First In Our Thoughts

The fruits are first in our thoughts,

but only in the end

are they truly seen.

When you have done the work

and planted the tree,

when the fruit appears,

you read the first words.

... Mathnawi I: 971-972, Rumi

Feels Like Home

Living In The Layers

I have walked through many lives,

some of them my own,

and I am not who I was,

though some principle of being

abides, from which I struggle

not to stray.

When I look behind,

as I am compelled to look

before I can gather strength

to proceed on my journey,

I see the milestones dwindling

toward the horizon

and the slow fires trailing

from the abandoned camp-sites,

over which scavenger angels

wheel on heavy wings.

Oh, I have made myself a tribe

out of my true affections,

and my tribe is scattered!

How shall the heart be reconciled

to its feast of losses?

In a rising wind

the manic dust of my friends,

those who fell along the way,

bitterly stings my face.

Yet I turn, I turn,

exulting somewhat,

with my will intact to go

wherever I need to go,

and every stone on the road

precious to me.

In my darkest night,

when the moon was covered

and I roamed through wreckage,

a nimbus-clouded voice

directed me:

"Live in the layers,

not on the litter."

Though I lack the art

to decipher it,

no doubt the next chapter

in my book of transformations

is already written.

I am not done with my changes.

... The Collected Poems, Stanley Kunitz

I Carry Your Heart With Me

I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)

I am never without it (anywhere I go you go, my dear;

and whatever is done by only me is your doing, my darling)

I fear no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)

I want no world (for beautiful, you are my world, my true)

and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows

higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)

and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart:

I carry your heart (I carry it in my heart)

... E E Cummings

Until The Hour Of Separation

“And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation”

... Kahlil Gibran