Poetry for Transformation

Oh mind you carry on your back

Your actions like a heavy sack.

No wonder that your shoulders ache

Another strain's enough to break

Your neck

So drop this stupid load.

This is the last stop on the road where you can find rest

Stay, be Loves guest.

– Kabir (Translated by Robert Bly)

Be at peace with your own soul,

Then heaven and earth will be at peace with you.

Enter eagerly into the treasure

house that is within you,

And you will see the things that are in heaven;

For there is but one single entry to them both.

The ladder that leads to the Kingdom in hidden within your soul...

Dive into yourself and

in your soul you will discover

The stairs by which to ascend.

– Saint Isaac of Nineveh

Stand still.

The trees before you and the bushes beside you are not lost.

Wherever you are is a place called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,

I have made this place around you,

If you leave it you may come back again saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.

– David Wagoner

Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn,

A cool breeze in summer, snow in winter.

If your mind isn't clouded by unnecessary things,

This is the best season of your life.

– Wu-men

Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.

It doesn't matter.

Ours is not a caravan of despair.

Come, even if you have broken your vow

a thousand times

Come, yet again, come, come.

– Inscribed at the tomb of Jelaluddin Rumi

"You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world,

that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature,

but perhaps this very holding back

is the one suffering you could avoid".

– Franz Kafka

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom

– Victor Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning)

"Let the Soul banish all that disturbs;

Let the Body that envelopes it be still,

And all the frettings of the Body,

And all that surrounds it.

Let Earth and Sea and Air be still

And Heaven itself.

And then let the Body think

Of the Spirit as streaming, pouring,

Rushing and shining into it from

All sides while it stands quiet."

– Plotinus (205)

Now we will count to twelve

and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,

let's not speak in any language,

let's stop for a second,

and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment

without rush, without engines;

we would all be together

in a sudden strangeness.

If we were not so single-minded

about keeping our lives moving,

and for once could do nothing,

perhaps a huge silence

might interrupt this sadness

of never understanding ourselves

and of threatening ourselves

with death.

Perhaps the earth can teach us

as when everything seems dead in winter

and later proves to be alive.

Now I'll count up to twelve

and you keep quiet and I will go.

– Pablo Neruda (Extravagaria translated by Alastair Reid)

The birds have vanished into the sky,

and now the last cloud drains away.

We sit together, the mountain and me,

until only the mountain remains.

– Li Po

The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day

runs through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.

It is the same life that shoots in joy

through the dust of the earth in numberless blades of grass

and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves and flowers.

It is the same life that is rocked

in the ocean-cradle of birth and of death in ebb and in flow.

I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life

and my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this moment.

– Rabindranath Tagore

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -

that perches in the soul -

and sings the tune without the words

And never stops at all. /p>

– Emily Dickinson

There is nothing to save, now all is lost,

but a tiny core of stillness in the heart

like the eye of a violet.

– D.H. Lawrence (Nothing to Save)

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