 |
| Marie Bortolotto 2023 |
Tuesday, November 28, 2023
Words by Henry Miller, Sexus
“The great ones do not set up offices, charge fees, give lectures, or write books. Wisdom is silent, and the most effective propaganda for truth is the force of personal example. The great ones attract disciples, lesser figures whose mission is to preach and to teach. These are gospelers who, unequal to the highest task, spend their lives in converting others. The great ones are indifferent, in the profoundest sense. They don’t ask you to believe: they electrify you by their behavior. They are the awakeners. What you do with your petty life is of no concern to them. What you do with your life is only of concern to you, they seem to say. In short, their only purpose here on earth is to inspire. And what more can one ask of a human being than that?”
Saturday, November 11, 2023
Reasoning comes to an end
a thought breaks in the middle
all day nothing but time
undisturbed all year
clouds come and go on a deserted mountain
in a clear sky the moon is a lonesome O
even if yoga or alchemy worked
it couldn’t match knowing Zen
- Shiwu Qingqong (Stonehouse) 1272 - 1352
from Dancing with the Dead: The Essential Red Pine 2023
Copper Canyon Press/by Red Pine/Bill Porter
Friday, September 1, 2023
 | |||||
| Marie Bortolotto 2023 The First Words The first words got polluted Like river water in the morning Flowing with the dirt Of blurbs and the front pages. My only drink is meaning from the deep brain, What the birds and the grass and the stones drink. Let everything flow Up to the four elements, Up to water and earth and fire and air. Seamus Heaney, Poet |
Saturday, August 5, 2023
A scattering
by Christopher Reid
I expect you've seen the footage: elephants,
finding the bones of one of their own kind
dropped by the wayside, picked clean by the scavengers
and the sun, then untidily left there,
decide to do something about it.
But what, exactly? They can't, of course,
reassemble the old elephant magnificence;
they can't even make a tidier heap. But they can
hook up bones with their trunk and chuck them
this way and that way. So they do.
And their scattering has an air
of deliberate ritual, ancient and necessary.
Their great size, too, makes them the very
embodiment of grief, while the play of their trunks
lends sprezzatura.
Elephants puzzling out
the anagram of their own anatomy,
elephants at their abstracted lamentations -
may their spirit guide me as I place
my own sad thoughts in new, hopeful arrangements.
I love this poem by Christopher Reid!
You'll find it in his collection of poems -- A Scattering -- which was written as a tribute to his wife who died.
Thursday, June 22, 2023
Wishing to cultivate the earth,
I cultivate understanding,
In vain I wield my hoe
And sharpen my sickle.
The earth languishes, grasses and trees wither,
Gazing at heaven and earth and heaving a long sigh,
I am filled with despair.
When will
That Garden of Eden
Bloom again?
Masanobu Fukuoka -- Japanese farmer and philosopher (1913 - 2008)
Your heart is full of fertile seeds
waiting to sprout.
Morihei Ueshiba - philosopher, martial artist and author (1883 - 1969)
Sunday, June 11, 2023
The Rainmaker
A story told by Richard Wilhelm, Chinese scholar and theologian to Carl Jung:
In the ancient Chinese province of Kiaochou there was a drought so severe that many people and animals were dying. All the religious leaders attempted to solicit relief from their gods: the Catholics made processions, the Protestants said their prayers, and the Chinese fired guns to frighten away the demons of the drought. Finally, out of desperation, the town’s people called upon the Rainmaker, and from a province far away there appeared a shriveled up, old man. The old man immediately requested a small hut on the outskirts of town, where he locked himself up for three days and nights in solitude, and then, on the fourth day, it rained. In fact, it snowed at a time when snow was not expected.
Wilhelm, who was allowed to interview the Rainmaker, asked him how he made the rain, and the old man responded by exclaiming that he did not make the rain, that he was not responsible! Not satisfied with this response, Wilhelm pressed on, “Then what did you do for these three days?” And the old man explained that he had come from another province where things were in order with nature, but here, in Kiaochou, things were out of order, and so he himself was also out of order. Thus, it took three days to regain Tao and then naturally, the rain came.
 |
| Marie Bortolotto |
