Wisdom of the Night Sky

"If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these preachers of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile."

-- Ralph Waldo Emerson --

 * * * * * * * * * * * * *

In the Wide Awe and Wisdom of the Night

In the wide awe and wisdom of the night
I saw the round world rolling on its way,
Beyond significance of depth or height,
Beyond the interchange of dark and day.
I marked the march to which is set no pause,
And that stupendous orbit, round whose rim
The great sphere sweeps, obedient unto laws
That utter the eternal thoughts of Him.

I compassed time, outstripped the starry speed,
And in my still soul apprehended space,
Till, weighing laws which these but blindly heed,
At last I came before Him face to face -
And knew the Universe of no such span
As the august infinitude of man.

-- Sir Charles G. D. Roberts --

Night On The Prairies

Night on the prairies,

The supper is over, the fire on the ground burns low,

The wearied emigrants sleep, wrapt in their blankets

I walk by myself - I stand and look at the stars, which I think now I never realized before.

Now I absorb immortality and peace,
I admire death and test propositions.

How plenteous! how spiritual! how resumé!
The same old man and soul - the same old aspirations, and the same content.
I was thinking the day most splendid till I saw what the not-day exhibited,
I was thinking this globe enough till there sprang out so noiseless around me myriads of other globes.

Now while the great thoughts of space and eternity fill me I will measure myself by them,
And now touch'd with the lives of other globes arrived as far along as those of the earth,
Or waiting to arrive, or pass'd on farther than those of the earth,
I henceforth no more ignore them than I ignore my own life,
Or the lives of the earth arrived as far as mine, or wanting to arrive.

O I see now that life cannot exhibit all to me, as the day cannot,
I see that I am to wait for what will be exhibited by death.

-- Walt Whitman --

Sheperds and Stars
(from, "The Land")

Shepherds and stars are quiet with the hills,
There is a bond between the men who go
From youth about the business of the earth,
And the earth they serve, their cradle and their grave;
Stars with the seasons alter; only he
Who wakeful follows the pricked revolving sky,
Turns concordant with the earth while others sleep:
To him the dawn is punctual; to him
The quarters of the year no empty name.
A loutish life, but in the midst of dark
Cut to a gash of beauty, as when the hawk
Bears upwards in its talons the striking snake,
High, and yet higher, till those two hang close,
Sculptural on the blue, together twined,
Exalted, deathly silent and alone.

-- V. Sackville-West --

Living Sustainably with the Earth, Compassionately with Each Other & Creatively with the Universe Itself

Social scientist and author, Duane Elgin, is an activist who advocates for our establishing a "more sustainable and spiritual culture." Winner of Japan's Goi International Peace Award for his global vision of sustainability, Elgin envisions a renewed culture in which humanity will build upon the fundamental unity that we have with the Earth, each other, and with the universe itself.

"As a species for the last 35,000 years we have been pulling back from nature," he observes, "we've been differentiating ourselves, we have been cultivating our ability to stand apart from nature (and) to know our own power and uniqueness. And we've been doing that as hunter-gatherers, as farmers and then as industrialists for 35,000 years. But now," he points out, "our power is so great that we are on the verge of undermining the ecological foundations (of civilization) for the foreseeable future. "

"So we have to turn then from separation to communion, to connection, to union, to Oneness with the Earth and with the universe. . . .There is," Elgin posits, "only one time in the life of a planet that a species comes to full wakefulness and dominates the life of the entire planet, and begins then to create climate change, species extinction and all the rest, that will forever change the evolutionary direction of the planet. And that," he points out, "is what is happening in our lifetimes, right now."

"We are beginning to see that the world is an integrated living system," says Elgin (in the video below), "not just the human system, but the Earth system of water, air, and earth. So we have to learn how to live sustainably within the Earth system, and we need to learn to live compassionately within the human system, and then . . . we have to learn to live at home within the cosmic system, the universal system - because that's where we come from, and when we die, that's where we go."

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Elgin's viewpoint of seeing and developing our universal sustainability, while utterly necessary, is not in and of itself unique, either to this culture or to this time. The seeming separation from the beauty of all that is has been apparent to mystics and sages for thousands of years.

Says Jalalludin Rumi, the great 13th-century Sufi poet, jurist and teacher:

The universe is a form of divine law,
your reasonable father.

When you feel ungrateful to him,
the shapes of the world seem mean and ugly.

Make peace with that father, the elegant patterning,
and every experience will fill with immediacy.

Because I love this, I am never bored.
Beauty constantly wells up, a noise of springwater
in my ear and in my inner being.

Tree limbs rise and fall like the ecstatic arms
of those who have submitted to the mystical life.

Leaf sounds talk together
like poets making fresh metaphors.
The green felt cover slips,
and we get a flash of the mirror underneath.

Think how it will be when the whole thing
is pulled away! I tell only one one-thousandth
of what I see, because there is doubt everywhere.

The conventional opinion of this poetry is,
it shows great optimism for the future.

But Father Reason says,
No need to announce the future!
This now is it. This. Your deepest need and desire
is satisfied by this moment's energy
here in your hand.

"It may be," says Rumi's masterful translator, Coleman Barks, "that the clarity Rumi calls "reason" is a brilliant lawfulness that ecologists and astronomers examine as the coherence in any system, and that the mystic and the scientist both attend the same layered intelligence: the grand and precise artistry of existence."

[Coleman Barks, "The Essential Rumi," pp. 145-146.]

. . . . . . . . . . . . .

Rumi on 'Breathing'

Beyond the four Cardinal Directions . . .
beyond North, South, East and West . . .
beyond time and space. . . 
beyond the in-breath . . . and the out-breath . . . 
beyond religion, science and metaphysics . . .
beyond the poet . . . and the muse . . . there is only Rumi . . .  and Shams el-Tabrizi . . . 

the Lover and the Beloved . . . .

Rumi: On Religion, Evoloution and Science

Rumi (1207-1273)

Perhaps the most popular and most influential poet in the West for the past several decades, is the thirteenth-century Persian Sufi from what is now Afghanistan, Jallaludin Rumi.

Rumi and his teachings on Sufism, the fruit of a markedly advanced Persian and Islamic culture at a time when Europe was still mired in its Dark Ages, is remarkable by any standard - poetically, artistically, scientifically, philosophically and metaphysically.

While elements of fundamentalist and evangelistic Christianity in the West, particularly in the United States, cling blindly to an exclusivity and blind faith that denies the legitimacy of all other religions and the findings of modern science, 750-or-so odd years ago, Rumi swept aside such false controversies in language that, even in translation, is both striking and startling.

Taken from "The Way of the Sufi," by the great Sufi teacher and scholar, Idries Shah, the following excerpts from Rumi's vast works, both poetry and prose, show how far ahead of his times, and perhaps ours, the great Sufi poet was.

Rumi on Religion:

I AM THE LIFE OF MY BELOVED

What can I do Muslims? I do not know myself.
I am no Christian, no Jew, no Magian, no Mussulman.
Not of the East, not of the West. Not of the land, not of the sea.
Not of the Mine of Nature, not of the circling heavens,
Not of earth, not of water, not of air, not of fire;
Not of the throne, not of the ground, of existence, of being;
Not of India, China, Bulgaria, Saqseen;
Not of the kingdom of the Iraqs, or of Khorasan;
Not of this world or the next: of heaven or hell;
Not of Adam, Eve, the garden of Paradise or Eden;
My place placeless, my trace traceless.
Neither body nor soul: all is the life of my Beloved . . .

HE WAS IN NO OTHER PLACE

Cross and Christians, end to end, I examined. He was not on the Cross. I went to the Hindu temple, to the ancient pagoda. In none of them was there any sign. To the uplands of Herat I went, and to Kandahar I looked. He was not on the heights or in the lowlands. Resolutely, I went to the summit of the [fabulous] mountain of Kaf. There only was the dwelling of the [legendary] Anqa bird. I went to the Kaaba of Mecca. He was not there. I asked about him from Avicenna, the philosopher. He was beyond the range of Avicenna . . . I looked into my own heart. In that place, his place, I saw him. He was in no other place.

Rumi on Evolution:

HOW FAR YOU HAVE COME

Originally you were clay. From being mineral, you became vegetable. From vegetable, you became animal, and from animal, man. During these periods man did not know where he was going, but he was being take on a long journey, nonetheless. And you have to go through a hundred different worlds yet.

WHAT SHALL I BE

I have again and again grown like grass;
I have experienced seven hundred and seventy moulds.
I died from minerality and became vegetable;
And from vegetativeness I died and became animal.
I died from animality and became man.
Then why fear disappearnace through death?
Next time I shall die
Bringing forth wings and feathers like angels:
After that soaring higher than angels -
What you cannot imagine. I shall be that.

Rumi On Science:

INTELLIGENCE AND REAL PERCEPTION

Intelligence is the shadow of objective Truth.
How can the shadow vie with sunshine?

THE SCIENCE

The Science of Truth disappears in the Sufi's knowledge.
When will mankind understand this saying?

[Idries Shah, "The Way of the Sufi," pp. 102-108.]

. . . .and, finally, from "The Essential Rumi," by Coleman Barks:

THE MILK OF MILLENIA

. . . For hundreds of thousands of years
I have been dust grains
floating and flying in the will of the air,
often forgetting ever being
in that state, but in sleep
I migrate back. I spring loose
from the four-branched time-and-space cross,
this waiting room.

I walk into a huge pasture.
I nurse the milk of millenia.
Everyone does this in different ways.
Knowing that conscious decisions
and personal memory
are much too small a place to live,
every human being streams at night
into the loving nowhere, or during the day,
in some absorbing work.

Thomas Merton on 'The First Lesson About Man'

This surreal poem, "First Lesson About Man" (from "The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton") is an all-too accurate view of the world from which the late, great Catholic contemplative, Trappist monk and prolific writer, Thomas Merton, sought refuge in the late 1940's. Sadly, it seems no less applicable to our state now, some 40-odd years after Merton's death, than it did on publication.

To paraphrase the words of the great 12th-century Sufi poet, Rumi: "We may need more grace than I thought."

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

“First Lesson About Man” by Thomas Merton

Man begins in zoology.
He is the saddest animal.
He drives a big red car called anxiety.
He dreams at night
Of riding all the elevators.
Lost in the halls,
He never finds the right door.

Man is the saddest animal.
A flake-eater in the morning,
A milk-drinker.
He fills his skin with coffee
And loses patience with the rest of his species.
He draws his sin on the wall,
On all the ads in all the subways.
He draws moustaches on all the women
Because he cannot find his joy,
Except in zoology.

Whenever he goes to the phone to call Joy,
He gets the wrong number.
Therefore he likes weapons.
He knows all guns by their right name.
He drives a big black Cadillac called death.
Now he is putting anxiety into space.
He flies his worries all around Venus,
But it does him no good.
In space where for a long time there is only emptiness,
He drives a big white globe called death.

Now dear children
Who have learned the first lesson about man,
Answer your test:
“Man is the saddest animal.
He begins in zoology,
And gets lost
In his own bad news.”

Musings . . . . Poetic and Otherwise

       No matter what your body's appearance is on the outer level, beyond that outer form it is an intensively alive energy field.
       If you are not familiar with "inner body" awareness, close you eyes for a moment and find out if there is life inside your hands, your chest, your forehead.
       Body awareness not only anchors you in the present moment; it is the key that opens the doorway out of the prison that is the ego.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

Each breath we take
is an exhalation of G_d.
And, from behind each face
and set of eyes,
G_d looks out unnoticed
on this world of our creation.

The rising and falling tide,
the blowing and listing wind,
the verdant or withered grass,
the songs of birds,
and the felt breath of angels,
are each an exhalation of G_d,
and an expansion of G_d's Being.

Everything rushes away from everything,
yet the expansiveness of G_d fills all.

There is no falling from Grace or Favour,
only the oblivion of unseeing
and the acceptance of a mundane world,
where life is taken for granted
and all else feared.

Surely the miraculous is frightening
and we pine for explanations.
Yet, this inexplicable Whole
falls short even of description,
let alone an explanation.

It is only when each exhalation
becomes an inspiration
that we might know.
Until then, we can only know in part
and intuit predictions.

Let them not be based on our fears.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

What a small place the world is,
       yet how large it seems
       as foreground to the stars!
Who amongst the ancients
       could fathom such immensities
       amid which we exist?
If the rishis had known,
       or could foretell, this
       star-vault's near infinitude,
       would they have not told us,
       and, this, explicitly?

Why would the Buddha speak
       of a mere ten-thousand worlds?
Thus, even the Tathagata could not sense,
       in neither time nor space,
       the Ocean's width once crossed.

How, then, will you or I
       plumb the depths of these star-fields
       from our too small perspective.
Is it not far better to forego
       contemplation of the heavens altogether
       then to hurry from our outward introspection
       with neither moment's wonder
       nor sense of humbled awe?

"I need more Grace
       than I thought," Rumi said.
Perhaps, however, we need more Grace
       than even Rumi could foresee.

Knowledge That Suffocates Bewilderment

(1207-1273)

"Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment," urges Rumi, the 13th century Sufi mystic and poet

I once read an anecdote about Rumi's first encounter with his spiritual muse, Shams of Tabriz. The story goes that Rumi is walking while reading a hand-copied book of his father's teachings (Rumi's father, Bahā ud-Dīn Walad, was a theologian, Sufi sheikh and mystic of the first order, himself.) Rumi runs into Tams, who promptly snatches up Rumi's most treasured book and throws it into a fountain, thereby destroying it. There is no doubt that an astonished Rumi must have at first been bewildered by Shams' actions.

But here I am again, clinging to all my suffocating cleverness which encases the bewilderment within. "But just let me explain," cries my smaller self, "I know what it all means." Knowledge and experience are not synonomous and may, in fact, be mutually exclusive. Do you know what it is you see, by its similarities, differences, qualities and classifications? Or, do you openly experience what your senses present to you?

Rumi eventually realized how nonsensical it was to be engrossed in the knowledge within the book that was destroyed, when Shams was already there as an exemplar. He realized that the moon reflected in a pool of water was not the moon, in fact, and that the puddle could not after all hold the moon. (This is the Sufi version of the Buddha's distinction between the moon and the finger pointing at the moon.) And, yet, the moon required the puddle, and the puddle the moon, in order to bewilder Rumi.

Can you not see what a clever little trickster the ego is? Where can one buy bewilderment these days?

Osho (1931-1990)

A recent issue of The Times of India featured an excerpt from Osho's book, Walking In Zen, Sitting In Zen, highlighting why he was against knowledge, but rather urged people to respond to the moment.

"Knowledge destroys wonder, destroys the capacity to feel awe," Osho observes. "It makes you capable of explaining away everything. It takes away all poetry from life. It takes away all meaning from life. The knowledgeable person is never surprised by anything because he can explain everything. But no explanation is true for they don't explain anything at all. The mystery remains. The mystery is infinite."

Knowledge "takes away all poetry." How true. It was only after embracing Sham's bewilderment that Rumi became a poet for the ages. All his considerable learning and knowledge were an impediment to the bewilderment that wanted to burst forth from his chest.

"The knowledgeable person," writes Osho, "becomes so burdened by his knowledge that he loses the mirror-like quality of reflecting the beauty, the benediction, the dance, the ecstasy of existence." This is Osho's poetics flowing from beyond knowledge.

 "Knowledge is not going to help as far as life is concerned," he concludes. "The knowledgeable person is almost a dead person; he lives in his grave." Rumi says, "Take tiny sips of breath all day long, before death comes and closes your throat." Knowledge can too easily suffocate, I say, smothering the flames of bewilderment with the ego's rote rememberings and constant analysis.