ShivAllahSita sutra 105

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If your heart is straight with God, then every creature will be to you

a mirror of life and a book of holy doctrine.

~Thomas à Kempis

Cherry trees - heavy with bird and fruit. After the showers, doves

perch in gray mist white faced, red beaked. We sit and wait in the

pearl-shine air for the spring storm to clear. Translucent-breathing

is flight. The humble heart of a servantof sky beats beneath wings

poised to soar. Late afternoon sun simmers lowbeneath the clouds in

unseenspectrums of visibility. I climb the cherry tree and whisper

endearments to the sky.Sky reciprocates with suddenflights of white

dovesmade visible by that whichblossoms cherries out of Cherry trees

and eats them with the mouth of sky itself. Master and servant share

fruit in the light of lifting orchard mists.Everything drips with

joy.

~Mazie & b

A prudent man does not make the goat his gardener.

~Hungarian Proverb

When the trees sing,you are the subject of their song.It doesn't

really matter if you know this,to the trees.They knowyou are the

song,in the same way you may or may not hear them singing.In any

case,there is singing.This really doesn't matter,in the same way

tonight's new moondoesn't matterto the sky.This singing never ends

--it is the sky,singing astrees,alight with dragonflies,swarming this

heart with new moonlight.

~Mazie & b

Not the cry, but the flight of the wild duck, leads the flock to fly and follow.

~Chinese Proverb

I am already in my urn of ashesI am already in my wombUrn of Cold

MountainWomb of Cold MountainThe past, I don't rememberThe future,

already pastWhere am I?If you interrogate Cold Mountainyou will get

the same reply!~Mazie & b

It's not easy being green.

~Kermit the Frog

There's a certain sound that's only heardwhen the charming blade meets

the back of the neck.Classical poets write line after linesinging

songs about sounds of thebattle within, yetthe sound this sword makes

when it reaches its markis in need of no word to describe it.Cold

Mountain is a tempered blade,attachment is that head --I stagger

around like a hen without care,nothing above my shoulders but air.

~Mazie & b

A study of animal communities has this advantage: they are merely what

they are, for anyone to see who will and can look clearly; they cannot

complicate the picture by worded idealisms, by sayingone thing and

being another; here the struggle is unmasked and the beauty is

unmasked.

~John Steinbeck's friend Ed Ricketts, from Cannery Row.

Ghosts of starsreverberating in my bonessinging in my bloodcoursing

through my nervesreminding:surrender that can be doneis not

surrender.The one who would surrender isthe one who keeps

surrenderout of reach.Leaves and branches funneling raindropsseasons

blending unnoticedhereempty, aloneI wait with warm tearsfor whatever

else this emptiness can produce.Remembering now:Shakya ate poison

mushroomstasting only Dharma.~Mazie & b

A handsome smokey-colored brown bear standing on his hindlegs, showing

that he is aroused and watchful.Bearing in his right paw the shovel

that digs to the truth beneathappearances, cut the roots of useless

attachments, and flingsdamp sand on the fires of greed and war;His

left paw in the Mudra of Comradely Display - indicatingthat all

creatures have the full right to live to their limits andthat deer,

rabbits, chipmunks, snakes, dandelions, and lizardsall grow in the

realm of the Dharma...~Gary Snyder, Smokey The Bear Sutra

She drops her bear paw from the nightsky's wolverine jaws and a

strange being bleeds into the earth.Neither one's the hot-blooded

creatureit imagines itself to be, yet in the saying of it somehowthis

mystery may seem less oblique.Like an oven still hot after hours of

cooking,this night's breathing its own combustion --devouring the

starlight as fast as it appears,streaking across the infinite sky of

this moment,shooting past any distant memory thatnow gives birth to

thought.Stilled as she distills the essence of darkness and light in

the heart,a thousand armies are defeatedbefore the cauldron of

boiling spermspills into this vast womb of forgetfulness,leaving

friend and enemy to battle in theshadows of themselves.No one has

ever conquered or been conquered.The quest for any conquest or

acceptance of defeat is consummatedbefore these words are

read,swirled away across the river's water body on whichthey are

written.

~Mazie & b

I am indebted to the cat for a particular kind of honorable deceit,

fora greater control over myself, for a characteristic aversion to

brutal sounds, and for the need to keep silent for long periods of

time.

~Colette

Perched on this cliff overlooking the forestit's easy to see the

allure of the green,surrounded by mountain slate gray,kissed from

here to the height withdeepening layers of snow white, blue vastness

embracing all, sharing gifts from nowhereformed as poem-bright

clouds,breathing wind, and the fire friend --a column base to

crownconducting the energy thatbrings forests, mountains,poem-bright

cloudsalive.

~Mazie & b

The world has different owners at sunrise ... Even your own garden

does not belongto you. Rabbits and blackbirds have the lawns; a

tortoise-shell cat who never appearsin daytime patrols the brick

walls, and a golden-tailed pheasant glints his way through the iris

spears.

~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Standing in the sunlit grovebowing, bowingLight is bowing back and

forthfrom nowhere to nowherejust bowing, not even that.~Mazie & b

A dog thinks: Hey, these people I live with feed me, love me, provide

me with a nice warm, dry house, pet me, and take good care of me...

They must be Gods! A cat thinks: Hey, these people I live with feed

me, love me, provide me witha nice warm, dry house, pet me, and take

good care of me... I must be a God!

~Author Unknown

Tying a sturdy rope around the waist,the single robe I wear is worn

for everyone.Taking nourishment when the body sounds the belland the

generosity of the land is extended,I eat my food for everyone.

Keeping alert to the mind,what watches sees enough for anyoneto

recognize what they are.It's known all share Buddha Nature,but no one

knows where Buddha goes when Buddha goes to Cold Mountain.~Mazie & b

Every man is sociable until a cow invades his garden

~Irish toast

Am I playing with the clouds, orare clouds playing with me?Who has

time for such useless questionswhen the sky holds the dice and has

just tossed them?Now I seem to tumble, cloudlike,rolling off a table

of blue andfalling into everywhere. Nobody wins or loses in the

gameCold Mountain plays. ~Mazie & b

The time comes to every dog when it ceases to care for people merely

for biscuits or bones, or even for caresses, and walks out of doors.

When a dog really loves, it prefers the person who gives it nothing,

and perhaps is too ill ever to take it out for exercise, to all the

liberal cooks and active dog-boys in the world.

~Frances P. Cobbe

For the moon to rise like this rising love in my heart,surely it has

something to do withthe darting dragonflies flittingabove the plum

tree standingat the foot of the hill.Surely, this love isthe moon

rising,the dragonflies flitting,the plum tree standingat the foot of

the hill,rising in my heart.Lonely, I turn my gazewithin.There,

darting bythe light of a rising moon, dragonflies flit through plum

trees still,here at the foot of the hill. ~Mazie & b

I think we are drawn to dogs because they are the uninhibited

creatureswe might be if we weren't certain we knew better.

~George Bird Evans

Afternoon amidst the ancientsbeneath the translucency of green leaf

canopya child day-dreams bythe edge of a stream,reverie of

waterskimming spiders, andlittle languid colored carprising to feed

ontime –my memories, ripples spreading over stillness,never reaching

the shore.~Mazie & b

I care not much for a man's religion whose dog and cat are not the better for it.

~Abraham Lincoln

Against the sky at duskI could not discern the colorof the

dragonflies' wingswhirring above the plum tree.Against the darkening

hillside,somber and silent,I could not detect the colorof the plum

tree's blossomsscattered across the ground.Against the heart breaking

openI could not fathom the colorof anything.Something has reached in

andtaken the veil from my eyes –now every color falls namelessly

intoits source.~Mazie & b

We must fight against the spirit of unconscious cruelty with whichwe

treat the animals. Animals suffer as much as we do. True humanity

does not allow us to impose such sufferings on them. It is our duty

to make the whole world recognize it. Until weextend our circle of

compassion to all living things, humanity will not find peace.

~Albert Schweitzer, The Philosophy of Civilization

Today, sitting by the cold stream,dreaming, dreaminga thousand seasons

came and went, unnoticed.Truth and lies, twining smoke vapors,

spiraled higher and higher into thedeepest blue these eyes haveever

seen.Somewhere, a dharma preacherinexplicably fell silent

inmid-sentence.Somewhere, love welled up again in an old couple's

eyes.Somewhere, a thousand seasonsflooded by unnoticed, whilesomebody

sat near a clearcold stream, dreaming, dreaming.~Mazie & b

My little old dog, a heartbeat at my feet.

~Edith Wharton

a lone flute in a distant canyon,suddenly I am heart-broken.Has my

meditation come to this?These tears?

~Mazie & b

 

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[Guest guest]

Greetings Mazie,

 

Thank you,

and how are you and your beloved?

 

We are still holding you in love and light.

 

John L.