May my heart always be open

May my heart always be open
by e.e. cummings

may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
and if men should not hear them men are old

may my mind stroll about hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young

and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there's never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile.

~ ee cummings, E.E. Cummings: Complete Poems 1904-1962

"Song for Nobody" by Thomas Merton

Song for Nobody

By Thomas Merton
(1915 - 1968)

A yellow flower
(Light and spirit)
Sings by itself
For nobody.

A golden spirit
(Light and emptiness)
Sings without a word
By itself.

Let no one touch this gentle sun
In whose dark eye
Someone is awake.

(No light, no gold, no name, no color
And no thought:
O, wide awake!)

A golden heaven
Sings by itself
A song to nobody.
~Thomas Merton, The Collected Poems of Thomas Merton (New Directions Paperbook)

"Have you ever noticed
a tree standing naked against the sky,
How beautiful it is?
All its branches are outlined, and in its nakedness
There is a poem, there is a song.
Every leaf is gone and it is waiting for the spring.
When the spring comes,
it again fills the tree with
The music of many leaves,
Which in due season fall and are blown away.
And this is the way of life."

From Darkness to Light: Poems and Parables (The Collected Works of Krishnamurti) by Krishnamurti

"If you're really listening, if you're awake to the poignant beauty of the world, your heart breaks regularly. In fact, your heart is made to break; its purpose is to burst open again and again so that it can hold ever-more wonders."

—Andrew Harvey, The Return of the Mother

Everyone suddenly burst out singing;
And I was filled with such delight
As prisoned birds must find in freedom,
Winging wildly across the white
Orchards and dark-green fields; on - on - and out of sight.

Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted;
And beauty came like the setting sun:
My heart was shaken with tears; and horror
Drifted away ... O, but Everyone
Was a bird; and the song was wordless;
the singing will never be done.

-- Siegfried Sassoon

The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon

Away! the great life calls; I leave
For Beauty, Beauty's rarest flower.

~A.E.



Buy this book:
Three mystic poets: A study of W. B. Yeats, A. E., and Rabindranath Tagore

Like a beautiful white dove,
That rises from the middle of the waters
And comes to shake its wings out over the earth,
The Holy Spirit emanates from the Infinite ocean
of the Divine perfections and comes
to beat Her wings out over clear souls
To distill in them the balm of love. — Curé d'Ars

Car Stevens: Morning Has Broken (lovely video!)

from Cormac McCarthy, The Crossing:

They were running on the plain harrying the antelope and the antelope moved like phantoms in the snow and circled and wheeled and the dry powder blew about them in the cold moonlight and their breath smoked palely in the cold as if they burned with some inner fire and the wolves twisted and turned and leapt in a silence such that they seemed of another world entire…Then he saw them [the wolves] coming. Loping and twisting. Dancing. Tunneling their noses in the snow. Loping and rising by twos in a standing dance and running on again…He could see their almond eyes in the moonlight. He could hear their breathe. He could feel the presence of their knowing that was electric in the air. They bunched and nuzzled and licked one another. Then they stopped. They stood with their ears cocked. Some with one forefoot raised to their chest. They were looking at him. He did not breathe. They stood. Then they turned and quickly trotted on. When he got back to the house Boyd was awake but he didn’t tell him where he’d been nor what he’d seen.

buy this book: The Crossing

The most beautiful and profound emotion we can experience is the sensation of the mystical. It is the sower of all true science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull faculties can comprehend only in their primitive forms, this knowledge, this feeling, is at the center of true religiousness.
~ Albert Einstein

09.19.08 - Beauty

We have 1000s of lepers here. They are so great, so beautiful in their disfigurement!
In Calcutta, we have a Christmas party for them every year. Once I went to them and I
told them that what they have is the gift of God, that God has a very special love for them,
that they are very dear to Him, that what they have is not a sin. One old man who was
completely disfigured tried to come nearer to me, and he said, "Please repeat that once
more. It did me good. I have always heard that nobody loves us. It is wonderful to know
that God loves us. Please say that again!"

-Mother Teresa