(Poetry written from the center, not the circumference)
“We dance round in a ring and suppose, / But the Secret sits in the middle and knows,” Robert Frost wrote, looking in from the outside.
Self is everywhere, shining forth from all beings, vaster than the vast, subtler than the most subtle, unreachable, yet nearer than breath, than heartbeat. Eye cannot see it, ear cannot hear it nor tongue utter it; only in deep absorption can the mind, grown pure and silent, merge with the formless truth. As soon as you find it, you are free; you have found yourself; you have solved the great riddle; your heart forever is at peace. Whole, you enter the Whole. Your personal self returns to its radiant, intimate, deathless source. Mundaka Upamshad
Most of what we call religious poetry is the poetry of longing: for God, for the mother’s face. But the poems in The Enlightened Heart are poems of fulfillment. They were written by the Secret, who has many aliases.
Looking out from the center, you can talk about the circumference. But really, there is no circumference. Everyone, everything, is joyfully included.
(The self moving freely through dream, waking, and union)
THE UPANISHADS (8TH?–5TH? CENTURY B.C.E) The Golden God, the Self, the immortal Swan leaves the small nest of the body, goes where He wants. He moves through the realm of dreams; makes numberless forms delights in sex; eats, drinks, laughs with His friends; frightens Himself with scenes of heart-chilling terror. But He is not attached to anything that He sees; and after He has wandered in the realms of dream and awakeness, has tasted pleasures and experienced good and evil, He returns to the blissful state from which He began. As a fish swims forward to one riverbank then the other, Self alternates between awakeness and dreaming.
As a man in sexual union with his beloved is unaware of anything outside or inside, so a man in union with Self knows nothing, wants nothing, has found his heart’s fulfillment and is free of sorrow.
Let me always feel you present, in every atom of my life. Let me keep surrendering my self until I am utterly transparent. Let my words be rooted in honesty and my thoughts be lost in your light, Unnamable God, my essence, my origin, my life-blood, my home.
May all selfishness disappear from me, and may you always shine from my heart.
(The Tao: unnamed, desireless, the gateway to understanding)
The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things.
Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
Darkness within darkness.
The gateway to all understanding.
Every being in the universe is an expression of the Tao. It springs into existence, unconscious, perfect, free, takes on a physical body, lets circumstances complete it. That is why every being spontaneously honors the Tao.
(The master embodies the light, wasting nothing and excluding no one)
A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent upon arriving. A good artist lets his intuition lead him wherever it wants. A good scientist has freed himself of concepts and keeps his mind open to what is. Thus the Master is available to all people and doesn’t reject anyone. He is ready to use all situations and doesn’t waste anything. This is called embodying the light. What is a good man but a bad man’s teacher? What is a bad man but a good man’s job? If you don’t understand this, you will get lost, however intelligent you are. It is the great secret.
Creatures rise, creatures vanish; I alone am real, Arjuna, looking out, amused, from deep within the eyes of every creature.
My eyes are radiant with your spirit; my nostrils fill with your fragrance. My ears delight in your music, and my face is covered with your dew. Blessed are the men and women who are planted on your earth, in your garden, who grow as your trees and flowers grow, who transform their darkness to light.
Their roots plunge into darkness; their faces turn toward the light.
(Non-duality: no gain, no loss, one instant is ten thousand years)
In this “Not-two” nothing is separate, and nothing in the world is excluded. The enlightened of all times and places have entered into this truth. In it there is no gain or loss; one instant is ten thousand years.
The mind of absolute trust is beyond all thought, all striving, is perfectly at peace, for in it there is no yesterday, no today, no tomorrow.
My daily affairs are quite ordinary; but I’m in total harmony with them. I don’t hold on to anything, don’t reject anything; nowhere an obstacle or conflict. Who cares about wealth and honor? Even the poorest thing shines. My miraculous power and spiritual activity: drawing water and carrying wood.
I meet him everywhere I step. He is the same as me, yet I am not him. Only if you understand it in this way will you merge with the way things are.
and everything that is hurt, everything that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful, maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged, is in Him transformed and recognized as whole, as lovely, and radiant in His light we awaken as the Beloved in every last part of our body.
WU-MEN (1183-1260) One instant is eternity; eternity is the now. When you see through this one instant, you see through the one who sees.
Midnight. No waves, no wind, the empty boat is flooded with moonlight.
(The field beyond judgment where the soul rests in fullness)
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn’t make any sense.
The Inner Secret, that which was never born, You are That Freshness, and I am with You now.
“The love of God, unutterable and perfect, flows into a pure soul the way that light rushes into a transparent object. The more love that it finds, the more it gives itself; so that, as we grow clear and open, the more complete the joy of heaven is. And the more souls who resonate together, the greater the intensity of their love, and, mirror-like, each soul reflects the other.”