On branch tips the hibiscus bloom.
The mountains sho off red calices.
Nobody. a silent cottage in the valley.
One by one flowers open, then fall.
Wang Wei (trans. by Tony and Willis Barnstone and Xu Haixin)
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On branch tips the hibiscus bloom.
The mountains sho off red calices.
Nobody. a silent cottage in the valley.
One by one flowers open, then fall.
Wang Wei (trans. by Tony and Willis Barnstone and Xu Haixin)
Every creature is better alive than dead, men and moose and pine trees, and
he who understands it aright will rather preserve its life than destroy it.
-Henry David Thoreau, naturalist and author (1817-1862)
My shoulder is against yours.
You will not find me in stupas, not in Indian shrine
rooms nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding
around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but
vegetables.
When you really look for me you will see me
instantly—
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.
Kabir: version by Robert Bly (The Kabir Book)
in our own lives that drives us
half insane and more than half.
To destroy that which we were given
in trust: how will we bear it?
It is our own bodies that we give
to be broken, our bodies
existing before and after us
in clod and cloud, worm and tree,
that we, driving or driven, despise
in our greed to live, our haste
to die. To have lost wantonly
the ancient forests, the vast grasslands
is our madness, the presence
in our very bodies of our grief.
Wendell Berry