meditative poems and "poems"

Some poems that are offered to meditators don't seem to me to be poems, that is, they haven't got the compression of language and spark of meaning that makes a "real" poem. Still, they can be very helpful.

These "poems" and poems were read to our meditation group yesterday. We found them helpful, in varying ways and to varying degrees.


First of all, practical thoughts about not beating yourself about the ears if you striving to be elsewhere because think you are not meditating "well" or "properly:"

The Pith Instruction

The pith instruction is, Stay...stay...just stay.
Learning to stay with ourselves in meditation is like training a dog.
If we train a dog by beating it, we'll end up with an obedient but very inflexible and rather terrified dog. The dog may obey when we say "Stay!" "Come!" "Roll over!" and "Sit up!" but he will also be neurotic and confused.
By contrast, training with kindness results in someone who is flexible and confident, who doesn't become upset when situations are unpredictable and insecure.
So whenever we wander off, we gently encourage ourselves to "stay" and settle down.
Are we experiencing restlessness? Stay!
Discursive mind? Stay!
Are fear and loathing out of control? Stay!
Aching knees and throbbing back? Stay!
What's for lunch? Stay!
What am I doing here? Stay!
I can't stand this another minute! Stay!
That is how to cultivate steadfastness.
                               by Pema Chodron

Which leads quite nicely into: 
 

“Forget about enlightenment.
Sit down wherever you are
And listen to the wind singing in your veins.
Feel the love, the longing, and the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you are, right now,
Not who you would like to be.
Not the saint you’re striving to become.
But the being right here before you, inside you, around you.
All of you is holy.
You’re already more and less
Than whatever you can know.
Breathe out, touch in, let go.”

                                    John Welwood

 We lack specific words in English for various kinds of love. The ancient Greeks had several such words. This next poem seems to me to be about compassion, about true connection, nurturing. It perhaps follows on from the advice in the first two on being g entle with youself:

Admit Something

Everyone you see, you say to them,
Love me.
Of course you do not do this out loud;
Otherwise,
Someone would call the cops.
Still though, think about this,
This great pull in us
To connect.
Why not become the one
Who lives with a full moon in each eye
That is always saying,
With that sweet moon language,
What every other eye in this world
Is dying to Hear.
By: Hafiz

Helen M Luke wrote a wonderful little book called simply "Old Age." Here, her wisdom as a Jungian analyst takes her into our area of interest:

"We hurry through the so-called boring things
in order to attend to that which we deem
more important, interesting.
Perhaps the final freedom will be a recognition that
everything in every moment is "essential"
and that nothing at all is "important."
By Helen M. Luke


Pablo Neruda, Chilean poet, on fine bossy form here. We threaten ourselves with death? H'mmm:

Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
For once on the face of the earth,
let's not speak in any language,
let's stop for a second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.
If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves
with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead in winter
and later proves to be alive.
Now I'll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.
By: Pablo Neruda

Many know Mary Oliver's work, if they have taken a mindfulness course, and I'm sure many who haven't still value her as much as I do:  

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.
By Mary Oliver





May all those words help you to this place:

I’ll Meet You There
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When we lie down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn’t make any sense.
By: Rumi

being beyond wrongdoing and rightdoing surely doesn't mean anything goes, it doesn't mean escaping the gruesome choices of politics or the difficulties of ethics in our social lives; it simply means that for a while, maybe at least once each day, we have to look within and leave those states of mind in which we polarise, separate, judge - or create - the "Other," and feel some unity with the ground of our being, that of us which is not conceptual or time-torn.