Month: December 2018
Sheikh Kherghani and the aubergine
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One day Sheikh Kherghani’s devout routine
Was spoilt by cravings for an aubergine.
His mother was unsure what should be done
But hesitantly gave him half a one –
The moment that he bit its flesh a crew
Of ruffians seized his son and ran him through.
That night, outside the sheikh’s front door they laid
His boy’s head hacked off by a cutlass blade.
The sheikh cried out: “How often I’d foreseen
Disaster if I tasted aubergine!”
The man who has been chosen by this Guide
Must follow Him and never swerve aside –
His service is more terrible than war,
Than shame that cringes to a conqueror.
It is not knowledge keeps a man secure –
With all his understanding, fate is sure;
Each moment we receive a different guest,
And each that comes presents another test,
Although a hundred sorrows wring your soul,
The future will not bow to your control.
But one who breaks illusion’s hold will find
Misfortune will not always cloud his mind.
A hundred thousand of His lovers sigh
To sacrifice themselves for Him and die;
How many waste their idle lives until
They bleed and groan, subservient to His will.
There’s nothing ahead
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Lovers think they’re looking for each other,
but there’s only one search:
wandering this world is wandering that,
both inside one transparent sky.
In here there is no dogma and no heresy.
The miracle of Jesus is himself,
not what he said or did about the future.
Forget the future.
I’d worship someone who could do that.
On the way you may want to look back, or not,
but if you can say
There’s nothing ahead,
there will be nothing there.
Stretch your arms
and take hold the cloth of your clothes
with both hands.
The cure for pain is in the pain.
Good and bad are mixed.
If you don’t have both,
you don’t belong with us.
When one of us gets lost,
is not here, he must be inside us.
There’s no place like that anywhere in the world.
What Jesus runs away from
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The son of Mary, Jesus,
hurries up a slope
as though a wild animal were chasing him.
Someone following him asks,
“Where are you going?
No one is after you.”
Jesus keeps on, saying nothing,
across two more fields.
“Are you the one who says words
over a dead person, so that he wakes up?”
I am.
“Did you not make the clay birds fly?”
Yes.
“Who then could possibly cause you to run like this?”
Jesus slows his pace.
I say the Great Name over the deaf and the blind,
they are healed.
Over a stony mountainside,
and it tears its mantle down to the navel.
Over non-existence,
it comes into existence.
But when I speak lovingly for hours, for days,
with those who take human warmth and mock it,
when I say the Name to them,
nothing happens.
They remain rock, or turn to sand,
where no plants can grow.
Other diseases are ways
for mercy to enter,
but this non-responding breeds violence
and coldness toward God.
I am fleeing from that.
As little by little air steals water,
so praise dries up and evaporates
with foolish people who refuse to change.
Like cold stone you sit on a cynic steals body heat.
He doesn’t feel the sun.
Jesus wasn’t running from actual people.
He was teaching in a new way.
Christ is the population of the world,
and every object as well.
There is no room for hypocrisy.
Why use bitter soup for healing
when sweet water is everywhere?
The gift of water
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Someone who doesn’t know the Tigris River exists
brings the caliph who lives near the river
a jar of fresh water.
The caliph accepts, thanks him,
and gives in return a jar filled with gold coins.
“Since this man has come through the desert,
he should return by water.”
Taken out by another door,
the man steps into a waiting boat
and sees the wide freshwater of the Tigris.
He bows his head,
“What wonderful kindness that he took my gift.”
Every object and being in the universe
is a jar overfilled with wisdom and beauty,
a drop of the Tigris
that cannot be contained by any skin.
Every jarful spills and makes the earth more shining,
as though covered in satin.
If the man had seen even a tributary of the great river,
he wouldn’t have brought the innocence of his gift.
Those that stay and live by the Tigris
grow so ecstatic that they throw rocks at the jugs,
and the jugs become perfect!
They shatter.
The pieces dance, and water …
Do you see?
Neither jar, nor water, nor stone,nothing.
You knock at the door of reality,
shake your thought-wings,
loosen your shoulders,
and open.
The core of masculinity
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The core of masculinity
does not derive from being male,
nor friendliness from those who console.
Your old grandmother says,
“Maybe you shouldn’t go to school.
You look a little pale.”
Run when you hear that.
A father’s stern slaps are better.
Your bodily soul wants comforting.
The severe father wants spiritual clarity.
He scolds but eventually leads you into the open.
Pray for a tough instructor to hear and act
and stay within you.
We have been busy accumulating solace.
Make us afraid of how we were.
I honor those who try to rid themselves
of any lying,
who empty the self and
have only clear being there.
The valley of bewilderment
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