RILKE, RUMI and BUDDHA ---Questions of 'Love'

zentrance.buddhistmeditationsantamonica.april 2016


Questions of 'Love' 

 

.... What I want to do
and who’s interested ? 

 

Rumi says...

 

" The onset of a new seasonal cycle

   teaches gradualness and deliberation,
   and how one gives birth

   to oneself slowly, very slowly "     

 

" Ahh, the springtime air

  smells so good today, 
  straight from the mysteries

  within the inner courts of God.
  The trees in their prayer, the birds in praise,
  the first flowers open in surprise ! 
  Whatever came from Being is caught up in being,
  drunkenly forgetting the way back to winter! "            

 _________________________________

 

~ Rainer Maria Rilke  

NOTE: On Young Poets / April 2016 ..

1908 ~ Rilke goes on to say. . . But this is what 'young people' are so often and so disastrously wrong in doing – they ( who by their very nature are impatient ) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment. . . And what can happen then?  What can life do with this heap of half-broken things that they call their 'communion' and that they would like to call their happiness, if that were possible, and their future? 

 

. . . And so each of them loses himself or herself for the sake of the 'other' person – and loses the other, and then many others who still wanted to come.  And loses the vast distances & possibilities, gives up the approaching and fleeing of gentle, prescient Things in exchange for an unfruitful confusion, out of which nothing more can come. Nothing but a bit of disgust, disappointment, and poverty, and the escape into one of the many 'conventions' that have been put up in great numbers like public shelters on this most dangerous road. No area of human experience is so extensively provided with conventions as this one is: there are 'live-preservers' of the most varied invention, boats and water wings. Society has been able to create refuges of every sort -- for since it preferred to take the "Love-Life" as an amusement – it also had to give it an easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as popular public amusements are. ( Britney, Paris )

 

It is true that many young people who "love falsely" for instance – simply surrendering themselves and giving up their solitude. The average person will of course, always go on doing that. And feel oppressed by their own failure and want to make the situation they have landed in livable and fruitful in their own, personal way.  For their nature tells them that the Questions of 'Love' - even more than everything else that is important – cannot be resolved publicly and according to this or that agreement.

 

That they are 'Questions', intimate questions from one human being to another - which in any case require a new, special, wholly personal answer.  But How can they, who have already flung themselves together - and can no longer tell whose outlines are whose? Who thus no longer possess anything of their own.

 

How can they find a way 'out of themselves', out of the depths of their already buried solitude? They act out of 'mutual helplessness', and then if, whit the best of intentions, they try to escape the 'conventions' that are approaching them ( marriage, for example ), they fall into the clutches of some less obvious but just as deadly conventional solution. For then, everything around them ~ is convention. Wherever people act out of a prematurely fused, muddy communion, every 'action' is conventional. Every 'relation' that such confusion leads to - has its own convention, however unusual in the ordinary sense of immoral it may be. Even 'separating' would be a conventional step, an impersonal, accidental decision without strength and without fruit.

 

Whoever looks seriously will find that ~ neither for 'Death', which is difficult, nor for 'Difficult Love' ~ has any clarification, any solution, any hint of a Path been perceived. And for both these tasks – which we carry wrapped up and hand-on without opening, there is not a general, agreed-upon rule that can be discovered.  But in the same measure in which we begin to test Life as 'individuals' – these great Things will come to meet us, the individuals, with greater intimacy.  The claims that the "Difficult Work of Love" makes 'upon our development are greater than life' - and we, as beginners, are just not equal to them. But if we nevertheless Endure and take this love upon us as 'Burden' and 'Apprenticeship' - instead of losing ourselves in the whole easy and frivolous game behind which people have hidden from the most solemn solemnity of their Being. Then "a small advance" and a "lightening" will perhaps be perceptible to those who come long after us. That would be much.

 

We are only just now beginning to consider the relation of One Individual to a Second Individual 'objectively' and without prejudice.  And our attempts to "live such relationships" have no model before them. And yet in the changes that Time has brought about - there are already many things that can now help our timid novitiate.

 

The Girl and the Woman, in their new, individual unfolding - will only in passing be imitators of male behavior and misbehavior and repeaters of male professions. After the 'uncertainty' of such transitions, it will become obvious that women were going through the abundance and variation of those - often ridiculous – 'disguises' just so that they could purify their own essential nature and wash out the deforming influences of the male-sex. Women, in whom "Life" itself lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths than light, easy-going 'Man'.  'Man' who is not pulled down beneath the surface of Life by the weight of any bodily fruit and who, arrogant and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves.

 

This "Humanity of Woman" - carried in her womb through all her suffering and humiliation –

will come to light when she has stripped off the conventions of mere femaleness in the transformations of her outward status - and those men who do not yet feel it approaching will be astonished by it. Someday, and even now, especially in the countries of northern Europe, trustworthy signs are already speaking and shining. Someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself - something that makes one think not of any mere 'complement' and limit, but only Life and Reality ~ The Female Human Being.

 

This "Advance" - at first very much against the will of the outdistanced men - will transform

'The Love-Experience', which is now still filled with error - will change it from the ground up,

and reshape it into a 'Relationship' that is meant to be between one human being and another,

no longer just one that flows from the man to the woman.  And this more 'Human Love' - which

will fulfill itself with infinite consideration and gentleness, and kindness and clarity in binding and releasing - will resemble what we are now preparing painfully and with great struggle – the Love that consists in this: the 'Two Solitudes' protect and border and greet each other.

 

And one more thing: Don't think that the Great Love which was once granted to you, when you were a child, has been lost - how can you know whether vast and generous wishes didn't ripen in you at that time, and Purposes by which you are still living today?  I believe that that true Love remains strong and intense in your memory because it was your first deep aloneness and the first inner-work that you did on your life.

 

–– All good wishes to you !   Yours, Rainer Maria Rilke

 

 

" The best relationship is the one

in which your love for each other 

exceeds your need for each other." 

 ~ Rainer Maria Rilke ( 1926 )

 

 _______________________________________





A Buddhist guy phones the monastery
and asks the monk,

“ Can you come out to do

a blessing for my new place ? ”
The monk replies " Sorry, I’m busy.”

So the guy asks,

“ What are you doing? Can I help ? ”
“ I’m doing nothing.” replies the monk.

Doing Nothing is a monk’s core business

and you can’t help me with that.”

So the next day the Buddhist guy phones again,

“ Can you please come to my house for a blessing ? ”
“ Sorry,” said the monk again, “I’m busy.”
“ What are you doing?”
“ I’m doing nothing,” replies the monk.
“ But that was what you were doing yesterday ! ”

  said the Buddhist guy
“ Correct ” - replied the monk,

“ I’m not finished yet!”

 

~ Ajahn Brahm, who is a Thai Buddhist monk

__________________________________ 

 

How many Zen Buddhists

does it take

to screw in a light bulb ?

There is no light bulb.

 

TJ and Phyllis ~

Pin Sidd'ha vay rah -

May the Power of the Siddhas

be with you Always....

 

?

 

C:\Users\Levi\Desktop\ZenTrance CLASS.KOPAN.4.16 BOOK 11.08.doc

 

" All sentient beings are essentially Buddhas.

As with water and ice, there is no ice without water.

Apart from conscious beings, there are no Buddhas.

Not knowing how close the truth really, really is,

we struggle to seek it so far away ~

You yourself are Buddha-mind !

Buddha here now !                  ~ Hakuin Ekaku Zenji

 

Rumi says...

 

" The onset of a new seasonal cycle

   teaches gradualness and deliberation,

   and how one gives birth

   to oneself slowly, very slowly "    

 

" Ahh, the springtime air

  smells so good today, 

  straight from the mysteries

  within the inner courts of God.

  The trees in their prayer, the birds in praise,

  the first flowers open in surprise ! 

  Whatever came from Being is caught up in being,

  drunkenly forgetting the way back to winter! "

 

_______________________________________________________

 

Empty Words  /  The Gift of Wise Words Collection 

 

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