Articles Tagged: poetry

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.

From T.S. Eliot’s Four Quarters; Contributed by Gregg Onewein
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From Eliot’s Burnt Norton

Watching the moon
at dawn,
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely:
no part left out.


Poem by Izumi Shikibu (974-1034) from The Enlightened Heart, Stephen Mitchell (Ed.), Harper & Row ,1989.
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No Part Left Out

Meditation on a poem by Izumi Shibuku about looking at the moon.

The birds have vanished down the sky Now the last cloud drains away. We sit together the mountain and I, until only the mountain remains.


-Li Po
(translated by Sam Hamill)
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Zazen on Ching-ting Mountain

Poem by Li Po.

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