The Swarm, 2012
by Tasha Lewis, via this blog

Crystal Gregory – Invasive Doilies, 2011, (via this blog)

Timofey Radya, via this blog

O Amor

E alguém disse:
-Fala-nos do Amor.

– Quando o amor vos fizer sinal, segui-o;
ainda que os seus caminhos sejam duros e escarpados.

E quando as suas asas vos envolverem, entregai-vos;
ainda que a espada escondida na sua plumagem vos possa ferir.

E quando vos falar, acreditai nele;
apesar de a sua voz
poder quebrar os vossos sonhos
como o vento norte ao sacudir os jardins.

Porque assim como o vosso amor
vos engrandece, também deve crucificar-vos.
E assim como se eleva à vossa altura
e acaricia os ramos mais frágeis
que tremem ao sol,
também penetrará até às raízes
sacudindo o seu apego à terra.

Como braçadas de trigo vos leva.
Malha-vos até ficardes nus.
Passa-vos pelo crivo
para vos livrar do joio.
Mói-vos até à brancura.
Amassa-vos até ficardes maleáveis.
Então entrega-vos ao seu fogo,
para poderdes ser
o pão sagrado no festim de Deus.

Tudo isto vos fará o amor,
para poderdes conhecer os segredos
do vosso coração,
e por este conhecimento
vos tornardes
o coração da Vida.

Mas, se no vosso medo,
buscais apenas a paz do amor,
o prazer do amor,
então mais vale cobrir a nudez
e sair do campo do amor,
a caminho do mundo sem estações,
onde podereis rir,
mas nunca todos os vossos risos,
e chorar,
mas nunca todas as vossas lágrimas.

O amor só dá de si mesmo,
e só recebe de si mesmo.

O amor não possui
nem quer ser possuído.

Porque o amor basta ao amor.

Quando amardes, não digais:
-Deus está no meu coração,
mas antes:
– Eu estou no coração de Deus.

E não penseis
que podeis guiar o curso do amor;
porque o amor, se vos julgar dignos,
marcará ele o vosso curso.

O amor não tem outro desejo
senão consumar-se.

Mas se amardes e tiverdes desejos,
deverão ser estes:
Fundir-se e ser um regato corrente
a cantar a sua melodia à noite.

Conhecer a dor da excessiva ternura.
Ser ferido pela própria inteligência do amor,
e sangrar de bom grado e alegremente.

Acordar de manhã com um coração cheio
e agradecer outro dia de amor.

Descansar ao meio dia
e meditar no êxtase do amor.

Voltar a casa ao crepúsculo
com gratidão;
e adormecer tendo no coração
uma prece pelo bem amado,
e na boca, um canto de louvor.

Khalil Gibran

As Crianças

E uma mulher que trazia
um menino ao colo disse:
-Fala-nos das Crianças.

E ele respondeu:
– Os vossos filhos
não são vossos filhos:
são filhos e filhas da própria Vida.

Vêm por vosso meio
mas não de vós;
e apesar de estarem convosco,
não vos pertencem.
Podeis dar-lhes o vosso amor;
mas não os vossos pensamentos
porque eles têm os seus.

Podeis acolher os seus corpos
mas não as suas almas:
porque as suas almas
habitam a casa do amanhã
que não podeis visitar,
nem sequer em sonhos.

Podeis esforçar-vos por ser como eles,
mas não tenteis fazê-los como vós.
Porque a vida não vai para trás,
nem se detêm com o ontem.

Sois os arcos, e os vossos filhos
as setas vivas projectadas.

O Arqueiro vê o alvo no caminho do infinito,
e retêm-vos com o seu poder para que as setas
possam voar depressa para longe.

Que a vossa tensão na mão do Arqueiro
seja de Alegria.

Porque assim como Ele gosta da seta que voa,
também gosta do arco que fica.

Khalil Gibran

On Children

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.

You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.

You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.

The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;

For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Kahlil Gibran

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

John Keats

“Uma coisa bela é uma alegria que dura para sempre.”

John Keats

cities of beauty

Inner roof tiles in Portugal

Photo from here

Our practice is based on the insight of non-duality. Both our negative feelings and positive feelings are organic and belong to the same reality. So there is no need to fight; we only need to embrace and take care. Therefore, in the Buddhist tradition, meditation does not mean you transform yourself into a battlefield, with the good fighting the evil. This is very important. You may think that you have to combat evil and chase it out of your heart and mind. But this is wrong. The practice is to transform yourself. If you don’t have garbage, you have nothing to use in order to make compost. And if you have no compost, you have nothing to nourish the flower in you. You need the suffering, the afflictions in you. Since they are organic, you know that you can transform them and make good use of them.

Our method of practice should be non-violent. Non-violence can be born only from the insight of non-duality, of inter-being. This is the insight that everything is interconnected and nothing can exist by itself alone. Doing violence to others is doing violence to yourself. If you do not have the insight of non-duality, you will still be violent. You will still want to punish, to suppress, and to destroy. But once you have penetrated the reality of non-duality, you will smile at both the flower and garbage in you, you will embrace both. This insight is the ground for your non-violent action.When you have the insight of non-duality and inter-being, you take care of your body in the most non-violent way possible. You take care of your mental formations, including your anger, with non-violence. You take care of your brother, your sister, your father, your mother, your community, and your society, with utmost tenderness. No violence can be born from this kind of attitude. You won’t regard anyone as an enemy when you have penetrated the reality of inter-being. The foundation of our practice is the insight of non duality, the insight of non-violence. This insight teaches us how to treat our body with tenderness. We must treat our anger and our despair with tenderness. Anger has roots in non-anger elements. It has roots in the way we live our daily life. If we take good care of everything in us, without discrimination, we prevent our negative energies from dominating. We reduce the strength of our negative seeds so that they won’t overwhelm us.

Anger, Thich Nhat Hanh

“I am doing my best” means you are living up to your commitment to go home to yourself and take good care of your anger. When you are angry, your anger is your baby and you have to look after it. It is like when your stomach is upset, you have to go back to yourself and embrace your stomach. Your stomach is your baby at that moment. Our stomach is a physical formation, a physiological formation, and our anger is a mental formation.We must take care of our anger in the same way we take care of our stomach or kidneys. You cannot say, “Anger, go away, you don’t belong to me.” So when you say, “I am doing my best,” it is because you are embracing and taking good care of your anger. You are practicing mindful breathing and walking to release the energy of anger and transform it into positive energy. While embracing your anger, you practice looking deeply to see the nature of your anger because you know that you may be the victim of a wrong perception. You may have misunderstood what you heard and what you saw. You may have a wrong idea of what had been said, what had been done. Your anger is born from such ignorance and wrong perceptions. When you say “I am doing my best’ you are aware that in the past you have gotten angry many times because of your wrong perception of what was going on. So now you are very careful. You remember that you should not be so sure that you are the victim of the other person’s wrongdoing, the victim of the other person’s words. You yourself may have created the hell inside you.

Anger, Thich Nhat Hanh