The Seer (1)

Dear Friends,

The mood of Tao and how to practice may be found in a vein of quasi-secular literature that carries the non-sectarian spirituality of our time.  Elements of this attitude include a different sense of the will and a close affinity for the natural world.  These two go together since nature is will, and streams forth as a willing that we encounter with our own.  We often find a Tao tonality in the work of Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1826).  For the next two or three weeks, we'll take as our central meditation some images and phrases from the following poem:

The Seer

In the trees, I see the storms
that, from out of dull days,
beat against my anxious windows,
and I hear the distances say things
that I can't bear without a friend
and can't love without a sister.
There goes the storm, a shape-shifter;
it goes through the woods and through time,
and everything is as if ageless,
the landscape, like a verse in the Psalms,
is earnestness and weight, and eternity.
How tiny, the things we struggle with!
What struggles with us, how vast!
If we, more like things,
let the great storm compel us,
we would grow immense and nameless.
What we conquer is small,
and success itself makes us small.
The eternal, the unique,
does not want to be bent by us.
That is the angel who appeared
to the wrestlers of the Old Testament.
When, in the struggle, his opponents' sinews
stretched out like metal,
he felt them under his fingers
like the strings for deep melodies.
Whomever this angel vanquishes
(and the angel often refuses to fight)
goes forth justified and upright
and mighty, out from that hard hand
that pressed on him as if to mold him.
Victories no longer entice him.
His growth is to be deeply vanquished
by what is ever greater, and then greater still.

with love,

Michael