Favorite Meditative Poetry

Favorite poems from with the Celtic tradition and others including John O'Donohue, Mary Oliver, Rumi, Buddha, Derek Wolcott and Achaan Chah (Buddhist Monk).

The video/music you are listening to is "An Bhoutais" from the album Celtic Meditation Music.

ACHAAN CHAH (Buddhist Monk)

The tree has its own pace
Your job is to dig a hole, water and fertilize it,
and protect it from insects,
But the way the tree grows is up to the tree….

Love After Love

by Derek Wolcott

The time will come
When, with elation
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror
And each will smile at the other’s welcome

And say, sit here, Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf

The photographs, the desperate notes
Peel your own image from the mirror,
Sit. Feast on your life….

~~Buddha

We are what we think.
All that we are arises with our thoughts
With our thoughts, we make the world

The Guest House by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Home (from Benedictus) by John O'Donohue

Home is where the heart is. It stands for the sure centre where individual life is shaped and from where it journeys forth.

What it ultimately intends is that each of its individuals would develop the capacity to be at home in themselves. This is something that is usually overlooked but it is a vital requirement in the creativity and integrity of individual personality. It has to do with the essence of a person; their sense of their own inner ground.

When a person is at home in his life, he has always a clear instinct about the shape of outer situations; even in the midst of confusion he can discern the traces of a path forward.

When one is at home in oneself one is integrated and enjoys a sense of balance and poise. In a sense that is exactly what spirituality is; the art of homecoming.

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
Though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

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