zip, nada,
zilch, nothin',
bupkis, diddly squat,
zippo, the big Oh.

Listen, my heart!

— R. M. Rilke

What is prayer?

We asked the captain what course
of action he proposed to take toward
a beast so large, terrifying, and
unpredictable. He hesitated to
answer, and then said judiciously:
“I think I shall praise it."

Robert Hass

An aged man is but a paltry thing,

A tattered coat upon a stick, unless

Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing

For every tatter in its mortal dress.

W B Yeats

How can I accept,
then honor,
and finally love
growing old?

And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

Mark 9:24

Maybe it was Norbu Rinpoche who said,

"Heal me from the sickness of effort."
 

HAVE MERCY!

What gets in the way?
Who follows in the Way?

WE ARE HEALED BY LIGHT.

IF I WERE HEALED, THEN WHAT?

I am a child of Earth and the starry Heaven,
but my roots are in Heaven.

-- Orphic Tablet at Petelia, 4th Century

O, this is the beast that doesn't exist...

Rilke

It came to me in a flash that in the organ of the plant which we are accustomed to call the leaf lies the true Proteus who can hide or reveal himself in all vegetal forms.  From first to last, the plant is nothing but leaf, which is so inseparable from the future germ that one cannot think of one without the other.

J.W. v Goethe, The Metamorphosis of Plants, 1790
 

"In November 1895 Venkataraman realized that Arunachala, the sacred mountain, was a real place. He had known of its existence from an early age, and was overwhelmed by the realisation that it really existed...."

Earth, isn’t this what you want: to arise within us,
invisible?

-- R. M. Rilke