October 1

1

There’s this shape, black as the entrance to a cave.
A longing wells up in its throat
like a blossom
as it breathes slowly.

What does the world
mean to you if you can’t trust it
to go on shining when you’re

not there? and there’s
a tree, long-fallen; once
the bees flew to it, like a procession
of messengers, and filled it
with honey.

2

I said to the chickadee, singing his heart out in the green pine tree:

little dazzler
little song,
little mouthful.

3

The shape climbs up out of the curled grass. It
grunts into view. There is no measure
for the confidence at the bottom of its eyes-
there is no telling
the suppleness of its shoulders as it turns
and yawns.

Near the fallen tree
something- a leaf snapped loose
from the branch and fluttering down- tries to pull me
into its trap of attention.

4

It pulls me
into its trap of attention,

And when I turn again, the bear is gone.

5

Look, hasn’t my body already felt
like the body of a flower?

6

Look, I want to love this world
as thought it’s the last chance I’m ever going to get
to be alive
and know it.

7

Sometimes in late summer I won’t touch anything, not
the flowers, not the blackberries
brimming in the thickets; I won’t drink
from the pond; I won’t name the birds or the trees;
I won’t whisper my own name.

One morning
the fox came down the hill, glittering and confident,
and didn’t see me- and I thought:

so this is the world.
I’m not in it.
It is beautiful.

— Mary Oliver, “October”

October 2

A leaf, one of the last, parts from a maple branch:
it is spinning in the transparent air of October, falls
on a heap of others, stops, fades. No one
admired its entrancing struggle with the wind,
followed its flight, no one will distinguish it now
as it lies among the other leaves, no one saw
what I did. I am
the only one.

— Bronislaw Maj, “A Leaf,” translated by Czeslaw Milosz and Robert Hass

October 3

The day we die
the wind comes down
to take away
our footprints

The wind makes dust
to cover up
the marks we left
while walking.

For otherwise
the thing would seem
as if we were still living.

Therefore the wind
is he who comes
to blow away
our footprints.

— Southern Bushmen song, translated by Kenneth Rexroth

October 4

He that keepeth his commandments receiveth truth and light, until he is glorified in truth and knoweth all things. Man was also in the beginning with God. Intelligence, or the light of truth, was not created or made, neither indeed can be. All truth is independent in that sphere in which God has placed it, to act for itself, as all intelligence also; otherwise there is no existence.

The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth. … I have commanded you to bring up your children in light and truth.

— Doctrine and Covenants 93: 29-31, 36, 40

October 5

Mankind’s true moral test, its fundamental test (which lies deeply buried from view), consists of its attitude towards those who are at its mercy: animals. And in this respect mankind has suffered a fundamental debacle, a debacle so fundamental that all others stem from it.

— Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, translated by M. H. Heim

October 6

While we were butchering and I was eating some liver, I felt sorry that we had killed these animals and thought that we ought to do something in return. So I said: “Father, should we not offer one of these to the wild things?” He looked hard at me again for a while. Then he placed one of the deer with its head to the east, and, facing the west, he raised his hand and cried, ” Hey-hey” four times and prayed like this: “Grandfather, the Great Spirit, behold me! To all the wild things that eat flesh, this I have offered that my people may live and the children grow up with plenty.”

We always made an offering of bait to the fish, saying: “You who are down in the water with wings of red, I offer this to you; so come hither.” Then when we caught the first fish, we would put it on a forked stick and kiss it. If we did not do this, we were sure the others would know and stay away. If we caught a little fish, we would kiss it and throw it back, so that it would not go and frighten the bigger fish. I don’t know whether all this helped or not, but we always got plenty of fish, and our parents were proud of us. We tried to catch as many as we could so that people would think much of us.

— Black Elk, Black Elk Speaks

October 7

When an archer is shooting for nothing
He has all his skill.
If he shoots for a brass buckle
He is already nervous.
If he shoots for a prize of gold
He goes blind
Or sees two targets –
He is out of his mind!

His skill has not changed, But the prize
Divides him. He cares,
He thinks more of winning
Than of shooting –
And the need to win
Drains him of power.

— Chuang Tzu, “The Need to Win,” translated by Thomas Merton

October 8

Multitude stands in my mind but I think that the ocean in the bone vault is only
The bone vault’s ocean: out there is the ocean’s;

The water is the water, the cliff is the rock, come shocks and flashes of reality. The mind
Passes, the eye closes, the spirit is a passage;
The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself, the heart-breaking beauty
Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.

— from Robinson Jeffers’ “Credo”

October 9

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

— Theodore Roethke, “The Waking”

October 10

What life have you if you have not life together?
There is no life that is not in community,
And no community not lived in praise of GOD.

— from T.S. Eliot, “Choruses from ‘The Rock'”

October 11

When the Savior shall appear we shall see him as he is. We shall see that he is a man like ourselves. And that same sociality which exists among us here will exist among us there, only it will be coupled with eternal glory, which glory we do not now enjoy.

— Doctrine and Covenants 130: 1-2

October 12

To stand on common ground
here and there gritty with pebbles
yet elsewhere ‘fine and mellow—
uncommon fine for ploughing’

there to labor
planting the vegetative words
diversely in their order
that they come to virtue!

To reach those shining pebbles,
that soil where uncommon men
have labored in their virtue
and left a store

of seeds for planting!
To crunch on words
grown in grit or fine
crumbling earth, sweet

to eat and sweet
to be given, to be eaten
in common, by laborer
and hungry wanderer …

— Denise Levertov, “A Common Ground”

October 13

Not because of victories
I sing,
having none,
but for the common sunshine,
the breeze,
the largess of the spring.

Not for victory
but for the day’s work done
as well as I was able;
not for a seat upon the dais
but at the common table.

— Charles Reznikoff, “Te Deum”

October 14

I said I will find what is lowly
and put the roots of my identity
down there:
each day I’ll wake up
and find the lowly nearby,
a handy focus and reminder,
a ready measure of my significance,
the voice by which I would be heard,
the wills, the kinds of selfishness
I could
freely adopt as my own:

but though I have looked everywhere,
I can find nothing
to give myself to:
everything is

magnificent with existence, is in
surfeit of glory:
nothing is diminished,
nothing has been diminished for me:

I said what is more lowly than the grass:
ah, underneath,
a ground-crust of dry-burnt moss:
I looked at it closely
and said this can be my habitat: but
nestling in I
found
below the brown exterior
green mechanisms beyond the intellect
awaiting resurrection in rain: so I got up

and ran saying there is nothing lowly in the universe:
I found a beggar:
he had stumps for legs: nobody was paying
him any attention: everybody went on by:
I nestled in and found his life:
there, love shook his body like a devastation:
I said
though I have looked everywhere
I can find nothing lowly
in the universe:

I whirled though transfigurations up and down,
transfigurations of size and shape and place:

at one sudden point came still,
stood in wonder:
moss, beggar, weed, tick, pine, self, magnificent
with being!

— A. R. Ammons, “Still”

October 15

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day
When the last fires will wave to me
And the silence will set out
Tireless traveler
Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer
Find myself in life as in a strange garment
Surprised at the earth
And the love of one woman
And the shamelessness of men
As today writing after three days of rains
Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease
And bowing not knowing to what

— W. S. Merwin, “For the Anniversary of My Death”

October 16

One granite ridge
A tree, would be enough
Or even a rock, a small creek,
A bark shred in a pool.
Hill beyond hill, folded and twisted
Tough trees crammed
In thin stone fractures
A huge moon on it all, is too much.
The mind wanders. A million
Summers, night air still and the rocks
Warm. Sky over endless mountains.
All the junk that goes with being human
Drops away, hard rock wavers
Even the heavy present seems to fail
This bubble of a heart.
Words and books
Like a small creek off a high ledge
Gone in the dry air.

A clear, attentive mind
Has no meaning but that
Which sees is truly seen.
No one loves rock, yet we are here.
Night chills. A flick
In the moonlight
Slips into Juniper shadow:
Back there unseen
Cold proud eyes
Of Cougar or Coyote
Watch me rise and go.

— Gary Snyder, “Piute Creek”

October 17

O mind, make this resolve: “I am bound to others.” From now on you must not be concerned with anything but the welfare of all sentient beings.

— Santideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life

October 18

Love is one of the chief characteristics of Deity, and ought to be manifested by those who aspire to be the sons of God. A man filled with the love of God, is not content with blessing his family alone, but ranges through the whole world, anxious to bless the whole human race.

— from a letter from Joseph Smith, Jr. to the Twelve, Dec. 15, 1840

October 19

In 1966, when Cheng Yen was twenty-nine, she saw an indigenous woman with labor complications whose family had carried her for eight hours from their mountain village to Hualien City. On arriving they were told they would have to pay for the medical treatment she needed. Unable to afford the cost of treatment they had no alternative but to carry her back again. In response, Cheng Yen organized a group of thirty housewives, each of whom put aside a few cents each day to establish a charity fund for needy families. It was called Tzu Chi, which means “Compassionate Relief.” …

Tzu Chi founded medical and nursing schools. Perhaps the most remarkable feature of its medical schools is the attitude shown to corpses that are used for medical purposes, such as teaching anatomy or simulation surgery, or for research. Obtaining corpses for this purpose is normally a problem in Chinese cultures because of a Confucian tradition that the body of a deceased person should be cremated with the body intact. Cheng Yen asked her volunteers to help by willing their bodies to the medical school after their death. In contrast to most medical schools, here the bodies are treated with the utmost respect for the person whose body it was. The students visit the family of the deceased and learn about his or her life. They refer to the deceased as “silent mentors,” place photographs of the living person on the walls of the medical school, and have a shrine to each donor. After the course has concluded and the body has served its purpose, all parts are replaced and the body is sewn up. The medical school then arranges a cremation ceremony in which students and the family take part.

… Our best hope for the future is not to get people to think of all humanity as family—that’s impossible. It lies, instead, in an appreciation of the fact that, even if we don’t empathize with distant strangers, their lives have the same value as the lives of those we love

— Peter Singer, The Most Good You Can Do

October 20

I must die. But must I die bawling? I must be put in chains – but moaning and groaning too? I must be exiled; but is there anything to keep me from going with a smile, calm and self-composed?

Why not try coming to terms with what you have been given?

— Epictetus, Discourses and Selected Writings

October 21

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul.

— William Ernest Henley, “Invictus”

October 22

At every hour devote yourself in a resolute spirit, as befits a Roman and a man, to fulfilling the task in hand with a scrupulous and unaffected dignity, and with love for others, and independence, and justice; and grant yourself a respite from all other preoccupations. And this you will achieve if you perform every action as though it were your last, freed from all lack of purpose and wilful deviation from the rule of reason, and free from duplicity, self-love, and dissatisfaction with what is allotted to you.

— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

October 23

“Of things, some are up to us, and some are not up to us. Up to us are opinion, impulse, desire, aversion and, in a word, all our actions. Not up to us are our body, possessions, reputations, offices and, in a word, all that are not our actions”

— Epictetus

The key to happiness, Epictetus suggests, is continually to analyse our experience of the world in terms of this division between what is “up to us” and “not up to us.” Almost all human misery, he argues, is the product of people not understanding the nature and significance of this division, of assuming that they have control of things that in fact they do not, of grounding their happiness on external things “not up to us” and so making it highly vulnerable to the vicissitudes of fortune. Instead, we should ground our happiness on those things that are “up to us”, on those things that can never be taken away from us. If we do that, our happiness will be literally invulnerable.

— John Sellars, Stoicism

October 24

Before you enter into prayer, ask thy soul these questions — 1. To what end, O my soul, art thou retired into this place? Art thou not come to discourse the Lord in prayer? Is he present; will he hear thee? Is he merciful; will he help thee? Is thy business slight; is it not concerning the welfare of thy soul? What words wilt thou use to move him to compassion? … When thou prayest, rather let thy hearts be without words than thy words without a heart.

— John Bunyan

October 25

Therefore may God grant unto you, my brethren, that ye may begin to exercise your faith unto repentance, that ye begin to call upon his holy name, that he would have mercy upon you; Yea, cry unto him for mercy; for he is mighty to save. Yea, humble yourselves, and continue in prayer unto him. Cry unto him when ye are in your fields, yea, over all your flocks. Cry unto him in your houses, yea, over all your household, both morning, mid-day, and evening. Yea, cry unto him against the power of your enemies. Yea, cry unto him against the devil, who is an enemy to all righteousness. Cry unto him over the crops of your fields, that ye may prosper in them. Cry over the flocks of your fields, that they may increase. But this is not all; ye must pour out your souls in your closets, and your secret places, and in your wilderness. Yea, and when you do not cry unto the Lord, let your hearts be full, drawn out in prayer unto him continually for your welfare, and also for the welfare of those who are around you.

And now behold, my beloved brethren, I say unto you, do not suppose that this is all; for after ye have done all these things, if ye turn away the needy, and the naked, and visit not the sick and afflicted, and impart of your substance, if ye have, to those who stand in need—I say unto you, if ye do not any of these things, behold, your prayer is vain, and availeth you nothing, and ye are as hypocrites who do deny the faith. Therefore, if ye do not remember to be charitable, ye are as dross, which the refiners do cast out, (it being of no worth) and is trodden under foot of men.

— Alma 34: 17-29, from the Book of Mormon, translated by Joseph Smith, Jr.

October 26

I think there is no light in the world but the world. And I think there is light. My happiness is the knowledge of all we do not know.

— George Oppen, letter to Anthony Rudolf, June 6, 1981

October 27

A couple of weeks later, after we had lost the World Series, I was doing a radio talk show, and this one caller called up. He was unhappy with a lot of things, with my policies. He thought I was being too soft on the homeless. There were a lot of homeless people as a result of the earthquake, and a lot were temporarily homeless but still out in the parks of the city. He was complaining about a variety of things, saying I was the worst mayor we’ve ever had. So the talk-show host, who was not a big fan of mine, said, “Well, you’ve got to admit the mayor did a pretty good job during the earthquake.” The caller said, “Yeah, but that only lasted 17 seconds.”

— Art Agnos, ex-mayor of San Francisco, in an oral history of 1989 Bay Area earthquake

October 28

October 29

Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring. If there is no response in you to the awakening of nature, – if the prospect of an early morning walk does not banish sleep, if the warble of the first bluebird does not thrill you, – know that the morning and spring of your life are past. Thus may you feel your pulse.

— Henry David Thoreau, Journal, February 25, 1850

October 30

In the account of Korea’s establishment as a nation, a tiger and a bear prayed to Hwanung that they may become human. Upon hearing their prayers, Hwanung gave them 20 cloves of garlic and a bundle of mugwort, ordering them to eat only this sacred food and remain out of the sunlight for 100 days. The tiger gave up after about twenty days and left the cave. However, the bear remained and was transformed into a woman.

The bear-woman was grateful and made offerings to Hwanung. However, she lacked a husband, and soon became sad and prayed beneath a “divine birch” tree to be blessed with a child. Hwanung, moved by her prayers, took her for his wife and soon she gave birth to a son named Dangun Wanggeom.

— Wikipedia article on Dangun, the legendary founder and god-king of Gojoseon, the first Korean Kingdom

October 31

Confucius teaches that certain rituals – “as if” rituals in particular – are transformative because they break patterned behaviours we’ve fallen into. When you smile as if you’re not angry, or bite your tongue instead of lashing out you are faking it. It’s because those “as if” moments create a tiny break from reality that they are so valuable. We act “as if” we are different and our feelings are more mature. By doing so, we transform into someone who is kind and generous rather than someone exercising the right to express authentically honest but destructive feelings. As we complete these rituals again and again, letting our behaviour lead our feelings rather than the other way around, we become different – and better – over time.

— Michael Puett and Christine Gross-Loh, authors of The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About the Good Life