/Excerpts/
*
Do you want to be happy, non-dual?
Find the suitable notions.
*
But why should I be One – not a separate mind and a separate body?
Why should I be One, how does it help, will the world around
become One, will the worlds of life and death
be separate no longer?
Will the world become a whole, which
I will not comprehend, because
it won’t be death, but it won’t be life either?
*
Where inside me, which point divides
matter and mind? Where is the first point,
where I am divided,
where is that very first point, where I am One?
*
Why should you choose between the two worlds – are they comparable -
the world of Things and the world of Non-things? Gather them then,
if you tell them apart!
*
How did the Greeks carry on, before Parmenides came up with the Being,
what did they have before that?
*
What is the problem?
What is the insoluble problem?
What is the insoluble problem of the human?
What is the insoluble problem of the cancer patient?
What is the insoluble problem of the man with a cap?
What is the insoluble problem of the human?
What is the insoluble problem?
What is the problem?
*
What does that mean –
a few thousand years of posing the same
insoluble questions?
It means the solution comes forth.
*
What does it mean to be One with the outer? To stop cognizing,
then you are One. When you cognize, you lock yourself in your cognition,
you slam the door to what’s outside. But why should you be One
with it? Why the insistence, such a stubborn insistence,
such a lengthy insistence, such
a futile insistence? It sounds like salvation, but it's not.
Like a means of immortality, but it's not. Like an escape,
like a rescue maneuver, likes a palliative, like a trick,
like a fiction, a metaphysical rebellion?
Such a lengthy and futile insistence,
as if a part of the puzzle is missing.
*
How, why all these questions with no answers?
How, why all these wonderful
questions, which
can not be answered by the asker?
How, why all these amazing
questions, carried
as a burden by this little human?
How, why all these magical
questions, which become answers with no answers,
someday?
*
That world has only time, no space, and therefore
it utilizes the space of this one to perform its miracles.
I wonder if it happens with the knowledge and consent of the latter
or against them?
*
I’m trying to impart vigor to the words,
because I hate when they don't function, but always,
somewhere at the bottom of the word there is
the principle of death, which curdles vigor,
makes the word unable to unfold, to open out,
brimming with life.
*
The wind won’t do the job, if not in the sails,
if in the water, the wind may topple the boat.
The water won’t do the job, if not in the dam,
if unharnessed, the water may flood the houses.
The rapture won’t do the job, if not in the head,
if in the heart or the legs, the rapture may kill the man.
*
The joy of the human - a folded eternity.
translated by Hristianna
God in New York
short literary fragments, EnglishCeateSpace, USA, 2010, ISBN 978-1453727584
1.
“There is nothing new under the sun”: Ecclesiastes 1:9.
My questions:
1. Is this how things are?
2. Why are things this way?
3. How long has it been this way?
4. Will it still be like this in the future?
I like the trapezoidal shape the above questions happen to take – each question a little longer than the last. I ask myself, what question should I ask to make the top disappear, so that the trapezoid becomes a triangle?
7.
You are too close to yourself, you are within yourself – you are simply identical with yourself. You are so indivisible, you are so committed to a relationship with yourself, that you cannot see what you really have to offer, what your mind and spirit possess. If you had the necessary distance, if you could gain the needed perspective on yourself, you would have a true picture of yourself; you would see how much you possess – so much that you are in a position to use only a minute fraction of yourself. If you had the necessary perspective, you would find that you possess everything you are looking for from God, that which you wait to be given from Him through your faith; that you yourself are that gift.
God is the necessary perspective. He is not a being – he is a means, the mechanism that assures the distance – the distance itself, from which you observe yourself and find everything you are looking for, even things you did not know you were seeking. Don’t burden the mechanism with complications – when you turn on a lamp to light the room, you don’t think about how the light bulb is made, how it is wired, or how it is connected to the plug or the switch. From your perspective it makes no difference what God looks like, when He was born, how He lived and how He died. What plays the vital role in organizing and assimilating information that leads to useful insight – imagining yourself, not God.
God – the necessary distance from where I see myself in my entirety, where I see myself best.
37.
But isn’t advocating a spirituality without authorities, without supreme truths, without supreme principles, without rigid rules, a spirituality without regulations – also proposing an extreme that is as dangerous as “regulated” spirituality? And isn’t there a contradiction – to advocate the deregulation of spiritual practices and at the same time to declare unsound the variety of analytical amalgams and palliatives that encrust the modern world?
Deregulated spirituality is founded on a synthesis between reason and spirit, between responsibility and vocation, between now and then, between here and everywhere. This synthesis is unambiguously required to emphasize the paramount significance, the paramount importance of the human being who has direct, free and unobstructed access to God and who has no part in the intermediate administration of this access. This synthesis, on the other hand, implies as an intrinsic human trait, as Intrinsically Human – a sense of responsibility. The serious and committed fulfillment of a life’s work is the conjoining, the interlocking, the fusion between doubting reason that seeks confirmation and liberated spirit that seeks solace. Humanity is most successful, Humanity can only be successful when reason and spirit combine, each playing its indispensable role. What one does on its own and what the other does on its own, everyone knows perfectly well – alone or as a brute aggregate. We have witnessed this many times already.
tr. by prof. David Jenkins & Hristianna
The Thread Seller
poetry, EnglishCreateSpace, USA, 2010, ISBN 978-1450555555
cover and design by Rumen Evtimov
2009 "Ivan Nikolov" National Poetry Prize
The inside of Man is not the man. The outside of Man is not the man.
Inside are the organs. Outside is the rest of the world. Then what?
A rather frail, vibrating, transparent and permeable membrane,
through which matter performs artificial respiration on itself.
...
With such a diligence the thread seller labours,
so seriously treats his trade, as if
he is about to do whatever the surgeon is going to do.
Doesn’t he look ridiculous, the thread seller,
compared to the surgeon? And the surgeon –
doesn’t he look ridiculous compared to the God’s shepherd?
And the latter – isn’t he totally ridiculous compared to God?
And God – isn’t He a ridiculous God if compared to the thread seller,
who with such a diligence labours?
...
You are looking for a favourable omen?
Look – the Sun is rising.
tr. by Hristianna
Attempt at a Definition (1989)
***
In the dark, still sleeping house
a ray of sun - orange and dusty, falls aslant on the wall -
as if a moon lane.
Vulnerable to the slightest whiff of wind, trembling like
a bird's feather
tangled in the twigs -
the light sinks for an instant and again gushes
with the previous brightness.
Then timorously, bit by bit, but in a way resolved
dies out the wall.
tr. by Hristianna
Attempt at a Definition (1989)
Dedications to E.
1.
Let us uphold our love!
Beloved,
let us not live to see with open eyes
life drifting us apart.
Through our bodies
time is flowing out like sand in hourglass
and falling down on our blended shadow -
without a trace to bury us.
Without us
life is passing within us.
We're finding out about our hearts
what's already come true -
as if we're dying in our absence.
So -
let us uphold our love!
tr. by Hristianna
Reverse Waterfall (1995), I
The Iceberg
Occasionally birds alight upon it; enormous
fish draw their torsos near, next move away.
The surface line defines the parts distinctly –
the light one, presented in a polar world of night and day,
and then the dark, immensely bigger one, ushered
in the night.
From side, the body as a whole seems onesame
in both worlds, its non-segmented forms
imply resemblance in perception – as though
each part cognizes with the surface of the other
and all the signs upon it echo in response
to the opposing part. Yet no!
As soon the Essence nears, the notions staunchly
disunite,
as if it passes through and scatters them apart.
Sensing its surrounding contours, them alone
each part discovers. In the looking-glass emerges
only half the Being, the other half –
being so close to appearing within the frame,
unavoidably remains beyond, unreadable; throbs muffled,
humbly manifesting its existence.
And nothing
links the halves together, except the line
dividing them.
While melting.
tr. by Hristianna
Reverse Waterfall (1995), II
***
A few raindrops on your neck
and from the Universe there's only left
the light,
flickering within them.
tr. by Hristianna
Reverse Waterfall (1995), III
***
Now it is late.
Even the water in my shoe
fails to piss me off.
tr. by Hristianna
Reverse Waterfall (1995), III
***
So many death-convenient
places for living.
The tea is getting cold.
tr. by Hristianna
Reverse Waterfall (1995), III
***
The flame which burns the scrolls away
illumines me no more.
It feels as though the mirror passed me through the face.
tr. by Peyo Karpuzov
Reverse Waterfall (1995), III
***
A sip of gin
and the indifference already has a flavour.
tr. by Peyo Karpuzov
Reverse Waterfall (1995), III
***
What do you embrace –
the echo of the fallen rock or
the emptiness it’s filled so far?
tr. by Peyo Karpuzov
Reverse Waterfall (1995), III
***
How cold it is!
My body’s what has only left to me.
tr. by Peyo Karpuzov
Reverse Waterfall (1995), III
***
Darkness ripens like a fruit
in which the light decays.
tr. by Peyo Karpuzov
Reverse Waterfall (1995), III
***
Your fingers touch the pages lightly
as if they would deliver. They
extract the words as blind as new-born little puppies.
tr. by Peyo Karpuzov
Reverse Waterfall (1995), III
***
WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BLESS?
Strength I never found in anything –
through blood I felt, my mind in turmoil quivered –
a presentiment of essence was it all.
What am I supposed to bless?
No God, no meaning –
I never felt the passion of belief
nor the manliness of unbelief –
all was a presentiment that wore an old man’s face
and bore an infant’s breath.
tr. by Peyo Karpuzov
Reverse Waterfall (1995), III
***
The sky is horizontal.
And the tree intersects it
like a scream.
tr. by Peyo Karpuzov
Reverse Waterfall (1995), III
***
There blows an ancient wind foreboding
storm and rain.
The night’s suspended in the air.
Again unknown, unwelcoming again
the world appears.
The reason dreams of
its sacred mother’s essence.
tr. by Peyo Karpuzov
Reverse Waterfall (1995), III
***
With reason hardly peeping out its fleshly cell
the human was a gaol unguarded once, so that
infinity traversed him freely. Like a mantle
spread among the stars above, unbound he used to offer up himself
but ever he remained a whole, or when the Cosmos filled him over
he remained complete again, forever shining
bright within this undisturbed togetherness.
But reason stirred somewhat and rose, the human
sank, recoiling from the Cosmos, deeply in himself.
Jesus was betrayed to suffer death
whereupon the human shrank away still more.
Having lost his primal, old support
he reeled, increasingly diverging from the centre,
bent in two as though in pain. (He raised his eyes but didn’t see
the Cosmos,
then he looked inside himself but didn’t see his self at all.)
So as to keep his balance
he shoved the heaven’s burden off his shoulders,
leaning down to find support in someone else’s leaning
essence.
Thus,
before the threshold of this new togetherness death found
a sheaf
and not a single stalk.
tr. by Peyo Karpuzov
Universe at Dusk (1998)
***
Blendness -
to feel no sadness on the corner
of Broadway and Sixth.
tr. by Hristianna
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