Hafiz: "A Cushion for Your Head"

Just sit there right now
Don't do a thing
Just rest.

For you separation from God,
From love,

Is the hardest work
In this
World.

Let me bring you trays of food
And something
That you like to
Drink.

You can use my soft words
As a cushion
For your
Head.

Hafiz:(1320-1389). "The Gift: Poems by Hafez the Great Sufi Master." Version from Persian by Daniel Ladinsky, 1999. Cf. critique by Murat Nemet-Najat.

Green Tara: the buddha-emanation from one of the two tears shed by Avalokiteshvara-- now the "karmic deity of Tibet," once a man who volunteered to postpone his final enlightenment until all sentient beings were also freed-- when he wept at all those still trapped in "samsara." Tara, "she who liberates" (no Indo-European Gaelic connection alas that I can pinpoint, but a welcome if accidental cognate!), appears in a white maternal and a green active form of compassion. This bodhisattva can be both playful and merciful. Her multiple eyes signify the Buddhist union of feminine wisdom and male "skillful means" that marks true compassion. For me, she represents love in its purest, most generous, distillation and distribution.

It's difficult if understandable to find an icon of her not a Tibetan "thangka." I looked at 600 Google pictures and found but two! This one appeared suitably mind-altering for "visualization" by those of us mired in the flesh. "Mystic Chaishop" "c/p 2004-2007 by A. Leib, all –whatsoever- rights reserved."

P.S. Happy Valentine's Day!