Everything Is Beautiful and I Am So Sad

How poetry in the midst of silence can reach where the intellect cannot

“Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.” How does Mark Nepo's haunting poem, 'Adrift' ask us to hold both truths at once? When it comes to expressing what lies beyond our usual ken, few things do it more powerfully than poetry.

One of my most treasured possessions is an old anthology of poems my grandfather gave me as a teen, the one in the photo above. It's a leather-bound copy of The Golden Treasury, arranged by Francis T. Palgrave, its pages now soft and fraying with age. He signed and dated it on December 5, 1941, in the thick of the Second World War. At the time, he was a doctor in the British army, serving on ships that carried wounded soldiers from the front lines. I've read bits of it, but more often I find myself simply inhaling the scent of its browned, time-worn pages. It instantly carries me back to the deep love my grandfather showed me, and the love I felt for him in return.

My relationship with poetry began in indifference. In middle and high school in India, English poetry was something we studied as the lingering legacy of Thomas Macaulay. We worked through anthologies filled with Keats, Yeats, Shelley, Milton and Shakespeare, voices wrapped in archaic language that I strained to understand and couldn't quite connect with. I studied them dutifully, not out of curiosity or delight, but because good grades demanded it.

It wasn't until my first Buddhist meditation retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center decades later that poetry began to open something in me. Western Buddhist teachers often weave poems into their teachings, using them to illuminate a teaching or help deepen a practice. For the first time, I was hearing poetry (much of it contemporary, written in everyday English) spoken in a way I could truly absorb. Maybe it was the spaciousness of silence, or the clarity of the language, or both. Whatever the cause, the lines I heard bypassed my intellect and landed straight within my body, my heart.

When I became a meditation teacher myself, I started gathering what I think of as dharma poems in a single document. It has now grown to 228 pages and has become my daily companion. I add to it whenever a poem resonates, with no real system of organization. Contemporary American poets sit alongside classical Persian mystics, Buddhist scripture mingles with modern free verse. Ending every guided meditation with a poem has become a personal signature. And while you might imagine it would be impossible to find the right poem in such a sprawling collection, I've developed an almost mystical relationship with it. The right one serendipitously leaps out as I scroll, and I know: Yes, this is it. Again and again, students tell me how deeply the poems land for them.

What follows are excerpts from a few poems that speak in a language uniquely their own, carrying both the subtlety of spiritual insight and the honesty of everyday experience. I invite you to read the poems in their entirety slowly and mindfully by clicking on the title links. As you do, imagine receiving them after a moment of quiet reflection or meditation. Read not to get through the poem or extract its meaning, but to dwell with it. Let each line have its own breath. You will see why poetry has become one of my most trusted companions in sharing these teachings. By the way, if these poems move you, please consider supporting poetry by buying the books, linked below, for yourself or as a gift!

Because by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

From The Unfolding (Wildhouse Publishing, 2024)

So I can’t save the world—

can’t save even myself,

can’t wrap my arms around

every frightened child, can’t

foster peace among nations,

can’t bring love to all who

feel unlovable.

So I practice opening my heart

right here in this room and being gentle

with my insufficiency.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

But today, the invitation is clear:

to be ridiculously courageous in love.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

To feel the shock of indifference,

of anger, of cruelty, of fear,

and stay open. To love as if it matters,

as if the world depends on it.

In times when the world feels heavy and unrelenting, this poem calls me toward a courageous openness of heart, reminding me that staying tender, receptive, and committed to love still matters deeply, perhaps now more than ever.

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One, One, One by Jalaluddin Rumi

From The Essential Rumi (HarperCollins, 1995)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The lamps are different,

But the Light is the same.

One matter, one energy, one Light, one Light-mind,

Endlessly emanating all things.

One turning and burning diamond,

One, one, one.

Ground yourself, strip yourself down,

To blind loving silence.

Stay there, until you see

You are gazing at the Light

With its own ageless eyes.

This is Rumi's expression of his realization of nonduality. I hear the voices of seers from all traditions echoed in these words.

---

Ami ('I') by Rabindranath Tagore

From Shyamali (1936)

The color of my consciousness made the emerald green, and the ruby red.

I gazed at the sky, and the light dazzled in the east and the west.

I turned to the rose and exclaimed - ‘it’s beautiful!’ and beautiful it became.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The philosophers are negating existence in every breath

muttering ‘No, no, no. Not emerald, not ruby, not light, not rose. Nor I, nor you.’

Meanwhile, the limitless one is exploring itself within the limits of humanity. That’s called ‘I’.

A luminous poem that explores the mysterious way in which Spirit, or consciousness, expresses itself through our sense of 'I,' to become the world of forms we experience. For me this poem affirms all of Existence and infuses it with divinity.

---

Adrift By Mark Nepo

From The Book of Awakening (Conari Press, 2000)

Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.

This is how the heart makes a duet of

wonder and grief.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In the very center, under

it all, what we have that no one can take

away and all that we've lost face each other.

It is there that I'm adrift, feeling punctured

by a holiness that exists inside everything.

I am so sad and everything is beautiful.

The Nepo poem undoes me every time. It captures poignantly the dance between grief and the overwhelming beauty of being alive. When I read these lines after meditation, I watch people's faces soften with recognition. We all know this ache. We all live in this duet between what Nikos Kazantzakis called the full catastrophe and the unbearable beauty of life.

Poetry has this quiet way of finding us when we need it most, of saying what we couldn't quite articulate ourselves. I often think about my grandfather on those ships during the war, carrying his leather-bound anthology through those long months away from his family in India. Did he think of my grandmother when he read certain lines? Did poetry help him make sense of the war? Of the wounded men he tended? I'll never know for certain, but I understand now what he was showing me when he gave me that book. That even in the darkest times, beauty and meaning persist. That words can be companions. That we're never truly alone.

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I'd love to hear about the poems that have touched you on your own journey. What lines have stayed with you? What verses have opened something in your heart or shifted your understanding? Please share in the comments below. I'm always eager to discover new voices and add to my ever-growing collection.

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