forward

October 17, 2022

ONLY A BUDDHA AND A BUDDHA

We walk forward
to try and see
where we are going,
always wanting
but never seeing
where we have been.
Is it better to
walk backward
seeing clearly
where we will not go
without idea
of a destination.
Look down and decide.

A reflection on Case 92 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo Koans (True Dharma Eye)

October 12, 2021

REGARDING HISTORY

We stand around
in the shadow
of the Coliseum
staring at
the Roman Forum
imagining life
in the time
of the emperor.

Fast forward
two or three
millennia,
and imagine
the faces
of those staring
at the ruins
of our civilization

if we have not
destroyed all
life by then.

May 12, 2020

KEEPING FOCUS

It is of little surprise that we find
this a dizzying world, for we always
try to look forward, but since the future
is often vague, we try and keep one eye
on the past to understand what
our other eye is poorly seeing.

The mind does not care to be
pulled in two directions at once,
objects with stabbing pains, and
when that fails to correct us,
a weariness we cannot overcome.

The Buddha would tell you
it is best to keep both eyes
in the present, to focus softly
and see what is there without
judgement or preconception, to simply

be, assured that all senses are
merely crude tools to shape what
is amorphous into something we
can grasp and file, but time itself knows
there is nothing more than now, ever.

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February 28, 2020

LOOKING BACK FORWARD

Between now and eventually lies all of history. We are unable to see it
though it lies in our field of vision. That’s the problem, we only know
how to look backward. We are barely able to see where we are. It isn’t
that we don’t want to be here, merely that here is difficult to see, for
we have a tendency to block our vision. Imagine a map with an X or other
marker saying “You are Here.” Yet seeing that we know we are not there for
in that instant we will look down and see where we truly are. But the better
statement to the “you are here” sign is not to call it wrong, but rather
to simply ask it, how did you know. It will answer, your visit was history
lying between my now and my eventually.

September 22, 2017

STARING

If you stare at it long enough
it is certain to become familiar,
as though you have seen the very thing
in the very place and time before.
You know this is not possible, but
it allows you to conceive of the future,
even though that cannot exist, any more
than the past can now exist, and if it
once did, was it as you remember it?
The mind is ponderous, and grows more so
when it tries to grasp what does not exist,
and in the accretion, it subtly
curves space-time around it,
so that what is real and what is not
cannot be distinguished, and if
you stare forward long enough, you will
likely stare into the back of your head.