illusion

May 29, 2023

THE SURANGAMA SCRIPTURE’S NOT SEEING

It happens every day,
when I arise from the cushion
and look, I see myself there.
If you look, you say you see me as well.
It will happen one day
that when I arise from the cushion
and look I will not see myself.
If you look, you will say you see me,
and I will nod in agreement.
Each day when I see myself,
I know that it is I who I am seeing.
But each day I see an illusion,
masquerading as I, a delusion,
and I see you seeing me, a delusion.
Each day you see me, you see
a delusion, but a different delusion.
Consider how strange this is,
for on the day I do not see myself
I see no delusion, but you see me
and see a delusion, but I do not
see you, for there is no me to see you,
and just then I am free of delusion.

A reflection on Case 94 of the Blue Cliff Record (碧巌録, Hekiganroku)

May 15, 2023

MASTER MA IS UNWELL

Yesterday is but a shadow
and tomorrow an illusion.
Do not wallow in the mud
of attempted memory, do
not sink in the mire
of deluded anticipation.
Stop, listen to the sun
and the moon sing
of the Dharma, hear
the silence it brings
for you are alive
in this moment,
and there is
no other moment
in which you can live.

A reflection on Case 3 of the Blue Cliff Record (Hekiganroku 碧巌録)

May 14, 2023

NO HARRY

There is no Houdini today, no
master of escapology, only sleight
of hand that cannot provide
a release from our self-
made shackles, for we have
failed to learn the secrets
that might have saved us.
We were stubborn, figured that
we could solve the problem later,
read a book, looked to a new master
but those new masters have only
perfected the art of illusion and that
was our delusion, that we could
magically escape from the prison,
the ecological and natural prison
that we have created for ourselves

October 22, 2020

I SPEND THE EMPTY HOURS

I spend considerable time thinking
about what it is that I am, what is I,
whether Descartes’ God or Spinoza’s
could possibly exist, or must if I can have
meaning beyond self-reflection, needing
a godly mirror, and image reflected.
Cogito, on what basis can I draw that conclusion
what logical proof, carefully constructed will
not fall under the weight of the axiom, cogito cogito
but of what? Keys that spit words that fade
under a misplaced finger, she caught in the web
twisting, unable to pull free, staring at
an approaching holiday of praying forgiveness
Vidui, as though to posit God is to validate
emotions, control impulses which leap synapses
and flit and fade, I have sinned and transgressed
I have violated laws and statutes and I beg
forgiveness that I might live, this I, this cogito
who has no external reference save God
which makes all things real, all illusion.
It is comforting knowing in death the soul is
carried on, thought lingers, or does it cease
such that I am not for I think not, yet why should
I fear, for when it is done, I will not have been
save as a reference point, a linchpin from which
may hang ornaments of a life, a tidy sum.

Publsihed in These Lines, Fall 2020
https://theselines.org/these-lines-1.1-fall-2020.pdf

October 6, 2020

MIRROR IMAGE

Each morning when I look
into the mirror I imagine
I see me, but of course that
is impossible, for in that moment
only the mirror sees me
and I see the mirror.

How deluded I must be
to assume that I look at all
like the mirror, but it is,
I know, just such delusions
that enable my sense of self,
and that is the grandest illusion.

A morning will come when I
look into the glass and nothing
is there or a face I have never
before seen and the mirror
will laugh, as will I, at this
game we have played for years.

August 22, 2020

WORMHOLE LOGIC

Getting a headache, are we? You feel like Schrodinger’s cat. It’s really like asking yourself if the Big Bang was the beginning of everything, what was there in that split second before the Big Bang? If God created everything, what created God? If time begins with the Big Bang, what time was it before there was time? And who are you really, if you know your are merely an illusion created by you? And please tell me, what time is it? Find the black hole, for there is freedom.

April 7, 2020

LITTLE LESS THAN GODS

It hardly seems all that long ago
when we were immortal, when
we measured our days by the number
of dares we undertook, each
with its own level of stupidity
which we took, mistakenly, for courage.
We are older now, we would like
to think far wiser as well, but the line
between truth and illusion is thin
and almost impossible to discern.
We now measure our days in open rooms
with small clusters of neatly arrayed chairs
and the odd table piled with magazines
that have faded with time and disuse,
occasionally a fish tank where it
is hard to tell who is less interested
we or the fish, but they, at least,
aren’t waiting for the nurse to call us,
take our vitals and say in a shocking display
of honesty, “the doctor will be with you
eventually.”

March 28, 2019

CRYPTIC (an acrostic)

God, it was a long night, unending
needs unsated, brought to the edge
man is a cruel beast, half master
as pleading supplicant, half slave
much the child, begging, wanting
as if food or thought would give
man humanity, elevated above
needs, existing outside, independent a
God, ruler of illusion and fantasy.

First Appeared in Aura Literary Arts Review, Vol. 3, No. 2, Summer 1996.

September 12, 2018

SLIP SLIDING AWAY

There comes a moment
at which both memory and history
become blurred at the edges,
where the bedrock on which belief
has been so carefully erected
seems more magma, shifting
threatening to bring down the superstructure
of desire and assumption.
It is the fading that is at once
both fear inducing and exhilarating
for faith is tested and will most likely fail
leaving uncertainty in place of illusion.
This is the joy and treat of aging
where your own life has former lives
that you cannot be certain you lived,
which seem familiar enough but
never with the crystalline clarity
you imaged memory must have.
Memory is a Buddhist river
and so much of the fun
is continually getting
your feet wet once again.

July 1, 2018

THE THING OF IT

The thing he wants most
is to experience life and all it offers.
By that he means he wants to see
what is there, to smell it, to engage
it with all of his senses, for
those are what he trusts, they
provide him reality, without them
his mind could not frame the moment.
The thing she wants most
is to be in life, an integral
part of what is offered, to
be indistinguishable from life,
so that they eyes cannot see it,
the nose cannot smell it,
the mind cannot frame anything,
for she is that thing
and that moment and there is
nothing else, except perhaps him
staring, sniffing and cataloging
his own illusory world.