Path

March 27, 2023

IN HIDING

The truth lives in the interstices,
increasingly harder to see
amid the morass of desire,
lost in the tides of alternative truths
as some prefer to call lies these days.
If you look for it you will find it,
for it burrows in, refusing to leave,
to be dislodged, transmuted, forgotten.
For most it cannot be seen but need only
be assumed, but those who need to see it
most clearly are those who wish it not so,
who, if they cannot be rid of it
because it blocks them, blocks
the path of their urges and desires
would bury it, or paint
it over or surround it with lies
until the casual observer could not
begin to tell the truth and the lie apart.

February 28, 2023

AND TO YOU WE LEAVE . . .

Of course we did not heed
the warnings, what did they know,
and anyway we were sure we had won.

History is a poor teacher, that
much we have demonstrated again
and yet again, lessons never learned.

It is how we got here, how we
have no clear path to leave here,
things assumed lying in ruin around us.

We are tired now, old and no longer
able to fight as we once did, so we
must become the teachers, sharing

what we know, what battle plans
we used, reaching for those who
assumed it would all be provided,

that they needed to do nothing,
to sit by, to not participate, and now
to complain about the disaster.

We did not want this for them,
they, although we didn’t know it then,
were the reason we fought, and now

they must carry the battle or lose the war.

January 15, 2023

ARRHYTHMIA

Life ought be little more than
arrhythmic motion, a path
we only want to straighten,
to smooth, its natural, necessary
twists and bumps somehow,
for we always see them as
impediments not moments
of joyous indecision where
there are no wrong choices
for each choice unfolds
a new path never trodden,
never imagined or foreseen.

A bird flies to where it needs
to be, but for most that are
not migrating, that place
isn’t known until arrival and
even then, save for nesting,
it is the right place only for
a day, a week, a month
or perhaps only a moment,
for a bird knows only this
moment and this until
there are no more moments.

December 5, 2022

DISCLOSING IS NOT AS GOOD AS PRACTICE

To speak of hours of practice
is not as good as 10 minutes
engaged in practice.
So, too, an hour speech
on practice pales
with even a moment of silence.
But to be silent and also
not practice is to turn
your back on the path
and blind yourself
with your stick.

A reflection on Case 77 of the Shobogenzo (True Dharma Eye) Koans

November 14, 2022

TOZAN’S DISCLOSING MIND

Many would say
I think therefore I am
and it is only death
that takes away all thought
and so to walk deeply
along the Path, all
that is required
is to truly live the Way
by allowing
the mind to die.

A reflection on case 62 of Dogen’s Shobogenzo Koans (True Dharma Eye)

October 5, 2022

NONATTACHMENT

There was the collectivist period,
those years when I wanted
a copy of every book on Buddhism
I could locate, a full and nearly
complete library, sutras and
philosophical discourses included.

There was the moment when I
realized the absurdity of all that,
the attachment to texts
to enable me to find the ability
to practice non-attachment,
and I gave the books away,
and finally set off on the path
the books only poorly described.

October 2, 2022

ON THE HORIZON

In crossing the event horizon
dualities collapse and crumble.
God and Satan are again merged
into a unity, pressed into diamond
its glint that of a thousand suns.

We follow as we must, for now
there is neither good nor evil,
there merely is, and we have found
the path we have been seeking
on the road to our sigularity.