He would be the first to admit
that he hated most things avant-garde
particularly when it applied
to either art or music.
It was simply a matter of being
in the moment, and he knew
you could not be ahead of time
for there was only the moment
in which you were in.
He can remember it as though it was just yesterday. Actually it was just yesterday, but for him that had little to do with memory. Bits of his childhood would come flooding back: the city, the cousins who took him in for the few dollars his mother could offer. But his grandsons are a vague shadow, sometimes present, sometimes faded into the background. He ex-wife is ever present, and he clings to her, despite her death, wondering if they will get back together. I don’t want to tell him that his wish will require a firm belief by them both in a hereafter, and that neither of them was very good at directions in any event, so who knows where they will end up.
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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.
For Something Different, a new bird photo each day, visit my other blog:
Bird-of-the-day.com
En route to Buddhism, I must admit
I stopped at numerous philosophical
way-stations, none quite as equipped as I
would desire and so I moved on.
Buddhism was my solution, no demands
other than I be present, knowing
I had no real choice but to do so,
all in the recognition of that fact.
I did consider other faiths and -isms,
and each but one had something
to beckon me, but each was incomplete
and I was looking for a full solution.
The easiest to reject was nihilism,
for while it was the simplest to adopt,
asking, no demanding, nothing from me,
assuring me all was nothing in the end,
I knew it would fail me in the most
essential way, for I discovered there
were no great nihilist poets, how do you
write when there is nothing real to say?
For Something Different, a new bird photo each day, visit my other blog:
Bird-of-the-day.com
We spend far too much time
clinging to what was
as the flames fade,
and far too little time
feeding the fire
and grasping
what could be.
You may seek to follow
the path of the dove
a fool know many roads.
You may wrap yourself
in fine linen, an infant
wears only his skin
and knows this moment
is already gone.
Think long before you speak
of how to walk
along the path, of where it leads.
The baby says nothing,
will not speak of where
he has been,
where he is going, for to him
there is only here,
and silence
is descriptive enough.
imagine
these words
written end
to end, each
well known
but the order
setting
this apart,
in a long
single line
with
a half twist
Moebius-like,
and not
on a page
but a band
like life
nothing discrete
a continuum
each word
the only word
each moment
the only moment
if you wish
Before the after
now is present.
It was never
like this before
it will not be
again anytime soon
for there is
no time soon
that has yet to be
or just gone by.
After the before
we find ourselves
here and now.
Is it the trip
or the arriving
that most matters,
or is it simply what
you expect once you
are there, if there
is where you expected,
for expectations are too
often misplaced and assumptions
reflect desire not truth.
In the end it hardly matters,
for you can never be
anywhere but where
you happen to find yourself.
It was easier being Buddhist
when I was young, despite
the fact I had no good idea
what Buddhism truly was.
for a child the moment is all
there is, the past so short that
it means nothing, the future something
that will arrive as and when it wishes.
For a child, things will go wrong,
and do so with fair regularity,
but children are also physicists,
and the Lorenz effect guarantees
that it was never really their fault,
and when all else fails, they
simply blame karma.
