Hallway to Nowhere

Category: buddhist

  • Sufficient Reason (Poem)

    the day begins.

    tears before I’m awake,

    the absence of you an ache,

    still I rise and open the door,

    knowing that the day will greet me

    if I allow it, and so I do.

    this morning I saw treetops on the ridge

    shine in golden glory within the early dawn,

    a brief bright exultance in the winter’s gloom,

    and thought, “this. this is enough.”

    once I would have demanded more,

    before you and the knowledge

    that love is also a sudden flash of radiance,

    unexpected in brilliance and depth,

    gone in an instant.

    I learned to hold beauty lightly with an open heart:

    dancing snow drifting smoke daggered moonlight

    entwine around my fingers and fall from my outstretched hands.

  • Taking Temporary Refuge in Sextus Empiricus (Poem)

    Wearied by these discussions of things I cannot affect

    Storms darken the skies over mountains coasts plains deserts

    Bombs fall upon the helpless here and here and here

    Parties await the change of the year in metropolei cities towns villages

    Babies get born die people get sick die some recover all eventually die

    All sometimes just too much and I want to say stop of course nothing stops

    My primeval self-concept urges flight back to measured tranquility

    Suspension of belief wants immersion again in Skeptical therapeutics

    Indeed this provides a temporary respite but only that

    Now a different path engages me

    With this world other worlds the endless arguments that give them form.

  • How To Sit In A Whirlwind (Poem)

    Because there is no beginning no ending

    Not even an ouroboros but more a writhe of serpentine time

    I revisit the past reexamine my roots reword my existential stories

    Who I am today changes who I was but who I was influenced who I became

    A twisted entanglement that cannot be teased into separate threads

    All or one or some lead to who I will become but really

    All eventualities are present in each moment of my becoming

    And voidness too is there in the pause before

    This happens just so this happens regardless therefore no need

    To try any harder than I do no need to make my eyes see the back of my head

    It is there or not a hand clap a finger snap and I know

    Just breathe

  • Grief Mala (Poem)

    I thread my griefs like beads,

    Stringing them as a mala

    Of impermanence, for remembrance.

    Loved ones, teachers, fictional characters.

    Letters etched around each one,

    According to their native language.

    Kind words. Harsh words. All the same.

    Each lacquered by tears to seal them.

    I run these through my fingers now,

    As I add my breath to yours.

    How long? Only this.

    No beginning. No end.

  • How We Can Mourn (Poem)

    How many tears are enough for the grief of the world?

    Can anyone now say even to themselves,

    “I can only mourn for this one loss?”

    Your heart will shatter anyway, and your eyes will burn from the salt.

    So now when we cry, whenever we cry, let our tears

    That flow with the wails of newly widowed women, that run down the faces of dying children, that drip unseen onto the hands of solitary men, and the ordinary ones that we shed from expected loss and unexpected reverberations

    Let our tears mingle into one great river.

    We cannot come together to stop death. We can at least come together to share our sorrow.

    (Tara was formed from the tear of Chenrezig who wept in compassion over a suffering world.

    Om tare tutare ture soha.)

  • Unready Yet (Poem)

    No grief over the knowledge

    That I’ve never seen my own face,

    Only relief.

    These images from different mirrors

    Glittering back at me

    In shop windows, photographs, and even a painting

    Are mere appearances.

    Likewise, one of my teachers suggested

    That altars only have an bare space resting

    Where the buddha would be.

    On my altar I have placed a statue of Chenrezig,

    The bodhisattva of compassion.

  • Writing In Ignorance (Poem)

    always considering the worth of this

    the energy effort expended in writing

    transient ephemeral malleable

    these words one thing to me the writer

    quite another to you the reader

    why should anyone want to bother

    why should I

    if we cannot even see our own faces

    then what do we see in the words of another

  • Cry and Response (Poem)

    Sometimes (ofttimes) I want to be finished with this life.

    The wearisome minutiae of the body demanding attention,

    Insistent muttering claims that needs must be addressed over and over and over.

    I answer these as best I can.

    I do so in full knowledge that these efforts are but a slight delay.

    Everyone crumbles in the end and flees their particular carapace.

    Mine was not well constructed or comfortable or nice,

    A hasty and ill-conceived effort from the beginning.

    Like all fleshy dominions, it has pride of being and the illusion of remaining.

    I want to shrug it off and move on to whatever comes next,

    Sick of being sick, and harried by the futility involved.

    Let me be done and close my eyes.

    (In my worst moments I fear doing just that.

    Only to find on awakening that I’m once again here.

    And here. And here. And here. A cicada who lives on,

    Dying forever.)

    Still, suffering mind. Breathe and know you’re breathing.

    Let the beads slip with that rhythm through your fingers.

    Om mani peme hung. Om mani peme hung. Om mani peme hung.

  • The Most Distant Part OF The Marianas Trench (Poem)

    No sleep this early morning. I rest in corpse pose.

    The salt from my tears, the salt from my sweat

    Has become the salt in the water of the sea.

    Waves collide in tumult under a bone-white moon.

    I sink beneath them into the depths of subtle mind.

    Down, down, down into the emptiness,

    Losing self in the interconnectedness of it all.

    The world breathes into the Challenger Deep.

    The atmospheric circulation, the sigh and gasp of existence,

    Moves through the body as a dream of life.

    Opening my eyes, I taste salt on my lips.

    Throughout the day I catch the linger of the currents

    And shiver from the thermohaline flow.

  • In The Morning (Poem)

    The tea growing cold on the table.

    The book lying open on the chair.

    The ceiling fan whirring the air.

    The door hanging half-ajar.

    I have gone now,

    Walked over the sill without a backwards glance.

    Everything is as it was.