Epistle to Myself

Dear Son,

before knowing what you really are,

you need to know just who you think you are.

I thought I was a person.

I had a headful of beliefs and one of them was me.

That me was re-formulated in the Sixties,

so a lot it was anti-war, pro-human rights,

and wondered when it all went wrong in my America.

I studied post-graduate American history

and found it never was exactly right.

In one important way, this was my spiritual beginning;

deconstruction needs to start at home.

In time I saw that war and all injustices are not

a matter of my being right

and someone else’s being wrong,

but essentially the fact I think there is a me and my

and someone else in opposition as another.

This personal assumption I’m a person is

the one original division from which all

division finds its origin.

Every little thing a person does

to get ahead, assert itself, insinuate its way

to some position of importance is

the primal swamp of war and all injustice.

So as long as I am thinking I’m a person,

there are hostilities and their infringements.

But being on the never hand,

love, Aum.

The River, a Road, and I

Every day I walk the road along the river, 

I want to walk the road along the river every day. 

Twenty years I’ve lived along this spacious river, 

in a less than thousand dollar rental 

in the middle of half-million dollar properties 

amid this precious priceless panorama.

Walking on this road I see a luminous mile of river,

and a mile of river is like ten thousand miles of heaven.

Ten thousand miles of heaven is something

no one ever knows and I see it every day.

What hand inserted me within this jeweled setting?

Across the river is an eastern white pine wilderness,

and in my heart is similar wilderness. Spirit talks to spirit.

There’s not a useless word within that conversation.

Here’s a road and there’s the river, and I’m the source of both,

although I’m never either. Not two, we say. Not two.

An Emotional Poem

Never fight a riptide;

heedfully observe it.

Then swim across and away,

returning to the ground.

Being isn’t rocket science.

Filtered by assorted lenses

of conditioned perpetuating

always transforming thought,

a spectrum of emotions

irradiates like a neon sign—

the heartbreak hotel.

Hence emotions are the light

of being, disturbed.

Accordingly emotions are existent

and undeniable.

Thus it’s just the thoughts

before emotions which are false.

In conceptual conceit,

it could be said

the absolute unknowable subjective

spontaneously intends

to know it is—

and this is that.

Don’t think about it.

This unfiltered energetic

raw existence is that knowing

and the only knowledge there is,

therapeutic, loving, wise or likewise.

This pure intensity 

'i am' is ground—

be

Supermoon and the Small Print

The Supermoon Is New And Guaranteed 

To Fill Your Sky With Cleanliness 

Located Next To Godliness 

Insuring Your Material Well-Being 

Until There’s No Material Left To Be! 

That you never were material 

is immaterial to this company. 

That the body’s like a wireless receiver 

and you’re the wave it amplifies 

is covered somewhere in this small print. 

Not reading your intuition is confusion 

to be suffered when mistaking 

such an object as the subject. 

Identity theft begins at home.

The way will let you know you've lost the way.

The way will let you know you are the way.

What one is is self-explanatory

as one distinguishes the what one isn’t.

Freedom's just another word

for nothing isn't my imagination.

Don’t mistake the tenor of the way

for some vehicle on the road.

Commercials pointing to the supermoon

are neither super nor the moon.

Supply's unlimited although this offer

may be withdrawn at any moment.

You are the wellspring of creation;

drink yourself responsibly.

Known Unknown

Whatever I am, 

I’m not distressed, 

non-existent, 

nor unintelligent. 

Some call this ground 

awareness, but that’s 

as much a metaphor 

as the moon; 

abstract nouns 

are still concrete. 

I am unborn, 

undying, not two— 

that open space 

without a view.

How Many Years Can a Mountain Exist

The world is like ten thousand words 

and all of them are lies if you believe them.

What is an orange when it’s not orange?

What is a person when it isn’t taking something personally?

Thoughts are either like delightful companions

or they’re enemies convincing one is two

and present is the past wishing it’s the future.

Keep your similes like friends and metaphors much closer.

Religion is the truth turned inside-out.

The truth is using words to point at what I really am.

The question to be asked is who am I

when I’m not thinking of an answer.

Thinking that I know is always overblown.

The answer, my friend, is being the unknown.

on war

"I was against...on two counts. First, the Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing. Second, I hate to see our country be the first to use such a weapon." ~Dwight D. Eisenhower on Hiroshima bombing 8/6/1945

Hiroshima & Nagasaki weren't isolated events but a culmination of American policy to target civilian populations in mass terrorist bombings.

In the constant war that is ego, the target never changes: the other. Only the technologies increase the accuracy and numbers.

The fire of war is always smoldering and re-igniting: gaza and world war two and world war one and previous wars are not separate events.

Great wars are not separate from personal wars are not separate from inner psychological wars. The egoic state of consciousness is war.

The wise response to war is to see through the sides and not take yet another.

The Undivided Pseutra

Where ‘this’ and ‘that’ cease to be opposites,

there lies the pivot of the Way

~Chaung Tzu (tr. Mair)

it’s not so much the world is an illusion

but how that illusion is relentlessly tricking one—

the illusion is division

but the trick convinces one

to put things back together

when of course they aren’t apart—

and by endlessly trying to put together

things which aren’t apart,

one loses focus on the truth:

one is that which is not apart—

the world appears to be

constantly tearing apart

but everyone is attempting to put it

back together in the best way they see fit—

the human illusion has

seven billion points of view—

you are this

and the other is that

but the other is this to itself

and you are that to it—

the mind divides;

this is the function of mind—

one takes a side;

this is identification with mind—

war!

this is one lost in mind—

war is fought in the home,

on the streets,

at work,

and maybe more importantly,

within oneself,

every single second of the day—

one takes sides;

this is identifying with mind—

one sees one side as god;

this is fundamentalism—

one may completely raze any opposing side;

this is evil—

an ego is like an edifice

built from all the sides one takes—

psychology tries to right the sides;

truth reveals the sides aren’t really there—

so absolute truth is unknown

and all one knows of absolute truth is being—

in other words,

is there an unknown?
yes, i am that.

S6 — Calvin on an Island

Island people have a saying: “Nowhere is an island.” Visitors are puzzled when they hear this spoken. After all, they’ve spent much time and money just to reach this paradise in the middle of an ocean.

Calvin was such a one. He went without for fifty weeks just to have his two upon that isle. So when he breathlessly disembarked only to be greeted by an islander conveying this saying, he strongly begged to differ.

The islander just smiled and said, “It makes no difference,” and danced lightly off to greet another. A recent transplant to the island seeing Calvin’s being at variance stopped to offer a more comprehensive reception: “No matter how you slice it, there never is division.”

S5 — Isle of Eyes: A Myth of the Scientific

In the eye of a hurricane, there’s an eye of a needle. In the eye of a needle, there’s an eye of an eye. The island people call this eye a third eye and take their own eyes out whenever it goes seeing. For what it sees is visible to no one.

There was a visitor who called himself an optical magician, prescribing telescopes to those he diagnosed as near-sighted, and microscopes to those he saw as far-sighted. But the island folk, as far as he could see, were neither.

He plucked his own eyes out in a pique of speculation but it left him only sightless. The island people divined no notion why he’d make a scene like that. And so they led him in a starry-eyed procession to a long reflective beach and cast him out to sea.