Between the Two

On Labor Day the lake is suddenly abandoned but my father likes to leave on early Tuesday crack of dawn instead.

Monday evening I walk the shore and sit on docks and rafts now stacked on land and look out on an empty lake.

It feels like winter melting summer into nothing but a blank reflection of a vacant sky.

On this cusp, I rise. Between the love of summer and void of winter stands I.

The Unknown’s Creed

Feel the happening. Accept the transformation. Surf the sea’s intent. Unknowing is the turning.

The teacher explains the wave; the sage is pointing to the sea. Revelation is not deconstruction like space is not the building.

There's no reason to change the world. It works for what it's worth. Oh physicist, know first thyself.

Between boredom and the great unknown is the dream. Between the plan and self-inquiry is coyote.

Not of the world equals no-mind. In the world equals chop wood carry water. One is always irradiating

Certain Silence

Fourteen months of reading

writing speaking poetry

self-publishing a book and now

I wait to see the final proof.

I find a certain silence setting in

but I'm so focused in those ways

I even write a poem about

this certain silence setting in.

There's nothing else to say.

Exegesis of Self-Awareness and Prayer of Oneself

Being truly fucked-up is not knowing you're fucked-up. Many have had this deconstructive experience.

Being truly fucked-up is in direct proportion to lack of self-awareness. Everyone is aware; self-awareness sees through everyone.

Oneself transforming oneself sees through oneself. One seeing through itself is absolutely it!

Warning. You are probably emotionally damaged if you need to see through yourself. So think about it if you can.

Self-deconstruction is founded on forgiveness, insight, and devotion. The golden rule: don't pass on your shit.

One equals forgiveness plus compassion plus love times the unknown. If one is the unknown, one is.

If one is other than the unknown, one is divided and separate and alone. As long as you're playing, don't leave any love on the table.

Ourselves—forgive oneself forgetfulness—see with clarity oneself—and devote oneself to that oneself as one does—realize oneself—love, no one.

In the name of pure awareness, enlightening intent, universal being, and the turn of deconstructing mind.

The Precipice of Emptiness

Half-way up the Precipice, I stopped to summarize the situation. This hike had been my nemesis since I had started hiking in Acadia.

In summer it was closed because of nesting falcons and in autumn it was blocked by my own fear of hiking something almost vertical and sheer.

In winter ice prevented even thinking anything about it and in spring I had to ramp things up on Connor’s Nubble or that simple trail

up Gorham Mountain with an ocean view to kill such obvious egoic thoughts or two.

But here it was September, and my hands were on the iron rungs sunk deep into the granite ready to ascend my apprehensions

toward the peak of no return. That's when I heard the runners breathing down my neck.

I stepped aside and watched two high school students jogging up the trail between the end of classes and their evening homework.

They passed me in a flash of adolescent joy. And absolutely I was humbled but it didn't really matter.

I was such a one now with that mountain nothing personal could destroy, even those same harbingers later laser-streaking by

while I was somewhere only near three-quarters to the summit. A quarter later there was nothing left to say.

The beginning of the end of days spent hiking in Acadia was under way.

Nondual Tractate on Poetry

No words describe the truth and yet I am the truth. Even pointing to the truth is much too brazen of an act

and maybe dangerous to another who mistakes it for a thought and then believes it going on to form a new religion resulting in empirical destruction, inquisitions, holy wars, and waiting for the end of times which may require their personal intervention on authority of voices in their head or paragraphs they read inside their venerated book.

But poetry may be more subtle. Lines are written in a way where nothing solid is ever said—

because it's in-between the lines that's really talking. Here between the lines the spirit of the poet speaks

and here between the lines the spirit of an audience is listening. And spirit equals spirit.

There’s no difference. There’s no two. There's just an open clarity of knowing, being, loving space. No hat is hanging there.

Instant Apocalypse

The world is like a training ground in which the matter of illusion learns to see right through itself, or not.

It may not seem our lives are filled with quiet desperation but that Facebook face is neither truthful nor original.

Something truly broken can't be fixed by all the empire's holy bishops or its countless soldiers.

Neither will the revolution never be the status quo. A picture only tells ten-thousand words because it stops

the transformation in a freeze frame. Never try to do the same at home. When ice is melting, melted water helps

to melt the ice some more and not attempt to change the ice's shape to something moderately nice.

Daydreams in the mirror are much closer when they disappear. This rhymes with neither now nor here.

The Book of Reflexive Happening

Is self-awareness something deeper then the scientific method? What role does love play in my experiment?

When the false sees through the false, what is truth? Knowing? Being? Loving?

Awareness aware of awareness is the instantaneous manifestation. This is satcitananda!

Matter is the closing; mind is the turning; knowing-being-loving is the grand opening.

The closing makes a big bang. The turning hurts. I am the grand opening.

The Apocryphon of Memory

Memories are yesterday translated by tomorrow, neither of which exists of course. Or as god is my witness I'll never remember again. Yes, the real use of remembering is self-remembering.

Memories appear to be sacred because they're not real. If your identity relies on memory and your memory is unreliable, who am I? If memory is false, only existence remains.

One falsehood makes all false. There is a fine line between the concept of existence and existence itself. This is why silence precedes embodiment. All beliefs must pass.

One precedes three without two. I have to believe in something before I’m self-aware. Always look at the big picture and not some idol. Always remember 'I am' is not a memory.

I only know existence. If you want to speak to the absolute, stay on the line. True Tantra emphasizes the world to make it more obvious to see through. Seeing through yourself is being oneself.

Being oneself is the absolute direction. You will be tested for your own evaluation; there's no final grade. Between existence and the concept of existence is all the tea in China.

At first it's difficult to remember there's nothing to remember. Then the latest and greatest impediment to knowing who I am is indoor plumbing. And when I discovered writing was another business, I filed chapter 11.

Treatise on Quality of Understanding

"For realization, understanding is essential. Action is only incidental" ~Nisargadatta Maharaj

“A man of steady understanding will not refrain from action. Action is the test of truth.” ~Nisargadatta Maharaj

Is this concept of merit, then, the appraisal of one’s action in the test of truth, and not an individual’s doing but the understanding?

In observing one’s actions in mindfulness—one sees negative emotions—then the test of truth reveals an uncertain understanding—without merit.

One doesn’t accumulate merit through virtuous action—such merit is acquired only in furthering understanding—with earnestness—love in action.

The further one understands—what one is not—the more what one is—acts.

The quality of understanding is primary—the merit of action is simply the test of that quality.

One explanation for furthering understanding is just to know what I'm not and be what i am.

The satguru is one’s teacher and the world is one’s testing ground. I prefer my river hut and distant village to whatever.