A Pastoral Told in Spirit

While contemplating boats upon the river being put away like little toy things at the end of summer play,

I see a falling leaf fall on my folded hands and feel its weather-beaten revelations.

Universal consciousness is like a tree and every insect-riddled sunburnt leaf is just another apparatus cast away in time

making way for its replacement, next spring's gold device continuing the amplifying of awareness in the ground of Buddha nature.

I Am is what I truly am; this body-mind is just another leaf that obsoletes with time, no need imagining some narrative device like death

to tell its story. Trees themselves are speaking truth and beauty in a shimmering October morning glory.

Letters to the Revelations

Without this being, what is love? Without the known, what is that great unknown?

You can try to build a better mousetrap or know you're not a mouse. But seeing through this something is not the same as seeing nothing.

The world has tried affirming its own unaffirmable and nihilism will deny the undeniable. Deconstruction is the dark beginning—

many will get lost within that wood. The world is what it's not but I am what it is.

Division is division only when it’s seen within division. Beyond division, division is intent for that unknown to know this one is that unknown.

Awareness in this consciousness is suddenly aware awareness is but what it is and this phenomenon is nothing.

Thus, the world is your reflection; think but nothing of it. This illusion, even though inherited, is utterly self-generating.

You are all the power and the glory, love. Be this universal. Speak that absolutely.

An Epistle to Death

The universe is called the universe because it’s one holistic entity but yet we cling to superstitious magical beliefs

of separate body parts that live untouched by universal interactions, are endowed with free volition, and are born, survive, and die—

like me—although, as me, I never actually experienced my birth and only know about my future death by some conceptual conjecture.

In truth, there’s only self-aware existence, name it God the Child, and that unknown unmanifest foundation, name it God the Parent,

and its Immaculate Intent to know itself, which seems to take a universe to execute, evolve, and do.

First Epistle to the Meaning of Life

Please listen, love. You’re in the middle of a process which when viewed within that process will appear absurd at best

and downright scary at its worst. So join me for a moment, step away from all the world, and let's consider myth and metaphysics.

Let's talk about this God the Father, call it God the Parent, Absolute Reality, instead.

Such a God would have to be that one without another. In other words, that absolute reality would be the pure subjective subject.

In our experience, there’s no perception of this state, except the one of deepest sleep.

The closest metaphor there is to this subjective subject is a mirror without reflection.

And the closest experiential terminology we have for such a state is pure awareness.

Now, let's take another view of God the Parent, Absolute Reality, Pure Awareness.

That god could never be a god and never know itself. The pure subjective subject thus intends to know itself, and this intention

sets in motion what we call the universe, an evolutionary process by which pure awareness is aware of pure awareness.

The process is reflexive, first creating something other than the pure subjective subject, then intending

this universal object of reflection to evolve as such awareness permeating being, seeing it’s no object but that pure awareness.

Let's call this being God the Child. Let's see that's what existence is. Let's know that all the world is just an object’s alienated view of this intention.

And with that understanding, let's return within the middle of this process and look again with open, clear, and natural eyes.

With my Daughter at the China Blossom

Enjoying such a lotus world

of lineage and love,

knowing there’s not anything

other than this spontaneity,

for the past is purely anecdotal

and the future nonexistent—

I open up my fortune cookie

and there’s open space within it.

Seventh Day Moon

Last evening i was suddenly contacted

by a crescent moon with mystic earthshine—

"peace-loving aliens tried to save america from nuclear war"

—earthlight on the dark side of the lunar landscape

saying awareness is native, belief is the only alien.

There’s Nobody Born Every Minute

Which came first, the hermit or the cracking of the world's illusion? Never mind, it doesn't matter.

I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss it though. But in the inhalation following such a mournful sigh arrives this further insight:

no longer does it hold undying interest. The world is just a sideshow thought to be the main attraction, but it's not—I am.

Listen, the wind is whispering through mid-September branches that the sun is going nowhere.

An Epistle to a Dream

Every person is a psychological dysfunction of this universal being. Whether the person is a functioning component of society is all that matters to the world. It doesn't want to cure

because it doesn't know the cure. It's all about alarm clocks, peak efficiency, and credit scores. The fact that personal existence is absurd is not a product sold at stores or sermonized on Sundays.

And the further fact that love is proof the personal is not sustainable is usually kept within the family unit if it's kept at all. Possessions are another thing.

Self-inquiry seems to be an esoteric practice even though it would appear to be the question being asked by every two-year-old. Why is just another way of asking who am I.

To answer I am that which is aware of this absurdity of personal existence may not be most appropriate to tell a two-year-old, or sixty-two-year-old for that matter, but loving wisely is.

Yet on another theme, the leaves are turning yellow on the butternuts.

The Gospel of the Great Blue Heron

Self-awareness is an evolutionary height the mind is turning the matter of all being toward.

The universe is functioning with all its processes and heart to make this happen.

Everything in space and time is how reality appears when viewed within the great divide—

although reality is not divided. Inside the process of an absolutist subjectivity aware

of absolute existence is the paradox of relative objective functioning, in which the crucial turn

appears to be to that which turns, volitional, although it's absolutely not. And with that said,

the blue September river sparkles with an afternoon abundance while a great blue heron turns into an eagle.

A Reflexive Triptych

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The world is where the mind is turning back to what it is. Recluses are Arjunas too.

I want to say more in less. Or less in something. Unthinking, consciousness gets to know a mind and thinks that's all there is.

A metaphor is the dream language of all communication between deep sleep and sleep-walking. Neither traditional, nondualist, or free.

**

Awareness is the primal absolute—intent to know myself—being is the universal name for big bang—mind suffering the turning—

Silence is the mind reflecting—realizing is seeing I am the mirror—self-awareness is the primal absolute.

Billions of so-called years happening in no time. That's my story and I'm wearing it. Pure awareness and self-awareness are not two.

***

Running is meditation for type A. And vice versa. My heroes have always been type zero.

Being is more than enough practice. Thinking is a way too hard. The reflection of a room inside the picture window.

Basho walking through quicksilver woods. Ninja kanji hanging in the silence. Ryokan studies the branch of a cherry tree outside his window.