Root

Paul Heussenstamm, Mandala Art

A White Swan
settles on the still lake
of my Heart
seeking one Seed,
the Name
of Shiva.

The luminous blossom
containing the Seed floats
here,
but its long sinuous root
springs from black mud
there,
at the bottom.

Every beauty, every radiance
is rooted
in the Dark.

I Spoke to My Soul

I spoke to my soul, "Let us strive to solve the great political problems of this world: war, poverty, injustice, and global warming! This is our duty."

My soul replied, "Each of us is learning precisely the lesson we need at this moment. Therefor, the world is fine, just as it is. If you've come to fix it, we're not interested. Why deprive others of the right to learn from the consequence of their actions, and the exercise of their own free will?"

"But I see crisis everywhere I look!"

"Then the real crisis is in your eye."

"But is there nothing WRONG?" I cried. "Is there no SIN?"

To which my soul replied, "The original sin is forgetting to smile whenever you can."

I was dumbfounded by these answers from my own soul. I had one more question. "Which voice is I, yours or mine?"

At this, my soul rose up and danced on its tail, transformed into a dove-winged rainbow serpent with two faces gazing in opposite directions. One was the face of Jesus, the other the face of Lucifer, both glowing with the same inscrutable splendor. This beautiful terrifying form flew upward, yet inward, and disappeared in the clear blue sky of my own speechlessness, uttering these final words:

"Abandon the voice that wants to argue; meet the one who loves to sing."

Our Daily Breath

Good Sunday morning, creation's first day! I enter the Kingdom of Little Things. I find something very small to hold in my hand, a pebble, a feather, a berry. I cherish its mere mysterious Thingness.

Through my senses, I breathe the Little Thing's color, weight, shape, texture into my body. Then I breathe out gratitude. This is called 'living & breathing on earth.' It is the meditation that humans practice all day unaware. It requires neither church, nor temple, nor preisthood, nor scripture, nor belief. Just Awareness. Just some Awareness is needed to turn our daily breath, among little things, into worship.

The Warrior and the Pacifist

The Warrior and the Pacifist each have their role to play. Does one have the right to judge the other?

I would not count on the Warrior to make peace. Neither would I count on the Pacifist to defend my children from attack.

To claim that the world needs no warriors is the luxury of the well-protected. To claim that the world needs no pacifists is to starve for a vision.

Let those who love peace not condemn the warriors. True warriors do not choose our foreign policy. They choose to protect our children.

Rather let us condemn, with all the fury of God's righteousness, the powers and principalities, the rulers of the darkness of this world, the corporate profiteers and politicians, who never spent an hour in combat and whose children are too privileged to fight, yet who abuse and misuse our valiant soldiers for the purpose of mastering Third World resources, to line their own pockets with the wealth of empire.

Local

After the collapse
of post-industrial corporate feudalism,
its imperial armies and global banks,
its hierarchies of priestly credit and debt,
all that is vast, abstract, untenably complex
will die into The Local
like a cluster of vines to the root.
We too, locating ourselves, will return
to the family farm of origin
and remember how to eat,
how to grow woolly well-muscled sheep
and uniquely delicious tomatoes,
discovering our hands for seed scattering,
for stone setting, for writing poems
on trees and caves; discovering
our feet again for grape crushing.
Later, by December fires, we will listen
to silence, we will learn to listen again,
energized by wind and water.
In a terrible and lovely antlered mask,
the village shaman will birth us in Springtime
and bless our old bones in Autumn,
preparing our Winter souls
for new bodies. A circle of friends,
chanting, drumming, dancing,
will bind us to our Creator,
as our Creator is bound
to this heart.

Take A Moment

Red begonias with burgundy pelts,
opulent, furry as otters
wriggling in November rain
through your vacuous eyes,
where a constant wind sucks inward
all light, to make a compost
of pure consciousness.
No need to stop time, just take
a moment for eternity.
Observe all day the back yard
sacraments, trans-substantiations,
a drowned mouse in the birdbath.
Nothing is ordinary, not even
a coke bottle in the black loam,
polished to a smooth green talisman
by the tumbling earth.
Rest in no space but your own
clarity, that which is never
a distraction. Let your tongue,
your nostrils, ears and eyes
become the angels
of revelation.

Why Meditate?

A friend asked me, 'Why bother to meditate?' This picture of my teacher is the answer. When I gaze into the eyes of the Beloved, I have no choice. Meditation happens.

'Then you have lost your freedom!' the intellectual replies. Intellect feels threatened by the Love that is beyond choice. Intellect feels alive only when it restlessly pinches itself with choosing, 'This is better than that, this is true and that is false.'

But as intellect comes to rest in the radiance of choiceless love, which is the choice that ends restless choosing, there is freedom. That freedom is meditation.

'Our hearts are ever restless till they come to rest in Thee.' -St. Augustine

(Thanks to Scotty Hague for the beautiful darshan picture.)

Power of Play

If your meditation doesn't 'work,' you must have turned it into a job.

Let meditation be play, the wave-play of awareness resting in its oceanic self. Meditation is the source of play, the primordial play of Silence.

This universe arises from nothing through Lila Shakti, the power of play. In Indian philosophy, there is no other cause for creation than divine playfulness. Unmanifest pure awareness spontaneously arises in waves of creative intelligence, which become particles of matter. This is the bubbling bliss of the Samadhi state in deep meditation.

Quantum physics describes the same bubbling up of the vacuum in spontaneous creation, where 'virtual photons' and 'virtual electrons' vibrate out of silence, out of the zero at the source of all mathematical equations describing matter. Founder of quantum physics, Sir James Jeans, wrote that to modern science the universe appears less "like an enormous machine" and more "like an enormous thought." Cosmos arises where silent awareness percolates into Word, the Logos, and the Logos sings hosts of particles and galaxies.

In Hindu thought, the universe is the dream of Vishnu. But unlike us who are lost in the dream, Vishnu is awake even while dreaming, to witness and delight in the drama, the play.

The Bible gives its own version of this same creation story. "In the beginning when God was creating the heavens and the earth, the earth was formless and void... Then God said, Let there be light, and there was light. God saw the light, that it was good."

And God laughed with delight at what his Spirit had playfully created in the silence of deep meditation.

Sunday Morning

*
This beautiful stormy Sunday morning, I went outside and bowed down to a holly berry on the tip of a twig. In that instant I attained the supremely perfect absolute bliss of eternal liberation, but only for a moment - just for the instant my forehead touched the ground. Then I bowed down to a poodle, a cat, a woman, a dead mouse, and a cup of coffee. Good morning.

I think that's the way to enlightenment. It's not some eternity outside of time or detached from creation. It's bowing down to every creature in the world, every particle of dust, every pair of eyes, moment after moment.

*
Joy and sorrow, anger and peace, sleep and waking come and go. But what never comes and goes, what remains constant amidst the arising and dissolving of all phenomenon and feeling, what underlies the universe, is a presence of perpetual wonder.

Therefor, I can be happy or sad, angry or forgiving, dreaming or waking, but I can never be bored. I have too many occasions for astonishment.

Passers By

I was walking down the sidewalk feeling rather low, worrying about work, about paying bills, about all my mistakes. Hearing a song, I looked up. Three carousers, their arms across each others shoulders, half danced and half stumbled toward me. I recognized them immediately: Jesus, Krishna, and Buddha.

Jesus said, "Hurry to the Tavern! Happy Hour is almost over. But while it lasts, everything is free."

Krishna said, "He's talking about the Tavern inside you."

Buddha said, "There is no Tavern. You're already drunk."

As they passed by, I became blessed with confusion, the music in their eyes, the sparkle of their laughter. I couldn't even remember what I was supposed to be worrying about.

What's Your Point?

You have a good point. I'm trying to make a point. Everyone has a point of view. But God is the vast space of intelligence without a point. God is pointless.

Christmas Presence

A dear friend of mine is out of work. This Christmas, she feels a great sense of lack. She wants to cover her bills and have money to buy gifts for her child. In love for her, I share these words:

Your being Present is the greatest gift a daughter could receive. Your child doesn't need any other present.

The idea that you lack something is just that, an idea. You don't need to get rid of the idea, 'I lack.' And you don't need to replace it with positive thinking. Positive thinking is a reaction to 'lack,' and another form of it! Just see 'lack' as an idea, coming and going in the vast Presence that you are.

I know this not because I am wise, but because I too deal with the sense of 'lack.' It is a great Guru! When we fearlessly see through the mirage of lack, our material emptiness becomes the spacious fullness of spiritual emptiness - vast, luminous and rich.

Even if you have nothing, you can give Christmas Presence.