The Place To Begin

In the crystal structure of divine silence, there is always a deeper order of resolution where what was work becomes play, until we rest in that laughing stillness that unfolds the whole universe without effort, and for no reason at all. This is the place to begin a song.

September: A Prose Poem

'It's all a reflection,' whispers the moon. The harvest of Presence, an echo of Spring seeds, spent and empty. Light itself a stream of infinitesimal mirrors, quantum silences ringing like a wind chime in the void. So I exist as the touch of another, my soul a friendship, my breath a kiss, my loneliness swallowed up by the sound of a cricket in the chrysanthemum pot.

In Your Body

'Glorify God in your body...' ~1 Corinthians, 6

Don't try to transcend by rising above the body. Transcend by sinking into the body, without effort. Dissolve your mind into this star-clustered host of photons, this inter-galactic hum of atoms, this black hole of unbounded space and limitless information at the center of each proton. Yes, there are other worlds, higher worlds, celestial worlds, angelic kingdoms: they are all in your body. And if anyone tries to tell you, 'I am not this body,' laugh, sing, dance, and meditate.

Take A Moment

Take a moment this evening
before you sleep
to remember death,
your constant companion
on the heartbeat's
pilgrim path.
Make friends, make friends.
Take a moment each morning
as you rise to remember
how limitless you are
before the day’s
first thought.

Recall how you came here
from the kingdom
of gratitude, not want;
how wild, abundant,
and spacious the night
inside you,
the sparkling silence
in every breath,
charging your body
with starlight;
how uncharted
the green dominion
of your beauty -
not the mountaintops,
for they are small -
but the valleys,
those generous
earthen furrows
where your roots
grow downward, and mingle
with mine.

Krishna Jayanthi

Ah, today is the birthday of Lord Krishna. He is Shyama Sundara. Shyama means the infinite blue of the sky. Sundara means beauty. This is the birthday of unbounded Beauty.

But manifestation is play: true Beauty is unborn. The name 'Krishna' comes from a Sanskrit root that means 'the all-attracting power.' Krishna is what attracts us to the fragrance of bliss, like a bee to a flower. Krishna is the uncreated transcendental Beauty that permeates, yet is beyond, the manifest universe, attracting us toward union with Him through hints of beauty in created things.

Anything beautiful is beautiful because it participate in the dark radiance of Krishna. The form wafts a scent of the formless sky-blue flower. Music flows from the hollow flute. You could bear that musk. You could be that instrument.

Who is Radha. She is Krishna's paramour. Yet who is she, really? The longing for Beauty in your heart.

What Happens In The Dark

Don't you understand
what happens in the dark?
Your breath is changed
to fire.
Your blood is turned
to moonlight.
Worm-woven loam awakens
as golden flesh.
Even your bones respire,
the gift of hollowness.
The jasmine tree with
roots in the sky
rains gently on our nakedness,
an embarrassment of blossoms.
Meet me
by the River Yamuna,
the stream of forgetting,
where it has always been
this moment, now.
Why do we glisten?
Because all things are suspended
in the element that alchemists
have not discovered:
Silence.

Ashtavakra

News is opinion.
Science is theory.
World is projection.
Mind is shimmering
waves of fever
bending air.
All you can
really do is fall
in love.
Dissolve creation
into the fierce
and holy Radiance
you are.

Photo by Kristy Thompson

Notice

'Yatha dristhi, tatha shrishti:
As you see it, so it appears.'
~Upanishads

You spin
the cosmos
out of your own
sparkling awareness
and nothing 
is not You.
Friend, it's time
to notice
that the world
could be a mirror
of your gratitude.

Morning's Secret

Here's a secret just spilled by the honeysuckle, wafted to a hummingbird whose wings confided in the thrush, who sang it to sunbeams in a whisper of dissolving mist, where an elderly cedar breathed it to ten thousand murmuring roots: You only have Power when you give it away.

A Mother's Breath, A Piercing Cry

Love - Judgment = Energy.

Only when I gave up being 'right' did I discover my true nature - uncaused happiness.

Blame drains energy. Love restores energy. Love without blame IS energy.

The entire universe is created out of This. Om Tat Sat. I am not talking about a philosophy to believe or disbelieve, I am talking about the golden sunlight inside every breath.

Temporarily, this energy may take the appearance of anger, or sorrow, or intense passion, or intense pain. So what? Breathe it down to the bone, down to the darkest marrow of light. When we are perfectly empty, we discover that it's all pure love, a radiant golden void.

Then 'Christianity' does not exist. 'Buddhism' does not exist. 'Islam' does not exist. 'East' and 'West' do not exist. 'Socialism' and 'Capitalism' do not exist. These are only thoughts, abstractions, superimposed by the mind upon the dance of energy.

In this dance, countless soul bodies perform their practices, each unique and instantaneous. But there are no 'isms,' no generalities, because no-thing lasts more than a micro-moment.

There is neither You nor I. We are the dance of energy. There is no heaven or earth, only the dance of energy. No superior or inferior, no above or below, no before and after, only the dance of energy.

Our mind constructs 'isms,' beliefs, and concepts to contain the dance, hoping to understand and control its vastness. But these concepts become ideologies, ideologies become parties, parties go to war, and war is only the dance of energy, the very chaos we thought we could contain.

Hearing this, one may try to discipline the mind, to silence thoughts, or replace 'bad' thoughts with 'good' ones. But this is futile, for the mind is also the dance of energy. And every attempt to control the mind is the dance of energy. There is nothing but this primordial uncontrollable condition: the dance of energy.

Only one action can bring harmony, heal the world, and make peace: to rest from all concepts.

This rest is not control. It is relinquishing control.

Simply witness the dance. Not only the dance of the world, but the dance of one's own mind, and the dance of one's attempt to change the mind.

Now there is room to Be. To Be the motionless explosion of bliss. To Be the effortless encirclement of the unbounded. To Be the dissolution of all forms in the radiance of pure love.

From this perfectly empty condition of non-doing, performance arises by itself. Everything happens with dynamic efficiency and effortless grace. Not one photon is wasted, because all things are as they are.

A housefly lands on a crumb of bread. A breeze stirs bamboo leaves just after sunset. Two eyes close and someone falls into the ocean of death. A mother's breath, a piercing cry. Two eyes open, spilling the same ancient light.

Why waste this brief infinite life worrying about what doesn't exist?

You could be useful. Wash the laundry. Take out the trash, very carefully. Listen to the neighbor's child. Leave a small gift for the deer.

Why not plant a fir, a hemlock? Why not delight in what Is, resting from all concepts about it?

Witness the dance, and radiate happiness for no reason. A mothers breath, a piercing cry. Two eyes open, spilling the same ancient light. Don't you see that all things are saying Yes?

Art by Jadurani Devi Dasi

Dwell In The Uncertain

My words with collage by Rashani Réa; click image to enlarge.

Prayer for Two

Don't pray to be One.
Pray to be Two.
The prayer of a curve
surrendered to its asymptote.
Seek infinite nearness.
May there ever be a thread
of breath between us.
That is where pouring happens.
Keep pressing out love
From musk-scented stillness.
In the darker space
of slightly parted lips
comes a kiss of exploration.
O trembling emptiness,
resonance of the last note
still warm in the flute.


Painting by Mahmoud Farshchian

Hidden

Have you noticed?
Nature hides the pearl,
conceals her rubies and gold
in the darkest vein,

disguises diamond
in diamond,
pricelessness in 
what is uncut.
Have you noticed?
You are the jewel.
Let those who don't seek treasure
mistake you for a stone.
We will meet in secret,
buried under appearances,
where breath touches breath
and this rough world
is already perfect.

Tear

If your heart would be gifted
with compassion, don't resist sorrow.
One who calls pain an illusion
must still be tangled in the net of twoness.

Please honor these drops
of bitter honey from my eyes.
Weeping is not a dream.
Touch the wound in the belly of the master.
That is where he was born.

Now polish your whole body
with the ointment of breathing
distilled from dust and bones.
Every sigh is a boat of ancestors
who stumble onto the island of your presence,
thirsting for beauty.

Flesh is prayer
encircling the emptiness of midnight.
Be brave as a black horizon.
Ignore the kiss of falling stars.

If you dare to gaze
through unendurable softness,
you will find companionship with strangers
and see the countless faces of the unborn
burnished by one golden tear.

Evening Meditation

A simpler way -
rest the mind in the heart.
Love has no name.
The So'ham swan
will take you there,
alighting without a sound
on the unfathomable stillness
in your chest,
where a mist of
secret longing
goes up from the earth
to kiss the sky,
healing every creature
who bows to drink
from these waters.
Cherish your gift.
Greet this breath
as a golden flame
consuming every thought.
What burns you away
completely,
you become.

The last line of the poem became the subtitle of the book I recently published with artist Rashani Réa. So'ham is the ancient breath-mantra of Advaita meditation, meaning, "He I am." The early treatise on Christian meditation, The Philokalia, and the ancient Yogic text, Vijnana Bhairava, give exactly the same instruction: "Place the mind in the heart."