The Book of Practice

There are 10,000 pages in the Book of Practice,
containing 100,000 instructions
for uniting Heaven and Earth,
for making God Human,
for infusing lumps of soil with stars and galaxies,
for irradiating your naked body with a splendor
beyond the delights of man and woman,
for turning the sex of infinity into the breath of life
and the clarity of pure awareness
into a solid diamond.
These practices are sweet and terrible,
demanding at least 777 lifetimes.
But the wise cheat.
They read no further than page 1, Step 1:
"Rest the mind in the heart.
Thought is just smoke: Be the fire."
Then they go straight to the end of the book,
the very bottom of the last page, where it says,
"Rest the mind in the heart.
Thought is just smoke: Be the fire."
This is all they do.
It is the way of Masters and Beginners.
We who need to do anything else
are just sophomores, fiddling
with intermediate knowledge.