Flower Haiku

 

Their lives are

so short,

the flowers in 

my garden.

But they don't

complain.

There Is No Meaning

No meaning, no purpose,

no plan, no center

or circumference,

neither justice nor injustice.

Only a swirling stillness,

energy dance of

forms arising

just where they are,

and where they need

to be.

What if a cruel hand

is about to strike

the child?

Friend, even as

that hand is lifted,

your hand is already there,

sweeping the little one

out of the shadow.

Act instantly,

without a concept

of "right" or "wrong,"

because no mind

gets in the way.

God is happening,

and happening is God.

You too are where

you need to be.

No plan, no center

or circumference.

Only a swirling stillness,

the energy dance,

the anarchy of love.

Unsought

I craved the savor of non-duality,
but kept finding two,
the seeker and the sought.

Then I quit the search
to relish the hidden nectar
in every perception.

Chimes of wine on my tongue,
melody of vanishing clouds,
taste of evening star and amber glow
of owl song at midnight,

healing moon-kiss on my
fontanel, the lovelorn blackness
of the loins, the yearning curves
of emptiness around a galaxy,
which are the very
proportions of this body.

Each dissolving
multitudinous touch,
a quiver in the continuum,
a tremor of the one
invisible tincture of my own
awareness, and yours.

Gravestone

On her gravestone,

in the first letter

of my mother’s name,

a drop of dew.

Or is it a tear?

Uncertainty is the womb

of 10,000 things.

At midnight a scent of jasmine,

at dawn a fragrance of

sunbeams in lavender.

The vow of my wound

is not to heal,

but to stay open

like an ancient eye.

Even grief is a breath

of the Beloved.

If you don't know how

to be hollow,

how will you be

filled with music?

No Floor

I love kneeling to the tiny spark

that ignited this fire in my chest.

The flame was not eternal until that

burning kiss. Now the whole palace

has crumbled to ashes like the dream

it never was, and I'm falling

through light years of darkness.

There is no floor where I can lay

my forehead. But there are other ways

to bow. I can offer my heartbeat

to turn the troubled silence

of your gray cocoon into a song

of plum blossoms. Or distill

all my desires into the dewy smell

of hay grass after Summer rain. 

I could become that spark,

drifting into your home,

consuming your world in an instant

like smokeless camphor.

After the inferno, what's left

but dust and joy? Eons ago

I knelt down while you were sleeping.

The cream of your breath rose.

I tasted some with my tongue.

Now I'm waking you up

To show you how to dissolve.

There was never any chrysalis,

never any waiting time to be

a postulant. Take my hand.

Don't leap. You have already fallen.

Just gaze down and discover

your naked body of rainbows

dancing for no reason in the golden void.

 

 

Artist: Matt Collishaw

Breath of Spring

One inhalation brings measureless wealth. One exhalation gives illimitable joy. In a flow of astonishment, a single breath contains more revelation than the Bible, the Qu'ran, and the Vedas. In fact, all holy scriptures came from the space in your chest where this breath arises.

In the boundless simplicity of this breath, beyond the limits of past and future, is freedom to love. In the fullness of this breath, with the mind in the heart, is freedom from craving. To delight in this breath is the end of war, the end of greed, the end of consumerism and exploitation. In this breath is the answer to many of the worlds deepest problems.

Pouring into your crown from the stars, this breath spills out through your footsteps to enliven the dust. Your human body is the bridge between heaven and earth, because your breath is the prayer of the creator.

"He breathed the breath of life into the man’s nostrils, and the man became a living person." ~Genesis 2:7

Walk gently on this planet, relishing the rain-sparkled moss with your bare feet. Listen to the poem of the lonely tree frog. Be wild and bewildered by an ordinary breath!

"Savor every inch of breath in your body. ~Sri Sri

Breathe in Goddess, breathe out gratitude, a silent breath your purest worship. Bless all humanity by making the miracle of your own breath conscious. Never underestimate the vast circumference and healing power of this breath.

Photo by Kristy Thompson

Bathed

 

Everything depends

precisely on how whirling

kisses stillness.

 

During meditation this Sunday morning it became so clear that we are bathed in an ocean of love. A boundless ocean of divine beauty surrounds us, pervades our flesh, buoys us up and infuses each atom with ineffable medicine, unfathomable joy. This is our healing. This is our vaccine. Yet we spend most of our lives arguing against it, and refusing to receive it.

 

A little child is born with the natural ability to see touch taste breathe this sparkling diamond energy, not through the mind but through each cell of our sacred body, which is both spirit and matter undifferentiated.

 

But our so-called "education," political, religious, and cultural, operating not only through schools but through the "media," shuts off our natural capacity to infuse and respire the nectar of pure love, convincing us that we must depend on their institutions for sustenance.

 

This mind creates, then identifies with, its own unhappiness, even as the real consciousness, the heart, swims in Sat-Chit-Ananda, the instantaneous energy, radiance, and bliss of God.

 

At any moment, with a touch of grace, we can return: not by going anywhere or accomplishing any task, but simply by resting in our true nature, and becoming aware of what IS.

Only Christianity

"Meditate like Christ. He lost himself in love."

~Neem Karoli Baba

 

This is the only Christianity I know:

At the end of each breath, 

the death of Jesus.

At the rise of each breath, 

the resurrection.

What happened 2000 years ago,

what will happen at the last judgment,

doesn't concern me now.

The sound of a wood thrush

is the end of time.

Because I am awake, 

every dogwood blossom is the Parousia,

the coming of the Christ.

Oh yes, I am a fallen creature

plummeting into grace.

From what should I be saved?

I was never lost.

The One who bears my soul,

a pang of fire in her heart,

can never let me go!

Foot Washing

 

You worship him

as if he wasn't just like you.

But why did he come?

Only to reveal that your body 

and the Lord of Love 

were born of one mother. 

His blood and yours is beaten 

to a froth by her heart.

His sole is covered with the same dust.

Both say, I Am.

The I's are different, but the Am is one.

You bend and wash his feet with weeping,

dry them with your fallen hair.

He can barely tolerate such behavior.

Soon he pulls you toward his lips

and whispers your true name.

He fills you like a reed with breath.

Then he bows to You.

Which must be why you feel a secret yearning

to prostrate your flesh before the wildest flower,

the pulsating stone, the un-created sky.

You might well genuflect your life away

were it not for the pure white veil 

of learning: tear it off!  

The tears of a fool are jewels. 

Shatter your crown on a forget-me-not, 

a worm-encrypted clump of loam 

at the ragged edge of the pasture, the gaze 

of a lost Honduran boy across the wall.

Haven’t we come here to wash 

each other from head to toe

as we might bathe a newborn child, 

a grandfather's corpse?

Friend, what pours from these eyes 

is the ocean of forgiveness.

 

 

 

Art: Mary Madgalene washing the feet of Jesus
from the website of Clairmont School of Theology.

Please

I don't need you to change me.

Just help me become

who I am. 

 

It is good
and very good for me
to feel precisely what I feel,

this cloud of grief,

this downpour of despair,

without any names or notes

to self.

 

Only let me dissolve

in a healing rain

that penetrates all my shadows.

A liquid sliver of sun may arise
on the jagged edge of mourning.

Or not.

 

Now I can feel everything

because I have tasted

the night.

 

How a bud bursts, spilling
beauty from its wound.

How the chrysalis shatters, 

frees the golden 

moth from her season 

of uncertainty.

How a single tear 

becomes the sky.

 

 

Photo by Laurent Berthier

Nama Rupa

In the beginning, the Word,

names blossoming first, bursting

from the luster of silence,

then the texture of the echo

called into softness

through pastel incantations

of Columbine, Dianthus,

Pulsatilla the Pasque Flower

also known as Mouse On A Stick,

Japanese Anemone, Grass Widow,

Pearly Everlasting invoked

as Anaphalis Margaritacea,

Fritillaria the Chocolate Lily, 

Trillium and Golden Bush,

Dodecatheon the Shooting Star,

 Lysitichon the secret lovely

Western Skunk Cabbage,

a shout of April flowers,

cacophony of wave and trough,

ghosts of beauty, shadow-bright,

erupting from a frolic of quarks

into fragrant clustered photons,

the nectar of your flesh.

Photo: Skunk Cabbage by Don Elliot

April 12, Beginning of the Fast

 

Tonight the darkness

barely opens her eye,

a sliver of moon.

Yet this is enough

to fill the Prophet's chest

with splendor,

his belly with the feast

of emptiness,

and turn his breath into a caravan

laden with gold,

moving Westward

through desert silence.

Tonight is the beginning

and the end of time,

because we compare this moment

to no other.

And the dawn sparrow's bell
of awakening

will be like no music.

Ramadan Mubarak!

Don't Forget

Don't forget

how we got here.
 

Yearning to kiss

the dark sweet soil,

we bowed too deeply.
 

What shall we do?

Some say, 

arise, ascend!
 

I say, there's an even

deeper bow 

inside this one

that carries us home.

As A Warrior

I yearned for you,

but you were the fountain

of yearning.

As a warrior does not flee

yet moves toward

the assassin,

so a lover moves

toward the pain
in the heart.

Both wield a saber

whetted by death

and compassion,

that one 

made of steel, 

this one made

of breath.

 

Arabic calligraphy for 'Huw,' the name of God and

the sound breath makes moving through the heart.

Shakti

How does the Serpent

dance without feet?

By standing on the tip of her tail,

rooted in the loam beneath

your belly.

How does she hug you

without arms, without hands,

stroking your hair,

placing two fingers

like white petals on your crown,

running them down the nape

of your neck, your spine?

She whirls inside her stillness,

and you feel everything.

How does she carry you off

and bear you up without wings?

By sending the golden boat

of your own breath,

laden with 10,000 suns.

O take that voyage,
throw away the oar,

become a sail.

And how does she
speak to you in silence,
imparting your secret name
without a word?
She listens, She listens
to your cries of longing.

True Meaning of Easter?

The website and community, Conscious Living Jewel, asked me to contribute a short piece on "the true meaning of Easter." So I shared this, and here I share it with you.

In the "Sermon on the Mount," Matthew 6, Jesus said: "The Eye is the light of the body... If your Eye is single, your whole body will be filled with light.” To experience this is to know the meaning of Easter. It is about the body, the body resurrected by the light of consciousness.

 

This resurrection happens not in the future of chronological time (Chronos), but in cosmic time, which is always the present moment (Kairos). As St. Paul wrote, “Now is the appointed time (Kairos)!” We need to demand resurrection now.

 

The kingdom of heaven that Jesus points to is within us, the awakening of pure consciousness. Grace awakens this jewel, and breath polishes it. Entering the secret chamber of the heart, we find what the early Christian mystics called “the heart’s silence, free from all thought.” This silence is the only space where we can hear the resonance of God’s Word, the Logos, which pours forth as a vibration of divine light emanating from the hollow core of our being. But we need to empty ourselves completely, in the pattern of Christ. In Philippians, chapter 2, Paul tells us that Christ “emptied himself.” The beautiful Greek word is “kinosis,” self-emptying.

 

Modern physics shows that the body of the universe, matter itself, arises out of emptiness. The void vibrates, and “fluctuations of the vacuum” arise to become virtual photons of light and electrons of energy. The universe is no-thing but the music of trembling silence.

 

When we enter deep meditation, this inner silence solidifies as a self-radiant diamond at the center of the heart. And this Christallized silence is what Jesus calls the “single Eye,” the witness of pure consciousness, beyond thinking, dreaming, and even deep sleep.

Here is the resurrection miracle. The jewel of awakened awareness sends its rays of Christall silence into every nerve of our brain, every molecule of our blood, every cell of our flesh. No difference between “spirit” and “matter”: this body with its crows-feet and wrinkles, its tears, lymph, menstrual fluid, and all its jagged edges of bone, is made out of infinitesimal love-sparks.

 

To go deep into meditation is to go deep into your own flesh. You do not ascend: you come Om. And when you taste the radiance you are, right down to your marrow, you experience Easter. You enter the empty tomb of silence and come out singing with illuminated flesh. This is your birthright. You are the garden: Christ is the Spring. Yet the real beauty is, as you burst open, your blossoming envelopes others in the healing diamond rays of your heart.

Why do we postpone this transformation, as if it will happen in a higher world, or after death? Now is the appointed time.

WAKE

 

Wake in a whisperless prayer
of listening.
Out in the blossoming plum
a sparrow breaks her vigil to praise
pure light.
April morning mind is hollow,
free from yesterday.
This is the only day to sing.
You must go barefoot into the garden.
By his garment of silence
you recognize the Gardener.
When you touch the hem of his shadow
don't take no for an answer:
Cling!
You repose in your wounds so patiently;
what bruises must be alive.

Yearning turns darkness bright;
secret wine flows from these gashes.
Now ease out of pain into something
more fragrant,
the swollen lily of the present moment,
exposing golden dust.
The God at the center of the sparrow's heart
sees you now.
This is why you sing.
"I Love. Therefor I Am."

Light of the Body

The website/community, Conscious Living Jewel, invited me to write on 'The Real Meaning of Easter,' April 2021, which I share here.

In the "Sermon on the Mount," Matthew 6, Jesus said: "The Eye is the light of the body... If your Eye is single, your whole body will be filled with light.” To experience this is to know the meaning of Easter. It is about the body, the body resurrected by the light of consciousness.

 

This resurrection happens not in the future of chronological time (Chronos), but in cosmic time, which is always the present moment (Kairos). As St. Paul wrote, “Now is the appointed time (Kairos)!” We need to demand resurrection now.

 

The kingdom of heaven that Jesus points to is within us, the awakening of pure consciousness. Grace awakens this jewel, and breath polishes it. Entering the secret chamber of the heart, we find what the early Christian mystics called “the heart’s silence, free from all thought.” This silence is the only space where we can hear the resonance of God’s Word, the Logos, which pours forth as a vibration of divine light emanating from the hollow core of our being. But we need to empty ourselves completely, in the pattern of Christ. In Philippians, chapter 2, Paul tells us that Christ “emptied himself.” The beautiful Greek word is “kinosis,” self-emptying.

 

Modern physics shows that the body of the universe, matter itself, arises out of emptiness. The void vibrates, and “fluctuations of the vacuum” arise to become virtual photons of light and electrons of energy. The universe is no-thing but the music of trembling silence.

 

When we enter deep meditation, this inner silence solidifies as a self-radiant diamond at the center of the heart. And this Christallized silence is what Jesus calls the “single Eye,” the witness of pure consciousness, beyond thinking, dreaming, and even deep sleep.

Here is the resurrection miracle. The jewel of awakened awareness sends its rays of Christall silence into every nerve of our brain, every molecule of our blood, every cell of our flesh. No difference between “spirit” and “matter”: this body with its crows-feet and wrinkles, its tears, lymph, menstrual fluid, and all its jagged edges of bone, is made out of infinitesimal love-sparks.

 

To go deep into meditation is to go deep into your own flesh. You do not ascend: you come Om. And when you taste the radiance you are, right down to your marrow, you experience Easter. You enter the empty tomb of silence and come out singing with illuminated flesh. This is your birthright. You are the garden: Christ is the Spring. The real beauty is that, as you burst open, your blossoming envelopes others in the healing diamond rays of your heart.

Why do we postpone this transformation, as if it will happen in a higher world, or after death? Now is the appointed time.

Blue

Why blue?

The tint of sky.

The tinge of silence.

The blush in the glance of Sundara.

The resonance of stillness.

The color of the space between

the notes inside his flute.

The midnight aurora

at the end of a breath.

The pool in the garden 

where our gazes meet.

Why blue?

Don't ask.
Dissolve.

Easter Prayer

 

Nothing is pure
that has not fallen.
Be an apple petal
on a stream,
a pale seed in the
mother-brown furrow,
a spark of the iron hammer
on the lock of the prison door.
Be lamb's blood on the lintel,
the silent footstep of a slave
escaping in haste at night.
Nothing crushed
in green shadows
can fail to rise.
Be the glut of a rain drop
on the mouth of a lily,
be the starry wine that pours
into the smallest cups
of your own body.
Breathe Christ
through the broken places.
Demand resurrection
now!

Easter

What seeps through your wound makes others whole. Find your scar, that portal to the chamber of hope, opened again and again by April's seasoning fire.

The wound could be your eye that sees, from its own blackness, the black meridian of every creature; or the birth canal, whose labor is grief, ellipsis in the scripture of your body.

Let the hollow in you speak, hear your name in the echo of all tears ever fallen. Caesar's nail did not make this, nor love's thorn in your skull. It was always the gouging at your center.

Be torn. Spill. Bear fruit. A soldier pierced your side that you might heal him. The one who reveals the power of this bleeding does not come down from heaven. The loam exudes her like a musky breath, and her first-born is the fierce joy of diamond emptiness.

Now incubate the centripetal ululation of your storm for three nights. On the third day, even before the keening of the raven, walk among lilies as a woman who has lost her paramour - desperate as Mary, careless and bold as Radha, wild as Ishtar searching for Tamuz among the garlanded tombs.

Look for the Gardener. Do not deny him when he opens your petals like the sun. Be his garden.



(Painting: Rossetti's Mary Magdalene)

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