There Is No Meaning
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.
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.
Bathed
Only Christianity
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.
from the website of Clairmont School of Theology.
Please
and very good for me
to feel precisely what I feel,
on the jagged edge of mourning.
beauty from its wound.
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
of awakening
Don't Forget
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.
Shakti
How does the Serpentdance without feet?By standing on the tip of her tail,rooted in the loam beneathyour belly.How does she hug youwithout arms, without hands,stroking your hair,placing two fingerslike white petals on your crown,running them down the napeof your neck, your spine?She whirls inside her stillness,and you feel everything.How does she carry you offand bear you up without wings?By sending the golden boatof 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
Dissolve.
Easter Prayer
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
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)