Uradiance

  Silence  x  Grace  -  Time  =  Love. I derived this equation by applying the science of tears to the field of yearning. I raised God's name by the power of the Mother and ascended into a shining exponential cloud  where rocks, bones, roses and prime numbers have no existence in pure space, for all appear as multiples of one. I factored my thought-waves into an empty denominator, by which I divided a tufted titmouse, a fern, a dog turd, and a jade Buddha, which resulted, marvelously enough, in a quotient of titmouse, fern, dog turd and Buddha, all things remaining just as they are. Then I stepped naked into zero-entropy snow melting in a stream of super-radiant virtual electrons that spilled from a glacier on Mount Meru, where I drowned in the gurgling calculus of chaos between the curve of my inhalation and the asymptote of silence. There I beheld the square root of the void   and became the a...

  Noun, from Latin mirari: "to wonder at, marvel, be astonished." Earlier *smeiros, from Indo-European root *smei: "to smile, laugh," which is also the source of Sanskrit smerah "smiling."   A miracle, then, is the root of your smile, as you marvel at any ordinary object. To truly pay attention, and be astonished at the quiddity of a pebble, a mushroom sprung up from moss at midnight, the cry of a flicker breaking the silence of morning mist, transmutes common ore into miraculous gold. Miracles are the irreducible currency of wonder. To clothe the simplest object in the sacred transparency of pure attention, is to dissolve all separation between your Self and the world. In that instant, you touch the seed of bliss. Your awareness effortlessly expands beyond the circumference of the galaxy, yet focuses like a laser on the bindhu of the smallest thing. Then the curve of eternity breaks out all around and within you as a smile. You see clearly, without having...

  Words are wings of prayer. Praying with words is a good preliminary exercise. But then one dives, one falls, one plummets into the abysmal essence of prayer without wings, abandoning words to dissolve the mind in luminous silence. And that dissolving, that abandonment, that silence, is the source of creation. NASA photo of Galaxy M106

Wind moved the bare branch at my window, scratching random runes on frosted glass. I did not attempt to interpret them. Their meaning simply appeared in my Winter awareness like black flames on white scrolls of stillness. This is what the wind said. Aloneness is the dream, all-oneness the awakening. Here is your simplest hardest lesson. The conflict you perceive is the conflict in your mind made visible by grace, that you may learn through images, reflections, how your own thoughts limit you until you let them go. Be crazy and free. Be naked, sky-like, and empty. Laugh, sing, dance, cry. You are the cause of Spring. Painting by Andrew Wyeth

Ran into Kerouac at the Carnival of Drunken Poets, where those just dead meet those about to be reborn. Jack and I have wandered through the zodiac, prodigal suns under the 13th sign, the sign of inebriation in the house of Lilith, with Coyote rising, the Moon single and pregnant again. We meet here every 26 thousand years.   The heavenly huckster sees us coming and shouts: "Step right up! Watch gladiator-poets beat each other silly with roses. One will die of wounds that gush communion wine!” The crowd is ferocious, hungry for metaphors. I bow to Jack, Jack bows to me. We make the fatal mistake of opening our mouths.   "Gorilla lilies at my Resurrection!" he wails. I refute him, "We forbid the silly physicists of tantra to taste our semi-sweet chakras,”  to which he replies, "I spin galaxies of cotton candy from the dark matter of God's breath." I demand, "What overflows the hexagon of your hollow grail?...

The moon has her phases, the sun its night, the polestar obscured by the dizziness of galaxies. The slightest tilt of earth turns Winter to Spring. Grief cleanses us with loss yet keeps returning, and joy is like the morning rain. We thrive on a chaos of changes. Even the Teacher appears and disappears, a dancer at the edge of the wilderness in summer mist. Not you, Beloved, your love no liquid ebb and flow, but an incandescent diadem of solitude. With each inhalation, I renew our marriage vows. We were wedded before there were two. The ocean of silence between us is merely a pause between the notes in a Chopin Nocturne. The melody pierces my chest, not as the cry of a migrant lark who will be far South tomorrow, but the pulse of my own blood chanting Thou, Thou, Thou... You are my rhythm. You are the sound inside "friend" when the word is unspoken. What if your heart should stop beating? I woul...

I've noticed that there is a new age cult of "trauma" that is very seductive. It happened in the Middle Ages as well, when so-called saints prided themselves on their sufferings, identifying them with the wounds of the crucified Jesus. Once upon a time, "spiritual" people said, "Holier than thou," but now many seem to say, "More traumatized than thou."   The "wounded" and the "traumatized" have become the new Elect, the Saved. But this is just another way to separate the righteous from the unrighteous, and it is based on the false notion that your trauma makes you special. Let's get something straight. Though some people like to wear it on their sleeve and tell stories about it all the time, while others work it out in quietness and privacy, EVERYONE has been traumatized. We all have suffered. One person's suffering is not "deeper" or more virtuous than another's. We are born from a wound, and the wo...

  "I embrace You as if You were already there and unite myself wholly to You. Never permit me to be separated from your love." ~The Act of Spiritual Communion, liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church   How often we mistake the cause for the effect, the effect for the cause. We assume that love is the cause of union. If we love enough, love will lead to oneness with the Beloved. But the opposite is the truth. Union is the cause of love. We begin with union, and love is the effect. Our seeking for the Beloved keeps us separate.   If we plunge into the naked being that makes no pilgrimage and takes no journey, abandoning every prayer bead, dissolving every image of the white dhoti and sandals, every form of the Guru, or Jesus, or Krishna, or Kali, and simply repose in pathless abandonment, resting the mind in the heart, we fall. We fall down the stem of meditation into the hollow seed. That is the silence that answers every prayerful longing, for that is the silence where no qu...

Countless "things," swarming "diversity," constant "motion," all that we call "the world": appearances reflected on the clear continuum of a mirror. And these ever-changing images are the very stillness of the mirror. The fullness of the world is the very emptiness of the glass.   When you taste the wonder of this mirror as your own pure awareness, every nerve in your body will thrill with the discovery that the many are One, even while manifesting multitude, and the past is Here, in the seamless eternity of the present moment. Then all is suddenly weightless, effortless, joyfully poignant and poignantly joyful, through an instantaneous perishing, an instantaneous regeneration.   A single kiss of this mirror, which is your Self, dispels the trauma of a thousand lifetimes, which is not your Self. Those lifetimes are reflections in the glass. Yes, you stored the trauma in the cells of your body. Yet each cell, each atom, is pervaded by mirror s...

All my chakras vanished when I tasted the Self. Now I'm a rose-apple pie, too caramelized and sticky to have a subtle body. Meditate on my flavor, friend, all sweet and sour and cinnamon flesh. I have no recipe. This crust was cooked with tears. Let's savor each other and forget those esoteric Dharma talks, those secret books of tantra. Who knows how the heart gets baked until it is soft and risen, but I'm sure it's made with real butter. Who knows if there is a higher world than this one with its Winter wheat and valiant weeds still blossoming in my ruined garden. But I'm perfectly sure about one thing: On a honey-golden stamen tip, the earth is just a pollen speck in the flower of Now.