Dark Honey

 

Inside this body of dust

is a subtler body

made of breath.

Inside this body of breath

is a subtler body

of starlight

which makes you dizzy,

hosts of stars  

swirling through the wild 

expanding silence  

of your heart,

the same stars that

glitter above you!

But this vertigo subsides

as you fall 

even deeper within,

and come to rest

in a body beyond the stars,

thick and sweet

as honey.

Few have tasted 

this body of darkness,

this body made of love.

But some have no choice.

Friend, you are the darkness

sheathed in starlight

sheathed in breath

sheathed in a body 

of dust.

Photo from MasterClass

Here

 

Out beyond right thinking

and wrong thinking there's a field,

will you meet me there?

Out beyond Israel and Palestine

there's a field, will you meet me there?

Out beyond Islam and Christianity,

Atheism and Religion,

Oneness and Twoness there's a field,

will you meet me there?

Beyond Republican and Democrat,

Beyond Whiteness and Blackness,

Beyond the Binary and Nonbinary

there's a field where wine forgets

it was ever a grape,

a meadow full of bees

with ten thousand fragrances

that all become honey.

I asked Rumi, "Which path leads there?"

He said, 'Follow any sweetness

through the gate that is always open."

I asked, "Where is that gate?"

He pointed, and his finger

ever so gently pressed

the hollow in my sternum,

where the heart breathes.


Photo: Mt. Tahoma from a field near my house

Hymn to Your Body: International Day of Yoga, 6/21

You don't have to go to the Amazonian rain forest or take hallucinogenic jungle herbs to be a shaman. Don't need a journey to Tibet in order to practice the secrets of Tantra. Don't need to tie your legs into a pretzel for the deepest perfect Yoga.

You were a yogi in the crib, at 6 months old. Stretching out, curling up, rolling over, bouncing, you performed a complete sequence of asanas, fingers and thumbs dancing with esoteric mudras of Buddhic blessing. You were a shaman in the play pen, your throat a bone rattle, your belly a drum, your joyful gurgling the incantation that invoked the animal guides, a dog, a cat, a parakeet. The sounds your body made were tantric bija mantras full of Shakti: "Yah!" "Hum!" "Phwat!" "Hri!" "Bham!" Even if you had no idea what you were saying, you practiced the art of creation through the Word.

Even as a fetus tumbling through the womb, you circled the vast Zodiac Dharma Wheel and embodied the constellations, fish, bull, lion, scorpion. Were you not purified in the sweat lodge of birth? What better baptism than the microbiome? Surely, as a newborn, you carried every talisman required for the shamanic journey...

Your skin the robe of the Deer Priest. At the center of your ancient brain a holy sepulcher, with a hidden medicine bundle, the amygdala. In the deep well behind your cortex, a visionary jewel, your pineal gland, spurting streams of sapphire wisdom toward your forehead. On your fontanelle a diamond cup, blending Christall light into seven colors of the rainbow, pouring distant stars down your backbone. Your diaphragm a lyre, strung with gut, resonant with Pythagorean intervals of thunder and silence.

Did the fiery tendrils of your cardiac plexus terminate in the outline of your flesh? Of course not! You were an edge-less field of organic radiance. Your neurons rooted in loam through the soles of your feet, twining with mycelia. Your vagus nerve a Tree of Life on a trellis of bone at the center of a dusty vineyard. How succulent those heavenly spheres entangled in your branches, lighting up your cortex, each twig a wick, each leaf a flame, returning planetary fire to the sun. Did your senses drink the world in, or flow outward to suffuse it like an incantation?

But then, alas, the priests and professors gave you an "education." They taught you to superimpose a mind full of concepts over the boundless mystery of Mother Matter. You learned to analyze and divide, to distinguish Eve from the Serpent (they are one and the same dangerous wisdom), the Sensuous from the Spiritual (they are one and the same divine energy), the Heavenly from the Profane (they are one and the same delight). Now is the time to lay aside what they taught you, and re-member your unfallen body of original astonishment.

The root meaning of "shaman" is "one who sees in the dark." Is this age of deepest darkness not the best hour to awaken, and realize your power? Witness the full moon of your own divine beauty, rising in the sacred night between your eyebrows. Stroll with the Goddess in the cool of the evening, through the terrible holy flowers of your sacrum, your belly, your heart, your throat, your forehead, your crown. Gaze into the light of glory that glows in the heart of Un-knowing. Your body is Eden. Your birthright is innocence. It was never lost. Now be breathed.

Photo: Six month old yogi.

Tavern of Awakening (Title Poem, New Book)

 

I got bored with spiritual practices.

Inhale counting 4, hold 2, exhale 6.

I did this in first grade arithmetic.
Why not just dive into zero?

I can’t even lie in Corpse pose anymore.

Maybe there's a Coyote posture,

or a Wounded Raven asana.
That bronze yogini in her bikini's

been sitting in Full Lotus over an hour.
She's still smiling: did she get a better mantra?

On your inbreath think, "breathing in,”

on your outbreath, "breathing out,"

but why not think, "My grandmother

rides her red tricycle through golden atoms

of intergalactic chicken broth?"

So I took my complaints to the Master

who just laughed and said,

“When did you actually see me 

doing any of that crap?”

Then he threw his arm over my shoulder

and led me to the Tavern of Awakening,

where everyone gets instantly drunk

by practicing absolutely nothing.

Nobody knows who's giving the party, or why.

Lovers just show up with big empty cups
and dance in a mambo line all night,
swigging from a jug of stars whose light
won't arrive for a thousand years.

Just before dawn, he whispers in my ear,

"Don't call me Master anymore, call me Friend."

Then he gives me all the advice

I'll ever need, for free: "Honor your body,

it's a garden of ancient weddings.

Christ kisses Magdalene here,

where your rib is missing.

Be a flute at Krishna’s lips,

he’ll breathe music through you.

And when you bow, bow to your own heart:

its pulse is the hum inside all names of God.

Now take off your shoes,

walk softly over the earth,

and pulverize diamonds with your whirling."

____________________

Persian miniature by Mahmoud Farshchian. The new book, 'The Tavern of Awakening,' is available for pre-order, to be released June 28, 2024: LINK

Sabbath

I am confused this morning. Yogis say the seat of the Guru is the forehead. Zen masters say, the belly. But my Lord's throne is everywhere. Each cell of my body is a temple of bewilderment. Conversation requires words. Communion requires silence. The silence of Lover and Beloved, listening. Is it one or two? This blessed morning, Love empties my mind and fills my heart with a holy confusion.

Verb

 

Neither christian nor buddhist,
disciple nor teacher,
republican or democrat,
wizard or fool;
not a color or a race,
nor an angel nor a man,
I Am that I Am,
shouting the absence
at the end of the sentence,
proclaiming with
eloquent silence
that this is no place
for nouns.
Not a flower but a bursting,
not an oak but self-seeding,|
I root down and trunk up.
Star-thousand inhale,
I acorn the sky,
I branch like bolted lightning.
No ocean but to froth,
let a savory panging be born,
no moon but luminously
to wax-wane.
Neither energy nor matter,
but to pulsate, atomize, astonish.
O You in whom a sigh
sun-plodes my bone-dance,
mountain-heaves the rippled earth,
purple-plushing the Merlotted
unborn roar in the belly
of the lion,
let me never forget
that You are the Verb         
who breathes me.

Collage by Rashani Réa, 'Still Life Withe Grapes' by Jacob Marrel, b. 1614

Getting Through

 

The beginning and end

of spiritual practice

is resting the mind

in the heart.

How the strawberry moon 

floats in the womb of a pond.

How, on a plum branch,

chickadees wait in line

for a sip at your fountain.

How a dogwood blossom opens

beyond understanding.

Sweep away a thousand

reflections and scatter

the stars with one breath.

There is no other way

to get through this miracle.

Calligraphy

 

I am grateful

for the Muslim mathematicians

who invented algebra

(an Arabic word),

and drew the first zero
(another Arabic word)

whose radiant emptiness

exalts what preceeds
even the One.
And I am grateful

for Mansoor al Hallaj

who was tortured and burned

at the stake for ecstatically

humming the mantra,

"Ana'l Haqq! I Am Truth!"

bestowed on him by Shams,

the Guru of Rumi.

I am grateful as well

for the humble nameless

artist of Isfahan

who wrote the entire

Qu'ran on a bird's egg

using for his brush a single

whisker from a newborn goat.

Yet how much more do I
give thanks to you, dear friend,

who with your gently

centered hairpin breath

pierced the shell

to suck out the unknown,

and then, through your most

delicate exhalation,

inscribed all 114 Suras 

along with many other chapters

not yet revealed
(O calligraphy 

of illuminated nights,

O innumerable constellations,

sacred beasts of darkness

hurtling toward us to be born!) 

yes, inscribed them here,

on the inside of the egg!

I dreamed this poem, and I still cannot quite convey its meaning. So I will simply tell you the dream. I went to sleep in extreme anxiety about the world, yet at the end of the dream, I awoke in ecstasy.

 

I was a captain in U.S. Army Intelligence, sitting across the table in a dangerous game with someone holding an egg that had the entire Qu'ran inscribed on its shell. Very fragile. The world depended on not dropping and shattering it. I held out my hand to catch the egg, daring the other player to throw it. I knew the world's fate would rest on this delicate but desperate throw. He tossed the egg and I caught it gingerly. Then I knew what I had to do, but not why.

I had to inhale the uncreated unborn emptiness inside the egg, through a tiny hole at the top, then blow my breath back into it. I performed this delicate task gently yet quickly with a fierce, fine, focused exhalation. And with that breath, the whole scripture suddenly appeared INSIDE the egg, glittering like the dome of a great mosque, radiant with the stars and galaxies.

The egg did not shatter, the world was not destroyed. I awoke in great joy and it was clear then that all our scriptures - the Torah, the Vedas, the Qu'ran - are dangerous and heavy when they are inscribed on the outside. But when we breathe the holy Word inside, allowing its law be inscribed on our hearts, earth is refreshed, and becomes a paradise.

Solstice Secret

'The world will be redeemed by beauty.' ~Dostoievsky

Our work is to behold beauty everywhere. To discover the whole blue sky in every cell of our flesh, sixteen billion light-years of emptiness in each atom. This is the dharma, the duty of the human mind. Why then would we waste one precious breath in argument and blame?

Solstice is a peak in time, a high pause in the year, when we can taste the transcendent embodied through our senses, and see the majesty of light solidified in the quiddity of a hummingbird's throat.

The Hebrew psalmist said, "Taste and see that the Lord is good." The ancient singer did not say, "believe" or "contemplate," but "taste" and "see." Solstice is an auspicious sensory moment, a time to taste and see. See what? Bliss incarnate in the commonplace.

What is bliss, ananda? No fleeting feeling or mere pleasure that comes and goes, but the quality of limitless expansion. Bliss is the dynamism of over-brimming stillness. Bliss pervades all of creation and, when apprehended, makes everything suddenly weightless. Bliss is the fullness of Being, the true parousia, when the formless overflows and sparkles in the transcendental quiddity of any form. A pine cone, a fallen crow feather, lady bug on a fern become the faces of Christ.

On solstice we see everyday miracles boldly. A wild poppy, a pebble in a stream, a sod clump, an infant's tear, rainbow oil on a sidewalk puddle: Govinda glances and blinks at us through the slightest thingness. Just for an instant, before we perceive the creature, we see God's un-created gaze.

At the core of our soul is an inward eye that sees the face of divine Beauty shining through the ordinary. With this inward eye of the heart, we embrace every creature in the space of forgiveness, and only then does the world begin to change.

For an instant, Lord Govinda and the cowherd girl, Radha, frolic in the meadow of our senses, playing hide and seek with us, just so that we may be stunned into silent wonder. Then God and Goddess hide their loveliness again within the shadow of this earth, yes, even its sorrow.

One name of Krishna is Shyama Sundara, meaning "the boundless blue sky of transcendental beauty." The human mind, in the glory of stillness, is a pelucid lens, transparent, silent and amazed, witnessing the darshan of God in a particle of holy dust.

Please, don't waste one breath of this precious bewilderment! Let the mind melt into the eye of the heart.

Lover on a Moth Wing

Just listen. Feel the silence. The love you seek already hugs you, even before you breathe.

When the sparkling light of Grace begins to dance in the space of the heart, a gentle power ignites your backbone. Every nerve in your body catches fire, with a cool and healing flame that does not burn. The spinal cord is the tree of life. Lit ablaze, it is the burning bush that Moses saw on Mount Sinai. He was immolated in the formless brilliant electric bliss of divine Love. He asked Love, “What is your name?” And Love answered, "I Am... I Am is my name forever.” (Exodus 3)

Why did the Lord put no noun after the verb, "to be"? Because God is a person. God is infinite subjectivity, the formless all-pervading subject who takes the whole cosmos for a noun, a body. Divine Love is formless, but never not a person.

Many mystics arrive at the Oneness, yet their hearts remain dry and unfilled. Entering formless samadhi, they presume that this is all there is: pure consciousness, universal energy. A thin veil of pride prevents them from the last letting go: to drown in the heart’s abyss, relinquishing even Oneness. As Augustine wrote, "Our hearts are ever restless till they find their rest in Thee." Do not mistake the formless for the impersonal. Strip off even non-duality, and dive into the mystery of Love.

“One” dissolves into Thou. “It” dissolves into Thou. Every impersonal pronoun dissolves into Thou. Let Love fall in love with Love. Then the ocean of stillness stirs in waves of adoration. One becomes two. Love becomes Lover and Beloved.

This is lila, the playfulness of God. This is the sport of Yaweh and his paramour, the Shekinah, creating the heavens and the earth. This is the courtship of Rahman i’Raheem, when the Ruuh of Allah’s breath ignites soul sparks in coals of cosmic night. This is the breathless dalliance of Shiva and Shakti in your solar plexus, between exhale and inhale, where worlds are born. Ameen, this is the dance of Jesus and Magdalene, Christ and the Spirit, in the radiant darkness of the Godhead, spawning each of us in their image and likeness.

The play of the formless is always personal. That is why even the humblest creature catches fire, and becomes the face of the Almighty - a leaf, a raindrop, a moth wing. How much more then will you find the love I Am in your own face, and in the gaze of every human child?

Just listen. Feel the silence. The love you seek already hugs you, even before you breathe.


Image by aceoni on DeviantArt

Golden Hollow

There's a clearing in the wilderness of the body, just below the heart and above the navel. A ring of mushrooms grows here, where we gather to study the physics of miracles. And this is why we have no time for outrage.

What do you learn from the anointed animal of your own physiology? When the mind wanders during meditation, don't chase after it. Let it explore the farthest edge of interstellar amazement, and mingle in the golden atoms of a rose.

Even when you have as many thoughts as there are zeros after the one in infinity, your meditation is silent and hollow. Do you know why? Because you are not your mind.

You are the space through which it wanders. You are the motionless green journey of a seed spiraling into the death of its flower. Therefore let your mind roam through time as well as distance, without the slightest effort to grasp or lead it home.

Just as a mother's love enfolds her wrestling whelps, so you watch over the play of thoughts. As long ago as your great grandmothers sing, and as far ahead as your unborn children dream, your mind is the refulgence of this present moment.

Through the sacred art of listening, know what the owl sees at midnight, how a new snakeskin shimmers under the old one, how a moth wing feels passing through a flame.

Why is there no journey? Because the beginning and end are the same breath. No judgment arises from the golden hollow in the core of your body, because the glow of "Nothing Wrong" engenders a new earth with each exhalation. So just rest in the heart.

When you find that forest glade in your body, my smile will arise there. And when your smile arises from this place in me, each photon in my blood will remember the whole sun and whisper, "Thank you." Thus I am absolved, forgiven, and transformed by your emptiness.

But non-duality is not enough. Get rapt in the ineffably soft fabric of otherness, and caress my toes. Oneness is entanglement. This is how your power to bless keeps expanding, and the dance of the galaxy begins in every spiral of your DNA.

Let us drown in the well of each other's gaze, and find stillness in waves of chaos. Only then can we be sure that judging others is the root of dis-ease, forgiveness the nectar of healing.

If we study the marvelous science of the belly, which is deeper than any love, we will meet our teacher. And because our teacher dwells in the moment before creation, She is very near.


Painting by Sue Wookey

Another Song from the Tavern

You asked me to drop every concept

of 'Other' and 'God,' so I did.

Then I abandoned words like

'Trauma' and 'Embodiment.'

Love is not a story.

Now I sink into my true flesh,

the infinite physiology of light.
This stillness in my chest

is an unbroken pour

that doesn’t flow from

'there' to 'here,'

but quivers in the void,

a braid of black lightning.

The taste is beyond

thought and breath.

I call it sweet wine,

but that is the language

of fools and lovers

whose tale gets drowned out

by silence.

I will never know who tilted

Fullness into Emptiness

and made the starry rim

of this cup overflow

with a wonder no longer

named 'me.'

But still I say 'thank you,

thank you, Friend.'

And still I ask,

'Was there a journey in that pour?

Or have I always

already arrived

at the Tavern of Awakening?'

 

 

Painting by Mahmoud Farshchian

Men (for Father's Day, June 16)

Men who believe women.

Men who care for women in pain.

Men who praise women when

their bodies grow old.

Men who listen to women even when

they repeat themselves.

Men who hear women even when

they do not speak.

Men who hug the whole body,

the whole radiance of a women

with their own radiance,

Rahman i'Raheem.

Men who father daughters and sons.

Men who father mothers.

Men who linger by forest ponds

and gaze into green stillness,

speaking to the great mother.

Men who travel deep into the wilderness

not to hunt or kill,

not to climb the highest peak,

but just to be there.

Men who know valleys,

observing the etiquette of mist,

the customs of cedar and willow.

Men who understand

that the fire in their belly

is the Goddess.


Photo: at the Jersey shore with my wife and daughters, 1988.

Wisps

"Yatha drishti, tatha srishti: as your mind is, so your world appears."
~Upanishads

Every particle of matter is made out of love, wisps of pure love dancing in a cosmos of appearances seemingly tainted with impurity and imperfection, due to the playfulness of our own minds, who project any qualities they freely imagine onto the world. We don't even need to forgive. We just need to be still for a moment and see through the eye of the heart the dance of energy as it truly is, without projecting our labels and beliefs onto that nameless kaleidoscopic rainbow of self-luminosity. In that moment of innocent seeing, even the most terrifying appearance becomes free energy, absorbed back into our mind as sparkling awareness. This is how we get liberated by everything we behold, just as it is! The liberation is never esoteric, the revelation is everywhere.

Poems for Meditation

 

I used these short poems, and fragments of poems, from my book 'Wounded Bud,' as a guided meditation last night in a small group. I hope these fragments make you whole, and create moments of silence for a morning or evening worship...

 

Of your mother and father

all that remains is you.

Of the bee and flower, just honey.

Of the master and disciple

only a quivering braid of cream

poured from bowl to cup.

Why ask if there are one or two?

Compare us, my beauty, to melting snow.

Give up perfection, take up

laughter and tears.

Drown in what you are.

 

May the pilgrim melt into her path,

the path into the goal,

the goal into Presence,

the very first step

into this breath.

 

What the bud calls a wound

we call blossoming.

This is how the angels see

our gashed and broken places.

They keep singing, "Stay open, stay open!"

Don't you know that through your tears

that world flows as light

into this one?

 

Savor eternity

one moment at a time.

Only love can stop the mind

and give birth

to living silence.

 

Like an opening

chrysanthemum, get lost

in all directions at once:

this is called the center.

I’ll let you wander through me

If you let me wander through you.

This is called the heart.

Peel away another layer of the dream.

Disappear without a trace

into the inconceivable vastness

of the next moment.

 

God meant to drop this mirror,

shattering into countless images

that perfect gaze.

This is why we meet in brokenness,

putting ourselves together again

through each other,

until we recognize one face

with seven billion reasons

for astonishment.