Uradiance

There's a secret in this madness. Everything is breath. A toadstool is Spirit-blown like glass. This mossy stone must be  the supreme Being because it exists. The wing of a housefly reveals a thousand verses of scripture, but you need to look. The fur on a golden shelter dog is infested with celestial messengers. Your next inhalation, the intimate name of Lady Wisdom, Sophia, whose whisper only lovers know. How does Mount Fuji float on a cloud? How do a billion stars rest in your open palm like a black moth? It happens through the science of miracles. The sun and planets in free-fall, caught and held by some colossal stillness. Be a pilgrim, then you'll understand the secret in this madness. Let the radiance of your destination illuminate your starting place before you take the first step. Let the space between the beginning and the end be a single exhalation of grace. What stands in your way is seeking. Everyth...

Rest the mind in the heart, until the path disappears. We meet here, in this brokenness, where all our pronouns dissolve into Thou.  A journey from the mind to the heart may be twelve inches, or twelve thousand light-years. You decide. 

        Don't ask, "What is my work in this world?" Just make honey. Let knowledge ripen into wisdom. Let wisdom ripen into foolishness. Only crazy people understand God. When this love drives you out of your mind, you will stop seeking and begin to dance. At the heart of the dance, stand still, while many worlds spin around you. Reader, stop reading this dangerous poem now! All right then, drink on. You alone, Nadimati, already tipsy with the vintage of emptiness, will hear a secret that you must forget when morning comes. This is not the juice of the Guru gushing up your stem, blushing your bud with April, spreading fragrance over the garden; nor is it the wine of Christ, bursting the wineskin, sweet Ruh from the suras of Mohammad, or the tears of Qwan Yin. Enter the diamond chamber in the rose of your chest. Feel the tremor of pistil and stamen. Refuse to name them Jesus and Mary, Radha Krishna, El Shaddai and Shekináh. For th...

To the bud, blossoming is a catastrophe.  But chaos is just another word for Becoming. Nothing you cling to is who you really are. The seed dies in a sprout. The stem holds up her tiny fist, bursting into petals of ineffable fragrance. Pollen, nectar, honey, fruit.  Use your ommatidia. You have thousands of eyes.   Soften your perception,   the way a bee sees. And if you cannot learn this from the body of Jesus, learn it from the breath of Spring.

                                     No need to transcend. No need to awaken. Awakening pervades the dream, the dream pervades awakening. If you know that your next inhalation is the paramour who danced with the Creator when the world was spun like sugar from nothing, there's nowhere else you need to go. One breath annihilates the difference between soul and body. Just pay a little more attention to what flows in and out. It doesn't matter if your atoms are made from the light of stars that ceased to exist before you were conceived. Walk softly on this planet, not like a landlord but a guest. If you don't know how to bend, to be hollow as a reed, how can you be filled with music? Photo: by Greg Alderete, Farrell's Marsh, a short walk from my house

My religion is  walking barefoot  in wet moss unnaming the stars. Every religion got started this way, invented by a five-year-old at the edge of a meadow. On the first warm day of Spring, after days of late Winter rain, when the sky melts into pools of cobalt, rivers of amber  you could wade up to your knees in, I follow the Rx of doctor robin: “Take seven sunbeams, then see how you feel.” Standing nowhere special (anywhere is sacred)  I inhale the fallen grace of April, mud squished through my toes,  the holiest  anointing, a loam-gush from below, lean back, guzzling body beams of star-breath through my forehead, down the perineum, out my naked soles: I Am  the sun’s hollow path. My skin exudes the fire, therefore sprouts tremble with nectar,  braiding birth and death,  green-umber in thirsty pastures. Every cell of dust inhales the golden sea. I Am the fifth element. Infinitesimal benevolent bacteria...

             Why are you awake at 3 a.m.? To make a home for the wandering angel of this breath. To hear the name of the Friend in your heartbeat. Why do you say, I am not this body? There's a garden in your chest where the sun and moon touch, twining their gold and pearl-white beams around a tree. The tree catches fire. From your belly to your crown, seven blossoms, coral, crimson, viridescent blue, other tinctures too soft to name, songs without words. And a chuppah made of clustered vines beneath your rib cage, where Christ meets Magdalene. You are the priest of silence who unites them. Their wedding is why you are awake. Please don't say, 'I am not this body.' Each atom of your dust is nothing but the light you've been longing for. Painting: Marc Chagall

Full grok I Am in wondrous suchness sole to soul to sol of solitude the sun my bare feet open mouths that hunger for the lunar pulse of Ourobóros serpent spine my wounded skull bent to devour the dust in Hebrew "adamah" my flesh and spirit one ancient language revealing how to breathe not think the Qi the Ruh the Pneuma Shakti pun of shock electric Goddess sighing bellowing Adamic sod into a living person "nephesh" meaning exhalation through hooves unshod now free to wander in the garden under new moon of first planting then inhale from earthworm toes to loamy fontanel through furrows of my cortex musky fountains alchemic of dark mycelium juice transmuting clod to consciousness a larva full of stars. Image: Walking meditation, from Buddha Weekly     

     What I put my attention on grows in my life: first in my mind, then in my energy field, then in the world around me. This is how I manifest my reality. I feed the leaves and petals as surely as the sun does. But too often this is also how I nurture precisely what I do not want. When I worry, I feed and manifest my fears. When I blame, I feed and empower the one's I call "enemies." Yet no one needs to cling to negative judgments. Though this may sound like a colossal revelation, the world can survive without our opinions. We cling to them only because they make us feel "right" - even when our righteousness destroys the community. I can drop this mental monologue of perpetual blame, because it is not who I Am. It is only my mind, not my awareness. Why not breathe out judgment, relinquish the feel of being "right," and sink down into the heart, my true home? The greatest discovery of a lifetime is this: I can breathe throu...

 

      Meditation is not a spiritual "by-pass." Deep silence does not circumvent our pain, but cuts to the nectar of pain. In the depth, we do not rise above the scar tissue, but penetrate its juicy core. At the center of sorrow, we discover a flower of boundless energy.  One sap pervades both rose and thorn. Petals of happiness, thorns grief, but the same transparent sap in both. The sap is bliss, Ananda. Which is no fleeting mood or temporary emotional high, but the nectar of pure existence, glowing in the dark. Transcendence is not above. It is the hollow in the seed. Yes, even in moments of quiet our solitude may ferment into upheavals of rage and despair. One student said, "I can't wait to get to the other side of this anger!" But when we try to wrestle down this anger with our mind, what happens? We only churn up more wrathful thoughts and images from the past. Mind, through mind, will never get to the other side of anger.   My teac...

          There is a field between your thoughts where love turns particles into waves. We are already dancing there!

      “Be ye perfect, even as your heavenly father is perfect.” ~Mat 5:48 A life-coach told me, "you're perfect right now." I tried it for a day and got completely bored. After all, God is already God, but who would be Me if I didn't keep fucking things up in my own peculiar way? My blemishes define me, jagged edges are the letters of my true name. Call me Broken Buddha, the Half-Awake. This universe just wouldn't be the same without my sins. I’m more priceless uncut, mud-covered, a ruby mistaken for a berry in a crow’s beak, that gem of surprise! Here's the sign of progress: I'm even less perfect now than I was yesterday. I dedicate this poem to you, my dear, who discovered the hot mess of your own precious body on the kitchen floor slobbering your tears into the linoleum while Good Morning America bled out in the living room. I honor the unconditional catastrophe of your hair, ...

Equinox = balance. Balance between light and darkness, Summer and Winter, Yin and Yang. But I cannot create this balance outside, on earth, until I find it inside, harmonizing my corporeal body, my breath-body, and my wonder-body. Unbalanced individuals cannot produce balance in the collective, in the nation, in the world. My own body is, after all, a hologram of the cosmic body, where I integrate the Masculine and Feminine, the Solar and Lunar energies, celebrating their spiral-dance around the Tree of Life, my spinal cord. Here I find, in a secret place nearer than my soul, the Bridal Chamber, where I witness the wedding of Shiva and Shakti, Christ and Mary, the Immovable and its Dance. When I pass through an infinitesimal door in one atom of my flesh, I enter an infinite expanse, the womb of creation. Uniting inbreath and outbreath, I rest in the equinoxial bindhu, where the rising and falling embrace. In this little indentation, this humble valley, just beneath my heartbeat and a...

Some create a world out of fear and anger. Some create a world out of beauty and amazement. Where do these worlds touch? Where do they intersect? In a dumpster behind the bistro? In a patch of daffodils at the cemetery? In the eye of a homeless kitten crossing the subway tracks? No, friend, these worlds do not commingle at all. Th ough th ey occupy in the same space, and abide within each other, they never meet or even sense each other's presence. Both worlds are on this earth, yet they are in opposite galaxies. That wasted food, who named it “garbage,” and who shared it? From the silence of yearning, how did the corpse of y our ancestor flower? When the feral feline gazed at you, did you let it burn a hole through your pupil, and remember the eye of the Goddess? Everywhere you walk, let the ruins of outrage dissolve into gardens of hope. When you give up your story of shame, stand before me in your new and perfect body. When I give up my story of reproach, let me stand b...

That path is best whose first breath is all you'll ever need. There is a stream of wonder that sings the ley lines of this land with no name, whirls the silken spindle of the moon,  and puffs the stars like milkweed over a bee-wild meadow. Now it is midnight. Stay awake. This is when the Goddess comes,  so lovely, almost naked, draped in the silver veil of your inhalation. She drops the  veil and you  rest  in her trembling  presence. Darkness, longing,  prayer,  three scents,  one flowing nectar that drips down your backbone. Use that flowing to polish your heart.