Original Mind

How many evenings
have you turned away?

As if the life you really want
could only begin

once something else had happened,
something else that was not yet here…

All the unmet conditions
you’ve placed before happiness

have kept you a person in waiting
like someone overlooked, someone

whose time has yet to come,
as if God somehow

forgot to pack you a lunch…

Right now
a wheel of fortune is spinning

but notice: its center is completely still,
unchanging, completely empty

Bet all your money here
on a clear reception

of that hollowness
a nothing that lacks nothing.

It’s like we have two minds.
One is conditioned, and conditional…

And it’s filled with drama:
—your anchorless ship ever drawing close

to fearful rocks of loss
or hopeful shores of gain.

But we don’t need all the drama
--or special conditions, for happiness

to visit and stay awhile.
It doesn’t need to be imported,

doesn’t need to be Maui
under a full moon,

with a special enchanting
someone in tow. Nor do we need

all our duckies
finally lined up in a row.

Our original mind
is already content

standing in any line, sitting in any chair,
or parked in an old jalopy

in any Safeway parking lot.
This mind is empty

of all that clutching
to outcomes and conditions.

Less picky, more eco-friendly.
Just this is enough.






Gary Rosenthal
Photo:  Peter Bowers

In the Realm of the Passing Away

This is the realm of the passing away.  All that

exists does not for long.

Whatever comes into this world never stops sliding

toward the edge of eternity.

Form arises from formlessness and passes back,

arising and dissolving in a few dance steps between

creation and destruction.

We are born passing away.

Seedlings and deadfall all face forward.

Earthworms eat what remains.

We sing not for that which dies but for that which

never dies.

Stephen Levine

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Being the Song

Reminding others of the enormity of their own 

Great Nature is the highest service one can offer another.

Kyoto Zen Master

First we serve, then we become service.

It is alot like prayer; first you pray, 

but eventually your life becomes the prayer.

First you sing, then you become the song.

Gandhi said, 'My life is my message."

Stephen Levine

Photo:  Peter Bowers

s

The Avowal

As swimmers dare

to  lie face to the sky

and water bears them,

as hawks rest upon air

and air sustains them,

so would I learn to attain 

freefall, and float

in Creator Spirit's deep embrace,

knowing no effort earns

that all-surrounding grace. 

Denise Levertov

Photo:  Peter Bowers

the deep innerness of all things

You are the future, 

the red sky before sunrise

over the fields of time.

You are the cock's crow when night is done,

you are the dew and the bells of matins,

maiden, stranger, mother, death.

You create yourself in ever-changing shapes

that rise from the stuff of our days -

unsung, unmourned, undescribed,

like a forest we never know.

You are the deep innerness of all things,

the last word that can never be spoken.

To each of us you reveal yourself differently:

to the ship as coastline, to the shore as a ship.

 Rainer Maria Rilke

photo:  Peter Bowers