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

the future unknown...

i.

The calendar all booked up, the future unknown.

The cable silently hums some folk song

but lacks a country.  Snow falls in the gray sea.  Shadows

fight out on the dock. 

ii.

Halfway through your life, death turns up

and takes your pertinent measurements.  We forget

the visit.  Life goes on.  But someone is sewing 

the suit in silence.  

Tomas Transtromer

translation:  Robert Bly 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

lute music

Let us celebrate

The Earth will be going on a long time

Before it finally freezes;

Men will be on it; they will take names, 

Give their deeds reasons.

We will be here only 

As chemical constituents - 

A small franchise indeed.

Right now we have lives,

Corpuscles, Ambitions, Caresses,

Like everybody had once - 

Here at the year's end, at the feast

Of birth, let us bring to each other

The gifts brought once west through deserts - 

The precious metal of our mingled hair, 

The frankincense of enraptured arms and legs, 

The myrrh of desperate, invincible kisses - 

Let us celebrate the daily

Recurrent nativity of love,

The endless epiphany of our fluent selves,

While the earth rolls away under us

Into unknown snows and summers,

Into untraveled spaces of the stars.

Kenneth Rexroth

Photo:  Peter Bowers

now in the blessed days...

Now in the blessed days of more and less

when the news about time is that each day

there is less of it I know none of that 

as I walk out through the early garden

only the day and I are here with no

before or after and the dew looks up

without a number or a present age.  

W.S. Merwin 

Photo:  Peter Bowers

the ancient womb

The world rests in the night.

Trees, mountains, fields, and faces

 are released from the prison of shape 

and the burden of exposure.

Each thing creeps back into its own nature 

within  the shelter of the dark.

Darkness is the ancient womb.

 Nighttime is womb-time.  Our souls come out to play.

The darkness absolves everything; 

the struggle for identity and impression falls away.

We rest in the night.

John O'Donohue

Anam Cara

Photo:  Peter Bowers

at home

I will be standing in the woods

where the old trees

move only with the wind

and then with gravity.

In the stillness of the trees

I am at home. Don't come with me.

You stay home too.

Wendell Berry

Photo:  Peter Bowers

.

song of not-being and being

The world is no more than the Beloved's single face;

In the desire of the One to know its own beauty, we exist.

Each place, each moment, sings its particular song of not-being and being.

Without reason, the clear glass equally mirrors wisdom and madness.

Those who claim knowledge are wrong; prayer just leads to trance;

Appearance and faith are mere lees in the Unknowing Wine.

Wherever the Footprint is found,

the handful of dust holds the oneness of worlds.  

This earth, burnished by hearing the Name, is so certain of Love

That the sky bends unceasingly down, to greet its own light.

Ghalib

Translated by Jane Hirshfield

Photo:  Peter Bowers

Always Touching

Always,

Enjoying,

The Perfume of the Beloved.

Even with eyes open,

Here,

In the world of form.

Even with Attention moving,

Here and there,

In “mundane” activity.

The Extraordinary… Ordinary.

The Ordinary… Extraordinary.

Always, ever,

Intoxicated,

By the Ecstasy that She is.

When Attention rests,

She is there,

Pulling at my Heart.

Always whispering,

Always touching,

Turning my face to Hers.

She exists in me,

As me,

And I in Her…

And… neither.

For “we” do not exist

At all.

There is only…

This!

Chuck Surface

Garden of the Beloved

Photo:  Peter Bowers