just this

 
I struggled all night
to find the right words
and failed
again.

I'll stop trying
when the coyotes quit singing.

May my heart break
a hundred million times
in pursuit of hopeless things.

Everything resolves to nothing.

Maybe only nothing
has room enough
for this love.

  
I didn't get what I came here for;
I got what came for me.

what if
just for a moment
everything was accomplished
your to-do lists all checked off
your 43 things all done
and everything you hoped for
wished for and wanted
sidled up to you
curled up into a ball
in the crook of your arm
and took a rest?
would you then hear
the chorus of cicadas
outside your window
serenading you?
would you feel the cool floor
beneath your bare feet?
would you lay your chin
in the cup of your hand
and drowsily
fall back into wonder?
would you, could you
breathe any word
but yes?

And now the ocean extends her foamy fingers
towards you, touches you, and draws you near.
And because your impetuous, horizon-leaning heart says so
you enter, recklessly, into that immensity
(as salty kisses come rushing to greet you)
with its embrace so wide it encompasses
everything--
whole continents, lost empires,
a thousand flashing radiant suns,
surfers with their golden hair glistening,
the lingering scent of coconut oil,
all the skinny girls in their blinding bikinis,
bottlecaps and shards of glass burnished by time--
a wealth of drenched treasures
and you
your stance succumbing to a force
greater than gravity
flow
rediscovering
the unexpected
buoyancy of being.

What you want more than safety
is to be as you are
so utterly vulnerable
as to be beyond harm.

What you want more than security
is to love and be loved
so unconditionally
as to be beyond fear.

What you want more than anything
is what you already have
so intimately near to you
as to be beyond loss.

For you are the same you
before any meeting or parting
the same you
before time crept in and said "then"
the same you
who spun round and round until she fell
     dizzy and laughing
     and didn't care who saw
the same you
who caught sunlight in her eyelashes
     and sneezed,
     held buttercups up to her chin,
     and married boys with rings made of grass
the same you
who filled a backyard universe
     with untiring investigation
     knowing for certain the secret was there
the same you
who swore she would never do that
     then did
who said I'll be happy when
     a thousand whens ago
the same you
who cried and dreamed and broke promises
who held back, risked everything, and lost
herself,
or thought she had
until she realized (again)
I am still here
and nothing real has changed
except the changeful.

Not a person, place or name.
Only you, love, remain.

I’ve just returned from the Double-T diner where I sat at the counter drinking stale black coffee. I was fortunate enough to be joined by Arnie on my right, a 71 year old moon-faced Virginian who is an expert on politics, religion, marriage, and waitresses, and by Samuel on my left, an even older man with coal-black skin and a beaming jack-o-lantern smile.

Between the two of them, I learned why the world is as deeply screwed up as it is and precisely what needs to be done about it (did you know, for instance, that the solution to any problem can be found in the book of Ezekial?). I was given the sort of advice on choosing a wife that you just can’t buy from any therapist. I also learned the history of our waitress, Ida, and how to make her laugh so that you can watch her eyes squint with pleasure until you can’t help but laugh along with her.

I’ve been at this counter many times before, sitting alone with the latest issue of The New Yorker, sipping coffee and keeping my eyes down; if someone sits next to me, I ignore them as politely as I can. But this morning I looked up, and discovered that the entire place was shimmering with light. The paper napkin dispenser, the stacks of coffee-stained cups and saucers, the cart of bused silverware and crumpled sugar packets, the loose change sitting idly on the faux-granite counter—all of it alive and vibrant; all of it singing its heart out for anyone with ears to hear.

And I got to meet these two old sages, either of whom could have been my father, and listen to their sutras. I got to see the creases on their faces and hands, the worn pathways of so many forgotten journeys. I got to shake those hands, strong hands that have touched and held so much, that have built ingenious devices, folded newspapers, signed checks, wiped away tears; I got to shake hands with these men and feel as if we were pals forever.

I didn’t know any of this before leaving my house. I knew only that I was hungry. I just didn’t have any idea what it was I hungered for.

Now I know.

This poem by Mary Oliver inspired me to quit my (computer programming) job two years ago:

The Sun

Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful

than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon

and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone--
and how it slides again

out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower

streaming upward on its heavenly oils,
say, on a morning in early summer,
at its perfect imperial distance--
and have you ever felt for anything
such wild love--
do you think there is anywhere, in any language,
a word billowing enough
for the pleasure

that fills you,
as the sun
reaches out,
as it warms you

as you stand there,
empty-handed--
or have you too
turned from this world--

or have you too
gone crazy
for power,
for things?

. . . and this one has just helped point me in the direction of where to go next:

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Thank you, Mary Oliver.

It's as if we love discovery so much that we hide things just so we can find them.

Like love.

Like truth.

Like ourSelf.

Is it possible for two people to share love, to bask in its warmth, to receive it and express it, to wonder together about it--all for its own sake--without attaching it to anything or anyone, least of all to each other?

Or, barring that, can we acknowledge this tendency and watch it, too, the way we watch the moon?

I wonder what is keeping me awake tonight.

I think it must be all the joy that stirs
whenever someone sings about paper lanterns
or library lions.

I love life, I love it tremendously.

It isn't just the lemonade stands
or the crooked toothed smiles.

It's the whole of it this very moment,
how it doesn't fold or tear.

Some nights I wish I were the moon.
Others, I am.

This very moment--replete with all we wish were otherwise--is, ironically, what we've been searching for all of our lives.

Can we wave a white flag at last in the hundred year war against what is and accept the terms of surrender?

It simply means saying yes. It simply means letting the whole thing be.

Here we are, choicelessly captive to this moment--a moment we think we know but in fact have rarely bothered to explore.

Humbly, then, we throw open our arms and heart and offer all that we know in exchange for all that is.

It's a good trade.

Dear Friends,

One thing is clear: the challenge of this "work," our challenge, has nothing to do with tomorrow or yesterday. It is simply a return to this timeless moment. Can I stay with whatever is happening right now--without escaping into thought or judgment, without trying to solve it through analysis or reject it as trivial or bothersome--can I just let it be?

There is more to this moment than we typically see, because our minds are conditioned to travel into time and fantasy. But this time-travel is really a response to what is happening right now, if only we had eyes to see it.

Thankfully, we do have eyes to see it. This moment is our only home, the only buddha, the only god, the only heaven, the only enlightenment.

Just this, as it is. What is missing? The moment is so vast, so complete, that it even has room for the feeling of something missing.

To see the thoughts and not believe them, not act from them, not react. Just to see them and let them burn up in the fire of attention.

We needn't attempt to be rid of all personal thoughts, fantasies and judgments: we need only see them as they are from the spaciousness of this very moment. To see them in this light is at once to welcome them and to be free of them.

The mind habitually creates a person to whom this happens, a chooser that decides to act or not act, resist or indulge. But at the heart of this moment there is no one and no thing; there is just the ever-unfolding mind expressing itself as the ten thousand objects, the awaring of that, of this!

Thought rallies with a desire to hold onto this insight, make it happen all the time. A deeper voice says, "All the time is only right now." This is open-handed unknowing. The sheer simplicity and beauty of it. The tidal wave of love.

Just as we are,
Dan

For the sake of the truth
I have to admit I don't know anything,
not really,
least of all who I am.

For the sake of the truth
I relinquish the countless crushes I land every day
on the countless forms this form encounters.
There are too many to keep up with anyway.

For the sake of the truth
I keep arriving back here,
this empty place of no horizon
no coming and no going
(could it be the train has never left the station?)
and no one left
to come or go.

For the sake of the truth,
I do not forsake this love
that burns quietly in the heart,
not mine or yours
not known or held
but still, burning, burning
for its own sake.

There is nothing I can do about life, nor is there anything that needs to be done. Here I am! That is all. I didn't do anything to make myself be here, nor is there anything I can do (or need to do) to keep myself here. I just am. This is seeing that what is is just what is--just being.

Next comes square two, which is the thought that I exist as an independent entity and an agent in control. I am a thinker and a chooser and I must make the right choices in order to be successful, to protect myself, to make myself happy, to ensure longevity, etc. All of this exists in a conceptual framework of space and time.

Square two can only come from square one. The idea of lack, of incompleteness, of something that needs to be done and a doer who needs to do it--all of this springs forth out of the first square, which is just being. Just rest. Just ease.

Problems (suffering, conflict, desire, fear, etc.) arise when I forget about square one and am firmly entrenched in square two (and all the many subsequent squares which proceed it). My world view and all my operating assumptions spring from these squares, from notions of time, space and being that are all constructed by thought and therefore segmented, fractional, incomplete, divided and divisive. This gives rise to competition, to anxiety and worry and regret, to violence and the rest of it.

Back home, here at square one, there is just being with no me in charge, no idea and nothing known. Just mystery. Presence.

Returning to square one is the liberation of being, the freedom at last from the struggle of having to become anything, to do anything, to attain, acquire or achieve anything. It is simply the natural joy, mystery and discovery of being here, of awareness.

From this vantage point, we can play all the other games we want to play, jump off onto any of the other squares, all the while remembering it is just play. We are never limited by any of it. Nor are there any real consequences. Nothing can divide, limit or alter us fundamentally as we do not fundamentally exist in space and time in the first place. In the first place, there is just this. Who knows what it is? Mystery.

These are not words
but kisses.

Oh, let them linger awhile--
don't hurry.  Let them rest
gently upon you.  They want only
to be as near to you as possible.

I am not a man but a world.
I am the turning of the stars
  on a cloudless winter night.
I am the rising of a fervent dawn.
I am the ground of all existence.

This sentence longs to be inside you.
It wants to feel the heat of your passion.
It's knocking on your door right now.

Open.

Already we are closer
than we think, dear reader--
closer than these words or
thoughts can bring us.

Already we look out the
window at the same sun,
the same sky, and with
the same subtle longing
that fills a common heart.

It isn't that I am here
and you are there, the
way we imagine. There's
too much love for that
wide a gap. How else
could it happen that
we both fall silent at
the mere mention of
moonlight, or at the
way a cat squints when
it purrs?

And how else is it
we recognize there is
no you, no me,
no moon and no cat?

Just moonlight and squinting.
Maybe not even that.

If I had to make the sun shine
I'm quite sure I'd botch it.
I'd want it to be more golden,
to be brighter or lighter--
I'd want it always to reflect just so
off the surface of things
like pebbles or lakes or
a cardinal's wings.

I wouldn't be satisfied until
I got it just right,
and it wouldn't get there,
always missing something I felt
it needed, something perceived
as lacking or inadequate.
There'd be a cloud in the way--
that would have to go--
or there'd be too many leaves
and petals to have to cover.

I'd make it a goal, a mission even,
to do it perfectly or not do it at all.
And so the sun wouldn't shine today.
Nor would a mountain range of tomorrows
ever bring a glowing warmth to
nuzzle up against the nape of our necks
or rest atop our neighbors' lazy cats.

Inquiring minds want to know.
Acquiring minds want to hold.
Preaching minds want to show.
Punishing minds want to scold.

Thinking mind makes thought.
Seeking mind makes sought.
Judging mind makes ought.
Nothing mind makes nought.

Awaring just awaring.
Seeing just seeing.
Loving just loving.
Being just being.

I wish I were Nisargadatta
for if I were him
my back wouldn't ache so much
or even if it did
I wouldn't give a hoot about it
And this big empty spot
at the middle of me
would be filled with something
bright and warm and cheery
I don't know what
but I would if I were he.

And I would sit atop a leopard skin
in some little town somewhere
and people from far and wide would come
to bask in my sunlight
and I would have enough love
to give it freely all around
no one would feel dissatisfied
or hungry for more--
there'd be enough, plenty.

Deer would wander in
and come right up to me
completely unafraid
to lick my hand.
I'd get to see their enormous
brown eyes up close,
to feel their quick breathing
and press my face against their fur.

The whole world would be inside me
and I would disappear forever into
the worldless and the worlding.

You might say,
"If you were Nisargadatta, you'd be dead!"
But you would be wrong about that
Just as I am wrong
to suppose that I am not Nisargadatta
already.

  
nothing to wait for
no one to wait
hot tea on a winter morning
a streak of pink in the sky

The rain has passed
   leaving fresh air and sunlight.
Now there is no knower.
Who can say what the next moment will bring?
No matter.

It doesn't have to stay.

  
impossible to say
where the blue jay at the feeder
ends
and the joy of seeing it
begins

Looking for the extraordinary, we miss the (much more extraordinary) ordinary world." (Joan Tollifson, Bare-bones Meditation)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I was remembering last night something I once read about how anything we perceive is really just our mind expressing itself as that thing. Not our small, rather peevish minds, but our Big Mind (otherwise known as the universe).

For example, the chair you're sitting on right now is not just a chair, a separate thing that exists independently of you. It is that, of course--that's our usual perception--but it can also be seen as something more vital and dynamic, something intricately connected with you. Just as you are the universe expressing itself as you, a chair is the universe expressing itself as a chair. Both you and the chair are simply the universe expressing itself in different ways.

This point of view is nothing new to me, not intellectually anyway, but last night I actually experienced things from that perspective for awhile. Suddenly common objects in my apartment took on a new and unexpected fascination: Ah, a lampshade! Look! This glass door knob, the smooth feel of it! I couldn't sleep for a long time because I wanted to explore every last object in my bedroom. It was as if I were seeing it all for the first time.

I think this is how infants must perceive the world: everything is a source of fascination because it is all fresh, spontaneously arising out of each moment. As grownups, we tend to see things as stable entities, existing in the past, and thus we take them for granted. We see the same desk day after day and soon we don't notice the desk at all.

But it is not the same desk day after day. It is your mind expressing itself as a desk in the very instant that you perceive it. In that moment, both you and the desk arise together from some boundless void where all things exist only in potential.

It isn't as though you can separate the desk from your perception of it. There may or may not be a desk out there in some possible objective universe: we'll never know. All we can know is the desk that we perceive, and that desk is our mind itself. It doesn't exist "in" our minds, because there is no separate entity "mind" and "desk." There is just the mind-as-desk, the mind-as-you.

Ultimately, there is neither you nor desk but just mind, and it flowers as "seeing" or "touching" or "perceiving." Have you noticed that when you fall in love, deeply in love with someone, the experience is so immense that (at times) there ceases to be a "you" independent of a "beloved" but just this ??? -- moving, humming experience of "loving?"

That same perspective is available to us in everyday matters. It's easy to appreciate it with powerful and intense emotions, but it resides just as much in the ordinary experience of our day to day lives. It's just a matter of attending to it.

When we are eating lunch, there is just eating. When we are sitting at our desk, there is just sitting.

Outside, it is raining. In here, it is writing. Soon it will be sleeping.

    
I find myself landing crushes easily and often lately, every day even, on unsuspecting metro riders, restaurant patrons, museum-goers, gardeners, random passersby. There are times, I confess, when I am in a crowded room and feel love for every person in it, feel each of their hearts beating, feel their lungs softly breathing, the way they look down at their worn shoes, the way their fingers explore the edges of the coins in their coat pockets. There are moments when I feel all but invisible, when the thin membrane separating myself from the rest of the world evaporates like so much moisture in the air, and what was once me dissolves into a commonality, a mutual happening, a chorus of voices singing ordinary ballads about everyday concerns.

To the tired, bleary-eyed metro rider, I must seem as disinterested and otherwise preoccupied in important matters--retying a shoelace or fidgeting with a shirt sleeve button--as the next commuter. But inside I am overwhelmed with love, and I wish the old man with the threadbare jacket well, and I nod to the mother of two that her children love her more than licorice and that even the moon is stirred by her presence. The windows on the subway feel cold against your face, and the landscape rushes past like a flurry of leaves caught up in the wind.

Your heart can easily get carried off in that whirlwind, and the safest course of action is to resist proclaiming your undying love for each of your fellow commuters, to refrain from writing two dozen love letters and sneaking one into each of their pockets, tempted though you may be to do so.  Best to travel on in silence, and let your love smolder quietly the way leaves do.

I am caught by the smell of burning leaves in autumn.  It's beyond my resistance, beyond all attempts to play it safe.  And so I burn, too.  And so I am burning.

All I want anymore is to serve life. I want to be a living expression of love. I died again this weekend, as I have died so many times before. Now a passion rises from the ashes, slowly, quietly, but glowing with the intensity of red embers.

And this is all the phoenix wants: let me love freely. Move through me; carry me like a cloud in the wind.

Turn me inside-out. Teach me how to love.

I tell myself I shouldn't write so much email--I still haven't finished my project here at work--but I'm not very good at restraint. And I happen to know from a reliable source (the moon, of course) that we aren't here to play it safe. Quite the contrary. We're here to shake the earth with our passion! We're here to make a grand mess of everything, to have our hearts broken a hundred thousand times, to write love letters at 3 am to people whom we've never met but have always known. Otherwise, the angels get bored with us and quit watching. Angels have remote channel changers, you know, and they're quite fussy.

So I've made it one of my solemn duties to keep the angels entertained.

Not that I have a lot to do with it. If I'm writing recklessly, then (with any luck) I've managed to get myself out of the way. Getting out of the way is so very important. Real passion seems to arise by virtue of my letting go, by dropping something, rather than by acquiring anything extra.

I remember deciding once upon a time to renounce all my worldly possessions by throwing them out my bedroom window (these sudden inspirations are a bit impatient; there wasn't the time to cart them all off to the Goodwill). Books were easy enough to toss out, but the appliances got rather cumbersome--and God help any unsuspecting passersby below. Then it dawned on me that even after I tossed every moveable object in my apartment out the window, I'd still have to toss one last (rather unwieldy) one out. Myself. Because I don't own my body, either.

We don't really own anything. We just borrow it. What needs to go out the window is the notion of ownership itself.

I have a trick I play on myself sometimes. I pretend that I'm going to die soon. I've got some terminal illness or something and my days are numbered. Then I ask myself what should I do with my day? The answer is seldom the safe choice.

Not that the activity matters as much as the mindset. What isn't ecstasy if we're pouring our whole selves into it? If we knew we were going to die soon, then we'd surrender ourselves to what's happening NOW; we'd live life fully in the moment, as though making love. We wouldn't care so much about the things that don't matter: long traffic lights, stock prices, annoying salespeople. We wouldn't let anything get in our way, especially not ourselves. We'd let more love and laughter in. We'd let go.

Every moment, this moment, is time we'll never have to live again, not for all of eternity. Should we waste any of it? I'm not saying let's all throw our toaster ovens and TV sets out the window and run off to a desert isle (though this might not be a bad idea). I'm saying let's quit trying to get to the end of things; let's see that everything is dancing. Let's quit focusing on the stack of dishes and wash just this one dish.

Because our days are numbered. And the angels are cheering us on.

I find treasures outside my back window. When I'm bored or feeling down or just a little restless, I go into my kitchen and peer through the window there.

Sometimes I find a calico who's adopted our backyard as a suitable place to lounge on sunny mornings.

This afternoon I found a young boy walking home from school, c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y stepping on every crack along the way, making sure not to miss one. When he got to the asphalt driveway across the street, he suddenly spun around three times quickly--his backpack nearly falling off in the process--as though guided by some invisible dervish whose mission it is to spontaneously whirl young boys into ecstasy without rhyme or reason. He then continued on his way, the endless sidewalk stretched before him, every crack summoning the buoyant step of small sneakers.

We treasure hunters needn't look far. We need only look well.

My basic premise--the assumption that guides all my behavior and decision-making--is that I'm worthless. Incompetent. A fool.

I'm not saying I can't pull the wool over some people's eyes from time to time. Trick them into thinking I may have some real talent. Dupe them into believing I have half a brain.

But underneath all that I know the truth: I can't write, I can't solve, I can't program, I can't drum. I can't do anything right.

There are times in drumming when I get in a groove; I can feel that it's going well, and I can pick up on the other musicians responding to the rhythm. And then I choke up--because I just know I'm going to blow it. I can't possibly sustain an intricate beat like this, I say to myself: I'm worthless. I'll fuck it up somehow.

And so I fuck it up. Somehow.

No one forms such a high opinion of himself through the natural course of events. It takes constant reinforcement through the developmental years. It takes a dad telling a small boy that he's an imbecile. The dad should attempt to teach the son various forms of sports (never mind a decided lack of interest on the part of the boy--he'll come along) and show explicit disappointment at the boy's peculiar ineptness and lack of coordination. He should have a short temper and scold the boy often for not doing things the right way. He should imply, as best he can, that the boy's inability to do things the right way will directly result in a lack of love and acceptance and, in all likelihood, the departure of the dad.

Don't worry: you can still visit Dad on Saturdays. They'll be plenty more chances to have him call you retarded while he gets shitfaced drunk because he obviously can't stand the sight of you.

Meanwhile, the dadless house falls apart at the seams. Things come undone. Toaster, washing machine, automobile and mom all break down in the same breathless sigh. The pillar of order has gone, no one will talk about it, no one dare give it voice, and the quiet house implodes, comes tumbling down upon itself and its inhabitants, leaving only rubble and dust where a family once stood.

She'd asked me a dozen times to do it, but I still hadn't straightened up my bedroom (for now things were in endless need of straightening) and in despair at having produced such a worthless child she ran into the bathroom slammed the door shut sat on the edge of the bathtub and wept out loud.

There's a hidden world of glowing neon shapes that float around the inner reaches of a pillow. You need to bury your head deep to find them. The worthless boy becomes familiar with this suspended terrain, comes to know its solitude and its silence. Focusing on anything makes it run away. But with enough time and practice, you can learn to make the shapes stick around for awhile. That lime green blot is a dinosaur. The bright yellow patch is the sun or a running tiger.

Stay.

 
When the wind blows, it blows through me,
through the bare branches of trees,
through the children on the swings,
through the blades of grass, the clouds,
the sunlight on the water's surface,
it blows through ten thousand things
returning to one.

When I love, I love through words,
I paint through letters on a page,
I sculpt in ink.  My words are like flames,
licking at the bottom of a crucible where
salt and sulfur unite to form gold.

I fall into your arms like a leaf
falls onto a pool of water, the old lake,
landing so lightly as to not make a ripple.

I am dizzy from the sight of your creation--
spellbound, delirious, drunk with excitement,
I stumble for words, I fall down.

If I can only open my heart wide enough.
If I can only let the wind blow freely
then the world will be as it is,
perfect, whole, round, the only fitting
birthplace for one as lovely as you.

Beat-beat I am walking beat-beat down this empty beat-beat empty roadway beat-beat covered with snow beat-beat and I am beat-beat all alone beat-beat and I start beat-beat to walk beat-beat faster beat-beat and soon beat-beat I am beat-beat running beat-beat and beat-beat I beat-beat trip beat-beat and beat-beat I beat-beat beat-beat fall.

Spinning. Down. Into. Emptiness.

Beat-beat. Beat-beat. Beat-beat. Beat-beat.

The taste of snow.