in the amusement park of life we don’t take the rides, the rides take us
the Unsayable
each person enters Mystery in their own way;
this is difficult to understand, let alone explain
Q: What is your original face before your parents were born?
A: No face now, no face then.
your path is always behind you
Sitting in the garden, drinking Chinese tea,
smoking a favorite cigar,
speaking aloud lines from worry free poets,
finding myself the same.
February sun recedes into shade –
simple pleasures, simple life, simpler man.
with life not turning out
as wanted, expected, hoped –
why this gratitude?
to be utterly without hope is also to be utterly without despair
Earlier I wrote — “the peace that passeth understanding can’t be understood.”
What’s worse, it can’t be experienced.
Then what, we may ask, is it good for?
And, of course, the answer is — it’s good for Nothing.
Granted a shattering glimpse of crystalline quiet early,
I came to understand it late.
Finding no one to explain the Unexplainable,
I kept a different kind of quiet;
drifted along some usual ways –
school, jobs, career, a run in public life.
Now and then, in a seeming desert wander, would peace descend –
alleviating for a while the dis-satisfaction of dis-ease.
These days I dwell inside my cottage in a large and fertile plain.
Through my doors a river runs. I do not interfere.
Without reason I study poetic lines revealing Way;
living unfolding within a gift of ease.
(with thanks to Wang Wei)
so simple, yet so seeming hard to accept:
there is nothing that is not It
if your boat is empty, nothing in the world can oppose you on the river of living
with thanks to Thomas Merton and Chuang Tzu
spring 1967 –
one night in the kitchen
two friends stand talking when . . .
words stopping the world.
emptiness . . .
light . . .
laughter . . .
words . . .
the world beginning again,
one night in the kitchen.
for GG
whether to speak of the One, emptiness, God, or even in the philosophy of Zen, the nothingness beyond God, is not to describe reality, transcendental or otherwise, but to make a poetic choice
the pointers of a master never reach the Way
All idleness in the back patio,
away from the world for a while,
poetry, a cigar, a pot of tea.
One moment empties into the next…
the Protestant Ethic has fled this life.
the peace that passeth understanding can’t be understood
No longer concerned with place in the world,
time relaxes, days fill with quiet mystery.
Everyday life unburdened, cooking, once a chore,
loses its tedium. I cook and eat at home.
In the garden a sapling soaks after planting.
I sit in the radiance of things as they are.
even the darkest clouds do not refute the sky
no fruit of hard work,
but a gift from elsewhere:
absence deepening in presence
(with thanks to Mei Yao-Ch’en)
little to show for this life:
few things the world desires
the early summer sun cool,
light breeze empties passing thoughts
long dead Chinese poets
point to Way with their words –
presence summoning absence
pushing the river does not effect the outcome of the voyage; it’s just tiring
ease in living accompanies acceptance of life’s finitude
dwelling in ease neither entails nor precludes an easy life
you can no more lead a horse to water than you can make him drink