Adapting the words of Shunryu Suzuki

Adapting the words of Shunryu Suzuki –                                                       

God is not something to find.

God is something you are.

The Way is not something to figure out.

The Way is something to express.

Let’s sit down here in the cypress shade.

In this quiet dust take up our instruments.

And we will ask no questions;

take no measurements

but learn to play and sing –

not to express ourselves but to express God.

O child of God, Meher said you are looking

for something you have never lost. 

The formless pitch

The formless pitch                                                                  

When the stars go out at last,

God will fold up the tent,

His performance over for a while. 

We can all have a good rest.

The catch is that each star

must burn itself out deliberately,

voluntarily, against all good judgment,

accepting its own inherent emptiness

rather than the roaring flame

of its separate existence.

It will happen – it is foretold;

as one by one the innumerable,

temporal stars give way to the original face of God

made visible again in the formless pitch.

O child of God, you speak of stars while failing

to grasp the immediate at your fingertips.

 
(photo by Petra Fischer- pixabay)

The lonely truth

The lonely truth                                                                                        

That which has brought me here, I must give up;

that which has served me well, protected me;

which has grown into my skin,

become part of me, part of my life;

that which I have clutched so bitterly

for comfort and refuge, which has always

understood me when no one else could,

is now keeping me from the heights

to which I must attain.  That which I thought

of always as my most loyal companion,

I must abandon, to find the lonely truth

of who I am and that which it is not.

O child of God, the lonely truth, it is said,

leads beyond companionship to union. 

In the room tonight

In the room tonight

God is in the room tonight!
the preacher shouts and I believe him

though I can't detect God among the wooden pews.
I'm veiled to conceal the nothingness I am.

The price of selfhood is God's concealment
and our estrangement.  God can't be singled out -

He gets lost in the examination, forest for the trees.
This ancient, lifelong intellectual human approach

is an error that must be abandoned at the threshold,
left with our sandals, visiting God intuitively;

credulously, a mote of dust (if that). 
He's right here, brothers and sisters,

in the room tonight; to be seen and heard
as well as felt in the heart and along the spine.

O child of God, when will you disentangle yourself
and embrace His holy presence?

Inconsequential

Inconsequential                                                                                        

Honoring God just might require you

to become inconsequential – disappear in fact,

or failing that, a mere dust mote

floating upon the light, slanted air.

You might find it your sacred duty

to fold yourself away in a drawer

somewhere or stay mutely perched

upon some high shelf way in the back,

becoming, in only apparent ways,

one of the least, the very least.

The laudable Joshu insisted it is better

to go without even one laudable thing.

O child of God, Meher said nothing matters

(in this wicked old world) but love for God.

(painting by Joe DiSabatino)

Flatfoot

Flatfoot                                                                                                         

Feed me something that sticks

to my ribs; fills my belly.

Pour me a cup that’ll buckle my knees.

Let me hear shouts of Jesus

among the wooden pews.

I want to flatfoot to a fiddle tune,

boots scraping a raw plank floor.

Daintiness is for tatting doilies.

 

Utter me verses blunt and thick,

rough as a cob.  My house is the one

where my grandfather entered the world,

made of chopped-down timber, daubed mud,

a stone and mortar hearth. It’s where I first

look for rudimentary comfort and warmth,

to find the treasure I was promised

lies buried somewhere beneath.

O child of God, there are as many paths to God

as there are souls in the universe.

A holy partaking

A holy partaking                                                                                        

They send me photographs,

friends traveling the world –

colorful glossies; include

a note of their adventures. 

No missives may be posted

from the realms I explore.

I just sit. Or tour my small house

and yard.  Do routine chores.

Enjoy quiet conversations with old friends.

I work on my flexibility; equanimity.

Read; compose; prepare simple meals.

The beauty of these ordinary happenings

I cannot reciprocally send their way

to fall upon busy, itinerant eyes and ears;

too subtle for photographs and words,

for the established premises, patterns,

constructs and commonality

of human communication.

O child of God, each morsel is a holy partaking

from the table which has been laid before us.

The only say-so

The only say-so

Om, Amin, Amen; three traditions,
similar pleas - so be it, so be it, so be it.

God spoke in the beginning
we are told - Om:

SO BE IT . . . and IT was!
From the original nothing

the Word was and the Word was
God and the Word was with God -

Om, Amin, Amen.  So Be It.
Now it seems logical, does it not?

likely - to get back
to the original point God made,

the truth He spoke, each false self
must declare, thunderously sincere -

So Be It.  So Be It.  So Be It, Lord -
what God hath wrought;

the only say-so in existence -
Om, Amin, Amen.

O child of God, whichever way you say it,
it unerringly comes out the same.