Tag along

Tag along                                                                                                  

The first Word, says the Lord Who uttered it,

was a question, a whim that begged an answer –

Who am I?  What a curve ball!  A monkey wrench

bit of mischief from the One

Who knows everything – to ask a question!

The ensuing uproar, the stuttering reply

has meant the coming into existence

of time, space, separation and shadow,

all the great stirrings, all manner of illusion,

this marvelously intricate milieu and melee –

existence (we are told) on the way to non-existence

and then to wide-awake existence eternal.

O child of God, what else to do but clench tightly

His damaan and tag along for the ride!

Attempted saints

Attempted saints                                                                                              

Nothing more natural than a saint

in rolled-up sleeves guilelessly attending

to the daily chores and prayers

shoulder to shoulder, perhaps,

with attempted saints

zealously scrubbing their own souls

to emulate the perfect Jesus

and be pleasing in the sight of God.

Last and least, along come the inveterate

devotees who seek in their own way

to escape the wheel of birth and death –

rescue, rejection and renunciation

being the cornerstones of their calculated

austerities, chores, readings and prayers.

O child of God, how might you reconcile

your unremitting efforts with total surrender?

Graveyard gates

 Graveyard gates                                                                                               

I have come not to teach, said my Lord.

Liberation, apparently, not something you learn how to do. 

With this lifetime of accumulated knowledge,

it’s difficult to become a vessel now with a perfectly hollow ring.

There’s an old joke about a drunk

stumbling into an open grave.

I’ve forgotten the punch line.  I’ve dug my own grave;

settled into the bottom, studying the sky.

I can dig no deeper nor climb back to the surface.

I thought the virtue of patience

referred to the length of the journey.

Now I see it only begins

when the path veers from the highway

and enters through the graveyard gates.

O child of God, how stubbornly you cling

to the only thing you know.

The trick

The trick                                                                                                   

When you try and try, said Lao Tzu,

the world is then beyond the winning.

To attempt (or strive)

is one definition of the word try.

To tax (or strain) is another –

to go through a trial. 

The trick, said Lao Tzu, is to act

without trying – strive without distress;

non-doing within non-duality.

Surrender is the ultimate abandonment

of attempt and strain –

an unimaginable state

in which we live without strife,

neither enduring nor causing friction,

illimitable, amenable drops dissolved

in the oceanic whim and will of God.

O child of (that same) God, everything,

says Lao Tzu, is won by those who let it go.