monastery

I wake up to silence

every morning in this castle

without my trusted dogs this time

choosing to be alone then

sometimes wallowing in loneliness

the rejection I projected

reflected back to me

I am learning

how I create

watching my addictions

going along with them

following them home for tea

enjoying the fictions I imagine

here I can stay undressed

until I take my body for an adventure

walking it instead of a dog

trips to the store alone

cooking for one

I always make too much

next door two terriers sometimes worry

about a deer, quietly munching in this yard

squirrels tirelessly attack the bird feeder

a cardinal waits until they’ve tired

not noticing he has no head feathers

and I wonder about pesticides and bees

the floorboards creak as I walk

the air stirred gently by the fan

a microclimate of solitude and quiet

day night and in between

surrounded by cicadas and frogs

500 yards away cars pass by

twice a day I practice sitting

once a day I tire myself outside

often I pace the house reading

I distract myself far too late into the night

I try to find discipline to write

I bask in gratitude for my guardian angels

but really I am pausing

letting the unnameable work

so more often I will notice

when the quality arises

that allows me the clarity

to see many things better, but also

to know why I still dream about you

Krishnamurti tea

Hope is a belief that something will improve in the future. Despair is a belief that nothing will improve in the future. Hope contains a belief that the past and present are no good. Despair contains a belief that the past was the best possibility and the present is no good. We swing between both, ropes creaking, gripping tightly, burning our palms.

The mind adores routine, worships the known. It will perform all kinds of gymnastics to cling to certainty. Routines of life are built and polished, decorated and painted brightly to evoke permanence. Predictability is comforting because it supports the mind's story of what life is. Patterns of thought and reaction build, until the expectations created from the foundational beliefs the mind has carefully organized from its limited experience are perceived as needs, causing desire to become grasping and attachment.

Desire can only be tamed by that which cannot be named by the mind, but what might be known as love. Otherwise, desire is a wild power, and from what the mind narrowly perceives and has already experienced in the past desire creates an idol, a story. The image inflates into a mirage of epic proportions until all possibility of seeing truth is lost. Until it ends.

"There is always an ending to that which is incomplete."

And so I travel. Then I stay. Here I am silent. There I participate. I am inside and out, sometimes at the same time.

Some of us have trouble seeing clearly.
Some of us want truth so much (and also, clearly, do not) that will we again and again try to leave our certainty behind. And then we notice that we've brought our certainty-seeking along. The judging deciding organizing mind. We still use the mind with the will to discipline, define, illuminate, understand, control... and we still hope to understand truth with insight the mind can grasp.
Again and again we tear down the false walls we keep building so beautifully, and we dive forward past what we know to be illusions, seeking truth. While building a new structure each time.

But eventually we see that seeking is the problem. Hoping for truth means we believe it is not with us right now. Right here.

So some of us keep changing our here. Keep changing our now. Then staying here. Staying now. Then changing again. Inviting contrast, swinging from hope to despair, from certainty to fear, from illusion to devastation...

And in the space, in the brief moment where the pendulum is centered, clarity dawns.
And the mind overtakes and swings again!

But there is a space now open for truth.
In case at some point I want it more than the gratification of the search.

escape

addiction             habit            compulsion            dependence            craving                        infatuation

identifying with thoughts

defining and putting parts of the world

into organized boxes of concepts

imagining we will be more complete

if we could possess more

avoiding the emptiness

everyone’s mind decides good or bad

no one’s mind does not say I want this and not that

but when we pick a rock from the stream

bring it closer

judge it in more detail

we notice flaws, darkness

we see it is just as bright as the last pebble

and believe another shimmering jewel

farther on in the stream

will be more beautiful

will add to our store of loveliness

and so what we yearned for and finally possessed

is instantly relegated to the past

discarded back into the stream

to the category of known and boring

and the mind searches outward again

engaging its radar for that which resembles the past

still safe but seems different

still triggering a kind of pleasure or pain

that has been experienced before

we keep circling the abyss

with eyes turned outward

not noticing our wings

denying our ability to fly

throwing images onto a tiny screen

grasping and analyzing

each flash each dust mote

faster and faster to keep ourselves distracted

when behind us inside us the void is open

yawning and patient

waiting for when we will turn off the screens

put down the stories

stop the work we don’t enjoy

finish wanting to change others

cease groping outside for love

and finally turn inside to see truth

diving off the edge

trusting the wings we have forgotten

gently dissolving and expanding

into that which has no name