Only God Is Enough

It’s enough, you’ve had enough
of experience, raw sensation,
ideas, emotions, memory,
self-definition, time.

The weight of beingness,
its essential weightlessness,
its utterly empty transparency
is revealed in your late night sigh

maybe in that same way, the same way
you can put your hand right through it,
the way your whole body fits inside it
like a breeze in an airy bamboo cage —

maybe in that very way you can feel
what God feels like being you,
the God inside of you.

Now you feel like falling, as if
everything is falling through itself
and ascending into itself, simultaneously.

You’re sublimely weightless in your falling,
falling like a feather on God’s own breath,
like a soft sigh shimmering late at night
that no one can hear . . . maybe one,
maybe God.

Even as that Divine breath quickens
in you, you rise up breathing, only God
is God, God is breathing, breathing into God,
breathing everything into being, one God
at a time, weightless as the light around
a flight of Doves ascending, a flight
of Doves ascending into God.

Standing Up

Standing up:
before any thought
both arms raise upward
stretching higher, reaching
higher above the head, higher
into the sky of that which
transmits and receives,
that heaven, all hands
turn upward, palms
open to transmit,
heart opening
to receive
Inhale
Exhale
Om Ah Hum
palms press together
above the head, above
goes on, goes on forever
praising, praising, praising

Painting by Sue Halstenberg

Just So

Your mind, a mirror.
Whatever appears is you.
You are none of it.

A Cool Walk

First, a cool walk
through the night sky.

The whole galaxy —
our intimate companion.

Later, after tea, we’ll sit
face to face around the fire,
and even that old devil
of poetry will know
enough to be still.

In such simple clarity,
what seeks understanding
is understood, what needs
to be released is serenely
let go in the vastness.

From that vastness,
we’ll just smile
and smile.

Cloud Talk

1.

New grass softens in the late Spring warmth.
You can lie down in it. Lie down in it now, be
a boat afloat on waves of wind-woven green.

Brilliant sky above — blue as blue can be —
gaze up, gaze up until you lose yourself
and disappear in it. It will receive you.

It will not harm you. The part of you
that was coiled unravels, you were
waiting for this, you didn’t know,
it doesn’t matter, whatever
still resists, just let it go.

2.

A pillowy cloud sails into view.
It appears to congeal from nothing,
come from nowhere. It is you.

In your silent cloud costume, you’re drifting
higher above the earth, a bit of cool moisture
slowly dissolving into the upper atmosphere.

Each molecule of liquidity is a memory,
a cellular composition of place and identity
that will not endure the relentless evaporation.

This sky-like vastness — it will quietly embrace you.
What was taken will be transmuted and replaced.
That part of you that was coiled now unravels.
Whatever came before no longer matters,
what’s yet to come will be the same.

3.

The Great Lord is nothing but your own mind.
There is a light behind this mind. It is your own
love light ascending and descending which lives you,
graciously revealing that which persists when everything
you imagined yourself to be becomes transparent,
like the rippling echo of a temple bell, struck
in the far distance, now slowly vanishing,
cloud-like, in the shimmering air.

Oblivion is nothing at all like we thought
it would be. The infinite void crackles
with the inconceivable electricity
of pre-existence.

When we awaken at last
from our bed of warm grass,
the whole universe appears again,
miraculous, like an incandescent cloud
emerging, unbidden, from nowhere. Empty
and marvelous — yes and yes, it is you.

Six Verses on Going Sane

We live on the tip of an insect’s whisker
in the midst of a raging love hurricane.

How can our hearts, so utterly fragile,
hope to endure such fierce wind and rain?

Short of surrender the onslought continues,
resistance can only prolong our pain.

Release all concerns, let the movie unravel,
discard the mind’s obsolete playbook of games.

Truth shines prior to amnesia’s adventures,
before any identity, person, or name.

Turn attention away from all that distracts you,
you and the one whom you seek are the same.

Samten Bardo

Crossing the bridge of existence
on the circular path of lights,
traveling without destination
never leaving home, the echo
of your singular song rippling
through time and space:
the one who hears,
the one who
sings

Satisfied

Now the late day sun shines sweetly
over the Western quadrant, there are no
true impediments, when neither plus
nor minus are favored, all ensuing
intimations of peace confirm
the heart is satisfied

After the Storm

After the storm, a break in the clouds,
sheer swaths of blue sky, below, all over,
the nameless fashions itself into myriad
mineral, plant, and animal formations
which keep appearing and vanishing
as if by some unfathomable design
the spinning spokes of the wheel
the vast emptiness background
the radiance aflame at heart

 

River Stones

The old ones walked a path down to the river.
Each in their own time became a river stone.
My whole life is leading me there now.

I will take my place at the outer edge
of the stone assembly so I can see
both ways, inconspicuously.

When I look forward, the stones
will gleam like multicolored jewels
strung in vast celestial constellations.

Looking backward, everyone, regardless
of any personal persuasion, walks the path
towards this river streaming out of mind.

One can’t help but feel a surging sense
of satisfaction gazing down the length of time,
appreciatiing each stone for its inestimable worth.

There’s an elegant sufficiency to that display,
of which any further verbal elaboration
would surely prove a superfluity.

When the river merges in an ocean of bliss,
imagine a sea of fireflies. Yet before this stream
even begins, a lone light illuminates an infinite dark.