1.
Who’s that leering spectral shadow, rooting around
the crematory grounds in search of grisly mementos?
Certainly, a smooth seared skull can eventually become
an eccentric chalice, if one has the required skill and will
to turn it. A toast to that which turns, and another
to whatever remains forever raw and unturned!
2.
This incinerator is burning fiercely day and night,
relentlessly rendering persona skins and bones to ashes.
Do you imagine still that you’ll somehow avoid it?
Even innocence can be a trap, wake up!
3.
Who’s that lurking in the corner, grinning, as another
witless fool comes squealing out of another wet womb,
heart pumping furiously with urgent animal desire?
4.
The looming shade knows that wherever the born
being may roam, whatever they might worship or
whatever baubles and trinkets they may manage
to accumulate, it will all end up on the fiery
slag heap of desire’s smoking ruin.
5.
Who sits here now in the midst of the embers,
smeared with white ash, singing the flamboyant
victory mantras, chanting ironically arrogant hymns?
Don’t turn your soul eyes from the tear-streaked faces,
your ears from the forlorn moans of broken children!
6.
Without facile and arbitrary fantasies of interpretation,
the simplest thing may become an eternal mystery.
Borrowed knowledge is worse than useless —
trash those books of belief and all their confident
explanations, become utterly mysterious to your own
intellectual reasoning. Quit trying to fit the immense void
into some appealing formula, abandon all hopeful
enlightenment schemes. Refuse to fear failure.
7.
Those well-heeled psychopaths who like to imagine
they rule the world would rather you stay asleep.
This way, they can gnaw without distraction
on your meaty bones and suck your tasty brains,
while you pass your time day-dreaming of food,
sex, power, and undeserved fortune and fame.
8.
Being somberly informed that all arising phenomena
and sensory objects are essentially illusory projections
won’t help much when your form body is engulfed
in the exquisite flames of passionate wanting.
9.
Hearing stories about how samsara and nirvana
consist of nothing other than displays of primordial
consciousness won’t do you much good when the food,
air, and water that you’ve been systematically poisoning
start to choke the lives of those you happen to cherish.
10.
When all objective reality dissolves back into the ground
of inconceivable suchness, will you remain unmoved,
detached, and cheerful amidst the crash of breaking worlds?
11.
Just so, by directly recognizing that anything
previously regarded as an obstruction to freedom,
peace, or happiness is merely a creative fantasy
of your own mind, that which is inherently
without limitation may automatically
becomes self-evident.
12.
By recognizing that whatever you tend to recoil from
in conditioned reactivity is nothing but a creative fantasy
of your own marvelous mind, everything is revealed at last
to be nothing but the sublime kiss and communication
of unconditional love to itself.
13.
By recognizing within consciousness the magical appearance
of endless arising worlds, beings, and birds, all are revealed
to be nothing other than your own indivisible form reflected
back to you as a creative fantasy of your indefinable mind.
14.
By recognizing the inevitable vanishing of each poignant
temporary form, the me-idea itself is revealed to be
nothing but the transient and non-binding play
of pristine emptiness within the vastness
of your own immeasurable mind.
15.
By recognizing the futility of belief in or identification
with any temporary form or concept — sacred or mundane —
we can relax, let go, and rest in the immediate presence
of our own spacious and intrinsically aware mind.
16.
Forsaking any effort to have anything be other than
whatever it already is, all views are naturally self-liberated,
and anything which remains is spontaneously enjoyed
as nothing but a breezy modification of one’s
own perfectly transparent mind.
The Mind That Never Was 