The Mind That Never Was

Without Remainder

It may be hopeful to see it as a lesson,
but isn’t that view just another comforting
construct of the mind, the same elusive mind
which can’t be found when searched for?

The energy which animates this form
will one day separate from consciousness
and the two will return to their origins,
leaving an empty shell to dissolve.

All this time we believed we were the fire
but now we see we’re more like smoke,
our intent powerless in the breeze
that sweeps the dust around.

There is great humility here. If we knew
back then, we might have lived differently,
perhaps we would have been more tender-hearted,
more forgiving, we would have appreciated
the great gift which we’d been given —
every single breath of it.

No regrets now, in any case — the unknown
descends into form, believes a while it is
that form, discovers at the end
it isn’t, then repeats again.

For every movement forward,
an equal step back, nothing is gained,
nothing is lost, so many stories to review,
optimism vying with despair, forging new
sand castles of identity, watching them collapse.

A play of mind, conceived by mind,
lived by mind — we can see how this goes,
around and around on the mind carousel,
the music familiar, the audience, ghosts.

This whatever-it-is, even if it imagines
it is the “I Am”, at some point shakes loose,
all views like tattered garments falling away,
then a luminous flash in a deep dark void,
and just before the last curtain falls,
a smile without remainder.

smile 2

Cultivating the Essential

Listen, Bob, in case you’ve already forgotten
in your self-inflicted dotage, sober up now:

Fantasies of interpretation on perception are endless.
The number of views one might entertain are endless too.
When you sit and try to figure any of this out, you are merely
compounding your own delusions by creating further confusion.
The best approach is to forsake any strategy, method, or remedy.
Completely abandon all programs seeking for something further.
Recognize directly that whatever appears is mind, and that mind
is like infinite space. It’s not a platform to construct identities —
it’s empty of any qualities one can invoke to confirm stories.
This emptiness is nothing other than immediate presence.
Moreover, within this immediate presence itself there is
no such thing as immediate presence, thus the mind
goes silent in contemplation of its own pristine
non-existence. Please don’t be fooled now
into thinking that you understand this.
You really don’t. Nobody does,
yet to the heart, it’s tacit.

Cross to Bear

There is a cross, but nobody’s on it. Perhaps
in our minds, we’ve hung somebody there.
What kind of mind would do that?

Just so, we’re given an innocent life, but then
we crucify it with ignorance, greed, hatred.
Really, why would we do that?

We can ask ourselves: Who do we have hanging
on the crosses of our own design right now?

Can we forgive them, can we forgive that mind
which makes crosses to punish itself for existing?

No tree ever wants to become a crucifix.
Trees don’t require blood sacrifices.

They only reach for the light, and make perches
where small flying creatures can land and nest
and sing the songs that nature wants to hear.

Trees talk to each other in an ancient language
prior to crosses, prior to the minds of men.

We once knew that lovely language too, but then
we turned mean, held grudges, built crosses.

Now we see them everywhere — the sorry crucifixes.
People say: “Everyone has their own cross to bear.”

Meanwhile, the trees keep sprouting fresh leaves
in Spring, then releasing them in Autumn.

In the midst of that ancient cycle of raptures,
at the vernal cross of creation and destruction,
of budding renewal and ephemeral decay,
our body has a message waiting for us.

It’s no secret, yet we must get very quiet
to hear it. Whatever else now occupying
the hearing space must be brought to light,
understood, and cleared down to the joists.

This is the ritual of purification — listen
the mind into silence. Burn off all thinking.

Only after the noise subsides can the ecstasy
spawn, the tear-drenched recognition begin,
a humble gratitude find harbor in the heart.

What do we usually hear? What transpires
when we listen? We’re never able to meet
ourselves until we cease talking and listen.

If there was any other way to do it
we would struggle furiously to find it.
We try to avoid what we don’t want
to hear, yet what resists, persists.

Once we loved and were loved so much
we chose to let go of love at last, only
to fall madly in love all over again.

We cannot get enough of love, yet love
alone is who we are. We appear in realms
of forgetting to magnify love’s remembering.

There’s a mechanism in the soul by which
we transmute our prior gladness into pain
and strains of madness just for contrast,
hence birth and death, and everything
that sings, shouts, and whispers
in the brilliant air between.

Together, in the brilliant air between,
we make Love’s sign of remembrance.

Horizontal and vertical intersect,
Shakti dances on Shiva’s chest.

At the still point of Union
that mysterious cross blossoms,
billowing ecstatically in the echoing
non-event of this dissolving universe,
the sheer intensity of our loving flinging
luminous gleamings of love’s dear light
in all directions, with only heaven
in every direction, and every way
love’s perfect way home.

cru

Imitation

There’s really no such thing as wasted time,
but if somehow there was, it would no doubt
consist of the fruitless effort to mimic the life
of another — to be other than who we are.

Each one of us has been given a unique
and special role to play. It’s pointless
to envy or covet another’s.

Imitation may be a form of flattery,
though we can be more creative than that.

We need not dress ourselves up in the costume
of somebody else, nor affect their way of being.

We can always admire the great ones, be inspired
and even try to emulate their best qualities
and deeds, yet we can never be them.

We can only be ourselves at last. Accepting that
can be great in itself, and worthy enough of praise.

There are trillions of stars in the vastness of space,
but each has their own special glow, and shines
with their own distinct light.

No two sages or saints are the same, no two leaders
or celebrity figures that populate the social firmament
lead lives that are merely copies of someone else.

Krishna, Shakyamuni, Jesus, Lincoln, Gandhi, King —
all had their time, now we have ours, to be the best
that we can be with the life that’s ours alone.

Inner Voice

There’s a voice within you
that you’ve been listening to
your whole life. It’s a liar.

It pretends to be you, and you
believe it is. It’s not.

It’s just a run-on string of nonsense.
It amounts to exactly nothing.

The more attention we grant it,
the more confused we behave.

But if we turn attention around
to get to the root of the voice,
we find nobody there.

Nothing.

Strangely, we’ve been basing our life
on nothing — just a ghostly voice
that comes from nowhere,
goes nowhere.

See for yourself.
Begin to doubt the voice.

Stop listening and hear
your own silence.

It’s before the voice,
after the voice.

Keep returning to that,
even when the voice
wants to play.

The voice says you can
become happy. You can’t.

Before the voice, you are
already happy. Always.

See for yourself.
Be quiet.

When the voice starts
talking, just go back
to being quiet.

Persist.

The voice fears silence.
It wants anything but that.

It will whisper, seduce, cajole.
It’s used to getting its way.

It will shout, but just
keep quiet.

What goes unused
becomes obsolete at last.

Stay quiet, be still.

Persist.

Silence sm

To Just Show Up

The paradox of being both a drop of water
and the whole immense ocean simultaneously
is difficult for the human intellect to reconcile.

When great actors completely lose themselves
in theatrical roles, the audience applauds
their impeccable performance.

Even though our lives may not seem especially
praiseworthy, or even though it may appear
that we’re confused, alone, and unappreciated,
there’s a vast and luminous assembly of souls
gathered around us through it all, cheering
the courage it took for us to just show up.

Everyone’s watching everyone else, even the animals,
even the trees — the whole forest is watching itself,
just to see what it will do next.

But wait, could it possibly be, that behind
every watching eye, nobody resides?

When everything happens by itself,
who is there to be implicated?

No season then of discontent, no outbreak
of hostilities between the left and right hands,
no complaint when we stop moving and sink back
into the elemental realm, the kingdom of fallen
twigs and leaves — how wonderful,
to be that utterly blameless!

Maybe that great and fearsome Lord Supreme
is nothing other than this natural innocence,
watching itself throughout all eternity,
enthralled by its own performance.

Rafal Olbinski

(Picture by Rafal Olbinski)

That Space

No experience is real,
only the one who experiences.

No experiencer is real,
only the awareness.

Awareness and experience
are not separate.

Neither is real.
Only reality is real.

What is reality?

A blind bird is gliding swiftly
through layers of dense clouds.

Within its tender breast,
its heart is beating wildly.

The space between
each heartbeat —

listen.

Patient

What will it take to please our Spirit?

Four sparrows fly out from the inner room:
north, south, east, west. Although it may seem
empty now, a tiny flame of light still burns within.

When we merge with that living light, our eyes
well up with unaccountable tears. For that one
moment, we are left bereft of words and wants.

In the world of the known, weary old men doze,
while the children race in circles around them,
until at last there is only light, the same state
in which we all exist, unspeakably.

In this light, there are neither leaders nor followers,
neither shepherds nor sheep. In every direction,
there is only luminous unbounded space.

If we are able to stay awake and not look back
with desire, anger, or regret, it will be good for us.
Whatever may appear — vile, holy, or indescribable —
it amounts to nothing more than flights of imagination.

A stone dog guards the ghost palace. We are free
to come and go, although there is nothing there for us.

A long parade of celestial beings is always ascending
and descending, like rain drops that fall to earth
and then evaporate back into the sky.

There is no special or secret meaning to this,
any more than when night becomes the day,
and then the night again.

Nothing has happened, no one has gone anywhere.
Motion alternates with rest — everything is innocent.

Out on the parched plains, the earth is longing
for the blessing. Patient, patient . . . it will come.

In the Wind

Daydreaming, the mind leaves the body statue
standing silent in snow while it wanders,
bemused, through mirrorland.

Now I’m thinking about the boxes
stacked and stored in the back shed
which I will likely never open again.

Then I’m scrolling through a weary catalogue
of old cities, old jobs, old friends and lovers.
Was any of that — the past — even real?

Memories, like a host of eager carnival barkers,
push their way forward to vie for attention.
At last, I simply ignore them.

Biting cold, I’m returned to the body once more,
but this immediate presence has no fleshy boundaries,
is neither acquisition or attainment, nor does it come and go.

Just so, now I’m walking on with nothing above my shoulders
but an expanse of open sky. Beneath my feet, the crunch
and crackle of ice breaks the silence. In the wind, a scent
of fragrant wood smoke, with a hint of pending snow.

Bodhidharma’s Electronic Wall

Click, click, click, click, click –

the wraith of mind, attention,

ceaselessly shifts from thread

to thread, post to post, searching

in vain for the ghost of the host,

adrift in inter-locking cyber-streams

with a hard-wired impulse to know

and be known, to love and be loved,

to touch, O Bikkhus, and, yes, be touched,

even if only by small black lines and dots

flashing along a warm bandwidth . . .

restless, and wishing it were otherwise,

a streaming edginess of compulsive thought

emerges from an alternating complicity

of craving and aversion, a deep desire

that will not be denied yet cannot be

satisfied, a thirst forever unrequited,

while the digital wheel keeps spinning

another day, another dharma, another

sutra of here I am, where are You —

the secret not-so-secret screen savior

lurking perpetually out of reach . . .

and so the click, click, click, click,

taps out an ancient repetitive S O S

as a bleary nouveau Bodhidharma

for that not-so-new-age dawning

sits in trance before the cave wall

of an LED computer screen, dueling

with the pixel mind aglow within

that mirror, while out beyond

the dim-lit solitude:

the forest mists are lifting

and some redwoods in that forest

were young trees when Shakyamuni

taught that there is only seeking

and he called this searching suffering,

yet deep within the forest grove

the tallest tree they’ve measured

will be someday sliced like beefsteak

into reams of blank white paper

for some future mouse magician

ripe with internet-based dharma

to press PRINT and too late notice

they neglected to spell check.