Ode

Here Comes The Sun King, The God Lugh, John Barleycorn, O Juliet and They Must Die. For It Is Lammas Eve, Looking to Lughnasadh, Beginning of The Harvest, August, A Certain Slant Of Light

O Psychological Thought is responsible for every War and every Murder and all Unspeakable Acts. If you choose a side, any side, this is what you ultimately choose. Thank god there's choiceless awareness

love is not a choice. Love is what there is before a choice. Always choose love. Render unto August the objects belonging to August but render to myself their life force. At last

a field of purple loosestrife, invasive weed, like deconstructive thoughts from Asia—August—late dawns, early sunsets—the apparent lessening of light—but these days taste concentrated as if boiled to an essence—

if July is the month of lightning bugs, August is the month of dragonflies—they don't just shine their light. They breathe fire! August 2007—I am climbing Yamadera—

the rest of my group is somewhere else around this temple being mountain—an ancient Chinese woman is translating the cicadas for me—ever since the First of August means No Crickets Yet.

Haiku Haiku Haiku

Speaking your mind is plagiarism. Speak love instead. In the world, silence is not a right. This love is silence speaking. Truest outlaw.

Now is the season of the butterfly. Its story is the nectar of the gods. Transformation is the nature of the beast.

Even science says that self-awareness is the only great intention and the fact of death is pointless and absurd.

But philosophy only thinks about it. Experiential being without thinking knows. Haiku haiku haiku.

The sun sets earlier tonight but I know it's only this and that. Space has no seasons. Contemplation is knowing a cigarette boat is

temporary. Open windows on a summer evening like the sea seen from an easternmost peak.

Evening breeze and leaves are dancing like translucent jade ninjas. Early July night. Not a sound in the valley. Not even a cricket.

An Epistle to the Person

The human body-mind is this wondrous instrument in and of consciousness developed in the process of evolutionary self-awareness.

But because of its metamorphic novelty, the body-mind misidentifies with itself, as a person, in a deficient sense of self-awareness,

and in effect usurps the absolute noumenon, which is a separate and most unnatural state, to say the least.

The resultant human condition of suffering is the natural balancing of forces in this process of self-awareness,

although to the mistaken identity of the person, it appears to be some kind of political imbalance within infinitesimal divisions,

and so it goes on and on. But “all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well” because consciousness.

2008 No Other Side

No division, no separation, no politics—there’s just purple loosestrife. If space is a metaphor for consciousness, then time is the darkest matter

of all anti-matter. A snake doesn't look like an illusion. A person lost at sea doesn't feel like self-awareness.

Li Po didn't drown in some watery reflection of the moon. He sees he is the moon and jumps right in! Look, being is not a social media—

it's more like an Emily Dickinson poem. Ten years ago, a coyote crossed the road to kill me. Somehow I still got to Santa Fe.

Georgia O'Keeffe. Ansel Adams. The Church of Saint Francis at Rancho de Taos 1929. The desert is form. Form is the desert.

At latest count, 140 bighorn sheep inhabit the alpine regions of Pikes Peak. By the time I got to Woodstock, who am I?

An Epistle to Nothing but Water

A person is like a fish out of water but call it brainwashing instead—there’s nothing but water in this divine analogy.

They call it selling water by the river but it’s really selling water in the river.

It takes a certain kind of sick infected suffering imagination to think that any phenomenon, no matter how personal it may appear to be, is not in consciousness.

Consciousness is the only manifestation of the unmanifest noumenon. The material world is as immaterial in consciousness as a dream is in mind—call it emptiness, impermanence, transformation, even vanity, but it’s not a real world.

Manifest consciousness is the unmanifest Absolute knowing it is the unmanifest Absolute. The dream state is how consciousness facilitates this knowing within consciousness. Call this evolutionary story the specter of self-awareness.

This fluid specter of self-awareness is called divine imagination when imagination is not sick infected suffering. Whether a butterfly or a Taoist wandering at ease, such a fish knows it’s in the wholly holey holy water.

Festival Manifestation

This weekend marks the height of New England summer heat—the sun is dropping body-mind. 

Everything appears in consciousness and it's abundantly apparent if one doesn't think about it.

Body-mind is like the dream machine of divine imagination getting lost within the nuts and bolts of its survival—but it's just my imagination running away with me. 

Next week the summer starts to fall. Nagarjuna's emptiness is Han Shan's transformation. Nothing not cold can stay.

Looking inside is called leaving the world. Dropping body-mind is called experiencing oneself.

Being is called self-awareness. This is called That.

Belief is about a single point of view but I contain multitudes!

Let my summers go; manifest one's current understanding.

Being is non-doing. Non-doing doesn't mean no choice. Choicelessness is choosing love.

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 22

In this seam of cliffs 

there’s enough of a crystalline breeze.

No fan needs rousing.

Cool air arises on its own.

A bright moon is shining.

White clouds are encircling.

He is sitting alone—

one ancient man.

304-red pine; 308-henricks; 145-tanahashi

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 21

I abide beneath Cold Cliff 

marveling at its manifest shelter. 

I carry a basket and gather greens and roots

using it to pluck some fruit as well.

Returning, I spread out a simple mat and eat

while chewing on some purple immortals.

I rinse my bowl in a clear pool.

I boil what’s remaining into a soup.

Sitting in sunshine, wrapped in a cloak,

I scan unhurriedly poems of the ancients.

290-red pine; 293-henricks; 255-tanahashi; 295-rouzer

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 20

Nowadays people search in the clouds for a path—

but the way of clouds is obscure and lacks a sign.

The mountains are high and the passes steep.

The streams are wide with little daylight.

Green mountains rise before and after.

White clouds stretch west and east.

But if one is truly looking for the way of clouds,

it’s here in the space of open sky.

255-red pine; 256-henricks; 69-watson; 244-tanahashi

Direct Tao

Here's my latest hottest take: the monolith in 2001 represents duality. The monolith is the birth of the binary. If there's a one then there's a zero. Dave, fast forward to the age of nanotech.

But nonduality is one being nothing. So the monolith is misunderstood. It was believed and not received as a gift to see through. Thus, we expel ourselves from paradise daily.

The intent of evolution is self-awareness, but in the act of chopping wood and carrying water, I discovered the fire of death. (Ever since I started using a fountain pen for writing, I have ink-stained hands and I like it.)

This is the 39th night of the 40 days of summer. Soon there will be purple loosestrife! The hardest part of my conditioning is thinking there are others, not knowing everyone at best is my projection.

Footnote. Love is not projection. Love is universal being. But too often it is filtered by the coloring of thought. O empire of scientific materialism, how do I know thy great intent?

of an evolutionary universe is self-awareness? Because I am. Question everything. Goddess is love. It's all about imagination. Imagination is another name for seeing through.

Remember. No healing. no growth. The so-called ego is not a bad guy. Seeing through the world is Self-awareness 101. Ego wants to be the bad guy. Believing right and wrong reinforces all the webs we weave.

Look, give the sense of ego half-a-chance. It's like the tool for focusing one's attention toward self-awareness. If not for love, I'm not self-aware. So always love the one you're with.

Nothing is wrong unless you think it is. Nothing is right, either. Everything is as it is. Self-awareness is the name of my best myth. The left is collective. The right is individual. 

Love and wisdom is the heart of nonduality. Butterflies! Gypsy moths? It's all about my point of view. Imagine that. It is as it is and all shall be well. That's easy for me to say.

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 19

A thousand clouds and ten thousand streams—

among them is one individual at ease.

In the light of day, he wanders in green mountains.

At night, he circles back to sleep beneath a cliff.

The springs and autumns quickly pass.

Untroubled, he is free of worldly entanglements.

Light-hearted, he depends on nothing.

Becalmed, he is as placid as the waters in an autumn river.

279-red pine; 282-henricks; 61-watson; 241-tanahashi

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 18

Since I’ve been dwelling on Cold Mountain 

how many ten-thousand years have come and gone?

Following my fate, I came to a place of woods and water

and here I stop and stay, observing being as it is.

No one troubles this cold cliff—

impenetrable white clouds obscure.

Meager grass makes my mattress.

Expansive blue sky is my quilt.

Satisfied, I rest my head on a pillow of stone

letting heaven and earth attend to transformation.

26-red pine; 163-henricks; 241-tanahashi; 7-snyder

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 17

I experience the peak of the Platform of the Sky, 

most eminent among that mass of mountains.

Pine and bamboo murmur in the swaying of the wind

like the ocean tide seesawing beneath the moonlight.

Contemplating green slopes below,

I consider the dark principle with white clouds.

My wild delight concurs with these mountains and rivers.

My prime intent is being with such companions of the Way.

  

226-red pine; 228-henricks; 60-watson; 231-tanahashi

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 16

I sit on a large slab of rock.

The valley stream is icy, cold.

Quietly, joyfully, I take in the enchantment

enveloped in the mists that cling to empty cliffs.

This is such a still restful place.

The sun is slant and shadows of trees grow enhanced.

I can see the bottom ground of mind—

a lotus is emerging from the sediment.

264-red pine; 266-henricks; 219-tanahashi; 267-rouzer

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 15

Cold Mountain is an undisturbed place

isolated from the worldly passersby.

Often I come across birds in the forest

and together sing our mountain songs.

Sacred plants flow along streams into valleys.

Venerable pines climb the difficult peaks.

Here you see an easygoing solitary

pausing by a precipice.

256-red pine; 257-henricks; 217-tanahashi; 258-rouzer

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 14

Cloud-blossoming mountains growing toward a heavenly blue sky. 

The road is out-of-the-way and the forest is profound—there are no wayfarers here.

Far-off I see the desolate immortal toad moon shining brightly.

Nearby I hear a flock of birds and their familiar chirping.

An old man is sitting alone on a dark green cliff.

Retiring to this abode, he lets his hair grow gray.

He sighs the past is like the present day—

unpremeditated, like all those rivers flowing east.

122-red pine; 123-henricks; 178-tanahashi; 123-rouzer

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 13

Your brushstrokes may be uninhibited

and physique be quite substantial

but alive, there is your limit.

And dead, one is a nameless ghost.

It’s been like this since ancient days.

To struggle now is simply pointless.

So join me here inside white clouds—

I’ll teach you timeless mushroom songs.

25-red pine; 19-henricks; 142-tanahashi; 19-rouzer

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 12

On Cold Mountain, there’s just white clouds,

noiseless, still, detached from dust.

My mountain retreat is a seat of grass.

The arc of the moon is my only lamp.

My stone bed overlooks a jade pond.

Tigers and deer make my only neighbors.

I prefer the joys of this hidden home

where living is always outside of form.

287-red pine; 290-henricks; 141-tanahashi; rouzer-292

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 11

I live alone beneath steep fluted cliffs

where the swirling mists amass all day.

In my shelter, dim and unilluminated,

my mind is protected from noise and discord.

In a dream, I pass through immortal gates,

my spirit returning across that slight stone bridge.

I leave behind my heavy quarrels—

clang and clash goes the storied cup abandoned on a tree.

48-red pine; 44-henricks; 42-watson; 138-tanahashi

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 10

Cold Mountain cold

freezing even rock—

obscuring mountain green,

revealing whitest snow.

The sun ascends to glow

and soon it all is melting—

presently its warmth

providing for this old visitant.

301-red pine; 305-henricks; 36-tanahashi