Dharma Path

You don't study Buddhism
To learn the sutras
Or to practice meditation.

You don't study Buddhism
To become more aware
Or even to become a Buddha.

You study, you live, you do
Buddhism
To be Buddha.

Of the 10,000 eyes.

Now toss this onto the compost pile
And start again.

On my cat scan

The fidgety waiting room,
Its antiseptic scent hinting not so much at fear
As at a grudging acceptance.

Eve never ate of the tree of good and evil.
Her plucked fruit came from the tree of
The knowledge of good and evil.
Here, there's a different kind of knowledge.

As ever, there is Shakespeare.
"If it be now, 'tis not to come,
If it be not to come, it will be now.
If it be not now, yet it will come.
The readiness is all."

Question:

How ready was Hamlet?
More to the point,
How ready am I?
How ready are
you?

Yet, pray, define readiness.

An open hand held out freely?

NARRATIVE

"Oh blessed rage for order, pale Ramon"--Stevens

My story spinning out,
A blind man's cane clicking
In the darkness of Plato's cave.

The story beguiling,
Justifying whatever propelling impulse
It follows a half a step behind:
Slime in the snail's wake,
Effluvium forming ever novel
Combinations from the
Mountain of yesterday's shit.

All this to both create and soothe
My-- "but I had to do it"-- defense.

THE ACTOR PAUSES

"The poem of the mind in the act of finding what will suffice. It did not always need to know; the scene was set; it repeated what was in the script." Stevens

The Actor Pauses
Steps out of his role
stands back
ignores the lines that
yesterday whispers in his ear

Silent
aware
hears the chatter
the king of the mountain
demands for utterance
this thought
that

Watches without attachment
not a whiff of answers
only breath
relaxation
just this
just now

UNHITCHING

She wants to give him confidence,
to make him feel good.
His attraction, my attention, gives her confidence,
makes her feel good.
Where is the someone making me feel good?

But i shouldn't need that, should know better.
The Diamond Sutra knows.
Where, Subhuta, is the abiding self to which
confidence would adhere?
Where, Subhuta, is the abiding "confidence"?
To what would this illusion cling?
To another illusion?
Me?
Just cut to the feeling good.