Before Beginning in the Middle: 3 poems


Here is some of the poetry I wrote just before and during the Ziji Collective leadership intensive at Karme Choling. 

Before

Having gone to bliss
Hope & fear are like detours
That end where they began.

Dropping persona and facade,
True creativity & interest
Are exposed as the ever present
     tidal-wave of nowness.


Beginning

Arriving is an abrupt
     And gradual
                          process.
The drala of this land is
     Instantly wakeful.
Habitual holdings, guardings, evadings
     Relax
               slowly.

Like a moon
Caressing the meadow,
Waxing one half

A rich column of smoke
     pirouetting its way
              up
     into an uncontrived blue sky.

Enlightened Society
     sounds like Nick's
              unobstructed beating
                      heart
Introducing us to the ziji
     of a shared flower petal.  


in the Middle

Heart break ice chest
Not so cold, but so hard
The Vidyadhara
       Lone leaf lilting down
       to the gentle ground
Softens me up.

Tightening up again
       hard hurts in my throat.
Rejecting my present heart
       to connect with someone feeling
                different from me
I trade the true ember
       for imagined flames: no heat.

Aloneness is openness
       full of poignant warmth.
Such a joy resting in
       Heart broken of habits.


Excruciating entrances Aside. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wearing out the shoe

Image
I spent this last weekend at Karme Choling in Barnet, Vermont.  I was there for a leadership intensive with Shastri* Nick Kranz focusing on the practice of social meditation.  Already, I can feel myself being drawn into the role of the slightly detached explicator as I write this, wanting to explain the word ‘Shastri’ and what the practice of social meditation is.  That role is very comfortable to me.  I think I actually do that with myself as way to distance myself from difficult feelings.  Information and it’s accuracy is soothing to me; it’s how I get ground.   Last weekend was hard.  Social meditation is about creating a culture where the norms and customs nudge us toward being genuine and awake, in touch with our humanity.  Doing this practice and being around 55 other people doing it too makes any disingenuousness on my own part vivid.  Not always clear.  I didn’t always have a clear idea of what was going on, I just knew ...
Read more

Dissertation Dathün: Day 1

Image
Today I’m beginning a project.  For the next four weeks, I aspire to engage my life as I would on retreat.  Today is Monday.  On Friday I had knee surgery with 2 possible outcomes: 1) Remove part of my meniscus: 2-7 day recovery and 2) Repair my meniscus: 4 weeks on crutches with no weight bearing, 6 weeks on crutches minimum.  When I woke up from surgery, my left leg felt large and amorphous.  It had a pretty serious brace on it.  I asked the nurse in the recovery room the outcome of my surgery.  I have no idea how she responded but I remember knowing, without much thought: 4 weeks without being able to carry out everyday life tasks unassisted. 4 is a magic number of weeks for me.  In the summer of 2007, I thought a lot about weeks in groups of 1, 2 and eventually 4.  These were weeks of meditation retreat.  In the Shambhala tradition we have a practice called ‘dathün’ which is a tibetan word meaning ‘month [long] session’ (ed...
Read more

Finding out how I actually feel in the wake of Trump's Election

Starting with how I feel right now, I feel afraid in a kind of heavy-dull limbs-in-concrete-jello way.  I don’t want to feel this too much.  Really at all.  This election result.  In one way, It doesn’t change much about how I’m going to be operating my life for the next 6-7 months.  I’m finishing my dissertation (actually finishing it this time).  That in itself means reduced interaction with the public sphere.  Politics, current events, music.  This election result, Trump/Pence elected and Republican control of House and Senate, feels like a wake-up call though.  I could make it about people like me collectively, but I’m mainly going to speak in my own terms so I can stick to my experience right now.   I really don’t know what to do.  I keep finding myself running down paths trying to explain how we got here.  There’s the sense that if I knew how we got here, I’d know how to feel.  In the Shambhala teachings we t...
Read more