James Moore Poet Free verse

Notes About The Poem

"Dark Pool of Light Nebula III", 2011, original oil

Mind Training

With training your mind will go and stay
Wherever you want it to.
Where you put your attention 
Your mind will go.
What you put in your mind 
Will eventually fill it.
So begin by aiming it where you want it.
But be careful what you wish for,
And what you gather,
Because that is what you’ll get.

Since there are more of others
Than there is of yourself,
And since everyone suffers
Put your mind on other’s suffering 
To keep your own in perspective.
The rule with suffering is it can always get worse.
But suffering is also only temporary.
Like everything, it too shall pass.
Yet suffering can also become unbearable
When it is all that fills your mind,
So be careful what you focus on
Because that is what will fill it.

By focusing on others one’s own situation
Gets smaller and softer.
Others, after all, are both vast 
And a little mysterious, unlike ourselves
Which we can make very tight and knowable.
There are many methods to focus on others,
As many as the stars, and as easy as simply
Exchanging them for us 
With each in and out of every breath.
With practice it becomes natural
And its benefits spill over into your world.
The mind after all fills with what you put in it.

With less self centeredness
Our center literally loosens and opens.
What was a single solar system
Becomes a star cluster, then a galaxy
And eventually a whole Universe, teeming
With myriad galaxies as vast as space.
Space which by nature is open and infinite.
The beauty of compassion for others
With its concern for causes and conditions
Is it leads to awareness of spaciousness,
Which is without cause and condition.
What is unconditioned is unchanging
Birthless and deathless, our true basic nature
And a reliable ground to put our faith in.
The beauty of the mind is it will go 
Where you aim it,
And it will fill with what you find there.

(9/24/26)

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