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Our Changeless Nature
(“Before the Door”, 2023, original encaustic)
Our Changeless Nature
Within all the changes of this life
All the particulars of who we are
What we do and know, and don’t know,
Is something that isn’t a thing
Isn’t caused and conditioned
Thus changeless and permanent.
There is only one way to know this nature
And that is for ourselves,
Once it has been pointed out for us,
And this pointing out can come in ten thousand ways
From pedantic philosophy
To poetic allusion
All pointing to the illusion
Of all we think is real.
Eventually this pointing out
Doesn’t depend on an external other
But comes from our own awareness
Like a sun dawning within
Illuminating everything we see,
And everything we see,
Being a projection of this awareness,
Reminds us who we really are.
Everyone, from beggar to king is the same
In carrying a shell we call our self
A shell we cherish and serve
In sad charade of our real self,
But this charade is only sad to the false self
Sad and boring or delightful and charming,
Even enlightening, it makes no difference
Because it is still always false.
To our true self,
Changeless and permanent,
There is only awareness, patient and dispassionate
Without coming or going
Learning or forgetting
And yet still we have these false selves
Striving to become
Something other than we have always been.
Eventually, in the end or along the way
We come to see
Only a fool would wish to be something other
Than they truly are
And in this moment
They know they are no fool
Nor can pretend to be one any more.
If there is no free nature
Then what’s the point
We being slaves to this or that
Blown endlessly by a wind
Of causes and conditions,
But if we have a free nature
Then it’s all good, this play of Life
Just sometimes seen through the wrong end
Of the lens.
(7/21/25)
Copyright ©
James Moore
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