("First Light", 2006, original oil)
Samsara’s wheel of Life,
Wheel of ignorance and suffering
Is but an illusion,
A mirage of a vast collective
Of veiled ignorant minds,
Like a spinning projection
Of hope and fear,
Above the true wheel.
So what is this true wheel
That turns at the base of reality,
In the heart of each of us?
Let’s just say
It’s not something
That can ever be named,
Yet something actual and changeless
Just waiting to be discovered.
(3/10/26)
(Persian rug depiction of Heaven)
I move forward
Sometimes strong and true
Sometimes stumbling
But always forward
As if towards a goal.
Then I see
I’ve really just been going ‘round and ‘round
A wheel, a cycle, a spiral
Ever returning.
Maybe it’s a trap
A Möbius loop
With no way out,
But maybe it’s just a path
That is already perfect,
Perfectly what is
My path in Life
Through an intricate and complete mandala
Of total inclusivity
The good, the bad, the light and dark.
(1/29/26)
(“Mrs. It Dances Through It”, 2014, original pen and ink)
Samsara is the wheel of rebirth
An endless cycle of lives in myriad forms
Endless as long as there is the ignorance
To fuel its engine.
The River of Life likewise flows
Ending up in the sea, to recycle again
Endlessly for beings compulsively carried
As long as there is the ignorance
To fuel its source.
The wheel and the river move in such cycles
An eternal stage for Life to play
And all its being’s enact their roles.
But what of the beings as they come and go
Struggle and overcome,
Drown and transcend their sorrows?
They are none other than us, and us, them
In their forms, parts and roles
Dog eating dog, and man petting man
As well as dog
We have been them all, married to the burden
Of all our wishes and deeds
In sickness and in health
Until death do us part
And we begin again.
(1/19/26)
This is the progressive era
And so we’ve all been steeped
In the ideal of progress
As an inherent good,
An end in itself,
But for a life
Spinning on the hamster’s wheel
All progress is illusion.
(11/8/25)
The good and true know rest and peace
Simple because without selfish intent
They can lay their burdens down
Moment by moment and so enjoy
The endless journey.
The bad and false know no rest
Because driven by desire
There is no satisfaction
And so their path
Becomes an endless wheel of suffering.
One is like a still pond
In which you can see your clear reflection,
The other a swift rapid
Making waves and turbulent eddies
At every turn.
One knows peace effortlessly
The natural byproduct of life in harmony,
The other knows it only as a dream
Something strived for
But never attained.
(10/26/25)
The Asian version of Life
Is of a wheel that endlessly spins
Rotating in kaleidoscopic scenes
Of beings in realms
Trapped by their karmas in endless suffering
Endless until it, of course, ends
Which is what all things must eventually do.
In the West the dominant view is now
Of an endless cycle of Life
Where we don’t actually become anything
After we die, just a nutritional building block
In the ecological web of growth and decay.
It’s a rational seeming world view,
But one devoid of soul.
On the whole these two views compliment
And complete each other;
Soulful and soulless
To give a sense of life on the wheel.
But the truth is neither are complete,
Together or alone
Because neither sees what lies beyond the wheel.
Of course, they say eternity and annihilation respectively
But what is the it that endures or dissolves?
And if it endures was it ever really trapped?
And if it dissolves was it ever really existent?
Somewhere between is the middle way
Free of extremes and labels,
Free to simply be, what is, inherently ineffable.
(10/12/25)
The plot in anything interesting
Always gets thick and twisted.
It’s the reason for the season
And the season and the season
Year after year.
Thick and twisted after all
Keeps ‘em coming back for more.
And sooner than later
Sooner than you know it
You are so thick and twisted
That you just can’t extricate yourself
And a lifetime has past
Then a thousand
And a hundred thousand
And you are not only not better
But way worse than it began
But you don’t even know it
Because of all those lifetimes.
The moment after all being everything
Seize the day, and all that
While what has really happened
Is it has all gotten just thicker
And more twisted.
(10/8/25)
Where is it we are heading
If not where we began,
But when we arrive
There is now a difference.
Hamsters on their wheel
Are always striving and always arriving
Since clearly the journey is the goal.
And yet there must be some goal
Held in sight, some vision to pull us
As we run round and round
Otherwise we would simply stop,
And, if truly a hamster,
Eat some of the roses.
(9/18/25)
The oblivious of technical school in Japan exist
In speaking California
Somehow people live with them
I am alive again
Perhaps to award self noble ink ignorance truth awards for forgotten reason folds?
Curmudgeon dialectitions are a single limit in integral derivatives vote agreement speak of French crime fraud
Fraud constraint in physical universe CMM Kevin grabs and places on earth as variable of energy in relation to sun spectacle gotama illiterate ancient vision possum.
Variable = zero
Aggregated data illegal to allow no cleared thought
Capitalism variance pond scum scrutiny re potting nirvana chart
Not present
Conclusion and resolved as impasse in the passed tense regarding agriculture builds have centered, stilled and stalemated upon inherent independence. When a single dejection occurs the independent publisher of our next theory which decides itself the better ended.
Now quiet, settled, easy, leisurely
through life’s affairs,—say, couched in everyday—
and sipping being’s sweetest, freshest ray;
Sunshine!, Sunshine! ‘midst winter’s coldest glee!
Now troubled, disjointed, uneasily
fumbling, scrambling through dumb frowning time.—Gray-
-haired night’s murk weighs down gay light’s mirth filled play...—
tumbling through summer’s scorching cruelty!
An inescapable alternation
of gloom and cheer,(to be—and—not to be),
wheeling circles and cycles—infernal,—
recur, relapse, return through all creation.;
Remember, though pain’s but temporary,
vacuous suffering is eternal.
(Dzachuka Tibet, summer of 2017)
The Madness of the Crowd and Other Popular Delusions
The crowd is always prone to madness
Since reaction as a herd in danger
Demands conformity without reason.
The fact we live in a time of madness
Is nothing new or unusual,
Relative Reality after all being
Merely a conspiracy of relatives.
But sometimes it seems it’s all now extra crazy
As traditional boundaries break down
And everyone is free to think and say
And increasingly do whatever they want.
The ascendency of gender dysphoria
And acceptance, even celebration
Of child mutilation
Being a case in point.
But the fact is, we live in a world of illusion
Which the madness and delusions of the crowd
Is merely attempting to adapt to,
As all our perceptions and thoughts filter through
A mind which can do no other than interpret and distort.
These are the tools we are given,
A mind and body hardwired to survive
In a world of illusion, thus adapted
To the point of expertise with spinning illusions.
It’s not our fault, but instead our destiny
To find a way through
Out of the Cave of Unknowing
Into the Space
Of a land before time.
(12/6/24)
(“Original Mind”, 2017, original mixed media encaustic)
Tathagata and the Paradox of Being
There is no death in samsara
Unless you are in samsara…
Mind is free and always has been
free to bind and enslaved itself
Perhaps first in play or accident
But then eventually in habit.
Mind is like the sky
Open and accommodating
And ultimately unhindered or blemished
In any way by obscuring clouds.
Reality on the ground however,
Is a whole nother story,
The way every region on Earth
With its different climates and peoples
Is in fact completely and qualitatively different!
The range of suffering in samsara
Is infinite and individual.
The range of what is beyond suffering
Is the opposite; uniform and universal.
(11/29/24)
The day after my Aunt Ro died
a doe approached within a few feet
as if confused about where she was
and what she should be doing.
I could neither comfort nor advise her.
I let her be not considering until later maybe
I had witnessed the transmigration of a soul.
But in the end I applied Ockham’s razor—
you rarely see what you believe.
A mile further along my morning stroll
I was greeted cheerfully by a flock
of cedar waxwings I always consider it a blessing
to encounter. Such social, amiable beings
I hope Aunt Ro will join, so sure are they of who they are—
("How to Hold Love", 2019, original oil)
Carpe Diem
This life
Precious from conception
Right on through till death;
Each moment a chance to break on through
To the eye within the storm
The center of a cyclone
Of endless delusion and confusion,
Struggle, and despair,
The heart of peace
That is only, always, peace.
Seize it now
With a mind of joy;
The simplest action
The greatest challenge.
(1/6/24)
("Exploded View", 2011, original oil)
Complicit in the Lie
Everyone you meet
Is complicit in the lie
That this is what’s real
(12/29/23)
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