In my youth I did my time
Doing strict religious discipline
A whole decade dedicated to mindfulness
And right livelihood.
And in the several decades since I’ve done
All that on and off again, from time to time.
But now my discipline is different
It’s the discipline of do-nothing
The wu wei of effortless action
More like mindlessness
Than effortful mindfulness.
What does it involve? Nothing!
Too simple you say,
And that’s the point exactly!
Like a cloud drifting through an open sky
Neither born nor dying
Simply manifesting
Into something
From nothing.
(9/16/26)
Take my savory words you, I’ll take yours if kind,
let go the ways to wicked wharfs, the way putrefies
away from stagnate depths of opaque layers grind
for those without weakness those of you rise
without the wormwood spells of bitter taste
Kind ways stagnate weakness and bitterness
Phoenix Sixain excerpt from The Pathless Path 5/20/26
of your being
and the shapes of leaves
in a clearing
and realize
that life
and looking up
at taller beings
and trees
is worth
the stillness
of being.
The Universe corrects itself
Each and every time
What seems to get out of hand
To be too much
Extremities
Always reach a breaking point
And what is dark and bleak
Will eventually see the light
Though it comes in varying forms
It will arrive
No matter how far you have gone
No matter how high you have risen
No matter how deep of hole you dug
No matter how bruised you have gotten
The sun will rise
The moon will set
The storm will cease
The fog will lift
To fix what is broken
And reset what is fixed
All the while
The Universe keeps breathing
--
The exclusively logical conclusion
of monotheistic-nationalistic strategizing,
rooted in anthropocentric caste-preservation,
is Winner or Loser fascism
AND
The inclusively ecological commencement
of polytheistic-international integrity,
flowering as Gaia Hypothesis caste-abolition,
is Winner and Winner panentheism.
Just as no one could sanely become
a fascistic panentheist,
we already have far too insanely many
monotheistic fascists.
Summer breeze, bones at ease.
Schedule clear, mind clear.
Belly full, tea at hand.
Love and cat both sitting near.
Hawks aloft, quietly.
Bats asleep, naturally.
The half remaining moon climbing
up to the Eastern horizon.
Cedars busy not rotting, cattails busy
decorating, ever so briefly, the not-there air.
The wind shifts...mint and meadow flower.
The winds shift...now the horse manure.
The Dào speaks and whispers,
roars and mumbles.
Her lessons ceaselessly
thread through Named and Noticed;
silk offering pearls.
Weaving warp through weft,
her unbounded Echolessons
knit the Fabric of Life to the
web of Space, of Time.
The wind shifts...playground sounds.
The winds shifts...I’m not now around.
The profound feeling-
giddy with the triumph of its reach,
that everything and nothing is wrong.
I dream I'm waking
in my American bed
from another time. But
the times keep interlacing
like lovers' restless fingers.
Like intercrossing networks
on a computer screen.
And she's always there.
And he's always there.
And waking reality has no backdrop
for this storyline.
But sometimes in the mornings'
thoughtless peace, I flip through pages
of a book until my fingers trace
the vibrations of myself. Rarely
does it take very long.
There's a man who found solace
in a glee that had no place.
And a woman who expected
only rubbish so she kept getting
more of something slightly better.
And another man told another woman
he ached for her, so she followed home.
And one more who in thoughtful respect,
laughed in the face of death just so
she could see what it was like. Why not?
She said to anyone who'd listen.
This all comes wrapped in various forms
of shadow interlaced by light.
That's what the books tell me.
Said flowing River
to glowing Mountain
What warms deepest
Thou cannot see
from sacred heights
of eternity
Robustly responds
growing Mountain Here
to deeply embedded River Now
What spills widest
shared compassion
Thou must deeply feel
to reconsider Integrity's warm
boundlessly reflective faces,
Earth bound graces
Said Father Sun's light
radiantly bright
when not in Mother Earth's
dualdark shadow night
Empowering shivered
quivered sacred passions.
I sit
reading poems of Chinese sages
with their paintings of mountains and mist
from a thousand years ago.
Outside, snow falls like it did then,
and inside, I muse on it and the ways of the world
as they did too.
In between, the sights and sounds of today wash over me
like in a dream
in a place and as a person I am always
only just getting to know
never quite sure I can accept
or trust what they have to offer;
security and comfort,
while snow continues to fall
amid mountains cloaked in mist.
(1/4/2021, first published in my 5th book of poems and stories, EXTRACTING THE ESSENCE, 2021)
What could I say
to change this kindness
you may have warmly heard
but only coldly felt?
How might my peaked
and valleyed,
top and bottom,
out and in
prelude and postlude
father spawned and mother sacred
before and after
stories
speak to your ambivalent ear?
Without hearing too much impatience
and continuing to feel
nothing
Nothing urgent
passionate
empowering
to survive dark days
of quiet lonely severance?
Where EarthMother's womb
had promised dawning reverence.
Could I sing with sufficiently enlightened passion?
Should we dance to light's bilateral integrity
flowing out communion?
Curiously nurtured Tribal fashions
if Earth would repair Her dignity
through sacred kindness
we may have lightly touched
but never deeply felt
Integrity
resurrecting powers
of ego trauma
in dialogue with eco-therapy
Where Yang meets Yin,
Truth greets Beauty
Resonance
of healthy minds
trusts wealth of resilience
co-empathic
co-invested
co-operative
organic
peaked and valleyed
opportunistic spiritual minds
inside risky natural bodies.
If to be
is to communicate
Perhaps
to be healthy
is to communicate
with deep listening
and nonviolent speaking
regenerative integrity
Both secular and sacred
natural and spiritual
multi-paradigmatically scientific
and inter-religiously philosophical
universal truths and unitarian trust
in bicamerally balanced sacred beauty
Faithful to mind and loving with body
ego and ecosystemic
rational-compassionate
Either/Or-Both/And
bipartisan
Taoist
NonDualist
Not-Not Zeroist
strength/flow
liberally loving/conserving caution
full/empty
space/time
bilateral-fractal
Bicameral-dialectic
mind/body redevelopment
within nutritional incoming
and fertile outgoing
organically active balance.
Gaia is radically interdependent Earth,
CoCreator of paradise
and pandemics,
of safe drinking water
and healthy fertile soil,
S/He does not faint
or grow weary;
His Yang Heaven raining
manna understanding
is also wellness watering
Her Yintegral Earth
rebirthing
inscrutably dense compassionate soil.
S/He gives cooperatively owned power
to those poor
in humane natural Spirit,
and transparently enlightened strength
to those uncompetitively powerless
Victims immigrating
in this Great UnRaveling Exodus
from high risk inhumane enslavement
to royal profits,
Prophets now trending toward traumatic
right wing rabid distortion,
trumpeting EarthTribe overtures
to understated extinction.
OldSouls believe Earth's ecological systems
need healthy humane theological experience
more than
theological HeavenlyWater/EarthSoil reflection
feeds wealth-restoring ecological Justice.
OldSouls also believe this is a problem;
Not a sacred sign
of resilient EarthSystemic strength
through cooperative
co-invested indigenous wisdom
and humane solidarity,
polyculturally enlightening nature
of multiculturally empowering spiritual experience,
healthy soil smelled
and safe water tasted
tested
invested
LeftWing yintegral nonzero OldSoul
felt theological remembering
RightWing yang
ecologically healthy cooperative wins
winning economic co-empowering gain.
All breathing
hearted
living sacred creations
are born of white light
and red power,
Of empowering transparent ecstasy
and vulnerably impassioned fire,
Of triumphant wind
radiantly communing spring tease
and slow burning
Earth-rooted
desire
To restore life-giving powers
of just-right lust for co-passions,
and to illuminate life/death
impassioned powers,
healthy white light polypathic
wealthy red powers co-empathic,
Born of illuminating sacred light
reborn of Taoist
NonZero Sum soul
empowering transparent ecstasy
and co-passioned fire
Yang white light
and Yintegral non-violent red fertile powers
ecofeminist conductive
inductive
seductive fired passions.
We each and all have, I suspect,
a felt awareness
that patriotism
risks degenerating into fascism,
as loyalty
risks bullying.
Isolating nationalism
self-righteously defending weaponized caste supremacy
and patriarchal privilege of one's State
moving toward fear-mongered isolationism
supporting competitive polarization
predative politicization
of "self-made" capitalism
Rather than appreciating our solidarity
as anthropocentric nations resting and wrestling
and co-investing
on interdependent continents
articulating green/blue loyalty
to the Gaia Hypothesis of Win+Win integrity
of self+other governance
And no less self-identified sacred State
of Father Sun
or organic Tribe
of Mother Earth,
avoiding dissociative incontinence
whenever possible.
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