Where To Dwell?

You can dwell

In the world’s messy configuration

In the constant push and pull

Of competition,

In its hurts

And blame’s countless catalogues

Of responsibility

Reaching far too far back in time.

Or

Recognise that love is here,

The source and solution to it all:

Love in your being,

The very being of the world

And heavens inconceivable,

The being you are

When all else is stripped bare

And you are clean

As the baby you once were,

With your heart on fire

With truth unthought, unmade

And unblemished.

Why Look For The Cause

Why look for the cause

When the cause is the whole universe

At this very moment,

Karma’s unnumbered strands

Fast in a knot

The shape of reality

Right now!

To look for the cause is madness,

When love stands by

Neutral and beneficent,

Allowing the knot

It’s imperfect-perfect life,

Accepting the conundrum

And shining through the unreality of it.

With A Sudden Thud

With a sudden thud

A robin

Hit the pane

And dropped.

It brought me from my chair

To cradle its tiny frame

In the cup of my hand.

I watched the last few moments

Of light in its eye

Before it faded away.

What is that light

So easily uncoupled

From the loose body still warm?

What intangible element

Glowed so fierce

Then dimmed over a long moment?

What miracle

This tiny death,

The being unsheathed

With but the stroke between a heartbeat

And the final fall

Of a red breast

That barely made it through a season.

Questioning The Beach

My eyes are closed,

And in that seeing

Waves wash the beach clean.

I can hear them

Arriving,

Surging and falling away.

A salt laden breeze caresses my skin,

My T-shirt flapping gently;

The air is warm as a polished stone

Rounded to a pebble over eons.

Who am I

Who perceives the beach flies,

The waves disintegrating,

The claiming shadow

Beneath the outcrop

Of crumbling strata.

Who am I

On the other end of the world,

Sensing through the body’s

Fine and tangible medium?

Perhaps sensing is a sea-ragged rope,

One end anchored

In the matter

Of things so various,

The multitude names

By which the whole us spliced.

But the other end

Where the mind cannot go,

Where it peters out,

What is that?

If I tug upon that rope,

Draw myself

In the directionless direction

To the seabed of my self,

Who will I find

Dwelling deeper than depth?

Who sees from the ocean of being?

Who is

Where silence is?

Who knows

The creation,

Blessed to my ears,

Broken as wavelets

Rolling over stones,

And saltiness powdery on my skin?

Who is

In this,

Who is?

Wonder In The One

Wonder lust

In the ever opening eye,

Wider with each glimpse

Of the infinite,

Broader

With its ephemeral taste.

Oh, how I am caught

By allure,

Drawn ever deeper

And called ever on,

Wiling to give my all,

My wholeness

My life

My love,

Hold back

Not a single drop,

Give it up,

Until I have none

Until I am undone

Until I am one.

In Love

In love

I am unmeasured by the world

And so I am free

As nothing

But the empty space,

Wide as the universe

Is unknowable,

Deep as starlight

From light years unfathomable,

Unexisting in peace

And effortlessly happy.

What am I?

What am I?

What am I?

Only the taste of falling

Inside myself,

Eternity’s sweetness

Loose on the windless wind,

Unbound and unstuck,

Devoid in the void,

Annihilated formless.

Close Your Eyes

Close your eyes

And go naked to the love

Free in the centre of you.

This love

Knows nothing

But being alive

And the one nakedness

From which all things are.

Be in being

Where all duality

Is dissolved,

Where all that is fragmentary

Slips loose,

And even the one who might hold

Is dissolved.

Close your eyes

And go naked to the love,

The free being inside.

Instead

Instead the ever outward looking

For love

Turn inside yourself

To that which was always there;

Deepest well of formless infinity,

For there dwells life,

A heart-full of life

In abandonment to love,

Beautiful being of love.

There seem to be two options:

A movement into mind

And the stories we tell,

That swirl around

As so much fear.

Or the other way,

In the direction of self,

Detached from the fictions

And free

In the formless realms

So easily overlooked.

Instead the ever outward looking

For love

Turn inside yourself

To that which was always there;

Deepest well of formless infinity,

For there dwells life,

A heart-full of life

In abandonment to love,

Beautiful being of love.

I Dwells There

All things are drawn

To the crucible of the heart:

None are immune

Or impartial to its force.

And there

The matter of it

Is dissolved,

Brought to equality

And equanimity

By love’s dominance.

All are relieved,

All are forgiven,

For I dwells there

And yet dwells elsewhere

In the same instant,

Covering the whole of it,

Every dimension

And all far reaches.

I, the lover and the loved,

I, the being being,

I, the one and all,

Star-bright and all consuming,

Dematerialising that which it touches.

A Breeze

A breeze strums

The feathers of the Scot’s pine

Towering above my garden,

And a wind chime

Gently interprets

Each gust.

There is a magic in the creak

Of the flexing branch

And the twisting sinews

Of fibrous bark;

An instrument

For the wind’s fulfilment.

Always, a dove coos

When I find the wind-full tree

Of my life

Existing in the silence

Of a tangible happening,

Drawing out the now

From its hiding

Until I am like a finely tuned

Sensing apparatus,

Filled with the sticky movement of sap

And vibrating

With the sweet resonance

Of life’s thrill

Through fronds of waxy needles.