CCLXV
Buddhas drink the poison without hesitation
Because their complete surrender
Has left only compassion
For the executioners.
* * * *
God and the devil are one in you.
Dissolve them both, and just be you.
* * * *
The you that is indisputable prior to all mind-made inventions,
The eternal nowness that you, without doubt, really are,
Is an incredible, wondrous, magically vast mystery
Beyond all appraisal, or thought in any form.
* * * *
The mind, approaching itself empirically ,
Sets aside the many assumptions of ignorance,
And explores reality, free of obligation or want, for its Self.
* * * *
You can market the words, but the stillness of eternity is the gold no coin can forge.
* * * *
There is nothing in there but the thought about it.
* * * *
Within each of us is a book, and perhaps if we share enough stories,
We will discern we are really no different from each other,
Nor any other creature nor thing, great to small.
* * * *
Wake up, remember; fall asleep, forget.
* * * *
Odds are that if you label yourself a Christian,
Muslim, Jew Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu,
Or some other such thing,
You are not what the prophets had in mind.
* * * *
Embracing totality is the only fate worth accepting.
* * * *
When anyone advises you to take responsibility for the world,
What is meant is the itty-bitty-widdle part you play in your version.
* * * *
Ancestor worship is just more blaspheme.
All those who came before have returned to dust.
They cannot help you, they cannot harm you.
Your dream is yours, and yours alone.
* * * *
Awareness is where doubt, without frames or boundaries, will return you.
* * * *
Your universe is your teacher in whatever fashion your imagination is inclined.
* * * *
All forms vying for imaginary supremacy, equally born of the same windy stardust.
* * * *
The gap between day and night, between waking and sleeping dreams,
Between consciousness and sub-consciousness,
Are in every way seamless.
* * * *
How convenient to be born into, or at least very near, the only true religion.
* * * *
Here you are this day – not yesterday, not tomorrow.
The imaginary filters of memory recalling or projecting
Only obscure the awareness of the ever-unfolding now.
* * * *
And many humans so feared and reviled the natural world
That they devised deities and religions that allowed, even encouraged,
Its abuse and neglect and destruction in any way that suited their bitter reckoning.
* * * *
You cannot stop a train wreck once it leaves the tracks.
* * * *
Some do learn from history.
* * * *
The world tarnishes all innocence that has will enough to survive it.
* * * *
If you cannot muster heaven in your own dreamtime of consciousness,
What makes you believe you would be given a free ticket to the real thing?
* * * *
To love that which is called supreme being by this name or that,
You must also agape its dualistic brother, the devil himself.
For they are truly one in the same in the vast totality.
* * * *
What triumph, what sanity, is there in growing populations that cannot be sustained?
* * * *
We all endure many things in the mind into which we are cast.
* * * *
Born again and again and again, every moment.
* * * *
'Tis a joyous fate if you can manage staying there.
* * * *
All identification is fabricated, a delusional, dualistic process
Galvanized by attachment to the given lingua franca,
To the sounds of notions born of imagination.
* * * *
A life of reflection versus sitting atop a mountain of gold,
Sky Juice in hand on a yacht in the Bahamas.
Hmm, could be you miscalculated.
* * * *
Good and evil are concoctions of imagination.
There is really no angel or demon outside the mind.
* * * *
This is where the free fall of doubt will take you
If you do not release the parachute along the way.
* * * *
Curious how we wage so much effort for mere sound.
* * * *
The ripple of one rock in a still pond can cast a tsunami upon a distant shore.
* * * *
Sometime against even insurmountable odds,
You must raise you sword and sound the horn.
* * * *
Attachment to time breeds every form of idolatry.
* * * *
Plumb the depths, and you will find what you have the vision to find.
* * * *
To declare there is or is not a god
Is to intimate knowledge
You do not, and cannot have.
Agnostic is the only honest position.
* * * *
Impaled on all the differences, the boundless similarity remains unseen.
* * * *
By manipulating the many imaginary fears and desires,
The middlemen in every realm insure their own
Temporal security and false glory.
* * * *
If you would just be attentive enough to breathe
Before the thunderstorm of thought flashed,
You might find that many of the bothers
Of the now-to-now-day-to-day
Would transcend into contentment.
* * * *
Arrogance, masked as humble piety.
* * * *
Please, a little gratitude for a moderately tolerable existence.
Like the weather, it could without doubt easily be so much worse.
* * * *
Of any history, it can be said that was their now; this is ours.
* * * *
A lot of gibberish about nothing in particular.
* * * *
Enjoy history, but do not let it weigh you down.
* * * *
You are you own little tidbit of infinity.
* * * *
Be all the buddha you can be.
* * * *
The portal of imagination makes for a lifetime of adventure in this dreamtime illusion.
* * * *
Am I vain for believing I am That I Am?
Or are you vain for believing you are not?
* * * *
Any great rise is susceptible to an even quicker descent.
* * * *
Be wary of believing any illusion; doubt everything.
* * * *
As minute as minute is, as enormous as enormous is,
Prior to the smallest, and beyond the largest, you are.
* * * *
Just because you wander about in a three-dimensional form
Does not make you as real as imagination would have you believe.
* * * *
A breath from death, whatever that is.
* * * *
Nothing in common, everything in common.
* * * *
Much ado about nothing in particular.
* * * *
The wind of humankind has howled through all corners of Eden,
And what the future of time holds for the progeny to come,
Is a reflection even the most sagacious imagination
Can do no more than guess this way or that.
* * * *
If we cannot even predict tomorrow's weather accurately,
How can we suppose to even begin to forecast
The fate of this garden world in general,
And humankind in particular.
* * * *
Why should anyone allow
Their own observations and reasoning
To be overruled by the superstition and ignorance
Of their ancestors, and the limited cultural mindsets they inspired?
* * * *
Through the life force, every seed – alone, sovereign, vibrant –
Manifests distinctive attributes for as long as its genetic blueprint allows.
This is the seed principle through which the immeasurable mystery of awareness
Permeates every particle throughout the vastness of all creation.
* * * *
What would it be like to neither see,
Nor hear, nor feel, nor smell, nor taste?
Without the time-bound nature of the senses,
How could you ever describe a reality
You are unable to measure?
* * * *
To see heaven on earth
Does not mean everyone else will.
It merely means those who are given vision
Will discern the absolute connectiveness of everything
During their brief sojourn in manifest reality.
* * * *
None can truly force their will upon another.
* * * *
This is the only moment there has ever been.
* * * *
The source is momentary, inscrutable, unfathomable, incomprehensible,
Inexplicable, mysterious, impenetrable, imperceptible, paradoxical,
Primal, potential, dynamic, untraceable, amoral, intractable,
Infinite, infinitesimal, unbound, integrated, transient,
Detached, indecipherable, vexing, imperturbable,
Undiscoverable, ironic, ethereal, anonymous,
Seamless, puzzling, immaculate, cryptic,
Unaccountable, dynamic, holistic, holographic,
Unknowable, iconoclastic, indefinable, intractable,
Intricate, incongruous, coincidental, abstract, universal,
Inexhaustible, concealed, ambiguous, enigmatic, intangible,
Implausible, unexplainable, arbitrary, esoteric, literal, figurative,
Indistinguishable, polymorphous, serendipitous, unblemished, arcane,
Capricious, vaporous, indivisible, unassailable, total, complete,
Absolute, inextinguishable, sovereign, immortal, eternal,
And, of course … all, some, and none of the above.
* * * *
Delusion blinds us all in our youthful daze,
But as the years roll on, flesh gets old, loses its vibrancy,
And eventually gets more than a little creepy, more than a little repulsive:
Obesity, scars, wrinkles, moles, warts, pimples, arthritis, rashes, open sores, flatulence,
Mouth and body odors, coughing, drooling, vomiting, watery eyes, cellulite,
Sagging, leathery, flaking, freckled, pockmarked, blotchy skin,
Varicose veins, cancer … and so, so much more.
* * * *
Here you are …
Sitting, standing, walking, running,
Drinking, chewing, watching, thinking, speaking, sleeping,
Ever the vast still mystery within … here you are …
Timelessly witnessing a kaleidoscoping,
Three-dimensional theater in time.
From one instant to the next,
To the next, to the next,
To the next …
Ever you are.
* * * *
Life is but a swirl of dust with a filament of absorbing imagination
To delude itself into believing one meaning and purpose or another.
* * * *
To be mesmerized by any history
Runs the risk of becoming a harbor
Of a limited, delusionary recording.
* * * *
The universe is your muse.
* * * *
Desire, the maestro of suffering; fear, its shadow accomplice.
* * * *
Meandering again, seeking that which cannot be seen.
* * * *
Who's the who whose who-ing?
What's the what that's what-ing?
Where's the where that's where-ing?
When's the when that's when-ing?
Why's the why that's why-ing?
How's the how that's how-ing?
Questions that can never be answered,
Asked over and over and over, ever over again.
* * * *
The nothing-moreness, the nothing-lessness, is well-established.
* * * *
Because it amused you, that's why.
* * * *
When else could it be but now?
* * * *
Even the longest, strongest nails cannot for one moment slow down,
The irrevocable, indivisibly seamless passing of eternity's timeless theater.
* * * *
What need of a god to judge your dream.
* * * *
Pleasure and pain, and the relativity between,
All little more than a fleeting invention of imagination.
* * * *
The difference between yesterday and tomorrow
Is but the mind's sensory perception of continuity.
* * * *
Curious how so many want from life more than life can ever offer.
* * * *
Jesus is dead, he ain't coming back, move on.
* * * *
That which cannot be known is easily forgotten.
* * * *
Time is a vigilant taskmaster.
* * * *
Of anything, it can be said, "Who knows?"
* * * *
What matters so much right now, will likely not for long if ever again.
* * * *
Nothing exists without your attention.
* * * *
The mystery is its own teacher, its own student.
* * * *
Jesus saves no one; never did, never will.
* * * *
Has it ever occurred to you to wonder why it is you have never seen your face?
* * * *
Packaged and repackaged as fresh again and again and again, it is, it is, it is.
* * * *
Here you are … Sitting, standing, walking, running,
Drinking, chewing, watching, thinking, speaking, sleeping,
Ever the vast still mystery of awareness within … here you are …
Timelessly witnessing a kaleidoscoping, three-dimensional theater in time.
From one moment to the next, to the next, to the next, to the next … ever you are.
* * * *
There is no past, there is no future, there is only this moment unending.
* * * *
Are you full yet?
* * * *
The obvious is not obvious to all.
* * * *
Education is only as meaningful as the mind that gives it attention, full or otherwise.
* * * *
Born again or born anew?
* * * *
The world cannot be reconciled but by giving it a resounding no mind.
* * * *
No creature can long abide breaking the laws of nature.
* * * *
No rewind button, sorry.
* * * *
What makes you so sure you exist in the way you think?
* * * *
We can only hear what we are ready to hear.
* * * *
Imitation is limitation.
* * * *
Surviving your daze.
* * * *
You are that prior to all advents.
* * * *
Are you this earthly, temporal, finite, mortal body?
Are you that of which this body is made?
Or are you that which is prior to all form and context,
Prior to consciousness and its innumerable channels of speculation.
Prior even to that inexplicable awareness by which all dreams of time are perceived.
* * * * * * * * * *
The Return to Wonder
Field Notes from the Unknown
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved