CLXXXV
You sort of outgrow yourself.
* * * *
We are inhabiting this dream of time
In most ludicrous, short-sighted way.
* * * *
Only the fools who read these words will understand.
* * * *
Once you realize the Buddha nature,
You will find it residing beneath many more masks
Than you ever imagined possible.
* * * *
Enlightenment is simply seeing
The interconnected nature of all patterning.
Liberation is simply giving oneself over to that nature.
* * * *
You are the only proof necessary.
* * * *
Greed creates an oppression sharing never will.
* * * *
What goes on behind the stare of the newborn
Before the mask begins acting out its will?
What is the sensory state of the unregulated mind
Unburdened by the patterning that marks childhood’s end?
* * * *
The pain comes from trying to hold onto
Or take back what can only be surrendered.
* * * *
Your desire and fears are generated
By your identification with the mind-body
Operating in the illusory field of time and space.
* * * *
The eyes with which you see
Are the windows to illusion.
* * * *
When you die to the dreamy known,
You become that which is unknowable.
* * * *
Alas, the opportunities of youth
Fade further and further into memory.
* * * *
The child is absolute witness
Untarnished by the many thoughts
With which they will soon be burdened.
Discern that clean slate and you will be home
To the conscious intent of awareness.
* * * *
Meditation is simply learning
To hold the will in abeyance
Until the silence is its own end.
* * * *
Grasping time is like trying to clutch a river in your hand.
* * * *
Humanity will eventually be forced to realign with natural law or perish.
Perhaps that “adjustment” will help bring about its true potential.
It is the scientific experiment of the manifest paradigm.
* * * *
Right action is not something forced or contrived.
It comes about naturally with alignment
To the timeless flow of eternity.
* * * *
How tiring the drama queens.
* * * *
You have never been
What you and your memories
Are inclined to believe.
* * * *
Mystics have no masters, only teachers.
* * * *
No earthborn knowledge will ever compare
With the transcendence of the eternal knowing.
* * * *
Death makes it all quite clear.
* * * *
This manuscript has written itself.
It is a holographic menagerie of thoughts
With each and every part a reflection of the whole,
All pointing to the you that you truly are.
* * * *
Amazing and pathetic as that may be.
* * * *
The seed is not the seedling,
Nor the seedling a tree, nor the tree a forest.
Endure time with serenity, for all things shall pass soon enough.
The process is far more relevant than any goal.
* * * *
Truth will be no matter your awareness.
You are merely an opportunity for its expression.
* * * *
Even if your eye could pan across
Every level of manifestation known to creation,
Every particle would be the illusory play of the same divine origin.
* * * *
How many put their head in the sand
Because they dare no examine the insanity
Humanity has managed to make of it.
* * * *
These thoughts are not about joy, love or comfort.
They are about truth, about the oblivion the essential truly is.
Whether joy, love or comfort come to pass is a byproduct, not an end.
* * * *
Herein is the disclosure of your unitary nature,
But only surrendering inquiry will make it yours.
* * * *
That was easy.
* * * *
Once the many voices merge into oneness,
All become vain, nonessential chatter.
* * * *
All suffering is the creation of mind.
Go beyond mind and its transitory nature
Will be clearly seen for what it is.
* * * *
Even “I Am” is a transitory concept.
* * * *
Within a deep pool of still water,
You merge into a different awareness of the body,
One really not all that different than the airy sea in which you daily exist.
* * * *
Until you discern with absolute certainty
That you are that which is godness,
You only know it as a concept,
As a thought born of dualistic separation.
Merge into the beingness, not an idea born of mind.
* * * *
The monkey with its hand in the baited coconut
Grips the prize with even more desperation as the machete nears.
Will it perish, or will it detach from its insatiable greed?
* * * *
What are you but a bag of assumptions?
* * * *
The history built of time by senses and minds
Is the dream we call life, and the theater
Within which we synergistically play
Whatever the collective imagination wills.
* * * *
What a challenge to see
All the masks of any given universe
Are merely vivid imagination.
* * * *
Time will wipe the slate clean
And all return to righteousness.
* * * *
In any given moment,
Heaven and hell
Are equally possible.
* * * *
Once a fork in the road is taken,
That is pretty much all she wrote
As far as going back is concerned.
* * * *
Just because somebody walks on two legs
Doesn’t necessarily make them a human being.
* * * *
Souls are not bound by age.
* * * *
Who would one drop of the ocean
Be any greater than another?
* * * *
There are more than a few people out there
More than willing to tell you how to live,
But there is really no set rulebook,
And you are free to manifest existence
In whatever way suits your indivisible nature.
* * * *
Are you reading what is actually written here,
Or merely projecting what you believe you understand
Upon a perhaps confusing mishmash of words?
Seek the vast subtlety to which they point
And you will discern their clarity.
* * * *
All you are is a mind full of arbitrary assumptions.
* * * *
How many times have you drifted off into oblivion,
Come to, and called it daydreaming?
* * * *
What a lonely, despondent, pathetic god.
* * * *
After all, it’s only death.
* * * *
One more thing you don’t even begin to need.
* * * *
Yeesch and by golly.
* * * *
Where’s a taco truck when you need it?
* * * *
The functional things in life should always come first.
* * * *
Alive on the page.
* * * *
No compromise is necessary.
* * * *
So cute that you would hardly even know
What to do with it anymore.
* * * *
Genetics aside, you’re fucked.
* * * *
Malls are about unrequited desire.
* * * *
To be content is to have little use for this world.
* * * *
The irony of humility
Is that if you think you are,
You aren’t.
* * * *
Eat it up, shit it out,
And buy, buy, buy between.
* * * *
Is contentment full or empty?
* * * *
Be cautious about getting between
Another creature and its meal.
Be even more cautious
If you’re the intended meal.
* * * *
Why would anyone read all this?
* * * *
Discern the ironic smile of it all.
* * * *
A simple cup of water will do.
* * * *
This old mind has had some interesting days.
* * * *
Just a good old zen guy
Born on the back of a forklift
Upon petals of a peach blossom.
* * * *
Wealth is an interior state of mind.
* * * *
One body bag said to another…
* * * *
Oh, great hunter, the trashcan is at the exit.
* * * *
On the better days, it’s just too crazy
To even begin to take it too seriously.
* * * *
Sometimes it’s best not to look down, or up.
* * * *
Yes, I will play your game,
But please, please, please,
Don’t ask me to believe it.
* * * *
Is it too much to ask from a chair or bed,
That one rise from it a bit more refreshed?
* * * *
What to do when your only ambition is to serve?
* * * *
One moment, here,
One moment, gone.
Time, life, is like that.
* * * *
Of never-ending amusement what some find attractive.
* * * *
Peace requires that all
See one another extremely clearly,
Which is, of course, all but impossible in this time
So let us continue ripping ourselves into itty-bitty little pieces,
Smaller than anyone would have ever dreamed possible,
Even in the most frightening nightmare imaginable.
* * * *
Never assume anyone has anything important to say
Unless they manage not to give it away first.
* * * *
Having your religion organized for you
Is handy if you really don’t want to think.
* * * *
If any philosopher wishes to have his entire existence humbled,
All his ideals quashed into unrecognizable wreckage
He should spend a day wandering a mall.
* * * *
Every life form has a peak to its flowering,
And from then on, whether quickly or slowly,
The remainder is an inevitable statistical decline.
* * * *
Is philosophy any more
Than the physiological outcome
Of a brain in great need of more oxygen?
* * * *
If you don’t mind sweating,
It really isn’t all that hot.
* * * *
All the ills of the universe need not be your problem.
* * * *
Nothing happens a lot.
* * * *
When nature becomes simply a resource,
You have seriously short-changed your existence.
* * * *
Your body is the universe.
* * * *
Simplistic minds seek simplistic answers.
* * * *
We all play out our vanity in one way or another.
* * * *
You mean god has nothing better to do
Than create some heavenly corporate hierarchy
That maintains endless scrolls of who’s naughty and nice,
And then imprisons them accordingly in one purgatory or another?
* * * *
Incredibly strange.
Who came up with this fiasco, anyway?
* * * *
Maybe tomorrow you’ll suffer such foolishness.
* * * *
If oneness was a gold sovereign,
On one side would be a benign, godlike figure,
And on the other would be imprinted the dark, menacing twin.
Yet despite the apparent duality, ‘tis the same gold coin all the way through.
* * * *
We plant the dead in garden burial grounds,
And from these eternal resting places
Come tales of heaven and hell
Only the so-called living bother to imagine.
* * * *
Is it hope or fear that inspire belief?
Is there really a difference?
* * * *
Of humanity it can be said,
They left Eden seeking paradise,
Only to obliterate what was always theirs
In ways only the deaf, dumb and blind can imagine.
* * * *
Do not allow any to deny your quest for sovereignty
For few will ever comprehend your vision
Or your desire to travel to its eternal conclusion.
* * * *
You seek the fountain of youth
Without ever noticing that within
You have not aged even a moment.
* * * *
These words came freely to the scribe,
And he passes them to all for the same price he paid:
The nothingness of his birth, his dream, and his divine recollection.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The Stillness Before Time (Compendium)
© Michael J. Holshouser 2009
World Rights Reserved