Introduction
Stop trying to fix your problems, to heal your disease, to overcome your deficiencies.
Stop fighting with your negativity.
Opposition doesn't work.
You can't win.
Stop acting like you're in control, like you're the boss.
Cooperation, not dominance, is the answer.
Adopt a compassionate, creative attitude to your negative experiences and those experiences turn from stumbling blocks into stepping-stones.
"You find, paradoxically, that what you've been running away from is the source of your authentic being," James Hillman.
The solution to your problem is right in front of you.
Life is theater.
We act out our problems in our day-to-day interactions until we find another way, another place, to pay attention to them.
Find a creative discipline to interact with what is bothering you.
Make poems of your negativity instead of acting it out in your personal relationships.
Draw or sketch your problems instead of doing them in your career.
Dance your disease instead of manifesting illness in your body.
My method can be tested.
Memorialize with creative expression what makes you uncomfortable, your dis-ease, and practically your life improves; you become smarter, more effective at dealing with the problematic people and situations in your life.
If you do your negativity in a journal or sketchbook, then you don't have to do it elsewhere in your life.
You can do it here or you can do it there, but it's not going away.
What you have is what you need.
What you need is a better attitude to life's difficulties, to the disease.
Everything is an oracle, including the negativity.
This book is a participatory experience.
It is meant as a guide to assist you in exploring your own disease.
Hopefully the ideas and poetry offered here will inspire you to write your own poems. Here are a few rules:
1. HEAP IMAGES ON IT:
Record the images that describe your negative experience.
The psyche loves images:
"I am lonely," carries no pictures;
"A tiny boat on a vast, dark sea," is a rich image of loneliness.
2. Avoid writing directly about the actual problematic people or situations.
Exaggerate, fictionalize, embellish.
Don't worry about being fair or accurate.
Make use of poetic license.
3. Avoid the first person as much as possible.
Don't write about "my pain."
Instead write about the tree's pain, the sky's emptiness, the world's sorrow.
Universalize your experience.
Poetry is the artistic discipline which I use to interact with disease, but I promise you, if you get a sketchbook and each day meditate on your negativities and then draw them, however abstractly, before you fill the book, your problems are forever changed, for the best.
It doesn't matter if you're not a great artist.
Just do it.
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1
"Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding," Lao Tsu,Tao Te Ching
What we take to be a problem is really the solution to another problem, a bigger problem of which we are not yet aware.
The problem is the solution.
Everything depends on how you frame it: the context for your disease.
Questioning invites knowledge.
Darkness enlightens.
"Buddha exclaimed on achieving enlightenment, "How wonderful! All beings are already enlightened, just as they are."
Everything is already perfect; everything except our attitude
The way you look at it is the problem.
The difficulty is integral to the system.
Something is calling for attention.
We are prejudiced against the experience.
What you do with the problem is the problem.
Sit attentively; interact creatively with what is "wrong."
Write a "Dear Disease" letter.
Learn its language.
Do something "for" not "about" your experience of disease.
What you don't look at comes around to haunt you.
Write it out instead of acting it out.
Write as if your life depended on it: it does!
Heritage
it is a heritage left you
a treasure from long ago
a language you cannot yet understand.
your basement full of riches
you leave home in search of wealth
going to search for authority
when you yourself are king.
that which you undervalue is the chief good
that which you neglect is the key to the kingdom.
the cow manure sprays out onto the field in a green-brown soup
enriching the earth.
respect yourself
including that part of you without self-respect.
***
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2
"When you find peace and quiet in the midst of busyness and clamor, then towns and cities become mountain forests; afflictions are enlightenment, sentient beings realize true awakening." Foyan
The problem is the way you look at it.
Change the way you look at the problem and the problem becomes less problematic.
Find a different way of interacting.
Behave differently towards the problem and it behaves differently towards you.
When you go to the market with a lot to buy, you make a list.
When you have a lot to remember to pack for a trip, you make a list.
When there's a lot going on in your heart and mind, write it down.
Write even if you have to write about not being able to write.
The journey is the goal.
The end is present in the beginning.
Each step of the journey is its own destination.
Each moment is complete unto itself.
Seek the wisdom of now.
Learn the lesson of the present circumstance before you move on, before you try to change it.
All healing and growth depends on being fully present now.
Be here now.
Take the disease as your primary coordinate.
Find ways of being here now without fixing or figuring.
Long Ago
the masters explained it all long ago
but people do not listen,
the way does not lead anywhere
the Tao does not lead away from itself,
there is nothing to acquire or lose.
men unfamiliar with the truth
make up games to pass the time
never satisfied with what they have
they have lost the capacity for enjoyment
restless ghosts
insatiably casting about
not knowing what they're looking for.
seek the wisdom of now.
***
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3
"You find, paradoxically, that what you've been running away from is the source of your authentic being," James Hillman.
It is precisely the desire to change, to grow and heal that prevents healing, growth and change.
Our strategies make things worse, compound the problem
Experience the fullness of the truth from which you flee and you will change.
Stop running away.
Words are magical.
The name contains the magical potency of the named.
Adam named the animals and had dominion over them.
Labels, diagnostic jargon and the pronoun "it" inhibit understanding the disease.
Avoid the inadequacies of pronoun.
Call disease by its name.
Avoid inarticulate self-destruction and suffering in silence.
If you want to change the world, start with yourself.
You are part of the equation.
Change the way you behave and the world becomes a different place.
Develop a practice of creatively considering your difficulties.
Change in a relationship does not fundamentally depend on the other.
Move from childlike dependence to self-empowerment.
You have the power.
Be willing to let go, to lose your attachment and things take their natural course.
"Everyone wants to get to heaven, but nobody wants to die"
Remedy
it does not take that much to set it right
a dive into the cold pond
a few quick strokes
and then up out onto the sunny bank.
there is a way
a remedy
not the putrid decomposition of a corpse
or the inescapable frustration of the torturer's conundrum,
there is not only wilderness but a path
a trail leading somewhere
if only to another trail.
or it is already right
and we need only persevere
sometimes things need to fall apart
skins ready to shed
we may not understand the code
but it is intelligent
you've got to let go you know.
calm, be calm
sit quiet with the source
it does not require much
just your heart and soul and wits
but the world is offered in return
descent and ascent
one of summer's last nights
come coolly through the window
the crickets are saying goodbye
to die and be reborn.
***
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4
Sometimes old concepts need to be broken to allow for new realizations.
Falling apart precedes reintegration, allowing for radical realignment.
Destruction and construction are two parts of the same process, two sides of the same coin, mutually dependent.
Disease as failure, constraint and frustration is the destruction which is as integral to creativity as construction.
Do the failure, constraint and frustration creatively on a page instead of acting them out.
Disease is the necessary counterpoint to health and growth.
Decay feeds growth which feeds decay.
Disease removes us from a state of ease, from our familiar accustomed state.
Disease disrupts our usual way of being, challenging our attitudes.
Disease demands that we integrate new contents, forcing us into new relationships with experience.
Find a new relationship to your problems.
Art has always been a way of addressing life's irreconcilable circumstances.
Poetry can be a non-invasive interaction with the unaccustomed.
If a culture doesn't have a word for the experience, then the experience doesn't exist.
Linguistics equal reality.
Choose rich phraseology over the poverty of unarticulated experience.
Only Shadows
uncertainty encompasses me
like the blue gray mists on this mountainside.
my vision is cloudy
I cannot see what is only a little in front of me
all the familiar things are lost.
am I on the path or about to fall over the precipice?
disoriented and afraid there is no place to rest
strange shapes loom before me
half-formed creatures obscured by fog.
somewhere the sun shines warm and bright
but here there are only shadows.
***
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5
Balance is not steady.
It is a fluid state, not a static one.
Balance is flow; getting stuck is the problem.
Balance dynamically responds to the dynamics of disequilibrium.
Balance rests on disequilibrium.
Tension allows for new equilibrium.
We must become better at responding to disequilibrium, flow through the darkness, find new ways of experiencing, heap images on it.
Synthesis requires conflict.
Ignorance, confusion and darkness open the way for new insight.
Challenge refines us.
Getting stuck in ignorance, confusion and darkness is the problem.
Find something to do in these problematic states.
It pays to have something to do with, not about the disease.
Art saves lives.
Disease is not damnation.
It is not a hell state where souls are punished without purpose.
Rather, through its suffering disease provides a corrective influence on the world-view which the ego has fashioned.
Disease is necessary, meaningful, complete unto itself and does not need to be healed.
It is we who need to be healed, not the disease.
Our attitude towards the disease, our stubborn refusal needs healing.
Art allows for an openness to revisioning the disease
Endangered
they are cutting down trees again
along the avenue
hundred year old sugar maples
whose only crime is that they might some stormy day
threatened power lines that ought in the first place to be buried.
the beauty is our loss, along with shade
the trees in some way that surpasses human understanding
forgive us.
the planet will survive our intrusions
and though it take ten million years it will somehow heal
it is we who are impoverished
we who are endangered.
***
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6
"If what is fundamental exists within you, how can you say that you have not obtained it?" Wen-i
Disease is fundamental.
It is the philosophers' stone which changes lead into gold.
Disease is part of the stuff of life.
It is not a mistake.
For all your romantic fantasies you cannot keep away.
It is our bad attitude, our resistance to the importance of disequilibrium that gets us further into trouble, that makes things worse.
Disease is integral to life.
Stop resisting.
Deliberately interact with the problematic emotion in a non-directed way.
You are not the director.
"The ancients said that when you want to keep away from what you are hearing and seeing, you attach yourself to what you are hearing and seeing..." Wen-i
Wanting to avoid, you attach.
Ignoring the problem makes it worse.
Denial and premature attempts at healing compound the disease, deepening our inelegant involvement with disequilibrium.
Recognize your attachment to disease.
Creatively embrace the problem.
Find new ways of expressing the disease.
What Hell Is This
What hell is this that follows me
Whichever way I fly
A darkness over all I see
A shadow ever nigh
A cloud that comes before the sun
Eclipsing golden rays
An umber haunting all things done
Until the end of days
A thief who sneaks in from the night
And leaves the heart a husk
Replacing heat and bloody might
With cool vapors of dusk
Each passing day my torment worse
No charm to break the spell
No flight of refuge from this curse
For I myself am hell.
***
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7
Carl Jung said that we ought to personify our disease, that we ought to treat our anger, depression, anxiety, confusion, etc. as though they were people.
Treat your disease like a person; it is at least a sub-personality.
Personal relationships require respect.
Presume intelligence and meaning.
What is the disease's point of view?
Find the images that speak to your disease.
Learn its language, its terminology.
Be deliberate about your relationship with disease.
Establish a relationship.
Talk to it.
Write to it.
Listen to it.
Try to get along.
Believe that it has value.
Respect its point of view.
Imagine its point of view.
Imagine that it wants to enlighten and enrich you.
We have to admit our relationship before that relationship can be improved.
Begin a dialogue.
Address the hellishness on its terms.
Respect yourself, including the part of you that has no self respect.
Indulge the negative perspective on the page.
Already Dead
madness comes on its own time
water dripping in the toilet tank in the middle of the night
the covers uncomfortably warm
a sensation approaching thirst
worries of the day
I am my mother's son
I know what keeps her awake
hearing the car start across the street
the low moan of a once proud man
we all need some inspiration
something to do
victory and defeat entwine
there is something strange,
something disquieting about people loving us.
it is hard to see the pattern
to find a context
but like it or not the shoe fits
sleep is a luxury
refuge undeserved
oblivion.
the cat knows
the insomniac knows
the furniture which will outlive us knows
we are already dead
already ghosts wandering immaterially
in a world of dreams.
the traffic begins on the avenue
the sun struggles up
towards the eastern horizon,
there is no other way.
***
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8
Disease is a wild man breaking into our house, disturbing our daily activities, disrupting our tame, predictable worldview.
Disease as wild man breaks doors and windows, soils carpets and furniture and leaves the refrigerator door open.
Bars and locks, psychologists, accomplishments and positive affirmations cannot keep the wild man out.
Disease as wild man often comes at the worst possible moment, throwing himself through the picture window when we are having a party, or blocking our vision when we most need creative insight.
Primitive, stereotyped perspectives, our unfinished business, interfere with both our ability to enjoy life and our ability to practically address life's difficulties.
Epitaphs
epitaphs unfurl this morning
in the unchallenged sun
banners waving in the breeze
prayer flags
along some Tibet mountain pass,
one hundred reasons why
after its over;
neither of us
were desperate enough,
the years were too
many between us,
there wasn't enough to give,
she believed in love too much
and I too believed too little,
we were both lost but not together
planets traveling differently
drifting apart
in the astrological night.
there is an end to some things of the heart
looking up through roses
on an early day in June
red-pink banners against blue sky.
the trail ends in some deep woods
and goes on no further.
and though I felt it coming
and even allowed it to die
still it is sad.
***
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9
"You shouldn't strain to seek the path; if you seek it, you will lose the path. You need not strain to make things fluid; if you try to make them fluid, thing remain as they are. If you neither seek nor try to produce fluidity, the path will merge with things; then what thing is not the path?" Foyan
Sometimes disease as wildman arrives in the middle of the night and starts yelling in the backyard, disrupting our sleep.
Then stick your head out the window and talk to it.
Don't yell or threaten, talk; ("You need not strain to make things fluid.")
Tell it, "Look, it must get chilly out there. I've left you some blankets underneath that blue tarp. Take them as a present. I'm trying to sleep right now, could you come back in the morning? I'll make you some breakfast."
Befriend the disease as wildman.
Do something for it.
Do something before the crisis.
Leave out some food and the door unlocked when you go to work.
The wildman will reciprocate, bringing you treasures from his world, sweetness and healing, honeycomb and herbs.
Learn to communicate.
Teach it to close the refrigerator door and how to wipe its feet.
Build a room for disease in your psychological house.
Follow it out into the jungle to taste the bounty of the wild.
Semblance
I saw you among the flowers
Their wild beauty unencumbered by gravity's pull
Unearthly,
Rising delicately triumphant in summer's early evening air
Celestial,
Rooted only in the sky
Not you, but your semblance
Her hair greying as yours might be
Falling forward across the blossoms
As she bent down to explore the curl of a petal
The boldness of a stamen.
In that twilight watching
From behind I saw you move
With slow feline grace
Fed and lazy down verdant paths
Suspend with you again
In the foolish certainty of youth
That now is all and forever.
I saw you in that garden
Amid roses yet impossibly full of a fragrance which had long since ceased to be.
Not there, but long before
Strolling in unhurried innocence across lawns still dewy with the promise of that first spring
Before the winter
Before the blight.
And I, breathless between two worlds,
Transfixed by your apparition,
Watched in the fading light of my distant reverie as she turned a stranger's face
Not you.
Not there.
How much has been lost.
***
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10
I am able to say to my sense of abandonment, one of my wildmen,
"Not now. I'll talk to you later. I'm involved in a difficult negotiation and I don't need to feel like a four-year-old trying to get mommy's approval."
And because I have already established a relationship with the disease, already paid it respect, it takes a back seat saying, "All right, but why don't you try x, y, and z?"
And I try x, y, and z and they work and I thank my sense of abandonment for the good advice.
Disease comes to inform us.
Friday Morning
children and lovers desert you
people dig holes in the middle of the road
in cracks of chimney tops
flowers bear fruit
the sun shines in an ordinary way.
enlightenment is not such a blissful state
go ask Buddha about the pain in his foot.
***
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11
"In my school there are only two kinds of sickness. One is to go looking for the donkey while riding on the donkey. The other is to be unwilling to dismount once having mounted the donkey." Foyan
We look for the answer even while it carries us along.
People fear that if they look at the face of their disease, they will perish
We fear that if we entertain it, we will be overwhelmed.
But we are already riding on the donkey.
When disease wants to overwhelm us, it does not need our permission.
It does not need our complicity.
If disease wants to push us over the edge, it can.
The attitude of avoidance, hiding from disease is like the magical thinking of a child who hides from the bogeyman under the bed covers.
Such an position in fact makes it easier for the bogeyman to wrap you up and carry you off.
We are under the covers being beaten up by disease, stubbornly refusing to look.
Hiding makes it angrier.
If we would just stick our head out of the covers and look at the disease, it would not hit us so hard.
Get better at mounting and dismounting the disease.
Attention helps pacify the negativity.
For the Misbegotten
I listen to the wind
but it is not in the wind,
I listen to the cascading brook
but it is not there,
I listen to the song of birds,
to the laughter of children returning from school
but I do not hear it,
the ten thousand voices of the city do not speak it,
not thunder, not systole,
neither rain upon the roof nor a lover's moon,
but sometimes in silence
dense like the bottom of the sea
it comes to me
in narrow places free of hope, I find it
in the wasteland of my wretchedness it draws near
rewarding the vanquished
companioning the lost,
a voice for the misbegotten.
***
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12
You cannot hide behind your hands.
Attempted denial is not actual denial.
Denial does not mitigate painful reality, it obscures and worsens it.
Our oppositional response exaggerates, compounds and makes problematic the resisted psychological experience.
Try to get along.
Do something for not about the problem.
Do something with the disease, not against it.
Make art with it.
It is because we respond to negative emotions as obstacles that they become obstacles. Our response is much more obstructionistic than are the negative emotions.
Find new ways of approaching the obstruction without trying to fix it.
Write about the disease without trying to heal it.
Have the experience of obstruction without getting stuck.
Acceptance of disease promotes healing; loneliness becomes solitude, confusion transforms into creative chaos.
Milky Way
he was very serious
she was anything but,
he was falling in love
she was just having fun,
he wanted it so much she finally gave it to him
but it meant a lot more to him than it did to her.
now he stands out under the milky way
in the dull shadow of the earth
after she has disappeared into the night.
we want love on our terms
to be worthy of the miracle without shedding a skin,
but there are scars among the star
gaping black emptinesses
wounds that will not be filled by any super nova
as he stares up at the milky way
and dreams of wholeness.
***
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13
If you want the disease to be less hostile and obnoxious to you, try being less hostile and obnoxious to the disease.
Disease is not fundamentally hostile to our being.
The psyche is not sadistic.
Imperfect Creation
the maple is bright orange
the morning is gray
success and failure are the best of friends
philosophers have been thinking for centuries
and have concluded nothing
except that there is nothing to conclude
we are distracted by life's necessities
bread on the table
a warm, dry place to sleep
a bit of animal warmth
we are distracted by the brightly colored leaves.
there is no proof of G-d
history is its own reward
ten thousand things conspired to overwhelm us
how much better we feel when we take things into our own hands.
riding down the cliff unscathed
or almost so
it takes one's breath away
anticipating a fall
theories are abundant
but then a unknown is still unknown.
we watched the leaves fall
and morning change to afternoon
contemplating our leaps of faith
with infinite interest
picking pennies off the sidewalk
pieces of religion
no two the same
we are fascinated by our artifice
the poetic works of our hands
what we have made
of this imperfect creation.
***
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14
"There is something in each of you that you will only be able to perceive when you turn around." Foyan
Disease wants attention.
When we attempt to ignore or intimidate the disease it acts out, making a mess of things, because negative attention is better than no attention.
When things get really extreme we enlist the aid of professional therapists to make the disease go away or, at least, shut up.
But it is not going anywhere and will not be denied.
If something keeps biting your ass, have a look.
Leave aside value judgments and preferences.
Become one with the experience of disease.
Find the images that speak to your negative experience.
Write them down.
"You must observe the present state. What is its logic? What is its guiding pattern? Why are you confused? This is the most direct approach." Foyan
Observe rather than direct. Learn rather than act. What is the pattern? What keeps recurring? What is its logic? What are you not understanding?
Disease is like a child who wants the cookies in the middle of the supermarket.
But we know from previous experience that he'll make a tremendous mess, cookies rolling up and down the aisles.
We refuse and he screams, ruining our shopping experience.
He cannot wait, having no faith that we will give him the cookies when we are out of the store, for he has been deprived before.
Leave the cart, taking the child and cookies outside and let him eat.
Pay the disease attention and eventually it will delay its need for gratification to a more opportune moment.
It may be obnoxious, but it's legitimate.
It is we who must change not the disease.
Artistically favor, indulge the negative perspective.
Thunderstorms
that thunderstorms come
on hot humid afternoons
seems proof of God's beneficence.
that all should be still
just for one moment
makes the tumult tolerable.
mountains of guilt
slide down over themselves
destroying whole villages,
balloonists plunge
five and a half miles
down into uncharted seas
and are miraculously unharmed,
this pen cyphers meaning
across the white slopes of this page.
there are various strategies for living
but no one has the answer.
the hill is slippery after the rain
tires turn a little before rolling on their way
the air is almost cool
the sun, retired behind the clouds
grants us a longer twilight.
there is not room
to save all who need saving
somehow a priority must be established.
I would like to work in my garden
to prune back some overreaching plants
but it has started to rain again,
nature has a way
of foiling our plans.
***
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15
Rapport takes time; cooperative experience builds trust.
vDisease needs to be practiced.
Our unpracticed encounters with disease are awkward, dangerous, and unencouraging. We want to run away.
Don't be discouraged.
It takes a while.
First there must be a period of convalescence.
It is a long row to hoe, but you have momentum.
You're not dead in the water.
Every art takes practice.
Patiently invest your energies
Spend time exploring the world of your disease.
Revision the negativity
Make something of it.
The rewards are great.
"When you encounter a situation or hear a saying, your mind gets excited, and you make up an interpretation, in any case you are in a scattered state." Foyan
We are quick to jump to paranoid conclusions, stifling the importance of the negative experience.
Disease comes, often at the worst possible moment, remembering what the ego would rather forget, drawing us toward repressed being.
Pay it homage.
Make a physical memorial.
Write it down.
Dance it.
Homage
This emptiness, this deep black hole
This hunger gaping wide
That swallows heart and breath and soul
Remains unsatisfied.
This silence which makes destitute
Each song and word and cry
Does deafen ear and render mute
Each voice which would defy.
This stillness with its spastic rein
And sharp unyielding bit
Does flesh and spirit both restrain
All motion made forfeit.
And death which holds all life prey
Our master and our host
Removes from us each passing day
And makes of it a ghost.
***
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16
From the point of view of the ego, the disease is a problem, but from the point of view of the disease the ego is a problem.
Assume the negative point of view.
The ego presumes that disease needs its correcting influence, when in fact, disease is the corrective influence in the world-view that the ego has fashioned.
If you want to do something, get out of the way.
The ego judges right and wrong, pretending to know what is best.
In its arrogance it presumes to effect the disease, like the colonialist who disruptively introduces modern conveniences into traditional, native culture, missing the importance of the aboriginal ways.
Observe the ancient ways.
The Night is a Jungle
the night is a jungle
panthers prowl suburban streets
hungry for their prey.
the timid stay indoors
while those possessed venture forth
hungrily.
strange insects fill the darkness with song
calling in a thousand tones
and listening for response,
armies of bats devour the air
the end is made certain
sensible people turn away
and dream their dreams of light.
in the darkness there you are free
with an abysmal reckless freedom
the night embraces all.
there you will find the unity you crave
in the only way that it's granted
oblivion's sweet kiss.
the night is a jungle
towns and cities disappear
all dissolving into the primal pulse
the end which is also the beginning.
now is the time for love and fear
draw closer now to your god
see how the dead rejoice in the darkness
with the wisdom of the grave.
all that you shun
everything wild and dispossessed
calls to you from out in the night,
there comes an hour
when you must answer.
***
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17
Disease awakens us to neglected facets of self.
Disease calls us to be more our authentic self, more fully ourself.
The universe conspires to show us our shadow.
Have a look.
Make a record of the images revealed.
Disease is a persistent advocate of our interest.
It is our vigilant mentor and friend
We harm ourselves.
Disease is trying to communicate with us.
Study its language.
You may have forgotten it, but it has not forgotten you.
Death Waits
death waits
beneath the frozen lake,
on the hospital's sixteenth floor,
on the inside lane of the interstate highway,
in the paintings of Frida Kahlo,
on the couch next to my father,
within the 45 caliber pistol.
death waits
while children play at recess,
while workers take their lunch break,
while old women pray,
and fish eye the wormy hook.
death waits
for the sun to set,
for the moon to wax,
for spring to arrive,
for the song to finish,
for the kettle to boil.
death waits
at the foot of the bed,
at the end of the road,
at the moment of birth,
patiently
with an all knowing smile,
enjoying the breeze on the first day of autumn,
watching the Jews walk to synagogue to pray to their God.
death waits
calmly
immobile
like the perfect Buddha
assured that all will come to him.
***
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18
"Thinking will not do; not thinking will not do either. Then how do you teach people to contemplate. I tell you, just step back and look." Foyan
Contemplate your reality without prejudice. Be open to perceiving in a new manner, with a different part of your brain. Step back. Attentive disengage from the process.
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries it appeared that science would solve all our problems, wonder drugs would eliminate disease, labor saving devices would eliminate the need for work, the mysterious land of the psyche would soon be mapped. We still cherish the naive assumption that science can measure and order our experience. However, life resists knowledge.
Disease is about un-knowing, putting aside our assumptions and entering the unknown.
Culturally we are obsessed with the one who knows and, putting that knowledge to work, fixes the problem.
Our cultural icon is the Hollywood hero who, knowing exactly what must be done, exterminates the opposition, has a drink and gets the girl.
We need some way of approaching the uncertainties of life.
We need to make room for and address the unknown disease.
Address the negative perspective with a creative discipline.
Straight Lines
there is no such thing as a straight line
there is no such thing as a simple explanation
train whistles sound in the night
cars driving down the avenue
sound like waves breaking on the shore
a woman called today to ask me
to help her commit suicide
if as she fears
her life becomes unbearable,
she was barely getting by
before her husband was institutionalized,
I promised her again that I would
I hope she doesn't hold me to it.
the back room is coming along slowly
grass doesn't grow in August.
after the sun set
I weeded the garden,
mint is so aggressive
and finished cutting the trees
out of the hedge and hydrangea,
each year it's the same
sooner or later their roots will give up.
life requires that we be part of something larger than ourselves,
there is no point to living alone.
each week my father seems to slip a little farther away
quietly occupying space.
oceanic cars speed down the road
trains bewail their comings and goings
there are no easy answers
no answers at all.
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Disease requires of us humble receptivity, a suspension of our personal agenda in favor of the deeper currents of our unconsciousness.
Disease requires listening over doing, the active listening that art provides.
"Whatever you are doing, twenty-four hours a day, in all your activities, there is something that transcends the Buddhas and Zen Masters; but as soon as you want to understand it, it's not there. It's not really there; as soon as you try to gather your attention on it, you have already turned away from it. That is why I say you see but cannot do anything about it." Foyan
You are not separate from your experience. It is not there for you to understand or manipulate. You are actively creating your own victimhood.
There is too much doing, too much directed action.
Disease, like grace, functions separate from personal effort.
Find the action which does not violate the negative space.
Be true to the disease.
Dominance
we are fascinated by our newly acquired dominance over nature
television commercials show family vehicles
being driven where vehicles ought not go,
racing through sacred desert land
splashing through pristine mountain streams
cresting remote flower-strewn hills.
we suffer from the world-denying attitude of our major religions
not this world but the next is our goal
we have contended with nature for survival for so long
that we don't know how to stop struggling
we don't know that we've won
that the game must be preserved
for those after us to play.
just because we can doesn't mean we should.
***
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20
Disease challenges and refines us, drawing us away from ephemeral ideals towards practical fulfillments.
Disease is a way of revising our conscious life plan.
What we want is often not what is best for us.
What does the negativity want?
Use your imagination.
Give Me A Call
When you've lost or forgotten whatever you came for
And your guilt seeps like rain through the cracks in the wall
But you don't know which crime you've accepted the blame for
Won't you please give me a call.
When you've let go of the threads by which you've been hanging
And you tumble through the darkness as you fall
Into another tangled web wove of lifeless haranguing
Won't you please give me a call.
When you can't find the ground that you used to stand on
And you're not sure which way that you ought to crawl
But you know that you won't reach the goal that you planned on
Won't you please give me a call.
When your reason takes the veil from your eyes and deserts you
And your nakedness leaves you no room to barter or stall
With the hungry embrace which surrounds and perverts you
Won't you please give me a call.
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21
"Once they have taken it up, they have already misunderstood; acting as if they were in charge, they do not realize Buddhism is not understood in this way" Foyan
Curing disease is neither possible nor desirable.
We cannot work on, cure or understand the darkness.
Find something else to do with the negativity.
We do not work on disease any more than a person sitting on an iceberg directs the berg with his paddle.
Deep ocean currents push against the nine tenths of the iceberg below the surface sailing it independent of the person's puny efforts.
You are not the captain.
Pay attention to where you are going.
Get the drift.
Abandon
Abandon all hope you who pass through this door
Say goodbye to the life you won't live anymore
For the signs that direct you are to clear to ignore
And there's no turning back if you'd want to
Because nothing's the same as it once seemed before
For your whole damn world is changing.
Sickness rages around you without any cure
Their drugs and addictions make you numb and obscure
While the fountains of water all run dry or impure
Don't worry 'bout the chances you're taking
Just get out while you can 'cause you're dying there for sure
For your whole damn world is changing.
Those you do love have been cruelly unkind
They've convinced you to search in the land of the blind
For a comfort and home that you can never find
As they stumble and fall right beside you
But now keep your eyes open and don't look behind
For your whole damn world is changing.
Your castles and temples have turned into sand
And they've all washed away with the dreams that you've planned
And they've left you there floating with no ground to stand
Amid dark waves that threaten to drown you
Just forget what you've lost and start swimming for land
For you whole damn world is changing.
The storm outside raging does batter and blast
And blow open that old door which you had held fast
And it sucks you along as the threshold is past
Out into the cyclone your spinning
Now you'd better start living like each moment's your last
For your whole damn world is changing.
***
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22
One cannot simultaneously "accept" something and "work on" it.
Working to change something is the opposite of accepting it.
It is not a job.
It is not a problem to be fixed.
It is a message to be revealed.
We don't need to do something about disease; we need to do something with it.
We don't need to understand or figure disease out; we need to creatively interact with it.
We don't need to work on disease; we need to play with it.
We need to "play with" not "work on" the "inner child."
Write in a playful way.
Fancy not analysis is the rule.
It may be an ugly or a sad game, but it is still a game.
You will not get to know someone if you believe that you already know him, especially if you believe that you already know him enough to change him.
Abandon that knowing attitude and humbly, diligently pay homage.
As Long
as long as you think that you can fix it
set it right
unknot or transform it,
as long as you believe
that you can heal it
resolve it
or make it work,
as long as you expect to forgive, forget or outlive it,
as long as you imagine that there is a possible right response
that it is unnatural, a mistake, an aberration,
as long as you make war on it or excuses for it,
as long as you feel singled out or especially cursed because of it,
as long as you think that it shouldn't be
or that it will change
you have not felt
how deep the pain goes.
***
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23
Disease is much bigger than us.
It is not inside of us; we are inside of it.
Don't hate your disease.
Be nice.
Be hospitable.
It's bigger than you.
It can kick your ass anytime it wants and has done so many times.
If it is not currently kicking your ass, it's just being friendly.
Be friendly in return.
If you are not currently in crisis, take the opportunity to improve your rapport with the negative through creative expression of the disease.
Close at Hand
the end is close at hand
sun raging through October's windows
so close you have stopped counting the pages
peace is not warm
tranquility is cessation
the final chill
hypothermia
entropy
molecules coming to rest.
my mother watches the obituary column
and today finds one of her friends dead
the end of the leaves
the end of the year
the end is never far
even on the sunniest summer day
in the midst of childhood's games the doors are closing
rusting shut.
beginnings are aplenty
distracting us from mourning the finality
everything contains its own annihilation
God is at once the endless beginning
and the beginningless end,
people worry about the sun burning out
the world however keeps limping along
with everything we've loved passing
until we too are no more.
my mother calls upstairs to ask
if I can watch my father who is also passing
while she goes to the funeral of someone
only yesterday
well loved.
***
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24
In a garden when the first two cotyledon leaves of a plant appear, it is impossible to tell what type of plant it is, squash, pumpkin or gourd.
Later, when the plant flowers it may be clear that it is a gourd, but still we cannot tell what type of gourd it is until it further matures.
Disease is a plant that needs to grow.
Tend it.
Heap images on it.
See what fruit it will bear.
"I always tell you that what is inherent in you is presently active and presently functioning, and need not be sought after, need not be put in order, need not be practiced or proven. All that is required is to trust it once and for all. This saves a lot of energy." Foyan
Emerson wrote, "Traveling is a fool's paradise," because everything we need is already here.
Nurture the experience of being out of sorts.
Cultivate the imbalance.
Give the disease an artistic arena in which to perform.
Dichotomy
the hills grow black
against the dark blue western sky.
the full moon crests the eastern ridge
shining down through trees.
the brook flush with snow still melting off the mountain
roars melodiously through the quiet gathering of night.
this morning I woke in the city
now I am alone on this mountain
the distance cannot be bridged.
***
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25
Adopt a broader frame to see the whole picture.
Get a larger screen so that you can see what is being projected rather than having the image spill off onto the curtains.
You are confused because you do not se the larger context of your sufferings.
Manure too concentrated burns the plant. Manure spread out fertilizes the field.
Give the disease more room.
Allow it to unfurl and express itself.
Spread out your shit.
Manure is valuable shit; shit in its proper context.
Another World
there is another world
below the surface of your thoughts
where the same things happen
but in a different way
for purposes you have not imagined
there Buddha sits declaring,
"How wonderful, how wonderful,
all beings are already enlightened,
just as they are."
there all myths of all lands are true
there our love and pain form symphonies
the mundane is rendered sacred
there mighty currents flow
rivers in the sea
unfathomable,
the ancient ones sit with inscrutable smiles
kaleidoscopically
questions find their answers
language finds its truest form
inexpressibly,
there is no wrong or shouldn't be
no wasted time or effort
there only that which must be learned
the vast, insistent present.
we are the shipwrecked on that sea
we are the corpse dragged down
we are all that can never be
the garden of the drowned
the sunken riddle now unfurled
below the surface of this world.
***
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26
That annoying black spot that you have been trying to rub off the page is microfiche.
Magnify it.
What does it say?
Enlarge the disease.
Exaggerate.
Indulge.
Inquire.
Disease is like a word processing program that has not fully inflated from a compressed state.
It is frustrating and time consuming to get stuck in the unexpanded area, but we do not want to trash that part of the program.
Expanding it we discover that it is the spell check and the word count and that makes our life easier.
What Ails Thee
What ails thee king? Where is thy woe?
How comes this land benighted?
There's naught to reap of what they sow
All hearts are disunited.
Where is the dawn that broke so sweet?
The sun which promised life?
Chilled by the cold and scorched by heat
The land is lost in strife.
How fares the bold and foolish knight?
How often must he fail?
He after famine, fear, and fight
Returns without the grail.
A wounded healer without rest
A queen in spells of magic
And not to find, ours but to quest
On journeys blessed or tragic.
***
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27
"If people recognize false thoughts and deliberately try to stop them, it's because you see that there are false thoughts.
If you know you're having false thoughts and deliberately practice contemplation to effect perception of truth, this is also seeing that there are false thoughts.
If you know that falsehood is fundamentally the path, then there is no falsehood in it." Foyan
Our world is not as we would like it to be. But that discomfort is the path.
If you know that disease is fundamentally the path, then there is no disease in it.
The body creates the disease.
Leave well enough alone.
Something is required, but it is not your manipulation.
Disease needs expression.
Like heated, subterranean, volcanic forces, disease requires a vent or it will explode.
Become an advocate for the dark.
Give voice to the negativity.
Feed it.
It's hungry.
Despite What Came Before
the dreams are fevered
but there is no heat
staccato vignettes
learning to fly
a mountain retreat
my childhood home
with brief wakings between them
time just to turn
to pull the covers up or down
a sleep not giving to rest
a mental somnambulism
a working out of what?
the summer sand
a classroom almost naked
a restaurant enshrouded
a caribou brought down by wolves
an antelope by lions
the herd moves on
not far
relieved
and settles down to grazing
so much of life is going on
despite what came before
we each have our burdens
and if not yet
then we anticipate their coming
the world is full of or horrors
mundane and profound
last night as I lay close to sleep
I could have cried but didn't
this morning out of fevered dreams
I touched my brow and wept,
the whole world is crying.
***
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Computerized noise reduction is accomplished by broadcasting the same sound wave one-half phase off, so that as one wave rises, the other falls.
Like cures like.
The disease done creatively becomes the cure.
Treat disease homeopathically rather than by contraries.
Unplug your ears.
Listen, and memorialize what you hear.
Disease doesn't need or want to be captain of the ship, but it's tired of being kept under the deck. If it has to grab the helm to get attention, it will.
Hunger in the Midst of Plenty
the sky is mottled
clouds barely shielding the sun
cows graze distantly on the hill
old friends are reunited
the air is still
like a soft kiss good night.
I feel myself a part of it all
pleasantly in the company,
I am sitting at the table
enjoying in the fullness,
I am the hungry dog
looking for scraps.
there are many unreasonable expectations
things that with age
we learn to do without.
there are deep wildernesses in the soul
where human comfort is sacrificed
where human things are put aside.
springs burst forth between dry rocks
the sun peaks through the clouds
hunger greets me in the morning
the untrammeled face of youth
the perfect curve of a woman's behind
the forgotten left along the way.
there is something burning
with everything in fruit
impossible to extinguish
there are hungers impossible to fill,
no matter where you are
the compass always points north.
***
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29
The inscription over Jung's door at Bollinger reads, "Invited or not the gods will attend." You may not like the disease, but it's not going away.
Invited or not, the horror will attend.
It has a right to be here.
Pay homage to the maddened gods.
Freud observed that the repressed remains primitive.
That is to say, disease becomes worse if we attempt to ignore it.
It is easier to have rapport with a sophisticated, articulate disease.
It's easier to know what is required.
Confusion needs expression, needs to be heard, practiced.
Spinning
one moment ago I was a child
and in an instant I shall be old,
time knows no bounds.
that night should become day
that day should turn into night
is only a trick of this rotating planet,
they are constantly in place
it is we who spin madly.
her mother was alcoholic and committed suicide
everything went wrong in Paris.
the cat will meow until she is fed
idealists think they can save the world
I am falling asleep
dreaming of good-byes.
the Chinese destroy Tibet to save its people
in Afghanistan human bones are dug, ground and sold as fertilizer
today I washed my sheets
tonight she is not here.
the darkness forces its way inside my head
it is comforting to turn away from the sun.
my father cannot refuse
the few needs which press him,
this man who has denied so much.
I hold him as he slips from life
especially weak when he has just risen
tucking him in I stroke his hair
as I know no one has for a very long time
if ever
and certainly not much.
he is grateful for his son.
I turn out the light
and say good nightv
as death spins silently closer
***
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Learn the language, the vocabulary of disease.
Become fluent with your negativity.
Allow that destruction style and grace.
Make way.
Make a way for the disease, creatively.
Disease has gotten a bad rap.
It needs better public relations.
If it weren't for my sense of inadequacy, I never would have accomplished so much."
It is not so much the disease, but our relationship with the disease that is the problem.
Disease is a wise old mentor and we act like a know-it-all kid.
Urine
she complains bitterly against her lot
but I just back from hearing tales of Auschwitz and Hiroshima
have little sympathy for her.
my father
eighty years old
tottering and mostly blind from a stroke
has wet his pants again
this she notices like something spilled in his lap
while I am with him in the bathroom
readying him for bed.
"I just washed three pairs of pants," she wails
ignoring my offer to rinse out the gray sweatpants
and I, still imagining the seared flesh of the living
and forty-four children deported after one-year hiding
singing to a death camp
I, so situated, am immune to her point.
suffering and love are relative qualities
and when life shorts us on the genuine article
we make up our own.
***
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Disease has purpose.
Disease is complete and meaningful.
Disease isn't stupid.
It isn't a mistake.
Disease is not broken and doesn't have to be fixed.
Disease isn't due to a character flaw.
Take it easy on yourself.
Loving the "bad" person that you are is a necessary stage.
The meaning of life comes from the meaning of our limitation, disease and death.
We must expand our imagistic vocabulary to appreciate the meaning of our disease.
Art is the only language rich enough to encompass the meaning of the negative
Disease has an ecology.
It is a complete system.
One must look at the whole picture and not intervene in a piecemeal manner.
Take a holistic perspective.
Find the images that make up the whole picture.
Filling the Void
one expects that love will matter
and then it doesn't
or it does
but not enough
or not in the right way
and slowly you work your way through the list
money, time, wisdom, peace
each one disappointing in its acquisition
failing to fill the void.
it's almost better not to have
to keep that hope alive
imagining some satisfaction just out of reach.
I see a weariness in the eyes of those who have gone before me.
the only way to keep from being fooled
is to stop believing
to find some comfort in a non-human scale
the time of rocks
the spirit of the wind
the measure of the sky.
hollow are the ways of man
the petty pride of kings
bend heaven down
or raise the earth
what are the things of this world worth?
***
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There is an economy to disease.
If you do it here, you don't have to do it there, but it will be done.
Creatively interact with disease rather than blindly acting it out.
Get past the denial.
Accept the pain.
It is what it is.
After so much denial now it is time to indulge the obsessional point of view.
"Uglify," Lewis Carol.
Humanity
we are all animals
humanity is never more than a veneer
those who are deeply human
are already saints.
you can see it at the supermarket
behind the wheel
in sports and politics
and of course
on the battlefield
territoriality and domination are the rule
cooperation is the exception.
the best we can manage is the pack
the gang, the team
an us against them
the truly social animals, bees and ants took a different evolutionary fork.
fetal development follows the development of the species
ontology recapitulates phylogeny
the embryo's first and fish-like brain is soon covered
by a bilobed amphibian brain
which in turn is swallowed by a mammalian brain
itself eventually buried beneath the human cortex,
but the ancient instincts are difficult to suppress
it's hard to be human;
most people eat like animals
most people love like animals.
there is something to be said for visiting these lower brains
but a little humanity goes a long way
humanity is the icing on the cake
the choice
the art of living
everything else is just reflex,
a little humanity is all the humanity we have.
***
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"When people do not understand an answer, they produce views based on words. They do not know it is something you answer for yourself-what truth have you found, and where does it lead? Therefore it is said, 'It's all you.' Look! Look!" Foyan
We are born like a mansion.
Our many rooms represent a great variety of being, perception and potential.
From birth we become effected by other people's valuations of our many rooms.
We are rewarded for entering some and discouraged from dwelling in others.
Eventually we come to forget about whole wings and floors of the mansion.
We come to regard ourselves in a limited way.
We cannot see ourselves beyond our habits, our habitual ways of being.
Mind is conditioned.
There are ghosts running through the neglected rooms of our psyche.
Some rooms are frightening.
Some are full of joy.
Madness
There is a madness in our souls
A tiger freshly caged
Who restlessly alert patrols
Captivity enraged.
There is a darkness in our eyes
A place unknown by light
Where measure's lost and order dies
And everything's in flight.
In every heart wild passions flare
Which threaten to devour
With fire and ice all that we dare
To build in our brief hour.
Strange hungers do our bowels consume
With flesh and bone within
For some dark birth inside our womb
Whose shelter is our skin.
Fearful the night and shadow's urge
Black snakes within their holes
Whose venom's bite as they emerge
Brings madness to our souls.
***
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In the desperation of disease we pound our head against the wall until it cracks open.
Inside the crack we see what turns out to be a doorknob.
Now deliberately breaking off plaster we uncover a doorway long ago sealed over.
We are a mansion with doorways plastered over, rooms lost, whole wings forgotten.
"Search for the coin in the river where you lost it." Wen-yen
The door has always been there.
The key is hidden in the one place we refuse to look.
We are so ashamed, so convinced of the worthlessness of our disease that we avoid exploring its recesses.
The key is the pain and does not need to be healed.
What trees are falling in your psychological forest that you are not hearing?
Listen, dance, paint.
Jungle
Perhaps the jungle's grown too dense
The passage blocked inside
By mountains rising up immense
Or rivers stretched too wide.
Maybe I'm weak in heart and mind
With plans so foolishly bold
To brave the perils search and find
A fabled city of gold.
Perhaps the night's too dark and filled
With ghosts of promises broken
With umbered haunts of wishes willed
And echoes of love misspoken.
Maybe all fables are for fools
And jungle's darkness reigns
But love bids me oppose all rules
And cherish all the pains.
***
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Disease is a treasure-laden time-capsule containing all that has been lost, repressed and denied.
All the selves that were not allowed to be are there waiting to be explored.
Face up to the witch and get the treasure.
Disease can be a process of enrichment.
The hollowing out wrought by disease results in an increased capacity, an opening to a greater level of psychic organization.
Find a medium with which to creatively explore.
Cooperate with the process.
Refuge
the world returns to nothingness
with nothing to mark its passing.
everything extinguishes itself
from satiety or neglect.
winter and early spring
passions cease to move.
once it seemed there was something to be done
somewhere to go
now all is lost
over before it started.
the animal needs are fed
the old man sits
impatiently waiting for death
the foolish days coalescing into one.
the simple things are lovely
brightness of sun
warmth of bath water
flavor of food
soft aliveness of the flesh
spicy, sweet smells.
the towers are fallen
what have the centuries accumulated?
the wonder is unearthly
wondrous because of its transcendence
something brought
an endowment
a crown atop an empty head.
we are left to feel something
without a place to feel it
there is no home
no wandering
there, just there
take refuge.
***
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Light is brighter on coming out of the dark.
After experiencing the night there is an increased capacity to enjoy the day.
The darkest hour is not only right before the dawn, the darkest hour brings the dawn.
The crest of a wave is only as high as the trough is deep.
The psyche is not sadistic.
It does not demand our attention to torment us, but calls us back to authentic living lost long ago in the blanket process of denial.
The pain was repressed, but so were essential joys.
Remembering the pain remembers the joy.
Remember the pain; assemble its pieces, its members into a whole.
Cultivated, disease transforms, if not like a caterpillar into a butterfly, then like a larva into a moth or at least a maggot into a fly.
Get wings.
Realize the benefit, the wisdom inherent in your disease.
Disease taken in stride transforms from a stumbling block into a stepping stone.
Misplacing
I am good at misplacing my affection
believing that the crescent moon could do other then fall through the night
enamored of the possibility
that what I see in love's dark eye
is more than my reflection.
this light is not the sun
although such shadowed fools as I might be excused for thinking so;
tiny, buzzing, winged things in sad electric orbits.
youth compels us into embrace
ensuring the survival of the species
but age makes our loneliness complete.
still, I would have thought there more than all these false redemptions
more than the sweetness of my blood
the throbbing pulse
the misting of my eye,
still there beats that silly hope
that obscene wish for someone's understanding,
that I have loved too well is but my most poetic fault.
***
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37
Locomote with greater ease.
Navigate.
It doesn't have to be so paralyzing.
Just let go.
Enjoy the ride.
It's not your job to fix it.
Stop trying.
You're not the cook,
Just taste the soup.
Disease is closing the windows of our house on a hot summer day.
The ego, complaining that the house will get hotter, rushes around opening them.
Eventually disease overpowers the ego, punching it in the belly.
Then the ego, lying on the floor catching its breath with windows closed, realizes for the first time that the house has air conditioning.
Sad To Tell
Oh children it's sad to tell
That you like me were born in hell
And those who claim to wish you well
Have hung your soul to dry and sell.
Crucified by mother's pain
Chafing from your father's rein
Your heart is broken and in chain
I wish somehow I could explain.
There is no way to count the cost
The love you crave is ever lost
You're brutalized and double crossed
That fragile spring betrayed by frost.
They feed you on their unfilled dreams
To fence you in their selfish schemes
And justify by any means
Ignoring all your muffled screams.
***
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38
"When you were infants you also heard sounds and saw forms, but you didn't know how to discriminate. Once you came to the age of reason, then you listened to discriminating thinking, and from that time on have suffered a split between the primal and the temporal." Foyan
Living is fundamentally a non-intellectual activity.
Essentially experience cannot be apprehended by thought.
"Live in the land of thought yet untouched by thought." Foyan
The thinking self is not the inherent definition of our being.
Do something with your experience besides analysis.
Stop trying to explain it away.
Life defies analysis.
Thinking about life is at best a poor second to living it.
"They are shrouded by the light of knowledge, attached to an extreme of knowledge." Foyan
Every understanding is an approximation.
All scientific theories are models, inevitably subject to revision.
Everything is relative.
Nothing is written in stone.
It all depends on how you look at it.
There is no objective truth.
Poetry provides us with a richer vocabulary with which to interpret experience.
If you could have figured it out, you would have figured it out already.
Pick a new strategy.
Become creative with the negative.
No Joy
do not expect joy
from a job well done
exhaustion has its own rewards.
do not expect satisfaction
from a principled life
loneliness has a tax.
comfort erodes
beneath this hard rain
were the only salvation
is a deep root.
there is some small victory
in opening your eyes to the morning
or surviving to rest again at day's end
but it is a fool's game.
the lights are out across the farm
there is no answer in the night
there is an awkwardness to living
a moth breaking its wings against the windowpane.
understanding is not the end of suffering
but the start.
what you want is not available
at any price,
it never was.
you may continue to dream your dreams
but there is no joy in waking.
***
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39
"The non-duality of initial experience and fundamental reality is called ultimate enlightenment." Ashvaghosha
We experience beauty directly.
We find the painting beautiful or not.
Our aesthetic response to experience is usually obvious, immediate, visceral.
vWe don't have to think whether we like a taste or sound or smell.
Experience ought also to be immediately visceral, not merely intellectual.
Stop watching life, live it.
We must re-experience our lives.
We must acquire an artistic approach to our experience.
Write to your negative experience.
"Those who seek for the truth should realize that there is nothing to seek....Thoughts perpetually change and cannot be grasped because they possess no self-nature." Ma-tsu1
Truth is often very hard to determine.
It is a slippery fish.
Aesthetic is stronger than knowing.
Beauty over truth.
The universe, including disease, has an aesthetic.
Art, painting, writing, dance, etc., is a non-intellectual way of paying attention to disease.
Art not analysis.
Not One
the leaden weight of a new day
not one but many.
privilege taken to the extreme
increases the inevitable oppression
just to set it down
provides relief
to share it with the page
passing comfort
like the sun racing through the sky.
a world not one but many
a different world on opening the eyes
unfamiliar
without the accouterments of self
gray and shadowy
sunny and warm
the mirage of consistency dissipates.
by evening today has changed again
the air somewhat hopeful
strange the things we cling to
the way in which we count
fragments of fairy tales
hearth and dark woods.
the cat seems impatient with these musings
wanting to go outside and hunt
unburdened by self consciousness.
to set it down
not once but many times
to make a story of the different days that greet us
comforted among the unfamiliar.
***
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40
Life is tragic.
Death, loss, sickness, pain, the simple passing of time all contribute to the tragedy that is living.
The ancient Greeks knew this and wrote plays about it.
Find the images that describe the tragic nature of experience.
Life, tragedy, beauty and truth cannot be essentially understood.
We are not required to figure out our disease, only to creatively engage it, to tell a story with it, to find a context that includes it, a mythology that encompasses it, a cosmology that gives it place.
Story over analysis.
Stop analyzing and write a poem.
The Laureate
High-built walls of stony girth
Hold prisoner amorphous earth
Protecting with their cool, grey pardon
Recesses of that sunken garden.
Whose lawns were filled as every walk
By congregates to hear the talk
And render in that evening's shade
The poet greater accolade.
And there the aged laureate
Ensconced in a gazebo sat
A weathered Buddha wizened wise
Staring out with complacent eyes.
Over the throng who'd gathered round
Across the flowered and sculpted ground
Taking it seemed recondite pleasure
In rhythms with those walls did measure.
Then read his rhymes to their applause
An hour forced to take a pause
When with a cough his voice did harden
As cool night sank into the garden.
While all the while from treetop's towers
Indifferent to the poems and flowers
Unbridled nature's voice rang strong
As one bird sang its sunset song.
For poems are made like garden walls
In patterns wrought from what befalls
Enclosures fashioned poor or grand
From just whatever lay at hand.
Their words restraining shapeless earth
Have won a place of human worth
From nature brutal and sublime
Who little cares for human rhyme.
***
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41
"The true nature of ignorance is the very nature of enlightenment; the empty body of illusions and projections is the very body of realities." Grand Master Yongjia
Children are very good at not knowing, at not understanding, at being confused.
Children do not assume that they are supposed to know.
Adults are very uncomfortable not knowing.
They strive to understand.
They pretend to understand when they don't, obscuring experience with superficial labels.
The nature of darkness is that you don't know.
Love it; you don't have to know it.
Stop looking for explanations.
Dinosaurs
the damned walk down the avenue
mole-like
without vision
with nothing to recommend them.
they work as little as possible
at anything
they eat far too much
the sun has already set on their sorry asses
they are dinosaurs
yet unaware that they are extinct.
I cannot blame them for this
they have no idea what they are missing
they cannot conceive of their damnation
their brains are arrested in an early developmental stage
barely human
worn down by centuries of oppression
or addled by too much comfort
the outcome is stupidly the same.
they feed
or dream of feeding their animal souls
with two hands
unable to satiate their selfishness
in the midst of plenty
they war with their neighbor.
I used to look at them with hope
but experiencing their stubborn refusal to live
cured me of that disposition
and also of the pity that replaced it,
then I felt disgust
but came to find them unworthy
of so active an emotion,
now there is only a certain pathetic indifference
as when one drives past roadkill
a dead skunk or raccoon
quickly on one's way to somewhere else
a brief regret
the smallest instant of horror
easily overlooked in the rearview mirror.
that is how I feel
seeing the damned promenade
on the avenue
already dead.
***
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42
Socrates claimed to be the wisest man because he knew that he didn't know, whereas others thought they knew but didn't.
The more you know, the more you know you don't know what you know.
Adults jump to arbitrary conclusions attempting to avoid uncertainty.
As Dylan sang, "We all sit here stranded, but we're all doing our best to deny it."
Tolerate ambiguity.
Stop pretending to know.
Poetry allows us to engage without knowing.
Not
not food, not money, not love
not sex, not fame, not lightning
not freedom, not God, not politics
not winning, not losing, not giving up
not beauty, not truth, not death
not poetry, not school, not the wind
(certainly not school)
not embarrassment, not being right
not timing, not enthusiasm
not birthdays, not diagnoses
not paintings or colors or books
not children, not being lost
not home, not history, not tomorrow
not crime or cultural genocide
not mistakes, not luck
not astrology, not the bible
not mother, not father
not your second grade teacher
not work, not vacation, not retirement
not patience, not growth
not today, not here, not now
not hunger, not drought
not Venus or Mars
not north or west or up or down
not intentions, good or bad
not almost (not even in horse shoes)
not questions, not knowing
not knowing that you don't know
not goodness or evil or destiny,
nothing is as important as it seems.
***
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43
"Right now if you are questioned and cannot speak, where is the fault? It is generally because of seeing forms where there is no form, hearing a voice where there is nothing said, forcing rationalizations where there is no reason, asserting control where there is no control." Foyan
Not everything can be thought.
Thinking is overrated.
Knowledge is overrated.
I know now what I didn't know then, but I don't know yet what I don't know yet.
The mind cannot understand the mind.
Disease is not inside of us, we are inside of it.
We cannot understand disease because disease is greater than we are.
There is too much doing, too much making, too much effecting.
Feelings are apprehended through receptivity, not doing.
When you tumble under the water, disoriented, don't flail about madly, relax, wait to discover which way is up.
Discover the truth of disease through creatively engaging it.
Saturday's Game
at first there wasn't enough money
then there was
then there wasn't enough love
then there was
then my father's disease
and my mother's anger,
the older we get
the more that assails us.
rules are for children
the law is a tightening noose.
at first the words came infrequently
like a national holiday
now they flow like a spring-fed mountain brook
at first she was small
now her feet are almost as big as mine.
this ball is too big
this one too soft.
strange how much things change
and how little the changes matter.
halfway through the season
the team hasn't won a game yet
but the kids are having a good time.
***
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44
"As soon as you accept and approve anything, recognizing it as your own, you are immediately bound hand and foot and cannot move. So even if there are a thousand possibilities, nothing is right once you have recognized, accepted and approved it as your own." Foyan
The hero has an agenda, knows what needs to be done and does it.
The arrogant hero conquers and captains.
The heroic ideal is made possible by the naive belief that science, i.e., "knowledge" can encompass and order our experience and solve our problems.
Hercules kills Proteus.
The hero reduces multifaceted reality to permit single-focused action.
The heroic archetype covers a tiny fraction of our experience; heroism is so rarely an option.
Adopt a less hostile attitude to the unknown.
Be less directed with disease.
Give it space, time, voice.
Pools of Hell
Oh spread those wings in fledgling flight
And flutter upwards towards the light
Away from this eternal night
Upon whose shores we dwell
By shaded pools of hell.
To bathe one brief triumphal day
With gladdened heart in golden ray
And turn our troubled thoughts away
From tears which rained and fell
In shaded pools of hell.
So render form and weighty mass
To images inside a glass
Our bodies' breath too soon does pass
Into the shapeless spell
Of shaded pools of hell
Then take the chisel and engrave
Heroic doings of the brave
And yet for us there's none to save
No bright Elysian dell
Just shaded pools of hell.
***
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45
"When you want to manifest it by the light of knowledge, you've already obscured it." Foyan
The problem is the way we think about it.
The way we think about the problem is the problem.
The way we think about the problem precludes solution.
The problem is the way we think.
"Learning Zen is called a gold and dung phenomenon. Before you understand it, it's like gold; when understood it's like dung." Foyan
The way we think about spirituality is a problem.
The way we think about soul is a problem.
The way we think about health is a problem.
The way we think about disease is a problem.
The way we think is a problem.
Change you personal mythology.
"It is just that you avoid what is right before you." Foyan
The biggest obstacle to realizing God is our conception of God.
God
god is an empty promise,
god is the severed hand,
the tortured corpse,
night terror,
the approaching battle,
a terrible swift sword,
a silent plague.
god is the end of all you have known,
no love,
no sex,
famine.
god is the perfect silence and the deafening roar,
the opportunity lost,
the end of hope,
the first injury,
and the final insult.
god is the good rejected and the horror embraced,
god is the opposite of all you believe
knowing which all is swept into nothingness.
god is the end of comfort,
god is the light which makes pale all other lights,
the sun which blinds and the eye which is blinded
god is the sudden frost,
the conqueror worm,
the drought and the quaking earth,
the tidal wave and the rain which washes all away.
god is the taste whose sweetness cancels all other flavors,
god is the wholeness which annihilates the parts.
take comfort in your searching
cling to your imperfections.
god is the devouring fire,
the idiot's dream.
god is death and god is dead
god is the starving baby,
the deformed birth.
god is the suburban desert,
unholy laughter,
shameful waste,
senseless destruction,
craziness at noon,
nightmare,
the end of days,
motherless children trembling in the wilderness,
unforeseen peril,
every insect that craves your blood,
humanity's abysmal stupidity,
harvest lost,
the suffering which wastes your world,
the end of innocence,
the gauntlet,
blight,
holocaust,
genocide,
genetic engineering,
nuclear waste,
sand falling through your fingers,
my stroke debilitated father,
cynical wisdom,
black humor,
the search for nothing,
the dreamer who does not awaken,
an unfinished poem.
god is unrequited longing,
an unknown hunger,
polluted rivers,
dead oceans,
the weeping earth,
babies starving in the womb,
god is waiting for you at the end of your pointless existence.
***
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46
The thinking self is not our primary self.
The thinking self, the ego isn't the hub of a system of selves.
Thinking is peripheral, not central.
The ego is not the hub of your experience.
Change the primary coordinates of your identity.
Identify with the negative.
"Inside your body and outside in the physical world, every phenomenon is the original reality - nothing is not it." Foyan
The self that imagines disease to be the problem ought not to be taken as the primary coordinate, the measure of all things.
We do well to identify our selves with the full spectrum of our being and perception.
The self that imagines disease to be the problem is itself the problem.
Imagine the disease.
Bridge
the monkey lay dead
roadkill in the middle of some African highway
there in a photograph on page sixty-three
of the National Geographic Magazine.
in the next issue the editors wrote
that many people were disturbed by the photo
and that some had suggested building a rope bridge over the highway
for the monkeys who wished to cross.
black rats devour baby sea turtles
uncounted species become extinct like clockwork
people slaughter each other singly and en masse.
the killing is okay as long as we don't have to see it.
that rope bridge just won't stretch far enough.
***
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47
No amount of logic is going to cure or fix it.
It is a fixation.
It's okay not being able to fix, not being able to reconcile things.
Pay the problem attention; you don't have to fix it
Life is a series of irreconcilable circumstances.
"Enlightenment is always with people, but people subjectively pursue things." an ancient
Explaining the feeling does violence to the feeling.
Thinking is not integral to the solution, it is part of the problem.
Make a place to experience the feeling creatively.
"You should realize there is someone who does not seek to know." Nanji
There is no possibility of understanding your problem.
There is no reward for doing so.
Even if we could, just figuring out the problem doesn't fix it.
Stop your whoring after truth.
Thank God we can't figure it out; how boring life would become.
If you feel responsible for fixing the problem, then you have two problems: the problem, and your belief that you are responsible for fixing it.
It loses a lot of hellishness when you stop trying to figure it out.
Waiting
there is a waiting
like the sky
when it is about to snow
a quiet premonition
a hushed gray pregnancy
silencing
the enshrouded world.
there is an expectation
like someone holding their breath
a moment suspended
outside of life
an impossible tension
demanding relief.
morning turns to afternoon
the day proceeds
like some underwater balletv
stony clouds and oceanic pressures.
there is
no air to breath
no snow to fall
only the cold nakedness
of now.
***
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48
"The knife does not cut itself, the finger does not touch itself, the mind does not know itself, the eye does not see itself." an ancient
The mind is a slippery fish.
Thoughts keep changing.
According to the Buddhists, a belief in consistency is one of the first illusions of mind.
The brain is a reducing filter, damping down millions of visual, auditory, tactile and other sensations each second, stereotyping perception.
Thinking is even more stereotyped.
Buddhism teaches, "The mind is conditioned."
Be suspicious of your take on the situation.
You've misunderstood.
Stop jumping from conclusion to conclusion; explore the wilderness.
Follow the signs.
Find the images.
"What is actual is true and what is true is actual." Chao-chou
There is no "thing," separate from you to be thought of, to be apprehended by logic.
It doesn't exist as a separate entity, an "it".
Things are not the way they seem to be.
The problem is irrational, not subject to understanding.
A chaotic, illogical system can't be figured out.
If analysis were going to work, it would have worked already.
It is a failed strategy.
Until The Dawn
one pathetic ending after another,
sitting on benches outside the front door
the sky is starry enough
music pouring out of the open windows is rhythmically pleasing
two blueberry pies cool inside on the kitchen counter
my right knee aches
the outside of my left foot hurts
spent all day hucking brush
piling up of sections of fallen trees
clearing the right field up on No. 9.
brush piles piled high
the crew about to finish this last week of nine
one pathetic ending after another
dinner's over
innocence is lost
hope extinguished
soon the blueberry pies will be history
some of these stars no longer exist
appearances can be deceiving.
I am nostalgic for things not yet past
movies draw to a close
energy drains
last drops squeezed from the remains of the day
local, wild blueberries about to go out of season.
maybe we had too much too fast
the moon has already set
moment after moment ebbs away
returning to the ether
a continuous leaving.
the story's over
the pies consumed
turn out the lights
close the door
sleep will comfort us until the dawn.
*** Back to top 49
We become trapped in our childish experience of the world.
Not admitting our childhood experience of pain we are doomed to endlessly recapitulate that pain.
If you can't remember your childhood, rest assured it still remembers you.
If you can't remember your past just look around.
If you're not in touch with your feelings, be sure that they're still in touch with you. Disease remembers the things that our ego would like to forget.
Pay attention to what gets in your face.
Write a poem.
Jealous God
memory fails
but it is not hard to imagine
to extrapolate from the present how it must have been.
it is at once the most pervasive and most secret attitude
invisible because of its ubiquity
without relationship
it is the primary matter
that which was not known better than
seemingly the ground of the world
the way things are.
how hard it is to reach beyond that primary indoctrination
that deficiency of animal touch
of kind words
of encouragement or appreciation
to reach beyond that empty hesitation
the overwhelming nothingness
that curtain which falls before the fullness of being
a jealous God
still hungry
for blood and fire.
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