The Good, the Beautiful and the True: seems the world is perfect as it is
Helpless to feel beauty in anything other than a pretty woman
Erroneous notions of goodness and the truth follow every footstep
Given human nature to freak out at insects as xenophobia
Orders us to accept only the familiar, no wonder our terror
Observing a cockroach slowly climbing a wall and flying towards us
Despite meditation, breath control and study, I am not unperturbed
Terrified my mind fights with this reality, my body attacks it
However, it is swift; it, too, wants to survive; and so it hides from sight
Egregious acts unkind make us want to kill them, to do away with them
But they have as much right to the world as we do, they appear beautiful
Each to their own; repulsed as we are, we kill them as we kill cockroaches
Affected by beauty, we see the opposite, and strike out in terror
Unto themselves, they are as beautiful, sexy, ugly and hideous
To each other as we ourselves appear in kind, humans are cockroaches
I saw the cockroach fly and went into action with my sandal in hand
Forgetting my sitting meditation, my mind perturbed, agitated
Unlocked fury to kill, not to reflect on this, a giant insect flew
Life is so beautiful in all of its glory but I cannot fathom
As my experience cannot feel this beauty, only as a concept
No conceptual thought will override feelings of deep-seated terror
Difficult to assume that equanimity is at hand yet so far
Try as I might, my mind cannot overcome thought, my indoctrination
However much I try, I have learned in the past to destroy the other
Enter my reflection in the mirror, my mind makes sense of reversal
Truth and the true, hidden within the otherness of the cockroach, myself
Religion teaches us to accept the other as we accept ourselves
Ugly and hideous creatures with diseases, who are we but just that
Even in our beauty, we are sickness, disease, suffering and sorrow
Seems the world is perfect as it is, perfection in our imperfection
Experience allows the truth to settle down the mind to encounter
Equally both the strange and the beautiful as not incongruous thoughts
Murder is beautiful in the eyes of the sick. "What is truth?" asked Pilate
Suffer anxiety in our need to survive in comfort, unchallenged
Tranquility to sit clear-eyed and unperturbed, to act and not react
Humans are cockroaches, the survival instinct makes us want to destroy
Equal in our beauty, we discern the other as a threat to comfort
Witness the truth to bear, to carry forth unto generations henceforth
Only, I am not Him, I am not Jesus Christ, I am not The Buddha
Restless in the city, I run as my practice, to still body and mind
Locomotion, a train of thought, my consciousness, a stream to cross, to bridge
Destination unknown, the fear of the other is on the other shore
Instincts no longer make sense of reality, intuitions hold back
Seen from the other shore, I become the Buddha, always and already
Perfect in delusion, all thoughts, feelings, and deeds without the diamond mind
Endlessly we circle, a wagon caravan, to protect our own lives
Reject this mind as false, empty without ideas, deception is the truth
Forge ahead with body, do and act without thought, not thoughtlessly unkind
Enter childhood again, a slate wiped clean to start over and see the world
Crystal vision shimmers in light as the cockroach hides from light in darkness
The dichotomy is not other but the same, we are still the cockroach
Ask yourself this question, "What makes me different?" Ego knocks at the door
Simply mocking the real, ego identifies with the same, not other
I am every cockroach that I destroy, I kill myself in each moment
Tranquility to sit still, unperturbed by thoughts, by flying cockroaches
I see beyond logic, beyond all argument, beyond antinomies
Still I cannot undo the indoctrination, the pledge of allegiance...
No comments:
Post a Comment