Guidance

1.

A hint from a friend

 

I gazed out of the window on a late March morning:

 

It was 5 o’clock. Pitch black outside.

A starry sky and stilled silent street.

As if it were 11 in the evening.

The dawn seemed so far away.

If we latch on to this, we will be late;

And rush about when the sun rises.

Miss out on many things.

Be guided by the bird’s song.

It sings: Morning is coming! 

 

2.

All are but tokens

 

All your toil, all your worried anticipations, all engagements

Are but tokens of your seeking and wandering through life.

You say in complaint, “Why me? Why is this on me?” but this

Is like rain questioning the puddles under its dropfall.

 

So here I am, and things are happening to me, and I am

Said happenings, and they are me. I accumulate them

With all my motions, with all my turnings and passings,

With my will to desire, weaving a web of manifestations.

 

I do not Lord over them, and they do not Lord over me.

 

 The Lord of the Land is watching us all from the high tower;

And the custodians who have been appointed are relating

His orders to us that we should believe and follow.

 

Better still, the Lord of the Land has fallen asleep and has

Been sleeping for millions of years while the custodians

Are increasingly confused whether they are not lords themselves.

 

Even better than all of this! There never was a Lord or someone

To be Lorded over. “Oh Lord, oh Lord, my Lord, do not leave me!

Stay in your tower, go on your journey or sleep. Appoint custodians.

 

But do not leave me with myself. I will curse your name; I will

Negate you, and this negation shall be my new faith. I shall conquer

Unconquerable things in your name or in the negation of your name.”

 

At the end of all my crusades and projects, of all my engagements and

disengagements and rituals and responsibilities and serendipities

I should come somewhere, come to some kind of being. Isn’t life

A pilgrimage with a serious end, and the goal is to reach that end.

 

Well, I know full well how life will end, so why hurry to reach it.

I am going at it, going towards it even as I write now, and you too

Are moving, dear reader; do not confuse yourself as stagnant.

All of us are engaged in a flowing, and it will never cease.

 

Then there is my toil, all my worried anticipations and engagements.

They come onto me, and I onto them; they are extensions of me,

And I extend from them. We all dance together, pushing each other.

Yet these things are not different from rain or gushes of wind.

 

I may plan and commit to properly meet my engagements,

And check off my to-do’s, but these, too, are wind and rainfall.

The tasks and important things, the immediate things they

Come onto me, and I onto them, moment by moment.

 

Suns pass day by day, moons rise night by night,

And task by task, joy by joy, turmoil by turmoil

My life happens. At each instance, all is there.

 

Then and there you, oh Lord, reside in, sleeping or wide awake.

More importantly than that, you have left the door slightly open,

Just enough for one to enter in, just enough for anyone to enter in.

 

Through the obscure yet obvious gate leading to what all beings seek,

You have no other residence. We all have no other option or gamble,

But this self-same gate is sufficient, secret, and always left open.

 

Always in each instance, with each happening. Here and now and nowhere else.

 

You may enter in.

 

3.

As I walked to work one morning

 

In musing and wondering, I split my hours, peeling away,

Lairs of time. Sometimes, feeling my steps on the ground

And the fresh air of the morning. Other times, fully lost in

Thoughts, forgetting who am I and where I am, flowing

In my footfall, not remembering how I passed three blocks.

As I walked to work one morning

 

Once stepped out of my body and walked, leaving my motion

To itself in rest. Then, twice, I stepped out of my stepping out.

Entering further away to observe how I was there musing

And wondering, whilst walking along in the fresh morning,

Obscuring my senses from the birds’ song, not conscious of

The ground underfoot.

 

My mind then was amidst the impatient anticipations

Of fame, success, and recognition, but in this, there was also

A simple resistance to what I perceived as a lack of fame,

Success and recognition. This was a daydream, but also

A protest! In my desire, I asserted lack, knitting a daydream

Of opiate discontent.

 

There and then, I recognized that it all was very logical

Not receiving any of the fame seen in my mind’s eye,

Nor the fame I set up for myself. Not a breadcrumb of

My reveries, which entranced me deeply and sweetly

Like an exotic dancer who soothes a spoiled master

In a relaxed half-sleep.

 

My production was a sorry one; it’s unfolding too predictable

To be well accepted. My view is too egocentric and selfish.

I could not pitch it well to the future. I knew this and felt it

In my bones. So, in rejecting my dreams, I felt a sorrowful

Calmness and a greater attentiveness than I previously felt,

As I walked in the morning.

 

The smelter is hard at work, melting away the structure and

Stiffness of the ore. The miller is hard at work, grinding wheat

Into a fine powder. Yet also, some misplaced and misnamed

Force is hard at work, smelting me, grinding, and molding me.

So, I may dispense with one form and embrace another; I myself

Deeply connected to this force.

 

Yet I cannot have a say in it, not in the same way as a

Minister has a say in the affairs of the state, or like a teacher

Commands a classroom. The control of said roles, even of

Themselves is questionable. What then of the control in the flow

Of things. We may distort the water and mud it up, but once we stop:

It immediately starts to settle.

 

We are such creatures that are ambitious and content

To distort through their whole lives and we invent some

Very refined forms of distortion. Such that enclose water

In a very complex system of dams. But the water is not

Born and immortal in its cycle. It will wait out any dam.

Wait it out without care.

 

All this leads me to the fortunate conclusion that I

Do not know how things should turn out, even though,

I dabble in how things ought to be. It is fortunate that

The future is kept in deep secret from me, like a secret recipe.

Like a craft that the master keeps hidden from the eyes

Of his apprentice.

 

But the apprentice is mostly engaged in wondering and

Speculating what the master hid away in the locked chest.

What wonderous alloy will the smelter make out of the ore;

Not yet melted? What tasty cake will be made from the grain;

Not yet grinded? The apprentice comes back to this question:

Again, and again, and again.

 

That is our favorite pastime, to make guesses of the future,

To demand from it, bargain with it, dread it, fear it, hope in it.

What is this it to which we send our hopes to? It is far-off

In the fringes of the field, outside the smelter’s blacksmith

Or afar from the miller’s windmill. It is enchanted with a far,

Which cannot be gauged.

 

So, I walk on, on my way to work, stepping out of myself.

Then, stepping further away, then back and forth between

Present, dreaming, and dream awareness. Passing several streets,

Down the city center and into a park. Walking and shifting focus

Of the mind and heart in a flux of thoughts and dreams,

As I walk on.

 

Then, a small side path caught my attention and pulled me in.

A dirt track of dried, cemented mud with encased acorns

And capless acorns and caps of acorns. Once this was soft and

Even fluent with the rain. Now, it is hard and stiff. I passed by

Quickly, coming closer to the office. Closer to the ceasing

Of my wondering.

 

It feels like that, although we have no say in the workings,

Of the smelter, we may still influence him somehow.

Both our lack of say and desire to say something, as well as

The melting ore all play a part in the process. There is a place

For us in creation, and the force recognizes us and takes us:

Into it, for we are part of it.

 

It feels like the end product of the smelter and the miller,

What lies waiting for us in the fringes of inquiry. In the place

Where our methods are helpless is much different, much richer

Then, our daydreams and goals; yet not foreign to them.

There is a strong and subtle similarity between our visions

And the final alloy.

 

It feels like that present and dreams and hopes and envy,

And jealous selfishness and awareness of these things all fall

Into the pot of the smelter, all pass under the grinding wheel.

They all go into the process, as well as the secret ingredient,

Which the master hid away from the apprentice. They melt away,

They pass into a fine powder.

 

It feels like even grander and more divine than the components,

Then the recipe, then the master or the apprentice, then both the

Knower and known, there is the happening, there is the process:

Burning fuel, the friction between the wheels, and their mechanisms.

These are at the root of all things. The process that is receptive to all

Thereby encompassing all.

 

It feels like my attention drifts in the flux of thought and

Happenings, as I practice and work and walk and meditate

And daydream and wonder. Both these ingredients, as well

As their interchange, they are all caught in the flow of things.

Being distracted was just as crucial as coming back.

Coming back to center.

 

It feels like having no say gives great freedom; being a part

Of things, but not playing Lord and Master is most proper,

Most joyful. Let your judgments, dreams, hopes, and

Desires float in the air, they will find their way to the

Smelter’s pot and the grinding wheel, but will enter in:

Not as orders but as ingredients instead.

 

Their role is not what we assume it to be.

Their play in the process is not easily understood.

 

All we perceive here and now is already melting away.

To make up the new day.

 

The process is rapturous and absolute, never wavering.

There is no going back once the ore is melted.

 

And if one demands something of it, then that demand, too

Falls into the pot and will be an ingredient in the alloy.

 

However, said demand does not determine the alloy.

The ore could have easily been smelted without it.

 

Maybe the alloy would be more refined and pure;

If we did not stir the fire so much and throw messy feelings in the pot.

 

Yet the process is protective of itself and does not let tempering

Influence it too much. It is protective on our behalf.

 

Then, in walking to work and wondering, I influenced the flow of things,

And influenced the future even, but not in a straight manner.

 

Most of our doings are so hard to trace that we either delude ourselves

Into being controllers, or we accept the total lack of control.

 

It is neither! Our lack of control or our futile meddling both influences

The state of things and their flow. Thus, we are in and out of control.

 

We watch how the oar melts, how the grain is ground, watch and look hard

For our place in all of this, and no one answer seems to suffice.

 

Is not our role, precisely that of the one who forgot who they are;

And is looking hard for themselves?

 

Pass our mind, pass our hopes and visions, pass space and time,

Pass logic and rhyme, pass the smelter’s blacksmith and the miller’s mill.

There we go, climbing up the hill, then past the sky and sun and moon,

Pass out omnipotence, pass our doom, pass the flower’s bloom, and

Expectations, realizations, inclinations, pass little old me, on we go

To the place we knew long ago.      

  

4.

 

At night time, net-winged insects come to my window;

To rest on its outside, attracted by the light inside.

They resemble little aliens with their ruby-red eyes,

Their light green bodies and long whip-like antennae.

Sitting there silently behind the backdrop of a dark night.

 

As the hour is getting late, my mind is ready for its wonderings.

Firstly, in my waking hours, then in sleep. To contemplate

And fascinate over both the mundane and abstract. My mind

Is already tired of the day and of itself. Pausing to rest before

Its rest, it examines the net-winged insects on the window.

 

Soon, dear one, I will put you to dream and shake away,

This long summer’s day with all its disappointing appointments.

You shall finally forget me and embark on your celestial travels,

Go to places that cannot be written about nor talked about;

Only to wake again and face the day, slaving to your worries.

 

May we catch a few insects in the room and toss them outside,

Without harming them. May we go out and watch the fireflies,

Or how the stars look down at us and how the self-important

Clouds move about, obscuring and revealing the night sky.

May we go out into the night?

 

Our walk shall bring us to magic places. I promise not to daydream,

Not to think of anything but the immediate. I know you are tired…

Dear one! I know you did much work and much more is to be done.

I shall not in any way further your burden. If we go far enough and

Think only of the immediate; we shall reach vast spaces.

 

We shall come to something totally unknown and grand and divine.

If we strive not to try anything but soak in the evening. Let us be

Unaffected by circumstances, yet follow circumstances fully.

If we are fools tonight, naive enough and inconsiderate enough

We may reach the shore where the night left its boat.

 

We may take it and sail away, take ourselves away without

Intending all of this. We may go to secret places where goings

No longer make sense, breaking off all burden and dead weight,

As we sail on. Then what need will you have of dreaming or of

Or waking if we go now tonight. Just you and me…

 

5.

Crashes

 

Amidst all of this, I was shocked to understand

That I was refusing the gift offered to me!

In this rain-filled afternoon of misunderstandings

Whilst tired and irritated and confused

The door of my heart was locked and forgotten.

 

Woe is me, the one who kept all of this outside.

Woe is the raindrop hanging from the electric wires.

Woe is the forgotten fire in the furnace, which went out.

Spring is coming like a traveling mystic as it once did

Whispering to me her secrets.

 

Pray, dear one, for me that I may stay and listen.

Pray I do not overlook the rain falling outside.   

 

6.

False accusations

 

Such hurried worry will not get you very far.

All your careful considerations are in vain.

As the guilt builds up, watch it crash down;

Like the excited crest of a white wave.

Leave all of your plans aside for now.

If, just for once, leave and be without them

If not just for the nonsensical fun of being

Absolutely stripped of the thing which you hold on to

You’ll lose them anyway. You’re losing them now.

In the end, Shiva will dance his dance, anyhow.

 

7.

Fire and ash

 

There, that warmth

That feeling of placement

And content

Leave it there unattended.

Do not take it with you.

As picked flowers will wither

And plucked fruit will rot.

Leave these things hither;

At the place where they happened

And at the time when they happened

Watch how they fade away.

As the horizon moves along

And the sky darkens in nightshades. 

 

8.

I set down with the Bard of Bengal

 

I shuffle along amidst a maze of mixed-up relics;

Like the fish that swim amidst rubbish in the ocean.

The songs of the past and maybes and suggestions

The fine dust particles in the breathable air of cities

The mass of papers and unwanted books in libraries.

 

The stuffed hollows of our lives that are, fortunately

Unfathomable.

Also, the ambition to quench a thirst that by definition

Is unquenchable.

 

This is how ghosts appear in the twilight, only to fade away.

By their own appearance. Their perseverance is in my own

Reassured uncertainty in things, which is more of a garment

Then, an actual trait of my nature I have gotten used to it.

I wear it for most occasions.

 

Even with it, even because of it or without it, the warmth

The sunlight finds my skin and the coolness of the shade.

Soothes me when I need it. Life offers itself to me,

And death will always accept me when I get tired living.

 

The meeting of God cannot be arranged nor postponed.

Can you, in fact, meet somebody who is always by your side,

Always for you, always with you, always you and you alone.

The river does not plan to become wet one day.

 

History cannot bury it. Ideology cannot taint it.

Science cannot disprove it. Humankind cannot ignore it.

Businesses cannot utilize it. Holy man cannot preach it.

Poets cannot sing of it. Computers cannot simulate it.

It sings and dances in total joy, receptive to all.

 

9.

A little piece of heaven

 

If I was asked what is the one thing, I crave the most.

If I were to ask of myself, what is it, I crave the most.

The answer would be journeying by foot anywhere,

Devoid of fixed plans or an agenda, to walk and walk

(If possible, close to grasslands, water, and trees.)

I desire nothing more, nothing that special.

 

Yet the web of false necessities ties me and engages me.

Tires my body and mind, drinking most of my energy.

I find myself interwoven in a maze of expectations,

Of musts, shoulds, to-dos, and oughts of admirability,

Which is like a cold, damp sip deep down into my body

All the way to my bone marrow, as deep as it gets!

 

My first reaction, of course, is to struggle and put up a fight,

Like the fly in a spider web, which attracts its executioner

With its desperate struggles. The more I kick and scream.

The worse it gets and deeper into the damp I go and deeper

The damp goes into me. The thread tightens around me,

As my flesh pushes the thread back while I struggle. 

 

After the offering of struggle and insurgence, I give

The offering of surrender, of full surrender. Then the mind

Although devastated quiets down, and this silence, like a

Shattering south wind melts away the web that clung to me,

And I clung to it. Without the slightest sound, I am now free,

And in a vast space where I walk as long as I want, forever.

 

Walk by blocks of buildings, run-down streets, parks, and gardens,

Walk-by playing children, starving children, begging children,

Allowing my heart to break and break and break and break and break

But still go on like the flow of a river goes on. Still, I pass through woods,

Over hills, along rivers and lakes and farmlands and swamps and bogs,

Reaching places I have been to, although now they seem different.

 

What sort of heaven is this? Where is the bliss and light and glory?

No angels sing here, and no rewards are being distributed.

This is my Paradise, to walk, watch, and feel whatever is to be felt.

I impose it on no one, but do not lose it from my grip as it grips me also,

Carries me on and on, consoles me, teaches me mystic things and magic.

I would journey on and further on, anyplace, anywhere, anytime.

 

Alone or with accidental company.   

 

10.

 

Nothing will be lost; nothing shall be wasted.

The futility in your struggles is that you think them futile.

The spilled water was not lost; this good Earth swallowed it,

Took it and sent it to many places. The sweat on your brow

Was taken by the wind and mixed in the morning dew.

 

Trust in what I relate to you. Look again at the places you avoid

And dismiss. Make an audit of your opinions, juggle up the importance

Of things. Look again at the forgotten garden; look again with new eyes.

Do not be the hasty judge; be the not hurried explorer; take a wandering.

Walk in the stillness of your situation as if you meet yourself for the first time.

 

You would be courteous to yourself if you just met. You would show

Genuine interest and amazement. “You wonder, you marvel of a being!

How did you get here? How do you maintain this gorgeous garden?”

 

“Oh no, it’s nothing; it is filled with weeds and hassle!” you answered.

 

“Oh no, no! Are these blooming blue flowers really weeds? Is this lush

And diverse grass really a hassle? No, all I see here is most beautiful,

Your garden is most beautiful!” would be the reply back.

 

Then, take yourself on a common adventure and share an enterprise.

With no fixed plans or crushing goals. Don’t you know how to

Do something for its own sweet sake? Can you manage not

Managing your doings, especially if they bring you joy?

 

Pass the garden gate; there is a path so small and hidden that it

Totally disappears in the high summer grass, but if you look carefully,

It may become visible to you, and you may take it. Then, in the wood

The path widens by the half-dried river, across the stepping stones

You will come upon an old little church plastered with slack lime,

With no icons, murals, or stained windows, just a shattered door.

Do not enter, but sit on the broken wooden bench outside,

Then go further down, past a grassy graveyard with no gate

Or fence, then again in the woods, where the path is now lost

In the trees’ shade, among the dried oak leaves and green moss.

Then you will be there without a path, just as you started out,

In the sweet and silent loneliness of your full recognition.     

 

You would swear that you heard a church bell ring,

But it did not!

 

11.

Song of the hermit crab

 

A shedded skin of a singing cicada

Once inspired Basho, not with its song

Rather, with the relic left to wither in the sun.

 

Then I think of the stilled sea floor, the calm

Curled sandy sea floor with rocks, boulders

And their innumerable hidden cavities.

 

All about are scattered relics:

Shells of clams, scallops, mussels

And of conelike sea snails.

 

Ah, here comes a hermit crab

Making good use of an old shell,

Very eager to utilize it as protection.

 

Does the crab know that this new shell,

Shell one day also be dispensed with

Left on the sea floor and be forgotten?

 

The crab is steadily growing, and as it

Slips into the shell’s cavity, soon it will slip out,

And take on a new one, only to leave it again.

 

So, it is in career and family and friends,

And fellowship, affairs of community, and state

That I do no more than dispense with relics.

 

Taking on new ideas, which I already feel

Are slipping away from my grasp, tight,

And incompatible with what is going on.

 

Nothing escapes from this conclusion: the only constant

Is the interchange of constants and the passing of things,

As shells pass the soft abdomen of the hermit crab.

 

More still, SOMETHING took on me, like a hermit crab.

And for IT, I am but a shell, just another relic in use.

Still, as a relic, I remain mostly unaware of any bearer.

 

I do not remember when it started, but I hope I shall be

Fully aware when the bearer lets me go onto the sea floor

And moves along. Only to pick me up once more.

 

I hope I may sing myself away one day,

And shed all memories, leaving just

A perishable trace behind.

 

 

12.

The wind in leaves

 

The wind in leaves rustled along the treetops.

Gushing with a sound like a gong that issues

The agenda in a monastery, better still, like

A sound of permanence amidst a shaky world.

 

“Watch out,” said the wind in leaves,

“Watch out for thieves!

Watch out for reveries,

That steal away from you the now!”

 

“Watch out for fears, for goals,

For chasings, keep away from

Them and listen to me, the wind,

The permanence moving between the trees.”

 

So, I walked on and watched out,

But soon realized that there is

Nothing here, neither wind nor leaves,

Nor thieves nor dreams, nor fears.

 

Only God’s breath is moving about.

As he dreams

Swaying the world within

Swaying the world without.

 

13.

In the buzzing of this day-to-day

And in the predefined and perhaps bias

Fluctuation of time. More so in the

Confounded perception of space

Rings, rings, rings, the self-same question:

Who am I?

 

As shadows stretched out, engulfing the city

While the mountains fortify the final light

As traffic begins to thicken, lambs flicker,

And our habits guide us into the night.

Then there is the same question:

Who am I?

 

Whilst the dreamboat has not yet departed

And our thoughts trouble us as we lay and sigh.

Trying to fall asleep, but sleep cannot be done;

It merely happens as we remember odd things,

Or half-forgotten things. Just as we slip away

Can the self-same question now be quenched:

As the questioner dissolves into the I.

 

14.

 

I had a dream of a brilliant river.

Which flowed backwards in Paradise

I often go there and step into it.

Letting the waters wash away

All traces of existence from me

Until the river becomes emptier

Then, before I entered it.

Since I am I back on the bank.

Yet I am not I when in the river.

Once in, I cannot recognize the I

That was left on the riverbank.

Since in the waters, I know not,

Of any bank bridge or border;

I cannot find my way back to shore.

As if I had never really entered therein

The backward-flowing brilliant river.

As if I had never gone out to dry off,

On the sun-baked boulders

By the riverside.

 

15.

 

The far-off misty line of the city

Is blurred out by distance and fume

As if they’re the world ends into infinity

I saw this as I conversed with my grandmother.

Who passed away 9 years ago; No seeds of turmoil

Can grow in such soil, which is my state. I am much like

The faraway misty horizon, I blur myself out and pass along;

Pass to spaces that have no tolerance for any measure or distance.

I slip in there to talk with my grandmother and to renew myself once more.

 

16.

The lotus that flowered away

 

As a child, my mother showed me the lotus seat.

How to bend my legs and keep them inter-caught.

Like play, I immediately accepted it and held it;

Meditated without knowing that I did so.

 

Then I was a young man.

I read the Tao Te Ching and C. G. Jung.

I went and practiced yoga and did zazen at home.

I held the lotus out of discipline and thoughts of gain.

 

Now, I am a father and a little over 30.

My lotus bloomed even more, but rarely with my legs.

I set less often, my practice changed, and I changed.

 

The lotus seat was withering away.

My legs less flexible, my zazen shorter.

I had to send the lotus down the river.

 

But it did not really leave me.

Again, it might bloom.

 

In different places and spaces.

Its leaves my life might illume.

 

The lotus growing in the mud.