tisiwoota

Rest in Peace
by Frederic and Mary Ann Brusatt
(inspired by Thich Nhat Hanh)

I am a World Trade Center tower, standing tall in the clear blue sky, feeling a violent blow in my side, and I am a towering inferno of pain and suffering imploding upon myself and collapsing to the ground.

May I rest in peace.

I am a terrified passenger on a hijacked airplane not knowing where we are going or that I am riding on fuel tanks that will be instruments of death, and I am a worker arriving at my office not knowing that in just a moment my future will be obliterated.

May I rest in peace.

I am a pigeon in the plaza between the two towers eating crumbs from someone’s breakfast when fire rains down on me from the skies, and I am a bed of flowers admired daily by thousands of tourists now buried under five stories of rubble.

May I rest in peace.
(more…)

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Light the first light of evening
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one…
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

— Wallace Stevens

How long have I been
looking into you
staring through you into
the other side
there is no way of telling

it appears to have continued
from an age of its own
this scrutiny of the bright
veil rising and the lit
corridors of the embers
in which I see the days

beyond touch beyond reach
beyond all understanding
beyond their faces
beneath your dangerous wings
you at whose touch
everything changes
you who never change

there in you one at a time
are the unknown days
turning the corners
the unseen past
the unrecognized present
familiar but already
beyond identity

expressions without selves
appearing finally within you
of whom the light is made

Today while listening to Judy Collins in the car I reflected on one of my favorite quotes, by Heraclitus: “You cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.”

It is both scary and reassuring to think that even the most permanent fixtures of our day-to-day lives are not static things but evolving processes. And humbling in a way, to remember that our world is still figuring itself out around us even as we are figuring out our places (and paces) within it.

Even the chairs we sit on, the rooms and routines we inhabit, are a muddle of molecules quietly brewing themselves into the guise of solid permanence.

And all these things are infused with undercurrents of potential change.

Which can catch us by surprise if we haven’t been watching the rivers.

…

Or watching Sesame Street, apparently.

Yes, I can hardly believe it either, but it seems Cookie Monster has become a health-conscious veggie-phile…

In googling a former professor I came across a Taoist reflection on work, called “The Woodcarver”. You should probably make yourself a cup of tea to sip while reading this, since these things are always better-appreciated in a tea-sipping frame of mind. My personal preference is Jasmine Downy Pearl, a rare green tea from Peet’s that has a rather refined astringency, but I suppose you can get away with having something regular and boring like Earl Grey, if you don’t mind being a spiritual cheapskate

Or you could just pretend to sip tea, since it, like every other aspect of reality, is just an illusory product of dualistic mental construction anyway.

Oh right. The story:

“Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand
Of precious wood. When it was finished,
all who saw it were astounded. They said it must be
The work of spirits.
The Prince of Lu said to the master carver:
“What is your secret?”

Khing replied: “I am only a workman:
I have no secret. There is only this:
“When I began to think about the work you commanded,
I guarded my spirit, did not expend it
On trifles that were not to the point.
I fasted in order to set
My heart at rest.
After three days fasting, I had forgotten gain and success.
After five days
I had forgotten praise or criticism.
After seven days
I had forgotten my body
With all its limbs.

“By this time all thought of your Highness
And of the court had faded away.
All that might distract me from the work
Had vanished.
I was collected in the single thought
Of the bell stand.

“Then I went to the forest
To see the trees in their own natural state.
When the right tree appeared before my eyes,
The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.
All I had to do was to put forth my hand
And begin.

“If I had not met this particular tree
There would have been
No bell stand at all.

“What happened?
My own collected thought
Encountered the hidden potential in the wood;
From this live encounter came the work
Which you ascribe to the spirits.”

…

So how was the tea? Did you enj– tea? Remember, you were drinking it? What’s that, you were so purely absorbed in the work of appreciating the tale you’d forgotten about your illusory tea? Oh. Well done then. You’re clearly much closer to enlightenment than I. But not totally there yet.

I mean, have you heard about the request the zen master made to the hot dog vendor? He said, “Make me one with everything…”

See? Don’t you feel more enlightened now?