A Wide Place in The Road

A Wide Place in The Road


There’s a wide place in the road ahead, it’s not too far.

It’s a place to rest for a spell with your own self alone.

After precarious curves, when steep, pent-up fears tried to

Rule your day, and abysmal depths loomed, you can park.


There’ll be time to form reluctant comraderie there

With thoughts of what could have been, were it not for

Your skills when dangers had been their most acute,

And, but for your swift, deft moves, all for you to lose.


Now that welcome respite’s been had, I must inform you

That it’s time to go. The road beckons, as ever, onward.

You’ll need to be alert to navigate capricious catenaries

Unforeseen just ahead. The journey’s not yet at its end.

Emptiness

Emptiness



"Samsara is just emptiness experienced


by a mind that is in a state of delusion."



"Nirvana is just emptiness experienced


by a mind that is free of delusion."



Venerable Bardor Tulku Rinpoche


Venerable Bardor Tulku Rinpoche,
a recognized reincarnate (Tulku)
Lama of the Karma Kagyupa School,
which originated in the Kam Mountain
range of Eastern Tibet was, for a brief
time, my neighbor on the summit of
Mead's Mountain in Woodstock, N.Y.

For a few years at Christmas season, I would
deliver a fresh fir-tree tied to the roof of my Jeep.

His wife, Sonam, and his two lovely,
Americanized, college attendee daughters,
took particular delight in decorating their trees,
with traditional baked barley flour and butter
figurals, named Tormas, which they hung, with
candles, from the boughs of their 'American'
Christmas trees.

I find this quote of his to be like an arrow, effortlessly aimed
and set aloft to reach the exact centre of a wisdom target.

---original tao

A Forgotten Earth Burns and Drowns

A Forgotten Earth Burns and Drowns


Dawn, Christopher, and their twin newborns,

Beau and Bea, have just left the 1st Church of

Christ the Redeemer, in old Charlottesville,

Virginia, after attending sunrise evangelical

Christian services, Easter Sunday morning.


The pious congregants support missionary

Families in three African countries, Chad,

Cameroon, and Uganda. Attendance at each

African mission is high because of their

Dedicated, skilled missionary families.


It doesn’t take a debate specialist in lexical

Cognitive-dissonance to create an argument

That supports missions egregiously created to

Change the hearts and minds of dark-brown-

Skinned African people to accept a light-

Skinned Jesus, said to have lived, died and

Ascended into celestial realms on high after

A miraculous reanimation, when he spoke

To his familiar, beloved devotees, after he

Had been wrapped in funerary shrouds for

Three days in preparation for secret burial.


Back at historic old Charlottesville’s 1st

Church of Christ the Redeemer, smiling

Deacons gently remind Afro-Americans

Wishing to worship their redeemer at that

Easter Sunrise Resurrection Service, that

Just a few, short blocks away there is a

Large, majority African-American place

Of worship where they would be more at

Ease amongst their own dark-skinned kind.


Debating hateful ancient ideologies of

Partition is a foolish game, impossible

To win. Time for those pointless debates

Is behind us. Anyway, the only good idea

To have come from them is inclusion,

An idea that no one knows how to effect.


Both modern and ancient dogmas blind

Us to dangers we now face from lands,

Atmosphere, and seas fouled by our waste.



Now, this time, is the beginning of

Young Earth’s transformation from

An Eden that supported uncountable

Hominid generations evolving from

Our proto-historic roots as hunter-

Gatherers to becoming agronomists

Growing enough to feed all, even

Storing excess for years of drought,

Flood or disease that brought famine.


Scientists note rapid sea-level-rise as

Warmed, salt-free hemispheric ice-masses

Calve away million-pound icebergs from

Glacial melts into a warm slurry that swiftly

Heats sea-water even faster, causing warmed

Salts to fall to permafrost ocean beds and

Release methane gas trapped there for aeons,

To rise into the atmosphere as bubbles that

Burst, creating another gaseous atmospheric

Poison… many times more toxic than CO2.


And lands, once famed for being fecund,

Beyond measure, that used to feed billions,

Now parched from epic droughts, burn in

Uncontrollable hundred-mile infernos taking

Lives and homes in bonfires lacking vanity, or

Any other dubious virtues, save those of helping

Their least fortunate sisters and brothers survive

The loss of all they had from sudden windswept

Conflagrations that roar and melt and consume all.


While any country with the means sends

Their poor away to fight insipid race-based

Resource-wars that can never be won, even

When physical occupation of those lands

Foment daily murders of the usurpers of their

Sovereignty, at the cost of their own lives and

Our common human hopes of a future Earth

Being left intact for our innocent offspring.


As I record these, the products of unregulated

Greed, which always describe profits which

Devolve wholly back to the capitalist class at

Near tax-free rates, and give back none of

Their loot to the building and maintenance

Of necessary infrastructure, hospitals, and the

Care required by a rapidly ageing world wide

Population who lack means to fund such care.


And on the planet’s desiccated, wasted surface,

Irresistible heat vies with storms of hitherto

Unknown and undreamt-of ferocity that surge

And flood inland reaches where rivers burst

Fragile berms to become the new norm that

No words can describe, but that we, in our

Heedless state of suicidal ennui, call change.


And multitudes of refugees trek to unknown

Lands as the world’s greatest hejira begins.

It could be drug gang-violence, turf wars, or

Insurgents against heavily armed occupiers,

Or child and adult rape and forced prostitution,

That makes life untenable in one’s homeland.

Or it could be drought or rising seas that force

Populations from home to feed their families.


Police everywhere, given broad discretionary

Powers to search and detain anyone, anywhere,

On suspicion of any demonstration that protests

The demise of the rule of law and the legal rights

Of human being’s, universally set forth as all nation’s

Highest, sacred principles of law and equal justice.


And in the U.S.A., the Land of liberty, they torture

And murder brown people and poor white people

With the same impunity that the cruel henchmen

Of history’s absolute rulers of yore lorded over their

Fearful, hapless subjects, to be exploited unto death.


Sands in hourglasses quickly drain away as our

Seas begin inexorable quick marches that obliterate

Most of the world’s populated coasts to cover all

But the highest inland elevations in fathoms-deep

Waters choked with acid poisons that will no longer

Support marine life or the symbiotic relationship that

We have always depended upon for our livelihoods.


Soon, agreed borders of nations will no longer hold

Against the onslaught of humanity’s need for survival.

As year after short year there will be fewer arable lands,

And less untainted, clean sources of drinking water to

Support the multitudes of survivors of the end of the

Rule of law and civilisation’s untimely, bitter demise.

Squint Through the Bars to See Anonymity

Squint Through the Bars to See Anonymity


I observed freedom’s flight. Gone away,

Perhaps never to return. With nary an

Etched claw mark to show for its half-

Hearted, brief struggles. Its only mark

Being cup rims ever so slightly chipped.


I saw it from outside my self’s blunted

Senses. Noted by hypocrisy’s shallow,

Dull complacency, and fear’s trembling,

For a future that shall soon be upon us.


Helplessly I waited, and then, within a

Pause, our brief moment of liberty was

Gone. No shadow of a whisper marks

Its retreat. Gone away, forced to flee by

Oligarchy’s faux news, created as means

For festering discontent and evil intents.


It fled from us because for too long we

Failed to remember the cold dead, whose

Lives were given in its defense, and still,

Whose graves remain to us, uncountable.


As the exterminated, in their millions.

Proved that memories of your father’s

Face and your mother’s sweet smile

Won’t save you when racism’s hatreds

Are loosed to poison the world’s hopes.


It fled away from me because for too

Long, I didn’t want to hear the loud

Discordant sounds of dissent as bright

Freedom’s promise flees away from us,

Relegated, seen as out of fashion now.

And now that disregard for freedom’s

Loss resulted in a life of conformity.


Constrained now to be less of my self,

Unnoticed even, if others look into the

Cell of my own admitted cowardice,

They’ll squint through the bars to see

Naught but the aged, wrinkled face of

Birthright’s loss, turned to anonymity.

Consequences to the Now of Being

Consequences to the Now of Being



I maintain that now is far, far more important than then!


I maintain that what I think, say, do, now, is everything!


I maintain that this is it, and for now, it is enough for me!


I maintain that you can be the best of yourself, here, now!


I maintain that we can be and do our best now, not then!

Never Say Never Again

Never Say Never Again


An object falls from above, unexpectedly,

To hail a new reality. Salutations to what was

Never imagined before, he, she, or it, has just

Popped in! Into your voids, for good or not.

And wreaks, what it will, at will; nothing’s to

Be done, whether stoically endured, or not.


Blinkered chance can’t look up while trying

To see what lies ahead, once without substance

It loomed, now falling, soon to be known.


Who was she, or he, or it, before chance decreed

Our fates become entwined? And so perforce, we

Linked karmically, to settle, fractionally, what has

Always been shared, by us and we; either as debt’s

Measure, gift’s delight or, a grand companionship,

Which bodes well to endure, open to journey’s end?


Never, having endured beyond saying either way,

Loses edge becoming blunted by the impossibilities

To which it can now subscribe, without measure!


And yet, never seeks to lull into complacency, and

Misdirect minds, from what could be, to what is,

Substantively, a shadow falling across a moment,

Ingraciously, never to be seen, or known again.