Awesome Responsibility
said Zen poet, Jane Hirshfield;
but so do our belief systems think
for us. Poetry does our thinking
when do not know where to go,
always searching, searching for the
way of what is to come, the path
to our true self, and how difficult
it is to let go of our belief systems
that do our thinking for us too—
religion, politics, fashion. Not
that we don’t want more freedom;
but because we cannot bear the
awesome responsibility of thinking
for ourselves.
Now Is Your Only Context
“Behold, be grateful, and forgive that
which you did not understand or control,”
said he, when he appeared to have his
portrait painted. “For life is divine, it is
perfect, and it naturally manifests the will
of the creator.” Everyone’s right, and
everyone’s wrong, and the world is always
changing; but not every one knows this,
which is why the world is in such a mess.
The eco system is out of whack—oceans
rising, deforestation, desertification, air
and water pollution dangerously close to
the point of no return, with religion no
longer sufficing to tame man’s reptilian
brain; it’s a sad situation, and we’re running
out of time. But that’s only one paradigm.
There’s another that’s always in play—
the merciful law of divine reconciliation;
and what we do today will be tomorrow’s
salvation. And before the artist completed
his portrait, the man said: “There is no
other time or place to find yourself. Now
is your only context.”
A Little Orientation
Looking back, way back,
I can see how far I’ve come:
a
teaching I studied five decades
ago, secretly known as the way
of the sly man, is so far out of sync
today that one wonders why it’s
still around; and another teaching
that I studied for over three decades,
secretly known as the way of the
eternal, so full of promise, is now
a pale ghost of what it never was;
and today I am where I want
to be, free to be me.
