Blog Archives
In His Cups
IN HIS CUPS
A sip of wine
A hint of melody …
Hallowed foundations
Shift ungoverned
Melt into lavaflows
Unleash unadmitted yearnings
Challenge this paltry masquerade
Yelled from minaret or pulpit
Hounded by fatwa and heresy
Across the centuries, this dented I
Which has, for all of that brouhaha
Such shallow roots
Must be why they ban
These dangerous demons
Intoxication, music,
Dancing, sex
While we for our part
Fight tooth and nail
To retain or else regain
These royal roads
Home
In The Beginning
IN THE BEGINNING
In the beginning
Was the Was
And the Was was
And the Was was with Was
And the Was was Was
And without the Was was not what was
And the Was Was Was Was Was
As If (A post for April Fool’s Day)
AS IF
As if it mattered
How the name was spelt
Or misspelt
Whether there were vowels
Or none at all
Or was avoided completely
To avoid guiltlessness
And is it sacrilegious
To omit the capital
Speaking or writing
Of the Reality that stands behind
The ancient glyphs?
Is this truly the gate to the pit?
As if it mattered
That some grouping or other
Has its sacred viewpoint
One that it is quite ready
To defend to the death
Or impose on others
On pain of a painful death
As if it had a gender
Or skin of whatever colour
(Preferably white thank you)
With or without a flowing beard
Spoke Latin or a cultured English
Or – God forbid – Arabic
As if it mattered
Whether there was one (One?) alone
A trio of some kind (quite popular)
Or a squabbling familiar handful
Or too many to keep track of
Whether it was worried what you ate
And had a fondness for some particular day of the week
As if …
The Peacock Feather’s Gift (Repost)
THE PEACOCK FEATHER’S GIFT
What is it not here to tell us, this peacock feather,
but that if, undaunted, we once slipped free of tether
and crept from our crepuscular haunts we might
have the ghost of a chance of a glimpse in the night
of the glimmer of a rainbow surely heaven sent?
In a flash the cloud-draped curtains part – Oh, My Lord!
- their parting announcing that we can look forward
to a star-packed evening of entertainment.
Awaken, awaken, sadly misdirected mourner.
Rejoice! Infinity patiently awaits you round every next corner,
breathes within your every breath, inhabits your every moment,
gifts you with compassion, understanding, eternal atonement;
until, finally, once again all in the altogether
- whatever, no matter, no why, no whether -
we giggle uninhibitedly, tickling one another
gently, delicately, knowingly, with this peacock feather.
… And Know That I Am God
… AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD (Psalms 46:10)
I wept for that seeker,
for the grubby pathos of her searching.
I ached a while with her loneliness,
that she might feel it
and be still,
and in this stillness
find the strength and solace
to continue.
I laughed at that seeker,
at the foolish, blind obstinacy that passed for courage;
that strove, and battled, and conquered despair,
and still continued
to be everything but still.
Puzzles
pic
pic
PUZZLES
Is this cup I hold here half empty
Or else, as some would have me think, half full?
A troubling conundrum, eternally insoluble
Yet quickly resolved by simply letting go
Full of confidence, the tortoise
Challenges his friend the hare to a race
“Just give me a ten yard start,” he says
“And you’ll never catch me,” he boasts
And he’s right, for whenever Hare reaches the spot
The tortoise has already gone
Still … When the hare has gone twenty yards
Where is the tortoise then?
Imagine a goose in a narrow-necked glass bottle
How can you get the goose out of the bottle
Without either of them coming to any harm?
Easily … There; it’s free
A puzzle you might find more tricky
History professors can’t answer it
Scientists still haven’t solved it
Which came first: the chicken or the egg?
It’s The Wine Talking
IT’S THE WINE TALKING
The scum rises to the top
The dregs sink to the bottom
I’d point this out more pointedly
But my mum always said
It’s rude to stir (or point)
She also said
There are three things you should never discuss
Politics, sex and religion
Unfortunately
Nothing else has ever interested me much
Except
Of course
Writing
… She’d be appalled
What?
WHAT?
If God is a verb
and the world is an adjective,
what is the subject?
And what of beauty
when the beholder
has no I?
The Four Immeasurables
THE FOUR IMMEASURABLES
Like atoms whirling in the depths of space,
Impelled by mighty forces, powerless,
Infinite beings, sparks of consciousness,
Migrating ceaselessly from place to place,
Are driven by their cravings to embrace
The pleasures they mistake for happiness,
But desire brings them only more distress;
The very pain they fear they have to face.
To think: “Their sorrows come, not from Above,
Or whim of Fate, or cruel external facts,
Or others’ malice, but from their own acts;
I wish all creatures, though unknown to me,
Freed from unskillful acts, could happy be;”
This thought is called Immeasurable Love.
A creature in his time has many lives,
And now and then in blissful heaven dwells,
But just as soon may fall into the hells
Or, demi-god, be hacked to death with knives.
Now see him as, a hungry ghost, he strives
Without success to eat the food he smells,
Or squeals among the pigs a farmer sells.
The wisdom from these sufferings he derives
Is small indeed, or so we may surmise
To see him waste his few short years on Earth
In foolish deeds that lead to fresh rebirth.
Thinking: “All creatures share this misery.
I must find out the way to set them free,”
Immeasurable Compassion will arise.
If many pass their days in lust and hate
Some make attempt in virtue to abide
But we, half of the time, blinded by pride,
Give them no praise but merely denigrate.
Others find peace that seems to be innate
While we must struggle hard against the tide
And feel ourselves to be most sorely tried.
If we begrudge their carefree, happy state
What little peace we have we will destroy.
To feel resentment at a man’s good name,
His happiness or virtue is a shame;
When envy of his virtue we disown
And greet his happiness as if our own
Then we will find Immeasurable Joy.
We say we long to leave Samsara’s game;
Why is it then that we remain attached?
Each thing we fear seems by another matched
That keeps us circling, moths about a flame.
In seeking praise, we run the risk of blame;
Our gain becomes a loss if from us snatched;
And from the want of pleasure pain is hatched,
While envy soon breeds slander out of fame.
If we think well on this we need not be
Impaled upon the horns of hopes and fears,
Aversions and desires, joys and tears;
By leaving craving and dislike behind,
And by this means alone, a man may find
Immeasurable Equanimity.
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This set of sonnets is a chunk of Buddhist theology which I wrote while studying Tibetan Buddhism in Northern India. Don’t begin jumping to conclusions, though. There’s more to the story. 
