Do not think that time
simply flies away.
Do not understand
flying as the only function of time.
If time simply flew
away,
A separation would
exist between you and time.
So, if you understand
time as only passing,
Then you do not
understand the time being.
Consider embracing blueness
The earth’s aura & your awareness:
For the time being –
The entire earth and
the boundless sky.
Time is not merely ticking.
Earth & sky not some kind of trivial time-pass
Sandwiched between one previous death
& the life unfolding from it,
Or one life & the unavoidable death at its end.
Albeit of substance unmade,
Non-fabricated as such
Their forms aren’t simply ‘empty’.
Neither is time’s continuous self-timing,
This ungraspable uninterrupted flickering,
Which appears as ‘you’ & ‘I’ & the ‘world’
Empty in the sense of being ‘nothing’,
But empty only in the sense of
Remaining out of reach
For anyone to control
What they cannot grasp:
Just being so.
Thus they call it naked:
Hiding nothing
& remaining true to nature
As the Buddha discovered:
Breathe in, breathe out
Fathomless blue sky.
Naked like this,
Fully lunar eclipsed & similarly
From the beginningless start
Exposed to the sun of the dharma
Without even knowing
Anything about such matters for years,
When I first appeared to have arrived
Like all the blind buddhas
Who are being born
To this and many worlds every day,
Eyes covered with the muck after
The previous time had imploded
Fully in their face.
And so
For the present time being,
I fell misplaced, cut off from
Perennial timeline
Now somewhere down there
Some sixty odd years,
Almost a lifetime ago
& in a way such fall is hard
To imagine & to bear.
They also report that I cried & I cried
Often at night when I was a baby
But not for food. I don’t recall food.
I cried more for the need to be touched
In the unfathomable ways
That still lingered pristine & rainbow
Unreachably clear:
Time being’s umbilical cord.
I still can remember
Black screaming loneliness
As I never felt home in my crib
Among these people
Among that particular country’s
Bombed out to ruins
& even today still guilt-ridden souls.
So I eventually left home
But couldn’t leave time
Only went on exploring
Time’s self-timing,
Which as Dogen says
Is the same as exploring the world
& vice versa all interconnected
Chambers of echoes.
Like when I twisted and turned according to
A certain French time being:
Somehow merging with place & people,
Myself becoming
The sounds their throats make when they
So decidedly voice an opinion,
Also for the food, the wine, the vanity,
For the charming gestures of self-mocking
Self-importance…
Yet, in the end, I refrained
From wedding Marianne
Even though I had courted her
And taken her to bed
At different times
Manifesting in various bodies
And always in time being’s particular
Buddha-like dispassionate
Tender passion
Love at its truest when it just so happens
Not sticky & cling-foil messy.
Like later
For some time being
I had to have a go
At the sharing a light bulb
California experience:
The holy cow of Americanized dharma –
(or should we say ‘drama’)
Buddhism with a drawl
As expounded by Masters of Business Administration &
Jurisprudence Doctors;
Meeting all the lovely people
Who in those years ago
Without exception
Were all exhibiting
This incomparable eagerness
For doing everything exactly right
But by going against all of
Tradition’s instructions
Or in the other extreme
By toeing the line
More closely than to the letter
& as a result,
Doing much of it exactly wrong,
(If just like them
We were to erroneously believe that
‘Right’ & ‘wrong’ were absolutes,
Rather than treacherously
Shifting Saharan sand dunes).
I even got married to self-righteousness
Fully buying into it three times
In spiritual & worldly ways
From sea to shining sea.
But later inevitably had to file for divorce.
I then
Came to live on earth’s
Especially designated chaos universe
That goes by the name of
Incredibly messy India.
Being here has been great
As for the time being the affair has been
Conducted in the careful manner of
Porcupines mating
& since I am not born a porcupine,
This is the kind of union
That I will never successfully complete:
No non-Indian can really unite with
Present day India.
Trust me,
Here is where for the time being
Inbreeding is strictly the norm.
So
Time being Indian comes right down
To a blood thing
Passed down in rather narrow lines.
Strangers have to stay out.
But as I love nothing more than
Minding my own business
I don’t mind standing apart.
At least, here they let me rest
In mind undisturbed,
As in India everyone leaves the non-Indian
Like myself alone.
Even though they derive fantastic pleasures
When they endlessly meddle
In each other’s particular being in time,
Which is a great sport in these parts, I mean,
Meddling: for the time being.
Nothing there is but time…
And here they seem to have
A lot of it to waste.
Bodhidharma on the other hand,
Now he’s a very different character.
He is an Indian from a time,
Before India took on the appearance
Of being muddled & befuddled
By the one and only god delusion,
& thus Bodhidharma is always his own man:
Even now
A completely straight shooter.
He never wastes a moment.
He comes right to the point:
You ask. – That is
your mind.
I answer. – That is my
mind.
If I had no mind, how
could I ever answer?
If you had no mind,
how could you ask?
That which asks is
your mind.
Whatever you do,
that’s your mind, that’s your buddha.
Beyond this mind,
You’ll never find
another buddha.
The reality of your
own self-nature
Is what is meant by
mind.
These are the sharp edged
Timelines along which
In this lifetime
I have been teetering
& groping in search
For some kind of solid wall
To lean on & solid floor
To walk on:
Where actually
There are neither wall nor floor
Only time being’s myriad bodies,
Voices & activities –
If that… but THAT
Is absolutely solid.
All of it,
What we separate as
Past present & future times
What we call
Dogen, Bodhidharma &
So many more from India and Tibet
That I have read from or about
& personally met
In this fantasy life and & listened to them:
Is itself the mind talking
& thus the guru talking
In luminous presence for the time being;
The guru breathing, eating, shitting & walking,
The guru teaching in tune with the times
By example & action most powerfully
As words are mostly weak:
The guru for real when in robes,
& even more real
When with ease pointing out
The difference between the finger
& the moon; the guru
When unclad, stark naked & decidedly mad.
And this guru never dies.
With such guru in particular
That I know & even befriended
In naked uninhibited ease
There is neither room nor need
For pretending that I am merely a
Westerner uneasy in my skin
Because I have no fancy roots to show
& no dharma pedigree.
There really is no need to shape-shift into the
Costume ball version of a Tibetan yogi.
What for?
What sense does it make for time
To kowtow to time
In the near or distant future
When they are but time & also the past?
Blades of grass on the other hand
They have humbly tuned into time:
Blades of grass
Easily and selflessly
Prostrate to earth moved by wind.
And indeed, mind enjoys such
Timeless acts of devotion
& entertains great respect for
Its own vastness.
So there is not much cause to wonder
Where this might eventually lead,
This particular time being story of mine
With the four country circus,
With Dogen & Bodhidharma
With Padmasambhava & his consorts:
I mean, having gone forward and backward
And all around
In time for sixty plus years,
If we count this one life alone,
Considering that every year
Time itself is not only NOT flying away
But in fact, NOT at all diminishing,
Never being less in time.
Never being less presence,
Less Iove:
The gurus
The buddhas
The dakinis,
The protectors –
The sea of time
Wisdom-compassion
For the time being
Never waxing, never waning.
∞∞∞∞∞
The Buddha himself says that
Leaving one’s fantasy home & country
Constitutes half of the way of enlightenment.
The other half then is to enact
The seeming opposite:
Never leaving home at all but
Abiding as mind split open
All the way to nature or
What they describe as the
‘Heart of sadness’
That feels it all without
Position & agenda
And further on
Through unchartered
Oceans of dharma time.
Which is so full of laughter, dance and embrace
But also weeping over every instance
When immeasurably many beings are lost in thinking
That they were cut off from the life giving waters:
From time being’s womb.
To grasp this truly:
every being that exists in the entire world
Is linked together as moments
in time,
And at the same time
they exist as individual moments of time,
They are your time
being.
Life is death.
Death is life.
And understanding this
For us is truly
A matter of
Life and death.
