“You dwell among the causes of death
like a butter lamp standing in a strong breeze.”
~Nāgārjuna
I’ve heard it said that, while we are living,
we’re busy making mind, but that same mind
we’ve made while living. becomes the one
which, after death, will then make us.
This may be cause for apprehension,
and yet perhaps it is not death
we fear the most, but life —
life that seems to contradict the dream
of any victorious resolution once imagined
in the eagerness of youthful idealism,
in its innocent willingness to believe
without question or doubt;
life forever isolated from the rest of life
by the self-imposed barrier of trust
in the reality of a dusty bag of flesh,
a mealy meat suit fashioned out of dirt;
life that might even seem to amount to zero
in a futility of form and motion, speedily racing
from nowhere to nothing, paradoxically
feeling trapped in a tight closed loop
of the known yet fearing the unknown —
deteriorating daily, yearly,
diminishing inexorably, until
all that is left is the stale dry air
of second-hand concepts which by now
have far exceeded their fraudulent warranty,
yielding only cynicism and disdain;
life that moves regardless, teased by the rumor
of a beautiful desire — the End of Wanting –
so far out of reach for still-suffering hearts
left pining for that balm of sweet oblivion.
For such wounded souls, death itself
may be welcomed, sought, and always found,
only to be usurped by yet another life of confusion,
disastrous fixation, and outrageous insult —
where boredom and doubt vie with a stubborn hope;
where relationship equates with deals and dilemma,
and love becomes a promise sadly despaired of,
perhaps to be regarded as just another lie,
a fool’s fantasy laced with hype;
where freedom seems a cruel fiction –
deceptive stories sold to themselves
by hopeful day-dream believers.
Yet in the shadowed corners of the night
frustration’s tears will freely flow,
and perhaps some secret prayers,
some bargaining, or a poignant plea
to the one believed to be behind
this seemingly endless calamity.
Then back on the spinning wheel
once more, embodiment resumes again,
and here is birth and death again,
a cycle that seems to never end,
till the futility hones to a keen red edge,
and the flash of its blade removes the head.
Mind now falls into its own black night,
rests at last on a bed of cooled ashes,
all light blown out into a silence
beyond any comprehension –
all let go, all released, all strife
and struggle surrendered,
until, until . . .
from the stillness of that dark,
with a true love unconditional,
a spark may rise, become a blaze,
illuminating limitless space, liberating
both sinner and saint, a torch in vast immensity,
beyond both sides of certainty, alive as the shine
of awareness itself, its deathless open essence:
here it is, here we are: home at last, Welcome!
The Mysterious Expanse 