ACORN

In Hindu tradition there is another trinity I subscribe to.  Brahma creates the Universe. Vishnu sustains it. Shiva destroys it so that it can be recreated anew. In my current practice my mantra is “arise, abide, subside.” The circle is complete. Our time comes to an end. The works of man sink gracefully into the sand. My body ages like the fallen trunk of a giant oak, merging softly & slowly with the green moss. My memories…  the vast reefs of my accumulated knowledge have already begun to blink off like galaxies  in a cooling Universe. Can I accept this? I do accept this. The acorn rests in the breezy grasp of the great Mother. She sees me. She narrows her gaze ever so slightly. & so it begins once again.

LITTLE RED

The earth itself is alive. There is no separation.  The smallest grain of sand mirrors & sustains the crests of Annapurna. The mustard seed enfolds the full Amazon river basin. The red squirrel scolding my presence in his northern spruce grove embodies the fine filaments of living light that thread through the mycelia webbing the entire surface of this cerulean sphere from the single bacteria to the great blue whale in the deep black sea. The wind knows. The waters breathe. The magma below sways & throbs. Light sparkles & cracks through the impossibly intricate networks of my human body. I am not separate from nature. I am of the natural order… no more,  no less. My mind is the sky above. You & I & the Red Squirrel. We know. We know. There is no separation. The earth itself is alive.

Kuan Yin and the Little Red Squirrel (or "Acorn")

Kuan Yin & Francis of Assissi. One from the East & one from the West. They both spoke to the animals & the animals gathered to listen. Who told us two-leggeds we somehow have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, over the cattle, & over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth? One sentence in a dusty  old Hebrew text just does not cut it for me anymore. Alive in the Anthropocene age- the last great extinction underway- my true allegiance is not with my fellow man but with all the  myriad creatures in this the living Creation. The right to live of a little red squirrel on a jack pine in northern Saskatchewan is equal- exactly equal- to my right to breathe the blue air of the vast abiding sky. All sentient beings- each and every one of them- will enter into the Kingdom, not just blind, self-absorbed, greed-filled Man. I listened with the snails & the wrens & the elephants  to St. Francis & to Kuan Yin. I have ears to hear. I hear.

ABOVE THE INEVITABLE EVENTUAL

REDTAIL DREAM

Gloria told me her dream...

Lost in the snow storm on the edge of a great glacier. Crevasses yawn before her. Great shelves of ice crack & crash into depthless sea. All around the avalanche enfolds... Devastation - certain. Despair - close. The headlong tumble. She falls... & falls.... 

“Open your arms…. stretch your fingertips.”A voice - familiar -  beckons... "Fly out,  fly  out Gloria....out  from the churn of the chasm of cloud.... from the collapse of the world." 

The emptiness of the empty sky abides.

DRAGON 3 ( The Cobra.... sun in the blue sky)

The Blue Sky. Clear. Bottomless. Clouds. One by one. Solitary. In formation. Reduced to the simplest elements the Mind is elegant, expansive... eternal. The sky by itself. A field between the countless stars. When I was born I saw this way. My mind clear... cerulean... undefined.... limitless. I have glimpses now and then.... glimpses. The certainty I know.... the sky is always and always will be there... immutable... placid... in place. & in that vastness.... the Sun. The Source. The  compassion that emanates out from the certainty of the Will of the Creator. & what is the dragon then? The dragon is the living interplay between the vast emptiness of space and the boundless presence of the divine. That interplay takes place in the mind of an individual human...me for instance... you perhaps. It coils. It spirals. It turns. There is relationship. The serpent tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden. It tempted them to awaken to become vulnerable. To be liberated from the material world... to stop the cycle of suffering. This waking up is not easy. I am half way there... still nascent... water in my eyes... Orange sun in the blue Sky.

SERPENT

Of course the dragon is a serpent… a serpent with eagle wings & jaguar claws. I know what I know. I cannot grasp it, or contain it or own it. What I know to be certain comes to me in principles, in equations, in images. The dragon comes to me in dreams… an image of ferocity & power. I accept the vision. It tells me to be patient. To loosen my grip on certitude… to flow free. No possessing this knowledge. It is not fact. It is majesty. The dragon coils from the heart of the sun. I lower my eyes. The beauty is overwhelming……