Zen poems

At the end of my life I will have achieved nothing
I will be nobody
I will have said nothing
Hallelujah
What a relief

In my younger years I would oscillate between states Doing and Being
I had something to prove to myself, and then to the world
There was a pull to accomplish something great with my life
What is my legacy?
A legacy is goal, it’s an orientation devise to move towards. But a goal is something in the future, and as soon as it is reached, we create a new goal, and there is no satiation
I have sparse evidence in my life to prove that I know what I want, thus far the greatest treasures of my life are unexpected gifts
There’s scanty evidence to suggest our culture knows what it needs to be happy, we are the most privileged generation to ever live, and still we are not the most joyful and loving

Why?
Here’s a start…
The world is full of Doers, moving outwardly with great inertia, and this world is paying for it
If we are always Doing something, even if it’s with the best of intentions, then when will we have time to be receptive to life and simply Be? If we are always chasing desires, how will we be satisfied?
If we cannot live within the balance of Doing and Being, we will never truly be present in the Now
Doing, is outward action, when we are always moving in this way how can we say we are truly present… Each one of your 100 trillion cells has an awareness, how aware can you possibly be of yourself when you are always doing ten-thousand things outside yourself, and never spending the time to awaken your own Being
It is estimated that there at least billions more cells in your body, than stars in the sky
You can become aware of the cells in your body, how many stars will you be able to travel to in your lifetime?

The world outside ourselves is finite, and if we use it to satiate our infinite desires we will devour our planet
The world inside is infinite
The depth of love in each of your hearts is endlessly deep

Humans are always searching to be boundless
We want more money
We want more property
Each day we wish to expand and grow
There is a part of you that always wants to transcend its bound and become closer to infinity
So long as you seek to boundlessness in a finite realm, you will only chase
When you seek the infinity within, you can become boundless, and then there is no need to seek and search in the world
Everything you seek is already within you
There was once a time when others had to show you what it felt like to be human, to feel love, to feel joy, to feel peace…but no one can show you anything that was not already inside yourself, we are all each other’s guides, I can tell there is a treasure inside your own heart more valuable than all the riches in the world, but only you can find it

You don’t have to do anything
Before you were born, you were nothing, there was nothing, no body, after you die, there will be nothing, no body
Why then do you think this form will last?
We are always clinging for something permanent
A sense of solidarity in this world of change
Yet all is slipping away
There’s no resisting
All is transient
So we place ourselves in the stars, we dream that our energies will ripple on, and create stories about how a piece of us will be permanent
Perhaps it will, for there is a piece of you that is infinite
Or perhaps we are creating more language and ideas as just another attempt to find some sense of permeance in an endless cycle of change
I have no answers
No one does, only beliefs
Only stories

For me, there is no purpose to life
It simply is, beyond words, beyond the mind and its endless creations
There is no goal
Life is the goal
There is no right and wrong
All is one

I say this now, I change my mind tomorrow
I can see the world ten-thousand ways
Yet people want consistency
I was once a single cell, and you want me to be consistent?!
Do not be absurd, all is change
Those who are consistent are stuck repeating the past,
I am spontaneous
I’m free to be and act in the moment, there is no need to be consistent

I used to try and to be someone and try to accomplish specific goals
But my pursuit of limited goals only caused me to live with blinders, seeking only my own aims, as if I knew what I should be doing with my time
Then I let go
And allowed life to flower in ways i could never have dreamed with my small mind
I simply trust
For I was never in control in the first place
May I remind you that we were all once a single cell and now we are 100 trillion cells
What part did you play in that growth?
Do you spin the galaxies into orbit?
And cause the rains to fall?
Perhaps a part of you does, but so long as your awareness is focused like a spot light on the world outside yourself, tinkering with small projects, where will you find the time to move into a receptive state in which you can merge with the part of you that is infinite

But… we must combat war they urge us
and climate change
and ten-thousand things outside ourselves
Yes and no
There are no problems outside of yourself, you are the only problem you need to worry about, go within and purify your own Being and watch the entire cosmos shift in a beautiful way
The problem solver is the problem creator
you simply must cut the root
you simply must let go
We have become too influenced by the ideas of men and women come and gone
we are conditioned on an unconscious level to think we must do good things to weigh against the bad things – we have deep seated fear rooted in our psyche of being hed for our sins
then there’s karma and reincarnation
maybe
there are ten-thousand ideas planted in our heads

Are they your experience? Or are you listening to a book, an influential person, or a charismatic speaker?

Life is still a mystery to me
I’ve had out of body experiences, near death experiences, thousands of visionary experiences, synchronicities I can’t explain, prophetic dreams, the list goes one, and yet I don’t know anything, I am as blank as my own birth
I’m not simply a doubter, I understand the power of belief, I also understand the damage that beliefs cause
Beliefs are stories we tell
I don’t mean that in a small way, the stories we live by are where we derive meaning and perception
That’s no joke, your beliefs can influence and alter reality like a dream
But they are just stories, and perceptions are just images and sensations
I see no reason why there would not be an infinite amount of stories and perceptions available to the mind to experience
What you believe becomes your reality in so far as you truly believe…nothing is more beautiful and dangerous

That is why I keep coming back to raw experience as ‘truth’, if you want to call it that
Experience needs to no words, they only get in the way and add a layer of confusion
experience simply is
Like the sound of the drum
or the rain falling on a tin roof
Or the sound of lovers kissing
That’s life
it exists to know itself through experience
It exists for no purpose other to be