SamadhiMuse

            The winter storm finds me
               watching the trees swaying
                  against a gray and moving sky.

            I feel the Buddha's thought,
            if what he experienced
               could be called a thought,
                  as the trees swayed
                  ...continuous, elegant, flowing....

            The raw beauty of it rendered
               on the canvas of no-mind.
            ...being and presence and timelessness...
                  cold and wind, winter and death 
                     and beauty all here....

            I watch them sway like they did
               when the mastodons roamed the north
                  and men wore skins.
            Such a small glimmer of focused awareness are we
               amid the turbulence and tumble of existence.

            Identified with our names
               our jobs, our bodies, our personalities
            and our memories
               we go blind almost all the time.

            Surely, those many centuries ago,
               Buddha watched other trees in a storm
            and felt the same benediction and blessing
               as I am feeling here.
            I know his thought
               and I feel his joy for a moment.

            But he turned and walked away into the rain,
               and chose to advance, openly, towards his death.
            And he gave up every fiction and every pose.
           
            He chose to meet existence in the raw
               and found the roll of God's thunder
            while we sleep
               and barely feel the breeze.

                              gallagher
                              16 dec 87
                              Newport Beach

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —