SamadhiMuse

 
1 - Overview

When you see everything move, 
   it is inarticulate beyond all words; the future.

They say you cannot put your foot into the same river twice,
   but I say that anywhere you touch the river, you create illusion,
      for the river cannot be stopped, named or divided.

At the limit, it is nothing less 
   than the movement of every particle, entwined.
And at any level of generalization, 
   it is less than the truth.

The river is both the future and the past, now.
   One seeming to yield and one seeming to become
      and both of them non-existent.

And this moment, with every particle's movement frozen mid-vector,
   still implies the future as a function of the past.

Only now, in this moment, do cause and effect touch,
   only now, in this moment, does existence exist,
      and only now, in this moment, 
         does the idea of creation have substance.

These words, 'Past, Present and Future', they divide us
   from the burning river's fire, from Shiva's blinding light.


2 - The Monkey's Despair

Be still, small mind, we want to seek the future
   through the river's fire and the impossible divisions.

We want to touch the pulse and read the tea leaves
   and see where the river is taking us.

Monkey-like, we look into this perfect mirror 
   and see nothing
until we reach out and touch the surface
   and the ripples begin to flow.

Somewhere, in these distortions, as in a crystal ball,
   the images begin to come 
of cities, armies and civilizations,
   rising and falling. 
And all of history 
   pours out, 
overwhelming us in a moment,
   until we are rendered dumb by detail.

If the words and the concepts 
   and the constructions we have
but touch the truth of it, 
   they are all made void.

All of our transient symbols 
   are washed away by an existence
that is simply 
   impermeable.
Just as patterns in the sand 
   are simply destroyed by the sea.


3 - At the Coal Face

Riveted by our senses in a world where you cannot just sit,
   we are all motes in a whorl made of womb born grit.

One becomes two and two becomes pain,
   action and reaction 
and our egos are born 
   and we take a name.
We arrive in confusion 
   and the play begins again.

Oh where in this causality 
   shall we apply the spade?

Blind from the womb, 
   each as dumb as the last,
we're up against the coal face 
   having learned little 
      from our past.

(this is a work in progress begun may 23rd, 2015 in Montreal, Canada)

gallagher

— Copyright 1965-2015 by Dennis Gallagher —