SamadhiMuse

every moment, night and day.
crystal, locked in, unrelenting awareness
every breath, every posture, every bite
all one.

all part of the illuminated awareness
that has, as its object,
its own blossoming.
that has as its effect
the figure/ground reversal
within which everything else
appears as illusion;
as dreams which are traps,
as distortions which ensnare.

as consciousness we can be one.
we can unify through achieving
the critical mass
of self-awareness necessary
to self-sustain self-creation
immediate eternal razor edge.

but before
we are fragments of light
lost in dreams dim and gray
with the lights and motors and pumps
of the illusion to sooth us.
and even after we become aware
of the possibility of unity
those dreams wait with
a thousand lifetimes of patience
calling us back to sleep.

                  Gallagher
                  9 nov 86

— Copyright 1965-2008 by Dennis Gallagher —

            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
               of this vision.
            I know his thought
               and 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 —