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You are here: Home / Announcements / Featured Poem / Solving the Problem

Solving the Problem

February 19, 2016

Blossoms do their pretty thing:
stones stone, bugs bug, trees testify. 
But somehow we tend to serve two masters. 
So which wears the mask that hides the other?
*
To teach “Already it is Perfect”
the Master simply moves his teacup. 
His students understand: breath out, 
breath in.
*
Many, in plenty, die of hunger;
some among heroes hope to die standing.
How to cross the Great Divide?
Crazy Wisdom, Crazy System.
Where is the jewel? (In the lotus). 
Root of the lotus? (Deep in the pond’s mud).
Our Buddha-nature?
quick: please answer. 
*
Poet Al Young sez he took himself over, 
                                                                                  years ago, from wanting
                                       to giving.
Likewise I tell my  baffled students:
“Disappear, you’re in the way—
Everything can’t come right through!”
Hilarious, how they gaze at  me. 
*
It would be good to start a new project, 
say polishing silence an eon or so. 
Ah, these occasional Gaps of Unself.
This life-long process of  Un-self-ing ourselves.
To be Everything
                                       instead of just One.
Brava, Bravo,
                                                       so to solve the problem.
(From Shaping Water by Barry Spacks)

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