Honestly moving into the center of my experience (禅)…

I am reunited with my ancestors:

My tradition is star-lit, deep, dark night sky,

The mysterious silent back-drop of a mountain stream,

The kiss of a tiger swallowtail butterfly’s wing,

And the interlacing of self and sound from large unadorned bamboo flutes, shakuhachi.

Embedded in this body are ancient traces,

The wisdom and life experiences of all of our grandmothers and grandfathers,

The songs from the land,

And of all creatures, seen and unseen, of Earth.

Within this body lay the truth of our experience,

The memories of where we have gone before,

Our trauma,

Our self-induced fiction,

Our sacredness,

And our simplicity.

It is the same voice that speaks through the landscape, through the layers of the mind –

A voice waiting to be heard,

Waiting for a listener.

It says, here is the place 道. Here the way 道 unfolds.

Every moment immediately experiencing this kaleidoscoping reality is a moment spent in Mind 心田,

On a threshold of an unknown realm (玄).

Patiently seeing into the heart of this realm,

Mind perceives Mind 心地.

I see myself in the varied forms of this existence,

Growing together – melding into new and unexpected forms.

From here the meaning behind all things is this incessant unfolding.

The authentic situation…

The web of existence

Of Mind

Of this Earth that we are all woven into

This self-same cloth

Mind perceiving Mind.

-M.A.Doherty, 1996/2022