Arrange three sticks,
bases resting in dirt,
Tips touching, balanced by
mutually necessary pressure.

Whatever [your] problems are, they are just enough. If these are not enough problems, Buddha is ready to give you more, just so you can appreciate your problems. Buddha is always giving you something.

Setting humor aside (almost) to conclude the point,

If you have nothing to cope with, your life feels empty. So I think you should trust Buddha. A life without problems is like sitting in this zendo for seven days without doing anything.

(the students had just completed a seven-day sitting retreat)

Watch the lights in a reverie,
Sit and picture yourself dancing,
Meeting her,
Not meeting her.

Your life hangs by a thread
Now unbreakable.
But in the imagined past, intimately delicate,
Pluck the heartstring and be carried to a darker place.
To pain born of happiness,
To fear born of hope,
To a death that exists because it is what you live for.

Moving quickly
To escape the heat
Simply ignites my soul
Like kindling.
Like gunpowder.

She shot.
Pushed taut until the wire snapped.
Launched with the force of a hateful ballista,
The ground moving so fast beneath her feet she could not place them to slow herself.

Our trajectories coincided.
The impact resounded.
Our carapaces shattered,
Littering our surroundings with shell fragments.
For a moment we beheld each other,
Held each other,
Directly,
Impossibly.
Our combined radiance was so stunning that we were blinded into unconsciousness.

We slept so deeply that when we awoke
A new layer of chitin had already begun to coat our vulnerable bodies.
Only our hands remained free, and
We joined them,
Gripping fervently,
Against the time when even that
Joy would recede.

Afterwards, we each walked numbly away from the scene of the crash.
I was trying not to forget, but not to remember.
She was mending the cord, stronger than before,
To restring the weapon which launched her into the night.

What impulse without suffering could have propelled us
Together forcefully
Enough to so fully annihilate the armor we rely on for survival?

But I feel unfamiliar gaps in my regrown shell.
Near each shoulder blade, the buds of small wings protrude slightly.
Their shape is different than before: They will be unfamiliar.
But perhaps it is time to try flying once more.

“Forgiveness is letting go of the desire to change the past”

“When I am doing yoga and my husband enters the room, the movement of air annoys me. When people walk into this meeting late, the breeze feels fresh and wonderful. Now I see it is just my choice.”

“When you are sailing, you work with the wind, but you cannot feel the wind. If you feel the air around you moving, then you are not moving with it.”

Listen!
There is a whisper gliding
Under your half-open window.

No! Do not rouse
Your Self but carefully, stealthily,
Attentively

Listen!
Between entangled eyelashes will slip
Into your dream
A singular mote of pollen
Drifting silently past watchmen,
Transparently through fortifications
Inciting germination of the seed
Of hope you guard,
Even from yourself.

For we each of us deserve everything, every luxury that was ever piled in the tombs of the dead kings, and we each of us deserve nothing, not a mouthful of bread in hunger.

Have we not eaten while another starved? Will you punish us for that? Will you reward us for the virtue of starving while others ate?

No man earns punishment, no man earns reward.

Free your mind from the idea of deserving, the idea of earning, and you will begin to be able to think.

It is our suffering that brings us together. It is not love. Love does not obey the mind, and turns to hate when forced. The bond that binds us is beyond choice. We are brothers. We are brothers in what we share. In pain, which each of us must suffer alone, in hunger, in poverty, in hope, we know of our brotherhood. We know it, because we have had to learn it. We know that there is no help for us but from one another, that no hand will save us if we do not reach out our hand. And the hand that you reach out is empty, as mine is. You have nothing. You possess nothing. You own nothing. You are free. All you have is what you are, and what you give.

More about suffering from Henri Nouwen, Christian theologian.

The great illusion of leadership is to think that a man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there… no God can save us except a suffering God, and no man can lead his people except the man who is crushed by his sins.

For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

My favorite quote from Paul.

One day, you cannot hear the familiar beacon.
In denial, you wonder:
Am I too far?
Has she changed her call?
No.
She is gone.

In anticipation of leaving, I step out,
Adjusting my coat and bag for the rain.
Saying goodbye with my eyes
To a now-familiar fragment
Of the visual opportunity
Unexercised.

Finally stepping outside
My nostrils fill
With the scent of abated rain

Standing near a railing near the sea
Freezing in the wind, under the sun
I don a coat, it flaps with my hair
The rhythm of the waves; my earth
Sailing past the bay.
Sitting to recover heat
A wave of goosebumps distributes
Warmth.

Hearing seagulls in the predawn
Non-embrace
The light, sound, waking
Open internal eyes
Looking at one another
Unfamiliar
Once more, drawn, inescapably
To learn

Piercing the soft layer of clouds:
Above, more clouds, harder

Within subterranean waters, small crystals of marble are dissolved into invisible uniformity by stifling gases mixed with the prevailing flow.

When the stream inadvertently, but inevitably, leaves its burrow, falling through open air, the freshness immediately relieves the liquid of its solvent, freeing tiny, pure white particles.

Rarely is the airborne flow great. It drips slowly, leaving some larger unmodified torrent to make its way down, down to deeper stones through unlit caves.

The drops hit, and hit, and hit, leaving behind their crystal impurities; eventually the point of departure constructs a monument to itself.

Through the gradual piling of discards, it attains a height which cannot be ignored.

Two writers walk
A path irregularly obstructed
By monstrous roots.

Arguing over the meaning of story,
Not a word is written.

At a junction, they hastily
Choose. Divergence.
Leaving trails of unread pages
Dripping with ink.

Love is a word
A word is an impulse
Passing from my lips to your mind
Through smooth perturbations
And reflecting

Speak it! Speak it!
Free it! Free it!

But don’t forget to protect
To capture, sequester
The touch you’ll remember
Is all that lasts forever

If, of the turbulence,
Of currents competing,
You tire,
Seeking relief,
You grasp
But are denied purchase.
Trade your jealousies
For abiding meloncholy.
Rather than fight, wait.
Pass your fingertips
Over mildewed walls in the gloom
As you slip free of the winds.
But with an open hand
Let go.

My beard retains water.
How queer! How discomfiting
That a part of me
Could be so compromised
Unexpectedly.

Yet moving on,
My idle fingers
Brush my lips and nose and eyes.
I find a surface alien
To my recollection.

Should I explore further
The extent of familiarity
Of the parts constituating me?
Considering the possibilities,
I hesitate indefinitely.

steel
fibers woven thickly
about flesh

Stepping in one another’s footprints
Sledding on one another’s trails

morning mist
settles atop pine trees
in spiders’ webs

tear-soaked hands
cherry blossoms unnoticed
looking back

In the warm
Laboratory
There is no winter

Ah, the blue sea!
Sitting on a rocky shelf
looking far away.

Outside the window
lies finely powdered snow
with intermingled pine needles.

Stepping over
a crack in the ice
of a frozen stream.