Enlightenment

Whenever I wonder
if I am enlightened
or not,
I ask myself,
"Well...am I omniscient?",
and the answer
is always,
"No" or
"I don't know, because
I can't even conceive
of such a thing
as a person
being omniscient
and I don't know
what it is"
so I just keep going
with my Zen
like a dummy
who is not enlightened,
and at my temple
we sing a chant
called, "Yebul"
which means
"Homage To Buddhas"
and in the end
of that chant
we say
that we will not become
enlightened
until all beings
become enlightened,
so that's that!

Zen And New Age

My Zen temple
was deciding
quite a few
years ago,
whether to blend
its Zen
with new age teaching,
or stay like pure Zen,
so we all seemed
to have a prejudice
against the new age,
because we thought
that it was too freaky,
so we stayed
with straight Zen,
but I then
sort of left
the temple,
and remembered
that once
I had promised
a woman
that I would read
a Shirley MacClaine book
and I did
and my mind
was freed
from the prison
that one gets into
with fundamentalist religion,
and from there
I have explored much
of new age teaching
and find it
most enlightening,
because, you know,
it's all Buddha!

Life Is Suffering So Hallelujah

In my view,
life is it,
it is the infinite
and eternal,
and Buddha
has been translated
as saying,
"Life is suffering",
but most of us think
that his word
for suffering
was dukha,
which means
"Life seems unsatisfactory",
to me,
so, you know,
it's one thing after another,
one problem after another,
and it gives us
a sickness,
so my new view,
which is not new,
is that dukha is a holy thing,
a kind of grace given to us from life,
because it keeps us going
with hope for something better,
some cure
for the sickness,
and I think the sickness
is not the problem,
it's the solution,
it's life.

Some Of Us Want To Hurt Some Of Us

My computer
recently was hacked
and the hacker
wrecked it.
So, today
I was wondering
why some of us
want to hurt
some of us.
I decided
that we must rub
some of us
the wrong way
and that's why.
So then, I decided
that I was innocent
and hadn't done
anything like that.
Until I thought
about it.
I once threatened
a friend
with a knife
because he wanted
to make me breakfast.
I once threatened
a girl
because she was
flirting with me.
I once blew up
on stage
at a friend
because he wasn't playing
the song
the way I wanted him to.
(and I got booed).
I once shouted
at a friend
because he said
that I was crazy.
(and he was right).

The Perfect Macaroni And Cheese

I don't know
if I remember correctly,
but it seems to me
that one time
in my life
when I was a child,
that I had
some macaroni and cheese
which was perfect.
Ever since then,
I have been trying
all kinds
of macaroni and cheese
and none of them
have quite had it,
like that early memory.
Maybe, it was only
some Platonic ideal
macaroni and cheese,
or some dream
macaroni and cheese.
I tried the box, the can,
the frozen, and the homemade,
but nothing can match
my dream macaroni and cheese.
Zen would say,
"It's all good!",
but I don't know,
I think that at sometime
I once had
perfection.

States

So, we've got
the four,
when we are
fresh spring air,
then warm summer mornings,
then an orange leaf,
then we become
snowflakes,
so why don't we start
the year
on March twenty first,
and then we've got
the three,
where we are air
and water
and earth,
and then we've got
the two
as we are
men and women,
girls and boys,
feminine and masculine,
and we sometimes say
not two,
but some sort
of continuum,
and let's think about
being satisfied
with this.

A Way Out Of Self-Pity

I was full
of self-pity
this morning
and depressed
because I felt
unloved, unappreciated,
and such like that,
so I was bummed out,
and the mind
tried to turn it around
by asking,
"Well...who do you love?"
so I remembered
that when I get really down,
I can only actually bring up
about four people
who I really love,
even though I try
to love everybody and everything,
and then
I thought
that even though
I write to many people,
that I don't connect
very well to anybody
just like they don't connect
with me,
so I thought
of a song
and thought,
"Love Stinks"
and laughed
and felt much better.