Category: Religion

Buseoksa Moon South Korea

by Rayn Roberts, posted in Autumn, Buddhism, Dreams, Heaven, Hell, Korea, Mystical, Nature, Nature poetry, poetry, Poets & Writers, PoetsWest, Religion, The Moon, Water, Wilderness

Enough meditation, three a.m. earbuds Dream # 9
reading Merton’s Seven Story Mountain in stillness,
the temple bell shakes the universe, calling monks
to save all beings in hell, a cock crows in darkness.
A half moon spins the stars in a black pool forming
on land in sea the spirit dance unfolding nonetheless.
Do not count the cost, no one, nothing is ever lost.

In fitful sleep I wake to the apple autumn morning
dressing herself in crimson, grey, brown and gold.
There’s a bus to nowhere, somewhere I think home.
I feel the half moon human mind moving to fullness
asking clearly, “Will you stay with the solemn monks
Or return to mad electric nights of paradise in Seoul?”
Sleep walking dreamer that I am, I hesitate, can’t wait

To go back to a circle of friends, lovers I know, my bed
a dream-pond of incarnadine leaves sinking to rest,
the bell is tolling, calling, shaking me awake, I think
but it’s just the glaring city moon tapping on a window.

 

 

Rayn Roberts 2019

 

Rayn Roberts 2019

 

Korean Buddhism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SXf_V18wQUhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SXf_V18wQU

Buesok Temple
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWpX6Rf_JuY&spfreload=1

“Dream #9” is the song by John Lennon

 

BDDG_Buseok_oct20_06

A Truth You May Have Forgotten

by Rayn Roberts, posted in Adam and Eve, Christianity, Earth Day, Easter, Heaven, India, Inspiration, Islam, Islam in America, Japan, Jesus, Love, Meditation, Mental Health, Muslims, Mystical, Native American, Nature, Nature poetry, Paganism, Peace, poetry, Rayn Roberts, Religion, The Regenerative Power of Nature, Time, Truth

There is a moment before the sound the Great Om,
Before Siva turned on one foot
Before Krishna was blue and Tara green,
Before the making of Lucifer, the heavenly war
The gravity of heaven and the drifting fire of hell
Before the holy breath blew into Man
Before Adam’s dream of Eve
Before Cain lost his mind and the daughters of Cain
And the flood, before an angel spoke to Hagar
And Moses saw a home of honey, fire and blood

Before David hurled a stone
Before Isaiah spoke a word
Before Buddha under the Bodhi-tree

The slaughter of the innocent
The cry of the desert in a voice crying in the desert
Before the sorrow of Mary
Before a nail cut the hand of the Anointed
Before the wonder of Magdalene at the tomb
Before tongues of fire
Before the first stone struck Stephen
Before stigmata in Assisi
Before Allah save infant girls
In a message of mercy from Mohammed
Before Gandhi felt the heat of a gun
And the death of Martin gave an undying dream

There is a moment
Without motion
Before the memory of time

Offered like sunlight filtered through trees falls at your feet
It is like sound
Or light surrounding the body
A lilting melody of light
Before evil or good were ideas, that when you hear
Clears the past of pain
Reconciles history to love
And the One you felt did not exist
Is with you saying
“I have always loved you and always will.”
It is the still point at the center,
That moment you truly are, that moment is now

 

Duck

Winter Moon

by Rayn Roberts, posted in Nature, Rayn Roberts, Religion, The Moon, Winter

Blackness and silence, that is where she rises,
Sylvia, you knew the moon too well.
Well of illusion, misguided dreams; old virgin appearing in white
she is barren, dry, bald-
Stolen light is borrowed beauty.
How can she be Lake of the gods,
She’s a mirror, she confounds, bewilders, dazzles and deceives.

What is a lover to her but a fool– You know what is said,
the lover, the lunatic share one bed–
A memory of sunlight, a fantasy in the way of her bright emptiness,
that is what love is to an old, envious maid.
I’ll not look on her again easily,
how can I and not recall
up over the white shoulder of a windy hill in icy air

She unveiled her face to me– I, whom she’d driven to despair,
cried a name she would never hear.

 

19118

Lament for the Body Politic

by Rayn Roberts, posted in Agnostic, Nature, Rayn Roberts, Religion, The Way I see it., Truth, War

You’re better to believe what we tell the children: God loves all
Satan’s to blame for the evil in the world, the horror of war.

You’re better if you just think it, think the heart of humanity
The soul of the nation is one, indivisible under Mr. Donald J.

Oh say can’t you see something eatin’ away at the heart-land
Like an amoeba eatin’ the brain, a crow peckin’ the liver of liberty?

Chipping away inside, death has a bone to pick with us all.
We let hate and bloodshed go, over and over, but never have we

Quite committed to memory how we do it—our books rust on shelves
Our art rots on walls, television keeps us distracted with football

Our laws help check, but there is no remedy for reality– violence
Erupts at any turn, with or without imams, rabbis, priests

A merciful God, Almighty Wall Street—
There’s no getting away from that unless we remember

How to love one another, send the cops and soldiers home for good
Lay down our views, our arms, and live in perfect peace—

Believe it’s possible and you’re better than me, pushin’ seventy
Kickin’ the tires of a heavenly car, never seen nothin’ like it so far.

peace-sign
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Credo 2

Religions are a balm to a wounded heart
but an insult to sound intelligence.
They provide peace and connection
while kicking us in the head,
So because we need to connect for peace
and we like being kicked around,
We’d do well to study and get use to them.

lifespan-bodhisattva-vow   Blues for a Buddha : Credo 1 & 2 by Rayn Roberts

Any Day Now

by Rayn Roberts, posted in Breathe, Buddha, Buddhism, Heaven, India, Inspiration, Meditation, Peace, Rayn Roberts, Religion, The Way I see it., Truth, Zen

Nothing you were to think, feel, know, remains intact
The givens all gone, the body unravels

The soul does not exist: where spirit seemed to breathe
A great hole deepens, a sea of liquid sound spills in
Pure as God’s voice, moonlight-shoals and starry reefs
In vacancies of time too wide to navigate, the soul
A supreme fiction, a lost frame in an old film
Lightens out of being, a dream in pure color, sensation
Glittering the last hour, the lives that lived you
And left you to wonder, completely gone, directions
Collapse in light, light in all from all
Nothing to hold you, what you are dissolves in awe

A dreadful wonder of knowing all and nothing at all
But the jewel in the lotus, this, this moment.

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