A white Rose of Sharon Wide open like the third eye of Wisdom Stares at the morning star Mugunghwa / The Rose of Sharon, Korea’s National Flower The Poem appeared first in “The Fires of Spring” by Rayn Roberts 2002 All Buddhist traditions agree that as the morning star rose in the sky in the early morning, […]
Category: Religion
Hitting the Wall
A wall in a monastery—call it meditation Is that wall in Berlin That was and now is not, Or the Great Wall in China That is and once was not, They begin and end in mind. And if the universe is mind It’s a wall whose stones Break into laughter When we say they are […]
The Voice
If I spoke from the heart and you could hear You could ride the sound Back to the beginning and see you who you are If I spoke from the heart, my tears would be a river Running to the sea An ocean of sweetest water If I spoke from the heart, my joyful laughter […]
The New, New Colossus
Give me your powerful chairman of boards Your bankers brokers hungry war lords Your lawyers quick to make a deal Judgmental preachers with fiery zeal The loudmouth fat-cat tycoon Your guns for hire: give me your goons Your huddled masses of real estate stars American idols in fancy cars, give me The plotter schemer corporate […]
Contemplation by Water
This is how I spend the days– nothing is for sure or what it seems in the sacred web as morning flowers into sun– I stand at a window watching herons out to sea the scent of wisteria over water moves in the fine yellow Gobi dust of China trees fill the air ever-green I hope […]
Gwisin at Seoraksan
An hour in autumn– alone yet not I saw a stretch of centuries, people, forms I’d been that made me what I am today– sad for what fights to spite death but cannot win pushing against a tide of joy and pain— Listen, the last cicada singing in a twisted pine chanting the past and […]
A Reckoning
There must be meaning behind a will, there must be healing. Night deepens but I cannot sleep, a lily pond glows drowsy koi floating by a moonlit walk in the park. Is there a reason to feel the loss of so many I never knew, did I help herd them to slaughter my twisted heart pounding […]
Buseoksa Moon South Korea
There’s a bus to nowhere, somewhere I think is home.
I feel the half moon human mind moving to fullness
clearly asking, “Will you stay with the solemn monks
Or return to the maddening city life of hell in Seoul?”
A Truth You May Have Forgotten
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 […]