Tag: Philosophy

Endless Bloom

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Could it be that I have pushed away pain and sorrow and failure to the point that I have nothing to gain? That I have dumbly succeeded and that is what drives my misery now. This normal ho-hum day cycling on and on and on. I can feel it, this cycle, I know it exists and that I exist within it, but I cannot see the whole of it. I feel it in my bones, in my tendons, ligaments, and muscles. This habitual energy flows through me. I’ve worked so hard to proliferate this endless bloom. 

The Only Good Art…

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The only good drawings he’s managed to come up with over the passed few years, are the one’s in which he started with nothing. No plan. No concept, no idea of where he would go with it. Start with a few lines. Experiment with technique and try his damnedest to fight those inner demons, which, bubbling, always keep him on the precipice; the knife-edge of sanity. A shape materializes and, if he’s lucky, he’s off into the void. The void where ideas bubble up and he sees it.

It’s here that conceptualization actually works. If you try to start from a concept, you’re doomed to failure (no matter the outcome), you’ll never accept the outcome.

—Ah, so this is freedom!

(And here is where you realize that in order for there to be freedom, it all depends on the situation; the here and now; the original intention, and application, of the design in the first place. )

The Net

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Consciousness is like a net; it can either catch you, or trap you.

We are here to discern change and differences. Which we do well, sometimes too well.

Am I comfortable right now? Does this benefit me? Is this what I want?

I’ve been here before.

I need to name this feeling.

Perhaps it’s not any one feeling, it’s a thousand things tied into one knot.

Intent on tension; intension

dis-ease; unable to be at ease; disease.

I’m trapped

Within a web of consciousness

The more I try to explain, the more I try to be understood, the more I wriggle, the tighter the bind

Let me explain;

Consciousness is a net

Like a murder of crows

Undulating caws, in unison,

What one crow sees, and knows,

The whole knows and sees.

 

Seeds of Self

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I am the gardener of this field

There are seeds I sow

And those that have been sown

I am the expression of myself

And all those I have met before

I am the gardner and my job

Is to cultivate these seeds

Regardless of how good or bad

So that they can come into the light

Of the midday sun.

So that I can continue to nourish and cultivate those that benefit myself, my family, and my friends.

For too long I have covered them up

With the soil from which

they try to emerge.

I have tried to hide those that I don’t want,

or have been too distracted to understand their true manifestation.

We are the gardners,

and this is our field.

**This poem came about from a meditation session after beginning to read Understanding our Mind by Thich Nhat Hanh. The book is a personal translation, or rather a personal interpretation (?) of fifty verses based on Vasubandhu’s Twenty and Thirty Verses. Vasubandhu’s is based on the Abhidharma, which is a scholastic approach -written by many different Buddhist scholars over time- to the Buddhas sutras. (I’m sure some of this could be corrected, however the point is that this poem comes from a translation of an interpretation, of an interpretation, a continuation of many in between.)

So this poem and the continual personal reinterpretations of these insights enumerates what is said in the fifth verse:

Whether transmitted by family, friends, society, or education, all our seeds are, by nature, both individual and collective.

I can’t say that I really feel that this is my poem in the sense that I am the sole author, the creator of the piece. I feel a great humility in being a part of the immensity of these insights. Understanding that the poem may not make as big of an impact to others, I still wanted to share it as I’ve noticed recently that when I look back on poems I’ve written all the things that I tried to say, but was unable to convey in words comes flushing back, which may just be one of the greatest things about poetry (of all the great things). I hope only that in some way it conveys something similar for you.