No-Design
A. S. Kline © 2012 All Rights Reserved
This work may be freely reproduced, stored,
and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.
Contents
Always
In The Realm Of The Spirit
Nature
Keeps Writing On The Rock-Face
Beautiful
Freedom, Shining Hills
We
Were There, Wherever There Was
Prayer
Has Nothing To Do With Religion
Grey sky.
Edge
of autumn. This world
Is
here without design.
The Chinese said tzu-jan,
Of-itself.
Deep down in the
silence,
You can feel it,
All that process,
All that order,
Smooth as silk
And
all without us.
Mist on the green
pool
In
the morning.
Chill leaves stir.
This world
Moves
without intent.
The Chinese said
wu-wei
Without
making.
No hidden mind here,
Cool dawn light.
Is filled with
intricate detail,
Plenty of action,
Not a silent end,
On
a silent beach.
The end of History
Is not the end of
war,
Technology,
interest, event.
It’s simply that
We end in
repetition.
To endure you must
Get used to the
repeats,
Always entertaining,
And the sameness
Of
the thought.
The end of History
Is not the end of
mind,
Science is
delightful;
It’s simply that
there
Are no further
values
Than those we know.
Love, truth and
beauty
Not enough for you?
The end of History
Is not the end of
those.
Respect, at last,
arrives
For the creatures,
the planet,
And
the individual life.
True, sensitive, and
kind:
The
final refuge.
The end of History
Is full of subtle
detail
Replete with action,
And not a silent
end,
On
a silent beach.
In a flash, the
brushstroke in the air,
The dancer in the
dance,
The exercise of
thoughtless skill is Te.
Here the fallen
trees, the broken rocks,
Roots, rot, down to the heartwood,
Floor of the forest,
Mist on the
mountain-top, alight.
This too a
lightning-flash in eternity,
Unfolded from
itself, self-organised,
Temporary the order
Out of chaos, we
call beauty.
Under clumps of pine
in the rain,
Watching the peak
float in the fog,
A murmur somewhere
Of
the running stream; all this life.
Slowly changing,
swiftly changing.
Imagining the meld
of mind and machine
Savouring
the cool air of the forest.
Our relationship
with space and time,
Swiftly changing,
slowly changing.
Imagining the meld
of mind and machine
Touching
distant galaxies in silence.
Our relationship
with each other,
Slowly changing,
swiftly changing.
Imagining the meld
of minds, machines,
Joining
thoughts over aeons.
Freeing the mind of
technology,
Its implications;
thinking
Of
values, thinking of purpose.
What to do then; aim
for; what to be?
In
the breeze. On mountain
slope
The white streams
scour the rock.
Pale
grasses in the shadows.
The sky is clear, nothing
hidden.
Our ignorance we
call mystery.
Measuring the
darkness, no need:
Everything settles
by itself.
Deep
Shadows flicker,
leaves sigh,
Fall of water, in
the darkness.
Floating
there, the bright moon.
No mind, and no reflection.
No will, and no
intent,
Following the
mountain trail,
Silently, seasons
pass.
Thorn and scrub, the
air close
I sit on a log,
Watch the
tree-creeper
Spiral upwards
Far hush of the city,
Still
roads.
Here a mind,
There the silence
Which is which?
Look down at the
floor
Of the wood, its
detritus,
Intricacy of twigs,
Bark, leaves, dust,
fibre,
Nature’s leavings,
Which are Nature,
And not left. Look
up,
Tendrils, shapes of
cloud,
The thousand forms,
Swirling
in the eye.
Here is a space.
To be.
No sound, distant
houses.
Deep in your
original
Mind, is the gleam
Of valley haze, cool
air.
The
world of phantoms work.
Ghosts, we pass, and
pay
Lip-service
to the powers.
A thousand
stratagems
To
rationalize the weird.
Buildings, clothes
and cars:
But
still a world of spirits.
Minds in the window-glass
Stop and reflect.
Cities standing, maya,
In
the silent universe.
Easy to tell
yourself it’s real,
Vanish in the maze
of names
And forms; drink the
tea,
Speak the ritual, be
careful.
The world is solid
in the dark,
Less
so in the light.
No I’ve no anger for
those
In
power. They are
Human beings just
like me,
And
fallible, just Egos.
Phantoms without
masks
Are
simply phantoms.
Most are powerless.
History
Is
empty. This irreal world
Is made of hidden
thoughts,
Of ghosts of ghosts,
The spirits of the
phantoms,
Shining
in the dark of the world.
And nothing changed!
The sky is clear,
World is how it is.
Smoke haze on
granite ridges,
Deep
light in the trees.
Everything wavers,
Then
is still.
Everyday life
Is
perfect awakening.
Nothing special,
Undefiled
by thought.
Not by meditation
Or intention,
The leaves move
The moon wanders.
Sunyata is emptiness,
Wu is non-being,
Neither are other
Than
the silent mountain.
What you think is
flowing,
That is still.
What you think is
still,
That is flowing:
Caught on the
snow-peak
The clouds stop
moving.
Trees and granite slide
To
the creek.
Tun wu, flash of insight
Offers
nothing.
The void is not
void,
The
real not real.
Nothing to find
here,
Standing
in the snow.
No Wheel of Being,
This Moment is the
Wheel.
Set down your mind
Steadily before you,
Watch it vanish
Into
quiet air.
Help or hinder?
Mind makes
obstacles.
Mind stirs up
thoughts.
In the great Void
Move sun, moon and
stars,
Wandering mind,
Regretful
heart.
Bright blue sky,
Birds fly through
it.
Mountain shimmers,
Ancient
places.
Nothing
else.
No mind in the Void.
Stone
without purpose.
Grass
without intent.
Sleeping without
dreams
Under
far heavens.
Waking to green
meadow,
Green thought, green
stream.
Brown-yellow
bracken, that oily scent.
The slow-curving ridged
backs of hills,
The layers of trees,
Birch, oak, down to the
alder in the valley,
Blood-red cut
trunks, black sinuous stream.
Sudden crashing:
deer gone through the trees.
Salt-licks in
hollows, moss-green roots,
The high dark crests
of ridges,
Stone shelves of
forest,
Birch saplings shading
the leaf-filled ditch,
Thin
white streams threading the mountain.
What purpose?
We can drift
Through eternity
If
we choose.
Why the frustration,
duhkha,
And
the pain?
Where are we
Off to travelling
In
the night?
The mirror is empty,
And the lake is dry,
Where is freedom?
Don’t strive, don’t
grasp,
Don’t crave, don’t
cling.
Leaf drops from the
tree.
Cloud slides
From
the mountain.
Stream from the ledge,
Moon
from the sky.
Eels in the tide,
Still this is void,
And
nothing to be grasped.
Flailing pine on the
hill,
Black in the milky light,
Still this is simply
void,
And nothing has risen.
Thoughts in the cool
night,
World
silent, sighing, calm.
Still life is merely
void,
No constant Self exists.
The world is that, the world is such,
Tathata.
The awakening an
awakening,
Nothing new:
Sun
breaking from behind the one peak.
In cold morning air
the world turns stone,
Then cloud, then
stream,
No beginning and no
end.
Frost on the
cliff-face, smoke from the fire,
The world, so, far
beyond the mind,
Slowly alters
temperature.
The
perfect feeling?
Clear, calm affection.
Oh so difficult.
Dawn world: chilled
trees and no people.
High to look down,
fearful mind,
Feet slipping on the
peat track.
This is form, and
this is void.
There is what is,
and nothing else.
Mind descends into
the bracken,
Chases each frond to
its base,
Awake, there’s
nothing new to see,
No addition. World
is free, world is free.
Scrambling along the
hill-track,
I saw that nirvana is samsara.
All
these forms and nothing there.
Washing in the
mountain stream,
You can even wash
the mind.
By seeing, not by
trying, we see.
In too much
concentration on the thing,
We miss the thing
itself, in the mind.
By too much
meditation on its nature,
Nature just passes
us by.
Who thinks to find
the self, loses it.
Who thinks to lose
the self, finds it.
Losing or finding
the self:
Neither leads to the
mindless trail.
Freezing water, wind
in the pines.
Trees all sway, the
heart flickers.
The world is always
like this.
Nothing
to do to make it so.
The diamond sutras,
Shining
quartz in the rock.
I trace the
glittering veins.
Like a web white
with dew,
The jewelled meanings,
Brightly
strung in the silence.
I trace the gleaming
jewels.
West and East: a
weight of being.
All the objects of
existence,
The
emotions and the actions.
I trace the silent
trail.
No one means to come
so far.
Once here, no way
back.
All naked flowing
light,
All grass under the
stars.
Try it without the
understanding.
There is the
cataloguing of nature,
There is the
mindless letting-go.
Wandering through
trees and grasses,
Hairy seeds blowing
in the wind,
Following the
moonlight on the stream,
Chasing
the radiance in the clouds.
Mountain Zen won’t
get you anywhere.
It means leaving
everything alone.
There is trying to dictate
the process,
There is watching
everything go by.
Sitting on the
un-carved rock, in the sun,
Drifting silently
among the pines,
Pollen spills across
your quiet heart,
Pale birch leaves
whisper in the light.
This place is
ancient.
Stone-axe factory
On the slopes,
Bone arrow-heads
Amongst
the scree.
Empty caves, old
hearths,
The
silent people.
Beautiful arcs of
slender trees,
Brushing their
leaves
Through the torrent,
Green meadow at the
foot,
All the signs
Of our past below
The
mountain.
Something carves
Into
the body.
Where we came from
Is almost a
memory,
Latent in the bones
In the skin,
Aeons
pulsing.
No paintings here,
No rock-carved art,
No ochre daubs,
No statuettes of
bone,
Just a feeling
Deep in the mind,
And a voice saying
Trust in the heart.
Birds are the
thoughts
Coming and going.
You can shoot them
With your feathered
Arrows, then they
die.
You can fly with
them
Imitating form,
Admiring
process.
Through the blue
Void of your
Past they swirl.
Sometimes they
Are
clouds,
Wisps
of future.
In the morning
They fly East,
West
at night.
They leave no
Trace, you can
Watch them go.
No one knows
What kind of
Birds they are.
They fly too
High, they fly
Too
swiftly.
Their call falls
Through the
Space
of mind.
The cry of all
The birds
In
the world.
Open your eyes and
you see it.
It needs no
discipline, no intent.
The wind at dawn
blows through.
The Tao is like the
moonlit lake.
See it and your mind
grows quiet.
It’s nothing to try
for or to gain.
The light goes deep
in the water.
The Tao is like the running
stream.
Look there, your
heart grows still.
Altering, it’s one
and the same.
Motionless, flows
through the eye.
What you look for
Was never lost: it’s here.
No point talking, no
use chasing.
No place for those machines
On
empty streets.
Nothing
outside, nothing inside.
There’s really
nothing
To be grasped.
Nothing
to be practised, known.
Nothing to be done,
Nowhere
to go.
Mind empty,
night-wind empty.
Just a perfect
Movement
of the trees.
Of power and
violence,
All
gone under. Nature
Survives,
lovely Earth.
Calm mountains stretch
Through the sky,
mind
Settles. Mad nations,
Elsewhere, mortal
cries.
You need to hover at
The edge of
conscience,
You need to float in
The
un-carved space.
No one can carry
The weight of human
Suffering. No one
Can
impose a purpose.
One species
scrabbling
To dominate the
planet,
Subjugating
creatures,
Withholding life-rights,
Will
achieve nothing.
Silent mountains
rise
Through
the sky. Deep
Woods, leaves
flowing.
No
one round here working.
Fields silent,
Old clapboard houses
glow in mellow light.
All the way round, the
soft mountain slopes.
Still
space. Quiet
people. Little competition,
The
sense of settlement, rooted tribes, trees.
Always there have
been the peaceful places.
We have it in us to
be free of every violence,
Of
the body and the mind. We
have it in us.
Though this place,
and this metaphor, will fail,
Though there is no
sanctuary from depredation,
Calm is not hatred,
benevolence no destruction.
The endless agony of
confrontation, of desire,
The eternal round of
guilt, regret and craving,
Evaporates
in this silence.
Inanimate Nature
Reclaims, free of
us, the rough deserted orchards:
Vanishing peoples,
old tongues, peculiar ways,
Old clapboard houses
fading through the twilight.
At a single word, in
a single moment,
Rested
in silence, spontaneity.
Neither selfless nor
selfish,
Neither this nor
that, free
Of temples,
scriptures, practice,
Old-time sages
sitting far off in the hills,
Living, peaceful in
the mountains,
Inside, outside,
life-events, the dharma,
Spoke not a word.
Nothing gained.
Journeying back to
primal being,
Entering the realm
of the creatures,
Old sages voiceless
under pine trees
Left no teaching,
spoke no wisdom,
Rested
in non-action, spontaneity.
Pain,
regret, transience.
The animate would
return
To the inanimate,
Cease clinging. All
return to Nature.
Sun softly shining
over Earth,
Autumn light on the
leaf-mould,
The wind blowing on
the mountain,
From the blue:
Ours,
this logic, this compassion.
Suffering is
inherent in the creature,
Not inherent in the
world outside.
Silent light
cascades,
Beyond the mind,
There is no
suffering in the universe.
Pallid
water.
Glistening clusters
Of pine-needles
stir,
Over the fallen
trunks
That
block the way.
Without tools and
furs
No one lived here.
Cunning and
co-operation
Led us outwards,
Our dispersal
From the African
savannahs,
Until we competed
for the planet
With every life-form,
Exploited every kind
of matter,
Black oil pumping,
Shale fracturing,
Machines above the asphalt,
While salvation lies
in not-doing,
All in intentionless
action,
Compassion devoid of
interference,
Free giving
Without competition,
The sharing where we
began.
Broad light flowing
in the creek,
Over the shining,
singing land,
Where is our power?
While the universe,
Without purpose,
Goes on doing what
it does.
The moon glows in
the water.
Calm, at night, among
dark leaves,
I look to catch the
stars moving.
In sitting, just sit:
in being, just be,
Like the boulder in
the stream.
Un-carved, at rest,
in black flow,
Here, without
knowledge or intent.
Don’t name the
lights in the sky.
Motiveless action is
the secret.
Mountain peaks in
the storm,
Poke through the
jagged cloud.
You need to wake
from morality,
Free the mind from
convention.
The inanimate adheres
to no virtue
The mindless feels
no empathy.
Stars are far off,
in the deep sky,
Leaves are stirring
in the chill air.
What point is there in
the universe?
Freedom is the
absence of desire.
Make no difference.
Though we are likely
not alone,
Mind is mind.
It can’t invent purpose
For what is without
intent.
Hail to the
invisible companions,
Slowly
circling.
Though we may likely
never meet,
Mind is mind,
And thoughtless
process rests
In
deepest values.
Some blue smudge in
the blurred image,
Might be us,
Silent
in the distant mirror.
But mind is mind,
With nothing to
grasp in the void,
Nothing
to gain.
We go.
Through the thousand
centuries,
We go.
Tools and skills,
Are what we learn,
And deep process
Of
the universe.
Learn: the Void has
No possessions,
Nothing to be gained
From
emptiness.
Perfect silence
Still
the best.
Look, I pass
Nothing
on.
After this
I’ll relax in
stillness.
It’s your mind
That goes on
working.
Something and not Nothing?’
The ‘why’ conducts a
complex meaning:
Nothing, it implies,
was a real alternative,
The Something a pure anomaly.
There’s a yearning
for design of the un-designed,
A direct communication
of the strangeness,
How Being feels so very
odd.
Mountains loom, the
water chills,
The trees feel
solid, alien.
Objects we imbue
with personalities,
And
endlessly anthropomorphise nature.
Or we grant intent
to the intentionless,
Desiring to be part,
to be needed,
Would be liked, even
loved by the inanimate,
Though we barely
manage love with people.
But was Nothing ever a real alternative,
Or that void a
physical possibility?
Why should this
strange world not be what always is,
The only meaning its
peculiar existence?
No purpose can
inhere in the purposeless,
Other than the
purposes of creatures,
And the purposes we
design into machines,
Where
in time we’ll meld with the inorganic.
You must understand
the beauty
In the absence of
design,
It’s that absence
that guarantees our freedom.
Is
too anthropomorphic for me.
Nothing ‘selects’,
there is no active verb,
There are pressures,
populations, there are outcomes.
What we see as the
sieving of life-forms,
What we capture in
equations,
Is a sequence of
events, devoid of greater plan,
Resulting
in a pattern of survival.
Science too is
plagued by language,
The inappropriate
embedding of intention,
Through verbs that
go implying a subject,
When all we really
have is the object.
Even the ‘selection’
in natural selection,
Is
too anthropomorphic for me.
The real issue being
whether we’re unique
Or
whether mind emerges everywhere.
Slanting
softly through the pines.
The mountain peaks
have no awareness,
The wind has no
identity.
In the woods, in
ravines, dark streams
Show white against half-buried
stones.
What’s the use of
all this craving?
There’s no purpose
in the cliffs, in the snow.
Boulders bedded in
the grass, white clouds
Moving
slowly in the sky.
Shadows deepen,
leaves fall,
Mind still clings:
to pathless silence.
In the mountains, in
the darkness, who knows
The trail, and where
is home?
Misted thought in
tangled valleys,
Endless flowing
endlessly consumed.
The Self dies and
rises every moment.
The world is a
process of energies in flight,
The
mind the endless process of awareness.
This thing you call
your identity,
Its name and its form,
how fragile!
There is no time so
nothing lasts in time.
You exist by this
continuous creation.
Is the stream the
stream, the tree the tree?
Where nothing
changes everything is changed.
The mind is
enlightened on the mountain,
This
still cold moon, the seething flow.
We wash in the stream.
Birds fly noisily
from the clump of pines.
Mist hangs in the
gorges. I roam round
With
nothing to do.
Mountains and trees
never get bored.
No intent.
Vague thoughts.
Pile wood for a
fire.
If you look for the
mind it’s not there.
The world is bright.
Heart is clear.
If you think there
are no
Values without
purpose, you’d be wrong.
Wu-shi, no busyness, nothing special.
Stones and spoons,
Cold water, flames.
We eat.
Is
this: there’s nothing to believe.
What is called faith
is pointless.
Mind-values flourish
of themselves.
There’s no use
following the Way.
Seeking the Buddha-self,
you lose it.
And when you wake there’s
nothing special:
Quiet knowing, an everyday
lightness,
This
empty stream flowing in the void.
Vast
buildings in the sky.
Giant doors, plate
glass,
Space over-engineered.
Here and there a
token tree,
Phantom
grass.
Ghosts of power
Pass to and fro.
The human is here
On sufferance
You understand.
This is power’s
place.
And here the
powerful
Bound by endless
forces
Go to and fro
Conceiving
of control.
This is the essence
Of
the civilised.
You must understand
What we have done.
Exchanged a world
For the dream,
Conceded the mind
In ritual,
To conquer the
material
Live in peace,
And overcome
Indifferent
Nature.
How did we get here?
As
ever, gradually.
What we create
exists
Beyond
our acts of creation.
Mind goes working of
itself.
The rhythms are your
native tongue,
Encapsulating
a whole culture.
What speaks is from
behind the mind.
Like that
heavy-blossomed thorn
Now losing itself in
a fan of fruit
Spread all round it
on the ground.
You can be casual
about it, creation,
But it’s the inner
complex moving,
And best if you just
open the gate
Let leaves blow across
the path.
The hills need no help
to be hills.
Clouds needs no
assistance to be clouds
Mind needs no effort
to be mind.
World needs no purpose
to be world.
Greed,
fear, dissatisfaction, curiosity.
Let all that go.
Watch the fog
And cloud
Swirling over
summits,
Clumps of pine
In
the deep.
In the silence,
there’s no need of values.
Morality’s the
result of too much action.
Sun-glare
after rain.
Wu-wei.
Sit and contemplate
The
brightness.
Jagged ridges,
Black wet stone.
The universe is
neither kind nor harsh,
Beneficent nor hostile, simply mindless.
Scrambling up the
trail,
Alone.
Confusion over, see
Beyond the trees
One whole mountain,
Floating
weightless.
Nothing
in the rocks and trees.
Empty mind, sees so
clearly:
Awareness
outside design or meaning.
No one can discover it
by searching.
No one can hold to it
by clinging.
Wishing I were
deeper in Nature,
Twice-born to
another kind of being,
All the
four-thousand year old phantoms,
Gone
with the mist in the breeze.
A kind of natural
integrity,
Truth you can touch,
our affection for it all,
The
living empathy that makes us human.
Yes it’s about
spiritual values,
But no, it’s nothing
to do with religion.
Mind is always in
the realm of the spirit,
The
integrative process of awareness.
If you don’t think
values arise
Out of the deep core
of the creature,
Nothing, I can do or
say, will ever
Convince you
otherwise.
But look. Pale
grass, antelope, clear eye,
The signs of natural
perception,
The closest to
reality we have, our delight
In it all, the
flowing light that is our being.
And all of it about
spiritual values,
Freedom
from design, devoid of the divine.
Values out of genes
and culture: we live
In
the irreal realm of spiritual awareness.
That’s what mind is
at the highest pitch,
The process out of
which values arise,
Caught between the
self and the world,
Nothing
of value otherwise.
All the books, all the
thinking,
Everything gone sliding
away,
Down
a snow-slope, in the breeze.
No knowledge to
chase after.
No karma to escape,
Every single cloud
and stone
Every breath is the
way.
Boundless as the
empty sky,
It’s around you and
inside.
What you can never
see or hold,
Always
with you, deep and clear.
Silence and it’s
there;
Speak it and it’s
gone.
Don’t look, and you’ll find it.
The open trail,
that’s the way.
Cities far off in quiet
air,
Deep
gorges, icy lakes.
This empty body is
the phantom.
This silence is the dharma.
On
the white beach in the rain.
Cloud
weighting the horizon.
The world is
aimless, mindless air,
Vapour and breeze, a
salt-light
Making its delight in
the mind,
One
pure play of mad fractals.
Green barrels of
waves, the roar
Of brine shattering
on the shale,
Far out gulls crying
out in flight,
Climbing
upwards from the spray.
Forms mind would
like to enter,
Vanish into their
complexity,
Become what the eyes
reveal,
Meld with those
granite shores.
If we could leave
mind behind,
Let self, outside self,
be Ocean,
Just as the old-time
sages did;
Thought,
the white birds passing by.
The
leaf-fall, the many fallen leaves.
Bring your values,
show what we are:
Do you know love of
truth, of beauty?
Which
may not be love of humans,
This
dark species. Though we
try
Not to weary of it
all, and this life,
Not to be destroyed
by the system.
From the top of
these hills, dry fields,
A pair of lakes, and
we wonder how
All the stone walls
got built, far now
From
the perceptions of those lives.
Aimless, empty: the contours
of place.
Wandering the wood, soft
laughter,
Mind falls with
everything that falls,
Delighted
by the world un-designed.
It’s about the hollow
paths of power,
A craving for
control, the foolishness;
A way through to
what we came from.
If you don’t
believe, explain the meaning
Of this universe
that never points beyond.
Always complete in
movement, aimless
A void that’s full: fullness
ever empty.
Not a way back, there’s
no way back,
Into those first
grounds of our being,
Into those
grasslands, the savannahs,
Below the shadows of
the silent trees,
And no path forward
on this track,
The endless erosion
of nature on our
Planet; illusions of
industry, courage;
Crushing
weight of the Anthropocene.
Curiosity, cunning,
co-operation
Can only take a
species so far,
Into the dumb
competitive deadness,
Into the knowledge
ending discussion:
Beyond them love is
needed, and a joy
Of depth beyond a
cursory enjoyment,
The creative force
that brought us here,
That needs now to
illuminate this Earth.
And not the toils of
religion, but human
Love. And not the joys of unawareness,
But delight in
throwing off the centuries,
To
return to the locus where we started.
Bring your values
here: truth, sensitivity,
And
kindness. Learn new
sharing, a new
Giving. Only what
is shared
increases
Of
itself. The rest is a bitter
dynamic.
It’s not about me, I
would fail, you will
Succeed. It’s about
the next generations,
Who must first learn
to wander aimless
Through this world,
in the spirit at least,
And be patient.
Since nothing is designed
Unless natural minds
design it, first learn
The intentionless,
Earth devoid of purpose;
Then question how we
got here, and why.
There’s a path
forward that is a path back,
To the grasslands
and the trees where we
Began. And in every single moment a Way
That can’t be looked-for,
but is always there
Inside
You.
But side-streets
empty still sing
Of other spaces:
under-seas,
Moonlit forests,
Silent
grasslands.
Night city seems
innocuous.
Walking the
concrete,
Beside sheets of
plate glass,
Phantom buildings
In the sky,
But
diminishes the spirit.
The water, wood and
grass
Is retrieved by mind
From more
Ancient
places.
Western hills gleam
bright,
The land quivers,
Under the creeping
weight
Of our domination,
Are we done for?
Strip out the
poetry,
Are we done for?
Another simple
eye-blink
Of the stars,
A
passing tremor?
Light is beauty,
beauty light.
Leaves shine in the
moon.
Clouds collecting,
Breeze stirring,
Black city echoes.
From
the ‘suchness’.
From the richness
Of
intentionless world.
Little from the
made,
Most from the given,
Aimless structure,
Meaningless
process.
Being clear that
function
Is not purpose, a
misnomer,
The seed has no
intent
To form the plant:
And that form is no
Direction, the wave
Is bounded water
Moving
to no plan.
At least that is
true
Of the inanimate:
Minds create purpose
From the self-aware,
And bestow meaning,
Imbue time and space
With significance,
Create their worlds.
Still, deep in them,
Deep in the ‘body’,
Is all the
imagery,
And force of nature.
Your body’s in your
mind.
Your mind is body.
Your eye’s that
shadow
Crossing
the beach.
The mountains, the
forests, grasslands, seas: all so frail.
A thousand
generations lost and vanished in a dream;
All the billion
leaves of autumn: all the empty trails.
The children and the
adults, the creatures, and the plants,
All
flowing, like a marvellous cascade, into the void.
Like gusts of rain
slowly washing down from the clouds.
Like the calls of
migrating birds heading through the sky.
Loose, like the liberty
of wild wandering streams.
Mindless
like the trembling of breaking ocean surf.
Dislocated
from the chain of purposed cause and effect.
Unconnected to the
reasoning powers, logically bereft.
Standing wordless,
seeing mindless, lost in this eternity.
Tiny spaces are
gigantic, Nature threads the momentary.
Sitting
under dark pines: gazing as the light shines on the pass.
What is this Tao, this Dharma, to be known?
Passing
by the names, not stopping by the forms.
The ridge above is
basalt: granite baking in the sun.
Bright
wordless minutes, and slow waves of stone.
Climbing over scree-slopes,
scrambling blocked gullies,
Penetrate the green gorge, stop to visit with the deer.
Drifting the cloud
trail, straying through the gate of grass:
All that worthless
hopeless nightmare, Being, left below.
In the shadows, in
the subtle play of form,
The swaying blades,
the arching threads
Of green: this
insect home.
My values in the
grass, bowed sincerity,
The slow empathetic
movement, all
Together, the
kindness of the coolness,
The
shifting of the light.
My values in the
grass, where are your values?
Beyond the human,
far side of being,
Surrounded by a
sensitivity, released
From
every kind of slavery.
My
values in the grass, intentionless.
What harm in stems
and shoots, the pastoral?
The best of what we
found on the way,
Almost intact,
still: a beauty.
What is it in the
mind that goes on
Counting time, feels
the dismissal,
Like heavy atoms
ticking in the dark,
The soft cool
centuries of rain subsiding,
The mind of no age,
Mind floating like a
bird in the light?
All the changes
buried under dark oak,
Juniper and
mountain-pine,
All the green gorges
East, West,
Haunts of the
creatures, the first peoples,
And no one ever owns
the land,
On this passing
world without intent,
This lost planet.
Dark-light,
water-drops on the thin leaves,
Those marvellous
globes, deep mirrors,
Snow bows their
platforms, wind stirs
Every sphere of the
shining mind,
Like surfaces of far
gleaming sky,
Where over the
mountain’s edge
Freedom slides on
silent wings.
The desire goes on
forever
And for the whole
mind
Not simply the body.
Ache. It’s the pain
Of its transience,
It’s the beauty
Of
the un-ownable.
The grasping is the
failure
To
let go. The wish
Goes on forever,
moving
In the mind which is
body.
Then gone! The
sudden flare,
In the blind moment,
A dolphin arced
From
impossible seas.
Sudden horizon opened,
The gasp of relief,
release,
Freeing of the body
And the mind,
Before the swift
fall back
Into deep water,
The grey-silver arch,
The
glittering spray.
It’s the lightness,
Not the density.
It’s not the scope
of reference that compels us,
It’s the feeling,
The
human feeling.
The slightest
architecture is the most welcoming,
The quietest mind,
Moving
on the darkness.
Though we love the
drama and the interplay,
The rain and
thunder,
It’s silent flames,
And peaceful trees,
barely stirring in a landscape,
That sink deepest,
Longest-leaved.
Excitement
on the edge of darkness.
Each light the invite
to the threshold:
Music, perfume,
beauty are the goddess.
Everything that came
from the desert
Has confused the
simple human mind,
The veils of the
galaxies that glisten,
The dangerous,
shifting sands of time,
While a clear heart lives
in the grass,
In that first free season
of the spirit,
Moves with the fast-running
stream,
Bathing
mind and body in the flow.
Night-time city, the
seductions of power:
Where souls are
sold, we become unequal,
Things shining in
each other’s perception,
Objects greed manipulates, deep longings.
Night-time webs of
light cross continents,
Thread the globe
down there, other nets
Are cast about our
meanings of the real,
Unseen, the dark
divisors, such beauty,
That alien beauty of
the made not given.
All things detached
from value may entice,
Leave us staring at
each other, wondering,
What future for this
night-time, sighing land?
Impermanent selves
live phantom lives,
In the dance that no
one proclaimed.
No emotions in
tranquility are enough
For this deep dark: pure
jets and gasps
Of
love like dying fires.
Almost the granite
peaks inadequate,
Floating over
scented grassy hills,
Rivers,
rock and birdcalls.
Dukkha has a name, and anyita,
Maya and trishna have names,
That’s frustration,
pain, transience.
The nameless is the
silence of trees,
Almost, the watery
glade gone still,
Almost,
the old unspoken nature.
Too much clinging, and less sharing,
Will undo us, the
ice age
And the truth will
undo us.
Harder now to take
it easy, to deny
The failings on the
planet,
The
actions gone beyond control.
Lovely, how the
squirrel still stirs
Through the litter on
the wood’s floor,
The kestrel
diligently hovers:
All this darkness fades, will melt,
Beyond us; Earth not
waiting,
But
enduring, blue till dawn.
From all the collapsing
quantum wave-forms,
Little knots of
energy,
We appear.
I dream about my
life, your life, what we were:
Skeins of strange
weirdness in deep space,
The irrationalities
of emotion,
Human
fate.
Rebirth is the fall
from moment to moment,
The
self-reincarnation of our life in time.
And not fresh lives
We’ll not know.
Purposed action is
the karma, pointless
Except to evoke the
being of the mind,
Preserve and
propagate the body,
Such
our world.
So much futile
grasping of each other,
So much clinging to
what justifies the self,
Careless of each,
We call it love.
From the tremors
underneath the universe,
From the deep-entangled
dance of almost-being,
Little knots of
space-time,
We appear.
Everyone writes
poetry,
Or
a novel. Everyone
publishes
Everything,
everywhere, wildly.
No one here carves
or paints
On the rock-face, in
scarlet ink,
Or black on silk banners
waving
Like cloud-kites in
the wind,
But above the domes
and spires
Of former ages,
planes in the sky
Write their message
in the air:
Every
waste to everyone, slowly.
Now it’s a mystery
what’s
Left to say,
everyone talks
And no one listens.
Everyone hears
Their own voice, is
it weeping?
But sometimes
silently we stop,
And Nature is there
in the eye,
Ceaselessly writing
energies
Over
the un-purposed quiet.
Non-meanings from
which
We try to gather
meanings,
Not Correlatives,
just cries
Of
being, unintended cries.
Not the fancy rites
and rituals,
Nor the primitive
confusion,
Despite
the warming glow.
No art meant to
reassure,
Tragedy, an easy
purgation,
Romance, a kind of
promise,
Fairy stories
everywhere.
Here the snowy
stream is life,
The trail a dust of
whiteness,
Needles and green
bamboo
Powdered over, all
still.
Mountains smoking
cloud,
Farms in remote
valleys,
Rooks soaring, hawk
high,
Banks
of stone and shale.
Inside you the
delicate heart,
Calm at last. Your
role is here,
Being nothing, no
more turnings,
A
long, a slow space of bliss.
We assert them,
inextricably
Linked to purpose,
action,
To
non-intervention, attitude.
We make them, we are
them:
Love, the desire
for, delight
In, the Other; all the complex
Intimacy of deep
relationship;
Truth, the desire
for control,
Understanding,
knowledge
Of the how, the way
to make
Things work, clear
assurance;
Beauty, the delight
in form,
That echoes
realities of being,
The lines of
creation, the light
Falling
there into inner spaces.
We balance them, and
that’s the art
Of living, tempering
the stresses,
Moving towards
whatever builds,
Turning from whatever
destroys.
Buddha is the
problem, but not
The
solution. Zen the bolt
Of awakening from
the dream,
But
not our future. It’s Being;
All things inanimate
alive for
Us. Every glittering leaf,
Ancient forests,
dark cities,
Strange textures of
the universe;
All things animate
alive in
Us. Every movement, tremor
Of the creature,
every cry,
All that’s living, and that dies.
Not random, but
stray;
Working of the
unconscious
Outside power;
Space where we
create,
Like the artisans of
what lasts,
With
their kilns, wheels, hands.
We subdue all that
with reason,
Settle for order, its
displays;
Playing to the
conscious
Sense of power;
Space where we
abdicate
Our humanity, and
bury
Their pots and bowls
underground.
Shining hills,
Torrents of rock,
Bowing
trees.
Affection is the
silent
Heart, that’s
Mind and body –
In
love, with this world.
Deeply we touch
Each other,
Face to face
Species to species,
Our desire
Sweet longing
To be one
With
all this Earth.
Sincerity is the
silent
Mind: that’s inner
process,
Resonating
To
the truth of things.
Honestly we face
Each other,
Spirit to spirit
Skin
to skin.
Beautiful freedom,
Shining hills,
Ramparts of rock,
Blowing
trees.
Despite attachment
We detach,
Driven,
by those unconscious forces.
Under the paved-over
bridge
The old river,
Not choosing its
path
Trickles
downwards.
And stone walls
In the sky: it all
breaks,
Melts,
scatters.
What we think we
purpose
Is not solid,
All these deep
emotions
Breaking
free.
And we think Reason
Controls this world
Of our unreason!
World
of forces.
Morning light.
As one examines a
painting
Or a landscape,
In the uncertainty
of detail,
In the confusion of
the light,
Is aura and music of
the spirit,
As we hear through
the paint
Where the musicians
Blow and pluck there
silently,
Inside
the layers of pure colour.
Or as we realise in
the landscape,
A breeze moving in
the distance,
Across the bluish
void,
Expressing what, who
knows,
But
scraping every nerve.
Flowered all along
the high green hedge
On
our footpath to the sea.
There the white
chalk cliffs stood unreal,
Eroded flanks
Of sheep-like flocks
enduring.
We were in the Tao,
peripheral vision
Was where the mind
resided walking,
The
waves beyond the edge.
Blurred, dim,
indistinct our bodies,
Memory fails them,
But the white-thorn,
the may; the dog-roses
Sweeter than time,
echo in that space,
Like snow of stars,
snow of cloud,
All
along our footpath to the sea.
And block the path.
Should I sweep them?
Delight is there in incoherent
beauty,
Foam of form,
Discarded
news-sheets of another year.
Curious how each
little pile, each leaf,
Rising from
The seascape of the
light evokes emotion.
Shelley was right,
the hectic multitudes
Are too like us
For
comfort, too perishable to be left.
Forms in
A deep crack working
away
At
the base of the world.
Lines of fire flow
from a volcano
In
Of the belching globe,
ash
Settles
on the roads.
In
In water, pole
around in water,
Learn the fear of
flood,
And
not its peacefulness.
From the satellite a
hurricane coils,
Its snowy Catherine
wheel
In spinning speeded
motion
Over
the silent screen.
Earth
in her elements.
In the cunning mind
will not be overcome by power,
Demonstrations,
politics, polemics, action, war.
We practised all this
in the grasslands and the forests,
By the blue lakes in
the rifts, in the deep caves in the ice,
All that led to these
systems of the brain, imagined error.
Yet mind is free.
The nightmare is irreal, and no control,
Never a hope of
controlling all this intricacy of events:
Still we’ve escaped
religion, the Victorian age of reason.
The Twentieth
Century surely taught us the blind unreason,
Only the individual
can ever channel clear, affirming values:
Only the single self
can be sincere, true, empathetic, kind.
No hopelessness and
no despair, though suffering is endemic
In the mind,
regardless of all riches, poverty, abuse of flesh,
Despite the tricks
of rapacious nations, world organisation,
Might
of trade, carving of the Earth, gone hells and heavens.
The individual life
intrinsic is still free. Meditate, love, walk
The pathways of the
planet: make your way across the void.
Don’t act; don’t
follow; don’t believe.
Mountain pine beetle
taking down ten billion conifers
Over the watersheds,
the ecosystems,
Its
life-cycle speeding with the world’s slow warming.
Old lodgepole pines prime targets, jack pines, spruce,
The high alpine
forests: no useful way to counter that,
No good
interference. Better the wildfires we prevent
Sitting in lookouts,
better the deep burn and the renewal,
Wild Nature, than
explosive, chemical, electrical attack,
Than the clear-cuts,
deep erosion, life-damage. Logging
Won’t
do. Down chainsaws, leave
the whole space alone,
Watch it go: non-action
better and another thousand years.
The grass succeeds.
The juniper survives. But no way back.
Small insect lever,
leveraging the planet, buzz of all forces
Slight,
half-visible, outside our control, our power to see
The outcome of a
stone tossed in the pool, its outer wave.
Fragments of
piercing colour
Scattered over two
acres of fragrant grass
Gazing at indistinct
stars in the sky
White splinters of
light
Signals out of
meaningless fires long gone
Singing deep in the
spirit with the branches
Of a blown mass of
woodland
Twisted by high
winds below the pass,
All of it better
nameless.
All
the forms.
Only a thin layer of
transparent gas
Between
the phantom and the galaxy.
Moon
on bare rock.
Black breeze in the pine.
A solitary cloud swirls
through the blue.
All the heart and
mind filled with stars.
Who will know that we
have come and gone,
On the unseen planet
in voiceless space,
Tracing its dark
ellipse, free of our presence?
Singing in the light
on the other side,
Live through the
wreckage of the heart,
As I survive, and
you, and every spirit,
Though damaged by
the loss of freshness,
Of carolling blackbird
silhouetted high,
Calling to the
twilight age of the Earth,
With that primal
melody that cuts the sky.
Enough if we
survive.
Through the gate of
grass on the old trail,
See the endless
summits jut from cloud.
Millions of
lifetimes black rock buried.
All illusion in this
empty body, all real,
Here’s nothing
solid: our intrinsic nature.
But
your affections never less than true.
And beauty is a
construct of the mind.
Everything is in
Nirvana from the start,
The everyday mind,
just being, is the Tao.
Do as you wish you
manifest the Way.
Yet still the end of
all your decisions,
Flowing air, deer on
the mountain slope,
And fawn among the
trees, is Nature!
Our simply leaving
everything alone
Proves
not as simple as it might appear.
Half-moon, half cylinder-top;
a star, our sun;
A planet, this Earth
clothed in oak and pine.
Behind the blue the
universe hides. Behind,
The
blue. Behind the blue is
black and light,
If there had been no
night we’d never know?
A
star, bright as one thousand, in the blue.
A moon, pale,
Shelley’s gazer in weariness,
The
planet, icy, brown, hard as dumb iron.
Winter’s triad in
the mind: our shining star,
Eye-scorching fire; the
pale sister opposite;
This ground under
our feet: this triple void.
Phantoms in thought,
of thought, dream bodies,
Our flesh is real,
but the inhabiting mind irreal,
Abstractions sliding
silently through pure form,
In a world that has
never been and never shall be;
No use our claiming
that process of flesh is mind,
We know mind still
floats far out beyond the flesh,
As a strange
phenomenon of the networked tissue,
In which are
conjured the distant scenes, not quite,
Transformed and
incorrect as memory makes them,
But beautiful if we
can free them of ancient terrors,
Shame, remorse,
pain, the rehearsed awkwardness,
Free them to billow
out, forms, in another daylight,
Where the weight of
the earth becomes its lightness,
And its language is
ours because it speaks us rawly,
In the fierce fire
we are, in our watery inner spaces,
In our airy flights
of falsehood, our earthen hearing,
In everything we are
not, but so conceive ourselves,
Phantoms in the
light, shadows across the darkness,
There on the fern,
there on the silent wall, once more,
There, as the
afternoon slides, white evening glistens.
Which
is chaos, sea of unintended consequences,
Obeying rules which
are born out of form itself,
As placing stick by
stick makes two sticks whether
You wish it
differently or not, as shapes connect.
Beyond ourselves we
feel the darkness of an order
Without reference to
anything within our feeling,
Not the divine, but
the absence of design, the cool
Unintentional nature
of the universe glowing there,
In
a thousand colours of which colour knows nothing.
It is an unimagined
order, perhaps beyond imagination,
Which
is only a model of meaning traversing the mind,
And this perhaps
beyond model, beyond our metaphor.
Like the mysterious
sound of the bird outside, behind
The curtain, no bird
we knew but the liquid sound itself,
Which is forced to
be its own metaphor: what is there
To offer for a
singing bird but the song itself: the fire
Of the galaxies down
to the deepest vibration of space,
The obscure presence
of what is, dissolving round us,
Until
we are one with the man, the woman, in the wind.
The universal single
many flow,
No time, all space,
the change
Of this whole into
whole
That nothing less
can grasp.
Weigh us with light,
weigh us,
There is nothing
into which
We look, there is no
word:
A language without
words
That can never be
spoken.
Bury us in light,
inter us
Among galaxies, in
fires
Of non-earthly
presence,
Clasp us, silently,
In
our non-being.
Underneath an interaction with the world, a private
Withdrawal into being, into his escape, communing
With a sweet inwardness and isolation. Harsh verse
Amongst the gentleness the desire for true response.
There is an ice and cold, the creaking branches yaw
In the night-winds, time is slowly creeping over all,
And the man himself, where is the man himself, far
From, behind, the surface of the poem, infinities deep.
There the tree tosses the wrong side of the glass, there
Is the fate of insect worlds, the maze of our vanishings
Into self, into wood and fern, into sky and stars, marsh
And memory, and what we look for, grail in the stream,
Meaning in what is gone, what is done, what the strong
Know of this world they penetrate with their dreaming.
Reading ‘Frost at
Calmness, silentness. And matter flickering in the light
Quivers till it almost attains the boundary, is there one,
Between the living and the lacking life, where stone is
Tree, and the tiny pebble in the fountain jet trembles in
Eternal motion, whirled in the vortices above pale sand,
And the solitary leaf on the branch dances to wind-dark
Rhythm. ‘Everywhere’, cries Coleridge, ‘echo or mirror.’
We interpret. We force the sympathies, companionship
Of natural forms in natural space, the other than human
That shares our time and space, strange in its otherness.
Those are our voices in the darkness calling, hiss, sigh,
And not its meaning, ours. Here is the poet of the subtler
State, moving beyond his age, not understood, belittled,
As if to provide a mind to the future is not truth enough.
And the body quietens to the intellect’s grave music, ice
In this atmosphere, blue mist on the near slope, a tremor
Of the universe passing through the individual life, wild
In its summons: mind’s civilisation seems a sham, time
Pours through it as if it were some fragile fluttering form
Rage-filled in its nakedness, soft as the air, bitter as cold,
One of those naked spirits on the heights, out on the moor,
Battering themselves against being, fate, each other, lost
And found again in the intensity of what this living makes
Of the creature and the cry. This what it gives, momentary
Calm, an abstruse meditative deep full of glittering snakes
And visionary dreams, a flickering of the dumb inanimate,
Tick of the twig in its mindless restlessness, its non-intent.
This is our world, of no design: we have given it our love.
Cold
green pool under green trees.
No
point planning the spontaneous move.
White
cloud drifts. Leaves turn
The
track disappears in bushes,
Power
is empty, though it makes
Sudden
barking: an adder slides away in the sun.
Why
an intent among the stars?
Squirming
life in the darkness,
Down
the valley: trees and no people.
Long
narrow trail along the hillside.
Mountain
Zen is hard to understand.
The Tao
is like the empty sky.
Old
fruit trees in the abandoned meadows.
Old-time
sages abandoning study
Suffering
is inherent in the creature,
New
planets orbiting their stars
Even
the ‘selection’ in natural selection,
In
the gorges, in the hills, autumn light
The
wave lifts and falls every movement.
Wu-shi, no fuss and nothing special.
The
intimate essence of the Tao
Eventually
you’ll hear your own voice.
Restless
mind driving endless purpose.
In
us sincerity, kindness, affection,
Pale
bark, green insect, watching eye,
Everything
known gone at a stroke,
Absolutely
nothing to aim for,
Late
October warmth, and quiet haze,
No
this is not about me, it’s about us.
Black
city echoing with light.
The
weight of all the mass of all the cities: swiftly gone.
Wandering
the aimless way: go, following the trackless track,
My
values in the grass, where are your values?
Dawn.
Water-drops on the bamboo leaves.
It’s
not the heaviness of thought that impresses,
Night-time
city, a white glitter of bars,
This:
a world now that blocks the heart.
From
vibrations underneath the universe,
Now
we’re puzzled what to say,
Simply
don’t believe. Start there.
No
ought in Nature, so no values.
No
explaining what comes to mind,
Examining
the form of your face in the silence,
Bleached
profusion of may-thorn and dog-rose
Like
random rags the brown leaves fall,
Today
an iceberg the size of New York
The
confusions all confusions of action. Greed and fear,
All
the tall trees dying in Alaska, whitebark in Montana;
Looking
at all those small unknown flowers
Seven
thousand feet beyond humanity,
Enough
if we survive the great disaster,
Do
what you like you manifest the Way.
A
star, a moon opposite, a planet, in the blue.
The
people too are ghosts, and some we knew,
In
our disorder we learnt there is a world of order,
Dissolve
us in light, and light is Tao,
Reading
Frost, at midnight. There’s a dark presence