Diligence: Facing

From one extreme
To another,
Bright light beams
And darkness uncovers

But what lies below?
Or is that just
A way of talking?
How can there be an inner direction?

Best to drop the metaphors, perhaps
But how to write this down
In simple words and phrases?
This is what puzzles and dazes;

Don’t want to fall
Back into the pit,
Have to keep making effort
Through the night;

Sense of foreboding re-occurs,
Have to let go
And continue my work,
No time to desert;

Inclining the mind
In a skillful direction,
Engaging the will
And facing the storm;

I will not be yielding
To this negative wave
But examine it closely
And find the spirit within it,

I refuse to get spooked
By strong feeling,
As it’s only a natural process,
A regular happening.

Difficulty: A Hard Thing to Do

In the absence of effort
There is no rest.
To feel rested
One must first make effort

And to feel like one is applying effort
One must rest,
Otherwise how could one
Distinguish between the one and the other?

Likewise, in the absence of clinging
There is no relief.
When clinging ends
Relief ends;

As long as relief repeats
There is clinging,
And with clinging
There is greed, hatred and delusion.

The easiest thing to do
Is the hardest
When the clingings take hold,
One after the other;

They dance before
The mind’s eye
And have to be recognized
And defeated one at a time;

As soon as one is identified
Another pops up
In a seemingly endless sequence
That soon grows tiresome

And then fatigue and irritability sets in
And I get caught in the itchy agitation
Forgetting my resolve,
Falling into mindless frustration.

Differentiate: Just Another Point of View

As the weather closed in again,
The feeling arose of
Having emerged from a place
Where I couldn’t see my hand
In front of my face;

There’s a sense that
I have just traversed a great darkness
And have now returned to light,
Not that the darkness ever left of course,

No, no,
It’s still here too,
And all I’ve done is
Change my point of view.

From here I have enough light
To see both in relation to each other,
And the wisdom to know
That this light isn’t me either,

To identify with that
Would be equally hazardous,
As then I’d think the darkness
Was something, “other,”

When it’s just as legitimate or illegitimate,
Has as much a right to be or not
As what I am calling, “light.”
There’s no need to justify either one,

It’s just a matter of
Which side’s on display,
Which to cultivate
And which to accept;

To relate skillfully to each
Is the task,
To neither disappear into one
Nor dissolve into the other.