Extant: Happiness

As I began to chop
A sweet potato,
I suddenly had an experience
Most indescribable,

That I was just chopping
This sweet potato
And that nothing else
Was going on,

That there was no Buddha,
No enlightenment
And no thought of such,
Nor any knowledge of such,

Nay, there was only
Chopping a sweet potato,
Just as ordinary
As it is,

With nothing on top,
Just a la carte,
Just as it is,
As it had always been,
Before I’d ever heard of this Dharma stuff

And yet,
It was quite different,
In a way
But in no way
That I could discern

‘But whatever it was,’
I thought to myself,
As I moved on to my next task,
‘If only it could always be this way,
Whatever that way is,
That would be it, just as it is,
Absolutely completely, just as it is.’
But as soon as I saw this, I lost it again.

Exquisitely: Flip-Flop

Now and then,
I find it funny,
How I flip
Back and forth
Between in depth musings
And making tea

And that I do it
So easily,
Like day and night
It sometimes seems,

Like two different people
Sharing the same dreams
And it may be so,
One day I may find out

That there’s more than one,
A multitude of interlinked minds perhaps,
Doing everything
That needs to be done
To keep reality going,

Sometimes having fun
And at other times
As miserable as they come,
For as long at it takes,

But for now
It’s back to making tea,
Cooking supper
Exercising, showering
And doing laundry,

Until another fit
Of thinking bursts forth,
Like the birds at dawn,
Getting on,
With their mysterious tasks.

Exquisite: Hilarity

I said to myself,
Why be so rigid?
Why not say,
‘what if,’ once in a while, instead?

‘But that’s not very scholarly,’
I opined,
Which is what I thought I was
Or wanted to be.

But I’m not thinking like a scholar
At the moment,
So, let’s see where that leads,
Can I do as I please and think for myself?

But then,
Wait just a moment,
Do I think for myself?

‘NO! I think not,’
Came the startling conclusion,
Nobody does.
How funny!

And if I ask
Who the thinker is,
I find none
And at this,
I laugh even harder.

‘What a crazy world,’
Hardly an original observation
But possibly just as true
As ever;

Sometimes I think I’ll never
Get to the bottom of this,
Perhaps, because,
What if, there isn’t one?
Hilarious!