Thursday 25 September 2014

Original Mind

I want to share with my readers a wonderful verse by the Poet
Gary Rosenthal. It is so lucidly written and so evocative of the simple awareness which is the true, but too often overlooked, source of glory, peace and happiness within each and every one of us...
Sunrise in Cairns
How many evenings have you turned away?
As if the life you really want
could only begin
once something else had happened, 
something else that was not yet here…

All the unmet conditions you’ve placed before happiness
have kept you a person in waiting like someone overlooked, 
someone whose time has yet to come,
as if God somehow forgot to pack you a lunch… 

Right now a wheel of fortune is spinning but notice:
its center is completely still,
unchanging, completely empty.

Bet all your money here on a clear reception
of that hollowness a nothing that lacks nothing.
It’s like we have two minds. 
One is conditioned, and conditional…
And it’s filled with drama:
—your anchor-less ship ever drawing close
to fearful rocks of lesser hopeful shores of gain. 

But we don’t need all the drama or special conditions,
for happiness to visit and stay awhile. 
It doesn’t need to be imported,
doesn’t need to be Maui under a full moon, 
with a special enchanting someone in tow.
Nor do we need all our duckies
finally lined up in a row.
Our original mind is already content 
standing in any line,
 sitting in any chair, 
or parked in an old jalopy
in any Safeway parking lot.
  
This mind is empty of all that clutching
to outcomes and conditions. 
Less picky, more eco‐friendly. 
Just this is enough.

‐  Gary Rosenthal