An Eyelash of Strength

Sky

 Climbing the wax tree

To the thundering sky,

I stick my tongue out,

What a downpour!

Shinkichi Takahashi born in 1901 was a Zen poet. His work emerges through time into the natural world of awareness. He once said: Thought of a poem's difficulty never troubles me, since I never consciously make a poem difficult. The thought of not making things difficult is a lesson I learn everyday.

How easy it is to create drama in the script of life. It seems I need to feel the pain of separation in order to understand it. I do climb a wax tree of contrast everyday and the stand next to the thundering sky of my perceptions and choose to stick my tongue out and taste the gentle rain of awareness or a mighty downpour of fear. I believe I know the difference between the two, but there's not two on top of the wax tree, there's only me and I create two. I believe the gentle rain becomes a downpour and it knocks me down the tree and I find my self back on the ground of illusion surrounded in fear. I look up at the tree and it appears bigger and slicker and my beliefs lock me in the mud of anxiety. My beliefs tell me not climb the tree again and those thoughts are greater than the desire to taste the sweet rain of awareness while climbing up the wax tree of this reality. Destruction rather than deduction fills my physical mind.

Takahashi's poem Destruction reminds me that I can change my thoughts:

The universe is forever falling apart

No need to push the button

It collapses at a finger's touch:

Why, it barely hangs on the tail of a sparrow's eye.

The universe is so much eye secretion,

Hordes leap from the tips

Of your nostril hairs. Lift your right hand:

It's in your palm. There's room enough

On the sparrow's eyelash for the whole.

A paltry thing the universe:

Here is all strength, here the greatest strength.

You and the sparrow are one

And should he wish, he can crush you.

The universe trembles before him.

It does seem like the universe is falling apart when I'm surround by fear. What I see of it is scattered all over creation and it is hard to make sense of it. I take the word of science and live as a separate part of this outer world I see around me, failing to realize that it is a snapshot of my inner world expressed physically. I do push a button and try to fix what I see around me, but the button controls an illusion filled universe that doesn't need fixing, I am the one who sitting on the ground of fear creating two worlds in order to experience one.

The wax tree, the universe, the sparrow and I, are one and we express the same desire; the desire to expand, to pro-create and to identify a sparrow's eyelash, which exists to support the energy that trembles and vibrates in unison with the illusion of the thundering sky, which jolts my nostril hairs with a downpour of awareness.  

I am constantly changing from sparrow to universe, from tree to sky. I'm falling and ascending with each blink of my eyelash.  I'm conscious of my inner consciousness which is in the palm of my hand, the wax in my ears and hair in my nose. Eye secretion is an action as the universe crushes the grapes of mindlessness. The sparrow in me climbs the wax tree and I stick out my tongue and sense the sparrow touching tongues with me and the universe trembles inside of us while it holds fear in an eyelash of strength.

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