That I Might Hear

By night we came to take him,

I Malchus, and a cohort of Temple soldiers,

in the still hours before daybreak,

we servants of the High Priest stormed the garden

where he stood. His fellows slept, in we crept

to arrest him. And there he stood, waiting!

We were following a direct order, to take him by number,

and led there by his trusted fellow.

Some awoke and then we could not find him,

not so simple then, he stood there without resistance,

and could not be seen.

And his trusted one, our trusted one, went forward

greeting him, kissed him in fellowship, as a signal,

our signal – the Galilean looked at our man, his man,

with an oddly resigned, yet penetrating glance.

I saw it, then I beheld him, spoke my office and demanded,

Are you he? He replied, I am.

And we laid hold of him. Then it happened.

So oddly calm, so in command of himself, suddenly

his nearest, a bear of a fellow, leapt at me with a fair blade

and whacked my left ear, nearly severed it.

It came so fast, unexpected.

What followed was still more shocking.

This very Galilean held up his hand, stayed his friend,

admonished him in dialect – then told us to let them all go,

we have whom we came for. And without hesitation

he approached me with that same hand and laid it

over my gashed and throbbing ear.

When he removed it, all was gone, the wound, the pain,

the hearing, all I got was ringing buzzing, my brain went cold.

My men had to nudge me to sternly fulfill my office,

I went through the motions in a daze, I looked at him,

not grasping, but grasping his shoulder I barely still heard him

saying, By night you come to take me like some thief,

when all the while I taught openly by day, open prey – now pray

do as you are sent, that it may be fulfilled.

That didn't help clear my thoughts,

and all that passed thereafter in my lifetime –

my leaving the Temple service and joining his circle,

sharing its joys and its devotion, its bread and its wine,

its destiny and its fate, in loving, serving and remembering him –

had its birth and its prophecy, its torment and its promise,

in that moment in that garden in that night,

when he healed my ear, that I might hear.

Kissing The Leper

Kiss the lepers that you meet,

as the spirit moves you;

embrace the uncomfortable in your life,

to grow in your light, as it behoves you.

Love, serve and remember,

instructed that beloved Swami –

who else had once said that and altered history?

This lends itself to no ideology.

One has washed the feet of transients

in the public parks or elsewhere;

hugged drunks, beggars, all regarded as sentient –

free of any trip about it, just showing care.

If you'd ever lain next to a dying AIDS-stricken,

body skeletal, sweaty, his mourning partner sickened,

and there hugged him together, held him close and tight,

then you've been there, you've known such nights.

If you'd been up to your knuckles in piss and crap,

or changed clothing on severely handicapped

with the same joy and aplomb with which you once wrung cotton diapers,

then you know what I mean, you know to adapt.

If you'd wiped spittle while feeding adults,

or felt love toward a huge bellowing, now quiet

psychotic in messed shorts, whose nails and beard you'd been trimming –

you know very well what I am talking about.

If your spirituality's too refined, you are only pious –

bring that refinement into the messy world and put it to use;

let no body be foreign to you, let the mess test the mettle

of that refinement, so that spirit has some gut and hooves.

Kissing the lepers is an internal acceptance

of forms as they are, not forced or imaginary "tolerance"!

It is most natural and native when about nothing

but loving, and serving, and remembering.

Looking Deeper In

(ca. 1986/7)

Look into my eyes, look
with the mirror of your heart –
Look beneath my humor, and my eccentricity;
Even my intellect, or the gentle care
with which I regard, even touch you –
Dare to penetrate what seems;
If you heard the song of my soul,
how it surrounds you:
Truly you'd catch the secret
of your own true nature,
revealing to you the Path of Love,
how it comes and goes,
like a single breath, a steady symphonic chord
drawn from the first Humans,
extending through the Ages.

Delicately I walk that Path and serve it.

Kul ad-duniya b'tedowwr b'il-'amr –
W'anti ajmal min al-qamr –
Inna 'ishq-allah m'abud l'illah –
Wa b'kul al-khalaq 'ahubb al-amraa'h.

(All the world turns according to order –
And you are more beautiful than the moon –
Indeed! God is Love, Lover and Beloved –
And out of all Creation I love the Sovereign Order of Love.)

Loving, Serving, Remembering

Love, serve, remember:

Love everyone, serve everyone, remember God.

There is only one way one actually can love everyone, serve everyone – that is to remember God, there is absolutely no other possibility. Otherwise one is “trying to“ and that is either helper-syndrome which is based on a need of one's own, or social concern which is admirable but greatly limited and frustrating – because in both there is only ego. It is in remembering God that the inner movement comes, and from which the grace may come to indeed love everyone, serve or feed or nourish everyone.

One isn't at all distanced from the human side of giving, of being available, attentive, or generous – one's humanity and warmth is not forgotten but enhanced, empowered and rendered conscious. Remembering God is not like "remembering to believe in," this would be to remain trapped in the external, like remembering "someone else". One can only remember what one has experienced, where one has been. That's why we're instructed to remember. God is your Origin and your Source, That's where you came from, so buy it or not, That's where you return to and Remember, because That never “left or abandoned“ you (for where?), because That Alone exists and not your ego. And That, therefore, is Who actually loves, Who actually serves and nourishes – and Who actually Remembers, in you and as you when you are in the act of Remembrance. The practice and the mastery and the conscious absorption in Remembrance is 24/7 on every breath. That is serving everyone, that is nourishing the planet and all those around one. Any outward "form" of service or generosity will come from this and will make its mark in the world.

The surest way of becoming acquainted with all this is through love, in falling in love. When one meets, directly in-person or indirectly, a Being who thoroughly embodies this, one will be smitten with love for that Being – who is both mirror and enabler – who is worthy of all love and reverence. Through such a one will one grasp Remembrance of God.

Repetition of mantra is not for building up points in a merit system for oneself, that's all external religion, tailored to ego. Like dhikr-allah among the Islamic-expressive dervishes, or it's silent form, fikr – the former coming from the Arabic “to remember“ and the latter "to think" or hold in thought – one is keeping in the Eternal Moment of Remembrance through the repetition, whatever the mantra - let's take om sri ram jai ram jai jai ram. (Was Rama really God or someone merged in God, is God Ram and we say Rama when referring to this guy who lived and had this adventure in the Ramayana and was there a Hanuman?) Lovely work, inspiring, multi-layered as always – but if one wants to get super-involved in all that, one can go spend 20 years with pundits in the Himalayas. Or one can practice, here and now, immersing oneself in this love-bond with the Beloved. Om is now and every-other-now. Sri isn't just some holy application, it means all forms, male or female, are of the Divine Mother. Ram is God and God is Love. Jai is victory. So: God always wins. With God is victory. God is Most Great. Allahu-akbar.

Where is this divinity? Don't look around, it's in the mantra or dhikr itself, God is there in every syllable, they are atomic and loaded. Repeat them consciously. What is their power? They will awaken in one the Memory of Origin, the faculty of Remembrance. So one can go on Remembering, ever more consciously until the only one left Remembering is God/Allah/Ram HimSelf, as the ego becomes more and more absorbed in this love and less and less in itself.

One does what one does, but dropping the ego from the doing every time the identity with it asserts itself, one stays in the Remembrance, on the breath or intoned, and remains concentrated and relaxed. As Krishna also instructs in the Bhagavad Gita.

Two big things lost through all this are pity and self-pity, which are almost the same thing. Also envy, jealousy, resentments and grudges.  Expectations and judgment will be tamed, disappointments overcome or less important. Drama and trouble will be survived and gotten through intact. One will take oneself far less seriously and remain one-pointed in love, on God. One will be present and available for others in a way never imagined, instead of breaking one's neck trying to "be there" for "others" - as the illusion of "others" is not being nourished here, through the repetition of Remembrance: that there is no "other," only the One Self - which is awakened in the atmosphere around the very one absorbed in the practice of Remembrance.

Now that is love, that is serving, that is remembering.

Most intimate beauty . . .

 
The most intimate beauty resides in my heart,

annihilating me, dismembering the organs of separateness.

I love with the full length of my body,

with a still mind and a free heart.

Passionately I live, the passions only garments.

One desire remains,

toward this beauty residing in my heart,

annihilating me.

(Monterey, ca. 1987)