Sakkayaditthi

Sakkayaditthi is oozing up from under the rugs.

    Feel this cloth on the skin it says, taste this tiramisu on the tongue. 

Sakkayaditthi is peeking out from under these boulders.

    Don't want to die alone it says.
   Don't want to be sick someday and drool. 
    Don't want the body to shrivel and wrinkle. 

    Time is too fast it says.
Sakkayaditthi is doing jumping jacks and tumbling out at me while I am working my work

for a living..

    Get me out of this place it says.  Too much stress. Too many people.
       I need another job, quick.  Time is too slow, it says.

Sakkayaditthi is leaving.
Letting the Buddha breathe,
Letting the Buddha walk,
I don't have to breathe
I don't have to walk.

Buddha is breathing
Buddha is walking
I enjoy the breathing
I enjoy the walking.

May I live in well-being, in freedom from afflictions, in freedom from hostility,
May I maintain well-being in myself.
May all beings live in well-being, in freedom from hostility, in freedom from ill-will,
in freedom from anxiety, and may they maintain well being in themselves.
A bow to Sakkayaditthi, embraced by the breathing, the walking, the well-being and
the freedom from hostility.

Skipping gears

The brain slips

now and then

Skips a gear

Rattles and clinks and chinks

Chugga-chugga, galoop, galoop.

Derails eternal minutes.

Lame, limp.

 

Swirls of breath float to the nostrils,

Just there, just enough.
A full millisecond tasting life,
life as it is, delicious

The brain hugging the gears,
runs smoothly,
Alert, aware.

No chinks, no galoop,galoop

Life flows.  You might miss it though, if you
didn't know what to see.

Fall Leaves

Leaves fall off of trees,
the way I see what's between you and me,
like a dried leaf
falling off a tree,
gentle,
 kindly finding it's way to the floor
with all the others.

That leaf won't turn green,
won't fly up, reach up and attach to the tree,
but it will lie there with many others.
It will break down over years.
Because all the leaves are together,
they create warmth
and life is reborn, mobile below. Insects, worms, new life has a shelter,
   a place in the cold and dark and uncertainty, to live and breathe.

In a few years, a flower might grow right there or a tree.
Beautiful and alive, maybe fragile like a rue anemone,
or maybe strong like the sprout of an acorn.
But deserving of life either way.