i have been listening to sunlight's song again
the hum in the ears like too much caffeine
the feel of static electricity pricking up body hair
back here in the U.S., I remember Bodhidharma's face all
over Japan
the red-bearded barbarian from india who they say moved to
china and started zen
strange familiar foreign image, voted nippon's most popular
gaijin for a thousand years running
(maybe because he never actually took that wild red beard to
japan, so much easier to love from a distance)
the heavy chain of wonder anchored him to the ground
safely trapped by the computational complexity of the search
for truth
but i am drunk, falling down drunk, on other men's wisdom,
addicted to it
i have heard that a moth flies to the flame because it mistakes it
for the moon
and i have heard that a finger pointing to the moon is not the
moon and cannot draw it down
and i have heard the story of a hermit monk who gave a
desperate robber everything he had
the clothes off his back
and stood naked in the night and said poor fellow, I wish i could
give him that moon
i am drunk on the flame
or is it the moon? or the finger?
mistake them and i burn
but no one can give me the solutions
the buddha is not the awakened one
gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhisvaha --
gone, gone, we're all gone beyond
and the rocks cried out with the pain of birth
the pain of leaving
a necessary precondition for arriving
flying forward in space but backwards in time
--Tom Swiss
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