With deep gratitude to Pema Chodron,
for her earthy, cogent, and compassionate teachings

Most of our thoughts
are just the burps and farts
of a restless mind,
stewing in it’s own turmoil.

They are like noxious gases
which foul our inner world,
for as long as we hold on to them.

They will fester and ripen,
like a fart in a space suit,
unless we let them go,
to dissipate in the open air.

And so it is,
that these suits we weave around us
(to protect our inner space
from imagined dangers)
do little more than stifle us,
as we slowly suffocate
in our own emotional waste.

But to smell this stench
can be all impetus we need
to jump outside
of what we thought we were
(this costume, this little mind,
this imaginary person),
into the magnificent freedom
of what we truly are,
and the sweet smell
of reality.

We are all ignorant,
in one way or another.

There are those of us
who are unaware
of their own ignorance,
and those who are complacent
in their ignorance.

And there are those
who revel in their ignorance,
and some who promote
the ignorance of others.

Ignorance is comfortable,
until it is examined;
we are either part of the problem,
or part of the solution.

Laughter
is our joyful recognition
of our own fallibility,
and of our desperate attempts
to conceal it.

In gratitude to the luminous spirit
and profound teaching of Thích Nhất Hạnh

Stuck in traffic,
as a seed of irritation
germinated in my thoughts,
I asked myself
“What would Thay do?”

I remembered, then,
that I had been given a gift,
the time to simply breathe,
relaxing, doing nothing,
as I let the sights
and sounds of the day
wash over me,
bathing in the moment,
grateful and content.

I was walking on a long path,
trying to get somewhere.

Suddenly I stopped,
and I was in a beautiful place!

I will never find
a lasting peace
outside myself,
in this world.

Right now,
on these streets,
the constant jangle
of people and machines,
the chaos of culture
and technology,
seem to assault me.

But the loudest noise
comes from within me -
a string of commentary,
constantly critiquing
the kind of world
I didn’t ask for.

In this stream
(the flow of my own resistance),
all the sound and bustle
become a torrent,
torturous,
tumultuous,
and I am swept along,
as if against my will.

But there is no torrent,
except in the tumble
of my own thoughts.

Beyond them,
behind them,
there is only silence,
a peace that I may glimpse
when I give up the fight,
and let the world be
as it is.

Love isn’t like gold -
it’s not a treasure
to be hoarded,
or valued
for its scarcity.

It’s more like the flame
of a solitary candle,
which, if not hidden,
spreads its light
like a wildfire,
sparking new flames
in every heart
it touches.

Precious and ubiquitous,
fragile, God-given,
it is always on the verge
of sputtering out -
from our neglect,
or the urgent breath of fear;
or being fanned -
by the gentle breath
of compassion.

Our love,
like everything we do,
lives or dies
in the web of choices
we are always making.

It is who we are,
and what we do,
when we expose the light
that shines within us.

There are people around me
always longing
to control the narrative.

And there is a voice in my head
that is always longing
to control the narrative.

All of us are caught
in a wild world web,
clamoring with voices
all striving to be
in control of the narrative.

And the narrative
is nothing but a lie,
a desparate fiction,
concealing our fear
that, without a narrative,
our lives would have no meaning.

And what if we are enough
without a narrative,
and we are entitled to be
just as we were born,
before there was a story,
when we were just ourselves,
content to be alive?

Everything that can be seen
is in the eye of the beholder.

We will never see the world whole.

Behind our eyes
are only glimpses,
only fragments,
a pale reflection
of what is.

But we may also see
ourselves looking,
see our own seeing,
until how we look
becomes as sharp and clear
as what we think we see.

Freedom
is a beautiful dream.

Maybe there has never been
a land of liberty
in the world outside,
but there may always be one
in the world inside our souls.

Freedom is a beautiful dream.

It is the dream
that points the way
to being a better human,
living in a better world.

It is a dream worth having.

And it is a dream worth living.