I am not the person
I was yesterday.

I am wearing his shoes,
breathing in his body,
living in his house.

These are the gifts
I walk around this world with,
gratefully;
but they are not me.

Each day,
as I wake up,
I am someone new.

Heir to the memories
of past days,
I am born into the present,
breathing its air,
walking its paths.

It is a world
I have never lived in,
and never will again.

It is the world
I always live in,
and always will.

Replace your outrage
with curiosity,
and the world will be
a friendlier place.

Give up your certainty,
and a universe
of delights and comforts
will await you.

There is much in the world
that needs fixing,
but there is much
that needs to be loved,
to be valued and enjoyed,
exactly as it is.

Love is not desire
for someone
or something.

It is being open
for giving
and receiving,
without hopes
or expectations.

Love is not wanting;
wanting is only
imagined need,
for whatever
we seem to lack.

To love truly
is to feel complete,
to celebrate
what we already have,
what we already are,
which connects us
to everyone
and everything.

I used to know
how to be a friend,
back when the story of “me”
seemed solid and definite,
a menu of how to feel,
what to expect,
how to act.

But, as I step outside this story,
observing it like snippets
of a remembered dream,
it seems slowly to crumble,
like a building made of air.

So here I stand,
without an edifice,
looking out from nothing
into nothing,
not knowing
what I should be.

Looking out into the world,
I can trust what created us
to let me be just as I am,
without a plan.

When I meet someone afresh,
I can likewise trust
this energy that binds us,
without a history,
in a moment of spontaneous creation.

So, if I met you again,
as if I had never met you,
as if there were no story,
I might discover
how to be your friend.

Standing in that common space,
we could be ourselves,
not striving for connection,
but enjoying what already is.

Embracing emptiness
is not like succumbing
to nothingness.

It is cleaning the closet
of the mind,
until it is a clear space,
like an open sky
through which clouds of thought
may come and go,
without lingering,
without clutter.

It is like standing
in an open field,
inspiring in its grandeur,
and pregnant
with possibilities.

Genuine love
is remembering
that we all came
from the same place,
and that, in the end,
we will all return there.

Facing that,
all our apparent differences
pale into insignificance.

We are either all the same,
or, in our dream of separation,
we are nothing
but dust.

Stories resolve themselves;
life doesn’t.

The more we look for resolution,
the more we are disappointed.

What if the stars and planets,
as they spin around the sky,
have no more effect on our lives
than a butterfly’s breath,
half a world away?

What if this dance,
in its infinite grace,
embraces the chaos around us,
shaping our experiences,
but not limiting them?

What if each
of our predicaments
has no cause
but our fears colliding
with the quantum dance of chance,
in this infinite universe,
amongst an infinity
of universes?

What if karma, itself,
is not a mechanism,
but simply
the greatest dance
of all?

When death finally comes,
will I be able to let go,
and say, with gratitude,
“This has been a life worth living!”?

So may I,
in each moment
from now until then,
likewise let go
of all regrets and aspirations,
and say joyfully,
“Yes, this is a life worth living!”

When we come together
to drum and dance,
it is our agreement,
unspoken among us,
to abandon our apparent differences,
and to celebrate
all that connects us.

In this sacred circle,
we agree to talk
only through our drumming,
and not with our words;
not as individuals,
but only as one being.

We agree to focus
on communicating
through our rhythms,
with which we share
this sacred space,
and not through a cell phone
(that digital garden of ego),
with those whose approval
we so habitually seek.

We agree to set aside
this sense of “me”,
if only for the moment,
and, immersed in this rhythmic communion,
to allow ourselves to melt back
to our common source,
where all there is
is “us”.