If you relax your hold
on the rudder of your life,
you may feel the tug
of karma and chaos,
steering you swiftly
into turbulent waters.

You may feel control dissolving,
like a mirage,
as reality impinges,
through the immediacy of touch,
of sight, of hearing,
on the orderliness
of your mind’s inventions.

You may learn to open
to the nudges of experience,
both strong and subtle,
in each pregnant moment,
shattering you complacency.

You may learn to suffer,
but gently, as in your mother’s arms,
and to sail through suffering,
towards the shores of peace.

I have an angry monkey
careening through my mind,
shouting judgements
from a forestful
of preconceptions,
excited and incensed
by the slightest stimuli.

Should I hunt him down,
or would that only increase
his frenzy?

Better to befriend him,
to offer him the calm
and the patient compassion
of a mother monkey.

What else, indeed,
does any creature need,
except the comfort of acceptance,
and the strength of being loved?

Equanimity
is not indifference.

It is the desire
to experience life as it is,
not as we might wish it to be.

It is openness to everything,
without the need to grasp,
or push away.

It is the opposite of indifference,
which is a kind of death while living,
a blindness to all we could experience
if we enjoyed the flow of all life’s wonders
without expectation,
and without fear.

Are we born
already knowing
all we need to know
to be happy?

Were all these years I’ve spent
striving for understanding
merely a distraction,
avoiding the simplicity of being,
afraid to surrender
to what already is?

What compelled me
to build these edifices,
these walls
against the rawness
of naked truth,
when it is only my resistance
that chafes me,
not the truth itself?

Before we learned to doubt,
did not nature
nurture us completely,
absent the demons
that our restless minds conjure?

Are we not born
into paradise,
but with the power
to imagine Hell?

Can we not, then,
imagine our way
back from our fever dreams,
and back to the heaven
from which we came?

In fond memory of Fred Rogers

Do you like to be yourself
because that’s who you are?

Do you like to be yourself
because that’s just who you are?

You’re not better
than anyone else,
you’re just who you are.

You’re not so different
from anyone else,
you’re just exactly
who you are.

Do you like to be yourself
because that’s who you are?

There is no one
just like you,
and that’s just who you are!

How can we be complacent,
when we live in a universe like this?

We are surrounded by wonders,
sometimes hidden,
too often ignored.

To open our eyes and hearts
to the grandeur around us
is to let ourselves be overwhelmed,
carried beyond all understanding,
beyond ourselves,
beyond the little limits
of our lives.

We are tiny particles of the limitless,
destined never to grasp it whole,
but blessed to rejoice
in these little glimpses
we are given.

The beginning of kindness
is to notice your own cruelty.

The beginning of compassion
is to notice your own indifference.

The beginning of love
is to notice your own fear.

At this window,
I stand in a tableau
of past relationships,
mementos of learning,
bit by bit,
how to love,
and be loved.

This cat beside me
is a token of my marriage,
my adopted second son;
at first unwanted,
he has grown in my heart
to be part of my family,
a trusted companion.

Beside him sits an instrument,
a gift of music
that recalls the warmer moments
of a tumultuous romance,
many years past,
its bell tones recalling
the harmony and understanding
we were able to share,
within brief islands
of calm.

Beneath them is a table,
left, as she moved on
toward a new life
(and away from our entanglement),
by a loving friend.

Above us,
a set of delicate chimes
tinkle gently,
singing the spirit
of another beloved one,
now gone from this world;
its soft melodies,
like drifting smoke,
are my inheritance,
my remembrance.

Each of these
is another token of love
tried, failed, or fading
with time.

Standing here,
amidst these reminders,
I see how much reaching for love
has shaped my life,
and how, with its grace,
I will continue to learn
how to give it,
and how to receive.