is wonderful
About your own mind.
You have covered it,
Losing it like a coin.
And so it feels
Like you are on a wheel;
And so it feels
Like treading water
In an endless sea, bobbing.
Find, right now,
The old masters say,
Your own
Bright mind.
3
Jesus said:
If leaders say, “Look, the Dance of the Sacred is in the sky!”
Then notice how the birds get there before you.
If they say, “Look, the Dance of the Sacred is in the sea!”
Then notice how the fish get there before you.
No—the Dance of the Sacred is both within you and without you.
When you know yourself, then you will be known,
And you will see that you are a child of the one.
However, if you do not know yourself,
Then you live in poverty,
And you are the poverty.
Meditation
In the Gospel According to Mark the location and meaning of the “Kingdom of God” or Dance of the Sacred is not clear. Is it a state of mind? A function of enlightened consciousness? Is it what is known in Buddhism as the “one-mind point of view”? Is it a group of words designed to express the inexpressible? Perhaps. The kingdom is found through self-examination. The method of this self-examination follows the mystic path. As Gershon Winkler says of the Kabbalah,
No wisdom comes to us when we are filled with it. Wisdom only comes when we are void of it, when we have hollowed out a clear space in our selves, and created room for experience and for what experience teaches us. (48)
In Christian mysticism this process is called kenosis, “emptying.” Buddhist thought sums the ideas up in two terms in an “eightfold path” toward enlightenment: right (or “proper” ) understanding and right mindfulness.
4
Jesus said:
An old one will not hesitate to ask a baby
seven days old about the source of life.
And that person shall thrive.
There are many who are first
who shall be last,
and the two shall be
one and the same.
Meditation
Old/young is one duality. First/last another. One/two another. To realize the Dance, all must become one: the one or the all.
In the first chapter of Ecclesiastes we read these words:
What is the product of all our labors under the sun? One generation passes away and another generation rises; but the earth abides on and on. The sun also rises and the sun goes down, hastening again to the place where it arose. The wind blows toward the south, then turns to the north; it whirls about continually, and the wind returns again and again according to its circuits.
All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers came, there they return. Everything is full of trouble; the tongue cannot express how much trouble. The eye is not satisfied in its seeing; the ear is not filled with hearing.
That which has been, that is what shall be; and that which has been done is that which shall be done: there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there anything of which it can be said, “Look, that is new?” No—it has been seen before. There is no remembrance of things past, nor shall there be remembrance of things to come.
5
Jesus said:
See what is in front of your face;
Then, what is hidden will be revealed.
Nothing hidden will fail to appear.
Meditation
Jesus insists that the Dance is hidden in plain sight, only requiring a closer, clearer look to recognize or dis-cover.
Chapter 11 of Hebrews begins,
Faith is the substance of things hoped for,
The evidence for things unseen.
Our forebears received approval in faith.
Through faith we understand
That the worlds were built
By the word of God
In such a way that
What we see is not what
The worlds are made of.
As poet Emily Dickinson put it,
Faith is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see—
But Microscopes are prudent
In an Emergency. (#185)
6
His followers asked Jesus:
Do you want us to fast?
How should we go about praying?
Should we give to charity?
Should we abstain from certain foods?
Jesus answered:
Do not tell lies.
Do not do what you hate.
Under heaven, everything is revealed—
Nothing hidden will fail to appear.
No, nothing covered will fail to be revealed.
