I had unsuccessfully danced with the paradoxes of Reality,
Its feet were not in lockstep with mine.
And yet I sensed they were a lesser peak in the shadow of the mountain peak above all.
I went into the forest in a state of Chaotic confusion.
It was a cold day, my wispy breath wafted in front of me.
It was a sunny day, the sun's explosive light,
Through the trees bare and bright,
Exposed my body, my soul was nigh.
I walked into the forest as far as possible,
And then completed the journey on the half-way out.
I emerged at the precipice above a sea,
Its shoreline on the other side of a narrow and meandering road.
Across the waters were the North Shore mountains.
They were snowy and rugged and hoary.
The sea was a blue-green marble sparkling by the sun's strong light.
I sat at the precipice.
In front of me my feet dangled above a void,
And behind me the Autumn leaves were dying.
I reflected on Reality's paradoxes,
On what they are truly telling me.
I stripped them of all prejudices and banalities.
I pealed away their artifices and artifacts.
I aimed to see them with a Zen state of mind,
deconstructed and bare.
How to describe a state of Zen consciousness?
Imagine looking at a painting depicting a beautiful sunset.
This painting evokes powerful emotions in you.
Emotions of serenity and your soul's longing for communion with divinity.
You ARE Zen consciousness when,
upon pondering this evocative painting,
All you can see is a coat of paint.
Zen deconstructs reality and returns you to the white-eyed womb of Creation.
Imagine descending the branches of a tall and sprawling tree,
From child to parent branch,
And then repeated like nested mirrors,
Until you reach the trunk.
You are now communing with the Source.
When you descend the Tree of Existence it is for the void,
The nothingness, the ineffable truth at the core of Existence,
That you are yearning.
And when I fell into the Zen within me I saw a grand tree.
But the world of space and time,
The implicate order imprinted by the paradoxical,
Was only one branch and not its totality.
On each branch I saw a myriad of wrestling angels - the denizens of its dream.
They perceived only the completeness of their own branch,
But not of the totality.
And then a denizen of a branch's dream soared high above the tree,
And saw its entirety.
How naive he was to think its home branch was the whole tree.
How myopic to only aspire to wrestle its home branch,
Instead of yearning to dance with the entire tree.
To this wrestler it slowly dawned, freed from prejudices and tethers,
First a release of tension due to paradox resolution and then,
like a shadow illuminated by the light,
The paradox lost its fight.
And then I snapped out of my reverie.
I witnessed a sunset with a beauty transcending sight's domain,
And which can only be parsed as the soul dancing with divinity,
Reverberating within its innermost grasp - Creation's womb.
The sky splintered into crimson shards that pierced the wispy clouds,
And then the sun's turgid red ball hung low for an Eternity,
Above the sea's furthest edge,
And then sank into the void beyond horizon's ledge.