Ear worms during zen prove that left to nothing, popular culture will take my attention.
So let them create their music: an evil in the Hadiths of Islam, and a degradation in the Pali Canon.
Music's flames burn away the veins and stupify the mind.
The heart is replaced with straw and the liver is poisoned.

Baha'u'llah said music is lawful as long as it uplifts the spirit.
But I say:
It eats the organs, toxifies the blood.
It makes me forgetful of liberation.
Its words are idols against the Path.
It masks the senses.
It trivializes reason.
It points the disposition into darkness upon darkness.
It deafens the ears.

It lightens the body.
It stammers the sense of smell.
It invades attention and enslaves the mind.
It dries the throat.
It displaces the sense of location.

Emma

Studying, studying, working, and sitting in zen.
She mothers her child and tends her home.
A denizen of her city's life, an outing here and there.
I see her as compartmentalized in all her facets.
Reading, reading, writing, writing.
So competent she is.
Dealing with life's struggles - they are so big to her if she compares them to all her angles.
When will she be mine? society makes me say.
But when will I be mine and she be hers, when will we take time for ourselves?
For we have so many things to contemplate, so much knowledge to fulfill.
We go to the school of God together, in college now we are.
Why take time to love when insights guide our star?
So take a break from the affection, accomplish your goals thus far.
The next time we see each other we'll have grown so much.
I want to be a better me, and see you a better you.
Let's share only the best fruits and rarest blossoms.
For life is so mundane if not working toward them.

Time Passes
I get a reminder email
Who from whom I regale
Some poetry website
Reminding me that I used to write

As I look at the date of that work
How is it possible it was so long ago
Where did the time go
Was I too busy to put words to pen

Or what else has taken my Zen
To share what talent I do have
In relating what I know of life
Even if it cuts like a knife
Where have those years gone
When my light so brightly shone

Having lost three friends to cancer
I wonder what is the answer

Should I not acknowledge their pain
For I am the one who does remain

Their lives were my beacon of hope
Each providing a different point of view
Of how a life well lived can affect so many
Never asking for nary a penny

And with a tear in my eye
I look upward to the sky
Hoping to catch a glimpse of
Ian, Warren and Sil
It is a tough pill
To swallow their loss

One that I cannot easily toss
And with that thought in mind
I do not want to be blind
To the blessing that they were

For me and those they knew
And for helping me as I grew

Andreas Simic

That which lily pads
Do not do -- Oh fantastic!
The water shimmers ~

The true artist does not paint pictures,
the true artists lends themselves to be and become
a paintbrush in the mysterious hand
of life.

The true musician does not play an instrument
but allows that self to be an instrument played
by the breathing space that encircles
all things.

In this way my darling
there is nothing you need to do,
or seek, or find, or become.

No fireworks, no flashing lights,
no grand awakening to understand
that you are not creative,
you are creation.

In this way my darling, wisdom
is the opening into that very vastness,
to be contained by that which has no edge,
and there find, there is no center.

It is to contemplate the Great
Mystery, and at the same time find
the Great Mystery contemplating
you.

Run after yourself.
Chase your own tail.

Catch that which cannot be caught.
Turn towards your own self,
and find that which does not turn. 

When will you see
the walls you *****
around your own heart
keep you imprisoned 
captive by belief? 

In setting the mind free
the heart soars. 
When the heart soars
there are no use for walls. 

What mast can I cast 
a rope towards 
to open the sails
in a windless sea?

To what dock can I stop
and secure a ship 
that is in the middle 
of the ocean? 

What ground can I lay
foot on when everything
is shimmering beneath me? 

This mind is like a bird
without branch to rest. 
Where then does one 
take refuge?

Here all the choice that lay beforith

To eat thereof the tree of life an **** it as thy bask fatted in the glory of a newborn star

Or to abstain there frometh an look inside eternal black thusly with knowledge that your stomach's redeeming feast is but a headturn away

The toad does notice
Most the river runs by it
But the whirlpool sings