This Ever Now That Takes Up Form

*This ever Now that takes up form
as yesterday, tomorrow, now and never,
as both the dream and as the waking eye within the dreamer
as both the one and as the two and many
and yet remains beyond:

Be just this pillar, be still,
and nonetheless aware, in the midst
of all these lovely and horrendous dreams
-a mere witness, motionless, but ever watching
the sublime
of the tragedy of forms.

This pillar is the doorway unto the abyss of the thoughtlessness’ realm
wherein lies the root of both no-things and things.

When facing, untroubled by fear, regret, desire and duty, fame and achievement,
just the emptiness
which is the playground of thoughts,
stay as this witness as they arise and they die.

That which is beyond the waking, the dreaming and the dreamless states
and yet pervades them all:
that is to be experienced as non-mind.

So, try zazen as
this lifeless emptiness, beyond all forms, beyond all pairs of opposites, which blows
the energy of life and death into the realm
of the transience of forms.

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* In response to Suresh Gundappa’s post Song of Zazen ~ Hakuin; Photo also by Suresh Gundappa