Not Really

If you're a seeker,
you'll go out and seek.

But if you
don't expect to find,
you're not really seeking.

Owner

Who owns my life?
The one to whom it was given?
Or the one who gave it?

There is no ownership.
Only the gift of experiencing it.

My Neighbor

But who is my neighbor?

I am my neighbor.
With all of my faults
and my arrogance
and my meanness
and my selfishness
and my bitterness
and my pride.

I am my neighbor.
With all of my pains
and my sorrows
and my heartaches
and my disappointments
and my weaknesses
and my defeats.

I am my neighbor.

When I accept others,
I accept myself.
When I care for others,
I care for myself.

Self-Made

No one is self-made.

This is why we live in community --
not because we are tribal,
but because we are vulnerable.

What Is Not Dark

To accept light is also
to accept darkness,
because it is through
darkness that we learn
to see what is not dark.

Words and Experiences

What happens
at the end of a life
is no different
from what happens
at the beginning
or anywhere in between.

What matters is
how we experience it.
The way we experience it
depends on the words
we use to describe it.
Words are not
experiences, though.

We begin to wake up
when we discover this.

Reflections

Outer light
is reflected light.

Inner light
is light reflected.

Next Thing

What happens next?
Where do I go from here?

Into dirt. Into ash. Into earth.
Heaven. Hell. Nothing.
The turning wheel of karma.

That I'll continue
in some form is a given.

Whether I drag my ego
along with me is not.

Spiritual Adjustment

Beyond the glare
of traditional lights,
it gets easier to see --
once your eyes
adjust to the dark.

Constructing Tao

Connect the unconnected.

This is how I construct Tao,
one connection at a time.

Woven into Being

We are made up
of threads of Tao
woven into being.

A hundred million
years from now,
we'll be a thin layer
of sedimentary rock.

All art, all music,
all religion, all wisdom,
all that we are
will have vanished
into the geologic record.

Yet here we are now --
Tao woven into being.

Getting There

The paths into God
are countless.

Each of us walks
our own path alone.

It is the walking,
not the path,
that gets us there.