29.6.07

The Everywhere of No-Desire

The Everywhere of No-Desire

by

Edward C. Paolella

August 26, 2006

"In meeting the Buddha along the Way,
may he kill you before you kill him."

-–A Zen-Buddhist Köan


Our time stretches from nowhere to nowhere
in search of the fulfillment of our desires.
But the flesh is too weak to sustain itself
beyond the moment of temporariness.

It must find its permanence on the far distant side,
on the other shore where self and other are identical twins,
each the image of itself, each the other in the land of no-otherness.


That land is the land of self resting at peace upon a couch
totally alone in the heart of the jungle singing in the key of poetry.


It is not found in the arms of one another, for there is no one-another.
It is found in one’s own arms, arms encircling the heart and providing
it with the only true home it ever does inhabit.


All other homes are but illusions like a hair-cut or art.
Art is not our true home; but more than a hair-cut
it is our invitation to the mind
to take the mysteriously terrifying journey
along the road leading us to the everywhere that is the only-where
of the beginning and of the end of
the fulfillment of our desires.


The only-where which is the everywhere of no-desire.

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