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Free

Only imagined,
these ten thousand things that we
assume to be real.
Things piled up in our homes -
cellars, attics, garages.

We spend our lives
tending these possessions,
keeping them safe,
secure, insured until they
represent our whole life.

Ten thousand things to
worry about, most of which
are superfluous,
weighing us down, keeping us
shackled, gasping for fresh air.

With wiser thinking,
the ten thousand things would be
recognised as just
mental appearances,
shackles made by our minds.

But ten thousand thoughts
can weigh us down as much as
the ten thousand things.
Thoughts of past and future, views,
opinions, theories.

fed by newspapers,
television, internet,
keeping our minds
occupied and preventing
our wisdom shining through.

Instead of dragging
all this stuff around with us
day after day, we
could take the clutter out of
our lives and feel true freedom.

Outside

What matters is what
is going on in my mind.
It does not matter
what is going on outside
because there is no
outside and therefore nothing
at all going on in it.

Toe

Knowing a bit about nerves,
I thought a stubbed toe hurt
in the brain, not the foot. Now
I know it is all in the mind.

Cup

When we both look at a cup
I see the cup of my mind
you see the cup of your mind
so not at all the same cup.

When you look at me you see
what is in your mind, but when
I see me it is the me
of my mind, quite different.

Me, cup, two phenomena
both differently perceived.
Looking for either beyond
these perceptions is futile.

There can be no cup without
someone being aware of it,
no person not heard or seen
or thought of by another.

My sense of myself as a
person depends on the same
thoughts and perceptions, so me
is just an aspect of mind.

Once me has come into mind
it gets busy taking each
thought as a call to action
in preservation of self

and all the things I value
as me or mine. Once self is
solidified as real and
fixed, then so is the whole world.

Everything in this world
now has to be named, counted,
catalogued as mine or yours,
thought of as real and out there.

This sense of self pulls me out
of the flowing universe
in which nothing is solid,
permanent or tangible

into a small personal
thought-made world of ownership,
borders, competition, a
deep sense of self and other

with all the thinking, planning,
worrying and struggling that
must be done every day
to maintain imagined self.

This is all the working of
small mind in delusion,
the worry of work, money,
illness, eventual death.

There is no solid cup, no
solid me looking at it,
just mental fabrications.
No real substance beyond this.

Dawn

Rising at dawn, through the kitchen window,
she saw Death sitting on her garden bench.
Being her usual gentle and gracious self,
she went out with an invitation to breakfast.
‘No, thank you very much’ came the reply,
‘food is more of your world than mine.’

‘Don’t you ever eat or drink?’ she asked
trying to show a polite interest.
‘No. After all, I do not have a body.’
‘But I can see it! Legs, hands, mouth and all!’
‘Ah, but what you see and what is really there
are two entirely different things.’

‘Are you Death, are you sitting on my bench?’
‘Yes, if that is what you are seeing.’
‘Are you saying you don’t exist, death’s not real?’
‘Yes, if that is what you are hearing.’
This was too much to think about so early.
She turned to go in – her cottage was gone.

Snow lying

Snow lying on branches.
Spring, summer, autumn, winter -
mere speculation