Page 2

Visitors

Which mind am I in, bright mind
or clinging mind? If bright mind.
then I am at peace, relaxed,
no stress or anxiety.

I know clinging mind by the
thoughts coming uninvited
with regrets about the past,
worry about the future.

That small mind sees all objects
as solid and unchanging,
each thing ‘outside’ existing
all on its own, separate.

It wrongly perceives myself
as ‘in here’ set apart from
the world outside, permanent,
important, death-defying.

Thoughts come continually
and will trap me in this small
mind unless I am able
to notice when they arrive.

If wise, I will greet each thought
cheerfully with, ‘Hello
again. I saw you come in,
I know you are not staying’

and then return my focus
to here and now, letting
each thought evaporate
as thoughts do if we do not cling.

The unwise approach is for
me to blindly follow each
thought down the paths of mental
turmoil; worry, hope, despair.

When I watch what my mind is
doing, I can see each thought
as it arrives without being
seduced into following

any of them into past
or future times with concerns
about money, food, sex
and all other distractions.

It is best not to treat these
visitors as enemies
for they would only become
stronger, more deeply entrenched.

I can consider them as
prompts to return to bright mind,
knowing how much I suffer
when visitors stay over.

Fish

Thoughts are fish swimming
in the fertile oceans of
the world’s memory

Trying to catch them
we become ensnared in nets
of past and future

Ego

Seeds sprouting in deep
consciousness emerge as our
seeing, hearing, thinking
- creating our own world for
each brief moment here and now.

But the ego mind
intercedes, everything
distorted by our
predilections, taking world
as real, self as its centre.

Cardboard Theatre

The good girl is fastened to a post.
Two bad men sit by a tangle of red paper strips
holding playing cards.
Our hero gallops in, scatters the men,
tears the girl from the post,
hoists her up onto the horse
and gallops off stage.
The director lowers the curtain
and switches off the cycle light.
Members of the audience fold the tabs
of their outdoor clothes over their shoulders
and shuffle
glide to the lounge,
unhook their clothes and,
as I imagine while I don
my paper pyjamas,
stand naked face to face.
Lying in my shoe-box bed,
I consider inviting you over
to join me under my
kitchen-roll duvet.

Wait

I wonder what my first thought
was. Did it have to wait till
I had learned a sentence-full
of words? And when could I think,

‘This is me and I’m thinking
this thought’? I wonder now how
many thoughts I have had since.
What will my last thought will be?

Not, ‘This is my last thought.’ Too
neat. Another thought would squeeze
in about thinking my last
thought. I must wait to find out.