Equal Night...

Twice a year
once for Yin
and once for Yang
We pass the Balancing Point
and hover there for just a moment
hanging in the Black
perfectly perpendicular
aligned with Our Star
Day lasts as long as Night
and Night no longer than Day
We pass this point
and balance on this edge
just as We begin to explode with verdant Life
and then again We balance here
at the other side of Our Revolution
just as We begin to grow cold and die
These Equal Nights are the doorways to Our Two Worlds
light and dark
Life and Death
Yin and Yang
back and forth from one extreme to the other
in Our Endless Revolutions
but always passing through the same
points of Perfect Balance
in one door and out the other
We live and die all the while
swaying to this Eternal Rhythm
and it shapes us
molds us into Who We Are
What We Have Become
And so We hold these Equal Nights as Sacred
Special
Holy
or Magickal
examples of those brief ineffable moments
of Alignment
and Balance
and Perfection
these Equal Nights guide us to seek those moments
within Ourselves
and without
We feel this rhythm
and We see this balance
return again and again
We see it in Our World
and We feel it within Our Selves
and We strive to achieve that perfection
And so do We accomplish
all Our many
Great Things

A Meadow In March...

Early Spring snowfall
dusts late Winter bloom
crystalline fractals piling gently
all around
to rest upon vibrant petal
leaf
stem
and ground
The field now
a riot of pixelated color
struggling to be seen under
blank canvas tarp of
Winter's last throes
Portrait of Nature's perfect balance
Yin meeting Yang
flowing together
each becoming the other
flower melts snow into water flowing into flower
demonstration of Tao
in this limbo-time between the seasons
that is no longer Winter
and not yet Spring
when the Universe gives lessons
to remind us that
there is no such thing as 
"impossible"

The Old Cherry Tree By The Lake...

Dead tree, blossoming
Twisted trunk, pink flower buds
Like a corpse breathing

Ancient and rotten
Split and stunted, bent and burnt
This is surely death

Yet blossoms burst forth
Pink and fragrant, life from death
Impossible bloom

This, here, is the Tao
From dead Yin flowers Yang life
Fire roars from ashes

I see this, and know
I am this tree; my Tao flows
From root to petal

...

Just posted this yesterday, and I'm already editing it.  I posted it too quickly, and almost immediately saw changes I wanted to make.  Doesn't help that haiku is about the most immature, Creative Writing 101 style of poetry, either.  But, I'm not a poet, and I've never claimed to be.  The thing I like about haiku, is that it isn't necessarily about being pretty or poignant or profound.  A lot of the power is inherent in the form itself; anyone can do it.  It lends this almost zen-like quality to whatever you say.  So, I find it's perfect for expressing zen-like thoughts and emotions.

I found this tree on my way back from my old high school during my St. Patrick's Day drift, after sitting for a while under the tree where She and I first fell in love a couple of decades ago.  I was stunned, at first, to see something so blatantly impossible.  Then I was attracted to it, because I found it so amazing.  Then I felt an intense kinship with this tree, as though we'd shared similar lives, and were both going through the same experience just then.  I would've taken a picture of it, so that I could share this amazing sight with others, but my phone had just died the day before, so I didn't have a working camera on me for once.  Seems oddly like provenance, now, that this mystical vision should only exist in my memory.  I have this strange feeling that if I went back to that spot, the tree wouldn't be there anymore.

I'd been planning to write a full entry about the experience at some point, but during meditation yesterday afternoon, the seeds of this haiku began to form inside of me, and by the time I was finished meditation, I knew I had to express them.

Contemplations of Liu I-Ming...

Dead Trees, Cold Ashes

     When a tree is dead there is no flame when you burn it; when ashes are cold there is no warmth when you stir them.  What I realize as I observe this is the Tao of transformation of temperament.

     When people become temperamental, the harm is very great; the slightest offense sets them off into a rage.  It damages nature and inures reason, so that they are unaware of their own greed and passion, they do not understand their own narrowness, they do not care about essential life, they are not mindful of life and death.  The troubles this causes are not simple.

     If one can master oneself and exercise restraint, turn back from inflexibility and become yielding, sweep away all anger, resentment, and annoyance, get rid of all contentiousness, change the aggressive and violent nature back into a gentle taciturn nature, concentrate the energy and make it flexible, empty the mind and nutrure the spirit, be selfless and impersonal, not discriminate between self and others, view one's own body as having no such body, view one's mind as having no such mind, have no discrimination and no knowledge, and be empty and open, this like dead wood not flaming when burnt, like cold ashes yielding no warmth when stirred.

     One can thereby be in the midst of Creation without being influenced by Creation, be in the midst of yin and yang without being constrained by yin and yang.

...

Drawing Water with a Well Sweep

     When a well sweep draws water, the bucket goes down empty and comes up full, drawing water in a continuous cycle to water the fields.

     What I realize as I observe this is the Tao of the twin functions of emptying and filling.

     If people can empty their hearts and be humble towards others, they will receive benefits that will fill them within and elevate them beyond others.  The more they become empty and humble, the more they are fulfilled and elevated.

     Continually becoming empty, continually being fulfilled, continually becoming humble, continually being elevated, so that one is empty yet full, full yet empty, low yet high, high yet low, one attains to a state in which above and below are in communion, emptiness and fulfillment correspond.

     Filled with the qualities of the Tao, those who reach this state never fail to ascend to lofty and clear perception.

                                                                                              -Liu I-Ming  (~1737 - ~1830)

                                                                                                translated by Thomas Cleary

The Tao of Yin Becoming Yang...

Yesterday was a really, really bad day, and not just because of Mr. Squirrel.  That was, unfortunately, only the beginning.  In fact, yesterday was a continuing escalation of a bad day that had really started the day before.

My computer crashed yesterday morning.  Again.  And crashed, and crashed, and crashed all day, and nothing I did helped at all.  In fact, every single one of my personal computing devices has died in the last week.  My smartphone died on Friday, and I'm still trying to find the time to get back to the store before they close in the evening to pick up a new one.  On Sunday, my internet at home crapped out, and didn't come back up again until Tuesday evening, after I reset and reconfigured every single part of it.  And for the last couple of days, my work machine has been dying a slow, painful death, as well.  I feel like I've spent my entire week just trying to get my computers, which I rely on so much for the functioning of my everyday life, to simply fucking work.

I ended up spending almost my entire day yesterday trying to fix my work computer.  Of course, I couldn't get any of my work done while I was doing this.  But that doesn't magickally push any of my deadlines back, either.  So every hour I spent trying to fix my machine was an hour that I no longer had to get any of my work done, and I was very aware of this in the moment.  And every time I tried to fix the problem, and failed, my frustration, aggravation, and stress levels rose.

I tried to find the Joy in my situation, but I just couldn't overcome the negative things I was feeling.  Even the fact that in trying to fix my problem I was learning all sorts of new things (normally an almost sensual pleasure for me) about the coding and configuration behind-the-scenes of my web browser wasn't enough to make me feel better in the face of ACH! FUCK! WHY WON'T MY COMPUTER WORK?!

I felt like a failure.  I'd barely made it a week, and here I was, losing my sense of Joy already.  I knew it wouldn't last forever, but I honestly thought I could make it last longer than that.  And then I realized that feeling like a failure for not living up to the spirit of UT #3, was also contradictory to the spirit of ManniMoonYin's Universal Tautology #2, "You cannot be good.  You cannot be bad.  You can only be."  Which, ironically, only made me feel like more of a failure.

But this morning was the beginning of a new day.  And I awoke with a fresh perspective.

What I realize as I observe all of this, is the Tao of Yin Becoming Yang.

You can't be happy constantly, all the time.  It's not that it is impossible to accomplish, but rather that if you're happy all the time, then eventually it ceases to be "happy" and becomes simply "normal."  Yin and Yang combining to form the Tao symbolizes that we live in a world of duality.  Or, rather, that our perception of the world is a dual one.  We can only distinguish something in terms of its opposite.  We only know what "happiness" is, because of "unhappiness," and vice versa.  Without "happiness" there is no "unhappiness," and vice versa.  So, in order to maintain happiness, it must occasionally be tempered with some unhappiness.  I realize now that the goal of UT #3 is not to be happy all the time, forever.  It is simply to be as happy as possible, as much of the time as possible, and to learn to let the unhappiness come and go when it must, without attachment, and to recognize it as essential to continued happiness.

In that sense, yesterday was actually a success for me.  Not because I got upset.  But because when I was upset, and when it became clear to me that I was not going to be able to Brightside my way out of these feelings, I responded by trying to let them go and not hang on to them, and by trying to remain calm and simply deal with the problem at hand without letting myself get all worked up about it.  I reminded myself that, "Yes, this sucks, but it's not the end of the world.  And sometimes things suck, and that is just a fact of living.  So, there's nothing to do but try to let it go, and focus on the problem at hand."  And I remembered UT #1, the "Primary Directive" (I totally just thought that up - no, really):  "All things that Are, are Change."  In other words, "This too, shall pass."

And it did.