Enough insecurity!
Enough striving!

No need to fall any longer for the allure of suffering
No need to fetishize the death drive

Ajahn Chah does not think much of the phrase original sin
Instead, he opts for original purity
I like neither the words “purity” nor “sin”
For me, original goodness will do

I do not need to push Herzog’s ship over a mountain
I do not need to emulate Sisyphus
I do not need to sacrifice myself on a cross
If thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame
— I’m out

Let the soft animal of your body love what it loves

Like all Protestants, I sublimated my pain into concepts,
squeezed vulnerability into a box
Now the demonic Id has fused with the superego,
making me a good candidate to be a Lutheran minister,
raging from the pulpit

Why not sit like the Buddha under the Bodhi tree
and forge a middle way between pleasure and will?

Let memories of youth permeate my present:
the dreaming days of adolescence
playing Tracker in Bunker’s Hill Wood
trekking in the Dolomites
where the way was easier to navigate,
even if the terrain was wilder

Harness transcendence
by tethering it to river, rock, tree and sky

Underneath shifting experience is joy
dig deep and uncover groundwater
Quench thirst