The wooden floorboards creak beneath my cushion
As moonlight pours in through the window pane
And though the kuti is free of disquieting devices
The cabin hums with electric night.
A discordant orchestra of cicadas
Fills warm dark with buzz and boom and drone
And prana shimmers through exhausted body
After days of duties and chores in sala.

Wat Pah Nanachat — Ajahn Chah’s monastery —
A training ground where minds learn to open —
— the place where Buddha consciousness meets
The wiry, slithering jungles of Thailand.
Budd – ho. Budd – ha. The sound itself leads the way.
Not replacing phenomena — existing within/without phenomena
Not replacing forest — existing within/without forest
Not an adding on, but a letting go, an unbinding.

The jangled jungle is my jangled past;
The snake and rooster wrestle with phantoms.
Atammayata means to allow and open to.
Allow the image of her face to flow through
— the moment missed, the jump not taken —
contraction in heart, shockwaves spiral —
What hurts more than the event itself
is years of identifications which clasp on.

The selfing process wends like branches of Mirkwood,
fed by the cankers, fed by the asavas.
To be an incarnate being is to feed — uppadana.
The fed “self” is a snowball rolling downhill
— recurring patterns, solidified habits —
New snow which gathers has same whiteness.
But clothes of action (karma) can be restitched,
Even unstitched, stripped back to naked awareness.

No longer shaken in London’s skittishness
But roaming free in rhythms which breathe.
Crickets gargle; frogmouth cries; owl hoots —
Instruments playing dissonant counterpoint.
‘Nature’ is boiling over here with craving
— fornication and asphyxiation and choking —
But I’m no body-phobic Victorian puritan.
Lean into the vibrant, vital green.

Cat is coiled up on porch like a mobius strip.
Her belly breathes. Her heart pumps.
Underneath the street, the beach.
Underneath the questions, the doubts, the identifications,
the scientific mindset: the life force (orgone energy).
Open senses to the forest’s energy,
When contact is easeful, the body relaxes.
Somatic refreshment. Rapture. Samadhi.

Grief is a strange thing. Some people howl —
some people cry — some people go numb —
My rigidity (autism?) blocks doorway of feeling;
It triggers panic attacks and anxiety spirals.
Of the six elements, I am earth and air.
Can I loosen into water and fire,
Allow agitation to dissolve into sadness,
flowing through my being like a river?

During walking meditation in sala,
Roof recedes above and Buddha statue looks on.
To my right, a gentle Israeli monk, smiling subtly;
To my left, a tall, beautiful American monk,
Eyes distant, contemplating. Venus as a boy.
At the end of each length, I pause.
Between inbreath and outbreath: an open field —
A stillness — an awareness — a knowing.

Sankharas rush into the mind with certainty:
The positive ones — Jackson’s compliments of me;
The negative ones — regrets and lamentations,
The disappointment of false starts in London,
My mental handicaps and self-judgement of those.
In the space of the open pavillion,
Can awareness open around sankharas
And restrain itself from pacing these tracks?

The uphosatha hall is a white jewel,
Its terracotta roof slanting downwards,
Sun rays ricocheting off it into the blue sky:
Kubla Khan’s pleasure dome lifted off the page.
The hall loops, curves and unfolds, inside-out,
Like Einstein’s curved space-time,
Like the double helix of DNA structures.
Uncanny convergence between science and spirit.

Bring awareness to the stuck places,
To the sankhara which utters: “I am unlovable”,
To the blockade against goodwill for oneself.
Clinging is fixating on a point in a wave
— in this case around the statement: “I am unlovable” —
Because it feeds upon an image of solidity.
Let hard rock of clinging erode into ocean;
Let awareness know the wave passing through.

After trying to let go, and failing, in the failure,
Something beyond my volition gives up —
Then there is an involuntary shift:
Unconscious, automatic and spontaneous — like breathing.
A woman strains when she’s giving birth.
She wills the baby to be born. Nothing budges.
She gives up. Her body involuntarily releases.
Transformation and creativity lie in surrender.