In Plato’s cave
I jump for answers too quickly,
forgetting the terrain,
hypnotized by the horizon

I wield Padmasambhava’s vajra too freely,
neglecting the nourishment
of his bowl of herbs

Let go of the vajra
let faith and body guide me
across rugged ground

Drop into experience;
relish the shadow performance
reflecting the ecstatic light;
dancing thespians,
sensuous play

Swamps and bogs are to be toiled through,
foothills navigated,
before the arduous climb begins

Lean into the story,

its ups and downs, its loops and u-turns
a grassroots uprising
The abstractions will take care of themselves

And gradually, at last, the mountain top!
an illumination!
the Idea!
a unity of feeling and thought,
sun parting the clouds,
seeing with being,
a crystal ship in the night sky

During the descent,
all ends are tied up
and knowledge is logged
in the nervous system

The cave darkens once more;
new questions emerge

Purple rhododendrons
and juniper trees
line the lower slopes
during the early stages

Dilating, bursting with colour,
they release the air my lungs need
life breathes below the tree line

Squelch of mud –
dappled forest shade –
crooked white tree trunks
are the bones of my body

Smell of incense in the air

Instead of pushing outwards,
I open inwards
As the trees breathe,
I breathe

Rosefinches warble their song
Grasshoppers buzz

The vitality of foothills
generate a field of energy
from which my climb begins

Air thins with the ascent

River rushes past

in a chasm below

My thoughts are malleable,
rolling with rapids,
steadied by dilating trees

From new heights I look back
at the lower slopes
A reflexive gap has opened up
Atmosphere emptied of birdsong

At Dingboche, a fellow hiker
becomes delirious,
confused rhizomatic apparitions
blurring his mental map.

But I have taken Diamox
and acclimatized along the way

Clouds weave patterns
at this altitude
which are subtler, more delicate

Chomolungma rises in the sky,
imprinting its constellation

Khumbu icefall

Lake of ice shivers and reflects,
shivers and reflects

In the stillness I see
a clear reflection,
a clear perception

I am learning to drink
from the broken cup of my life,
knowing it is already broken

Superego fires its volley
of mental arrows,
splintering cracks further

Civilization is a fine archer too,
shooting down queer nature

Imposition of linear roads,
metal columns,
towers of Babel
above the drunk river
– rolling kundalini ripples –
and tipsy plane trees
poking through concrete

The worm has every right to be in the apple;
an apple is a perfect home
for the rotten worm

Screech of the urban fox
muffled by winter smog
They screech like that when they’re having sex

Crow has been on the stump since November,
ended by a car and left in the gutter

The rigid structure of myself
is mind’s finest feat,
branching out in ramifications,
a hosepipe channelling an ocean

Room walls billow,
silver pools reflecting our faces

Moss grows on the ceiling
while funghi sprout in the cracks

They bloom in broken places

Awakened mind blooms in samsara
Vilasamuni Linsey-Bloom my dear friend

Love is the running towards

“When you play, I listen” Pete says
is Taryna Kali or a fiery dakini?

The room-brook pulls me in,
fixations loosening into conversation,
righteousness flipping into play

God the Father scowls,
while Persephone sings full-throated,
liberated (within) the underworld

From infinite resignation
to infinite jest
to Knight of Faith

From arid desert
to parched hallucinations
to a cool oasis

Stay with the underground sonic majesty
prior to the mental landscape

Let Orpheus’ earthy voice
and Picasso’s Guernica
well up like a fountain

A lion sits by Saint Jerome in his cave, tamed
a gong’s echo vibrates through the air
a peregrine flushes passion from the sky

The world is beautiful but unsayable

Some experiences can only be hinted at with words

“I don’t have the words”, “words fail me”

The finger pointing at the moon

Flush away fear of the intangible,
let intuition steer reason,
love steer vision,
as Michael J Fox’s spirit
steers his broken words

Balance Ajahn Sucitto’s stillness
with American drive,
the tensionless state of the valley
with heights of mountain peaks

And grow outwards towards love,
outwards, always outwards,
or we’ll implode inwards to destruction

A body is dissected
a cow chews the cud

Nature discloses itself to reason;
they are parts of each other

Here we are, foam on the sea of being,
and the ocean rich with fish

Will we one day convey
if we are speaking our DNA?

Let’s pull off the shirt of reason,
and his tie, and his boots

Hair, wet, nausea, light

Breathe without labelling

The five colours make a man blind
the five tones makes a man deaf

The unspeakable world

Suzuki is fidgeting somewhere,
blinking like a mouse,
rehearsing behind the veil of thoughts

And I, an insensitive, governed beast,
strapped to the back of the zodiac,
trawling our humanity
for facts

Undomesticated, a snow leopard
roams in Himalayan peaks
(wild but mute)

Earth

Microplastics lodged in Arctic ice
A thin layer of carbon embedded in the earth’s crust
Digital waste in garbage heaps in Nairobi,
where children forage for broken laptops;
lithium batteries hang from bare skin

Water

The Alberta tar sands are black tributaries
criss-crossing each other like veins in Canada’s flesh
Glaciers dissolve into an ocean
which will one day spill into Dhaka
Synthetic fertilizer sinks into acid soil

Fire

Scorching days render the fertile crescent impotent
The Amazon rainforest burns hotter than Bolsonaro’s denial
Copper is used for wiring, roofing and medicine,
formed through a toxic smelting process
which leaves hills of slag behind

Air

Power plants are the lungs of civilization,
breathing carbon into the atmosphere each day
Extracted gas splutters into power grids
Smog billows through cities
like a hungry brown spectre

Space

Radioactive fallout enveloped Chernobyl,
invisible to the naked eye,
expanding through space
Industry turns nature into Standing Reserve,
into empty space, into a car park lot

Consciousness

Consciousness, ineffable, hard to grasp,
known to us through feeling and thought.
AI scientists wave technological wands,
build computational systems and neural networks,
so that experience unfolds from a silicon substrate?

I am glowing.
I am bright.
A spider crosses the room, pulsating with energy.
My body rises in the breeze like a feather.
The cold, hard stone of fear melts into lava
and the fire of imagination is lit.
Mahamati’s eyes are dancing, dancing with delight.
He is Mr Magorium and he is
dazzling me with his wonder emporium.
The birds in the blue sky are there and not there,
and today I walk the way of the white clouds,
half embodied, half hanging loose,
expanding like a hot air balloon,
slung into space.
My friend the spider winks at me, and says:
“there is nothing wrong with pleasure, Mr Scrooge
loosen the nails on your cross.”
Revolving around earth,
I look back at my old self,
who stands on brittle ground.
Up here there is no more strain,
only constellations of stars
and a breathing pulse.
In, out, over, under,
cyclic rhythms, repeated re-turns,
creating bonds between brothers
and a bridge over murky water,
where a white lotus blossoms.

Styrofoam cup in my pulsing hand,
nylon raincoat in the cool rain,
power cables between poplar trees
shooting electricity from house to house

Underfoot, concrete mixes with soil,
two minerals in the automatic earth
Beyond the hum of neon lamps,
a flock of birds fly silently

In nearby labs, biochemists experiment
with new concatenations and hybrid beings,
like Edward Kac’s fluorescent rabbit,
created with genes from a jellyfish

Black stains on Oriel college wall
are a Japanese Wabi-sabi installation
Its ancient dust mingles with
dust from my dead skin

At first glance, flowers appear natural, static
Look closer and they flow uncannily, disjointed
In biological systems, algorithms unfold –
a mathematical universe – fractals everywhere

Beyond the betting shops
in a tacky shopping centre,
pylons are planted in fields
alongside crops bloated by fertilizer

He returns home, plugs in the laptop,
inserts the needle and injects the electronic hit:
a cyborg wallowing in life 2.0,
half caveman, half replicant

Life 1.0 was virtual too
Humans have been painting dreams
and conjuring worlds with spells of stories
since the Stone Age

But virtuality is absolute now:
translating translation, analyzing analysis,
overlaying digital and scientific grids
upon the Cartesian blueprint

A day enmeshed in metrics
spins into an online evening haze,
shared with fellow avatars
as an island of one

Rain strums on his window,
riprap, pit-a-pat,
while wind chimes through trees,
unseen, untranslated

An old oak tree warps and lurches upwards,
its body rooted in the ground,
a canopy of leaves unfolding above

Cracks, fissures and sharp grooves
are emblems of raging storms and wild winds:
past accidents gathered into its aim

A skin of moss envelops
gnarled, pockmarked bark:
a green balm healing the scars of time

Like strings of wool,
interlacing branches weave themselves
into a yarn of purposive purposelessness

The tree moves, creaks, breathes and pulsates
Its history is inscribed in rings of grain;
its future is held in unborn acorns

Not only nutrients but a strange calm
flows through the cambium,
opening to life, opening to itself