After awakening, even clarity sees the polish — and still chooses to plant.
Dharma Pageantry
Newly awake,
I sit under the Bodhi tree —
precious jewels and gold
once circling my wrist,
gone to bare stillness,
rain rinsing the morning clean.
Each leaf heavy with its own green,
each ant
an unrepeatable sutra.
Air without border —
I breathe, and it breathes me.
Mind like a river in flood.
Nothing to teach —
everything already
what it is.
And yet —
my mind tilts forward.
It imagines the after.
Robes stitched from catalogues.
Compassion graded on a curve,
adjusted for seniority.
Silence performed at a volume
you can’t quite ignore.
The five brahmavihāras—
four true, and one holy seriousness —
trotted out like prized oxen,
glossy from feeding
on other people’s longing.
Mudras and mantras
arrayed like shopfronts.
Architectures of the sacred
with parking for 200 souls,
polished to a mirror sheen —
in case your enlightenment
wasn’t obvious.
From afar or behind, a bird calls
Somewhere, a bell —
its sound small as a drifting seed.
folds around me like a cloth,
finding purchase
in the soft earth of a thought.
The perfection of the absurd
almost tips me into laughter —
not joy,
but the kind that can split a stone.
Better to keep still,
to let the pageantry
flower without me.
And still…
In every robe,
I see the child:
still raw
from the first time they learned
the world could end.
So I open my mouth —
not in anointment,
but to tuck a few seeds
into the folds of their costumes.
I will not watch for sprouting,
will not water or shield them—
only trust the quiet work
of rain and time,
how a seed, once given,
knows its own way to the light.
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