Category: Poem (Page 3 of 22)

Podcast Reading, spoken and written by Mathew Brensilver on March the 3rd 2019 at The Insight Meditation Centre, Redwood City, California.

I transcribed this section of Mathew’s Dharma Talk and posted it here as it is a piece of writing that calls me back again and again; to contemplate, to hold and to let sink ever deeper into the part of me that is eternally true.

Martinos

Sila (Ethics) Reflection

Make of yourself a refuge for all beings. The Buddha enjoins us to cultivate this radical heart. A cultivation expressing not only Sila (Ethics) but also Samadhi (Unification of Mind) and Panyo (Wisdom). 

To be safe for others entails a path of self discovery, humility, sensitivity and willingness to be softened by one’s own suffering.

Goodness ripens through a process of letting go and letting go involves a measure of grief. 

We grieve the harm done to us and the harm done by us, we grieve the human condition, the indivisibility of life and suffering.

This process is autobiographical, idiosyncratic and universal. To be mindful of goodness brings love, to be mindful of pain also brings love. This asymmetry is the miracle. 

The more attuned we are to our heart and its instant karmic reverberations the clearer our ethical life will be. The more unified the mind becomes the deeper the love will be. Boundless, nothing but warmth. The effortless care that is the face of emptiness.

And we learn unwaveringly that hatred is never the last word. Sila [ethics] expresses the entire path. And then we begin again. The story we tell about love is never final, new questions, complexities and debts arise.

Might I know more than I suppose? The ego complicates everything – I want to think of myself as a really good person and I don’t really want to change my behaviour – ethical development stagnates when we rationalise our preferences. 

It’s conceivable that goodness entails much more than even we good people are accustomed to giving. Just because the saint is extremely rare, doesn’t mean that anything less, strictly speaking, is justifiable. I can imagine in the not distant future a major reconfiguration of our ethical obligations, to non-human animals, to the egregious suffering of the most vulnerable around the globe and to future generations. 

This is a time for radical hearts.

I don’t usually feel up to the task, but I am steadfast in keeping a relationship with my own sense of moral incoherence. From that relationship I hope that I evolve and contribute more of what I owe to the welfare of others.

The path unfolds and then at some point it’s time to die. The final gesture of letting go which is both deeply poignant and also not such a big deal. 

Your life was made complete by what you gave away.

Mathew Brensilver

That moment
When you are swamped by your own rage
You feel the desperate abandonment that comes
With the loss of what you once stood for
And the sheer absence of loving kindness that left you
When the centre did not hold

Ahead you see the long dark climb, back
To where you once held the light
With the knowledge that should you arrive as you have before
You will in certainty, as night ends day,
Be cast off again by your own fragility
To face the fated narratives you’ve been assigned or have subscribed to,
These that have set their course through your beginnings
To lead you to certain destinations of frailty and fear.

And then, that moment
When you see all this with sheer egoless clarity, and know
The all encompassing darkness to be but the temporary absence of any light

That moment
When you, cast off the last vestiges of your clinging
And say in full throated prayer to the unknowable greatness that is beyond you and within you

I surrender
I surrender
I do Surrender

Martinos © 2020

outside the window and at once together
a hawk and a butterfly

the hawk high with the wind
the butterfly low to the flower

to the dance a flutter
and the grace of wing

fields fell silent
grasses dipped

and a bottlebrush,
it’s vermillion tipped

Martinos © 2020

At the hospice
It’s a chilly clear crisp blue-sky morning

Through your rasping
We wait, attentive to each simple wish

We sit at the window, embracing each hour
Simply with you

Grateful
For warmth and light from the wondrous sun

Martinos @ 2019

Bulwark majesty,

silent the mountain stands steadfast 

against the elements,

a buffer, 

a shield.

The weather blows and breaks

but cannot penetrate

those  protected on 

the other side,

safe.

Lowanna Dunn 

at sunrise, a delicate film of low mist
feathers the grass plain
and camphor-laurel stand

an  occasional treetop
appears  as an island
amidst the gentle soft-air sea

the purple pink tinge of heaven
and deep-green night shadow
as must, retreat to make way

for this, a Sunday prayer on
peacefulness, and for what
is luminous in things

Martinos © 2019

heart to heart, is
the clearest strongest voice

as a river
of song and light

it will move the immovable
find the natural flow

and bring us to the source
from whence we came

more open
to what we can become

Martinos © 2019