Enthusiasm

People spend their days
Grudgingly doing tasks,
Enslaved
By the mind that tells them
They can only do this or that.

Day after day,
They hope for the lottery
To be free to fulfill their dreams—

Dreaming, praying,
While their eyes become more sunken
And their bones more protruding,
And gravity becomes more relentless
To pull their bodies back into the soil.

O Adventurer of the Cosmos,
Take up your banner of joy,
And go out into the jungle
And roar with the tigers,
And charge with the rhinos,
And live each day with a light
Shining in your eyes.

Janaka has,
And the toy chest of heaven
Lies open for him to pick and choose,
With angels anxiously waiting to bear such gifts.

When your body drops
A rerun of your life you’ll see.

Make it a good one,
When no yawns will drown out the words.

Make it a show
At which you can smile, laugh,
Say ooh and aah,
which finishes in a crescendo of a Wow!

The Infinite Self needs nothing to add to ItSelf,
So it does not tell you
To go grab something outside yourself,
Which will give you happiness
That they tell you is to be found
Only upon a Hollywood screen.

That Self,
which you are,
And share with All That Is,
Is happiness complete,
Wanting to express in this wonderland of delight.

If you feel anger at a desire thwarted,
Happiness did not send you that way—
But only the shadow of unfulfillment.

Let every moment be your desire,
Free of the whips of ‘shoulds,’
That you may be donned in creation’s garment—
A glorious garment removed by angelic hands
From the toy chest of God.

Janaka wears this garment,
Is given everything he needs,
And each moment

His heart utters: Wow!
 
--Janaka Stagnaro
from "Footprints along the Shore of an Incoming Tide"

No Expectations

"Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering and delaying your self-realization."--Nisargadatta, I Am That

The mind likes its orgasms and says you are not fulfilled until you have them. So we have created a culture full of O's, with our entertainment, our consumption of things, our vain pursuits. Even in our spiritual lives, when we turn away from the fruitless material quests, that habit of looking for the Wows still holds sway, and we think we have to have Hollywood-like moments where angels descend and burning bushes speak and flying saucers land and aliens tell us that we are the One to become divine, to become accepted by God. Sure these things can happen, just like orgasms can happen, but they come and go. Mere phenomena. Looking for such experiences, which is the allurement of psychotropic drugs, is what Trungpa called "spiritual materialism."

I have a 4-year-old son who finds the wonder in the commonplace as he watches a leaf fall or finds a mushroom on a stump. If we really want the Wows it is all around us because it is within us. We don't need to manufacture it or seek it out. The real ecstasy is just being oneself, whether in a state of excitement or in tranquility. It does not matter. The rider of this physical/emotion/mental/spiritual roller coaster is the one to be focused upon, who smiles enigmatically amidst the screams and ahhs of this adventure.

The Rider in the Sky

O God, I saw in the sky the other day
Wisps of cloud in the shape of a horseman,
Scattering the other clouds with his cry.

The walls of city towers shook,
And the birds in the sky flew silent;
Yet no one in the city did hear;
No one in the city did see.

Who was this rider across the sky?
Was it truly one of the four the preachers and priests
Have thumped over their congregations’ heads
With the threat of the wrath of You?

I cannot but laugh at the thought of You filled with wrath.
It is like the sky filled with fish.

I know this horseman,
Whose name is Death,
Has been sent not from You,
But from human minds.

How is it that the Eternal
Can know this specter called Death?
Can water know this thing called dryness?

Only those who continue to believe
They are nothing but a bag of flesh and bones,
Who know not the Self,
Will meet this lord of death,
Who rides howling across the sky.

Yet the very ones who created such a god,
Stare straight ahead as they speed down the road,
To lock themselves in little cubicles
And to turn on the magic box.

Lest they see that ride,
Lest they hear that cry.

O silly ones, who close your eyes and ears,
This rider comes not to destroy.
He comes to be released from time’s unending task.
He cries to quit, to walk away from his job.

But no one hears him.
No one sees.
So he must rip apart bodies and draw away breaths,
To knock down the towers and tear away the cubicles,
Until his creators have cried out:

“Enough!”

Until they have looked inside and found the Eternal Self,
Where Death is dissolved like a spider’s web
Licked by a dancing flame.

O seeker of God,
Know that this rider of the winds
Is the greatest of friends.

He will only touch you
If you see me and you,
And you chase after this and that,
And think your happiness is but outside.

While, at the same time,
you build security boxes
To keep that same outside from coming in.

Janaka has heard this cry
And has seen this ride,
And has laughed with his pants around his ankles,

As the rider galloped to run him down.

--"Footprints Along the Shores of Time," Janaka Stagnaro