I love the way I love.
camouflaged owls
Impermanence was…, no…., is… a presence that I know is now, that is understood as always here. But, something within still waits for it …, still craves it. As if it’s not happening …, as if it’s not what enables happening to be, to be… now.
Impermanence disrupts comfort to recreate it, calms chaos to redefine it, and actively initiates itself through such randomness that could ignite hope in even the most hopeless and melancholy souls.
Impermanence is what makes life itself a paradox and yet, it is what balances the paradox, holding us up, sustaining itself as us, as all that is, through a force without a name.
I sit here, writing about the lingering experience of subconsciously and mildly consciously waiting on impermanence to be. In a room within a home, all enclosed from the outside, and the outside being the world that exists on a rock called earth. This rock of earth floats in what we call space, and life exists on this rock. But, is it only this rock that life is?
I sit here writing about waiting on and even craving impermanence. Only to realize that the writing, the transition from one word to another, and the thought of each word, of each punctuation, of each emotion occurring, and of the experience of an existential dilemma and then centering, is all impermanence. Writing this, feeling this, happened as a millisecond of the swift and present eternity that impermanence is, always has been, and will forever be.
I sit here laughing with tears of joy because impermanence is always now, infinitely here as everything…, even this me that is WE because even I didn’t just fall out of a coconut tree.
Change is consistently holding our hands, never not us and everything that is.
And writing, well, as you can see, she provides a significantly soothing type of clarity.
Dunya Mikhail, from ‘Tablets IV’ (trans. Kareem James Abu-Zeid)
[Text ID: “We are not upset when
the grass dies. We know
it will come back
in a season or two.
The dead don’t come back
but they appear every time
in the greenness of the grass.”]
The nature of you, of us, is the power of presence and the instant access to this beautiful collective energy by simply breathing in and breathing out.
(Join us as presence.)
Here’s an in- and out breath practice for us to connect with the now of us all:
“Breathing in, I know I’m breathing in.
Breathing out, I know I’m breathing out.
(In. Out.)
Breathing in, my breath grows deep.
Breathing out, my breath grows slow.
       (Deep. Slow.)
Breathing in, I’m aware of my body.
Breathing out, I calm my body.
       (Aware of body. Calming.)
Breathing in, I smile.
Breathing out, I release.
       (Smile. Release.)
Breathing in, I dwell in the present moment.
Breathing out, I enjoy the present moment.
       (Present moment. Enjoy.)”
-đź“–Silence by Thich Nhat Hanh
DREAMS
Dreams often come true
When they come from you
Forget your parents’ dreams
No matter how great they seem
True dreams sprout from the heart
Not fanciful delight of a mindful start
Anyone can dream after a drink of gin
A dream-come-true has an actual origin
Believe it or not, it is really much up to you
Touch your heart, love it, let it speak to you
©Johnny J P Lee
01 March 2023
A Gogyoshiren Poem (10)
Photo: J. P. Lee
“I don’t want a future, I want a present. To me this appears of greater value. You have a future only when you have no present, and when you have a present, you forget to even think about the future.”
— Robert Walser, The Tanners
Now is the only place I’ll meet. Presence is what I can truly promise. Here, right now, the expression of past and future designs itself. Now is where I’ll be found, and it’s also where I’ll find you, us, we. Now connects us all and the only place we’ll ever meet. Now, it’s never not because it always is. I want a present because I am presence. Bloom here with me in this flowering presence of being. Now is the only place to meet, grow, expand, experience, love, laugh, hold, and understand. Now, this present moment, is where “you and me” actively dissolves as we.
