The Grain
A poem on work and its intent.
Work is its own reward-- Embodiment of existence, Perspiring to more life-- Muscles crave resistance, Not slippery smoothness: The grain makes them stronger. Work pulls me into the moment-- Away from the din of id, Through the slow pain Of molting into a new self, On the road of purpose: Was it chosen or it chose me? If I climb up the steps of intention Past hunger, past home Past my death: a future me Into the web of causes Will I find My chained will? This moment finds me Unaware, enmeshed Without love, stuck In shame and worry Will I choose that work Which will free me?
"Into the web of causes / Will I find my chained will?" That stanza stopped me cold.
Buddhism has a word for this web: pratītyasamutpāda, usually translated as dependent origination. Everything arising because everything else is already arising. No first cause. No unmoved mover.
And the classic question inside it: where does the "chooser" live?
The Yogacara school, a 4th-century Buddhist psychology, said the will that seems to choose is itself a conditioned phenomenon. Not an owner of the causal chain. A thread woven inside it.
Which doesn't kill agency. It reframes it.
The grain makes the muscles stronger. The resistance isn't external to the self. It is the self, temporarily, choosing its next form.
Do you feel more free or more trapped when you think of it that way?
This is a wonderful journey poem. May we continue to choose.