Without A Ground
A poem on clear perception
If I listen, will I hear My self-deception My lies My pride, my greed, my fear? Will I hear my heart beat Or my craving let loose Upon the world, My ego overstep my hand To sunder will from discernment The names of my selves? If I see, will I see My paradoxes, My compartments? The shape of my house I built with my own two hands The moment glancing at me And dissolving away My scheming self And dreamt past? If I touch, will I feel The warmth of an embrace The enmity of a fist The hatred of blood Oozing into my red face? The violence of my teeth Against my prey The giftwrap of this instant Or the vein beneath--pulsating From this body--fidgeting into existence To my beloved world? All this I needs to see To hear To touch To smell To taste Is itself And the world will appear Clear, loved Without a ground Sans self.
"To my beloved world" lands like the whole poem's center of gravity.
Not "and the world will be beautiful." Beloved. That's an active relationship, not a description.
Buddhism has a similar move in the practice of looking for the looker. You turn attention toward itself and find nothing that holds. What you find instead is exactly this: the world appearing without a filter between you and it.
What strikes me is that the poem doesn't describe this as peaceful. It includes hatred, enmity, blood. The ground that falls away isn't just ego comfort. It's the insulation.
I've been sitting with whether groundlessness feels more like freedom or exposure.
Does writing the poem change the experience of it for you?
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