He liked its darker tones,
and that it filled in the in-betweens;
recalling notes left behind,
seemingly forgotten,
by the other instruments;
tracing the empty spaces
with its subtler sounds;
the ones people in the audience don't notice;
their minds drawn
to the attention-seeking utterances of the violins
or the moaning complaints of the cellos;
but without which, riches would be lost
But, all the string instruments,
responding with tenderness and mirth
to the touch of human hands.
The show stopper, of course, the violin;
crying out in despair;
pitching grief one moment
but flighty and mercurial;
quick to laughter;
and able to move
with the impressive speed
and eloquence of a sprinter,
wearing flashy fluorescent spikes.
The centre of attention;
the life of the party.
The cello, the big-hearted and mournful one;
capturing our depths,
resonating the deepest cries and yearning
of the human heart;
full of power and unable to contain its desire;
the middle distance runner,
strong and intensely physical;
strategic; sweatily aggressive.
The double bass, connected to the earth;
trustworthy and even tempered;
the gentle giant; ancient and wise beast;
soothing with sounds felt rather than heard;
the very expression of commitment, of love.
Determined, softly pliant, ultra-marathon runner;
expressing timelessness;
and never giving up or giving in.
The viola player plays in the in-betweens,
and doesn't ask to be loved.
She’d been through a lot this girl, only 13 years old. So she needed chocolate biscuits, lots of them.
And dad, in prison for domestic violence. the daughter missed her father and knew he just got upset sometimes and couldn’t control his temper.
Surely, the chocolate biscuits will help, thought mum. She’d had a lot of wounds and hurts and that meant a lot of chocolate biscuits were needed.
So she had chocolate biscuits for lunch, at school, every day.
The teachers were concerned. But mum knew best, and thought, and hoped, that the chocolate biscuits would cover up all the times she’d let her daughter down.
But they always melted in the girl’s lunchbox and made her queasy.
Our dog was forever barking. We’d tried everything, but to no avail.
One day he heard the words of the Buddha —
“Life is suffering.”
He thought to himself, Oh, that must be why I’m forever barking — I’m suffering!
The humans in his life would often say to him “who’s a clever boy?” He had no idea and wondered why they were asking. But seeing himself acquire this understanding of Buddhism, he thought to himself, I must be the clever boy! I must be a real thinker.
So, when he heard the famous words of Descartes, the Cogito,
“I think therefore I am,”
he saw that this must mean “I am.”
This really blew his socks off. It led to his discovery of the work of Indian guru Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, and his book, I am that. He wasn’t sure exactly what ‘that’ was, but didn’t let it bother him.
He appeared to be a genuine seeker making real progress on the spiritual path. So a spiritual teacher offered to give him shaktipat, the direct transmission of divine energy leading to spiritual enlightenment.
The teacher called him over, “come here boy,” and touched our dog’s third eye. He wagged his tail, barked happily, and trotted off.
The teacher commented,
“There’s not much going on in there, is there.”
“Probably not,” we replied.
Undeterred, our dog continued his study of Nisargadatta. He particularly liked the quote, though he hadn’t a clue what it meant —
“Love says: ‘I am everything’.
Wisdom says: ‘I am nothing’.
Between the two my life flows.”
Finally, our dog discovered the Tao Te Ching. He found he couldn’t put it down. He carried it everywhere between his teeth.
One day, he read —
“He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.”
I don’t know if he got enlightened but he never barked again after that.
Then, when you hear the oven buzzer go off after 45 mins, think to yourself, oh, i wonder what that is, or, oh i wonder what the neighbours buzzer is going off for.
Return to whatever you were doing.
4. Then, when you smell something burning, quickly leap up and say a swear word — <insert your choice here>!
5. Plate up and use lettuce leaves to hide burnt bits. You might need to cover the whole plate. It’s alright, it adds greenery. Very Healthy!
6. Send a text or shout DINNER’S READY!
“srsly you burnt dinner again”
“mmm charcoal, our favourite”
And marvel at the fact that hungry teenagers will eat anything.
Someone told me once to ‘get on my bike.’ That’s when it occurred to me that I didn’t own one. So I went and bought one—no wait, actually two—bikes. A pretty blue mountain bike and a helpfully self-propelling one with a motor, a motorbike.
The three of us fell deeply in love.
The motorbike had the soul of a dirt bike, having been one in a previous lifetime. So it was attracted to dirt and gravel roads, and to mud. That was after a lifetime spent as a pink tricycle, with streamers hanging from the handlebars and ridden by a little girl in a pink dress with determined eyes, who would turn out to be me.
The mountain bike was afraid of mountains, and heights in general, and preferred city streets. This was after meeting its end in its previous lifetime as a cigarette butt, flicked, spinning end-over-end, from a mountain-top sight-seeing lookout. Thus the dying of the light and the extinguishment of that particular lifetime. And of course its strong preference for the big smoke merely an inveterate habit of the many short lifetimes it had spent as a cigarette.
Both bikes had done stints in previous lives as ten-speed racing bikes; as car wheels; and as various kinds of tyres. The motorbike was once a ferris wheel; the mountain bike a monocycle, and before that, a monocle. They both served me in a previous life-time, forming the pair in a set of regular spectacles.
Going back a way, all three of us had once worked together on a steam train: I was the driver and those two worked side-by-side as wheels. And going back before the time of people and before memory itself, the three of us were nearby pebbles, beautifully smooth and rounded, in a stream, sometimes rolling together in the current. Then I decided to reincarnate as an eel-like creature in the late Cambrian period, whilst they remained in orbiculate occupations.
Together again now, our wheels once again turn together.
wannabepoet : zen perspectives 