​To Learn From Animal Being
 
Nearer to earth’s heart,
Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.
 
We who are ever
Distanced and distracted
By the parade of bright
Windows thought opens:
Their seamless presence
Is not fractured thus..
 
Stranded between time
Gone and time emerging,
We manage seldom
To be where we are:
Whereas they are always
Looking our from 
The here and now.
 
May we learn to return
And rest in the beauty
Of animal being
Learn to lean low,
Leave our locked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us. 
 
May we enter 
Into lightness of spirit 
And slip frequently into
The feel of the wild.
 
Let the clear silence
Of our animal being
Cleanse our hearts
Of corrosive words.
 
May we learn to walk 
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness
So that our minds
Might be baptized
In the name of the wind
And the light and the rain. 
 

​Love Dogs
 
One night a man was crying,
            "Allah, Allah!"
His lips grew sweet with the praising,
until a cynic said,
         "So! I have heard you
calling out, but have you ever
gotten any response?"
The man had no answer for that.
He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.
He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,
in a thick, green foliage,
            "Why did you stop praising?"
“Because I've never heard anything back."
"This longing you express 
is the return message."
 
The grief you cry out from
draws you toward union.
Your pure sadness that wants help
is the secret cup.
Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.
That whining is the connection.
There are love dogs no one knows the names of.
Give your life to be one of them.

1: Dharma talks and guided meditations by Thich that Hahn  

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yl6l48zst4ofjiv/AACDBRdtiGHJvDwX0VJIkhrma?dl=0


2: Guidance in Jhanas 

http://www.leighb.com


​

Hiroshima of My Heart
 
forever alone
no floor
no arms
falling 
empty
love is delusion
connection a trap
everything died
no time
forever
alone
flies buzz 
endless blistering
 afternoons
no wonder
enlightenment
is 
annihilation
stopping
ceasing to 
exist 
and just 
fucking
be 
done 
with 
it
 

"Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing:  the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not.  And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.  I am impermanence itself in a rapidly changing human form that appears solid.  I fear to see what I am:  an ever-changing energy field.  I don't want to be that.  So good practice is about fear.  Fear takes the form of constantly thinking, speculating, analyzing, fantasizing.  With all that activity we create a cloud cover to keep ourselves safe in make-believe practice.  True practice is not safe; it's anything but safe.  But we don't like that, so we obsess with our feverish efforts to achieve our version of the personal dream.  Such obsessive practice is itself just another cloud between ourselves and reality.  The only thing that matters is seeing with an impersonal searchlight:  seeing things as they are.  When the personal barrier drops away, why do we have to call it anything?  We just live our lives.  And when we die, we just die.  No problem anywhere."
--Charlotte Joko Beck,  Everyday Zen
​

​Thirty three thousand Feet
 
 
People sleep, watch videos,
play games on screens and sip at wine.
We hurtle West over snow covered mountains.
A chasm opened, or perhaps just revealed itself
with a taxi goodbye kiss
That moment of looking away
one plane change ago
it's always the same.
Here, and then not here!
It's that simple.
Those moments that we actually have,
When we can touch, hear, see,
and smell one another other
are all we really have.
The stakes are high aren't they?
Either we connect and love one another now
or not at all.
 
Robert Beatty

KPTV interview with Robert about broadcasting from the tent during the Coronavirus pandemic.

​Camas Lillies by Lyn Ungar
 
 
Consider the lilies of the field,
the blue banks of camas
opening into acres of sky along the road.
Would the longing to lie down
and be washed by that beauty
abate if you knew their usefulness,
how the natives ground their bulbs
for flour, how the settlers' hogs
uprooted them, grunting in gleeful
oblivion as the flowers fell?

And you - what of your rushed
and useful life? Imagine setting it all down -
papers, plans, appointments, everything -
leaving only a note: "Gone
to the fields to be lovely. Be back
when I'm through with blooming."

Even now, unneeded and uneaten,
the camas lilies gaze out above the grass
from their tender blue eyes.
Even in sleep your life will shine.
Make no mistake. Of course
your work will always matter.

Yet Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.