Uradiance

Anger is an energy that attracts more anger. Intelligence is inversely proportional to crowd size. A single animal behaves more humanely than a multitude of men. Therefor hold space for the Alone, curled up in the woods around your own wound, keeping your breast warm to share your perfect milk with one stranger at a time.

The rock star guru seated on a golden throne sells glittering tricks to stop your yuppie mind. The yogi says, repeat this mantra 12,000 times a day til monkey mind is docile as a lamb. The roshi shouts, kill it! Concentrate so hard you burn a black hole between your eyebrows! But what does Fred say? Oh dear one, what does Fred say? Be a lover. Let your mind run wild and free, kissing every sweet spot in the universe. Just don't chase after it.

  Renoir's 'Woman with Black Hair,' which I recently photographed at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. Maybe my favorite Renoir. She is re-creating the world through the serene and positive energy of her gaze... Plant seeds of beauty through your lips and eyes. Name every creature with your love. See the world you want to realize lit from your face, not from above. Now better dance than hesitate. God waits to watch the wonders you create.

I give thanks for my daughter Liz, and for my beautiful wife Anna, for Abby and Willy and Finn, and all my relations. Ho! I give thanks for Philadelphia and Seattle and the vast rolling chaos of love between them. I give thanks for food. I eat whatever my host gives me, knowing that it is blessed by the grace of hospitality. I say, 'Yes please, I'll have seconds!' I hug my bad habits too, because the space of my hug is wider than the habit. I hug all ragged fractal untied threads of lack, all jagged angry edges of wanting. And when I hug them, I am free. Because the space of the hug is always wider, and I am the space of the hug. Photo: My daughter and I after running up the steps to the Philadelphia Art Museum, like Rocky. 11/25/19

I used to believe in Nothingness. Sometimes I spelled it 'no-thingness' to be more metaphysical, or I Buddhacized it into 'emptiness,' which sounds kooler. But now I truly un-know that there is no such thing as nothing. What appears as nothing, or vast emptiness, in deep meditation, is only the space around the jewel. My senses are too dull to perceive anything but this auricular shadow for awhile. But finally, after my perception has been refined in the fires of even deeper grace, I discover that this "nothing" is a cornucopia, the fruit of the seed of the fruit of the seed, divine causation spiraling ever inward toward a luminous and adamantine source, who is the very Eye that seems to be perceiving it. This endlessly spilling source never empties but grows more full, more solid. The deeper I dive, the more Christalized the ocean of the un-created. The great seers were all gemologists: for Jesus the transcendent was not the heavenly sky...

No one is to blame. To realize this is freedom. I blame others to absolve myself from the sins of the world, yet I as much as anyone am responsible for the appearance of creation in the shimmering bliss of pure consciousness. Now let me unbuckle the breast-plate of anger, lower the shield of political judgment, and drop the sword of blame. For blame is just the way I deflect the pain of my anger and fear. But when I release judgment, I have no choice but to inhale the terror of the earth. Yet only then may I widen my embrace to feel her Beauty. The Sorrow is profound, but the Beauty is breath-taking. The Sorrow I breathe in, the Beauty I breathe out. What I draw into my heart is cleansed and transmuted into a sapphire sky, emitting rays of gold. Self-luminous compassion is mine to release. Now let me breathe the dawn across the sea... Yes, let it be repeated: the un-created arising of the whirled is only a mirage in blue stillness. Amidst this hurricane of sorrows...

Today I honor the Warrior who wields the sword of his own breath to sever the illusory knot that binds every effect to its cause, once and for all liberating the earth from any creator, liberating the body from any soul, the dance from the dancer, the song from the troubadour, and the full moon's beauty from the sun. I honor that mighty one who achieves victory without war, empowering the world to dance in the void without creation or first cause. Again and again I bow down to that Warrior, offering priceless golden petals from the seedless rose that was never planted in any ground, yet springs from my loins and blossoms through my crown for no other reason but the frolic of stillness.

Madness has taken its toll. Where once there were opinions, now there is laughter. Where once there were rare gemstones Now there are waves of sparkling uncertainty. The earth tilts toward the womb. The sun cries, thirsting for black milk. Silence cannot contain its own emptiness and fills our bones with dust. We must listen to the gong of the raven that unties the vagus nerve from it root in the anus and it’s needle eye in the forehead. Lost in the desert between those firmly nippled opposites we may still find some chalice buried in the pulverized cathedrals of hope. First offer a drink of sand to the ancestor who betrayed you. Then taste the magnificent ashes of your own fire. I do not know what these words mean, but I know they will carry me like raptor wings into the tropical depression of your breast, which is just another caesura in the rhythmic echo of a world without voices. Now let us open eight billion mouths to the diamond cave of zero . Pa...

"She raised her eyes to the bright stars, looking down so mildly from the wide worlds of air, and, gazing on them, found new stars burst upon her view, and more beyond, and more beyond again, until the whole great expanse sparkled with shining spheres, rising higher and higher in immeasurable space, eternal in their numbers as in their changeless and incorruptible existence. "She bent over the calm river, and saw them shining in the same majestic order as when the dove behel d them gleaming through the swollen waters, upon the mountain tops down far below, and dead mankind, a million fathoms deep. "The child sat silently beneath a tree, hushed in her very breath by the stillness of the night, and all its attendant wonders. The time and place awoke reflection, and she thought with a quiet hope-- less hope, perhaps, than resignation--on the past, and present, and what was yet before her." ~Charles Dickens, 'Old Curiosity Shop,' 42 Big...

We are not here to carry the pain, the grief, the blood-guilt of our ancestors. We are here to free them. Our life is not an act of penance, but an act of bold forgiveness. At the root of our literature and our politics is the Oresteia trilogy of Aeschylus. The Furies drive Orestes mad with their infernal history of unreleased trauma, through the relentless cycle of retaliation. But the new Goddess of civilization, Athena, descends to cast the deciding vote in the Assembly of Athens, the original rite of democracy. Our freedom is a choice, and it frees others as well as ourselves. Orestes awakens from the dark stupor of the past. I am Orestes. I am the punishing Furies. I am Athena. I descend into the Assembly of my own heart, where all are gathered. I cast my vote for absolution, and pure joy.

The fool never gets tired of three things: drinking strong wine from his own heart, reaching the goal on the first step of an infinite journey, and running his fingers through the wise fur of a brown four-legged earthling. Now get good and lost until you find yourself beating at the door of this fool’s hut. Knock and he'll cry, 'Who's there?' 'It's me!' you'll reply. And he'll answer, 'There's no room in here for me!' So you'll spend a thousand more lifetimes praying, fasting, giving alms until one day, weary of all your goodness, you'll wander to that hut and knock again. 'Who's there?' he'll cry. 'Nobody,' you'll answer. Then he'll open the door and hug you with fierce joy, uncorking your heart so that you too can taste the dark vintage of wisdom that's been aging in your chest since the day before there was light.

Things that make me sad. I cannot stop sipping whisky. I pour it down the sink. Then I buy more. Even though I got a new dog I miss my old one. This makes me cry sometimes. When my wife is away I wish she could be here. I dream of her. But when she’s here we argue. In the store I can’t find things they sold when I was growing up. The junket pudding, the ginger snaps, the little mary janes. The world is a wound that will not heal. Now here's a list of things that make me happy. This breath. This breath too. Stars in the dark. Sunrise. A robin in November. Thank you thank you thank you.

The void is not even void. It gushes like a wound in your food. Your grandmother knew, nestling your brown voice in her quilt of bones. Now pay attention to what pays attention. Secrets will reveal themselves, atoms of pain instantly swollen into galaxies the size of tears. Your gaze circling the earth like a shapeless moon. The eye of space itself awakening. And your own breath will heal you.