Life is the universe’s challenge to the order it has created.  Life simultaneously defies and indulges our attempts to attribute meaning to it.  Life continually presents us with illusions as to what would make its experience easy and symbols as to what would make its secrets known.

On a misty morning some months ago, the dampness of the walkway and the clouds overhead presented to me a tantalizing fragment of revelation.  I present here what it inspired.

Waters

Awareness is as water from the sky:
It mists, condenses, falls; it runs, collects.
A droplet–the perceptions of a fly;
And scattered puddles–beastly intellects.
A lake contains the ponderings of a sage;
And tribal teachings rush the river’s flow.
As tributaries merge from age to age,
The oceans swell with all that billions know.
As sunlight warms the seas, they yield the air
A portion back of their dear conscious worth.
And heaven briefly holds its sacred share
Before the rains fall back upon the earth.
     The countless drops that think themselves their own:
     One substance in the waking world, alone.