Photo courtesy of: ‘On The Road’ by 12019 – Pixabay
https://tinyurl.com/y88ms4lw
DRIVEN…
TSK Instructor Ken McKeon’s poem brings this up for me…
ON THE ROAD… the journey can get monotonous, somewhere between gruesome and gratifying… the space between disgust and desire… bleak and blissful… between lost and found. ‘Where’, seems to be between ‘movement’ and ‘the story’, between the lines… Seems the ‘center’ is in the sensing… the feel of immediacy as it unfolds… on the living road… and it is what it is… between ominous and awesome… a gift on loan… till journey’s end.
“Reflect on the course that your life has been taking. Without encouraging negative emotions, focus especially on the mistakes and missed opportunities, the broken promises and failed intentions. Let yourself feel the pain that this way of being brings in its wake. Cultivate a sense of caring about this pain, as you might care about a good friend’s suffering. Let this feeling penetrate the power of the fabrications you ordinarily use to isolate yourself from time’s immediacy, so that you can FEEL TIME’S PASSING—in the beating of your heart, in the rise and fall of the breath, in the steady flow of thoughts and images, in the hopes and wishes gone unfulfilled.
By switching back and forth from caring to analysis [of story and transition between], you will learn to integrate and balance these two forms of inquiry. An inner sense of conviction forms, giving you confidence that you are on a journey toward the truth of time.â€
….’Dynamics of Time and Space,’ by Tarthang Tulku, p.290-1
DRIVEN
By Ken McKeon
Sham sky, nowhere sun, bleak, failed,
The day begins,
With least light on a packed road,
The tires are bad,
Engine’s nearly spent,
It’s running roughly,
It must be out of tune,
I think of pulling to the side of the six lane
Straight shot Highway 5
As it tears on towards LA,
It would be a missing the boat move,
Being left on the dock,
The band gone, the crowds too,
It’s like becoming an it’s all over,
Tired, shaking, lapsing into aching,
Would there were a pond around,
a hut, a porch,
And daybreak too
To jostle me
to wakefulness and life,
That sounds wonderful and hokey,
Play it out anyway,
Like golden prayer wheels spinning in the dawn,
Like frosty grasses steaming with light,
Like stiff boots easing by a fire,
There is so much to do,
But first off, flapjacks and coffee
After morning practice in a converted attic,
Candlelight and incense,
A few rows of zafu’s,
One struck gong,
Endless lifetimes put a hammer in my hand,
Strike down on a nail,
Fashion a new life now,
Six lanes of traffic,
No exit sign for miles,
Just how we get off,
That’s hard to finally know.
