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From the age of 17 to about 35, my life was a constant search for the meaning of life. It led me to read considerably in philosophy, psychology, literature and mysticism. I found the most meaningful interpretation of life in the views of Zen Buddhism, Buddhism, Advaita and Christian mysticism. Some of the poems written below are a direct effect of this influence.

Brainy Brawn (Psyche)

No brute or beast is he puny man

Staking claims to a superior existence

King of creation, sub- atomic speak

In the vast void of the endless eternal universe

A mind brute, a thinking beast, a reflecting  creature

Result of the frail fragile stuff lodged above

An atomic reactor - simmering, raging, bursting

Altering a wee bit of the immense universe.

If mind be his greatest strength, greatest weakness

It is – friend and foe, liberator and enslaver.

Everything is in it - past and future

Love and hate, joy and sadness, desire and pleasure.

Alas, our minds always in states of unconscious conscious 

Holding on to the past, dreaming of the future 

Creating an ego – seeking security in desirous thought

Incapable of letting go and gripping the present.   

Mind

Mind’s shimmering

Waves of the deep dark god

Ever silent intelligent energy but causing.

The unknown remains unknown.

The waves perceived

As the uncaused cause –

The ego-weaving web in which it is entangled.

Human Birth

Humanity:

evolution’s zenith

carries no haloed glory

but stretches one on a rack

mind throbs of pain.

The tiny bird

sky darts

Free, ever free.

Sky-bird

The sky and the bird

In perfect harmony

And so

The sky bounds by the bird,

Sky-bird.

This is an attempt to write a haiku-zen like poem.

You can hold not

For it defies holding

Like a sieve

That can hold no water.

This Zen poem is my favourite poem as it captures the essence of the Zen outlook and way of life.

Zen Poem

The shadow of the bamboo

Sweeps the stair

All night long

Yet not a mote of dust is stirred.

The moonbeams penetrate

To the bottom of the pool

Yet in the water

Not a trace is left.

This is a poem by a psychic personality.

Divinity is

a give and take

between unknown participants

in which miracles occur

beyond the reach of each alone

yet always happening –

a dizzy secretness

of relationships.

- Seth (a psychic personality)