IN HARMONIOUS OPPOSITION

IN HARMONIOUS OPPOSITION

 

In harmonious opposition all things exist.

Even the discordant sympathies

of the great sea of awareness

getting things off its chest like waves.

But I’m not sure it was me who said that

though they’re my words

but I know it’s mostly me who says

I don’t want to disgrace the Buddha with wisdom.

I’d rather sing like the sea

winging its way with a voice of its own

like the improvised lyrics

that make me up as they flow along with the seabirds.

As it is so it is.

But one isn’t the reflection of the other.

When I try to mean what I say

it turns into conditioned gibberish

but if I listen exquisitely to the silence

it begins to play with me like an audience.

If you don’t want to be lost at sea

tear down the lighthouse.

Only the dead know where they’re going.

I snap my fingers like a koan

and chandeliers of stars come crashing down

like mirrors of rain

and all my signposts

turn into mystic weathervanes

whirling like a gust of Sufi dust at the crossroads

of the alone with the Alone

like a red-tailed hawk

on a hot August afternoon

rising like prophetic fire

on the helical stairwell

of my two-way transcendence. 

As it is so am I

fire and flame

though we’re not the same

as soon as I give it a name.

The dragon that brings rain

is slain by a lance of water.

That’s the way things are here.

And I’ve lived dangerously enough to know

that taking a risk

isn’t the same as being given a chance.

Enlightenment knows how to dance in a snakepit

without getting bit.

Ignorance puts up warning signs and hesitates.

And after awhile one gate looks the same as two

and so on forever like a repeating decimal

that’s never done.

The seeing is one

but ignorant eyes

are blue sky

that have never seen the sun

shine at midnight

though they have their suspicions.

The trouble with being stupid is

not that you don’t have insight

but you look into the light

and think that your existence here

is one of its conditions.

The wise know there are none.

Everything is space without a mirror.

They look into the light

until even the light disappears.

 

PATRICK WHITE