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In this podcast I squeeze dharma from a band called, Three Dog Night, explain why it’s insane not to sprinkle our days with divine pauses and redefine “awake” as “self-respecting brokenness.” Next, we dive into a dark, unspoken truth: meditation is self-absorption unless it gives rise to “soul-seeing, on-the-spot.” From there, we explore ways to jumpstart this soul-seeing by inquiring into the body’s “Somatic Scriptures,” constantly prodding us to break the trance of Aries “selfing” and allow personality to flower like a dream character from the Piscean ground of Being. To close, we sit with a question, “Why are egos so averse to prostration?” and end with two dharma prayers: the first, a punchy “reset” designed to pivot us out of reactivity; the second, a cleansing confession designed to catalyze “positive disintegration” and set the mood for full-bodied reverence.
Only Awareness Understands
Greetings fellow dream animals. Welcome. This podcast is place where silence grows a tongue, words turn into dharma bells and astrology is understood as a mystical practice more suited to poetry than psychology.
To make the podcast more meditative and digestible there will be 7 dharma bellow breaks followed by 30 seconds of silence. At the end of the podcast, you’re invited to join me for a few minutes of devotional chanting.
If you’d like to learn more about my Astrodharma readings and online courses, please visit my website: astrodharma.org.
The theme of this month’s podcast is simple:
Compassion is what happens when we behold Deathless Being animating a time bomb of flesh.
As a little boy, I felt the truth of this in my bones. I couldn’t yet put the insight into words, but it guided my choice of friends and music. One song, in particular, comes to mind.
In 1968, a song by a band named Three Dog Night used to haunt me. Five decades later, I finally understand why.
The song consists of four cryptic verses:
1) One is the the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.
2) Two can be as bad as one; it’s the loneliest number since the number one.
3) No is the saddest experience you’ll ever know.
4) Yes is the saddest experience you’ll ever know.
This song taught me the value of not explaining. Its lyrics were obscure only because I was not spiritually mature enough to digest them. Years later, when I revisited the song, its meaning cut into me like a razor.
Had it been explained to my teenage brain by some spiritual wise guy, its catalytic power may well have been neutralized, sealed in a tomb of concepts.
Instead, the lyrics bubbled in my subconscious like a fine wine, and when it finally came time to sip, I caught an unexpected glimpse of the reason why souls must awaken slowly and painfully, over many incarnations.
What do the lyrics mean? Why are one and two, yes and no, so lonely?
Let’s break it down, line by line.
1) One is the the loneliest number that you’ll ever do.
Initially, the song appears to be about being alone, a break up, lost love.
2) Two can be as bad as one; it’s the loneliest number since the number one.
Here, the song pivots. Suddenly, we’re talking about a loneliness that no mere mortal can resolve.
3) No is the saddest experience you’ll ever know.
Seems straightforward: It hurts to reject or be rejected.
4) Yes is the saddest experience you’ll ever know.
Again, the song pivots. Acceptance and rejection, winning and losing, are both hollow victories.
Duality, it appears, is inherently unsatisfying. Seems we’re being urged to explore an alternative. Here’s my take:
Return to Zero
One and two arise from zero, the womb of awareness, itself. Numb to our eternal, overflowing source, one and two, (self and other) appear solid, separate and real. Our best shot at happiness, then, is to manipulate (and, thereby, affirm) the world’s evidence of separation through yes and no (desire and aversion), which only exacerbates our existential loneliness.
Divorced from our deathless Being, we’re immersed in a world of “ones and twos:” orphaned ego’s on a countdown, busy with “yes-ing and no-ing” (wanting and not-wanting), lonely for the experience of divine rest.
Said more succinctly: Only awareness understands.
Only eternity-with-eyes, the Unborn looking through us, can make meaning of this world and authentically forgive the dream.
But wait. There’s yet another layer of dharma here.
A quick Google search reveals that the name, “Three Dog Night” refers to a night so bitterly cold you’d need three dogs in bed with you to keep you warm.
Minus a sense of the Divine staring through us, we shiver in an existential Siberia. In Buddhist language, the three dogs we need to survive this place are Buddha, dharma and sangha: Teachers, teachings and allies in awakening.
Would the band members of Three Dog Night agree with my interpretation of their name and lyrics? Irrelevant. My dream, my decode.
Three Dog Prayer:
May all flesh be nobly inhabited, infused with sublimity and presence, so we can mercifully witness the world and know it as divine play.
Every day: sprinkled with divine pauses, holy instants when we “return to zero” so we can be cleansed of spiritual swagger and humbly confess: Only awareness understands.
And may we trust, no matter how eerie or Orwellian the planet appears, that all incarnated souls are getting the feedback they need to face their inner demons, shake free of orphaned habits of mind and awaken to the fullness of Being, so perfectly symbolized by the round, womblike mother of all digits, Zero.
(Dharma Bell Break #1)
Self-Respecting Brokenness
Today, I found myself texting a friend at a rehab center in Thailand. Without thinking, the following words fell out of me:
Your self-respecting brokenness buoys me.
Immediately after pressing “send,” I felt a wave of relief. I realized that I was sending a message to myself and that this is what love in Siberia looks like.
Most of what ego says is high school swagger: thoughts and opinions designed to keep the vastness and disorientation of Timeless Presence at bay and harden our conditioned story about who we are.
Is this pathetic? No.
Not out here in the tundra, where truths are spoken with teeth-chattering pride and conversations focus on icy survival.
Does that mean we should shut up and never speak the dharma? No.
The path to self-realization begins with “self-respecting brokenness.” There is no shame in admitting we are part guru, part charlatan.
Souls wake up in all manner of bleak landscapes. Here’s the hot, sandy version:
Like a Bristecone pine in a howling desert
May Samsara design a love strong and weathered. -H.R.
Seen without prejudice, the traumatized are oozing with dharma. Addicts exude a streetwise nobility, just as the “well-adjusted” are haunted by complacency and isolating specialness.
When it comes to speed of evolution, the ones that hit bottom often outpace the cushioned and successful. The outwardly limping, inwardly sprinting.
Still, even self-respecting brokenness can be worn like a badge. Spiritual egos love to brag about their ordinariness.
Who are the awake ones and who are snake oil salesman? Hard to tell.
All I know is The Merciful Witness is the sweetest Jasmine I’ve ever known. So sweet, in fact, that the dizzy swooning lingers long after it’s overtaken by ego’s sewery stench.
One day, the contrast itself, will be our Jasmine.
We’ll bow down to God’s ingenious curriculum of sickness and injury; the mortality-shocks designed, not just for us, but for family and friends, desperate for death-readiness.
Frozen on our death bed, unable to speak, our milky, faraway eyes will transmit their final message:
A day without deathless Being is more than un-strategic; it’s insane.
Then, just before we draw our final breath, as our soul recedes into the heavens, the insanely loyal one who spent the night sleepless and achey in that plastic chair pulled close to our bed will hear us, calling down to them, in a dream:
Hurry! Hurry! Don’t miss this chance to forgive the dream and awaken to God’s choreographic genius!
(Dharma Bell Break #2)
The Somatic Scriptures
Let’s face it: meditation of any consequence happens off the cushion, in the throes of meditative relating.
I call it, “soul-seeing on-the-spot:” an essential skill because it puts our daily ups and downs into a larger, incarnational context.
Yes, it still hurts to watch everything and everyone we love being ground into supernatural ether. But as eternity-with-eyes reveals each beloved as a soul pulling in for a “pit stop” on their way to further incarnations too fantastic to imagine, we release our grip on people and things before they’re ripped away from us.
It also helps us understand evil: why it is allowed, even essential.
Egos must out-picture their self-centeredness in order to face the pinched and painful way they are inhabiting consciousness. They must act-out, receive their karmic sting, repent and learn the selfless joy of attuning to the “imaginary others.”
How else will me-story mangled minds become more spacious, “field sensing” and in tune with the Tao?
Am I advocating that you believe in reincarnation? No. But I do enjoy teaching people how to become archetypally literate enough to witness, for themselves, the cycles of death and rebirth playing out in their every day lives. At this point, reincarnation becomes self-evident.
Where to begin?
First step: notice how the Aries-to-Pisces wheel of incarnation is embedded in the head-to-toe symbolism of our body. This, alone, has the power to turn devout materialists into a perceivers of intelligent design.
Seen through astro-literate eyes, the body is a “crash helmet riding on a timeless trance of toes.” To understand the meaning of this phrase, we will need to take a journey through the “Somatic Scriptures:”
This will take a little while. But, trust me, it will be worth it.
As we move through the body’s head-to-toe, Aries-to-Pisces progression, ask yourself,
What are the chances that the form and function of each body part would so perfectly match its corresponding archetype?
Notice, also, how each somatic scripture heals and corrects the blind spots of the one just before it.
Yes, this is a love story.
Let that sink in. It’s the moral of the story.
Let’s get started.
1) The Aries “Crash Helmet”
Sky diving down through the fontanelle, the soft spot at the top of the baby’s head, the Great I AM activates the Aries “crash helmet,” a hairy headquarters of identity and will, that fires the synapse-firing brain, activates the fight-or-flight adrenal glands and drapes itself in a will-asserting muscular system.
Aries is an initiating fire sign ruled by the red planet, Mars, father of the term, Martial Arts. It takes uncommon, existential guts to break free of the trance of the previous sign, Pisces, the pause between incarnations, that once provided refuge and soul-repair, but has now become stagnant escape. It takes gutsy soul-esteem to “ram” through the spirit/matter veil and don an egoic crash helmet from which to further evolve the soul.
Forget heads- these are gladiators wrestling free of boundless Being. This is genius of the Aries “Crash Helmet.”
2) The Taurus “Taproot”
In the next step of “waking down,” the crash helmet is planted into the sensual soil of body and earth via a “Taproot:” the Taurus neck, activating the thyroid gland which enables impulsive bursts of Aries “I AM-ness” to be metabolized more steadily, for sustained follow-through, as the soul sinks deeper into the five senses which allow us to attune to the ways of the world and live “in the body, on the earth, as it is.”
Taurus is fixed earth, ruled by both Venus and our home planet and the color, green: color of nature, fecundity, growth and gardening. No sign is more naturally embodied, sensual and devoted to beauty, form and function. It’s key phrase, “I have,” points to the fleshy foundation it provides for Aries “I Am-ness,” equipping us with the power to fully own and invest in anything and any one we are karmically ordained to commit to.
Forget necks. This is personality rooting into the soil of flesh: This is the genius of the “Taurus Taproot.”
3) The Gemini “Chi-Tendrils”
Next, in order to widen our carnal, body-centric worldview, the Taurus taproot grows “Chi Tendrils” that spread out, communicate and network with other people, places and perspectives: the Gemini arms, hands, lungs and tongue as well as the intricately branching bronchi and nervous system.
Gemini is a mutable air sign, ruled by fleet-footed Mercury, media and our most nimble body part, the tongue, which enables the soul to impact an ever-widening range of psyches. As Gemini’s uncommon curiosity and range of experience gets synthesized, focused and mature, souls learn how to communicate compelling, swiftly conveyable truths: soundbites and memes that circle the globe. Gemini is vital to the success of earthy Taurus, providing the social and intellectual skills it needs to communicate and package its goods and services in updated forms that suit the the changing times.
Forget tongues. This is breezy intelligence bridging dense islands of flesh. This is the genius of the Gemini “Chi Tendrils.”
4) The Cancer “Cradling Sacs”
Lest things become too heady and superficial, the soul seeks vulnerable bonds; people and places to give and receive nurture and protection, as symbolized by the soft, cradling sacs of the body: the Cancer breasts, stomach, womb, tear ducts, eyes and cheeks, as well as the shield that protects these soft tissues and organs – the rib cage.
Cancer is ruled by the milky Moon, mother of all feelings and needs, provider of emotional intelligence, nurture and homey rest to the restless, networking mind of Gemini. The cultivation of Cancer empathy may be uniquely private discipline, but the rewards for overcoming self-absorption and attuning to others hearts is quite visible: family, friends and a steady sense of belonging. Cancer fine tunes our trust-building skills so we can create an atmosphere for others to freely express, and skillfully manage, their hurtable humanness.
Forget breasts. This is restless, “wanting mind” coming home for a nap. This is the essence of the Cancer “Cradling Sacs.”
5) The Leo “Posture Pump”
With hurtable humanness now fully installed, the soul resists the temptation to withdraw and protect by standing tall, ready to shine, lead and create, as symbolized by the Leo “Posture Pump” – our irrepressible, life-pumping heart, our oxygen-activated blood, and the un-hunched pride of the upper spine.
Leo is ruled by the Sun, a planet that- if it were ever to pause to second guess the value of its light- would plunge us all into an ice age. Similarly, Leo infuses Cancer with dynamic self-expression and the courage it takes to get up on stage, free of self-involved sensitivity. In this way, souls practice the art of leadership, play and the open celebrating of life.
Forget hearts. This is ingrown sensitivity learning to shine more generously, on a stage. This is the essence of the Leo “Posture Pump.”
6) The Virgo “Test Tube”
To discern the difference between confidence and vanity, the soul now calls in some ego-humbling critique as symbolized by the the Virgo Test Tube, or intestines:” that intricately twisting food filter that expertly discriminates between toxins and nutrients, flushing us free of waste and impurity.
Virgo is an adaptable earth sign that works diligently for purity, efficiency and the creation of organized, well-attended to spaces that allow doer-ship to fully relax into timeless presence. Clinical on the surface, devotional within, Virgo is a sacred space artist.
Forget colons. This is vanity and charisma learning to quietly and humbly serve. This is the essence of the Virgo “Test Tube.”
7) The Libra “Team Cleaners”
Our quest for purity would become perfectionistic if it weren’t for the kidneys, or “Team Cleaners,” which continue the colon’s ego-cleansing work in the form of a soul-mirroring relationships that reflect how artfully we’re balancing individual self-expression with consideration of others. The kidneys, which work in relational pairs, symbolize our need to develop mediation skills: the ability to compromise and build intimacy by highlighting common ground.
Libra is an air sign ruled by beauty-loving Venus who understands that we don’t really know who we are without the help of other beings to evoke us. Even monks in a cave go crazy with out a guru to periodically check-in with. We wake up together, in pairs, or not at all, which is why unmarried wise guys require extra scrutiny. What good is transcendence untested by everyday life with a smelly ego?
Forget Kidneys. This is judgment softening in front of a soul-mirror. This is the essence of the Libran “Team Cleaners.”
8) The Scorpio “Shadow Hounds”
Scorpio deepens Libra’s understanding of love and beauty to include visceral desire, ego-purging catharsis, confession of psychological shadow and perseverance in the face of messy cycles of death and rebirth. Perversely fascinated with darkness, I call Scorpio the “Shadow Hound,” as symbolized by the genitals and all shadowy orifices of the body.
Scorpio is fixed water sign ruled by Pluto, planet of the underworld, equipped to survive the icy outer reaches of our solar system. Its morbid curiosity and thorough lack of sqeamishness produces excellent therapists, detectives and surgeons. Their primary challenge is moderation: to discern the difference between passionate commitment and controlling obsession, serving others as the confessor and dominating others through psychic manipulation.
Forget genitals. This is “terrified niceness” getting confessed and undressed. This is the essence of the Scorpio “Shadow Hounds.”
9) The Sagittarius “Meaning Marchers”
Scorpio’s fascination with the dark and forbidden needs guiding principle and perspective. This is accomplished through the Sagittarian “Meaning Marchers,” the ground-covering hips, buttocks and thighs that gallop us out into the wider, panoramic vistas of philosophy, religion, teaching, counseling and the studious art of self-inquiry.
Sagittarius is a mutable fire sign ruled by Jupiter, planet of expansion, learning adventures and wide-ranging understanding. Passionate for truth, the challenge for Sagittarius is to notice when truth-hungry study and travel drifts into the commitment-phobic lifestyle of the adventure junkie.
Forget thighs. This is carnal desire getting studiously tamed by the ultimate truth: the essence of the Sagittarian “Meaning Marchers.”
10) The Capricorn “Climbing Levers”
The quest for panoramic truth could easily turn into irresponsible adventurism and preachiness were it not for the pressure to work them into realistic and reputable contributions that adhere to the rules of the marketplace, as symbolized by our Capricorn “Climbing Levers” – the knees – and our age-chronicling skin, joints and teeth.
Capricorn is a disciplined, ambitious earth sign whose challenge is to balance work, reputation and the bottom line with vulnerability, trust and belonging. Capricorn becomes cynical, depressed and workaholic without the messy successes of personal love.
Forget knees. This is “big ideas” getting reality-tested by the marketplace: the essence of the Capricorn “Climbing Levers.”
11) The Aquarian “Kick Starters”
Worldly success becomes a hollow victory until we reinvest it back into the Aquarian community that lifted us up. For this, we need the “kickstarters” – the shins, calves and ankles that constantly kick us forward into a more equal, just and awakened collective future. Aquarius rules electricity and the healthy shocks we need to break free of paradigm paralysis and develop a genuine perception of all beings as equal.
Ruled by Uranus, purveyor of crazy wisdom, Aquarius must, to some extent, be an independent outlier in order to see where society is stuck and throw a monkey wrench into the gears of societal prejudice and dysfunction. The challenge for Aquarius is to balance impersonal love of community with personal commitment to individuals and notice when activism turns into adolescent rebellion and disenfranchising differentness.
Forget shins. This is Scrooge giving back to the community that made him. This is the essence of the Aquarian “Kick Starters.”
12) The Pisces “Timeless Trance of Toes”
Sensing that the Aquarian ideal of “community” is actually a compressed field of egos, hopelessly riddled with reactivity and projection, Pisces eases our activist ankles down into the Timeless Trance of Toes:” skin-to-skin contact with the meditative ground of Being: the Shepherding Presence that humbles our ego and guides our every footfall.
Pisces is a mutable water sign with uncommon compassion, psychic power and a presence that melts egoic boundaries, as symbolized by the pressed-together world of the Pisces feet. Pisces correctly perceives humanity as “angels with amnesia” but often fails to realistically assess whether egos are capable of translating this positive intention into real world behavior. The result is “idiot compassion:” a habit of escaping the harshness of the world through codependence, drugs and manipulation of others by playing victim.
Forget feet. This is a compressed field of ego’s bonding through storyless presence. This is the essence of the Piscean “Timeless Trance of Toes.”
(Dharma Bell Break #3)
And so ends the head-to-toe journey of the somatic scriptures.
What happens next? Do souls circle back up in search of another fontanelle? Does the ego-cleansing wheel of incarnation continue to spin or does it unceremoniously peeter out?
Clearly some kind of sneaky, soul-guiding intelligence draped our bodies with these dharma-pointing archetypes.
What happens when we “get the message” and the stream of separate somebody’s is replaced by the Divine sucking on the cigar of separation, exhaling the smoke of flesh?
Meditating on these somatic scriptures- we have a good chance of finding out.
Ready to dive deeper into archetypal self-inquiry and jump-start your soul-seeing skills? You’re warmly welcome to join us in the next, 3-month Styles of Awakening Training.
(Dharma Bell Break #4)
The Purpose of Incarnation
The purpose of incarnation is to break the spell of compulsive Aries “selfing” and allow personality to flower like a dream character from the Piscean ground of being.
This is achieved by aiming the Crash Helmet’s identity-asserting will at the timeless presence pedaling our Pisces toes.
This circulation of awareness between Aries will and Pisces surrender is vividly depicted in one of the oldest recorded symbols in the western world, the Ouroboros, the “tail-devouring snake.”
An emblem of wholeness or infinity, the Ouroboros is the western equivalent of the Eastern Yin/Yang symbol. It accurately depicts a state of consciousness in which the circuit between head-born Aries individuality and foot-born Pisces reabsorption is flowing unimpeded: mad enough to be mortal, sane enough to disappear.
With orphaned ego no longer pinching our Astro-Chi-Flo, Aries naturally bows to Pisces and the chronically un-lowered head becomes an embarrassing symptom of insecurity.
(Dharma Bell Break #5)
Positive Disintegration
The Somatic Scriptures appear to be offering us a practice of positive disintegration- a graceful way of assuming the inner- and, perhaps, outer- shape of prostration.
Notice that the Pisces feet are the only part of the body that is constantly pressed together — merged — with something else. In this sense the feet symbolize our unbroken connection to the ground of Being.
The Aries head, on the other hand, is located as far away from this seamless dimension as humanly possible. Thank God for Aries! Egoic individuation is a vital evolutionary step towards becoming a healthy, full-bodied wave moving across the ocean of Samsara.
We are all waves in love with ocean, but only when our wave is well-managed are we ready to curl and crash into boundless being.
Only when identity and will are pausing for “permission to proceed” from the signs and symbols offered by field-sensing Pisces, does life flow in harmony with the Tao.
Okay, but do we need to physically prostrate?
Why not? We’re already expert prostrators.
All our lives, we’ve been falling down on our knees to a concept of who we are. The power of physical prostration is that it exposes our embarrassing devotion to ego: the me-story guru that assigns godlike importance to feelings of enough and not-enough and is, therefore, flooded with betrayal and shame when we place our head at the feet of anyone or anything else.
Prostration helps us pass swiftly through this fire of humiliation into a state of positive disintegration — the great unburdening that plants orphaned ego into the soil of awareness, itself.
Who or what will we prostrate to?
Buddhists bow down, not so much to a guru, but to the lineage of teachers moving through them. They bow down to the greater, guiding intelligence moving through these inspiring incarnations.
Who, or what, do you authentically revere enough to bow down to? What do you honor so much that you would place your pride below it?
Suppose you are unmoved by any living or deceased spiritual being. No problem.
In India, disciples are not so perfectionistic in their attitudes towards spiritual teachers. Masters can have “off” days or moments. Disciples merely wait until “the awake guy” returns. You can do the same with your inconsistently awake friends. Here are some examples of devotion-worthy “gurus” that may generate the impulse to prostrate:
1) A partner or friend whose steady support of you though all your bouts of pride and moody self-absorption breaks your heart.
2) The unfathomably guided string of events that has brought you to this pivotal, soul-seeing moment.
3) Any being (living or deceased) in whose presence your defenses spontaneously melt away.
4) The unfathomable forgiveness and patience of mother earth.
5) The shine of eternity in the eyes of a newborn or the selfless devotion of a pet.
You get the idea. The important thing is not the devotional target but the depth of reverence that it stirs.
Sometimes, we may need to put our body into the shape of prostration before we know what we’re bowing down to or even what our aspiration is.
Perhaps our prayer is simply for the clear seeing that would allow a genuine spirit of humility and devotion to rise up in us. This is an entirely worthy prostration goal and infinitely preferable to rote prayer or some tormented attempt at meditation.
All we need is a small corner of someone or something that embodies a kind of clarity or tenderness that evokes admiration and reverence. Once we find that, the momentum of the posture, itself, is enough to jumpstart the humility we need to sit quietly and chant: “rid me of ego, replace me with you.”
Arriving there, we prostrate to life, itself.
Still think prostration is goofy and cultish? Perhaps. But have you noticed that virtually every culture in the world is littered with head-lowering gestures? Why is that?
Best to take no position and keep watching the Crash Helmets riding on the Timeless Trance of Toes. The endless footfalls perfectly placed, with no conscious do-er. The constant otherworldly pedaling that somehow protects our delicate toes and keeps us graceful, balanced, and erect.
Forget walking. We’re cloud-pedaling through God’s dreamscape, and if one is the loneliest number, prostration may be the zero we’ve been looking for.
(Dharma Bell Break #6)
Closing Dharma Poems
I ONCE ASKED Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Jane Brunette, what she thought was the core cause of human suffering. “Believing this place is solid,” she quipped. “Of course,” I thought to myself, “ego has to make it solid ‘out there’ so it feels solid ‘in here.”
So long as trees and tits and power plants and politicians stay unventilated by the seamless field of sentience, the separate sense of self reigns supreme. Better to be proudly orphaned, says ego, than mind-killingly merged.
We close this month’s podcast with two dharma poems.
The first is a pithy four-liner called “Little Wind.” Try it as an instant “reset” when you’re gripped by reactivity.
The second is called, Me-Goth: the perfect precursor to prostration.
Little Wind
I once was so, so alone
A sky in puberty
Then vastness made a home
In that little wind, called “me.”
(Dharma Bell Break #7)
Me-Goth
Remember when
there were solid, separate somebodies
instead of me-goth
inked into forever’s forearm,
and “falling for the trait bait”
was sexy fun?
Now there are no people,
just tattoos asking why,
mythologies marching
across a skin-celled sky
cattle-brand charisma
with deep-space cry:
“person, sweet person,
die before you die.”
Remember when cut flower psyches
had to wilt their way
into your heart,
and conversations grew louder
than the dreamscape
moaning for a lucid dreamer?
Now there are no people,
just tattoos asking why,
mythologies marching
across a skin-celled sky
cattle-brand charisma
with deep-space cry:
“person, sweet person,
die before you die.”
Remember when activists
whipped frothy rapids
into the lazy river of time
and opinions were social lubricants
instead of thought activity
commenting
on thought activity?
Now there are no people,
just tattoos asking why,
mythologies marching
across a skin-celled sky
cattle-brand charisma
with deep-space cry:
“person, sweet person,
die before you die.”
(Dharma Bell #8, followed by 5 minutes of devotional chanting)
© Hunter Reynolds
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