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Posts Tagged ‘nature of mind’

Mandala of Forgetfulness

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 14, 2017| Leave a Comment »

COFIO 5 (mabinogi lesson)
(Mandala of Forgetfulness, Third Branch)

Who would have thought it?
In the empty deserted fortress
Not a sound nor a flicker.
Those thin chains of gold reaching up forever,
The fountain’s cup suspended.
We can not fail to drink its clear, cold waters.
We can not fail to become entranced
And held, perfect and still, out of time, insensible.
The fortress of memory revolves about itself.
The thin gold from hand to lip to tongue to eye
All locked up, the mind silenced:
A boat that is not a boat
Upon a still sea that is not a sea.
Let the leaves fall. Let the petals fall.
Let the poppies and the roses fall.
Let the rain fall, and the sunset and the stars.
Let a dawn come free from pain
Where memories are not chains nor burden,
Nor hold us immovable.
Just one sip now, though, just one more.
And the earth axis will shift under us
And the crack of thunder from the cloudless sky.
We are born to become lost,
Born to forget
Adrift in summer
Remembering spring.

—

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Before and After Li Po

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 10, 2014| 4 Comments »

Before and After Li Po

( improvisations on the poem “Jingting Shan Hill” by Li Po, following the lead of Robert Okaji)

Characters are rendered:

Crowd birds high fly utmost
Lonely cloud alone go idle
Mutual watch both not tire
Only be Jingting Shan

1
Birds, a scattered knot
In distant depth.
One cloud aimless
(This thought).
Lost the mirror distance,
Resonant, the still hill.

2
Silent swing the flock.
Wind flute, too, silent
At this peak of distance.
We exist only because
Of the other.
Green hill breathing.

3
Caught, the distant, sweet movement.
An upper air, a life of song and wind,
Silent here from this depth.
See too, there is one small cloud,
Sweet movement hesitant.
So, now, eye sinks earthwards,
Locks on swelling hill,
There before, and there after,
A poet’s gaze.

4
Scribble splatter
Brush of birds.
Splashed distant sky.
One thought lost,
The hand and eye
Follow each other,
Equally curious.
A mountain of bone
And earth,
Misted,
Remains.

5
The names matter.
On the tongue, in memory.
Located the sweep of sky,
The noisy flock of one mind,
The moment,
A congregation
Of blessings.

—

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“Moonlight Through Glass”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 22, 2013| 7 Comments »

Moonlight cover2

My first collection of poems is now available from Smashwords.( http://www.smashwords.com ) it contains one hundred and eleven poems compiled from my first year’s blogging, up until December 2012. This is my first attempt at e.publishing, and as far as I can see it seems ok – looks really nice on Kindle.
If you would like to take a look you can download the first twenty percent of the text for no charge. Price to download the whole caboodle is $6.99 (apparently there are 13,910 words, most of them in the right order! In a little while we should also have the book as a downloadable pdf available from http://www.treeseer.com

“This is the first published collection of poetry from Simon H. Lilly, an artist and lecturer who is also an established writer on esoteric healing. The majority of the works are from the last two years, with a selection of earlier poems spanning four decades. There are over a hundred poems, from short, haiku-style pieces to longer performance texts and epic narratives. The landscape of the changing seasons is often the backdrop upon which the nature of mind, awareness and reality is explored. His poetic influences are the spiritual landscapes evoked by Classical Chinese and Japanese poets, the rhythms and word-play of Old English charms and spells, and the wistful lilt and muscle of the Celtic bardic traditions, particularly the contemporary Scottish Gaelic masters.
Rich language, sometimes dense, sometimes light, always looking to recreate an instant within memory, a picture in words. Quiet, contemplative, but never sentimental, he describes these poems as “flocks of thoughts watched from a quiet distance”.”

Next project (when I’ve fully recovered) will be to publish “The House of Trees: a poem of thirteen parts.” and then maybe a volume with a mixture of word and image (a lot more unpredictable in how it will work on different reading platforms, though I believe).

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