tipping my hat

Pol Ledent

You don’t need to drill a hole in your head in order to get enlightened. You can hold several ideas in your mind that are contradictory without freaking out—Keats’s negative capability.

Allen Ginsberg, “Spontaneous Intelligence”

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Jesus and the French Fries.

The mushrooms kick in and your brain grows feathery wings

And flies right out of the window, into the exploding green sky.

You hear bassoons and oboes. Someone is singing the poems

Of Emily Dickinson quite loudly, and without any particle melody.

The smell of french fries. Aah. And flowers fly beside you

Like small birds. Chirping. Any hard feelings you were harboring

Are now gone. You love your enemies, just like Jesus said.

You are walking, no, you are flying, no, you are swimming

And the street has become a river. Today has become tomorrow.

Now Jesus is here, and he brought french fries. Let's run.

No, let's dance. Let's release all of the balloons. 

james lee jobe

Link: Fear, a poem by Liv Mammone

i am tame 

yet i am wild all the same 

think of me as you would think 

of a seedling tree in your front yard 

you didn’t plant it 

yet it grows there nonetheless 

will you uproot it 

or leave it to grow toward the sky 

toward the sun 

toward the moon 

life is about growth 

and life is about choices 

life is the tame and the wild 

sharing space together

james lee jobe

Pol Ledent

Turning to the Buddha’s teachings, attending to suffering can provide us with resiliency to skillfully respond with a tenderness of our hearts that guides us toward action rather than succumbing to numbness.

Jessica Angima, “On Bearing Witness and the Resilience of Karuna”

love comes from love 

life comes from life 

looking up by chance 

at just the right moment 

to see the red tail hawk 

disappear 

behind the stand of valley oaks

james lee jobe

Link: jasper, texas 1998, a poem by Lucille Clifton

i tip my hat 

to everything 

that people love 

or i would 

if i had a hat 

james lee jobe

If you accelerate your efforts, if your awareness is continuous, your mindfulness will become full. Both by day and by night, it’ll keep staying full like that. It becomes a stream of water.

Ajahn Chah, “Make Your Practice a Continuous Stream”

summer 

night

to the west 

a slice of moon 

for the first time since dawn 

the air feels slightly cool 

i am an old man standing in my driveway 

to look up at the night sky 

but i am complete 

i know peace 

isn’t that something 

james lee jobe 

love sick -bob dylan

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