Gesar Of Ling's Songs Of Abandonment Poem by Douglas Penick

SONGS OF ABANDONMENT

(Gesar is lost in a blizzard and he sings this :)

All Buddhas, infinite as snow flakes in a storm,
Bright as oceans of stars,
You dwell in all realms in whatever is called space.
You manifest in all eons in whatever is called time.
Infinite in form, you dance:
You share a single gesture.

You each produce illusion on illusion on illusion:
Rainbows within rainbows within rainbows.
You shine in an illusory sky,
Opening in the eyes and hearts of beings
In a living moment of self-liberated awake.

(Gesar sings this song early one afternoon while walking by the Brahamaputra River :)

1

Right where you are,
Transcending time and space,

Gesar, King of Ling, Lord of the Realms of Form,
Wearing the dazzling armor of noonday sun,
Carrying the full moon banner of exultation,
Swirling the star light sword of pure awareness,
Riding the miracle horse of universal life force,
Flies from moment to moment and shape to shape.
He is the Indestructible Warrior free from time.

Gesar is renewal itself.
He passes like wind through past, present, future.
Spontaneously he destroys what needs to be destroyed.
He binds anew the elements and times.
Ever moving, he weaves anew the senses.
Again, he cuts down the three lords of materialism.
Again and again, he conquers the Demon lords of passion, aggression, ignorance.

Right where you are,
Transcending time and space.
You may lose heart; you do not see it.


2

The human world is cracking up.
A century of warfare, genocide, destruction and want
Has severed men and women from their roots.
They have no forbears, no folkways or culture, no past.
Money has shredded all other values.
The young wander in a phantasmagoria of luxurious diversions,
Violence, intoxication, constant novelty and hopelessness.
Elders are abandoned; whatever wisdom they might have found discarded.
Language has no more eloquence.
There is no ground.

All know
The earth will not long sustain this whirlwind of consumption.
Pollution and the fear of pollution are everywhere.
Everywhere people struggle to separate from the sickened earth.
Everywhere, they strive to avoid the fate of all,
Desperately amassing gilded walls of wealth,
Anxiously cultivating peaceful states of mind,
Smugly practicing religions that leave the world far behind.
The visions of humanity and the reality of earth are parting.


3
Swamped in the shriek and welter of materialistic cravings
The Buddha dharma is corrupted or inaudible.
The Buddha cuts through fear and craving;
Life and death, the myriad forms of universal love, consumed him.
He taught the path of boundless love.

But now in the blinding roar of world delusion,
The door of light the Buddha opened to the world
Begins to close.

Now,

Now Gesar of Ling, the Unconquerable Warrior, leaves the world
Again he dissolves back into the world of myths and stories;
He returns to the great source,
The flow of feelings, thoughts, sensation
The great river of life.

Again
Right where you are,
Transcending time and space.
Gesar hears a voice, a heartbeat.
He is poised on the edge of a new world.
He enters a new world and new time.
Again

Right where you are,
Transcending time and space.

Now Gesar, the Perfect Warrior, wakes
In the silent pause
Of searching for a word,
A world recalled by the scent of a catalpa tree in bloom,
Searching for a word that brings a question into being
That finds a riddle answered
A world on the horizon of being born.

Right where you are,
Transcending time and space.

Gesar, King of Ling turns back into legend.
He dissolves himself further into the ancient words,
The ancient time, the ancient stream. the ancient sagas,
He wanders on the timeless path.
He renews dharma in the timeless stream.

Now

Right where you are,
Transcending time and space.

Now,
Riding on the breath of life,
Gesar enters the past and emerges from the past.
He flies like a silver arrow
Into the tumultuous sky of illusion.
Instant by instant,
Without any intent,
He reinvents the world.