In God Makes the Rivers to Flow; An Anthology of the World’s Sacred Poetry & Prose, Eknath Easwaran includes a selection from Seng Ts’an entitled “Believing in Mind.” I’ve written the following poem-like reflections inspired by this selection.
No Impediments
The great Way has no impediments;
It does not pick and choose.
When you abandon attachment and aversion
You see it plainly.
Make a thousandth of an inch distinction,
Heaven and earth swing apart.
If you want it to appear before your eyes,
Cherish neither for nor against.
—Seng Ts’an
There is no dam big enough
to stop the Way from flowing.
There is no sin big enough
to incur the judgment of God.
God has no likes or dislikes,
no concept of good or bad.
There is only love in God.
Good and bad are human concepts.
Judgment is ours.
If we want heaven to open before us,
we need to forget judgment,
to transcend like and dislike.
We need to stop taking sides.
God has pure compassion
on us and all our suffering.
God knows what causes suffering
and what does not.
God knows the suffering of the rapist
the suffering of the mass murderer
the pain that leads to genocide.
And God gazes on the perpetrator
of each crime with pure love
and acceptance.
We so easily get caught up in blame games,
blaming the boss who said the mean thing,
blaming the partner who let us down,
blaming the friend who talked
about us behind our back,
blaming the child who doesn’t clean her room
or get good grades,
blaming the politician whose views we oppose.
We like our coffee hot and our beer ice cold.
We want fries with our burger, not chips.
We want bacon with our eggs, not sausage.
We want sharp cheddar in our grilled cheese, not American.
We want blueberries on our cereal, not strawberries.
Don’t you dare serve us melon.
If anything is not right we complain, we blame.
We want everything to go our way.
We are entangled with our desires.
Consider the possibility of looking at everyone
with the eyes of love, every action with compassion.
Consider the possibility of eating what
you don’t like, but that is healthy for your body,
just to get past your addiction
to your likes and dislikes.
Consider letting your partner
order for you, and eating
what they choose with appreciation
whether you like it or not.
The truth is, we will get closest to awakening
when we set aside our preferences
for how we think things should be
and embrace the now
and all its imperfections
as infinite perfection.
