Late

It is so late and this heart so weary
Blood ties mean nothing
I live on feathers, on wings
I would rather drown as an albatross

A Morning with Theptun Tulku Rinpoche

I had the honor and pleasure of spending the good part of the morning Sunday with a small group of Buddhist practitioners in the presence of Thupten Tulku Rinpoche for a short talk and discussion. I have been around a number of Buddhist leaders of a couple different schools. This time was the first with a Tibetan master and for the first time, I was touched and felt a connection like nothing I had ever experienced.

I don't consider myself a practicing Buddhist and I had no idea what to expect yet his view and lines of thinking made more sense in bringing together a lot of concepts and ideas that reached the core of me. It was strange, very strange, in a good way. I could not have imagined that during his chanting that tears starting flowing and I could tell that they were neither good or bad. It was just being touched.

April 30, 1975

It is the dead who keep
Whispering into our hearts,
Paint visions into our souls.

They know it's their time.
Their time to finally rest,
Leaving the living to struggle on

With the memories of all that
We cannot rightly place to rest.

— Son Dao

(Tomorrow, April 30 will mark 39 years since me and my extended family fled Saigon at the end of the Vietnam-American war).

A Poem for Chino

This Side

There is light. We neither see nor touch it.
In its empty clarities rests
what we touch and see.
I see with my fingertips
what my eyes touch:
                                 shadows, the world.
With shadows I draw worlds,
I scatter worlds with shadows.
I hear light on the other side.

— Octavio Paz