The Seed

This hard dark seed of hopelessness -- cold and still like death wrapped in the world buried in my belly -- seems a real thing. It is the truth of dissolving and loss, there from the start.

How to kill death and free joy? I watered it with poison, fed it smoke, but such heroic interventions failed.

The mud of the world is made of death and every seed unfurls in mud. I let death feed my hopelessness. Everything ends, something else begins. Turning away doesn't stop the show.

Instead the light of my gaze can warm this seed, focus of terror and despair. Let it split open, sprouting of its own accord. Within the dark shell hums a luminous flow of endless knowing.

Only in the dark mud, warmed by the loving light of mind, can seed become root, stem, and flower.

The stem extends; the flower blossoms in my heart. From root to blossom it is nothing but death and death is nothing but life. My awareness decides whether I collapse or grow.

Fearful soul, do not despair! What you most deeply love and most truly yearn for is beyond dying and being born. Mud and sun, seed and flower -- it includes all of this and more.

Do not fight or flee the world. Just shine the clear light of mind upon it.