BIOGRAPHY

Posted on July 20, 2021 by Universal Octopus

I was born
just like you.

I came I knew not
where from
just like you.

I had the good times
(and the bad);
was by turns,
unhappy and glad
(just like you).

Till I determined:
Be HAPPY ALL THE TIME !

So I withdrew from
I didn’t want
and made
as I wanted.

This I achieved
I made as I wanted.

But then I saw
that where to
leads to the end
of making as I wanted;
and to losing hold of
and forgetting
beyond all power
of holding on to
and remembering.

So I chose to let go
BEFORE
I lost.
And I chose to forget
BEFORE
I forgot to choose.
(And to not remember the cost).

And with my NOW
seeing quite clearly
where to,
I turned around
to see if I could see
where from.

And I found
where from
is HERE & NOW
where I have always been.
(And where to
is here too.)

And you?

.

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PERFECT ACTION

Posted on July 18, 2021 by Universal Octopus

When the fires are raging,
don’t add fuel
and the two worlds
(the inner and the outer)
subside into their natural state.

When the dogs
of dissension and desire
are sleeping,
don’t wake them
and the world is already cool and quiet.

.

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LORD OF THE JUNGLE

Posted on July 16, 2021 by Universal Octopus

In the Jungle of the World
and the tangle of the Senses
we build us huts
of mud and heartache
and make (and mend) our fragile fences.
“This is ME! This is MINE!”
is the burden of our song.

We cannot see, still less define,
that pain and sorrow prove us wrong.
This is NOT mine, this is NOT me,
is the beginning of our Sanity.

Letting go of what does not concern us
leaves that alone which, meddled with,
will burn us.
The Law is mirror-like in its precision
and its simplicity needs no revision;
that Good breeds Good
and Evil has its price;
that Virtue is its own reward.
And so is Vice.

That all things pass away,
from butterflies to stars,
and though the World’s a prison
it’s the Mind that makes the bars.

.

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NOT TO BE BORN IS BEST

Posted on July 15, 2021 by Universal Octopus

Looking with dispassion,
with equanimity,
with detachment,
doesn’t it shine brighter than a thousand suns?
And in every minute particular?

The broken wing
the severed finger
the uncompleted life
‘the smyler with the knife’
the loss of all things dear
the smell of fear
spirochaetes, viruses and germs
and the ever-chewing sepulchral worms?

And don’t we see a thousand times and more
that what we build up and try to hold in place
disintegrates and vanishes without trace?
And what we hoard up
and try to store
provides a breeding ground for rats?

And this which is the Past
is also Evermore.

What we cannot preserve here
we save for heaven
taking our joys and pains
across the no-man’s land of death
when we feel the betrayal of the breath
And there,
in finer, subtler, intellectual realms,
plant our standards.

And still the Eternal, empty wind
will blow them down.

.

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UP TO DATE AND READY TO GO

Posted on July 14, 2021 by Universal Octopus

It may not be the bearded man
who smiles at you and explodes.
It may not be the errant tyre
that slides on the icy roads.
It may not be the scaffolding plank
that bounces on your head.
It may not be pneumonia
that smothers you in bed.
It may not be the fever
that creeps through blood and vein.
Or the quiet worm in the sole of your foot
that climbs up to your brain.

It may be that the breath leaks out
in a mist of expiring pain
and nothing can make it turn about
and slide back in again.

Ready?

.

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THE WORD OF THE BUDDHA

Posted on July 11, 2021 by Universal Octopus

According to the manuals,
they are everywhere.
How is it, then, that I
cannot see them?

Under my feet,
in the silent corners,
under the stairs,
in the crowded common rooms,
I search;
and find nothing.

But, when I speak,
what is it that crawls
along the fissures of my tongue
towards the light?

The padding of feet,
snapping of clickers;
the reaching out into the void
with silken webs,
multiple eyes
and subtle poisons?

And, when I listen,
what is it that glistens,
floating across the void
to grasp and bind
and, with such circumspection,
transfer another dying image
to the collection
in my mind?

Ah yes! My mind,
the internal
(and eternal)
darkness of the blind.
That’s where they breed
and infiltrate their eggs,
which incubate in silk cocoons,
cossetted, nourished by a myriad
wayward thoughts,
waiting to hatch.

To hatch
and emigrate
and lie in wait
and catch

more prey.

.

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VISITORS AND VISITATIONS

Posted on July 6, 2021 by Universal Octopus

Up Hillcrest steps to where
the crumbling, grey, defining wall
becomes a bare
and narrow ledge
holding back the jungle of beyond.
Honeysuckle, fern and bramble
slowly amble
and quietly digest
the Hillcrest
fence.
(A peaceful study in impermanence.)

On the boundary hedge,
a green and flowering ivy has blossomed there
in the late summer sun,
and the still air
has turned the ocean
from a surfers’ paradise
into a millpond.

Butterflies
have descended in a great cloud
of Red Admirals, Painted Ladies, Small Coppers,
with hover flies (and a wasp or two).
A great crowd
of revellers who flutter and feed
jostle and pay no heed
to the passing of the year,
the touch of autumn,
the fading of the here
and now into a colder season yet to come.

They stay all day
and are content
with the wholly present.
And there is one who sees it all
and smiles
(and one who does not).

.

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GARDENER’S NEWS

Posted on July 5, 2021 by Universal Octopus

Newspaper headline in a “Democracy”:
PARLIAMENT VERSUS THE PEOPLE

Have you noticed how world-wide
A versus B situations are becoming
more and more confrontational?

Stoking up the fires of hatred and dissatisfaction
in more and more areas of human activity.

Sport, politics, arms sales.
National and international.
Racial and domestic.
Marriages, families, medication, religions.
Even sexual identity.
Even educational.

Just like a heating compost heap,
getting ready to burst into flames
and unify its contents
into next year’s fertiliser
as we sleep.

Are we getting any the wiser?

.

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TAPEWORM

Posted on June 18, 2021 by Universal Octopus

God sees with the same eye
you see with, says Meister Eckhart.

Do you live your life,
or does Life live through you?

Do you breathe
to stay alive,
or does the Life-breath
breathe you?

Life lives and blossoms
through Nature
and thus Nature can heal itself.

Man tries to live his life
and opens wounds
that even Nature
struggles to heal.

Who lives man’s life
and is it any more than
what we have come to call the Ego?

Is Ego any more than a bundle
of thoughts and feelings
spawned by an insatiable quest for more?
A pinpoint of Desire,
smaller than a globule of blood,
that has flooded into an ocean
of craving and passion,
which parches the tongues
of those who drink from it.

When you say “my life”,
who is I and what is his life?
Is it any more than an intruder
that slipped in between the sheets?
A tapeworm fitting snugly
between your food and you?

When I ask you how you are,
a tapeworm answers, “Hungry!”
He has been answering on your behalf
for so long that you take him for
your true abiding Self.

See him for the interloper that he is.
Let him slide out as long ago
his proglottids of eggs slid in,
unnoticed and unremarked.

The ego slides in between your divine eye
and what you see,
like the red-tinted lens
between your fleshy eye
and your world.

.

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MAN INVENTS

Posted on June 17, 2021 by Universal Octopus

Man invents and Man becomes
the slave of his invention –
time-clock invention.
Maintenance and breakdown.
Marriage the chains of Marital Fidelity.
Governments and the laws
of taxes and repression.
Medical Science and the slavery
of Pharmaceutical Propaganda.
Money.

Clothing, the Tyranny of Brand Names,
clothing factories for Indian children.
Agriculture and deserts.
Churches and the theft
of their Spiritual Foundation Stones.
Houses, Maintenance and Mortgages.

Above all, Work.
You work to lead the Life
you think you choose.
You end up living to work
without the Freedom
that you chose to lose.
Motor cars: traffic jams, pollution, tail-backs.
Science, microscopes, telescopes
instead of spiritual vision.

Egoic self and dissolution
binds you with your own tether
and makes you the witness
to their (and your)
painful dissolution.
Collect all of your inventions together!
See what we have traded
for the uninvented treasures
of this world.

.

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