Awaking In A Dream

“Awaking In A Dream”

This is a chapter in my book “Compassionate Tarot Companion”.
The book’s overview with download & 2 chapters … {-here-}
All blog posts that are chapters … {-here-}

Audio of the author reading the poem … {-here-}

A Poem Of Cosmic Telepathy

There are many tales, of course, of Lao Tzu who,
accord­ing to the legends, wrote
The Watercourse Way,
a little book of nature poetry,
upon which other thinkers
then built up the lean, beautiful and tough
spiritual philosophy of Taoism.
Here’s one of them.

The story flies us to the early morning of a day
when our hero was a bright but sorrowful young man.

He was a bureau­cratic junior clerk in the palace
of a rich and brutal warlord prince.

The sparkling morning and the budding springtime
garden grounds through which he trod to work
belied the torment in the young man’s soul.

This day’s duty was to be an awful deed which
no one with an open heart could ever wish.

The garden path led on across a footbridge
on a lovely brook and, setting foot onto
the rising boards, his paces further slacked.

His gaze was beckoned to the sparkling water.

On the arch’s highest little height the now
unconscious footsteps stopped and
– mind, heart and soul –
he found himself drawn out
into the clear deep rippling stream.

This was the moment when a human
asks of “there” and “here”.

As another poet wrote,
do I dream the butterfly
or does the butterfly dream me?
Gazing deep into the world I see only
countless things which mirror me.

So: What are “you” and “I”
and what am “I” to do?

But in this young man’s mind no riddle
of that sort found any weight.

The doubtless fundamental knowledge that this
clarity exists would henceforth lure and guide
his thoughts and steps.

The beauty of reality had possessed Lao Tzu
and he was struck with lifelong love.

(-Here is the end of this poem.-)