Sundays in Taiwan

A piece of spiritual journalism

I arrive at the purple yang gate. The lioness asks
“Attain the Tao how?” I’m immorally immortal
Now, but I talk around the treasures
At the thunder entrance, before the 8 divisions
Of divine dragons in charge
Of my cultivation of self-nature.

To restore my innate perfection
Is surprisingly hard
When I’m already perfect
And don’t know it.
Heavenly decrees are needed
To transcend to what you already are.

Red purity and purple virtue
Are used to supplement the merits,
By, for instance, washing dishes,
But when the ten lords of the underworld
Execute me for too much karma
What is my … next act?

The punishment comes from heaven
But the pain occurs in hell –
So, how, again, are they not the same?
Who does all this banishing anyway?
Does anything guard Quinguang Hall?
Does it know me … at all?

Whose fault is it
When vengeance is silent,
Repentance inherently insufficient?
That’s a note to match with my heart
In the first nourishing room
Where habitual nature is cleansed.

There are those who already wear
The purple robes and golden crowns,
Who everyone admires from afar without
Ever knowing what the fuss was about,
What brought the honored escort
Not the one to endless suffering.

“Who is your master?” The lioness asks,
As the question always is, but there are
Many titles piled before God incomprehensible
But no answer that works for both
Erroneous and Holy – the better I suppose
To rectify shortcomings til time ends

In renovation underground,
The cultivation chamber,
Where the Lords of Karma
At every mistake they notice
Further tighten the wheel
Of another sentient sentence

For violations of the social norm,
Sentenced to its judgment,
Hellfire’s torture, in yet another body
Because the one that was released
Craves the endless pain so much
For daring to exist in defiance of others.

The work on what triggers is repentance;
To polish the mind there’s the flying bugs room
And the freezing-ice gate for detailed inspection
Of my meritorious deeds, and a welcoming
Goodness pavilion for punishment because
I can’t see my original being.

I may give a dollar to wash a dish
But is it ego or duty that performs?
Or is the giving formless?
My true, original nature knows all this
Unconditional benevolence, one hand
Not knowing what the other hands over.

I’ve only retained a dollop of
Heavenly instruction, only enough
To make me recognize myself
In other humans … so I can lose them.
Telepathy comes when translation fails,
When the words become impossible on purpose.

Would I do what can’t be done,
Vow to save the doomed world
Not with fear of consequence
But gratitude that I even have the chance
To cast all I am aside for the void
Because I judged all my sins to be wrong?

There are some, you can tell by their
Demeaner, people kneel down to them
And others ask them why. That’s all I get
To aspire to, as I contemplate in rooms
For rites learning, merit makeup, where I’d
Visualize 3,000 virtues and 800 fruits indeed!

The mind-favoring pagoda for false pleasure lost,
Transparent monument tower that records each
Erroneous thought, so judgment can
Be passed, on those for whom it is impossible
To reach their natural state of purity,
So easily deluded to think they can.

That’s how deep in our awareness our true nature lies
We believe our evil thoughts created hell
And heaven has the outrageous task
Of balancing, so that we must repent
With gratitude, not by spiritually-charged streams
For too many teachings turn the dharma into venom.

It is Satanic to hold one’s thoughts to oneself
And Satanic to hold to one’s own ideas with others,
For every dispute is with your inner demons
As a test of your mental stability. Before you can
Register as an immortal, the hall that leads to hell
Is the only coherent possibility.

The sincere cultivators ask at this point,
“Are there no exceptions to these seemingly strict
Rules?” But the lioness calmly enjoins them
To be humbly unsuccessful. If you can watch
Your mind, you can eliminate the human mind,
Attain the greater harmony as nothing.