What I Learned in the Zen Monastery

1.
Sex is not power. Except
that it can be. If you want it,
if you take it. Sex is powerful,
no denying that. I learned
how it had been a weapon, a thing to wield,
how I had wielded it, what damage I had done. I learned that
I did not know what to do with my hands
when I set that weapon down.

I learned to walk without the weight it,
to meet new people without the shield of it.
Learned new reflexes that did not reach for it.

(It is only later
that I am learning that perhaps not all power
corrupts. That perhaps there is a place
for swinging my hips.)

2.
Mindfulness is no-such-thing.
Even after two hours a day - even
after sixteen hours a day of zazen,
even after I had touched my true heart and the open center of oneness,
had constructed and deconstructed the ten thousand dreams of self,
wept for a full week,
walked for a whole day alone,
sat once for an hour without moving a hair,

I still forgot my water-bottle every time I set it down.

3.
Love is power. Not power-over,
not power-from. Not even power-to.
Power like sunlight is power,
like truth is. Love is not what we think it is.
Love is hard, like a cocoon is hard,
like truth is, but harder. Because love is truth,
and more than truth, for truth at least
has a beginning and an end.
Love, once loosed from the cage
we strive so hard to keep it in
(For to what end do we fill our lives
with comfort and distraction,
but that of keeping love at bay?)
- once loose, well.

Just look what happened to Siddhartha:
poisoned on his own goodwill.
Power like that can't help but destroy.
(The caterpillar does not grow wings.)
Power like that, it can't be controlled.
(The caterpillar dies, don't you see?
All that which is caterpillar, dies.)
Once loose, power like that, power like love,
it isn't what you think. You can't turn it off.
No picking and choosing,
remember? It doesn't matter
if the coffee is sewage or saintly. Don't you see?
If your life is blessed or bothersome.
You have to love it just the same.

I didn't learn how to love, not really.
I still have an appetite for leaves.