Love on the Three Hundred Mile an Hour Train

 

 

 

 

How does it happen? In spite all of your insecurities and imagined faults, you meet someone who thinks that you are attractive, clever and sexy and they seem to be everything you have ever desired.

They sense your mutual attraction, and it empowers them in ways they never knew before, inspired to reveal themselves to you in ways they never knew possible.

You are stunned…awestruck within this dance of courtship, flattered beyond your imagination that someone so amazing is just as attracted to you.

Your soul feels lighter than air. Your imagination soars and every word you speak sounds brilliant to both of you, and you never felt quite so good looking before.

In each other’s eyes you raise each other far above the mundane, and the banal, each one better and brighter than either was in each others absence.

For a time.

One day, the spell breaks. First she stops believing in herself.

She is no longer inspired to charm and seduce you with the brilliance that she believes that she no longer possesses, and you in turn lose the faith in yourself that had made you so irresistible to her.

To be the idol of one’s own idol is to steal fire from the gods.

Like enlightenment, that which we desire cannot be attained by mere will.

In either courtship or marriage, now our longing and neediness as well as our self-consciousness makes attainment of our desires impossible.

The dog does not chase the deer because the deer runs…the deer runs because the dog chases it.

So you forget about it long enough to loose yourself in your self doing whatever makes you feel most alive. The longing is gone. You no longer feel incomplete.

You are complete within yourself.

You are back on the three hundred mile an hour train.

No desire, and no suffering.

Only this, just this.

If you try to call a cat to come to you, unless you have food, or something else that they want, they never come, but if you ignore it and read a newspaper, they will come to you.

Love comes, Love goes, yet we remain.

Fish swim with the tides, into and out of the lagoon as it empties itself, receives from, and flows back into the sea.

Namasté

नमस्ते

Chazz Vincent

07/19/2020

How I Found Happiness through Lowered Expectations

How I Found Happiness through Lowered Expectations

“There is no need for attainment with nothing to attain.”

(Seung Sahn)

*****

When Dreams become Expectations

we set aside Gratitude to be replaced with Envy.

When wishes and desires

become tyrants

we become slaves to Suffering,

held down by the chains of covetousness

pulling us beneath the waters of Despair,

too blinded by Greed to recognize

the lifeboat of Opportunity

awaiting only

recognition and acknowledgement.

A dream without a plan

is a sparrow’s fart

in a hurricane,

but a dream with a plan

is a goal

that is both patient and tireless

and willing to accept

course corrections

like a sailboat tacking into the wind.

“You’re not the Man I thought you were…”

said she.

“Then open your heart to love the Man I am

he said.

or love me not at all

if it should bring you sorrow,

for I am a living, mutable changing being,

not trophy to be hung upon your wall.”

*****

 

Even as the moon shall wax and wane

according to her nature

if we should grow apart

gratitude provides the cadence

and patience sets the meter

as acceptance

awaits

the return of

our song.

All is impermanence.

Impermanence is all.

The Uroboros

reminds us we shall meet again.

The Phoenix

teaches us how.

To learn to enjoy Nothing

when we realize

that in having nothing,

we have Nothing in common

except the gratitude

that no one can take from us

for knowing the joy

of the seemingly random coincidence

of having collided in the first place

with no expectations

in the midst of nothing in particular

where Nothing is everywhere.

In that moment we are rich

in our abundance of Nothing.

Be like the Willow

or swim with the tide.

Do not curse

the waters that carry you away

as you swim so hard against the tide,

only to drown

before you have the opportunity

to wash upon my shore again,

or me to yours.

It matters not

which way or how.

The sting of the pangs of nostalgia

that causes us to sigh

and shed a tear

for that which once was

reminds us of its beauty

so we can recognize it once again.

As we gratefully and patiently

welcome its return

if it should be,

and teach us how to be

in that timeless state of grace

that is ours

without asking.

Without demands.

Without expectations.

In the meantime.