Nothing matters
When I was beginning
my career, to get a good
job was a dream, thus
to get promotions, positions,
possessions mattered to me;
when I had them one after the
other, it was nothing.
A childless mother,
a motherless child,
what do they think?
Ask a mother with children,
and children with mother,
to them, it doesn’t matter,
it’s nothing.
When I wasn’t rich,
wasn’t able to express
myself in writing,
then, to own a car,
win accolades,
sign autographs,
mattered the world
to me, now when I
have them, it’s nothing.
When I was 10, I thought
of being in my prime
40s, but when I became
a forty-something, I missed
my childhood days; being
in my forties didn’t matter,
it was again nothing.
O Budhha! Now, as I am
walking on the beach,
I see the sun rising from
the west, feel the waves
on the sea, in the air, in
the sky, I realise the duality
of nothing, with experience,
I know I have to repeat one thing
over and over again, like I
breathe, eat, walk, read, write,
like my organs inside, like the
stars outside; on being a practising
student of zen, I know that
nothing matters, and yet
nothing matters.
For you, O Budhha,
enlightenment is nothing.
The sound of one hand clapping. And of course, there was no Buddha to be enlightened, how could there be?
I could hear the sound, of a gap, a void. True. Thank you.
The koan is a most useful pointer – but who is pointing? The difficulty (as I see it), is in our individualistic idea of the self; that there is a ‘self’ looking through my eyes, as it were, at the world etc. And if there is no immutable self, how can there ever be this self that is striving for enlightenment?
Anyway, always appreciate your poems.
Best….Dougie ( as a convention!)
Yes, I understand. The ‘self’ is both, a challenge and a solution. The mystery is when one understands that the self is nothing and yet, it is through the self that one realises the nothing (or the meaning of life).
Would it be inappropriate to look at ‘words’ in a similar way, I wonder.