Living In Love

You look into my heart
Like you’ve known me before
You know my rhythms
You see my yearnings, 
You understand my depths
Better than I 
In the clear mirror
Of your open eyes
Your love flows

Through me
And grows inside me
In my still quiet places
Like swollen seeds in the darkness
Sprouting towards the light
Uncurling, unfurling, and stretching 
Out of the mud of opinions
Into the infinite sky of open minds
From the sacred earth of our loving hearts
Our roots drink from crystal springs of kindness
Our flowers blossom in dazzling suns of compassion
Our souls sing harmony with all bodies and minds
Unclouded, unfixed, and limitless,

Can we see without being seers?
Love without being lovers?
Uncenter ourselves from ourselves?
Tune our heartstrings to the key of gratitude?
So in this moment, 
With this breath, 
We can be 
Free in life 
To live in love
With death

– Colin Farish

Infinity's Wholeness

I’ve planted my fair share of selfish seeds

That grew into a karmic tangle

I confused my wants with my basic needs

Until my dharmic spirit felt strangled

 

But when I stopped, the thought-mud

settled down and cleared the air

The grasping silt sank and the masking clouds cleared

Visibility became boundlessness

An indescribable view without a viewer

Indefinable and new, uncovered without a pursuer

Our shared essential nature is the most ordinary blessing

Where our potential is much greater than whatever we’re possessing

 

To do whatsoever is necessary

For whomsoever is in need

To be a forever emissary

Together planting seeds

Of stillness and compassion

With such clearness we can’t imagine

Where forgiveness can just happen

If what’s within us gets examined

Let’s quit pretending to be split

And start befriending our inner critic

Who can be an insufferable tyrant,

Or a supportive disciple

If we stay vulnerable and silent

Without distortion or denial

 

With a light touch attention is present

A gentle hush comprehension is transparent

Then our centerless source of clarity is boundless space

Tenderness dissolves false identities in groundless grace

What a relief to finally cease and desist

No more beliefs, only peace, and nothing to resist

 

A deceiving squint of our ego in time

Can no longer convince our lidless third-eye

That sees, without a seer, into unbroken emptiness

That can be, now and here, in open receptiveness

 

Quiet calm and resting in completeness suchness wholeness

Unbiased aplomb nesting in the sweetness of kindness’s closeness

 

Enfolded dimensions reveal and ask us

To remove our blindfolds that conceal this vastness

The observer is the observed

The subject/object duality once hellish is moot

When we nurture and persevere,

And don’t neglect reality for selfish pursuits

 

Why trade away sacred repose?

In loving service for every being?

Why be betrayed by the hatred of those?

Who would hurt us with misattributed meaning?

 

For fleeting phantoms of a fictitious future

Competing tantrums from ambitious suitors

Choosing the chooser of banal misconception

What a confusing abuser installed in perception!

 

The gentleness of lovingkindness compassion

Morphs and transfigures undoes and unfastens

All clinging and attachment to the misery of separateness

By bringing our fragments back into infinity’s wholeness

– Colin Farish

For Melissa

Your body spurs my passions

Your mind affirms my attraction

Long bronze hair frames deep brown eyes

That are faithfully fair, profound, and wise

 

Fast to smile, praising everyone’s worth

Relaxed yet wild, staying rooted in the earth

 

You dig in the dirt to pull out the pests

From a sprig of past hurt to a full bush of regret

To make space for our hearts to open and uncover

Forsaken grace unbroken to discover

 

Your kinship mirror is here

In a timeless nexus

Where all splits disappear

In clear light that shall bless us

 

Your flowering blossoms thrive

Planted in blood rot they bloom long

Empowering awesome and alive

Sown in mud clots they grew strong

 

Your lotus of loving kindness freely shares

Immanence with every being

You’ve shown us love’s brightness really cares

With your transcendent beauty and inspiring meaning

 

Your life is a love song honoring ancient spirits

Played on sky strings and garden drums

A bouquet of souls waits patient to hear it

When lightening dances in your thunder heart

 

I am grateful, your beloved, your dear friend

Your silent sentinel of sacred sustenance

Wakefully hugging you till our years end

In our vibrant dimensional co-created multiverse

– Colin Farish

Empty Into Wisdom

Adding is knowledge

Releasing is wisdom

 

A mirror reflects but never sees itself

What appears is just an illusion

Parallel mirrors together will see

An infinity beyond mind’s confusion

 

Caring for the mirror of relationship

In both darkness and clear light

The dissolution of illusion comes

With no clinging, fight, or fright

 

If we know to look in, we see

We listen and move towards the thunder

We don’t get hooked by dreams,

Opposition, or selfish blunders

 

We abandon, relinquish, unhand, and let go

We snip all the strings of our marionette show

Revealing an infinite kaleidoscope view

When the you as you know you is hopeless and through

 

May your “I” die right now, into One, from time’s two

Say goodbye and be done, there’s no ‘how’ to undo

Leap to the stars in one giant stride

Drawn to the nearest far quiet side

 

Instead of adding information

To ambition that’s never complete

That you guard in a crumbling tower

With avarice for power heavy with conceit

 

Empty each breath every second

Of all arrogance, pride, and deceit

 

Make space for an upwelling of wisdom

One cup swelling and then some

Isolation from grace is perception’s mistake

Compassion is where we all come from

 

An unbounded mountain of beneficence

An inexhaustible fountain of intelligence

Suspending all limiting preferences

Revealing unfathomable concurrences

 

Coherence and kindness flow in waves of love

Unimaginably blessed, cared for, and loved

Uncover your transparent omniscience

Rediscover your inherent percipience

 

Acquiring more will update mind’s prism

But crowd your dreams with misused knowledge

Releasing it all makes space for true wisdom

That finds meaning in embracing all wonder and love

– Colin Farish

Blossoming Mindfully

Let us gather to re-member this moment

Without a viewer

Not scatter or dis-member time

Into past and future

A fragmented mind is like a skipping turntable

It’s narrow, repeating, discordant, and unstable

 

Remove the sack of assumptions

That crowds your head with racket

That blinds your vision with overfed opinions

With little room to unpack it

 

Let all rise and fall in wonder and awe

Be in tranquil meditation

Cling to nothing in thought let all judgements dissolve

Untangle identification 

Let mind’s sky clear into infinite space

Let fear disappear of inexhaustible grace

 

We can’t change the past, but we can certainly heal it

By tuning into this moment our presence reveals it

Vibrating harmoniously, we ripple concurrently

Birthing potentials from stillness coherently

An effortless release of whatever’s holding us back

Obscuring our perception with disinformation attack

 

We don’t need to know where we’ve been to see where to go

When we’re present within, our responses just flow

From compassion and kindness that fountains endlessly

With gratitude and love we blossom mindfully

– Colin Farish

Beautiful Way

With the energy we’re saving

By minimizing craving

We increase intelligence

Dispelling ignorance

By dissolving our arrogance

 

With precise questions

Absent aggression

Thought sludge sinks

Heavy views

Of what we thought we knew

Depressurize and shrink

 

In the spacious infinity

Of audacious serenity

Illusory subjectivity,

That mendacious duality,

Of persona’s insularity

Ceases to reify, then ossify

Far better to inspire and simplify,

Sanctify and revivify

With un-fixated mind in non-located time

There’s jubilant gratitude

With an exuberant multitude!

 

Ego’s distraction

Is unskillful action

Distorted abstraction

In knee-jerk reaction

Trivialized absurdities

Emphasized externalities

Indulging incoherent eccentricities

Is unconscionable irresponsibility

 

The nowness of breath

Is vainglory’s death

In desire’s demise

Craving’s downsized

 

In expansive magnificence

Of silence’s beneficence

Discursiveness acquiesces

In centerless quietness

In luminous consciousness

The wave is the ocean once more

Harmony in motion is restored

 

Compassionate wisdom,

Clear Light through a prism

Fills full hearts and bright minds,

Unblinking eyes that shine

In open cloudless skies we synchronize

Our lucid intentions, with consonant emotions

Revealing spontaneous inventions

In concurrent dimensions

Cojoined by strands of attention

Ecstatic comprehension

 

We deep dive into stillness

Beyond light and darkness

Or pain and pleasureless-ness

Or Joy and sadness

Or death and aliveness

Or dullness and fullness

Until all is nothing

Tremendous ordinary nothingness

And nothing is all

Oh, it’s nothing really,

Really nothing at all

 

In the gob smacked eternity of tranquility

We release undo and let go of dichotomy

There’s nothing to tempt me

When there’s plenty of empty

In the boundlessness of impermanence

There’s transcendence of otherness

This inseparable oneness is limitless bliss

Sentience at play

In love’s exceedingly meaningful

Beautiful way

 

– Colin Farish

Begin With Compassion

Don’t be stuck in the muck in the dark

A luckless schmuck dumbstruck in the murk

Framing black clouds without seeing blue skies

Inflaming attack crowds instead of freeing truth from all lies

When watching life unfold as theater in the round

Without hankering to be the star that wears the heavy crown

Who clings, to hold onto identity’s attachments

Who sins, for gold with enemy combatants

 

Rather, can we uncover, ordinary wonder?

Within mind’s flights of fancy?

Avoiding foolish blunders

Letting mind’s eye be quite uncanny

 

Swirling fugues like hummingbird’s wings

Creating symphonies of song

An unfurling that includes many worlds that sing

Where innovating epiphanies effortlessly dawn

 

So close we don’t see it

So familiar we don’t trust it

So open, we can’t hold it

So near, we can’t find it

So spontaneous we miss it

So effortless we neglect it

So inseparable we discount it

So impermanent we avoid it

So inviting we forget it

So incontrovertible we obscure it

So limitless we dismiss it

So ordinary we snub it

So sublime we override it

So profound we overlook it

So present we defy it

So loving we deny it

So alive we slight it

So transcendent we hide it

So joyful we avoid it

So silent we disturb it

So restful we avert it

So whole we can’t subvert it

So intricate we can’t control it

So multifaceted we can’t command it

So dimensional we can’t conceive it

So incomprehensible there’s no believing it

 

Closer than a pug nose on an oblong face

More insistent than a stubbed toe in a long race

More dire than a bonfire in a haybarn

More inspired than a men’s choir in a gay bar

More spacious than the cosmos of creation

More gracious than the source of imagination

 

Clearer than a downbeat

Stronger than concrete

Nearer than a heartbeat

Higher than arched feet

Brighter than a Starfleet

 

More flavors than collusion of nations

More layers than evolution of relations

 

Just stop, look, listen, and question

In the quiet stillness of patient awareness

In available emptiness of unobstructed immanence

If without a watcher we subversively watch

The dense speeding comets of discursive thought

They slow down and burn up without reentry in time

In the luminous numinous belfry of mind

What is mind without a thinker?

A bottle without a drinker?

A ventilated vessel with no cargo

An emancipated vassal on multi-levels

 

Let mind-stream clear of all recalcitrant patterns

Quit live-streaming fear from all intoxicant taverns

Loosen slacken uncinch and unfasten

Solutions will happen when we begin with compassion

– Colin Farish