Heretical Thought

For the sake of conscience
we bear a selfless weight;
the limit of ruthless exhaustion
was passed long ago.
 
The inescapable gospel of decay—
a single life is almost small enough
to slip beneath the lens,
magnified into Lenin,
into the rivers of blood
that run from nation to nation,
from the Himalayan snows
to the Gobi sands.
 
Across them drift
the weary words of the Tathagata;
human civilization
thins in the shame of honesty,
still seeking sin within the temple of virtue.
 
Sin remains—
in the bodhi-light of unclouded meditation,
in the spontaneous motions of our mind,
in the unknown chambers of the mental vault.
 
We flee to save ourselves
from the shelter of lies;
in our sincerity itself
sin is born.
 
The non-dual soul
wanders guiltless,
yet life decays,
fear gathers—
and when we have crossed
all the weary doctrines and roads of earth,
the boundary-line still stands,
telling us where the dark
grows strong by pulling in
the whole harvest of light.
 
Tibet bleeds in a thousand streams;
the continent kneels in peace’s shadow.
 
Give us our own light,
and in our own darkness
awaken us—
from these broken,
misbegotten opinions
of the yet-to-come.