The Moon Is Really A Zen Master
The moon has a great fan base— and I would say for very good reasons. One being, she always seems willing to listen. And she seems to not mind at all if you kiss her as much as you want, or throw kisses to her.
And have you ever known her to be righteous or prejudice about anything? She is really Buddha and Jesus in drag in a big way. That is: she is the personification of compassion, love and encouragement.
Have you ever seen her face, her light, turn away from any act she may witness? I think a real Master would only do that (act as if something was wrong) knowing she/he needed to play patty-cake with the world, because most in it were really still such spiritually young children. A decent definition of being spiritually young, or you might say being a young soul could be: the inability to be kind and intelligent to yourself, and to the hearts of other humans and creatures.
Yeah, the moon is so popular that she has names in over 7,000 languages. I never would have guessed that there are some 7,100 recognized languages in the world. But Google that; there are. And they list twelve of the most popular languages, one being Bengali. And the word in Bengali for moon, if you are ever in a jam and might need to know, is: camda.
I have a whole bunch of free-style haiku that start with the same 7 words. Then it seems there are so many ways to interestingly complete the haiku; and sometimes actually say something meaningful.
To me, the word moon in a haiku can be synonymous with a lot of words, like Buddha, Jesus, God, self, knowing or enlightenment. Or even, how to really kick ass, or how to really be free, laugh, sing and dance.
Here is one I wrote a couple hours ago and posted on an international web-chat site connected to Meher Baba. I often post things there a couple times a day. Watch out for me there... especially if a beer has just smooched me, or a mountain, bird, Hafiz, or Rumi… Or if I had a second brownie for breakfast.
And this free-style haiku, or haiku mutant as I sometimes call them, has a personal story connected to it that happened while I was living in California. Well, there are a couple personal stories, but just gonna share one today. That hm (haiku mutant) goes:
the moon asked about
her luminosity said, 'i know
i am really not here'
Yeah, what zen master could not say that! Bet Eruch knew that ... to the bone. (Eruch was my living spiritual teacher whom I have mentioned several times in my blogs.)
Well, here is that one story that I remembered after writing that above haiku, and had not really thought about in years.
I was living in San Francisco at the time; it was in the 80s. I had an apartment not far from Union Square. I used to love to walk a couple of miles all around the city, and did so almost everyday.
I can now see this situation very clearly, and feel this in a real way again. One morning, I was walking down Geary Street alone, toward Union Square. I was walking rather fast and feeling rather cheerful in just being the little free range chicken I have been most of my life. It was a beautiful day. All of a sudden, completely out of the blue, I got a deep feeling of the greatest certainty that one day I will know that I (Danny) never could have possibly existed! And that what I really am, and what everyone and everything really is, is just too off the Richter scale to try and articulate. But that that knowing, or recognition, is something you might see in the eyes of Buddha or Jesus, if you were ever able to hang out with one of them after-hours in a bar, when all the patty-cake stopped. And one of them is looking at you as who you Really Are. And that realization and experience in your soul, is now enough forever. Forever.
And to me, that is the extraordinary significance of Hafiz and Rumi: they are all about helping you realize who you really are. They are so much into helping you become more and more less entangled with anything that can undermine your beauty, your power, your freedom! They are really about helping you become more and more free and alive!
There is true magic, a real alchemy stone in endearing words. And they can enrich even more if you read them slowly and out loud— and can cherish them a bit, like a beloved.
Knockout poetry can be like a Zen Master or the moon climbing in bed with you ... naked.