Spiritus Superstitius
by Ivars Balkits
Umm. We don't need to pronounce the One Word
for everyone, do One?
Let the multiplicity of faiths gathered for One Love
be all that is necessary.
In MY faith...
It's inevitable Can we await it?
Or should we push the river?
--
So resolved: I will know more about Orion than Orion's three-holed belt in my dotage. When I retire more than the stars dripping down his one good leg. Or his bow drawn so unsupportively high, easy to spot in the winter sky.
And here is the Gourd. Or is that the Bear?
My ignorance shames me. But it's nothing really. Another terminology. So I may yet adapt to the rules and culture, the certain style of the Heavens.
--
Buddha bhagavan, Buddha bhagavan
Buddha bhagavan pani mam
Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva raksha mam...*
It's the just the chants you take.
--
Dear Pastor,
A Persian-Christian monastery was set up in Chang An, China, in the midst of a Taoist religious compound, circa 635 A.D. These Nestorians were invited by the Taoists. The Buddhists too were given facilities at that site. Thus, through intentional multiculturalism was Greek-Persian aesthetic introduced to Buddhist spirituality. Up to that time the Buddha had been represented with a simple footprint. Hereafter the Lord... Buddha would be a curly-haired Adonis – with locks tight to the head. So it was that Christians brought idolatry to China, and left behind The Jesus Sutra, scripture on stone steles, in Chinese, describing the new Faith of Light in Taoist terms.
Truly, [Look it up. The Jesus Sutra]
(signed)
The Church Secretary
--
New Agers have their Capitalism.
Christians have a Capitalist system too.
Each has its Speakers Bureaus. The Daila Lama too. Only Lao Tzu truly dropped out.
O, and Timothy Leary.
You know who I mean when I say Connie Chung, when I say Timothy Leary?
Symbols that were people. And a set of people called a generation... that sent "another hero up the pop charts" – Paul Simon, Huh?
Symbol me, symbol you. We are a symbol-making creature. Simply said. And from the point of view of multiple perspectives... a stable condition. Hum.
On my wall are the eyes of the Tibetan Buddha. On another wall Om Mane Padme Hum. When we had a potluck here once we DRUMMED.
The Eyes took on the gaze of the Idol the kind that the supposed indigenous in B-movies prostrate themselves before.
In my imagination. No one else's.
Subsequently,
at a Greek Orthodox Easter celebration in Indiana, the blood rite of the Lamb (a lamb was slaughtered) felt to me the most Ancient
experience ever... as if:
an Artic shaman taking the first bite of reindeer meat (Don't ask me.
I don't know whether an Artic shaman takes the first....
If I were to choose religion as I would luggage: I would choose
the great I-don't-choose. The great I-don't-think-I-know. I think what I TOTALLY like worship is THAT.
Sorta.
Kinder.
--
The universal sound is Home. Welcome there.
--
Thank you for this day, Lord.
Thank you for this day. **
It's an hallucination, but I am hippy to live that.
I am hippy to know the unity of this community in which I live, which I acknowledge not enough, praise not enough. I am skeptical.
But I am hippy to live that.
Hippy holiday and many holy nights... drumming.
I and my beloveds... Hippy to land here and bed here and share table here. Hippy to rest here... hippy to take what Earth has had to offer.
The world cannot resist the necessity of Love. It's what the world needs now... again:
I want that hippy love.
--
Eyes on a wall. Mirror for a mouth.
Rectangular. Eyes like wings. Eyes
like planes.
On the wall. Tibetan writing. My
love's calligraphy. Om mani padme...
hum.
yum.
um.
uh.
a.
u.
m.
on the wall writing on the wall!
And a white dog named Shanti.
And the Shinto paper in the hall.
And the Cross of branches grown together
where a robe-like strip of horse
chestnut pod
hangs
hanging on the cross-sticks
in the hallway. Om.
* chant by Yogiraj Swami Satchidananda
** Native American Church chant
for everyone, do One?
Let the multiplicity of faiths gathered for One Love
be all that is necessary.
In MY faith...
It's inevitable Can we await it?
Or should we push the river?
--
So resolved: I will know more about Orion than Orion's three-holed belt in my dotage. When I retire more than the stars dripping down his one good leg. Or his bow drawn so unsupportively high, easy to spot in the winter sky.
And here is the Gourd. Or is that the Bear?
My ignorance shames me. But it's nothing really. Another terminology. So I may yet adapt to the rules and culture, the certain style of the Heavens.
--
Buddha bhagavan, Buddha bhagavan
Buddha bhagavan pani mam
Bodhisattva, Bodhisattva
Bodhisattva raksha mam...*
It's the just the chants you take.
--
Dear Pastor,
A Persian-Christian monastery was set up in Chang An, China, in the midst of a Taoist religious compound, circa 635 A.D. These Nestorians were invited by the Taoists. The Buddhists too were given facilities at that site. Thus, through intentional multiculturalism was Greek-Persian aesthetic introduced to Buddhist spirituality. Up to that time the Buddha had been represented with a simple footprint. Hereafter the Lord... Buddha would be a curly-haired Adonis – with locks tight to the head. So it was that Christians brought idolatry to China, and left behind The Jesus Sutra, scripture on stone steles, in Chinese, describing the new Faith of Light in Taoist terms.
Truly, [Look it up. The Jesus Sutra]
(signed)
The Church Secretary
--
New Agers have their Capitalism.
Christians have a Capitalist system too.
Each has its Speakers Bureaus. The Daila Lama too. Only Lao Tzu truly dropped out.
O, and Timothy Leary.
You know who I mean when I say Connie Chung, when I say Timothy Leary?
Symbols that were people. And a set of people called a generation... that sent "another hero up the pop charts" – Paul Simon, Huh?
Symbol me, symbol you. We are a symbol-making creature. Simply said. And from the point of view of multiple perspectives... a stable condition. Hum.
On my wall are the eyes of the Tibetan Buddha. On another wall Om Mane Padme Hum. When we had a potluck here once we DRUMMED.
The Eyes took on the gaze of the Idol the kind that the supposed indigenous in B-movies prostrate themselves before.
In my imagination. No one else's.
Subsequently,
at a Greek Orthodox Easter celebration in Indiana, the blood rite of the Lamb (a lamb was slaughtered) felt to me the most Ancient
experience ever... as if:
an Artic shaman taking the first bite of reindeer meat (Don't ask me.
I don't know whether an Artic shaman takes the first....
If I were to choose religion as I would luggage: I would choose
the great I-don't-choose. The great I-don't-think-I-know. I think what I TOTALLY like worship is THAT.
Sorta.
Kinder.
--
The universal sound is Home. Welcome there.
--
Thank you for this day, Lord.
Thank you for this day. **
It's an hallucination, but I am hippy to live that.
I am hippy to know the unity of this community in which I live, which I acknowledge not enough, praise not enough. I am skeptical.
But I am hippy to live that.
Hippy holiday and many holy nights... drumming.
I and my beloveds... Hippy to land here and bed here and share table here. Hippy to rest here... hippy to take what Earth has had to offer.
The world cannot resist the necessity of Love. It's what the world needs now... again:
I want that hippy love.
--
Eyes on a wall. Mirror for a mouth.
Rectangular. Eyes like wings. Eyes
like planes.
On the wall. Tibetan writing. My
love's calligraphy. Om mani padme...
hum.
yum.
um.
uh.
a.
u.
m.
on the wall writing on the wall!
And a white dog named Shanti.
And the Shinto paper in the hall.
And the Cross of branches grown together
where a robe-like strip of horse
chestnut pod
hangs
hanging on the cross-sticks
in the hallway. Om.
* chant by Yogiraj Swami Satchidananda
** Native American Church chant
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Ivars Balkits has most recently been published on the web sites for Down in the Dirt, cahoodaloodaling, Angry Old Man, Plural Prose Journal, Uut Poetry, Helios MSS, Unbroken Journal, and Otoliths. He is a recipient of two Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, for poetry in 1999 and creative nonfiction in 2014.
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