The Trees Haven't Read the Diamond Sutra

and they still grow

Some days I go on and on about the porch,
the birds, the trees, the bugs, the sunbeams.
But alas… today I’m too tired.
So instead, just this:

Chased the truth all day.
Tripped over it on the porch,
it didn’t even blink.

From the Porch (again)

We read.  
We seek.  
We follow.

Seems like a lifetime.

All the old masters, all the old texts - 
The Pali Canon, the Desert Fathers and Mothers,  
the poetry of Zen, the prayers of hermits,  
the teachings of those who ate little, spoke less,  
and died without knowing if they were “awake.”

We follow their words like maps -  
folded, faded, annotated by a dozen translators,  
each one a little farther from the path  
and a little closer to ourselves.

Pursuing the un-reachable.  
Chasing silence that never quite arrives.  
Buying one more book.  
Signing up for one more course.  
Asking questions we already know the answers to  
but are too afraid to trust.

Then one day -
not because we’re enlightened,  
not because we figured it out,  
but because we’re just tired -
we stop.

Not in some grand temple.  
Not on a retreat.  
Maybe just in the kitchen.  
Or on the porch, shoes off, coffee getting cold.

We don’t sit.  
We don’t breathe with intention.  
We just… stop.

And in that stopping,  
something shifts.

The trees haven’t read the Diamond Sutra.  
The wind has never taken a mindfulness course.  
But they’re still here.  
Still moving.  
Still enough.

And so are we.

When we stop reaching.  
That’s when it finally reaches us.  
Not the answer.  
Not the peace.  
Just the moment—bare and plain as it’s always been.

Nothing changes,  
and somehow everything does.

“The mind is the place where God dwells.
But first it must be at peace.” 
~Evagrius Ponticus