End Of The Year: Thief!

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All years are thieves and this one was most thorough going in that regard for many.

I looked at my photos for a graphic for this post but didn’t find anything that fit. Google Image search for “thief” was not even close to dead-on so I searched “Zen thief” and was quite surprised at the results – check it out.

As the year ends and I reflect on the past year, I remember the bold sentiment of moving-on in “May old acquaintance be forgot….” A hearty dharma tune.

Here’s my year-ending prayer:

May we honor where we’ve been and who we’ve been there with

by celebrating all of our virtues,

taking responsibility for our own failings,

forgiving the failings of others,

resolving to fully embody the Buddha way through wholehearted practice-enlightenment,

planting tender seeds for the good every day.

And here’s a good year-ending poem by Jane Hirschfield from an old collection, October Palace.

The Thief

Every fire is stolen.

And so lovers,

after, their arms or thighs touching

lightly, find themselves

even in daylight speaking in whispers.

Not to escape the passionate,

vanquished gods, who, the Greeks told us,

hated our happiness with an inexplicable heat,

but because their tenderness raises

its clear, wild sap in artesian tongues of desire

wedded wholly to jealous time.

For fish, water is endless; for birds, the air.

And our element, endless too.

But who can fin unstoppably in desire,

that lifts and lets go legs, outreaches arms,

quickens and slows even breath? It pins us

to this world we thieve and thieve from, want without pause,

the hunger blossoms first of flower, then snow.

Until the single fragrance spilling and we open

to the dark that comes to take us – embrace

that should be brutal, yet somehow not. No, intimate,

almost a kindness, the quick taking.

And then that too is faithfully stripped from our arms.

End of the Year: Thief!