Teacher

 Teacher
 
Monkey kings
bow their head in reverence
while studious and
well mannered students
 clap and wave their arms about
as the teacher
speaks  to lessons
reduced to  fading words
and symbols  on
yellowed scripts,
translated and transmuted
into concepts that
hold  only grains
of the sand
Truth is.
 
Once a disillusioned  Indian Prince,
a humble Jewish carpenter,
a Saudi travelling merchant
 and the face of so many others
who have looked directly into the divine,
the teacher stands before us,
an accumulated morphing
 of centuries of shed outfits and forms,
 different languages and pointers
with only one lesson to share.
 
The weary teacher has  traveled far
along the silk road to the east,
the busy industrial path to the west,
over mountains and through dessert,
through  rice patty and through ocean,
through golden lined streets
and war -torn rubble,
to stand here today.
 
 
The teacher teaches,
not so much with what is said
but by what is embodied
within this meager form
that is worn as a cloak
around all that is.
The lesson is taught through
slow purposeful steps,
inspired speech,
and a light that shines
so brilliantly
from eyes that
offer Love to all of us
who so desperately want to know
what the teacher is here to teach.

© Dale-Lyn (Pen),  June 2020

 

I do not know why I wrote this but I did...against all ego's reprimands and warnings. 

 

I listened to the talk below and this is what came from it, as well as 8 pages of notes lol. ( I am old school...spent many a day in a university classroom, one student among many, trying to capture from the teacher everything I thought was needed in order to pass the exam...while understanding little at the time. So I take notes ...but luckily I understand much, much more from the teachers who teach the "really important" stuff because I have learned to be present) .

 

All is well!

Plum Village (June, 2019) Eight Realizations of Great Beings/ dharma talk with Br. Phap Hai. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzo_hZolNi4