cycling through

while cycling through time today
along a path near to the rio grande

in considering the satisfying choice of
maintaining a very loose attachment
to a goal of triathloning one of these years

in order to simply prioritize
the numerous moments of beauty
along the way

in addition to fitness and fun
and improved presence in my relationships


a thought occurred to me:

it is possible the root cause of suffering
can be expressed as

the prioritization of attachment to a strategy
to attain one's needs

over a direct energetic connection
to the needs


yet in reflecting further
on my life experience I realized:

it is also possible that suffering occurs
because of the difficulty in distinguishing

the majority of circumstances
wherein a yin approach
of maintaining connection to need
is in harmony with life

from the roughly 12.5 percent of circumstances
where one is best served
by a canine-toothed single-mindedness
offering satisfaction of survival needs so directly
as to avoid life-draining dependency


the tricky part
is that a little yang goes a long way
and we are generally more likely to lose balance
by holding on too much to things

and in our celebration of supposed independence
neglect the effects our actions are having on others
and the whole

the lynchpin of justification for such a course
being the mistaken assertion of one's supposed right to comfort
over and above another's toothy survival

yet what of that grey area we might call
security?


fortunately there are numerous solutions to such koans
each unfolding systems of abundance

one being the realization of one's mortality
and the concomitant dawning of desire for contribution
to the life that persists beyond oneself

be this passing along a timeless path
offering a contribution to the river of human survival technologies

perhaps realizing an achievement of growth that cannot be erased
even by the clenching fingers of inevitable death


or in simply giving to the life of another

whereupon the who of giving
and the who of receiving dissolves

into sublime raucous mystery