What is the teaching?

Do I have some new chunk of wisdom,
To impart upon a fantastical and eager mind?
Or is the wisdom,
That there is no wisdom.

I feel called to simply live.
To follow your will, and bend myself under it’s questions
Seeking only the smallest answer
That leads onto the next curiosity

How can I know,
Except in the deeper feeling of a task that is not of my making?
How can I know,
Except in the surrender to the knowledge that I know almost nothing?

How can I teach,
When it is not my right to know the answers?
How can I teach,
When there is nothing to teach but your humble mystery?

Is that the only teaching there is?
To follow ones heart into the depths of love for all things
To follow ones mind into the heights of understanding all things and no thing
To follow ones hands into the making of art in the form of ones own eyes

It is not my right to decide upon what is good or just
But simply to open in the midst of it all
A little at a time
And sometimes not even a little

It is not my responsibility to feel responsible for my destiny.
That is your responsibility
And that is why I pray to you

That you tell me where I will walk
And which new delights I will shed
And which old wounds I will kiss with tenderness

I need not know who I am
But simply who I am not
And be content with that

What is it that lies beyond idealism?
What is found underneath the rocky dreams,
That have haunted me for as long as I had a memory?
What small piece of peace hides in the place,
Where there is no one to be, and nothing to do
Except this.
And this.
And this.

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One Response to What is the teaching?
  1. Rita de Podesta
    November 5, 2010 | 2:09 pm

    Ewan, I’m very grateful to you for the resonance this creates with me: how and whence it comes. It really helps me today. Thanks for blogging. :-) )

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