After many years of practice, something begins to
emerge within the sweat and rubble of an imperfect
life. That delight which is distilled from our own living,
sweetened on our own lips, burning the oil of our own
passionate commitment to being, and which has always
been the essential oxygen of our life.

This delight is the energy of our own essential nature -
the essential nature of all being - yet whose sweet fruit is
consciously available only to those willing to face into the briar of their experience. Whose fruit is in immediate supply, yet bypassed by those captivated by the easier array of passing distractions and compensations offered by the world.

This intrinsic or essential delight is not a one-sided, self-involved or Pollyanna experience. It does not depend on the mind's frail attempts to maximize comfort or avoid pain. It does not turn away from the profound truth of suffering or violence within the hearts of human beings, and that is enacted across the theatre of history and the daily news. It is aware of the preciousness of this moment of human birth. It trembles with humility and awe.

Sitting there on the hillside, on that occasion of delight and gratitude, we may look back at our own past journey and on our own choices; on the grace that drew us forth from the labyrinth of the mind into the light of our own being; and at the long years of our own apparent effort, intention, and diligence - in the face of all our stumbling and imperfection - that inexorably carried our feet forward while the winds of distraction, inertia, and delusion seemed to carry the day all around us. And we are dumbfounded that the camel of our ignorance and our self-centeredness ever managed to get even its nose through the eye of the needle. And in our concern for others, and in the seeming impossibility of this journey of spiritual awakening amidst all the distracting messages of life, we just want to run down the mountainside and make sure the trail heads aren't overgrown, and wave our hands, and post signs that say, "Please eat the berries" and "Pay attention" and "This way please," and offer our bodies as stepping-stones.

But the same grace that is operating beyond the illusion of self and other continues to manifest as an endless file of hikers up the mountainside who are welcomed by new trail heads and whose pathways will not duplicate our own. And to codify the trail or to post too many signposts is to turn the living impulse into formula, which the ego thinks it needs to do. So while we may be lovingly anxious to unroll a string, sometimes the best we can do is to be heard whistling. To hold space. To shovel stone. And to answer when called.

This poem is basically about bodhicitta: the intrinsic energy and impulse to awaken; the dawning mind of awakeness itself; and above all the awakened heart energy that knows nothing but the commitment to the awakening and happiness of all beings. It is about that great conspiracy of help in our world. It is about the state of mind of the helper. When we are graced with the intrinsic delight of being, at these times we would easily lie down as a bridge to be walked on, disappear into the apparatus of liberation, enter with all intimacy and availability into the journey of all beings, praying for their own delight, celebrating their awakenings. This is the delight of the note to be the music, the delight of the drop to be the fountain. The disappearance into the service of What-We-Are, all as an expression of the great companionship of being that is true at the beginning and true at the end. So that you and I may simply sit together and enjoy the same setting sun, the same rising moon.