Until you can see, literally, that everybody is the Buddha, then you are not seeing things the way they are.
—Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing
First I quarter, then core them,
the red-skinned pears, then slice them
into slender white wings to dry. The fruit
in the box is misshapen, lumpy and mottled,
brown scarred in spots, some shriveling.
But ripeness has brought a warm tide of gold
to their skin, and in my hands, beside the knife,
it is easy to find them beautiful. I am thinking
about how today I heard a teacher of mine
suggest that everyone, everyone is a Buddha,
and I wonder if he could also mean me.
Could I unknow myself to the point where
I, too, am Buddha? It is easier, somehow,
to believe in everyone else. The scent of
autumn weaves through the kitchen air
as the pear sugars concentrate on the racks.
And Herbie Hancock undoes the scales
on the stereo, while Joni Mitchell sings
of … I do not know what, but I feel I would
follow her voice anywhere she would sing me.
Surely Joni Mitchell is a Buddha, and surely
Herbie Hancock, too. I can tell by the way
they loosen the notes from grasp of where
I expect they will go. I try to harmonize, but
they elude me. It is late. Or rather,
it is early morning and it is easier now—
perhaps from exhaustion—to laugh at myself,
to belt out loud and off key and make up words
to unfamiliar songs. It is not embarrassment I feel,
though I’ve often been embarrassed before—rather
I wear a sense that the pieces don’t quite fit together,
that the world is unsettled and breaking apart,
and that I am a part of the mess. But I don’t
feel a need to fix it, nor myself, I suppose,
surely not now when my hands are sticky with pear juice,
slicing the white flesh pound after beautiful, mottled pound.
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