LAR WILLSON

About Me

Ego Dropping

Great awakening

be no more, no less 

ego dropping

No desire, no preference

I am free 

from suffering

Free from suffering

I am free to be

choice-less awareness

Still notice, feeling

thus free I am not

free from pain, only

empty self being,

swelled with a glad heart

embracing all hurt

So proud of feeling

free I fall flat on

the face, even say

the arse―head swelling

as I move about

again pretending

Then, noticing me 

I at once see not-

me, and me drops

Of such is my plight

as the upright beast

wandering, wondering

Time comes and goes yet

I―pondering not―

feel two-less, all round *

*For “choice-less awareness” see J. Krishnamurti, e.g., Commentaries on Living, First Series (Wheaton, Ill: The Theosophical Publishing House, Quest Book ed., 1967; orig., 1956):97-102. The words “two-less, all round” are not poetic contrivance but rise iconic from the nature of things by looking with a contemplative eye through things, not at them―i.e., with persistent focus, consistent intent, nonresistant notice.  

For the Tibetan sense of “two-less,”  see Marco Pallis, The Way and the Mountain: Tibet, Buddhism, and Tradition (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2008):212-213.  For a direct sense of “round of existence” (=samsara) as depicted by traditional Buddhist iconography, see Pallis, A Buddhist Spectrum: Contributions to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue (Bloomington, IN: World Wisdom, 2003):7, saying, “Its purpose is to serve as a key to a heightened awareness; it has no other use.”  And further (182) he writes: “[It] is calculated to strike the human mind above all through its dynamic overtones; impermanence, change from one state to another, alternations of pleasure and pain, relativity of all we would fain treat as enduring, these form the message this symbolical portrayal is meant to deliver.”  All poems herein-to-follow the author relates in this very light. 

Education

Academy for Spiritual Formation, The Upper Room, 1989. (Project:  Poeming: A Language of Spirit)

PhD, Boston University, 1980.  (Dissertation: The Being of Being - Comparative Philosophies of Charles Hartshorne and Daisetz T. Suzuki)

ThM, Boston U School of Theology, 1972.  (Prime interests: social ethics, systematic theology, comparative religion, philosophy of science)

BA, Birmingham-Southern College, 1969. (Major: philosophy)

Career

For 35 years taught at varied institutions of higher learning as well as in special education and served as chaplain in both university and hospital settings.  Retired as spiritual counsel at Hill Crest (Psychiatric) Hospital, Birmingham, Alabama, 2007. 

Hobbies and Interests

Reading Jose Saramago.  Writing contemplative verse.  Travel with my companion of 40 years and mother of our two sons.

Perspectives

Inquiry Responses and Comments