The Law Within

I have sought the sacred in the order of the world,
where every life proceeds beneath a law profound,
where birth and death are moments in a greater turning,
and every living creature travels toward the ground
from which all forms arise and into which they pass,
like waves that rise upon the timeless sea
and lose their separate names within its vastness,
yet leave their motion living in eternity.

I cannot say that heaven waits beyond the stars,
nor claim that earth contains the whole of what we are.
The mind perceives a universe of causes,
yet consciousness remains a door ajar.
Behind the ordered sequence of the days
there seems to dwell a truth the mind can scarcely hold,
a principle older than our wisdom,
more lasting than the stories men have told.

The Buddha taught the way through suffering,
through desire relinquished and illusion overcome.
He offered no throne for an anxious soul to worship,
no distant kingdom where the weary could become
immortal princes beneath an endless sky.
He pointed toward the discipline of seeing,
toward wisdom born when craving loses dominion,
toward compassion practiced through our being.

Yet still I feel a presence greater than the self,
though I give that presence neither face nor name.
It may be the Dharma moving through existence,
or something deeper for which words have no claim.
Maybe, the sacred dwells within the law itself,
in cause and consequence, in mercy freely given,
in every mind that turns from hatred toward understanding,
in every life that chooses love and thereby learns the meaning of living.

I have learned that truth requires no ornament,
and wisdom gains little from a priestly crown.
The universe requires no human decoration,
and truth remains when human creeds have fallen down.
A prayer may rise in silence from the mind,
a thought may become a path toward greater good,
and one compassionate act may hold more holiness
than all the sacred words a thousand books have understood.

So, I will walk with reverence through this life,
accepting change as teacher, death as guide,
holding reason near and wonder nearer,
with neither dogma nor despair for my abiding side.
If there is a God, I trust the truth will meet me there.
If there is only Dharma, I will follow where it leads.
For truth requires no certainty to make it live,
and love becomes its clearest form in deeds.

When my own name has vanished from remembrance,
when all my arguments have fallen into dust,
may something wiser than my private longing
remain through every act of kindness and of trust.
Then I shall have learned the old lesson fully,
that life belongs to life, and self belongs to all,
and wisdom comes through seeing every being
as part of one great truth in which we rise and fall.