A Meditation on the Mind of a Host

By Chou Tung (Snow Reid)

Happiest of all are the guests
Sorriest are the servants
Half happy half sorry is the host.

Chunk upon chunk of meat,
Goblet after goblet of wine,
sent tumbling down their gullets,
Exhilarating to death the guests,
Worrying to death the host,
And tiring to death the servants.

Talking and joking,
Shaking hands, exhausting words;
Time flows by swiftly.
Does the host do all this just to please his guests,
or could it be that … Read the rest of this entry »

Running to Paradise

by William Butler Yeats

As I came over Windy Gap
They threw a halfpenny into my cap,
For I am running to Paradise;
And all that I need do is to wish
And somebody puts his hand in the dish
To throw me a bit of salted fish:
And there the king is but as the beggar.

My brother Mourteen is worn out
With skelping his big brawling lout,
And I am running to Paradise;
A poor life do what he can,
And though he keep a dog and a gun,
A serving maid and a serving man:
And there the king is but as the beggar.

Poor men have grown to be rich men,
And rich men grown to be poor again,
And I am running to Paradise;
And many a darling wit’s grown dull
That tossed a bare heel when at school,
Now it has filled an old sock full:
And there the king is but as the beggar.

The wind is old and still at play
While I must hurry upon my way,
For I am running to Paradise;
Yet never have I lit on a friend
To take my fancy like the wind
That nobody can buy or bind:
And there the king is but as the beggar.

Mind Waves

when our minds are filled with thoughts
it is like a pond filled with waves
the more waves fill the pond
the more difficult it is for the pond to be clear

thoughts cloud the mind as waves cloud water
they distract us from the awareness of the present moment
and cause us to confusedly go through life
never feeling our immediate connection to everything else Read the rest of this entry »