Radical letting go

Radical letting go of letting go
The overwhelming realizations
Of one’s own human limitations
Require letting go of all identity
Built again over entire lifetimes
Go up in fire’s flames at long last
Purging dual judgements of self
Making room for the unity of all
The one and only present moment
Where capitalized musts evaporate
Illusion and appearances of insight
Reality greater than we can know
Detached allow all currents flow
In and out freely through all of it
No more holding back as possible
So tremendously much to clean up
That accumulated over these times
With given beliefs and convictions
End up as complacency and hubris
Corruptions of insight and pseudo
Directed at all others but oneself
When actually looking into a mirror
Exclusively see just what one wants
Preferably glory plus shortcomings
Eventually balance out in between
With life and love, the joy of heart
Where all comes and goes freely
In and out heaven’s door here now
Wishing us all abundant equanimity

“Between light and sound” — Hungarian Gypsy equanimity

A path with heart requiring radical letting go

“Corruptions of insight refers to our attachment to and misuse of the genuinely positive phenomena that arise in practice… In pseudo-nirvana, students become stuck in positive states, trying to maintain them, grasping the clarity, power, or peace, using them to reinforce their subtle sense of being one who is awake, accomplished, free… Release from this level of attachment is a radical letting go… No matter what remarkable state arises, we must learn to allow it to come and go freely… [including] states of joy, equanimity, and clarity… noticing how they too arise and pass… Let go of everything, even the states and fruits of practice themselves, and … open to that which is beyond all identity.”

“Achaan Chah taught: If you let go a little, you will have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you will have even more peace. So wherever you are attached, let go of that and come back to the center. Learn to see all movement of life with balance and openness.”

“Finally there is nothing to do but to let go… All that you take yourself to be — your separate body, mind, and individuality — can unravel before you until you discover that your limited identity is not your true nature… No matter where or how far you wander, the light is only a split second, a half breath away.”

— A Path with Heart, Jack Kornfield, pp. 147 and 153-156

Alpine salamander on a path with heart