Gāthā on the Boundless Real

1
Reality is the sky—vast, boundless, without edge or floor.

2
Nothing lies before it, after it, or outside it.
To doubt it is only to affirm it anew.

3
Perfect is the Real,
for imperfection implies a beyond—and That is It.

4
Beyond one and two,
Reality is the transdual whole.

5
Dividing, analyzing, naming—
these cannot grasp the all.

6
Every system is swallowed
by a system yet greater still.

7
Reality, then, is not a system—
but what makes all systems possible.

8
It moves without why or when,
mysterious, ungrasped, non-rational.

9
The touch of knowing, the flavor of felt truth—
these are also the Real.

10
No word binds it;
no phrase can hold it.

11
But it is known—
by intuition of Self: the irreducible “I.”

12
Mind alone is primal;
nothing stands beneath sentience.

13
Thus is Reality sentience itself,
reflexive, all-containing.

14
It appears as the dance
of difference and non-difference.

15
Their play is lived reality—
the breathing now.

16
This lived moment is phenomenon,
ever blossoming.

17
Phenomenon arises and arises again,
spun by cause and effect, birthing the new.

18
This endless arising is no illusion—
it is the face of the Real.

19
Time has no first breath, no final sleep.
How can there be a before-before?

20
The quest for origin stumbles;
creation myths collapse.

21
Yet from within its infinite play
arises desire, attachment, delusion.

22
Thus are born the 27 realms—
from gods to ghosts, humans to hells.

23
Above them dwell the four formless spheres:
Space, Consciousness, No-thingness, Neither Perceiving nor Not.

24
This is the formless realm—
free from grasping, dwelling-place of Buddhas.

25
The Buddhas are the deathless ones,
the awakened, unbound.

26
All of this—seen, unseen, grasped, forgotten—
is held together in the Real.

27
The wise call this “nonsense” and smile;
so fools become wise, and sages laugh.