Meeting Buddha in your brain First get acquainted with discipline, which in this case is learning to hear the chatter. To make karma workable, notice it working. Attend to the engine rumbling between your ears: the voice, or voices, or -- hey, that's just me! -- that spins the scoop, the everyday play-by-play, sharing airtime with commentators who color what you call real. Hearing the chatter, you see your choice. Intimacy takes more effort: you have to face the fear of commitment. Sit with whatever there is and make friends until finally reality penetrates: there's no way out but through, no way through but in. So dig. Prehistoric fault lines trigger seismic shifts within your skin. Beneath boredom, nuggets of anger, reservoirs of sadness, and rich veins of pain await the attention that only you can give. Giving it, you meet your familiars. If you flee them, they'll hover in every inhibited breath. Pay heed to their needs instead and, like magic, windows open on a wider world. There you can rest easy on wisdom's indestructible and evershifting ground. Supreme understanding will only come calling when all your disaffected refugee tendencies -- cut off from the flow of life, burrowed in bones and sequestered in cells -- are brought back home by the light of awareness to the center, the core of experience you call yourself. Then your natural sense becomes openness, aperture everywhere. And ongoing presence engages as appetite leads you on a soothing accessible passage through time where chatter subsides and thoughts arise as if Buddha were talking in your brain. He might say, "What do you think?" He might say, "You can do it, sweetheart." Or he might say, "Your guess is as good as mine," and you might actually believe him. Inspired by the Vidyadhara's teachings offered by the Archives for this occasion, I wrote this poem and read it at the feast at Karme Choling tonight. May we all live up to the potential our teachers see in us, and bring benefit into this world. With love and appreciation, Carol Hyman