Doubts

During my Journey,
As I chased the dream of “enlightenment”,
Wandering the desert of “myself” in search of Water,
I ate, drank, and breathed doubts.

Doubts about enlightenment itself,
That this felt sense of “I” would ever vanish,
Could ever vanish.

Doubts about the “enlightened” and “awakened”,
So many of whom seemed to me, Delusional,
Wounded, broken, and often pathological.

Doubts about the Great Teachings,
As I encountered them along the Way,
So rife with belief, orthodoxy, and dogma.

Doubts about my ability to do and not do,
To embrace practice and technique,
To exert will and discipline.

Doubts that it was all simply a grand fairytale,
The hysterical delusions of religious types,
Or the conceptualizing of intellectuals, full of hubris.

All so very certain in faith or knowledge,
About that which I could only…
Doubt.

Now… looking back, I see…
Doubts were not the harbingers of despair,
Nor demons which hindered and harmed.

They were the shining weapons of my Honesty,
Born of fierce discernment, discrimination,
And an empiricism^* that would simply… not… die.

* The theory that all knowledge is derived from sense-experience.

Any view, any Expression of “Truth”,
That could not withstand their onslaught,
Fell in defeat, however revered it was by others.

Doubts led me, ultimately, to The Great Mystery,
Where nothing is known,
And nothing is resolved.

They led me, after such a long Odyssey,
To where Absolute Doubt,
Turned to Absolute Surrender.

When the last breath of hope was whispered,
When all grasping ceased, for “more”,
When in despair's fruition, I collapsed where I stood.

I died as a thing that existed, a thing alive,
And Remained, as Existence, Life Itself.