Sitting Under the Bo Tree

Taken into the other mind, I was spellbound, beside 
myself.  Here, all was not what it seemed.   

I sat in lotus pose under the fig tree, ficus religiosa, 
the tree Buddha sat beneath (for it was twenty years ago

and I simply climbed over the railing and sat down
beneath what was once a sapling, taken from the first tree).

Pilgrims circumambulated a nearby stupa.  It was early 
morning, not quite starlight, not quite sunlight, 

and beggars and sadhus floated past, a mass of orange 
and yellow.  Nowhere in the sky was the north star.  

I couldnt look down like Siddharta Gautama 
and see myself from the pole star, see all that was: 

but still I was different, another person, other than, 
of another mind.  It was a weird seizure,

a kind of rapturous delight.  Neither the bliss of nirvana, 
nor the humdrum life I lived.  Something 

grew up from the roots tangled and flung itself 
through the ground, reached up and touched my folded 

aching knees, tapped my long bones, moved into, 
oh permeable membrane of tissue and flesh-

the root chakra, generative base of my being, 
and then up the ratcheted hollow of the backbone

stopping to spin a flower, this way and that, seven 
flowers, one blossoming at the top of my head

which was itself blooming, and then all things began
to speak to me, saying: I am that, I too am that.

 

© Jan Lee Ande