CANTO 77 Working against the pattern

 

Working against the pattern

to give the pattern air

showing the pattern a pattern

it never knew was there.

On the way to chaos,

coming up for air,

what Lorenz showed us

is non-linear.

To work on ourselves again and again

not caring where we are, or going,

or how long we’ve been coming—

the system is never the same.

It takes a strange attractor,

a period-doubling cascade,

or it’s just the cycle of pain

over and over again.

The genie in the convection cell

learns to melt the seal,

each has a fractal guide,

another genie outside.

in the trance of iteration

in the stream of the third eye

in the words of Tseng Lao Weng

the pattern is cosmic shen

The ch’i returns in the breathing,

the breathing a matter of course,

it’s all a pattern of scale—

the mind becomes the Source.