WEBVTT

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This poem, I just wrote it.

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And I feel very
uncertain about it,

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but I think I would like
to read it as like the end.

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And it's a poem I wrote after
a healer put his hands on me,

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a Korean doctor who does a
strange pressure therapy called

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shiatsu.

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The poem is called
"The Buddha Radiant."

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"When the healer
put his hands on me,

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practicing an ancient
art of pressure therapy,

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it seemed that he
transmitted a message

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that I saw as the Buddha, and
understood that the Buddha was

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not a person, but a shape
of inner space, a reshaping

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of inner space that
heals from within;

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that the statue we know so well
is not a figure to worship,

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an idol, not the
statue of a man really,

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but a meditation tool,
a system of healing;

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that that seated pose
in its proportions

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is a harmonizing image
in the mind and body

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to free us from tension
and bring us grace.

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A vision of at-oneness,
encompassing the sexes,

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it has something
of a large child,

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the human being at its softest
and most divine, and also

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of the mother, that tranquil
image of tenderness,

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not at all like Christ,
twisted in agony.

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With the doctor's
hands magnetic on me,

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I understood that
words were unnecessary.

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And in any case, he did
not speak my language.

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For it as a teaching
image, a demonstration

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of not holding on anywhere,
allowing the energies

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to flow that releases the
punished self, the deprived,

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the held back, the
denied, the lowly self.

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And we find the
fullness of ourselves

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in every part, the roundnesses,
the plumpnesses, the smiles,

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the thereness, taking the
idea, thy will be done,

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and pulsing with it like
a purring cat, conductor

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of energy, generator of love.

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We could not speak to each
other, the doctor and I.

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But I received this teaching
and blessing through his hands,

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when into my mind came
the Buddha radiant."

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[APPLAUSE]

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