You gain nothing in wisdom or ignorance,pick up an axeand start swinging at the unmanifest1,
when you feel yourself forget this truthtake that feelingand behead it like a demon2,drink its blood,
that is the ambrosia of actualization3
The Ambrosia of Actualization
Notes
By the editor.
- The same wildness of the mind is behind the Chan line “If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him,” which she explains in What Does It Mean to Kill Buddha?: to cut down even the highest idea the moment you start holding it. The axe falls on the unmanifest because that is where the grasping starts. ↩
- This is how the goddess Kali disposes of the demon Raktabija, each drop of whose blood grew into another Raktabija. Durga tells Kali to drink the blood before it touches the ground, and when it is all gone Durga strikes off his head. The poem's remedy for a forgetting feeling, behead it and drink the blood, is the same two-step. source ↩
- Greek ambrosia is “immortality,” from a- “not” and a root meaning “to die,” and the same Indo-European form gives Sanskrit amṛta, “undying,” the drink the gods took to become immortal. So the poem's drink is the deathless one, won by the same act that kills the demon. source ↩