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May 2009 
Your Path -- From my upcoming book The_Power_Of_Yes_
Michael
Your Path
Each human being is unique, none are identical.
We are absolutely, totally, wondrously, unique.When two or more people go the same way from here to there, they create a path. Sometimes you imagine you are looking for someone else, a soul partner, but it is only you, a reflection of you. If you follow their path, you will find them. But in whatever happens between longing and finding, you start out wondering who you are and wind up discovering yourself. There is only one you, so no second person can do it the same and thereby make it a path. If there is a path, at least one of the travelers is lost.
So as you move it does not need to be recorded. Where you have been, you will never return. Where you are about to tread, you know not.
Often you have heard that it is not the destination, but the journey. Be in each moment, just where you are. Do not fear over the future nor gaze wistfully behind. Be here, now. Ad let your mind, your vision, your attention expand a bit and immediately, in the light of your awareness, your next step is revealed. Take it.You may notice someone has been here before. Appreciate it. You may notice this spot will be nice for so-and-so. Leave a little sign. When you come across a well-worn path, do not take it. It is trodden by the lazy who no longer see their own next step but instead are following a path. If you need truth of this, look around you. The world is a well-trodden path. Rarely will you share some steps with another. But when you do, cherish them. Fall in love. But hold them only with the powerless grip of the air around your hand. Give them yourself totally, completely, fully, deeply. Breath their breath while it is present. When their next steps lead somewhere else, take your own. Go. Go your way, your path. When it is into a crowd, take it. When it leaves, take it. Live in each moment. When a step appears, take it. Leave little signs, but blaze no trail. Leave reverential candles as sparks in the night. Step. Now. Here. "Ah, I see!" Step.
Access: Public
What a beautiful blog. I'll leave a little sign. Step.
Step
~ by Michael Ondaatje
The ceremonial funeral structure for a monk
made up of thambali palms, white cloth
is only a vessel, disintegrates
completely as his life.
The ending disappears,
replacing itself
with something abstract
as air, a view.
All we'll remember in the last hours
is an afternoon - a lazy lunch
then sleeping together.
Then the disarray of grief.
On the morning of a full moon
in a forest monastery
thirty women in white
meditate on the precepts of the day
until darkness.
They walk those abstract paths
their complete heart
their burning thought focused
on this step, then this step.
In the red brick dusk
of the Sacred Quadrangle,
among holy seven-storey ambitions
where the four Buddhas
of Polonnaruwa
face out to each horizon,
is a lotus pavilion.
Taller than a man
nine lotus stalks of stone
stand solitary in the grass,
pillars that once supported
the floor of another level.
(The sensuous stalk
the sacred flower)
How physical yearning
became permanent.
How desire became devotional
so it held up your house,
your lover's house, the house of your god.
And though it is no longer there,
the pillars once let you step
to a higher room
where there was worship, lighter air.
~