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# Englightenment
- URL: https://www.andyposner.org/englightenment/
- Published: 2023-12-24T20:30:38.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-15T05:02:51.000Z
- Description: I was seventeen when I read Alan Watts’ The Way of Zen a couple pages at a time, putting down the book to observe sunset drape itself over my mind, falling asleep thinking of not thinking, hearing a flock of birds and imagining myself
- Author: Andy
- Tags: Be The Change, poetry, #Migrated-1784090317409, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-15 04:39

I was seventeen when I read Alan Watts’ *The Way of Zen*  
a couple pages at a time, putting down the book to observe  
sunset drape itself over my mind, falling asleep thinking  
of not thinking, hearing a flock of birds and imagining myself  
flapping against the sky and recalling that I am sky. Once,  
the book well-thumbed and creased and read twice over,  
I felt an ant crawl the length of my arm like a nagging  
sense that this enlightenment wouldn’t last, that  
whether I crushed it or saved it would determine  
the course of my life, which I knew to be my one and  
only life, and I knew that I would get it wrong, that one  
day I would own a house and have a wife and son  
and no amount of introspection would clear the crumbs  
I hadn’t time to sweep between this and that  
priority, then when the ants came looking for food  
on Christmas Eve like a parable of how the living world  
exists for the living I would set to work with poison  
and impatience because the hour was growing late  
and we are all made in God’s image, which is to say  
we are power-hungry gods, we have things to do--  
we can kill without consequence.