The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

The fact was I had the vision... I think everyone has... what we lack is the method.

I suddenly discovered the delight of rebellion.

Man lowers his head and lunges into civilization, forgetting the days of his infancy when he sought truth in a snowflake or a stick. Man forgets the wisdom of the child.

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved...the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

The only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to love, mad to talk, mad to be saved the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

Trees


But a tree has

a long suffering shapeIs
spread in half
by 2 limbed fate

Rises from gray rain
pavements
To traffic in the bleak

brown air
Of cities radar television
nameless dumb &numb mis connicumb
Throwing twigs the
color of ink To white souled
heaven, with
A reality of its own uses

The Scripture of the Golden Eternity

1
Did I create that sky? Yes, for, if it was anything other than a conception in my mind I
wouldnt have said 'Sky'-That is why I am the golden eternity. There are not two of us
here, reader and writer, but one, one golden eternity, One-Which-It-Is, That-WhichEverything-
Is.


2
The awakened Buddha to show the way, the chosen Messiah to die in the degradation
of sentience, is the golden eternity. One that is what is, the golden eternity, or, God,
or, Tathagata-the name. The Named One. The human God. Sentient Godhood. Animate
Divine. The Deified One. The Verified One. The Free One. The Liberator. The Still One.
The settled One. The Established One. Golden Eternity. All is Well. The Empty One. The
Ready One. The Quitter. The Sitter. The Justified One. The Happy One.


3
That sky, if it was anything other than an illusion of my mortal mind I wouldnt have
said 'that sky.' Thus I made that sky, I am the golden eternity. I am Mortal Golden
Eternity.


4
I was awakened to show the way, chosen to die in the degradation of life, because I
am Mortal Golden Eternity.


5
I am the golden eternity in mortal animate form.


6
Strictly speaking, there is no me, because all is emptiness. I am empty, I am
non-existent. All is bliss.


7
This truth law has no more reality than the world.


8
You are the golden eternity because there is no me and no you, only one golden
eternity.


9
The Realizer. Entertain no imaginations whatever, for the thing is a no-thing. Knowing
this then is Human Godhood.


10
This world is the movie of what everything is, it is one movie, made of the same stuff
throughout, belonging to nobody, which is what everything is.


11
If we were not all the golden eternity we wouldnt be here. Because we are here we
cant help being pure. To tell man to be pure on account of the punishing angel that
punishes the bad and the rewarding angel that rewards the good would be like telling
the water 'Be Wet'-Never the less, all things depend on supreme reality, which is
already established as the record of Karma earned-fate.



12
God is not outside us but is just us, the living and the dead, the never-lived and
never-died. That we should learn it only now, is supreme reality, it was written a long
time ago in the archives of universal mind, it is already done, there's no more to do.


13
This is the knowledge that sees the golden eternity in all things, which is us, you, me,
and which is no longer us, you, me.


14
What name shall we give it which hath no name, the common eternal matter of the
mind? If we were to call it essence, some might think it meant perfume, or gold, or
honey. It is not even mind. It is not even discussible, groupable into words; it is not
even endless, in fact it is not even mysterious or inscrutably inexplicable; it is what is;
it is that; it is this. We could easily call the golden eternity 'This.' But 'what's in a
name?' asked Shakespeare. The golden eternity by another name would be as sweet. A
Tathagata, a God, a Buddha by another name, an Allah, a Sri Krishna, a Coyote, a
Brahma, a Mazda, a Messiah, an Amida, an Aremedeia, a Maitreya, a Palalakonuh, 1 2
3 4 5 6 7 8 would be as sweet. The golden eternity is X, the golden eternity is A, the
golden eternity is /\, the golden eternity is O, the golden eternity is [ ], the golden
eternity is t-h-e-g-o-l-d-e-n-e-t-e-r- n-i-t-y. In the beginning was the word; before the
beginning, in the beginningless infinite neverendingness, was the essence. Both the
word 'god' and the essence of the word, are emptiness. The form of emptiness which is
emptiness having taken the form of form, is what you see and hear and feel right now,
and what you taste and smell and think as you read this. Wait awhile, close your eyes,
let your breathing stop three seconds or so, listen to the inside silence in the womb of
the world, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, re-recognize the bliss you forgot, the
emptiness and essence and ecstasy of ever having been and ever to be the golden
eternity. This is the lesson you forgot.


15
The lesson was taught long ago in the other world systems that have naturally changed
into the empty and awake, and are here now smiling in our smile and scowling in our
scowl. It is only like the golden eternity pretending to be smiling and scowling to itself;
like a ripple on the smooth ocean of knowing. The fate of humanity is to vanish into the
golden eternity, return pouring into its hands which are not hands. The navel shall
receive, invert, and take back what'd issued forth; the ring of flesh shall close; the
personalities of long dead heroes are blank dirt.


16
The point is we're waiting, not how comfortable we are while waiting. Paleolithic man
waited by caves for the realization of why he was there, and hunted; modern men wait
in beautified homes and try to forget death and birth. We're waiting for the realization
that this is the golden eternity.


17
It came on time.


18
There is a blessedness surely to be believed, and that is that everything abides in
eternal ecstasy, now and forever.



19
Mother Kali eats herself back. All things but come to go. All these holy forms,
unmanifest, not even forms, truebodies of blank bright ecstasy, abiding in a trance, 'in
emptiness and silence' as it is pointed out in the Diamond-cutter, asked to be only
what they are: GLAD.


20
The secret God-grin in the trees and in the teapot, in ashes and fronds, fire and brick,
flesh and mental human hope. All things, far from yearning to be re-united with God,
had never left themselves and here they are, Dharmakaya, the body of the truth law,
the universal Thisness.


21
'Beyond the reach of change and fear, beyond all praise and blame,' the Lankavatara
Scripture knows to say, is he who is what he is in time and time-less-ness, in ego and
in ego-less-ness, in self and in self-less-ness.


22
Stare deep into the world before you as if it were the void: innumerable holy ghosts,
buddhies, and savior gods there hide, smiling. All the atoms emitting light inside
wavehood, there is no personal separation of any of it. A hummingbird can come into a
house and a hawk will not: so rest and be assured. While looking for the light, you may
suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true light.


23
Things dont tire of going and coming. The flies end up with the delicate viands.


24
The cause of the world's woe is birth, The cure of the world's woe is a bent stick.


25
Though it is everything, strictly speaking there is no golden eternity because
everything is nothing: there are no things and no goings and comings: for all is
emptiness, and emptiness is these forms, emptiness is this one formhood.


26
All these selfnesses have already vanished. Einstein measured that this present
universe is an expanding bubble, and you know what that means.


27
Discard such definite imaginations of phenomena as your own self, thou human being,
thou'rt a numberless mass of sun-motes: each mote a shrine. The same as to your
shyness of other selves, selfness as divided into infinite numbers of beings, or selfness
as identified as one self existing eternally. Be obliging and noble, be generous with
your time and help and possessions, and be kind, because the emptiness of this little
place of flesh you carry around and call your soul, your entity, is the same emptiness in
every direction of space unmeasurable emptiness, the same, one, and holy emptiness
everywhere: why be selfy and unfree, Man God, in your dream? Wake up, thou'rt
selfless and free. 'Even and upright your mind abides nowhere,' states Hui Neng of
China. We're all in heaven now.


28



Roaring dreams take place in a perfectly silent mind. Now that we know this, throw the
raft away.


29
Are you tightwad and are you mean, those are the true sins, and sin is only a
conception of ours, due to long habit. Are you generous and are you kind, those are
the true virtues, and they're only conceptions. The golden eternity rests beyond sin and
virtue, is attached to neither, is attached to nothing, is unattached, because the golden
eternity is Alone. The mold has rills but it is one mold. The field has curves but it is one
field. All things are different forms of the same thing. I call it the golden eternity-what
do you call it, brother? for the blessing and merit of virtue, and the punishment and
bad fate of sin, are alike just so many words.


30
Sociability is a big smile, and a big smile is nothing but teeth. Rest and be kind.


31
There's no need to deny that evil thing called GOOGOO, which doesnt exist, just as
there's no need to deny that evil thing called Sex and Rebirth, which also doesn't exist,
as it is only a form of emptiness. The bead of semen comes from a long line of
awakened natures that were your parent, a holy flow, a succession of saviors pouring
from the womb of the dark void and back into it, fantastic magic imagination of the
lightning, flash, plays, dreams, not even plays, dreams.


32
'The womb of exuberant fertility,' Ashvhaghosha called it, radiating forms out of its
womb of exuberant emptiness. In emptiness there is no Why, no knowledge of Why, no
ignorance of Why, no asking and no answering of Why, and no significance attached to
this.


33
A disturbed and frightened man is like the golden eternity experimentally pretending at
feeling the disturbed-and-frightened mood; a calm and joyous man, is like the golden
eternity pretending at experimenting with that experience; a man experiencing his
Sentient Being, is like the golden eternity pretending at trying that out too; a man who
has no thoughts, is like the golden eternity pretending at being itself; because the
emptiness of everything has no beginning and no end and at present is infinite.


34
'Love is all in all,' said Sainte Therese, choosing Love for her vocation and pouring out
her happiness, from her garden by the gate, with a gentle smile, pouring roses on the
earth, so that the beggar in the thunderbolt received of the endless offering of her dark
void. Man goes a-beggaring into nothingness. 'Ignorance is the father, Habit-Energy is
the Mother.' Opposites are not the same for the same reason they are the same.


35
The words 'atoms of dust' and 'the great universes' are only words. The idea that they
imply is only an idea. The belief that we live here in this existence, divided into various
beings, passing food in and out of ourselves, and casting off husks of bodies one after
another with no cessation and no definite or particular discrimination, is only an idea.
The seat of our Immortal Intelligence can be seen in that beating light between the
eyes the Wisdom Eye of the ancients: we know what we're doing: we're not disturbed:



because we're like the golden eternity pretending at playing the magic cardgame and
making believe it's real, it's a big dream, a joyous ecstasy of words and ideas and
flesh, an ethereal flower unfolding a folding back, a movie, an exuberant bunch of lines
bounding emptiness, the womb of Avalokitesvara, a vast secret silence, springtime in
the Void, happy young gods talking and drinking on a cloud. Our 32,000 chillicosms
bear all the marks of excellence. Blind milky light fills our night; and the morning is
crystal.

36
Give a gift to your brother, but there's no gift to compare with the giving of assurance
that he is the golden eternity. The true understanding of this would bring tears to your
eyes. The other shore is right here, forgive and forget, protect and reassure. Your
tormenters will be purified. Raise thy diamond hand. Have faith and wait. The course of
your days is a river rumbling over your rocky back. You're sitting at the bottom of the
world with a head of iron. Religion is thy sad heart. You're the golden eternity and it
must be done by you. And means one thing: Nothing-Ever-Happened. This is the
golden eternity.

37
When the Prince of the Kalinga severed the flesh from the limbs and body of Buddha,
even then the Buddha was free from any such ideas as his own self, other self, living
beings divided into many selves, or living beings united and identified into one eternal
self. The golden eternity isnt 'me.' Before you can know that you're dreaming you'll
wake up, Atman. Had the Buddha, the Awakened One, cherished any of these
imaginary judgments of and about things, he would have fallen into impatience and
hatred in his suffering. Instead, like Jesus on the Cross he saw the light and died kind,
loving all living things.

38
The world was spun out of a blade of grass: the world was spun out of a mind. Heaven
was spun out of a blade of grass: heaven was spun out of a mind. Neither will do you
much good, neither will do you much harm. The Oriental imperturbed, is the golden
eternity.

39
He is called a Yogi, his is called a Priest, a Minister, a Brahmin, a Parson, a Chaplain, a
Roshi, a Laoshih, a Master, a Patriarch, a Pope, a Spiritual Commissar, a Counselor,
and Adviser, a Bodhisattva-Mahasattva, an Old Man, a Saint, a Shaman, a Leader, who
thinks nothing of himself as separate from another self, not higher nor lower, no stages
and no definite attainments, no mysterious stigmata or secret holyhood, no wild dark
knowledge and no venerable authoritativeness, nay a giggling sage sweeping out of the
kitchen with a broom. After supper, a silent smoke. Because there is no definite
teaching: the world is undisciplined. Nature endlessly in every direction inward to your
body and outward into space.

40
Meditate outdoors. The dark trees at night are not really the dark trees at night, it's
only the golden eternity.

41
A mosquito as big as Mount Everest is much bigger than you think: a horse's hoof is
more delicate than it looks. An altar consecrated to the golden eternity, filled with


roses and lotuses and diamonds, is the cell of the humble prisoner, the cell so cold and
dreary. Boethius kissed the Robe of the Mother Truth in a Roman dungeon.

42
Do you think the emptiness of the sky will ever crumble away? Every little child knows
that everybody will go to heaven. Knowing that nothing ever happened is not really
knowing that nothing ever happened, it's the golden eternity. In other words, nothing
can compare with telling your brother and your sister that what happened, what is
happening, and what will happen, never really happened, is not really happening and
never will happen, it is only the golden eternity. Nothing was ever born, nothing will
ever die. Indeed, it didnt even happen that you heard about golden eternity through
the accidental reading of this scripture. The thing is easily false. There are no warnings
whatever issuing from the golden eternity: do what you want.

43
Even in dreams be kind, because anyway there is no time, no space, no mind. 'It's all
not-born,' said Bankei of Japan, whose mother heard this from her son did what we call
'died happy.' And even if she had died unhappy, dying unhappy is not really dying
unhappy, it's the golden eternity. It's impossible to exist, it's impossible to be
persecuted, it's impossible to miss your reward.

44
Eight hundred and four thousand myriads of Awakened Ones throughout numberless
swirls of epochs appeared to work hard to save a grain of sand, and it was only the
golden eternity. And their combined reward will be no greater and no lesser than what
will be won by a piece of dried turd. It's a reward beyond thought.

45
When you've understood this scripture, throw it away. If you cant understand this
scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom.

46
O everlasting Eternity, all things and all truth laws are no- things, in three ways, which
is the same way: AS THINGS OF TIME they dont exist because there is no furthest
atom than can be found or weighed or grasped, it is emptiness through and through,
matter and empty space too. AS THINGS OF MIND they dont exist, because the mind
that conceives and makes them out does so by seeing, hearing touching, smelling,
tasting, and mentally-noticing and without this mind they would not be seen or heard
or felt or smelled or tasted or mentally-noticed, they are discriminated that which
they're not necessarily by imaginary judgments of the mind, they are actually
dependent on the mind that makes them out, by themselves they are no-things, they
are really mental, seen only of the mind, they are really empty visions of the mind,
heaven is a vision, everything is a vision. What does it mean that I am in this endless
universe thinking I'm a man sitting under the stars on the terrace of earth, but actually
empty and awake throughout the emptiness and awakedness of everything? It means
that I am empty and awake, knowing that I am empty and awake, and that there's no
difference between me and anything else. It means that I have attained to that which
everything is.

47
The-Attainer-To-That-Which-Everything-Is, the Sanskrit Tathagata, has no ideas
whatever but abides in essence identically with the essence of all things, which is what


it is, in emptiness and silence. Imaginary meaning stretched to make mountains and as
far as the germ is concerned it stretched even further to make molehills. A million souls
dropped through hell but nobody saw them or counted them. A lot of large people isnt
really a lot of large people, it's only the golden eternity. When St. Francis went to
heaven he did not add to heaven nor detract from earth. Locate silence, possess space,
spot me the ego. 'From the beginning,' said the Sixth Patriarch of the China School,
'not a thing is.'

48
He who loves all life with his pity and intelligence isnt really he who loves all life with
his pity and intelligence, it's only natural. The universe is fully known because it is
ignored. Enlightenment comes when you dont care. This is a good tree stump I'm
sitting on. You cant even grasp your own pain let alone your eternal reward. I love you
because you're me. I love you because there's nothing else to do. It's just the natural
golden eternity.

49
What does it mean that those trees and mountains are magic and unreal?- It means
that those trees and mountains are magic and unreal. What does it mean that those
trees and mountains are not magic but real?- it means that those trees and mountains
are not magic but real. Men are just making imaginary judgments both ways, and all
the time it's just the same natural golden eternity.

50
If the golden eternity was anything other than mere words, you could not have said
'golden eternity.' This means that the words are used to point at the endless
nothingness of reality. If the endless nothingness of reality was anything other than
mere words, you could not have said 'endless nothingness of reality,' you could not
have said it. This means that the golden eternity is out of our word-reach, it refuses
steadfastly to be described, it runs away from us and leads us in. The name is not
really the name. The same way, you could not have said 'this world' if this world was
anything other than mere words. There's nothing there but just that. They've long
known that there's nothing to life but just the living of it. It Is What It Is and That's All
It Is.

51
There's no system of teaching and no reward for teaching the golden eternity, because
nothing has happened. In the golden eternity teaching and reward havent even
vanished let alone appeared. The golden eternity doesnt even have to be perfect. It is
very silly of me to talk about it. I talk about it simply because here I am dreaming that
I talk about it in a dream already ended, ages ago, from which I'm already awake, and
it was only an empty dreaming, in fact nothing whatever, in fact nothing ever
happened at all. The beauty of attaining the golden eternity is that nothing will be
acquired, at last.

52
Kindness and sympathy, understanding and encouragement, these give: they are
better than just presents and gifts: no reason in the world why not. Anyhow, be nice.
Remember the golden eternity is yourself. 'If someone will simply practice kindness,'
said Gotama to Subhuti, 'he will soon attain highest perfect wisdom.' Then he added:
'Kindness after all is only a word and it should be done on the spot without thought of
kindness.' By practicing kindness all over with everyone you will soon come into the


holy trance, infinite distinctions of personalities will become what they really
mysteriously are, our common and eternal blissstuff, the pureness of everything
forever, the great bright essence of mind, even and one thing everywhere the holy
eternal milky love, the white light everywhere everything, emptybliss, svaha, shining,
ready, and awake, the compassion in the sound of silence, the swarming myriad
trillionaire you are.


53
Everything's alright, form is emptiness and emptiness is form, and we're here forever,
in one form or another, which is empty. Everything's alright, we're not here, there, or
anywhere. Everything's alright, cats sleep.


54
The everlasting and tranquil essence, look around and see the smiling essence
everywhere. How wily was the world made, Maya, not-even-made.


55
There's the world in the daylight. If it was completely dark you wouldnt see it but it
would still be there. If you close your eyes you really see what it's like: mysterious
particle-swarming emptiness. On the moon big mosquitos of straw know this in the
kindness of their hearts. Truly speaking, unrecognizably sweet it all is. Don't worry
about nothing.


56
Imaginary judgments about things, in the Nothing-Ever-Happened wonderful void, you
dont even have to reject them, let alone accept them. 'That looks like a tree, let's call it
a tree,' said Coyote to Earthmaker at the beginning, and they walked around the
rootdrinker patting their bellies.


57
Perfectly selfless, the beauty of it, the butterfly doesnt take it as a personal
achievement, he just disappears through the trees. You too, kind and humble and
not-even-here, it wasnt in a greedy mood that you saw the light that belongs to
everybody.


58
Look at your little finger, the emptiness of it is no different than the emptiness of
infinity.


59
Cats yawn because they realize that there's nothing to do.


60
Up in heaven you wont remember all these tricks of yours. You wont even sigh 'Why?'
Whether as atomic dust or as great cities, what's the difference in all this stuff. A tree
is still only a rootdrinker. The puma's twisted face continues to look at the blue sky
with sightless eyes, Ah sweet divine and indescribable verdurous paradise planted in
mid-air! Caitanya, it's only consciousness. Not with thoughts of your mind, but in the
believing sweetness of your heart, you snap the link and open the golden door and
disappear into the bright room, the everlasting ecstasy, eternal Now. Soldier, follow
me! - there never was a war. Arjuna, dont fight! - why fight over nothing? Bless and sit
down.



61
I remember that I'm supposed to be a man and consciousness and I focus my eyes and
the print reappears and the words of the poor book are saying, 'The world, as God has
made it' and there are no words in my pitying heart to express the knowless loveliness
of the trance there was before I read those words, I had no such idea that there was a
world.

62
This world has no marks, signs, or evidence of existence, nor the noises in it, like
accident of wind or voices or heehawing animals, yet listen closely the eternal hush of
silence goes on and on throughout all this, and has been gong on, and will go on and
on. This is because the world is nothing but a dream and is just thought of and the
everlasting eternity pays no attention to it. At night under the moon, or in a quiet
room, hush now, the secret music of the Unborn goes on and on, beyond conception,
awake beyond existence. Properly speaking, awake is not really awake because the
golden eternity never went to sleep; you can tell by the constant sound of Silence
which cuts through this world like a magic diamond through the trick of your not
realizing that your mind caused the world.

63
The God of the American Plateau Indian was Coyote. He says: 'Earth! those beings
living on your surface, none of them disappearing, will all be transformed. When I have
spoken to them, when they have spoken to me, from that moment on, their words and
their bodies which they usually use to move about with, will all change. I will not have
heard them.'

64
I was smelling flowers in the yard, and when I stood up I took a deep breath and the
blood all rushed to my brain and I woke up dead on my back in the grass. I had
apparently fainted, or died, for about sixty seconds. My neighbor saw me but he
thought I had just suddenly thrown myself on the grass to enjoy the sun. During that
timeless moment of unconsciousness I saw the golden eternity. I saw heaven. In it
nothing had ever happened, the events of a million years ago were just as phantom
and ungraspable as the events of now, or the events of the next ten minutes. It was
perfect, the golden solitude, the golden emptiness, Something-Or- Other, something
surely humble. There was a rapturous ring of silence abiding perfectly. There was no
question of being alive or not being alive, of likes and dislikes, of near or far, no
question of giving or gratitude, no question of mercy or judgment, or of suffering or its
opposite or anything. It was the womb itself, aloneness, alaya vijnana the universal
store, the Great Free Treasure, the Great Victory, infinite completion, the joyful
mysterious essence of Arrangement. It seemed like one smiling smile, one adorable
adoration, one gracious and adorable charity, everlasting safety, refreshing afternoon,
roses, infinite brilliant immaterial gold ash, the Golden Age. The 'golden' came from the
sun in my eyelids, and the 'eternity' from my sudden instant realization as I woke up
that I had just been where it all came from and where it was all returning, the
everlasting So, and so never coming or going; therefore I call it the golden eternity but
you can call it anything you want. As I regained consciousness I felt so sorry I had a
body and a mind suddenly realizing I didn't even have a body and a mind and nothing
had ever happened and everything is alright forever and forever and forever, O thank
you thank you thank you.


65
This is the first teaching from the golden eternity.


66
The second teaching from the golden eternity is that there never was a first teaching
from the golden eternity. So be sure.

One Flower

One flower

on the cliffside
Nodding at the canyon