(Un)Becoming-In-Time

The following introductory note is minimal;

this is a conscious choice: art, including poetry as philosophy, does not belong to the author; but is an open invitation to the audience/readers to unpack and repack meaning for themselves from whatever light or dense textures of concepts and intertextualities can be gleamed.

The haiku cycle (Un)Becoming-In-Time follows the traditional threefold arrangement of a central theme in Buddhist philosophy: Impermanence, flux, and continuity without identity (the Buddhist paradox of rebirth without a Self); this theme can often be found expressed through the cyclic experiential categories of the arising, abiding, and ceasing of phenomena and persons or, in terms of social philosophy, of our belongings and subjectivities.

Arising weds becoming-in-time (the Heideggerian Dasein as a Buddhist Dawerden) into an authentic individuation beyond dualistic concepts with the lived experience of non-binary transness. 

Abiding focusses on a simple response to the experience of dis-ease (the Buddhist dukkha) throughout being-in-time: the Bodhisattva-vow, an enduring and recurring aspiration to altruism (Promise to be kind!) 

Ceasing acknowledges unbecoming-in-time as letting go in the light of despair and its ending. 

Bee Scherer (Amsterdam, summer 2023)

I 

Arising

Piercing through the cold

Fertile ambiguity

Pushes beyond as

The messengers of 

Crossroads conquer the rigid

Heaps of toxic ice

Throbbing sky ripples 

Out through frozen name and form

Empty life awakes

Listen to the pulse

Of the neither-nor both-and

Non-dual measure

II

Abiding

Shades adrift appear 

Walls of pain no hope no fear

Promise to be kind

Lost in clouds astride 

Between sky and ground abide   

Promise to be kind

In the droning night 

Empty sound trembling and quiet

Promise to be kind

Breaths adrift appear

Aimlessly no hope no fear  

Promise to be kind 

III

Ceasing

In the chokehold void

Warmth is gasping while the moon’s

Haze entombs the sun

Dying gods flash as

Falling leaves cooler nights' gates 

Welcome our failures

The Great Seal shatters 

Me Not Me flickers across

Corals of light on 

Mountains of Rubies

Home-void-bound nothing to show

Closed lotuses dream