Tantric Evolution

Amid obscuration, practice uncovers pure ground.
Amid recognition, the practice a spontaneous display.

Before we see, we are deity forgetting our nature.
After we see, phenomenal forms: the deity's game.

The performance of the ritual and the deity invoked,
Here, subject and object: an indivisible awareness.

Confidence dawns; I assume the form to remember.
Recognition deepens; the face and mask are not two.

Before knowing: samaya; a vow guarded with vigilance.
After knowing: the uncontrived integrity of awareness.

Action without strain; no claimant to have authored.
Mudra, mantra, visualization arise; yet who acts?

A seeing practitioner engages, as if, bound by rules,
while abiding in the certainty of absolute freedom.

No tension between effort and effortlessness;
preparation, execution, dissolution: one taste.

Realization matures into unerring conduct.
Ritual fully alive, fully free; its emptiness seen.

Awareness displays: concealment and revealment.
The fire burns bright; a smirk gives way to laughter.

I wink at the dakini and she winks back blushing.
Still, silent, yet aroused: neither has batted an eye.

Like a lover who, after a long exile, finally beholds her beloved and is lifted into motion before thought can intervene, rushing to embrace the companion whom she has loved in the innermost chambers of her heart, so too the soul rises on wings of yearning and delight, hastening toward reunion with the One, her eternal Sun.

Spleen et Idéal. Carlos Schwabe, Symbolist, 1907.