Advaita ad libitum

"the unreality of Birkin, Inspector of Schools, who sees the world as a book he isn't writing"

According to the latest avatar
Of universal knowledge, sanskrit sage
Adi Shankara was falsely accused

Of teaching a version of Buddhism
In the guise of Vedic Hinduism,
As his espousal of advaita

Could be confused with Buddhist emptiness,
When more truly his Atman was full up
With Brahman, never empty anywhere.

I chase advaita around the Web,
Unsure of whether I am the spider
Or the gracehoper or the struggling fly.

I find there's a guy, a guru sort of,
In, of course, Sedona, called Nirmala,
Who is fond of quoting himself, to wit:

"I often say, the truth is whatever
Opens your Heart and quiets your mind." Ah.
Somewhere the dour shade of Karl Marx chuckles.

Even he would not have gone quite so far
As to define, not only religion,
But truth itself in terms of opiates.

I cast my mind over hospital beds
In which I felt, singularly, not one
With everything else, but floating, detached,

My heart wide open, my mind so quiet
Every pin drop was a noisy insight,
And opiate memories remind me

Of that other, recent floating, the lake
In which I swim whenever the weather,
My child, my spouse, and circumstance allow:

Another, presumably healthier,
Form of floating awareness, a mind full
Of deep, cold water, green in northern light.

There swims my sometimes oneness, weirdly real,
Weirdly unreal, where awareness meets a
Kindly wall. I am that; advaita.