Tendrils of Mind

Dorothy S. Hunt*

No matter how many words

arise in your mind,

or how many places

its musings travel;

No matter how many

thoughts or opinions it clings to,

how many attachments

to how many stories;

No matter how many shoots

called projections or memories,

or how many judgments

it imagines are true,

There is one single tendril

wound round all the others,

the must be unwound

if you want to be free;

The last one to drop

is the one you most cherish,

the one that insists

its productions are real;

The tendril that causes

all of your suffering?

The one that holds tightly

to a thought called "me".

*Founder of the San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy, and Spiritual Director and President of Moon Mountain Sangha, Inc., a California non-profit religious corporation.