Great Pond Sangha

03/24/2026

https://open.substack.com/pub/writeyourselffree/p/microdosing-beauty-a-poem-for-your?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email

REMINDER: "WRITE YOURSELF FREE" CLASS THIS EVENING (3/24/26), ZOOM LINK INCLUDED

12/03/2025

Jane Kenyon, “Otherwise,” from Collected Poems.

I got out of bed
on two strong legs.
It might have been
otherwise. I ate
cereal, sweet
milk, ripe, flawless
peach. It might
have been otherwise.
I took the dog uphill
to the birch wood.
All morning I did
the work I love.
At noon I lay down
with my mate. It might
have been otherwise.
We ate dinner together
at a table with silver
candlesticks. It might
have been otherwise.
I slept in a bed
in a room with paintings
on the walls, and
planned another day
just like this day.
But one day, I know,
it will be otherwise.

08/03/2025

We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.
The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.
I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
inside love there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.
The universe is shot through in all parts
by a single sort of love.

Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
(Kabir, translated by Robert Bly)

04/01/2025

“As Buddhists, we are called upon to witness, respond to, and resist the ongoing systematic destruction of norms and institutions that allow free societies to flourish,” the Buddhist Coalition for Democracy’s Call to Action reads.

04/01/2025

A new poem for you, by Alison Luterman

At Albany Bulb with Elaine

Side by side on a log by the bay.
Sunlight. Unleashed dogs,
prancing through surf, almost exploding
out of their skins with perfect happiness.
Dogs who don't know about fired park rangers,
or canceled health research, or tariff wars,
or the su***de hotline for veterans getting defunded,
or or or. We've listed horror upon horror
to each other for weeks now, and it does no good,
so instead I tell her how I held a two-day old baby
in my arms, inhaling him like a fresh-baked loaf of bread,
then watched as a sneeze erupted through his body
like a tiny volcano. It was the look of pure
astonishment on his face, as if he were Adam
in the garden of Eden making his debut achoo,
as if it were the first sneeze that ever blew,
that got me. She tells me how her dog
once farted so loudly he startled himself
and fell off the bed where he'd been lolling,
and then the two of us start to laugh so hard
we almost fall off our own log. And this
is our resistance for today; remembering
original innocence. And they can't
take it away from us, though they ban
our very existence, though they slash
our rights to ribbons, we will have
our mirth and our birthright gladness.
Long after every unsold Tesla
has vaporized, and earth has closed over
even the names of these temporary tyrants,
somewhere some women like us
will be sitting side by side, facing the water,
telling human stories and laughing still.

--Alison Luterman

02/15/2025

https://psychedelicbuddhism.org/

A Gathering for Evolving Practice and Connecting Community