Jared Ideta Lee

JARED IDETA LEE draws inspiration from the most unlikely of sources. From the quirky black-and-white messages on Cartoon Network’sAdult Swim to the forms of Japanese poetry, Lee weaves pop culture into intense paradoxes of Buddhist thought. What is really meaningful? What is trivial?

He is also fascinated by things like rituals without meaning and forms without function. Read on and you may discover stuff about Godzilla that you never considered before.

Waiting For Weightlessness

There once was an utter silence, an instant of time. In that instant there was thought. Through thought birthed the waiting. In that instant of waiting the moment was born. A moment governed only by time. This moment of thought wiped the dust from innumerable lives as it labored to achieve symphonic living. This moment of thought thought of gift giving, a virtue of the most supreme. This moment of thought thought of the life and of the earth and the lingering amidst blue skies. This thought thought it was an end to strife as it saw itself as the beginning, the haven for the presence of indestructible lives.

Would Cold Mountain crumble under the weight of waves while its jagged cliff faced the ocean? Do the silt deposits of a lifetime accumulate to anything? In this life, where is the land? Where must the fruit of embodied beings make their stand against the tests of time?

In an instant,
There was sound
Thoughts innumerable and thoughts alike combined and intertwined,
Mind that this was a most indescribable place,
Weeping Forest, Melodious Melilotus

Within these walls and silent inner halls
The moment grew into fruition
And from the endless potential space came the passage without pace
Limitless was its references, directionless was its state

Time? What is time? There is no time! Life Indestructible!
Death? What is death when there is birthlessness. Life Indestructible!
Truth? Perceive the proof. Life is indestructible yet contained in an instant.

Moments have passed by in single-mindedness
And words have accumulated by single-minded moments

“Who are we if the world knows not who we are?”
Said the thought that was slow to awake
Said the thought that was slow to rouse

From action perceive the duty of detachment
In discipline perceive the action detachment from the fruit of words
And from the moments of inner silence
And through the thoughts of thoughtlessness will arise
The journey seldom heard

Tumultuous Sight
Echoing winds from afar
Trades, tides, waves subside

Once upon a mirror there was such a vision that beheld a most tumultuous fright. It was able to express the myriad of thoughts through mere refraction of light. An existence, a realm of lost and sometimes sleepless wandering where words lack expression as the picture induced a thousand and one impressions. Stumbling upon the befuddling deep trance, a bodhisattva’s only thoughts within this earthly embodiment fused into two words, “Oh! Brother.”

Innumerable
Breaths taken, lost amidst thought
How many are left?

He declared it; he would swear by it, “The Realm of the One Mind persists! It bounds and leaps about as it was as obvious as the elusive. Fused into water as an instantaneous instant, this mirror of mine leaves me sincere though I long for serenity. The myriad passes before me without a single word of praise. Had I called it the purge of darkness I would awaken to morning’s light! Had I assumed that it was potentiality that formed my thoughts, sure of its single-mindedness, I would drown amidst the identity diffusion of manifested emergence.”

Darkness! Fade away
Shallow pool of reflection
Vast ocean fortune

The compressed, compacted, single, focused spot grew past proportion. It darkened the skies and extended into the fringes. Yet amidst the all consuming, ultimate manifested mindlessness was the nakedness of thought. Pure as the realized potential, it blanketed the profoundness and gave it life.

Here, on top this rock
Lost amongst and amidst thought
Constant seaward stare

When were we displaced? The temporal had no time, the spatial had no space and where oh where was the wedding to take place? Had there been a choice left, I would choose no other than that of an illusion, never looking back. Or was it that I had always faced the past as I saw no other way forward?

Having perceived the present as past
Serving, acknowledging, reflecting
There is only the presence
And from the convergence of rapid waters
I emerge as the divergence

Godzilla

Blood runs, he was forgotten Just like that dream

You forgot when you woke up
He’d remember, it was you who gave up

Blood caved in, surrounded by sin
his reflection was his own introspection

he was a monster

Blood drowned in a river
It was you who flowed through his mind

Like the wailing of a newborn strength
Such were the echoes of ricochet wit

He ran with the river far from sight
Laid low out of exhaustion,

time gave up

Admist the Sea of Ceremony

A Bodhisattva Barbarian hums a single note melody
To the tune his mother once sang
To sooth her sweet son who slept

Amidst the sea of thought

Rambling curses and sloppy spittle
Falls from his face

The sickness had kept him awake
Conceived by ceaseless anxiety
He sits alone in the dark

Amidst the sea of thought

He could not pronounce his own name
Vain was his life of libation

Lonely was his heart’s frustration
Worldly was his obligation to education
Everyday he had awaited her return

Though she lay amidst the sea of thought

Forever Dawn Podium

Road Voyagers collect their songs most meticulously
Freedom fleeting in a vehicle of vanishing sight
Recognizing a familiar song…left in a turmoil
Expression! Where does the great sayer go?

Say by blinding florescent lights this life can be transformed
Where oil is the fuel of an ego soul
Spent and sent away so many moonlit nights ago
The perpetual in motion, an individual’s reality speeds away
And we ask…does this conditional truly seek an end?

Transmission in choice
Gear grinding word binding poetic relief
And belief redlined manipulation marring purring expression

Children of the light
Forevermore they say
Those who touch the flame shall never spoil
Flame consumes

But this ego soul cannot be separated from the light
The fire which burns, within, shall forever ignite the tender, within

We are children of the light
Carnation’s incarnations…knighted multitudes
In cultivation of spectrums we are whole
We speak of liberation and the oneness of peace
Just a piece of serenity sounding in meaningful existence

Separated we strive and struggle
This be proof, an existence beyond mere existence

We are children of the light
We have cause to emanate
The five senses served as our temporary abode
Adorned with courage the will will provide

We are children
We are her poems
We are her light

…words within a flash of thought

And in between dreams there is reality
A voice by which I animate this body
With these words I give the voice its meaning
But it is not my spirit, it is not my soul

You judge reality as the present?
Whence dreams fade in the wake of waking?
Where the body moves but there is no sounding of metaphors?
This world that you call the present does not need these words

Then truly life exists before words

Body shivering
Awakened in between states
I am gravity
I magnetize with pure weight
Neither egg nor animal

There is thought
River flowing

These words are ripples
Such is not the essence
That is the belief in sight

Perhaps it was in the hearing
Feeling without words…the internal
Which manifests into perfection…sight?

Empty ache
Brief brevity wake
A slow witted mind meets with your eyes

Through far focused lens
I preconceived, categorized, and internalized
Intending never to look again

Enslaved through dependency
I accept the I of internalized eyes’ sight
Acculturating the normality of accepted world view

It separates me from you!

I thought my mind should be locked away
And here! There you are!
Walking amid endless daylight

Oh dormancy! How she shook and broke these chains
Casting off fears
Of a life lived forever, localized, in my self-sufficiency
Of my functionless form, isolated and absolutely emancipated

From this breath till every breath thereafter
I shall lift this practice of breathing

Awaken and walking amongst the living
Please give me your name
Turn around and see me
See how I strive to meet with your stride

Unless it is gazed upon through a lens, the great social and cultural achievements of our collective past remain a formless memory. For in formlessness, the mind would serve no higher function as it would remain isolated and absolutely emancipated (perspective). Said mind would not be able to perceive sight as it would lack ontological structuring and the basic ability to categorize thought (status ambiguity of self). Unable to sectionalize thought from thinking, this mind would not be able to express itself as it would not be able to perceive a self. Thus, such a mind would be perpetually conditional as its state would be dependent upon absolutes (flashbulb localization identity). It is inevitable then, that we must express ourselves through metaphors. Segregate the thoughts from thought and we have thinking, thinking from perception and thus form individuality. Must personal advancement be defined through self-determination?