Laughing Buddha Weeping Sufi / Poems

“Excess of sorrow laughs. Excess of joy weeps.”(William Blake) A cooly impassioned, and “pathward” adventurous series of poems joining two modes of enlightenment, Buddhist and Sufi, that may in many ways be parallel—from my sitting with saintly Shunryu Suzuki of the San Francisco Zen Center in the early 60s, and my blessed time with Qutb Shaykh ibn al-Habib of Fez in Meknes, Morocco, in the 1970s, may Allah be pleased with both of them. Are the two protagonists of these poems the main characters in Waiting for Godot, now no longer waiting, but there? Exalted humor lightens our spiritual endeavors.