The Tao that can be told (we are told) is not the actual Tao. The God that can be told is not actually God. And the dharma that can be told is not the dharma. This is an underlying truth of the wisdom teachings of Buddhism, which builds in sufficient paradox to antidote our tireless (and tiresome) tendency to literalize. God, the dharma, the Tao is (See the word “is”? Look out for it) just that which cannot be captured or reduced to any of the mental or linguistic structures—however subtle or grand—through which we perceive and create the world. And in contemporary physics, even our science has been relieved of its literalness. The universe is not literal.
Literalism presumes to hand us the “real” as it is. We seem to want our spiritual, metaphysical, scientific, and religious doctrines or formulations, even when subtle, to assume the mantle and “dignity” of being literal. But there is not anything that is literally real. God is not literal, and as all of creation is not literal, God is clearly not a literalist. Whereas, that God is a poet is evident everywhere. The poetry honors the space in which we allow “the real” to continually evolve and manifest out of our reciprocal and uncalculated relationship to it. It is what blessedly allows for life, love, paradox and play, and freedom.
Moonlight is playing against the old rail fence. We only see the fence by its being illuminated. And we only see the light by what it illuminates, including our own retinas. What light is, and what the fence is, we will never know. But this occasion to sing in the moonlight is the dharma as poetry.