Saturday, July 26, 2014

any day -- now -- will be released


I would like to thank law enforcement for their attempts in history to preserve law and protect people. It saddens me that there has been a drift toward militarization and partisan violence by police throughout nation.
Pulled by our own attachments, we are always chasing phantoms. Terrified, we run away from monsters created from our own aversions. So long as perception is distorted, we are unable to see the true nature of what is in front of us nothing but an ever-changing collection of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and thoughts or concepts. 
(--Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “Like a Mirage”)
I also wish to thank the Armed Forces for their part in protecting the nation and preserving freedoms at home and abroad.
It saddens that you have been used to further the ends of select groups and particular and peculiar ideologies over time.
If you start concentrating the mind on stillness,
You will merely produce an unreal stillness.
What does the word "meditation" mean?
In this school it means no barriers, no obstacles;
It is beyond all objective situations
Whether good or bad.
The word "sitting" means
Not to stir up thoughts in the mind.
-- Hui-neng (d.713)
Finally, thank you to those you’ve chosen to be public servants in Senate or House or Supreme Court -- following the intent to guide and assure fairness and justice for all peoples.
It saddens that greed, ignorance, and narrow minded pettiness has made the workings of these bodies ludicrous and lopsided, with little real debate toward real and meaningful inclusive change.
Gaston Bachelard writes:
In poetry, wonder is coupled with the joy of speech… The poetic image is in no way comparable, as with the mode of the common metaphor, to a valve which would open up to release pent-up instincts. The poetic image sheds light on consciousness in such a way that it is pointless to look for subconscious antecedents of the image… Poetry is one of the destinies of speech. In trying to sharpen the awareness of language at the level of poems, we get the impression that we are touching the man whose speech is new in that it is not limited to expressing ideas or sensations, but tries to have a future. One would say that poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.

(--Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962)  in his 1960 treatise The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos published in English seven years after his death)
Perhaps we will soon learn to speak.  Speak creative realization of inherant worth. Arising spirit of cooperative compassion.
It gives joy to imagine what would occur if we ever began to think.

Began to feel.

Began to begin the movement to being human.

Friday, July 25, 2014

how there is out there


There wasn’t enough room.

So he opened the door.

Stepping outside --

The sky.

Thursday, July 24, 2014

setting out in rain; coming back to where we've never left


Planes fall from sky. It is, they say, war.

Soon there will be no need for planes or war.

Real devotion only arises when you have a glimpse of emptiness, some glimpse of the nature of mind. Once you have some very precise insight as to how emptiness helps to alleviate suffering, then devotion is based on a real, embodied experience.  (--Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche, "Keys to Happiness")

There will be nowhere to go because everyone will be there already.

Not in imagination, really there. We will come to embody physicality. 

Touch the ground. Breath the sky. See distance in locality. Remember things as yet unhappened. Forgive things that never happened.

We are lovers like that, and besides, it was never a question of being right or wrong.

It is, however, all right, all along, for each and all.


For each is all in each.

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

and with (you are) spirit


Let's see if I have this right -- if I don't do the thinking, where does the thinking come from?

Are you going to tell me that no one is doing the thinking? That things just "feel" themselves into our minds and then we become conduit for expression of what is felt into words?

Ha!

Next you'll be telling me that the stories we tell ourselves about our lives are illusory fabrications and silly excuses for something not yet known.

You'll have to forgive me -- I have little patience for the false -- mine or yours.

We are each situation.

Each circumstance.

The unfolding present.

That's why the successful pretend and control and puff themselves with power, money, and position.

Meanwhile, we fools, feeling the world into existence with eager emergence, are surrounded by what is coming to be actually coming to be beyond our understanding.

Listen!

That silence?

Is prayer...

Coming to be, through us.


Tuesday, July 22, 2014

hunger for seeing; naked infinite love


Bodhidharma (6th c.CE) was looking for a non-deluded person. 

Ikkyu obliged.

The Haiga Pages

The Haiku and Poems of
Ikkyu Sojun/Ikkyuu Soojun (1394-1481)

 

A melancholy autumn wind 
Blows through the world; 
The pampas grass waves, 
As we drift to the moor, 
Drift to the sea.

What can be done 
With the mind of a man 
That should be clear 
But though he is dressed up in a monk’s robe, 
Just lets life pass him by?

Why do people 
Lavish decorations 
On this set of bones 
Destined to disappear 
Without a trace?

No one really knows 
The nature of birth 
Nor the true dwelling place. 
We return to the source 
And turn to dust.

Many paths lead
from the foot of the mountain, 
But at the peak 
We all gaze at the 
Single bright moon.

If at the end of our journey 
There is no final 
Resting place, 
Then we need not fear 
Losing our Way.

No beginning, 
No end. 
Our mind 
is born and dies: 
The emptiness of emptiness!

Rain, hail, snow and ice: 
All are different, 
But when they fall 
They become the same water 
As the valley stream.

The ways of proclaiming 
The Mind vary, 
But the same heavenly truth 
Can be seen 
In each and every one.

Cover your path 
With the fallen pine needles 
So no one will be able 
To locate your 
True dwelling place.

As Ikkyu does not think of his body
As if it were his body,
He lives in the same place,
Whether it is town or country.

This world 
Is but 
A fleeting dream 
So why by alarmed 
At its evanescence?

The vagaries of life, 
Though painful 
Teach us 
Not to cling 
To this floating world.

If you break open the cherry tree,
Where are the flowers?
But in the spring time, see how they bloom!

To write something and leave it behind us,
It is but a dream.
When we awake we know
There is not even anyone to read it.

Look at the cherry blossoms!
Their color and scent fall with them,
Are gone forever,
Yet mindless
The spring comes again.

why is it all so beautiful this fake dream
this craziness why?

this ink painting of wind 
blowing through pines
who hears it?

oh yes things exist like the echo when you yell
at the foot of a huge mountain

sin like a madman until you can't do anything else
no room for any more

fuck flattery success money
all I do is lie back and suck my thumb

one long pure beautiful road of pain
and the beauty of death and no pain

mirror facing mirror
nowhere else

sick of it whatever it's called sick of the names
I dedicate every pore to what's here

a well nobody dug filled with no water
ripples and a shapeless weightless man drinks

oh green green willow wonderfully red flower
but I know the colors are not there

the mind is exactly this tree that grass
without thought or feeling both disappear

not two not one either
and the unpainted breeze in the ink painting feels cool

Ikkyu this body isn't yours I say to myself
wherever I am I'm there

nature's a killer I won't sing to it
I hold my breath and listen to the dead singing under the grass

suddenly nothing but grief
so I put on my father's old ripped raincoat

when I was forty-seven everybody came to see me
so I walked out forever

my monk friend has a weird endearing habit
he weaves sandals and leaves them secretly by the roadside

even before trees rocks I was nothing
when I'm dead nowhere I'll be nothing

no nothing only those wintry crows
bright black in the sun

if there's nowhere to rest at the end
how can I get lost along the way?

that stone Buddha deserves all the birdshit it gets
I wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind

no words sitting alone night in my hut eyes closed hands open
wisps of an unknown face

the wise know nothing at all
well maybe one song

melons eggplants rice rivers the sky
I offer them to you on this holiday

go down on your silly knees pray
for what? tomorrow is yesterday

I found my sparrow Sonrin dead one morning
and buried him just as gently as I would my own daughter

I hate it I know it's nothing but I 
suck out the world's sweet juicy plum

you stand inside me naked infinite love
the dawn bell rips my dreaming heart

When it blows,
The mountain wind is boisterous,
But when it blows not,
It simply blows not.

Dimly for thirty years;
Faintly for thirty years, -
Dinly and faintly for sixty years:
At my death, I pass my faeces and offer them to Brahma.

a comprehensive list of Ikkyu publications, links and resources is available here

 The German shepherd gentle large goofy dog who lives with us could teach Ikkyu a thing or two about leaving faeces right in the middle of hiking trails.

 I'll go rowing now, then, later, pay a man $1400 dollars to poke and prod my mouth with needle and scraper and drill. 

I don't know.

“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.”
— Albert Einstein


I happen on website for Eternea:

The Seven Cornerstone Postulates

These postulates are predicated on contemporary research findings from frontier science in its investigatation of spiritually transformative experiences and non-local manifestations of consciousness, as well as the timeless wisdom from the core pillar teachings of the world's greatest spiritual teachers and major religions.

Indicators of Eternea's Success

Eternea's ongoing research efforts are intended to test, challenge and potentially reinforce the validity of these seven cornerstone postulates. To the extent Eternea succeeds in establishing the veracity of these postulates through the research efforts of frontier science, Eternea will be further empowered to inspire people all over the world to accept them as personal truths or convictions, which in turn would then lead to major changes in individual perceptions of reality, hence values, attitudes and behavior. The degree to which Eternea succeeds in in efforts to educate humanity about these postulates and accept them as true should result in a direct decrease in the following:

  • War and violence
  • Hunger and malnutrition
  • Poverty and despair
  • Illiteracy and ignorance
  • Environmental degradation
  • Gender and racial inequality
  • Human and animal abuse
  • Religious conflict and divisiveness
  • Political oppression
  • Greed and exploitation of others
  • Substance abuse and addiction
  • Suicide & clinical depression

 

Monday, July 21, 2014

yes, do enter here


The inmate suggested we read D.G Leahy. We will.

We will learn more about thinking.

Maybe we do not yet think. Perhaps things think us.

CONSECRATED 
All has been consecrated. 
The creatures in the forest know this, 
The earth does, the seas do, the clouds know 
as does the heart full of 
love. 
Strange a priest would rob us of this 
knowledge 
and then empower himself 
with the ability 
to make holy what 
already was 
(--Poem by St Catherine of Siena, from ‘Love Poems From God’ by Daniel Ladinsky. )
What I love about holiness is the suggestion we are not holy. Rather, what is holy finds its way through us with our permission.

We have so many tutors. 

Sunday, July 20, 2014

come apart and rest awhile


Big dog comes into room and lies down.

Something about down the hall some red and green lights spooking him around his mistress.

Fear is one more thing to let go.