rigpa* (the word)

Time nears.

When it arrives we’ll know what we need to know.

Like the dwelling place of silence.

Where no one ever has to explain anything.

Where it doesn’t matter what we think.

Only the sound of breath.

Ground.

*  Rigpa is a Tibetan word, which in general means ‘intelligence’ or ‘awareness’. In Dzogchen, however, the highest teachings in the Buddhist tradition of Tibet, rigpa has a deeper connotation, ‘the innermost nature of the mind’. The whole of the teaching of Buddha is directed towards realizing this, our ultimate nature, the state of omniscience or enlightenment—a truth so universal, so primordial that it goes beyond all limits, and beyond even religion itself.Rigpa (Skt. vidyā; Tib. རིག་པ་, Wyl. rig pa);  Added: 02.Oct.2011 | Rigpa Shedra: An Online Encyclopedia of Tibetan Buddhism

minutes, 14Apr2016, class #11

Theme, The light between: versions and margins

• 3 mins (between)
• gathering thoughts for discussion of what disturbs
• Between the World and Us: Hannah Arendt on Outsiderdom, the Power and Privilege of Being a Pariah, and How We Humanize Each Other “(--in Brain Pickings, by Maria Popova)
• John Dewey’s Pragmatism
• discussion of the varieties of education -- how margins and versions compete for attention and portray vital differences
• versions: Two Translations of a Poem from the Old Irish Pangur Bán
• margins: Billy Collins Reads His Poem “Marginalia”
• finding our way through beginning, middle, end: Billy Collins Reads His Homage to Aristotle
• Elie Wiesel: "Man defines himself by what disturbs him and not by what reassures him. When will you understand that you are living and searching in error, because God means movement and not explanation.” (p.93, in Legends of our Time, by Elie Wiesel, c.1968) https://books.google.com/booksid=JWsFb07rIScC&pg=PA93&dq=god+means+movement+not+explanation.+elie+wiesel&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjAiOvn1pHMAhVKeT4KHZkoDuAQ6AEIJzAC#v=onepage&q=god%20means%20movement%20not%20explanation.%20elie%20wiesel&f=false
• examples of difficult education
  • Chukotka's struggle in Russia's Far East  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q-tjnUhhMUE
  • Faroe Islands, a self-governing archipelago in the North Atlantic, part of the Kingdom of Denmark The Grind: Whaling in the Faroe Islands (Full Length ...
  • Documentary, Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom trailer, the matter of perspective
  • • The Heartbreaking Irony of ‘Winter on Fire’ The Nation Magazine story version.

• so much depends on how we receive and see things. cf. Quidquid recipitur secundum modum recipientis recipitur. (--Thomas Aquinas)  http://lonergan.org/?p=599   “whatever is received into something is received according to the condition of the receiver.” 
• student dyads, details, letters to teachers
• letter to teacher, Rilke’s Redemption: The Beloved Poet’s Stirring Letter to His Boyhood Teacher at the Military Academy That Almost Broke His Soul
• final circle

between us, a new world, between us

The light between, versions and margins.

There is no good but what is found between us.

In fact, no good can be found in anything other than individuals who feel what is true and allow that light to be seen.

The collective does not suffice to illumine.

Only individuals.

after watching “Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom", (a Netflix 2015 Documentary)

Buddham saranam gacchami 

Dharmam saranam gacchami 

Sangham saranam gacchami 

after a complicated dream

Sunrise

What I have seen is the totality recapitulated as One, 

Received not in essence but by participation. 

It is just as if you lit a flame from a live flame: 

It is the entire flame you receive. 

(--St. Symeon the New Theologian (949CE -1042))

The constant leaving.

“Those of whom I speak and whom I call heretics are those who say that there is no one in our times and in our midst who is able to keep the Gospel commandments and become like the holy Fathers…Now those who say that this is impossible have not fallen into one particular heresy, but rather into all of them, if I may say so, since this one surpasses and covers them all in impiety and abundance of blasphemy. One who makes this claim subverts all the divine Scriptures. I think (that by making this claim) such a person states that the Holy Gospel is now recited in vain, that the writings of Basil the Great and of our other priests and holy Fathers are irrelevant or have even been frivolously written. If, then, it is impossible for us to carry out in action and observe without fail all the things that God says, and all that the saints, after first practicing them have left in writing for our instruction, why did they at that time trouble to write them down and why do we read them in Church? Those who make these claims shut up the heaven that Christ opened for us, and cut off the way to it that he inaugurated for us. God who is above all, stands, as it were, at the gate of heaven and peers out of it so that the faithful see him, and through his Holy Gospel cries out and says, ‘Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest’ (Mt. 11:28). But these opponents of God or, rather, antichrists say, ‘It is impossible, impossible.’”
(–St. Symeon the New Theologian )

No idea what happens next.

“If you know that all visible things are a shadow and all pass away, are you not ashamed of playing with shadows and hoarding transitory things? Like a child you draw water with a bucket full of holes; do you not realize it and take it into account, my dear friend? As though there were nothing more serious than appearance and illusion, as though reality has been taken from them?” 

+ St. Symeon the New Theologian, Symeon the New Theologian: The Discourses (Classics of Western Spirituality), XIX Symeon’s Spiritual Concern

Moving out.

And on.

Learning to transform obstacles into objects of meditation provides a much needed bridge between the stillness of the concentrated mind and the movement of real life. 
(—Mark Epstein, “Stopping the Wind")

In nescience.

night prayer

For Tuesday.

God come to my assistance...

morning

Room is still

The letting out, in, of dog.

Fresh wood for dying embers.

Tear 11 for 12 on wall calendar.

Listen to mourning dove under yew bush.

Time between dying winter and reluctant spring is holding desolation.

Here's what to do:

If you are thinking a year ahead, sow a seed. If you are thinking 10 years ahead, plant a tree. If you are thinking 100 years ahead, educate the people. 

--Kuan Tzu (circa 500 B.C.)

Seeds and trees seem easier friendships.

Educating -- the emerging out into presence -- is a longer night through difficult dreams toward any clarity.

why a mirage might be the best we get

In the desert mirage experience that is the Republican Party -- something illusory, without substance or reality -- there's a need for a road to emerge to counter the empty desolate wandering of the primary season.

Mr Paul Ryan is no Donald Trump nor Ted Cruz. He is no Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders. But he is, like Lawrence of Arabia, a useful player in a chess endgame intent on laying waste participatory government in favor of private corporate hegemonic capitalism.

We can do better as Republicans and as Democrats.

If it comes to open conventions, let's leave the stained sands of political desertification creeping across the moral and humane terrain of the United States and reach for something that once nourished this country -- shared yearning for equality, freedom, and justice. For all.

My vote?

A mixed ticket. People who have shown they are real, solid, and embody what we need when we finally step out of the desert, at home and in the Middle East, of recent mire.

touch and go

We had a friend, while still alive, used to say, stay away from politics.

Then there was the Italian Francis in 13th century who said, stay away from money.

A guy named Jesus, two thousand years ago, said stay away from power.

I do. I do. I do.

The mystics say, whan they say anything, lose yourself in prayer.

I try.

Some day, there'll be no one found, resembling me, in any way, that can be traced.

I've been lost a long long time inside the emptiness some say God calls home.

I wouldn't know, and so I look out at politics, money, and power, with no desire for anything but

Silent 

Still, and

Sober

Listening attentiveness to what appears and fades away

holy breath, teaches prayer, to listening, sound

The last thing you want to experience

The name of God breathing through you 

It goes with you as you go back to the silence of God

Exhale!