The Shy

Grail Quest

The Holy Grail and the search for it. Drink of the cup from which Christ drank? Consider the conservation of personal consciousness. Usually personal consciousness flows like water poured on the floor: running wherever gravity leads. To awaken consciousness it must be conserved. Consciousness cannot be conserved if it cannot be contained. Meditation is the means by which we create a vessel capable of consciousness containment. Meditation is the smithy in which we forge a Holy Grail capable of containing the drink of which Christ drank: awakened Awareness.

The Christ Within

The Christ within is no less real 

Because it is our fabrication 

No less than automobiles 

Or atom bombs 

Chop Wood

Zen and Hocus Pocus VS Chop Wood

Zen of this, Zen of that; there is a lot of honky hocus-pocus about Zen, ascribing to its adepts a mystical perspicaciousness unmet in ordinary beings. The word Zen is a Japanese transliteration of the Chinese word Chan, which is a transliteration of the Sanskrit word Dhyana, which translates in English to “meditation.” In a first millennium anecdote an acolyte inquirers of the master the essence of Zen. The master brandished before him his hossu. This act brought enlightenment to the acolyte. The hossu, which had become a ceremonial scepter, was the dried tail of a horse or donkey used as a fly-whisk. The adept was poetically suggesting our practice of meditation as the means of whisking away gnats, flies and mosquitoes of idle thoughts. Only that mind not in a haze of idle thoughts is in a position to address the question of the real. A mind not in a haze of idle thoughts acts without mediacy, and the outside observer will see a sometimes-preternatural perspicacity. It is this “sometimes-preternatural perspicacity” that has given rise to the Zen of this, the Zen of that, nonsense. Another first millennium adept once said that Zen (read meditation) is merely the brick with which we knock at the door.

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Chop Wood, Carry Water


In sweltering heat or a foot of snow
A bucket in each hand
I walk this path

Water to drink
Water to wash
Water arousing the mystery of water


The hand that poured concrete around an oak barrel
(the stave-marks remain)
Scrawled 1927 on the lip of the basin
From which I clean the silt
And chase the frogs
That creep under the lid I made against the detritus of nature



I sometimes sit by the spring
My mind dancing with the virgin water
From the spring to the creek
To the James, then to the White, and on to the Mississippi

And finally at home
In the great ocean



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Consider Winter

The Devil's Hat Trick

The hat trick is one where a rabbit or some such, is magically drawn from an empty hat. The Devils hat trick is a disappearing trick: a trick where we become convinced that we grow spiritually by means of self-mutilation, and subsequently disappear up our own ass.

There are many systems teaching that the extinguishment of ego is possible and desirable. Were I the Devil, I would go about whispering such in minds spiritually curious. What part of us would wish extinguishment of ego? Extinguishment of ego is an egotistical pursuit. We would not engage in such self-hypnotic pretzle-twistings did we not wish to see ourselves more spiritually handsome creatures.

Ego is no enemy any more than skin is an enemy. Healthy ego is as necessary to our well being as healthy skin. We attempt to extirpate ego from our behavioral repertoire at our peril. Like skin, ego is a sensitive outer layer protecting the complex structure beneath. Ego’s sensitivity provides valuable information about the environment, and upon ego's strength or weakness depends much of our success in the manipulations necessary to the quality of our survival. Ego ergo I go, and if we seek first to be wholly Aware, ego can (kind of like a sheepdog) be left to do its job with minimal supervision.

Freak Freely 

Freak freely 

What have you to gain or lose 

Except the idea of your molded self 

Or the tenuous respect of uptight others 

Or the chance to have a lot of stuff 

Or an insight into your true face 

Or the devotion of true friends 

Or a few things worth having 

Freak freely 

Your instinct to survive will not evaporate 

From the heat that is inevitable when first you begin 

And if it does 

The world is better off without you 

So freak freely

surface

Rumplestiltskin: Identification

The demon whose name you know has no power over you. The question is identification, and what within us we call by our name. To behaviors dictated by the latent contents of the unconscious mind should we say, “I do this?” Is there such a thing as free-will? What is the who?

The seat of identity can be variously placed, In most cases the seat of identity is in the personality. While not wrong or reprehensible or a crime against human dignity, such configuration has no more genuine self-awareness than a chipmunk. Such an identity is in the surface of being: and the surface is just as real as the depths. If the depths move, the surface moves. If the surface moves, the depths feel the jiggle. Freedom, justice, and the urge to integrity, spring from the inmost core of our humanity, and will present themselves at the surface. The bad that is evil, is evil precisely because it is not superficial.

Might the seat of identity be found in a different aspect of being? Say, the awareness? An analogy can be found in the computer. We will give a computer a sense of identity: the seat of identity can be in function (the personality), or in the electric fields that produce function (awareness). We have the merest approximation, but made explicable by this analogy is: when the electricity is awake the configuration of the hardwiring is self apparent. When the seat of the consciousness is in the awareness, the collective-unconscious-mind no longer has the luxury of living in the dark and calling itself by our name.

What is the Who 

“Who are you to say?” 

Tell me what is the who 

And I’ll answer your question 

reflections

Open Non-reification

All ideas are imaginary. Good ideas, bad ideas, useful ideas, idiotic ideas; whatever the idea may be, all ideas are products of imagination. The difference between humans and other animals is that other animals do not have the same capacity to create self-generated perceptions; imagination is self-generated perception.

Much is known about structure and function in the brain. The frontal lobe is the seat of imaging, and a major difference between human brains and the brains of other mammals is the size of the frontal lobe. Other animals have the same sense of being, but not the same ability to have an idea about it. Ideas are imaginary and reality is real. An idea about reality is really imaginary, and it behooves one be able to separate the two. The way to do this is to cultivate that state, effortlessly alert, not generating ideas. In this state we do no imaging, for this state of perception is sufficient unto itself: it can not be added to without being dispelled. Some have referred to this state as "open non-reification".

I now look through the forest: a butterfly flits through forest crown, the wind has leaves shimmering. I have no idea about it. I have only perception: perception adequate to the ever-shifting flood of sensation. My entire field of vision, every shifting flux of sound, the breeze drifting through the window, in one chord of awareness. Make note of the butterfly: all else must lose attention. Pick out one leaf: forest, butterfly, and breeze lose some portion of awareness. Entertain some idle thought and lose it all. This is the way the mind works. Mind is a powerful servant and a poor master. knowing how the mind works will help us build tools to separate the real from the imaginary, and thus restore imagination to its powerful and rightful place as magic wand.

Open non-reification is effortless awareness. When we abide in effortless awareness what is, is simply there. Reification is a "doing" possible only with effort of mind: this doing is habitual. The effortless non-doing which is open non-reification takes practice.

Reification is not a bad thing, nor is imagination. Doing of mind; use it, don't abuse it.

Enigmatic Humor

two monks passed in the hall

one said to the other

"what's new"

both laughed uproariously