Cooking the Seeds of Karma: Self Expression

The mass-energy equation "Energy equals Mass times the Speed-of-Light-Squared" tells us that all things are convertible to energy. Inertia is the mass-energy of a subject relative to the system in which it is found. These definitions tell us nothing about the substrate of matter or energy. They describe effects. As yet no one has described prime movers. The basic substrate of matter and energy remains a complete utter mystery.

While the essence of being may remain clouded in mystery, there are valuable insights to be gained in understanding the way things work. Karma is the inertia of classical physics, and Karma is the existence of moral mass and spiritual energy and physical urgency. Karma is the inertia of classical physics. There is global karma, social karma, individual karma, and universal karma. Karma, in every case, is the existence of forces in motion that shape the unfolding flux of inevitability.

It is no accident that spiritual savants have emerged from opulent circumstance. The unbridled exploration of will and desire in a spiritually precocious being will bring karmic forces into the field of conscious awareness. Thomas Aquinas will call it one thing and Siddhartha will call it another, but in each case the individual has realized that there is no self in self expression.

Self expression is lending the energy of self to the inertia of karma. There is self: there is karma. Self is inhabited by karma in ways both parasitic and symbiotic. Outside of the energy of self, karma has no power. Outside of karma, self has no expression; and resisting self expression is a form of self expression.

Growth requires nourishment whether it is a black-hole or a bean sprout. For example: we are born with an accretion of millions of years of animal nature. This animal nature exists within the personality as karma. The inertia of this "animal nature" is invisible to us so long as we do not question it's existence. Questioning produces friction; friction produces heat. Questioning engenders an existential heat of curiosity and attention which can result in cooking the seeds of karma. A cooked seed is an excellent source of nutrition, and it's sprouting days are over.

As we grow spiritually by intentionally or unintentionally cooking the seeds of the karma within us, the energy stolen from self by parasitic karma is restored to it's rightful owner. The energy consumed both by repression and expression is conserved, and a higher level of existence is made inevitable.

Prajnaparamita

We find in the Buddhist lexicon some of the most wonderful words, and one of those wonderful words is "prajnaparamita". Prajnaparamita is a noun referring to a state of comprehension. The Sanskrit translates roughly to "wisdom, most high", but what is actually referred to is the state of "comprehension of things as they are".

Of course everyone automatically assumes that they perceive the world and themselves as they are. They do this without thinking, and yet their assumption is charged with thought. I mean.....when you think about it, is it possible that thought could encompass reality? Is the universe trapped in a coconut? Prajnaparamita is about comprehension, and comprehension is about intelligence interfacing it's environment. With the awakening of prajnaparamita ones humanness becomes translucent. Yes, one is fully human; but ones humanity is a vehicle in which the universe discovers its self. The darkness of matter spontaneously ignites: does the Sanskrit word Buddh means Light?

Well, let there be light.

The Law of Accident

At what point does an automobile accident become inevitable? At what point does the formation of a raindrop, or a star, or new living being become inevitable? And why? All things happen because they have become inevitable, and the causal chain of events leading to said-happening starts with the beginning of the universe.

Humanity is blinded by the sense of purpose. It seems to us that we do things on purpose, and because of that we think everything (including the universe) must have a purpose. All of our purposes are an accident to the occurrence of our existence, and our existence is an accident made inevitable by the existence of the universe. Everything happens by accident, and the way we make things happen according to our "purpose" is by the articulation of accident.

An automobile engine is a system of trapped inevitability: a harnessing of accidental forces. The way any purpose is accomplished is by the articulation of those accidents which will result in the desired manifestation. We can start a fire with flint and steel. We can build an atom bomb. All this is harnessing the law of accident to fulfill our purpose.

To be filled with a sense of purpose, and blind to the law of accident is a naive and dangerous position for a clever animal. Is it possible that this little bit of universe could wake up, and accidentally freely will a better world?

The Meaning Saturated Gestalt

As with all creatures human life has a beginning, a middle, and an end. The fact of duration and its inevitable vicissitudes gives rise to meaning. Just as in making a cup of coffee, what happens in the beginning influences what happens in the middle which determines the quality of the end. The experiential nature of quality is the foundation of meaning. Meanings are put together. All meanings have many moving parts. Living creatures are semipermeable membranes in a saturated solution: they absorb such meaning as they will, and are impervious to other potential meanings.

A living organism's existence takes place in a Gestalt: a dynamic interconnected flux of inevitability. Any aspect of inevitability will have different or no meaning from one organism to another and of course some categories of meaning have broader implication than others. The environment is a Gestalt saturated with meaning, and individual access to the sea of meaning is limited by both nature and nurture.

Our existence takes place in a meaning-saturated gestalt, and the future of humanity will be determined by the categories of meaning we access.

The Curvature of Space

in the curvature of space

the surface of the earth is a limited infinite plane

the center of which is everywhere

The Rule of Law

The rule of law is a necessary and good thing: it is in part a codifying of behaviors that can not and should not be tolerated, and in part a set of principles where by formal agreements can be made. When the law serves class principles or idealism it becomes a tool of oppression.

Let's take "good" for example.

The Contemplation of the Void

All things are just as they are: in and of themselves they contain nothing. Suchness is Empty.

The "contemplation of the void" is: be wholly aware not using mind. When one is aware at this level, any movement of the mind can be recognized as twitching. If you can be aware without twitching an interesting state ensues. You learn the nature of the twitch, and you can learn to twitch or not at your purpose.

The contemplation of the void is the contemplation of awareness. The receptive emptiness of awareness is it's facility.

Karma and Dharma

Dharma is the macro flux of inevitability; of which our small portion is Karma.

It has always seemed to me that the difference between "the big bang" and "let there be light" is the difference between poetry and prose. It is remarkable that thousands of years ago meditating individuals arrived at what could be called a "unified field theory". If we let Dharma be considered as a theory of everything, it is quite comfortable with physics, psychology, economics, politics, and the ecological sciences.

There does not seem to be a corresponding theory in modern physics concerning the nature of awareness.

The Care and Feeding of the Inevitable

if you have to ask

don't mess with it

after all

every thing happens by accident

The Children and the Doors of Perception

Happiness, sorrow, joy, rage, hate, love, compassion, disdain: are inner states that spontaneously arise in response to perceived relationships of self to outer world. Any impetus is reduced to a sharply limited repertoire of instinctual responses. In the same manner as red blue and yellow are the substrate of the plethora of color we see before us, a very few symbolic representations are responsible for the seemingly infinite variety of our inner experience. We can no more determine the way we will "feel" about something than we can choose the taste of food in our mouths. And in the same way we manipulate the taste of food with a spice of choice, we manipulate our feelings by draping ideas over experience to reconfigure "meaning".

This again brings us to the inestimable value of meditation. If our awareness can not not-think we have no way of recognizing our imaginary thumb on the scale of our perceptions, and therefore our tasting of the world will always be colored by predispositions that are invisible to us.

Meditation can cleanse the doors of perception: free us from what we have become, and see the children of the earth reborn as the children of the universe.

Indolence

indolence of which one is aware

and indolence of which we are not aware

are poles apart

Grandfather Trees, Chain Saws, Dozers: and Happy Endings

Aboriginal cultures often have aspects of their norm which translate as "grand-father-tree". A real grandfather-tree is that tree that had the big tree thing going a thousand years before your grand father was conceived. Your people are the people of the tree??......oh...the movie... . But if you haven't seen the movie even better, because without the story line we see just the exploitation of impotent-fact-people by omnipotent-fact-people: and the only difference between them is modernity and money. The difference between power and the powerless is these days measured in fiat currency.

Humanity as being must enter into symbiosis: eschew parasitism, elitism, envy, enmity; and with forethought and knowledge enter into husbandry of life on earth.

Otherwise

We're doomed

Caesar's Lies

render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's

One Hand Clapping

It seems to me that awareness operates outside time, perhaps feeding upon time the way interstellar black holes mature; eating such mass as can influence. Or perhaps like some cosmic surfer, awareness harnesses the wave of Now. Moving in the Now for the rewards thereof, goal and balance are everything: the trout's small moves let the stream bring to it its desire.

In meditation there is the distinct awareness of existential motionlessness: something one might imagine as the state of existence before the creation of the universe. All is awareness: no mind, no matter, no energy. We return to the material world with an appreciation of the native power of inevitability, and with new apprehensions of utility.

The continuity of experience is an immaterial event . . . or perhaps one should say "non-material". We have, at this point in our understanding of the universe, no way to weigh awareness; no way to measure, to detect, no way to prove, or to capture the fact of awareness. We can measure electrical activity in the tissue of a brain, but in simpler life forms awareness exists independent of nerve tissue. So a mysterious "non-material" event happens to be the substrate of what "we" are as creatures with "personalities".

Why a mere stack of atoms should be able to ask anything at all is the right question to ask.

All things are happening or they don't exist at all. A rock on a Martian desert plain is happening. A single photon pressing through space on the other side of the universe is happening.

But what is the sound of awareness happening?

Rainy Drive to Town

inertia is more efficient

when less mechanical advantage is presented

to opposing forces

yesterday's verdant hills now blaze reds and golds

the damp sky billows gray

and how is it possible the sky could be so beautiful

or that the cry of the great flocks can be so new each fall

experience is beyond the reach of memory

for memory is an experience unto itself

the living instant of our experience is held by the senses

as a leaf holds the wind

experience nurtures and sustains us

as the sky supports the cloud

and although the fact precludes possession

in truth experience is all we own

experience is our source and our destination

it is this damp fall day

Inevitability, Time, and the Law of Accident

Time is and is not. The stream of time is the same as the existence of mathematics; it is a utilitarian concept. The concept of time is an acknowledgement that all things are in flux, and therefore possess trajectories. If we take the existence of the universe all at once, every wave form is just where it is regardless of the rate of sequence in its existence. There is simultaneity of existence, but not of time. What really exist is Now, and Now is a system of ubiquitous pressure, everywhere in motion. "Now" is a roar without duration or cessation. If there is no awareness there is no time: there is a seethe of being, but that seethe of being is timeless.

Awareness seamlessly flows on the material Now giving rise to the illusion that Past exists: and of course nominally and colloquially it does. What this means for living creatures is that things done in this now will echo in our ensuing now, and no act is quite what it seems because the trajectories of existences that will impact the results of our actions in the flux of inevitability can not be known. The essence of "Good and Evil" concerns presumed outcomes, and well intended people are capable of great evil.

In meditation one sometimes has a feeling that might be likened to a boulder in a mountain stream: ones awareness is motionless and the flow of the stream of time around one is palpable.

Conscious Tillage of a Mystery

stampeding leaves herd

this way

now that

in search of some utopian frozen ground

wind waves crash

and pound

and hiss

and then recede

sharply as a hatchet lopping limbs

a crow call

the kettle hums a high note

the fire pops and cracks

smoke plows straight to ground

vanishing in silent impact

the inevitable rules by law of accident in fate's rich domain

conscious tillage of fate's field

is the one resource of destiny's slim province

Anatman and the Balloon Show Wiener-dog

We have probably all seen at some time or other a balloon entertainer who can twist the air-filled resilient sack into any animal that you can imagine...say, a wiener-dog. It is no different with awareness and self. The dominant imperatives of person-hood are biologically driven and have no selfness that is not hostage to the vagaries of animal existence. Far from being de-humanizing, this truth is the foundation of all that is noble and all that is vile in humanity. At the same time it must be acknowledged that the self as popularly conceived is an illusion.

Awareness has no choice but to fill the space defined by its form; and finding self in form, accrue identity. The central fact of enlightenment is the potential for awareness to awaken existentially and then to pre-empt the biological self as the center of its existence. And far from de-potentizing the limited expressions of being human, the awakened intelligence finds its self in a garden of wondrous potential.

So what happens when the inevitable friction with environment pops the balloon? Certainly not some atmospheric reiteration of the cosmic wiener-dog.

Noticeable Change Seeking Repose

conditioned cycles of behavior

should they evaporate

what would be left of us

we who can only with great effort retain a focus

at odds with the dictates of the unconscious

we whose most cherished thoughts

are but the shadow of our being

in the light of reality

it is notice

that by saturation illuminates our being

notice is precursor to all true freedom

and powers premature of notice

enthrall

enmesh

aggrandize

idea is her novice

and genius is her adept

and though we may juggle well the ideas of others

it is what we have noticed

that is our own

in the swirling billions of galaxies

what takes notice

before this mystery unfold all questions

Icarus Pilots the Juggernaut

Taken en-mass humanity is clever but not wise. There is wealth and intelligence enough to commit great crimes, but not enough of either to save mankind from it's self. The kind of aggressive altruism and fearless facing of fact necessary to save our little dirt-ball, our beautiful little island afloat in the endless emptiness of space, is simply in too short supply to suggest a happy landing for life on earth this time around.

The ancient Chinese Taoists recommended that in times of disorder the sage retreat to his own virtue. Or I suppose one could stand in front of a tidal wave waving ones arms and screaming stop. The Punch and Judy show of good and evil must play its self out; after all we are only human.

There was a fellow by the name of George Gurdjieff (died 1947) who was an arch disciplinarian (and one whose work deserves survey) who in his ruminations suggested that humanity could be saved only by a threat to existence so huge that it over-shadowed culture everywhere and of every stripe.....well it seems to me that we have a rainbow of such dire information, but it is just not able to cut through the sea of darkness that is the modern self. So I'm expecting a spontaneous flowering of awakened intelligence.....no one will have seen that coming.

Clearing Skies at Midnight in December

it is that moment just midway of dusk and dawn

and between stragglers of the grey that all day fed rivulets and puddles

in lazy drift through Gemini appears

Jupiter now startling bright

now dissolved in haze once more

stars are close

tomorrow

sun

it is not

Monday droning

after monotonic cretin Monday

that brings December's dreary repetition

the days have no names

and convention's reassurance does not tame them

on every side of God's toy top the flood of light goes on forever

never is there any dark

but for shadow

and this

our little corner of the universe

rages

for reunion with oblivion

they are reckless

the stars that send their light to fill this puddle

and we

are their children

Free Teeshirt Slogns

awareness ?????

consciousness ? ? ? ?

WTF

Symbol and the Nothingness of Time

All meaning is symbolically constellated. A proper symbol is a cymbal that resonates within the catacombs of archetype.

When we survey the art and literature of mankind's rise from blessedly ignorant earth, we find a treasure trove of truth and light. Riches beyond the imaginings of the merely acquisitive are scattered on the ground for the taking. Carl Jung (1875-1961) may have been the first western mind to fully appreciate this. I have found the more valuable gems to be those closest to the earth-source, and there are scholars that should be sainted for their insightful collections of this material.

Symbol does not reduce to icon: it is rather that icon is a pointing to symbol. Icon is a stick that would hope to strike the cymbal. Symbol is the voice of the facts of our existence in the nothingness of time.

Ten Thousand Previous Poets

the smell of your hair

is with me in the world

the thousand previous poets

have with honed pens torn their hearts

to tell of love

their words

are no mere dried butterflies

upon pins of heartless history

and I find

across the motionless centuries

we chant in unison

I find no thought . . . no yearning

unthought

un-yearned

unknown before

within our souls

are the living incarnations of primordial goddesses and gods

their life eternal is our rushing wave of mortal selfhood

and there forever

they find and they love one another

for our petty human lives

there are such riches as can assure a patient poverty

and for the restless gods within my soul

all that is found

in you

A Swig From the Bottle While Admiring a Spoon Collection

There exists a pervasive difficulty with technologies of being. Most (if not all) individuals first encounter these technologies in the guise of religion which leads the affected person to identify the benefits of the discipline with an efficacy of religion. I suppose this is to be expected of the emergent state in which we find mankind, but it is rather like attributing the power of medicine to the spoon.

If we distill the "spirit" from juices of fermentation we will end up with the same chemical intoxicant regardless of the nature of the original ferment, because ferment produces alcohol. It is just fine to prefer brandy to whisky, and with a bit of sugar either will ease a cough regardless of the picture engraved on the handle of the spoon.

Enlightenment is the product of ferment within an individual. After his satori Lin Chi (died 867) is supposed to have said "So after all, there isn't much in the Buddhism of Huang Po (died 850)", where upon he immediately returned to his master. It was also Lin Chi who, when himself the master, said "If in your travels you meet the Buddha, slay him."

It is appropriate and good to respect the antique forms in which high truths were first revealed to humanity. And it is absolutely necessary to apply the ensuing evolved technologies of being to our person.

A chain of gold will do as well as one of iron if we are to be imprisoned.

The Pole

I

knowledge of esoteric fact

and possession of technique

are as different as roast beef from a photograph

II

of silence

a reflection

will never be the silence

and the power of evocation is that of resonance

expression transforms and is transformed

but noble ideas

numerous as all the sands of all the deserts in the universe

do not weigh as much as one single noble act

III

to thrive all seeds must have a matrix

a man may climb to the top of a pole one hundred feet

and there stand on his head for a week

that is all very nice

but he should proceed from there

and manifest his entire body in every quadrant of the universe

Conscious of the Little Things

Consciousness is huge in its implications. One might even say "Cosmic" in that it is undiscoverable in its fact, and infinite in its implications.

Human motives are quite small. There is no behavior without motive, be it smoking a cigarette or zazen. Motives are small; tiny, all but infinitesimal cues that animals get from environment. These little cues are writ large in the stuff of life and death. Motives are the result of consciousness growing into animal form over hundreds of millions of turns 'round the sun. You don't think your self up. Your self happens to you because of the myriad tiny things that humanity makes conscious in a Darwinian social-circumstance sort of way.

There is, of course, growing to the light.

Selflessness is not without self.

The Soul of Things

as if upon one knee in prayer

the rust-roofed barn sinks through the years

back to the dust from which it sprang

where cats once stalked mice that stole the draft horse grain

owls now freely wait for rats that secret acorns

beneath a steel wheeled tractor's rust pitted cowl

as dust will in a vortex all things coalesce

and then like dust by wind they are dispersed

effaced

to leave no trace

for no mark made upon the earth

will survive the earths evaporation

not in matter

but in mystery

lies the soul of things

Sway

There is sway

There is that which is swayed

If the willow knows its existence only by its movements

it thinks the wind

god.

The Awakening of the Intelligence Revisited

Intelligence has been variously described and the only one we really know anything about is our own [if we know any thing about it]. I've gone on about the nature of intelligence elsewhere so we will consider that as read (the point being: ordinary atoms properly stacked=life). The question then is the fixation of intelligence, and might there be such a thing as the awakening of the intelligence. Intelligence is the very stuff of life. It is the difference between a molecule and a paramecium. Intelligence has no ideas. Intelligence is the stuff of which ideas are woven.

If we imagine intelligence as a flower in the fruition of the evolution of the universe, then it would seem that the finest fruit of this flower would be the universe awakening to its self.

The May Pole

we are the May Pole

mummified

in wrappings of imagination

dancing round are a circumference of lovely demons

weaving with colors existential

the life that will entomb us

drawn to accept vagaries of the sun

can we accept the certainty of the moon

Awareness, Mentation and the Zen Doctrine of No Mind

Awareness is a passive state that seeks no affirmation of its existence or its contents. Mentation is an active state made inevitable by the existence of Awareness in exactly the same way as water will ripple in response to circumstance. In the absence of mentation Awareness in all creatures presents the same sense of being.

Mind is the behavior of Awareness made inevitable by the genetic imperatives of creature-hood. The existence of the unconscious mind as a template for behavior shapes our perceptions of the world and of ourselves being.

In meditation we cultivate Awareness: the "no mind" from which mind emerges.

The waves are the water.

Insouciant Anonymity

it is drizzling rain
and the sleek red squirrel weaves her way
the intense glow new-green floor growth her umbrella

stop

sniff

hop a bit and sniff again


dig a bit and up with last falls full acorn
sit and peel and eat

back to the hunt and with the next find undulate the nearest tree
stub-branch perch and eat
calmly in the warm spring rain


Her kits will find themselves well fed




wind

and rain
every drop real and alone

snow
every flake cold and unique

searing heat


care not for life or for death
joy or sorrow
for pain
for pleasure

for crushing servitude or leisure

every voice proceeds to flex the void
every cry of hope and despair un-echoed
spends its immeasurably tiny weight into the void

unmet unresisted unobserved
unanswered

but yes form

and form

shapes everything

the winking out of an instance of cognisant warmth
is dissolved in the fabric of nothingness from which it sprang
and nothing there-by is enriched
by everything


the voice of the universe



is the taste of being

The Visionary

Seeing is one thing, having an idea is quite another. Vision is the result of direct contact with the physical environment. Idea is an intellectual construct. The difficulty inevitable between visionaries and ideologues is that to the ideologue the visionary is merely in possession of different ideas.

We can not connect dots that are invisible to us. The sky is falling; it just falls, in human terms, very slowly. And by the time the obvious becomes apparent to the hopelessly occluded things will be totally FUBAR.

Flotsam and Jetsam on the Point and the Line

Flotsam and Jetsam

In their drift upon the sea of life discoursed and pondered

many a weighty and provocative imponderable

such as

might there exist a vertical dimension

to illustrate his object Jetsam recounted a tale about Mr. Point

conversing with

Mr. Line

Mr. Point found Line to be an interesting fellow

though something of an egotist

for though Mr Line was quite like any other point taken straight on

he alluded to possession of dimensions not shared by points around

Line boldly spoke about his intimations of the plane

at which the scoffing Point declared that

"even if there were such a thing as a plane it would be inconceivable

and therefore all talk of planes was

idle speculation"

to which Line replied that

if Point would stretch a bit he would gain perspective

well, Flotsam was not entertained by reasoning in this line

for thinly veiled in Jetsam's anecdote was his tired old point

concerning rectilinear space

which

not merely contrary to experience

blasphemed the sanctity of the plane

The Mechanics of Wellbeing

Understanding the mechanics of the sense of purpose no more invalidates having one than a degree in chemistry ruins the enjoyment of fine wine. There is no purpose that does not tug at our human nature.

The awareness that one cultivates in meditation is capable of mining a rich field of self knowledge through recognition of the tides of purpose generated within ones self as the gravity of being acts upon the mechanical fact of our humanity. And as a water wheel provides an endless and practically free source of energy, awareness of the mechanical aspects of our humanity can provide an awakened engine of well being.

In the Prime of Your Life

I have no fear of growing old

and I would choose to die the death that old age brings

my fear of future

is that I might never again hear your voice

or touch your face

and I am so glad to be here

in the prime of your life