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