Suicide

This is a note to all those contemplating suicide. Amongst the Eskimos of old those who had become old and in the way would on some storm driven night just walk off into the snow. If you are young and contemplating suicide you have a great gift to give to the world. Obviously your world has become a burden: it seems to you that there is nothing to live for and it makes a certain kind of sense to just put an end to it all. If you have come to that point of futility in self effort then you are the perfect candidate to help make the world a better place. Your very loss of self interest means that you are in a position to devote yourself to helping those who can not help themselves. You have lost what you think you have to lose so why not do what you can for those for whom a little help is a lot. It cost you nothing (except the burden of existence), and the weight of the good you can do significantly out weighs the weight of self destruction.

Your loss of hope can make of you an emissary of hope for others by the very fact that you have nothing to lose and yourself to give.

Give it some thought.

Awareness, Thought, Instinct, Brain

Any successful meditator will discover for themselves that we are not our thoughts. Well then, what is the the who to whom thoughts occur. It appears to me that the awareness which possesses the imprimatur of "I" is a field phenomenon: probably one made inevitable by the behavior of electrons in the outer electron shields of complex molecules. I haven't heard a more convincing or logical theory, so mine will do as well as any I've encountered.

It is known that electrically stimulating specific sites in the brain will excite specific categories of experience. The fact that with practice we can control our thoughts is an indication that awareness navigates the brain and draws electrical attention to the patterns of configuration that will produce the desired thought.

Instinct must project into experience if it is to effect behavior, and instinct is woven into the physical structure of the brain. If we imagine the brain as a vast interconnected waterway with flow patterns and tides, we will detect preexisting canals and rivers that direct the flow of electrical activity. This is instinct.

Awareness is all, and everything else is fluff. The good that brings happiness is like a chess game between awareness and instinct. A game in which the supreme outcome is win-win.

There are many meditation forms with variously described efficacy. I suggest "The Contemplation of the Void". The contemplation of the void is the contemplation of awareness, and can result in what one might call "The Awakening of the Intelligence". When the field phenomenon known as "awareness" becomes self aware, a little bit of the universe has met its maker.

Emotion

Wasps sting because they are afraid or because they are angry. It goes unremarked that in the opening scene of the famous "Romeo and Juliet" Romeo is groaning with love for some unnamed female that is clearly not Juliet. Emotions move creatures in ways that overawe the meager powers of reason. Rage and love are prods to action with value vested in survival and propagation. The violence and the "other vulnerabilities" made inevitable in creatures subject to emotion have Darwinian implications that seem to be completely invisible to humanity at large. Every song is a love song (with the exception of ballads that tell the tale of some emotion charged escapade). We don't know it, but we tend to love our emotions. We feel that our emotions are the essential truth of our being.

Our emotions are as mechanical as a wristwatch. Wristwatches have purpose and that's why we have them. We don't worship our wristwatch. Emotion has a survival purpose that humanity must come to recognize as "not-self" in the same way as an artist appreciates the brush as "not-self". Emotion tells us a truth about ourselves and not much else about what is real.

Truth, Beauty, and Good are emotional values, and the difference between good and evil is in that which truth beauty and good are found. If we are the pawn rather than the conservator of our emotions we will never be able to know the difference.

Political Statement: a modest outlay of fact

Rape and pillage have advanced beyond the cold simple brutal physical realities: rape and pillage have become metaphor. However unfashionable old-school rape and pillage may be in the community of advance nations, hygienic rape and pillage retain their fascination for an amoral class of world wealth. The basic principle is the use of the power of social advantage to extract from the vulnerable their modest possessions and their powers of resistance.

Well-educated nice-people in expensive suits provide the guns and the bullets for the less sophisticated to murder each other over antique stereotypes and mineral rights. Well-educated nice-people in expensive suits provide the contractual paraphernalia for the emergence of the new-slavery in its latest incarnation: debt. Debt of individuals, and debt of nations.

The "newness" of old fashioned Darwinian exploitation is not only predictable: it is inevitable. Innovation is evil's way of keeping everything the same. And for the purpose of this tirade let's define "Evil" as the exploitation of others to their disadvantage.

The canonization of "Growth" as the mantra of progress is simply ridiculous. Growth is the mantra of cancer.

Human enlightenment is the inevitable progress of the awareness which is the substrate of all existence. Enlightenment has no agenda. But the agendas spontaneously rising from enlightenment are humanity's only hope for a decent future, and only the innovations emerging from enlightenment can seize the imagination of humanity in such a way as to make rape and pillage a mere shocking artifact of our savage rise from dumb matter.

Teach your children

Sock Puppet World: a Story

Let us imagine a world peopled by sock puppets. Sock puppets of every imaginable configuration. Sock puppets of every shape and size. The hand inside every sock puppet is the same hand: the hand of the universe. Every puppet usually goes about its business as dictated by its form completely oblivious to its true self nature. But then one day . . . .

You can make up the rest of this story your self.

The Silent Stars: Caring

Most of my adult life has been lived in relative solitude in the second-growth forest of the Missouri Ozark. I have seen my share of city life, and done some time in abject wilderness. In a true wilderness in the absence of light pollution on a clear moonless night the sky is an unbelievable blaze of stars and it is so dark that you can not see your hand in front of your face. For all it's blazing glory nothing that requires the use of one's eyes can be done by the light of the stars.

Twice in wilderness I have found myself in difficult situations. I've had run-ins with bears, and been on iffy cliff faces: I don't mean that kind of thing. Twice I have in the course of an otherwise ordinary day slowly come to realize that I had gotten myself in jeopardy and things could go either way, and if I couldn't sort it out by my self no one would know or care. The silence of the stars is absolute.

All creatures care about something if only hunger. The thing that most separates one kind of creature from another is the development of the capacity for caring. The human capacity for caring is limited and infinite. We have natural limits such as our perceptions, and we have artificial limits such as personal and cultural prejudice. Caring is life's most precious gift.

The silence of the stars is majestic, eternal, and mechanical. The only thing that will save humanity from its own darkness is the light of caring.




Little Blond Girl on a Leash


little blond girl
huddled on the curb arms around your legs and head upon your knees

your well-being is now the beach ball of external forces
and no parlor trick of sentence structure will restore you to your senses

the gay bright lights don't care
nor the shills before the rowdy open doors

and the noisy throng of dissipation seeking revelers knows
that you
you insignificant and fallen city bird
are on your own



your single ally's name is
Time

for though unconcerned with your well being
Time alone can tether Hazard

and most certainly
Hazard has you on a leash

Four Noble Truths: a perception of narrative

One of the difficulties with existing forms is their formal existence. Language has evolved, and with the evolution of language a more succinct expression of fact is inevitable. The "Four-Fold Noble Truths" of Buddhist fame tell the story of self and narrative. We are not born a blank slate. We are born with an instinctual narrative upon which we build a personal narrative. All that is promulgated and all that is advised in the "Noble Truths" is awareness of and subsequent freedom from narrative. If we entertain no narrative we are found in a world of simple perception.

Of course most individuals and populations are not going to apply common sense to much of anything at all, but consider petty strife or wars between nations in the absence of narrative.

The Koan Exercise

Many years ago (in human terms) when I was voraciously hunting down every thing that could be found with my limited resources concerning the meaning of life and the core of consciousness, I encountered the koan exercise. I had been a meditator since my early teens (Self Realization Fellowship) and had been initiated into the Nichiren Sect while living in Japan in my early 20's. By my mid 20's I knew enough to know that I knew nothing about the ultimate nature of my own consciousness, and I got serious. I looked into every system I could find without regard to race, color, or creed; in those researches I discovered Zen Buddhism, and in discovering Zen I met the Koan Exercise.

The Koan borrows its name from jurisprudence and refers to established case law. It shows up in the enigmatic questions and answers between master and acolyte found in the historical records of Buddhist monasteries. The most famous koan is doubtlessly "The Sound of One Hand Clapping", but there is a veritable rainbow of koans; all of which are hopelessly opaque from one angle and and open to brilliant white light from another.

What captured my youthful imagination was the anecdotal evidence of human beings awakening to the very thing that had thus far eluded me: to encounter the root of ones consciousness. In these gleanings from the historical records we find a person who has practiced meditation and austerity: an intelligence that has practiced self cultivation, but that has not yet "awakened" (just the right word). The koan emerged as the pin prick to induce such awakening, and again and again we see an earnest human intelligence on one side of the koan and an enlightened being on the other. My favorite will always be Huang Po's slapping of Lin Chi. I took up the koan exercise in my clumsy way. It was maddening. What was it (always there from the Beginning) that they had so suddenly seen? What was the nature of this dramatic transformation that occurred in nanoseconds?

There are many koans and the literature concerning the efficacy of the koan exercise is often quite charming. D T Suzuki's "Essays in Zen Buddhism, second series" is devoted to the study of the koan exercise, and it is a hugely rewarding piece of work if you like that sort of thing. Chang Chung-Yuan's "Original Teachings of Ch'an Buddhism" is also second to none.

The light came on for me as the result of a phrase casually cast in conversation: casually cast, but cast into a mind harrowed by study of the koan exercise. I was stunned. A primal darkness was seen to be woven of light. I was looking into a mirror that was looking into a mirror that was looking into a mirror, and I then understood the timeless beauty of the koans: each an illuminated open book with nothing to hide: each a different key that opens the self-same door. Or better yet: dispells all doors. I have lived something of an ungoverned life, but stubbing your toe in the dark and stubbing your toe when you can see around are two entirely different events.

Oh, and by the way: what is the sound of one hand clapping?




The Water


the sky warm tarnished silver
ground awash with crisp brown leaves
air so still sounds dilate behind the clatter of a single falling leaf

there is magic


it is not
not

it is not any amount of yes


seething explanation cannot contain it
annihilation cannot circumvent it
it is not circumscribed by time
nor confined in space

it is not known by knowledge
nor is it not known
it is that from which all certainty is contrived


it does not resist naming
yet is that most resistant to being named
it is the wellspring of all names light and dark

pattern within paradigm
paradigm within pattern
endless simple repetitions from which we weave complexity

the pattern children
look for the pattern in all things
for subtleties of connectedness and repetition

pull one thread and a thousand can not but follow



the waves are indeed

the water

Affirmation, Negation, Higher Order of Certainty

Affirmation, negation: the mind wants things nailed down. Certainty is a necessary nutriment for the mind, and so it wants to set a seal upon that which it considers to be real. The problem is that affirmation and negation are concoctions: mental confections to assuage the animal sweet-tooth for certainty.

Meditation is not an end in its self. Meditation is an exercise that builds resources of self discovery. Much of what we identify with as "self" is the animating structure of the mind. We say "I" to the impersonal inclinations of instinct. My certainty is mine in the same way as my hand is mine. Barring cases of deformation all hands are structurally identical, and differ only in detail; and like the fruit-in-the-bottle monkey trap we must relax our grasp on ordinary "certainty" if we are to become truly aware.

The knowing that coincides with being can not be reified. When we entertain affirmation and negation we give up awareness as a hostage to mind. The finest fruit of meditation is the awakening of the pure awareness that is the fullest fact of our being. The intelligence which is the natural faculty of this awareness manifests a degree of facticity that quite satisfies the mind's appetite for certainty,

Sectarian isms of every stripe, dogmas, and madness; are mental accretions: they are diseases of affirmation and negation. The supple flow of awareness in the unfolding moment has made a knot, a tumor; has created an eddy circling its own creation. There is another way of being, and meditation is the key that opens the way.





Ego Pin, Imaginary Tail, Inconceivable Donkey




how is it that your hand

is so like that of the Buddha

The Spirit of Play

In many esoteric texts we find references to the spirit of play amongst celestial forces. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that human existence is the result of the gods at play. This seems to me not the anthropocentric musings of an antique mind, but rather an awareness that play is an essential element of the universe becoming conscious. It is certainly not difficult to see that much grief in the world is the direct result of people taking themselves way too seriously.

We find ourselves at a moment in planetary evolution where humanity has tied itself in a knot. Untying the knot which is our self is the necessary step to untying the Gordian Knot of human opacity. Without the celestial spirit of play this is impossible.

Good will and playfulness . . . bring it on.

Singularity and the Many: Animal Proliferation

Ideas that capture the popular imagination are not written on a blank slate. Every personality is a reservoir of instinct populated by a menagerie of habits, and the potential for differing world views is limited only by the imagination.

Historically speaking our survival has required that we look outward and shape the world to our outer needs. Science and industry are the natural extension of the outward press of natural life. The proliferation of ideas (the many answers to life's urgent questions) is the inevitable result of human cleverness. We live in a fog of cleverness, and humanity may well end up drown in a sea of mindless cleverness.

The central aspects of our existence are non-idealogical, and remarkably uncomplicated. The fact of being that we share with all living creatures has mass compared to which all ideas are fluff, yet by and large we unconsciously live in ideas and never engage the fact of being.

It has been said: "there is no insight....there is only out-sight". The out-sight that is insight happens when, for whatever reason, the the hold of the many on our consciousness slips; and we experience that moment of singularity which is the fact of existence. The ideas that come from this place result in a different kind of animal.

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