Happy Birthday Siddhartha Gautama

c. 563–479 BC

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming!
Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
-W. B. Yeats

The Bat Poet

... A bat is born
Naked and blind and pale.
His mother makes a pocket of her tail
And catches him.
He clings to her long fur
By his thumbs and toes and teeth.
And then the mother dances through the night
Doubling and looping, soaring, somersaulting --
Her baby hangs on underneath.

... The mother eats the moths and gnats she catches
In full flight; in full flight
The mother drinks the water of the pond
She skims across.
~Randall Jerrell

WHAT SHOULD WE DO ABOUT THAT MOON?

A wine bottle fell from a wagon and
broke open in a field.

That night one hundred beetles and all their cousins
Gathered

and did some serious binge drinking.

They even found some seed husks nearby
and began to play them like drums and whirl.
This made God very happy.

Then the "night candle" rose into the sky
and one drunk creature, laying down his instrument,
said to his friend ~ for no apparent
Reason,

"What should we do about that moon?"

Seems to Hafiz
Most everyone has laid aside the music

Tackling such profoundly useless
Questions.

Nature as Mind

"There is a great insight which our culture is
deliberately designed to suppress, distort,
and ignore: that Nature is a minded entity;
that Nature is not simply the random flight
of atoms through electromagnetic fields;
that Nature is not the empty, despiritualized
lumpen matter that we inherit from modern
physics. But it is instead a kind of intelligence,
a kind of mind."
- Terence McKenna

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet, cold water and the jar that pours.
~ Jelaluddin Rumi

Toys 'n Things

"Mind is interested in what happens, while awareness is interested in the mind itself. The child is after the toy, but the mother watches the child, not the toy."
~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

William Carlos Williams was born in Rutherford,
New Jersey, in 1883. He was a practicing doctor, and a
principal poet of the Imagist movement, which stressed
precision of imagery, and clear, sharp language.

When I was searching about,

(not too long ago) looking for something, didn't know
what it was at the time, I went down to London on
the train to listen to Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee giving a
talk on Rumi, Llewellyn is the present Shaykh in the
lineage, (inherited from Mrs Irina Tweedie,) of
The Golden Sufi Order, as he was speaking, questions
built up one by one in my mind which I intended to
ask him after the talk. . .

He was sitting on the edge of the stage, I went to
him and sat down beside him and said, "Llewellyn,
I had a hundred things to ask of you, but I can't
now think of one single question. He was eating
dates at the time, he answered, "forget the
questions, Tom, have a date."

Tom McFerran

Wei Wu Wei

A myriad bubbles were floating on the surface of a stream.
'What are you?' I cried to them as they drifted by. 'I am a
bubble, of course' nearly a myriad bubbles answered, and
there was surprise and indignation in their voices as they
passed.

But, here and there, a lonely little bubble answered, 'We are this stream', and there was neither surprise nor indignation in their voices, but just a quiet certitude."

Wei Wu Wei

Ask the Awakened

Infinite Potential

It's very important to understand that everything that exists—the whole universe, including each and every one of us, is a manifest or material expression of that which does not exist. From nothing came something. The unmanifest became the manifest. From emptiness, from the void, this whole material universe, which eventually gave rise to life, emerged. So everything that exists came from nothing. Nothing is the source of everything that is. That which became everything is that nonmaterial spiritual essence. That's what you can experience in a deep state of meditation. The fundamental mystical insight throughout the ages is basically this: that the ultimate essence of everything that exists is this no-thing-ness. But when seen from this evolutionary perspective, what you become aware of is that the nothingness is not nothing. Why? Because in the absolute emptiness prior to the big bang there was still the infinite potential for everything that would be created. Everything was possible but nothing had happened yet. So even in complete emptiness, there is some kind of positive creative tension that is experienced in meditation as a suspended state of absolute awakeness. This quiet tension exists in consciousness because everything is possible but nothing has yet occurred. There is a vibration of empty fullness that is enthralling. And what we're very interested in, in the teaching of Evolutionary Enlightenment, is locating that same vibration within our very own self—the same energy, the same intelligence that initiated the entire creative process at the very beginning.

Andrew Cohen

AhhhhAuden

"You,"

Really, must you,
Over-familiar
Dense companion,
Be there always?
The bond between us
Is chimerical surely:
Yet I cannot break it.

Must I, born for
Sacred play,
Turn base mechanic
So you may worship
Your secular bread,
With no thought
Of the value of time?

Thus far I have known your
Character only
From its pleasanter side,
But you know I know
A day will come
When you grow savage
And hurt me badly.

Totally stupid?
Would that you were:
But, no, you plague me
With tastes I was fool enough
Once to believe in.
Bah!, blockhead:
I know where you learned them.

Can I trust you even
On creaturely fact?
I suspect strongly
You hold some dogma
Or positive truth,
And feed me fictions:
I shall never prove it.

Oh, I know how you came by
A sinner's cranium,
How between two glaciers
The master-chronometer
Of an innocent primate
Altered its tempi:
That explains nothing.

Who tinkered and why?
Why am I certain,
Whatever your faults are,
The fault is mine,
Why is loneliness not
A chemical discomfort,
Nor Being a smell?

WH Auden (1960)

Those who wish to embody the Tao

should embrace all things. To embrace
all things means first that one holds
no anger or resistance toward any
idea or thing, living or dead, formed
or formless. Acceptance is the very
essence of the Tao. To embrace all
things means also that one rids oneself
of any concept of separation; male
and female, self and other, life and
death. Division is contrary to the
nature of the Tao. Foregoing
antagonism and separation, one
enters in the harmonious oneness
of all things.

Lao Tzu, from Hua Hu Ching,
translated by Brian Walker

Click to enlarge.





















The important thing is not to think much,
but to love much;
and so, do that which best stirs you to love.

Saint Teresa of Avila

You stop to point to the moon in the sky,

but the finger's blind unless the moon is shining.

One moon, one careless finger pointing --
are these two things or one?

The question is a pointer guiding
a novice from ignorance thick as fog.

Look deeper. The mystery calls and calls:
No moon, no finger -- nothing there at all.

By Ryokan
(1758 - 1831)

The Self

"Being the source of both, the self is beyond both knowledge and power. The observable is in the mind. The nature of the self is pure awareness, pure witnessing, unaffected by the presence or absence of knowledge or liking. Have your being outside this body of birth and death and all your problems will be solved. They exist because you believe yourself born to die. Undeceive yourself and be free. You are not a person."

~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Watching a Documentary

Watching a Documentary about Polar Bears

Trying to Survive on the Melting Ice Floes

That God had a plan, I do not doubt.

But what if His plan was, that we would do better?
~Mary Oliver

John Donne

BATTER my heart, three person'd God; for, you
As yet but knocke, breathe, shine, and seeke to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o'erthrow mee,'and bend
Your force, to breake, blowe, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt towne, to'another due,	5
Labour to'admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in mee, mee should defend,
But is captiv'd, and proves weake or untrue.
Yet dearely'I love you,'and would be loved faine,
But am betroth'd unto your enemie:	10
Divorce mee,'untie, or breake that knot againe;
Take mee to you, imprison mee, for I
Except you'enthrall mee, never shall be free,
Nor ever chast, except you ravish mee.

The Secret of Freedom

Under the right circumstances, it is not difficult to have a powerful experience of meditation, to taste the indescribable peace, bliss, rapture, and stillness of the Ground of Being-like a still forest pool, in which you sink ever more deeply, where your mind is not moving at all. It is very important to taste the inherent liberation of your own infinite depth, but that kind of experience in and of itself will not necessarily teach you how to have a liberated relationship to the chaos of your own mind and emotions. Sinking to the depths of your own self is always profoundly inspiring, but it's not enough. It is equally important to know how to stay on the surface when a storm is raging and have no relationship to the chaos. And that is what the deliberate practice of meditation is all about. For most of us, learning to do that is ultimately a source of greater confidence and soul strength than the spontaneous experience of infinite depth. And in fact, from an absolute or nondual perspective, being at the surface is no different from being at the very bottom of the pool. Even if it doesn't necessarily feel that way, in time you will come to understand that it is the same. That is the secret of freedom.

Andrew Cohen

Reality

Any reality that can be conceived by an individual entity is based on a belief or personal absoluteness in temporality which is a complete misapprehension in itself. The individual human just cannot accept the fact that his individuality and, more importantly, his individual volition or free-will is nothing more than an illusion.

There is a single, immanent Reality which is at once the source, the substratum and the true nature of everything that is manifested as the universe. This indivisible Reality is directly experienced by every sentient being as the subjective awareness of self, the consciousness of existing and being present.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

Just for sheer delight . . .

From . . .
Faustus, M.D. The Search for Love in Manhattan

March 29, 2008

From a conversation E.S. and I had earlier today in the kitchen.

E.S.: Hey, those cookies are mine.
FAUSTUS: Yes, but your love for me makes them mine too.
E.S.: ...
FAUSTUS: It's the transitive property of love.
E.S.: Give them to me right now.

" I Am An Illusion"

Lyrics

by Rob Thomas . . .

Take this confusion
Runnin' round my head
Take back my unkind words
Lay that weight on me instead
I'm the place where everything turns sour
Where you gonna run to now

Wrong step
We got off track
We need someone to help us get back now
Worn thin
Awful state I was in
I believe I was losing me now I'm found
I am found

But I'm not real anymore
I am an illusion

I am the damage
I am the relief
Sometimes I'm people
I never hoped that I would be
If I take in whatever they turn out
What's that gonna make me now
Don't you understand

I'm not real anymore
I am an illusion

Wrong step
We got off track
We need someone to help us get back now
Worn thin
Awful state I was in
I believe they were fooling me
Now I'm down
I am down

But I'm not real anymore
I am an illusion

Hear it here . . . .

chinese

One of my chinese students in China give me a Christmas card at Christmas past. On one side she had written these words presumably copied from some text. I just wondered if you had heard these words before or thought they might be of interest/relevance. (Strange christmas card verse I thought )

"Happiness is accompanied by sorrow and it would turn sunny after rain as well. If rain remains after rain and sorrow remains after sorrow, please take these farewells easy and turn to smilingly look for yourself who is never to appear."
~Anonymous
From "Non-Duality Highlights" Jerry Katz, Editor

The Clash

"The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually 'grasps' reality ... All the various definitions of the universe have had ulterior motives, being concerned with the future rather than the present. Religion wants to assure the future beyond death, and science wants to assure it until death, and to postpone death. But tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live.

There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly." ~Alan Watts "The Wisdom of Insecurity".
Thanks to "The Daily Dish"

Take The Test

Our imperfect perception of the manifested world in terms of
measurement, diversification and classification is the veil that
maintains our commitment to illusion.
~Ramesh S. Balsekar

Poem by Frank O'Hara

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

Spring: 3/19/08 11:49 PM

O sweet spontaneous
earth how often have
the
doting
fingers of
prurient philosophers pinched
and
poked

thee
, has the naughty thumb
of science prodded
thy

beauty .how
often have religions taken
thee upon their scraggy knees
squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive
gods
(but
true

to the incomparable
couch of death thy
rhythmic
lover
thou answerest

them only with

spring)


E.E. Cummings

Irish Day "Beannacht "

On the day when
the weight deadens
on your shoulders
and you stumble,
may the clay dance
to balance you.
And when your eyes
freeze behind
the grey window
and the ghost of loss
gets in to you,
may a flock of colours,
indigo, red, green,
and azure blue
come to awaken in you
a meadow of delight.

When the canvas frays
in the currach of thought
and a stain of ocean
blackens beneath you,
may there come across the waters
a path of yellow moonlight
to bring you safely home.

May the nourishment of the earth be yours,
may the clarity of light be yours,
may the fluency of the ocean be yours,
may the protection of the ancestors be yours.
And so may a slow
wind work these words
of love around you,
an invisible cloak
to mind your life.
John O'Donohue
(1954 - 2008)

An All-Consuming Care

In Evolutionary Enlightenment, we begin to understand that who and what we all are, at every level of existence, is part and parcel of a vast, cosmic process—a process that began 14 billion years ago when something burst out of nothing, and is constantly developing and ever-unfolding in every moment. And our own personal salvation is found when we reach that point where we begin to care more about the evolution of that process than we do about our own liberation, our own happiness, or even our own enlightenment. When we begin to care about something that is so much deeper and higher and more important than ourselves, we find ourselves remarkably and quite spontaneously less preoccupied with and burdened by our personal fears and desires. This is not because those fears and desires have necessarily gone away, but because something more important has entered into the very center of our being, and our heart has become consumed with that. In this way, personal liberation becomes no longer the goal of our spiritual search, but merely a spontaneous byproduct of our passionate care for the unmanifest potential of the next moment.

Andrew Cohen

Hallelujah

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know
What's real and going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen

Bring Me Only This

Life packs each vessel with song
until it overflows
then scoops it out like a melon,
spoon by sharp spoon
loss by loss
until just the rind is left
translucent,
to shape the aching hollow
through which sunlight pours.
But the hunger of absence
is wrapped around a seed
that cannot be destroyed.
When loss leaves you empty
sing into the void;
let the soft, moist breath of your moan
caress the seed. Water it
with attention until it reveals itself.
What you find there
at the heart of emptiness
born of loss
cup it tenderly.
Bring it to me.
Bring me only this.

- John Mizelle