"... in Buddhism we're not that interested in talking
about the Buddha himself. Nor was he; he wasn't
interested in people believing in him, so to this day
Buddhism has never encouraged its followers simply
to believe in the Buddha. We have always been more
interested in understanding human psychology, the
nature of the mind. Thus, Buddhist practitioners
always try to understand their own mental attitudes,
concepts, perceptions and consciousness. Those are
the things that really matter."
--Lama Yeshe

Nature is trying very hard to make us succeed,
but nature does not depend on us. We are not
the only experiment.
R. Buckminster Fuller

Perhaps, according to the Washington Post:

"...seen as a single entity, the Glass House/Brick House structures add up to the gayest house in America, an architectural enactment of a life lived with a rigorous division between the public and the private. Not that Johnson, a man who enjoyed wealth throughout his life, lived that particular dichotomy of hiding and revealing in the way that less fortunate men had to. But even at the level of its mechanical systems, the two-house dyad seems like a metaphor for the publicly brilliant homosexual: The Glass House is enticingly open but dependent on the Brick House for its hidden electrical and plumbing connections."

Philip Johnson's 1949 modernist masterpiece, the "Glass House" in New Canaan, Connecticut, will open to the public as a National Trust for Historic Preservation site this Saturday.

Summer Solstice, 12:06 MST, 2007

There came a Day at Summer’s full,
Entirely for me –
I thought that such were for the Saints,
Where Resurrections – be –

The Sun, as common, went abroad,
The flowers, accustomed, blew,
As if no soul the solstice passed
That maketh all things new –

The time was scarce profaned, by speech –
The symbol of a word
Was needless, as at Sacrament,
The Wardrobe – of our Lord –

Each was to each The Sealed Church,
Permitted to commune this – time –
Lest we too awkward show
At Supper of the Lamb.

The Hours slid fast – as Hours will,
Clutched tight, by greedy hands –
So faces on two Decks, look back,
Bound to opposing lands –

And so when all the time had leaked,
Without external sound
Each bound the Other’s Crucifix –
We gave no other Bond –

Sufficient troth, that we shall rise –
Deposed – at length, the Grave –
To that new Marriage,
Justified – through Calvaries of Love –

By Emily Dickinson
(1830 - 1886)

Permanence

To what shall
I liken the world?
Moonlight, reflected
In dewdrops,
Shaken from a crane’s bill.

By Dogen
(1200 - 1253)

Do...
as if you have nothing else to do.

Be...
as if you have nowhere else to go.

Look...
as if, you are looking at the only thing that exists.

Be...
as if you have Infinite time.

Be...
as if you have nothing to think.

Unknowingly, I did that and miraculously,
it again transported me to Heaven.
The heaven that I have been secretly afraid of.
Heaven, that I have been secretly avoiding.
Adithya Comming

Grace

Background is two temporary lovers - one an anti-religious anarchist statistician and the other a society girl clearly out of his league - stumbling across a Church in the snow, in post-war Germany:

"They walked through the tracks of all the others in the snow, she gravely on his arm, wind blowing her hair to snarls, heels slipping once on ice. "To hear the music," he explained.

Tonight's scratch choir was all male, epauletted shoulders visible under the wide necks of white robes, and many faces nearly as white with the exhaustion of soaked and muddy fields, midwatches, cables strummed by the nervous balloons sunfishing in the clouds, tents whose lights inside shone nuclear at twilight, soullike, through the cross-hatched walls, turning canvas to fine gauze, while the wind drummed there ... The children are away dreaming, but the Empire has no place for dreams and it's Adults Only in here tonight, here in this refuge with the lamps burning deep, in pre-Cambrian exhalation, savory as food cooking, heavy as soot. And 60 miles up the rockets hanging the measureless instant over the black North Sea before the fall, ever faster, to orange heat, Christmas star, in helpless plunge to Earth.

Lower in the sky the flying bombs are out too, roaring like the Adversary, seeking whom they may devour. It's a long walk home tonight. Listen to this mock-angel singing, let your communion be at least in listening, even if they are not spokesmen for your exact hopes, your exact, darkest terror, listen. There must have been evensong here long before the news of Christ. Surely for as long as there have been nights bad as this one - something to raise the possibility of another night that could actually, with love and cockcrows, light the path home, banish the Adversary, destroy the boundaries between our lands, our bodies, our stories, all false, about who we are: for the one night, leaving only the clear way home and the memory of the infant you saw, almost too frail, there's too much shit in these streets, camels and other beasts stir heavily outside, each hoof a chance to wipe him out ... But on the way home tonight, you wish you'd picked him up, held him a bit. Just held him, very close to your heart, his cheek by the hollow of your shoulder, full of sleep. As if it were you who could, somehow, save him. For the moment not caring who you're supposed to be registered as. For the moment, anyway, no longer who the Caesars say you are.

O Jesu parvule

Nach dir is mir so weh...

So this pickup group, these exiles and horny kids, sullen civilians called up in their middle age ... give you this evensong, climaxing now with its rising fragment of some ancient scale, voices overlapping threee and fourfold, filling the entire hollow of the church - no counterfeit baby, no announcement of the Kingdom, not even a try at warming or lighting this terrible night, only, damn us, our scruffy obligatory little cry, our maximum reach outward - praise be to God! - for you to take back to your war-address, your war-identity, across the snow's footprints and tire tracks finally to the path you must create by yourself, alone in the dark. Whether you want it or not, whatever seas you have crossed, the way home..."

Gravity's Rainbow, Thomas Pynchon

Hat Tip Daily Dish

This Is Just Too Good

Your task is not to seek for love,
but merely to seek and find all the
barriers within yourself that you
have built against it.
Jalal ud-Din Rumi

35 Years Ago Today

Wikipedia

Enso

Enso is a Japanese word meaning "circle". Enso is perhaps the most common subject of Japanese calligraphy. Enso symbolizes enlightenment, strength, elegance, and the universe, and is an "expression of the moment".

It is believed by many that the character of the artist is fully exposed in how he draws Enso, and that only one who is mentally and spiritually whole can draw a true Enso. Some artists will draw Enso daily, as a kind of spiritual diary.

Some artists draw Enso with an opening in the circle, while others complete the circle. For the former, the opening symbolizes that the Enso is not separate, but is part of something greater.

The Enso is also a sacred symbol in the Zen Buddhist religion, and is often used by Zen masters as a form of signature in their religious artwork. See also Hitsuzendo for information about the Way of the Brush.

The Enso has also been co-opted as an advertising symbol by various companies, notably, Lucent. Lucent's logo is often jokingly referred to as the "coffee cup ring." Enso has also been co-opted by the company Humanized as the name of a series of software products based on the work of Jef Raskin meant to simplify common computing tasks.

Wikipedia

You Are the Buddha

Starting right now, this moment, I am asking you to become the Buddha. I am asking you to take your stand, to stand absolutely firm in your intention to awaken to the Truth of your Self. This is what the Buddha did. He didn't say, "I'll try." He didn't say, "I hope I'll find the Truth." He didn't say, "I'll do my best." He didn't say, "If not in this lifetime, then maybe next lifetime." He came to the point where he didn't look for anyone else to tell him the Truth or show him the Truth. He came to the point where he took it all on himself. He sat alone under the Bodhi Tree and vowed never to give up until the Truth be realized. The power of this very simple, yet unshakable intention and absolute stand to be liberated in this lifetime propelled him to awaken to the simple fact that he and all beings are liberated—that all beings are freedom itself. Pure awakeness. The Buddha was no different from you. No different. That is why he serves as a good model, because he was as you are now. So don't worship the Buddha. Don't put him on a pedestal. Don't even look up to him. Become him. Have the same intentions, take the same stand. Be the Buddha now! Put an end to all delaying, to all excuses, to all bowing down to saintly figures of the past or present. Stand up! You are the Buddha! You are freedom itself! Stop dreaming your dream! Stop pretending that you are in bondage—stop telling yourself that lie! Stop pretending to be someone, or something! You are no one, you are no-thing! You are not this body or this mind. This body and mind exist within who and what you are. You are pure consciousness, already free, awake, and liberated. Stand up and walk out of your dream. I am here to say that you can do this. Step out of the dream of your concepts and ideas. Step out of the dream of what you imagine enlightenment to be. Step out of the dream of who you think you are. Step out of the dream of everything you have ever known. Step out of your dream of being a deluded person. Stop telling yourself those lies and dreaming those dreams. Step out of all of that. You can do it. Nothing is holding you back. There are no requirements and no prerequisites to awaken. There is nothing to be done, nothing to think, nowhere to go. Just stop all dreaming. Stop all doing. Stop all excuses. Just stop and be still. Effortlessly be still. Grace will do the rest. At each and every moment from here on out, have the intention to directly experience Truth, your true liberated Self. Don't think about the Truth—directly return to your experience here, now, moment to moment. Experience Truth. Experience your Self. Dive into your experience. Your experience! Your experience of hearing, of seeing, of tasting, of breathing, of your heart beating, of your feet touching the floor, of the birds, of the wind. Experience the vastness of who you are. Experience the freedom of who you are. You are the Buddha—experience that. You are the Buddha.

© 2005 Adyashanti

Women in Art

The Negative

To remain 'negative' is to remain 'stuck' . . . in the linear dimension. Negativity thinks it is trying to solve a 'problem'; yet, it can't solve it because I, itself is the part of very same problem. It provides food on and fuel to the very same cycle it thinks it is trying to end. We can already see its failure in the result of fighting violence with violence, stress with stress, depression with depression [as in feeding it thoughts like 'I don't like being depressed', 'I hate being depressed', 'I am depressed. . . because, I am depressed']. Positivity moves in the vertical dimension and in doing so it changes its FOCUS and Perspective and gains the ability to view the entire 'maze' - unlike negativity which because of being lost in the same maze can only see a fraction at a time. Because of this change in perspective, positivity transcends the very problem. . . that negativity can spend eons and still not be able to 'solve'.

Love is the language of positivity.

Fear [and violence] is the language of
negativity. And, brain deals with
psychological fear [and violence] in
the same way as it does with real
physical threat and violence. . . by
releasing emergency stress hormones
like Adrenaline!

Therefore,

Stress, Strain, Violence, Fear,
tension and depression. . . naturally
results from negativity.

And, yes,
negativity 'fights' against violence too. . .
using more 'violence' of course ;)

And, it fights against stress causing more stress,
against depression causing more depression,
against thoughts causing more thoughts.


Negativity 'fights' against garbage. . .
Positivity simply remains its
beautiful inner self - and, just by
being so it serves inner-outer beauty.

Positivity envisions a beautiful
landscape, a fertile land and a
beautiful garden growing out of the
garbage. It 'sees' garbage giving shape
and slopes to landscape, it 'sees'
'garbage' acting as fertilizers for
grass, for beautiful plants, for roses. . . for flowers.

Negativity 'looks' for and 'finds'. . .
'problems' that it 'must' 'fight' against.

Positivity SEES Possibilities.

adithya_comming

me

All the causes of human confusion and
discontent - desire, greed, envy, anger,
pride, fear, etc. are not the independent
phenomena but merely the various
manifestations of the identified ego.
And the great joke is that the identified
'me' wants to be free of these things to
'enjoy' that enlightenment which cannot
come about except by the annihilation
of that very 'me'!
Ramesh S. Balsekar

Void

We consider ourselves to be the presence
only of what we appear to be, but what we
appear to be is only the costume, the persona
put on by what lies underneath. We are the
presence of an absence we are unable to perceive
and of which we know nothing. So we call it a
"void", and we avoid it.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

Memorial Day 2007

Christian Pentecost 2007

"Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands
but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes
through which Christ's compassion looks out on the
world, yours are the feet with which He is to go about
doing good and yours are the hands with which He is
to bless us now."

Teresa de Avila

"Awareness becomes consciousness when
it has an object. The object changes all the time.
In consciousness there is movement; awareness
by itself is motionless and timeless, here and now."
Sri Nisargadatta

THE SEA

The pull is so strong we will not believe
the drawing tide is meant for us,
I mean the gift, the sea,
the place where all the rivers meet.

Easy to forget,
how the great receiving depth
untamed by what we need
needs only what will flow its way.

Easy to feel so far away
and the body so old
it might not even stand the touch.

But what would that be like
feeling the tide rise
out of the numbness inside
toward the place to which we go
washing over our worries of money,
the illusion of being ahead,
the grief of being behind,
our limbs young
rising from such a depth?

What would that be like
even in this century
driving toward work with the others,
moving down the roads
among the thousands swimming upstream,
as if growing toward arrival,
feeling the currents of the great desire,
carrying time toward tomorrow?

Tomorrow seen today, for itself,
the sea where all the rivers meet, unbound,
unbroken for a thousand miles, the surface
of a great silence, the movement of a moment
left completely to itself, to find ourselves adrift,
safe in our unknowing, our very own,
our great tide, our great receiving, our

wordless, fiery, unspoken,
hardly remembered, gift of true longing.
~ David Whyte

The identified man takes part in
things and suffers. The unidentified
man merely watches the spectacle.
The identified man tries to understand
truth while the unidentified man
experiences it.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

You are not the mind. It is axiomatic that the perceiver
cannot be the perceived. You can perceive your body;
therefore, you are not the body. You can perceive your
thoughts; therefore, you are not the mind. That which
cannot be perceived or conceived is what you ARE.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

Mothers Day 2007

Theotokos

Kaddish
Mother of my birth, for how long were we together
in your love and my adoration of your self?
For the shadow of a moment as I breathed your pain
and you breathed my suffering, as we knew
of shadows in lit rooms that would swallow the light.

Your face beneath the oxygen tent was alive
but your eyes were closed. Your breathing was hoarse
but your sleep was with death. I was alone with you
as it was when I was young but only alone now
and now with you. I was to be alone forever
as I was learning, watching you become alone.

Earth is your mother as you were mine, my earth,
my sustenance, my comfort and my strength
and now without you I turn to your mother
and seek from her that I may meet you again
in rock and stone: whisper to the stone,
I love you; whisper to the rock, I found you;
whisper to earth, Mother, I have found my mother
and I am safe and always have been.

~ David Ignatow ~

(New and Collected Poems 1970-1985)

Our lives are in fact being lived for us rather than
by us as we seem to think. All our experience,
if carefully analyzed, would clearly show that
volition is really not a significant factor in our lives.
Only the most minute fraction of our total physical
and mental functioning even appears to be subject
to volition. Did you exercise volition when you were
conceived? And when the conceived material grew
in the mother's womb? How long can you live without
sleep,without food or water? How long can you go
without the excretory movements of the body? How
do you breathe and digest your food? Do you have
the absolute certainty of remaining alive for even the
next five minutes on the strength of your own volition?
Ramesh S. Balsekar

Man has himself created the horrific problems which face him today. For hundreds of years man has been trying to "improve" the world, and if there is chaos as he sees it, it is only he himself who is responsible. It is presumptuous beyond measure for the individual human with his puny brain, donated by the courtesy of nature, to have arrogated to himself proprietorship over the whole natural order. We have, in fact, so separated ourselves from the universe and its unimaginably complex system of relationships that the more we try to control the world, the faster it runs away from us. It is only when the individual can view the universe as inseparable from himself that he sees everything in its true perspective. Technology becomes destructive wherever this oneness of the universe is not understood. Most significant, however, is that man's very misunderstanding of the universe is also a necessary aspect of WHAT IS in the inevitable functioning of Totality!
Ramesh S. Balsekar

The one who could effort is this silly king marching around thinking that he has birthed the world and birthed a life. Ha! It’s simply telling and noticing the truth. That we never ever were in charge or making any of this happen. Let's look inside and find this one who's making your life happen. I can’t find anyone either. And yet, I’m going to make it happen. So it’s simply noticing in every moment our foolishness, that we could ever have stolen the crown, this little me, and thought we had anything to do with anything. We are here for the ride. The mind will argue and will find plenty of evidence in its self-created world of not-enough-ness, surrounded by enough-ness, it will create and point to the evidence of the not-enough-ness in its own little created world. And underneath that always, everything unfolding, moving, and you watch. So you can just kiss that sweet, chattering, over-responsible mind, just kiss it until it’s so crazy, you know like when you have a child that’s getting very serious about something, a thousand and one kisses over its face and head and it forgets what it was so serious about, this is the treatment we can give the mind. Cutie pie, thanks for your suggestions, lovie duckie, thank you so much for all your efforts on behalf of survival. Mama’s here sweetheart, now take your nap.
Jeannie Zandi, Taos, NM

The crux of man's dilemma lies in the concept
of time. While chasing his mythical happiness
of the future, man has no time to enjoy the
present moment. And actually there is no such
thing as the present because by the time one
thinks of it, it has already become the past.
Therefore, what is vital is not thinking about
the present but actually being the present
moment -- and that is nothing other than
enlightenment.
Ramesh S. Balsekar