fallenguru's Xanga

Precursor

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:39:07 GMT

This came to me while, probably wasting my time, thinking about our existence. This is the precursor to a little writing I will do, in a throwback style, on contemplation of Man. I am saddened that our day is awash where you cannot have such conversations, or really, find in any sort of abundance or even rarity, such people to speak so. In the days of old-I have been reading Adam Smith and am saddened by the lack of such friendships i.e. he had David Hume, Voltair, to name a few as correspondance, and such thoughts about virtue and, ultimately, morals, were a common theme amongst them. I think it is a weaker and demeaned as well as mean reality that has given up the activity of thought, for even our betters have ultimately given it up, and those that still do are truly removed from the populace because of 'taste' I guess. When Wealth of Nations came to print it was well read, Hume was well read, eegad! In our time there is no comparison, there are no Men like this, nor women, and even our smaller contemporaries attempting them are removed and isolated from those they would assist-chattering back and forth in a circle of intelligent but ultimately masturbatory endeavors.

Well. Here we go. Please take this as if it were a letter to you, dear reader. This beginning is just to set the stage for what I write next.

The Mate of two is one
The Sire of one is zero
the Mother of Zero.....

The mother of reason is logic
The mother of logic is absurdity
the Mother of Absurity is......

The mother of music is silence
the mother of motion is stillness
the Father of God is emptiness

That which Begat Emptiness.....

I will start the introduction to the letter when I have more time.

Be well

E.M Forster

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 21:07:12 GMT

I came across this and I think that this is what we, in our modern times, aspire too. I think that it has always been as Mr. Forster says. They are the Anonymous Hero of whom, without, the world would have been destroyed already.

"Not an aristocracy of power, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes and through the ages, and they know each other when they meet. ... Authority, seeing their value, tries to net them and to utilize them. ... But they slip through the net and are gone; when the door is shut they are no longer in the room; Their temple is the Holiness of the Heart's Imagination, and their kingdom, though they never possess it, is the wide open world."

The Diabolical Nature of the Wheel

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:13:42 GMT

When I was young, "when I was a child" I thought as a child, yes? I was like my daughter, filled with laughter and tears, wrenched from one extreme to the other with only ladder rungs in between leading to either or as a way station. I thought that this was the way it was.

When I was old, "when I was a Man" I put away childish things, yes? And being a Man is not chronological definition, it is a attainment definition. And in this attainment "lo' I walk through the valley of death" and suffer the shadows of doubt, and misery, of angst at the diabolical nature of the wheel. Let me explain.

I use the "shadow" reference only because I have been churning that metaphor in my mind as of late. In the Buddhist literature it states in a more manual manner if not as mellifluous way, that, "once an inkling of view is attained on the true nature of existence they shall weep for lifetimes". I have used these quotes before but they seem to match in what I imagine they seem to be talking about the same thing; the death of what you were, and the 'valley' or 'pass' into what you will become. A valley is bounded on both sides by peaks abscuring the vision of the traveler, and the 'faith' of the promised land beyond is all that leads one on such a path. Once the traveler has left behind what they were, they have an interim-or what Guru Rinpoche would say, "a Bardo of life"-which, by all accounts, is a deeply frightening experience for us newbies (not so much, or at all for the enlightened. It was once explained to me that the higher ups see such a state as a rest. As an oasis between the sufferings of 'existence') if we are to take the Brado Thodol, or, as the west knows it, The Tibetan Book of the Dead which is only a few of the books of the whole teaching.

Now what is Death, we think of it as the end of things but with some insight into our lives we can see that it pervades everything. If we instead of thinking of death as an end of all things (which it can be seen as) and also as the end of specific things we can understand how I imagine this metaphor. When we see each moment as arising, each second, milisecond, we must with any honesty say that they end-they die so to say. What comes together i.e. life or in this example entities whether living or metaphorical, falls apart i.e. dies. When the tree comes together to us we see it as such a permanent fixture, but, it was a seed, it was a sapling, it was a tree, and then it is mulch, and then it is a beetle, then a bird etc. It cannot be two things at once i.e. a seed and a sapling because if that is true when you eat you are "eating both food and feces" (Nagarjuna). It is in all things, this falling apart, it is not apart from life, but it is, this conundrum is emptiness but let us not focus on that right now-and focus on the Valley.

When I was a child-and I am lumping together my adolescence and youthful pre adult stage, or Imago if you will, with being a child. I was on the part of the wheel where I saw the tangential line of demarcation. I did not see the curve. I saw this world as a progression and not as a wheel. I was excited and rewarded with this excitement with each new experience that, to me, was new. But then the curve came and I started to see everything again, it was okay, I enjoyed it again, but then another curve, and again, and again-not exact replicas but different costumed version of the same thing. Then, to my fright, I had to turn on my ignorance-and I did for years. I could not see this Truth because I thought that it was inescapable.

And then I found the Dharma.

I had worked for so many years on the western philosophers and the western religions and it had lead me to a dead end, mostly because of my defects and not their inherent truths. It was not conducive to my nature. The Dharma opened my eyes to the truths of this life, what the valley of death is, that it is a constant state in this material world and not one of life to death, but rather our actions are minstrations within the boundaries of death. That until this realization is gained one is trapped within such states, that you cannot escape, that, God, Gawd, and Demons and Devils are all also trapped, they are creatures of Death-not because they are untrue but because they are labels and even ventures into permanence i.e. Omnipotence leaves us with the question, "if it is permanent then how can we observe change in anything touched by such an entity? If it is permanent how is there thought, age, death? If there is permanence then how is transcendence possible? Grace could not then be attained, no?" Then when I tried to dance in the arena of Ideas i.e. Utilitarian, Golden rule-with it only in the material realm it became moot-all things end. The world will be gobbled up by the sun, so the scientists say, the universe will die either cold and desolate or contracted into a ball of fire, or some other cataclysm. What does it matter if they suffer, there is no 'ether' for it to reverberate through. Suffering, as Good, would be Ultimately in such a material world be moot. It does not lasting 'good'.

The Dharma starts with all is impermanent. Even Emptiness. These are the highest understandings and gives a step by step procession toward revealing it in labels even though it is beyond labels. The Buddha's were Men and Women-they are not Omnipotent or else, logic tells us, if they are indeed all compassionate "we would all be free". They are omniscient.

These are a few of the things I learned. It kept me from leaping from a bridge metaphorically and literally. I was, at the root, what I think most people are-a materialist because in our age it is reified by the priests of such a Church-the Scientists. They have 'proof' which just means it works (but 2 * 2 = 4 but does not mean that 2 * 3 = 5). But, it is so difficult to reject, on any level, that which you can see and touch. I understand this. But, what Truths does this reveal without deeper insight (I was told by a friend of mine that went to hear a Monk speak. He said the scientists would eventually get to Emptiness, they would see its power, but because of not practicing the Moral precepts to such a revelation it would lead to the problem that are material things come too-Power, and Death, that since it would not answer anything but in a circular meaning-we seek what the material world can only offer-fleeting 'happiness' which, inevitably, leads to power, which inevitably leads to war i.e. the Atom bomb, the musket, metal, etc. war, war, war-both personally and nationally. I find it interesting that the new atom smasher, or Large Hadron Collider, in Switzerland is trying to uncover this testy 'reality' that matter seems to be 'appearing' without, ultimately, a root but Emptiness-and that the Priests of Science are reverting to Faith i.e. believe in the String Theory even though we cannot test, or experiment in it. But, the Monk said, they would uncover Emptiness and its power, but have no "Yoga" to use it properly)?

So, once I progressed past this selfish despair, it turned my focus to the without, and I saw that my despair was part of the universes. And, unlike the Buddhism often practiced by beginners in the west, it illuminates the Horror of this existence (the teachers, at first, knew this revelation could not be be first shown to the hippies who were testing it out. They had enough of the fire and brimstone from their parents Puritanical preachers. But, after some reveling in the Love and Compassion you see that it is not feathers that you are cultivating but swords and spears to fight this World of illusions. To the poor Tibetans we got this impermanence early i.e. your parents are going to die, you are going to die, and all is going to die, yikes!) I was left with the ache of seeing this ache. I was first perceiving the valley into which we were existing, but now, I had faith based on outcomes, of what was beyond the mountains.

This is the nature of the wheel. It is not what most people who know of the Path, but have not studied the path know it as. It is not some Truth that we are supposed to be complacent in its existence. I have met so many Followers that just want a happy Samsara, they don' t want to get off really. That is the point. The Wheel is not some Illuminated Reality, or Good, it is evil, or the root of it, if we equate evil with suffering, we are to get off, to try to destroy it-this motion is evil, to be still a virtue. To help others get off, that is what we ultimately have to do. Yes, charity, yes, giving in this world, for one has to be able to have a minimum in order to even contemplate getting off. You cannot practice if you are suffering too hard within it.

It is so hard. In the shadow looking at all the suffering.

There was a monk meditating in a cave for twenty some years. A follower came to see him and found out the monk was sleeping two hours, drank some water, ate some barley flour and meditated for ten some hours, stopped drank, ate again, and then meditated until he slept for two hours. He did this for twenty years. The follower came for a teaching and remarked how hard it seemed. The Follwer was expecting the master to expound that it was easy once you reached a certain state, to beautifully, and lyrically tell them the joys of meditation but to summarize what he said,

"It sucks. I wish there was another way."

So, we must suffer, and we suffer more when we have no sight and we witness all of this falling apart. All this death. This motion. And yet it is also a catalyst. I have to stop this wheel, I have to get off, and I could not be free if everyone one else was churning on that burning wheel. I could not fathom leaving while I watched villages burn, individuals mourn, that is what this world is, The Mourning Star-burning so bright with activity but always in a constants state of descent-out of the heavens pulling down even the brightest of other stars.

In the Shadows I despair, but it is not a impotent despair, in the Shadows I train for the only Way worthy of existence. I sharpen my mind, my heart, and my spirit with draughts of Love and Compassion, and foods of Wisdom. I hide from the Dragons of the midnight sky, but not out of rabbit like fear, but for fear to show my position. It is the stealth of a warrior. I will free my people even as I sit with heavy heart, and filled with fear, there is a determination born not of futility "nothing to lose" but a focused expectation "we have everything to gain".

Be well

A Little Brown Man's America

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 23:17:24 GMT

I like to read Joe Bageant http://www.joebageant.com/ and his book Deer Hunting With Jesus was a wonderful read. His America, the redneck America, is so far from my own life. It made me wonder and ruminate on my life that has been so shaped by a oppositional stance to what has been pawned off as America, that it seems that I am not American so to say but a antoganist to it. Most of what I oppose is the propaganda that has been so fausted upon us, and that is so foriegn to me a brown man from a largish metropolitan coastal city. It seems that they are speaking some foriegn, alien language when they speak of 'values' and 'religion'. I see now why, through reading things such as Deer Hunting, why it seems so odd to me. This is not for me. This propaganda. I am already seen as a forgone conclusion. They know how my views are, they know that I am intractable to such a deal with the Devil i.e. you say you are against abortion and so I will accept that you will kill thousands, tens of thousands of other children elsewhere. I will accept that you will kill me through lack of care, making health unimaginably expensive, as long as you say that Jesus is the King of Kings-and mean it. Now I can see when people tell me to 'go home' the reasons behind it, but, they do not understand that I do love my country. It is both with my heart, and my mind, and not for some document but for the people that I have met in this country that has been mine for many years. But they don't think I do. I will always be the invader to them. Not, to most I think, the Mongolian horde come to rape their buffont hair do'ed women, and take all their Rhinelander, but the one with such different ideas. Perhaps, my ideas are as odd to them as their acceptance of the Deal is to me. These people who love their families (as the Republicans are always trying to point to as if other people don't love their families) who love their guns, booze, cars, and sports. They also believe that taking anything from the government, or have been taught this, is a form of cheating. And, they believe that cheating is dishonarable (growing some pot out in the forest isn't cheating it is making a living) they pay their taxes, they get screwed in the mortgage crisis, and they are ready to accept the blame of their idiocy like it is some God's decree-or the Redneck way of life to always be screwed.

I am trying. I imagine going to these towns, much as I have in the 'inner cities' and try my hand at teaching there. We know that rural America is as blighted as inner cities are with the difference being there are trees and fertilzer about. I imagine having these conversations with the populace about Health Care and how it is a right, and how getting screwed by the predatory lender is not all your fault. Yes, you signed the document but you couldn't read it! This is not a joke. It took me three days to go through all of the paperwork to sign a mortgage deal and I only understood 10%. I was able to glean some assurities, I make enough to have a normal mortgage, but I could have been swindled. What about those towns where they can't even read the 10% or get any gist of it? They don't know how to value things i.e. location, location, location-but what if you live in a town that is a shithole, and everywhere nearby is a shithole, and if you buy there and the factory up and leaves to China you are in a double shit hole with worthless land that you still owe 75% of a mortgage on whose APR will set to double once the ARM comes due?

I have a hard time understanding this lifestyle because I come from one so different. When we came to this country with empty pockets (down to our last 20$) my father espoused an education, as did my mother even though she did not get the chance to get one. They came from a war torn country, and we were refugees. An education my father pounded into me, intellectual pursuits trumped everything. He cared that I could take care of my future family in a material way, but never, ever made me feel that there was any honor in baubles in themselves, or the pursuit of them. I had greater affinity and understanding with those that had the same pursuit and ideals, to some degree, that came with the children of liberals that get the snide Intellectuals label. We liked to think, our parents were not rich, they were teachers and carpentars, but they read, they liked to discuss things, they drank beer too. We had BBQ's in the backyard that my father manned after he dug a pit and put the oven rack over it. The children played, white, black, and two mexican kids and me. But, it is so hard to understand this adherence to an anti-intellectual code. I can't understand it but I can see it, when I read Deer Hunting it matched up so closely with the urban blight problem. Where being smart, being articulate and well read is "white' and you get beat up for it. Did you know that? I taught fourth graders and there was one highly skilled student who enjoyed reading at about an eighth grade level, and he was beaten up, so bad he pissed himself, just because he was being "white". In the redneck towns they vote republican though, in the urban desert they don't vote. That is the difference.

How has this happened? In this country I love, that I poke and prod at because I want it to be better. We have groups of people who the progressive ideal was meant to help and who refuse it on basis of smoke and mirrors. Why the hell would Jesus want you to be against Universal Health care? Why don't you vote? Because it is "white". What the fuck kind of world is this?

I sit here at my desk and wonder what I will do to make myself get up tomorrow. My daughter, my wife, check, my mother my father, check, sister, check, and ultimately that I think I can make a difference. In my classroom, at least, they pay lip service to that ideal my Father had. That an education is not a racial stereotype, but a hard fought, difficult journey, that allows you the ability to better help those that can't help themselves. To be able to do good in this world. To be knowledgably productive. To navigate it with as open eyes as you can.

That is what gets me, I think, it is that in this country, we have focused on closing peoples eyes and making them think of a Demon Haunted World rather than having them open them and observed what is before them. The Republicans have attached Health Care to Abortion, they have attached blind acceptance of National policy to patriotism, they have intertwined American with unquestioning devotion-the have replaced the God they so love and on his throne the Mammon of Country. They try to make God synonymous with it, and Country deserves, so they believe, the same crusade inducing faith. Eegad!

How was this done? Is it because we were too busy talking about the new New Yorker? Am I at fault because I was sipping a shade grown, fair trade coffee right before I swam into the hundreds of children I ache for? Right then. While me, the graduate school grad, swam into the hundreds of aching children, who worked hard at what he did, so hard that I bled on the inside, from parents that bled on the outside to give me this chance? Did they pull these shenanigans while I went to school and studied over a hundred hours a week, and only cut back when I had to work? That is their intellectual elite? me? Rubbing two coppers together in hopes of it illuminating into some alchemist dream and shabam into gold? Me? Just because I want them to have the health care I scratch together, a little left over to save, and a chance at an education, just because I want to fund Citizens and not bombing citizens of some other place makes me the Snobbery? I like to read, write, have dabbled in travel, and give monthly to charity makes me a Snob? I guess so. My compassion and efforts are what make me out of touch with 'real america"? Because I don't drink (bum liver) or smoke (got to stay alive to help my daughter, help my students, help...) or find NASCAR interesting, or fanatical in my religious dogma-trying to be open and caring of other pathways to Truth, I am a snob. I am the problem??

I have read the Bible, a few times, I have read commentaries, I have read many of the Buddhist literature, and will do the Quran etc. I am open. I read Harpers and the Economist, I have opinions on politics and policy, and most of my leanings are Liberal-progressive. I don't believe in tax, tax, tax, but I do believe in a progressive one with no loop holes. I believe I know so little, I know I do, but I do have the traits of what many have begun to hate so much. I don't want to take anything away from anyone, except their ignorance and pain. But, somehow, the powers that be have worked it that I am the Bad Guy. The Greedy Clever Bastard out to turn everyone communist and take away their freedom. Their Freedom to do what? Be swindled and conned, to die broke and ill? Free to be drunk and pissed off? But never the Freedom to really be free.

I am the bad guy. And I don't know how it happened.

Be well
G

My Wife My Teacher

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:42:58 GMT

My wife is my teacher in so many ways.

Not only in the reigning in of my too romantic ways, but, in the pragmatic practice of attempting being a good human being. She is both example and active participant.

I am one, often, to lament this world. I am often saddened beyond reason? Well, maybe not beyond reason, but it inches to despair, and in this I cannot allow myself because in the grips of despair one is consumed with, in my observations, indolence. They do not move toward freeing themselves, which, I have found means to focus on the Other rather than the self. To say less convolutedly; "get off your ass and do something". Now, I wouldn't say this to anyone, it is not always good to do something when you do not have the means, or even an inkling of a view, but if the 'something' comes from a great desire to ease such sufferings in whatever manner that be-then it must be attempted. The greater the attempt must be equally measured by ones talent, which, must be seen through strong lenses of self scrutiny and, usually, the harsh realities of the market (not to say that talent always wins out in such a flawed system as the market).

Now, at best I am low moderate in talent in anything, thus I start on the self first. When the despair begins to peak in me, I become reclusive and quiet, not the pensive quiet but the quiet that a beaten dog gets in the company of others. I tend to snap at people and forget my awareness of 'harm no one'. And who is that, that is beside me the most, my beautiful wife who suffers the most from my black moods. I try to keep her from them and, to be honest, 90% or so I would say she is not conscious of. Perhaps I am wrong, but I think it is the duty of a Husband at least (I say this not to be sexist but I do not know what it is to be a wife, well, at least not in this life) to 'be like a log' and suck it up-to say vulgarly. My black moods are my own, brought upon my excessive clinging to myself, I know, and the worry I have for the world. There is a cure, I am trying, and who am I to suffer another with my own suffering. It would not be fair. I know, in our modern definitions of 'relationships' we believe that we should have 'dialogue' and this often succumbs to airing every woe and fancy that comes into one's mind-however, in my experience this has brought nary a happiness to ones partner and usually quite the opposite. For, what mostly plagues our minds, or at least mine, are things that have no outside panacea. I am my own surgeon in such matters, and the only reason to air it would be to ease my burden by not letting it dissipate into the emptiness that it is but to have my wife share in my burden-this I would not do. To Love is to be defined as "may they have every happiness" and compassion, the teachings say, is "may they be free from every harm" and in this I believe. I cannot alleviate my suffering by diffusing it to another, the weight is the same but it is carried by two, which, when lugging a bed frame up two flights is okay, but when it is the shouldering of woe-it is not. The internal struggle must see through this woe, see it for what it is, the clinging to the idea of self: that there is something there that can fill out the cape of suffering. I know it is there. I try so hard, and at times I make headway, but it comes back in different forms-before it was the woe of material things, or the lack of, in the earthly sense not just money, but now, it is the same but that for others. My students, my friends. When you get to be a certain age you see the wheel of experience churn, it is no longer new, these things, and they become less fanciful and more worn, ragged. Even humor, I have told my students, even 'happiness' becomes a tad stale, as any fantastic meal would become if it was all we ate. And I see these friends and colleagues wincing, I didn't notice before but they are, my parents did too and their friends too, now that I can recollect those pictures of the past with some insight. Quiet pain that leaked out in a myriad of different ways of abuse of both self and other, to bear it, but not in a benign (to the other way) but mostly to punish those that you love for you cannot seem to keep a lid on it. I read and this suffering has been since, at least, they had the ability to record it. Thus, when it dawns on me that a day of pain awaits, I try to meditate on its impermanence and smile, to remember what Love means, what Compassion means, and struggle through it, bearing it alone.

Alone

Alone because when I see my wife, even in the throws of my childs tantrums, in her own struggles of family, friends, future and past, and I want to get angry, at somone, to lash out my frustrations (which I still do too much of the time to my shame). I have to remember the great unknown to say it romantically, or the Great Terror that we all face to say it otherwise. We are alone. Faced against this absurdity that is life bounded on two sides of uknown to birth, death and unknown. And in the face of this we, despite our greatest efforts, face it alone.

I picture my wife, beautiful, gorgeous in all the measures of a mate and person standing there bravely, upset, angry, and saddened by my sorrow, by my harsh words in the throes of my passionate agony. She is standing before this Great Terror and on top of facing it, caring for a child, she has me, an anchor of melancholy. This will not do. She is my example to being quiet. To those with little or no talent, it is the best practice, to those with a lot of talent, it is the first practice to master. To be quiet in my face, in my exchange of words and mood, to give not a trace of the turmoil that I wage-for a drowning man, a compassionate drowning man, if given the choice between drowning by himself, or drowning with those that would save him, would, I think choose the former. Even though, even though experience tells us that the 'natural' reaction to drowning is to grab another and try to pull them down with you, to climb over them in any attempt to live-however, in the attempt to be Good, we should destroy this reflex-to, if we must, die alone, for, without any imbellishment we are inevitably to do so.

My teacher, my beautiful wife. I love you. And for you I will be silent, quiet to my woes. To shoulder them alone is the proper way to be. To figure out this puzzle, to worry it, until there is not a fetter left. I will be with you, holding you, I will shoulder as much as I can, of yours, for it is what I wish. It is my joy to do so. And here we have the opposite of teachings. To want to shoulder a load and not to give it, to be quiet to ones own suffering but to listen and take on anothers. It is the way of the Way. To drown for the other, to lift them up to breathe as you are to brave the deep, dark, where the light fears to tread. There is something watching down there, in the deep, where the motes of detritus sink into the Abyss and whether friend or foe I do not know, I have hopes, but I do not know, and even this I would brave so that you, her, Her, would not have too.

(to those who wonder why I put it here and not being silent it is because you don't know me, and my wife doesn't read this. It is, mostly, just a medium to my own mental mastication.)

Be well

The Ache of Sight

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:16:34 GMT

I wrote last on the sorrow, my Familiar, and it left me, after reading it again, with only an ache. There was no redemption in it. That was not correct even though, at the time of writing it, the idea of redemption was far off-a distant light in the fog. What I did not emphasize is that sorrow is a correct response to the elevated head. I am not saying I am fully removed for the muck of this world, no, I am not. I am awashed in the sickening self-focused pathways that only leads us deeper in the pit of decay. My acceptance of my sorrow is a signpost of this, my determined effort at self-recognition and lack of humility are flares of my degraded state. I am worth only that which I would give, and, to be honest, a miserly fellow am I. But, I must say, the sorrow although sign of only a person who has attempted the lesser of goods-the weak and flaccid conventional all encompassiong compassion (Bodhicitta-even though this is not to be translated, I am told, as compassion-it is greater-a driven compassion) is a sign of the correct direction. I am relegated to tears, and ulcers, but it is necessary. There cannot be any glib victories in a conventional sense, they must not be clung too, and I try valiantly to cling to them, but, that is not the way to the only worthy striving-freedom.

To be sad, then, is good. To be afflicted with the woes of the world is a logical, I think, state to be in. However, it cannot be a permanent state (even though this is, on a Ultimate level impossible) or it threatens one's practice. It is reifying the very self that one is trying to get away from. To be sad states that there is something to be sad. However, one must also not go beyond what they are capable, they must strive and strive and find that barrier that cannot be overcome. I am not at a state where I must believe that I can accomplish 'anything', I know my limitations intimately. That is not to say that I could not accomplish all the material aspirations that I attended too; rich, etc-however, I see these now with a critical mind. What amount of effort would it be to become so? And, ultimately, for what purpose-and for me it would only to be indulgence and pride. Pride, pride of what? Really, what is this that stands before you? It is but a corpse, really, just with breath and a heart beat, a tad warm (like compost). What is there really to lift up and cherish? I don't want to get too far down the path of loathing, or not at all, but to a clear view-it is beautiful in itelf-the body, but no matter how fantastic a Hammer is, beautiful in the extreme, it is mostly beautiful in that which it can do-build a home (through hammering nails). What is it that your body would do, your riches, etc. Even if it is to charity, which we all should do, if we think of this as the path then we must remember The Christ, "They will always be with you" the Buddha says this as well. Charity is not the path toward freeing them or yourself, although it is part of the path. It cannot be stagnant. One must be free. It is the only way out of this. I think, after time and insight, one become like Munch's silent scream. "This can't be it" one wonders, and searches hopefully to find something, a path to freedom. Why do I keep harping on freedom, because after you get old like me you look at your life and you see that most of what is usually measured doesn't mean much; degrees, money, house, etc. That the things I used to measure myself by; intelligence, looks (or lack therof), girlfriends, prideful things-don't mean much if anything. I look at things with admiration i.e. a beautiful child, woman, man, but with an eye more toward that of an artist (of which I am not one), stylistic appreciation really more than anything-but not any, or very little, investment other than that in it. My face will age and become ugly, so will theirs, my body weak, my loved one's all left when I die-this is True. I enjoy the moments, but again in the sense of the moment. I have moments where I am mistaken and fall into the trap of worrying about it, but, it fades, and I see, with a little insight its real worth-which, for even the most famous of paintings is kindling when it comes right down to it. If I am cold that is.

What matters is what I do, what mattered is what I have done. If I focus on my endless desires the most I can get too is the giving of charity which will be exhausted. If I can figure out to be free, then too, I can show how to become so. I lament the suffering I have caused, I lament that I will come up short over and over again to the desires to alleviate suffering. And this is the sorrow I feel for myself, and that I could work for eons and there would still be Other suffering is also a great weight. I would take it if I could.

Dearest one
upon worried brow
I carry thee
remembrance lost
and gained
and lamentations begin
In my own throat
at such appearences
illusions reified
or at least attempted
and only your pain
becomes my blade
to hopefully
cut these fetters
and to remain of my will
to teach wings

Be well
G

Sorrow My Friend

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 16:17:48 GMT

I used to think it was about happiness. When I was young and decidedly not happy. Even when I smiled She was there in the shadows, my friend, lounging and watching me with a Truthful glint to her eyes. She knew. She saw through the facade of my games. And in this worry I glared at the world and thought there must be an escape, perhaps down the path of Happiness. There had to be happiness in this world.

When I became older but still young I thought that I had found it. In the life of the glib. Oh, I know, the Intelligent and Serious People will tell you that it is not 'real' this life, but they don't know, or have forgotten the Siren song of it. You cannot tell me laying drunk on grass clasping at the first drops of dew watching the constellations spin is not fun. Or, at least, fun in its moments. To see the fine dip of a woman's hip, beautiful lips, and her mirth tickle through the mossy retreats of my mind like a babble of a brook, is indeed intoxicating. So much so that we think, in the grips of the madness that is inexperience and vigor, we think that it is it. It could be it. When our guts are not rotten and we don't shit out pus and half digested, half rotted matter, we think that Scotch and midnight burgers are great deeds indeed. I think we look back on those times with nostalgia not because they were not without worry but because they were without thought. They were fun, they were, but the Argonaut listening to Aglaophonos has only one fate, beautiful though the reverie may be it is but a fog to the Mind-which is the only escape. That which baffles it, that which becomes a barrier to it, is that which tethers you.

Oh, we live in these prisons, prisons dark and deep. I told my students the worry of mine is the worry of this glibness, this fog. I asked them, "what if a world government Hegemony existed and forced you to live five miles deep in the earth" and they quaked and gave brave childish answers-I would kill them, fuck that I would rather die-and yet they have no idea the strength of the ties to this illusion-I ask, "what if they held what you hold most dear for ransom? Your children, your wife or husband, your family, and threatened them with destruction" These students only knew the selflish understanding of sacrifice, that of self, and yet, that is the easiest, often, to shoulder. So they were silent. They admitted it would be horrible, and then I said, "and what of your children, or their children, would it be horrible for them that know only the sky and stars as a children's story?" they would not know their prison, their baking prison beneath the weight of the sludge of the earth, the vomit of its bowels. And we are like this, enthralled with our cages, digging deeper pits to throw this cage into, shrinking the ceilings, walling ourselves in ever tighter. We are. I can hardly breathe at times.

And in the pressure of this vice I surrendered my quest at happiness. It served its purpose: to have an end, to think on its will-o-wisp nature, that it was really just a washed out rag fluttering in the wind and not the standard of victory, it was the palsied reality behind the Great Oz. This does not mean that I take on its opposite, of anger, and hate, no, to let go of happiness lets go of its twin. It is hard, so hard, I sweat and shiver from the effort. I think I am so weak, that it must have been so much easier for those that have come before. Thus to serve.

I read Adam Smith, and, to some degree, I agree, that imagination is the ability to arise sympathy which has been a catalyst to intricate Economics both in the Selfless realm i.e. charity, etc. as well as in the selfish i.e. transfering of goods in exchange for goods/species-or money-the imagination of want, or "the fair and deliberate exchange". But, he always alludes to the self. It is always there. It is the final tether. I am bounded in such and it seems, at times, or when I was young and muted to what I precieve, that it is a silly thing to rage against. That I am agitated at that which I cannot change and what use is that, but, I cannot eliminate the woe of the world. I cannot change, in all honesty, the brutality washing over many individuals and peoples of the world, and yet it pains me. It does. Any idea of exchange, ultimately, is a fettered proposition.

To be free. I am at a loss as to what it is. I can imagine it in foggy words, and mental phantasms such as limitless, unbounded, but what do these mean to one that has lived nothing but that of a fenced hound? I long for it, but, perhaps, it is the Shangri-La, the unshakeable imaginings of a caged beast of something better, grander. That it is innate to the animal, this Sympathy for the Other, both in the corporeal sense and in the whimsical state sense. It is this, perhaps, that pushes economy, the Invisible Hand so to say, not the 'betterment' of oneself but the possiblity of escape of oneself. And yet, we know, that there is not.

Here, beside the oaks whose leaves have been tainted with the flush of its annual death, I imagine that it hurts, leafy Prometheus awaiting the hungry Eagle. I watch the students trudge off to college classes, drink coffee, reading books or eyeing one another with animal lust. And what for, I ask myself, what for. I envy them not their youth, in this moment, but their glibness, their unknowning. I envy them their ignorance and I lament at my own. The fall of things, and the Fall of things, are inevitable, in the frosty mornings or in the collapse of composite entities-the rumination of 'realities' rumble in me. I am at a loss.

And my friend, that beautiful woman rests with me, giggling, playing in the shadows. She has always been there with me. Not consoling, not sympathizing, but playing games that illuminate my tendency for fancy, the loadstone that brings me back to grey realities. I will miss her when she goes, truly, if she will. I will miss her even if it means she only leaves when we go into the great unknown, for, despite her harsh cries and sharp reprimands I am sure I would not be able to temper my romanticism. That I would float off into the ether still trapped but forgetting that I was. And thus not any motion, no realizations, but she is a hard friend. Her, in the shadow. Always with me.

Be well

The Uknown Known: The Illusion of truth

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 17:54:18 GMT

What is it that you can know? I ask you this. I think on this as I have been contemplating the Apocolypse. Not in some sense that I believe it will happen in some exo-ending where there will be "blood the height of a saddle", no, I am a believer that the Books, especially the last one (that, Martin Luther when rearranging the Bible that most protestants read was going to leave out because he said, "Jesus is not known in it") are focusing on the internal struggle. That the whole of eternity that it speaks of is an introspective realization-for, as we know through Nagarjuna or any other such vein Kant, Hume, etc-that Time, ultimately, is a fallacy. That there is an infinity between seconds and if wherever you are there is an infinity in every direction there is, I imagine, no motion-even if measured from where you were. The Eternity of Existence, the Emptiness of Reality.

In this mind I was thinking. That one should always be unsure of what they know, highly skeptical of anything they understand, that their Truths should be relegated only to the most quaking and unsteady of foundations. For, truly, what can one know? I ask this while reading Philip K. Dick's novel The Divine Invasion. In the idea of the returning Christ how could one know that it was not the Other, the Trickster? There are signs that say the Holy of the Holy would never touch the ground but, honestly, do we think that levatation would be beyond the powers of the Dark One (incidentally I think it is a stark contrast to the Buddhist viewpoint, and one that sticks to my craw a bit in exasperation, that in one-Christian-we view him as Evil and to be battered with words, animosity if not outright hostility-and the other-Buddhism-you get chastisted for doing so because all beings afflicted with ignorance-anger sometimes seen as the greatest-deserve our compassion not our own anger for flames to flames create nothing but an inferno. I am supposed to extend my compassion toward them, and, actually imagine, meditate on taking their woe and suffering-eegad!). I have read an article on DARPA which gave unprecedented access to a journalist who, was later told, he shouldn't have had that access. But, one of the weapons that they were working on was a large scale hologram capabilities that would be indistinguishable to the naked eye from 'reality'. The person he was interviewing actually made this comment, "We would be able to broadcast in an area of high religious zeal, for example Jeruseluem, the second coming of Christ which would make a strategic military move into such an area successful with minimal cost" This is not an exact quote as I am doing it from memory but it is something along this lines. But, to the observer, to the literalist of the Bible, it would be indistinguishable from their systems of belief-tell me, who would they be bowing down too? Not just the play of lights but the motivation of such a creation, their arms wide open for the rapture, their hearts bursting with righteouss anger to flog the unbelievers and Homos one million times worse than the King of Kings got for, we know, the ecstasy addled homo rave boy has angered God to thoughts of retribution on to levels that would sicken Goebble.

So, what is one to do? In this world of Illusion, and what if that which is precieving the Illusion is an Illusion? Where is the 'I' we speak of? Is it possible for an illusion to percieve through an illusion? I have been told that it is possible, as a diamond is used to cut a diamond-but the illusion within it has to be of the highest order. Thus, in this life when it is illusion we must understand this, we must grasp ahold of the understanding that what we percieve is tainted, or, a better word would be created by, that which percieves. If we are the creators of this 'world' and that this creation has meaning unto itself, like a snake bitings its own tail, we have the freedom of creating it in all its glory (although I believe there is an underlying Truth of which when realized is exempt from such a label). However, I think, when we have ideas that we know within this illusion anything with a certainty then we are in trouble. This leads to untruths of solidity and thus all that is without is wrong. And we know that when we label that without our conceptions as Error what happens-on a large scale persecution, inquisitions, or marginilization.

A Man came to the great Rabbi Hillel and said 'I will become a proselyte on the condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I stand on one foot' Hillel said, 'Whatever is hateful to you, do not do it to your neighbor. That is the entire Torah'

Then how is one to act? Are we to keep silent? Well, I think silence is a lost art, so much can be said with it, in fact, The Buddha gave assent with his silence i.e. when someone requested he come to take alms from them he would give assent with his silence. His words were precious (do not give pearls to swine)-we are also taught that one of the basic teachings, and first ones, is, when emotions afflict you, 'be like a log'. There is also foolish silence as a saying goes-'to speak too much is foolish to keep silent when one must speak is more foolish still'. Thus, no, we are not to be silent if we have any ability at all, if not (which I think is not possible if you are in the human form), and we have deduced this through introspection then it is best to remain silent-our judgement is what is at hand here. Our Judgement should never be swayed by our vanity or our angst, to make this steady and true, or as true as can be in this land of Dreams and Nightmares. To fill one's keel with a ballast of outgoing catalysts i.e. Love and Compassion-to hone one's judgement one must hone their motivations. This concept allows for one to hedge their error, for error will still be done without True Sight. But Error on a path attempting selflessness with the intelligence of the "Golden Rule" as stated above i.e. how would I feel, or as Shanti Deva espouses the practice of exchanging self and other. However, this is not to be seen as the end, as ends without Truly reaching the end (which is without concepts of Love, Selfless, etc) will lead to the error of pride, of stagnation which leads us right back to the error of solidity and its subsequent outcomes.

Thus how can we spot the Devil or the great deluder if we ourselves our deluded? How could we spot the stainless if indeed we can only see through eyes that are stained? This is the great question one has to come to, the humilty of knowing how little you know (I have heard Socratese had said as much that wisdom is knowing how little you know) and to be aware of the persistent and constant slide into incorrect sight, and that only Love, Compassion, Kindness, Selflessness can be any buouy at all to us. To whit, the only way to spot the devil, I think, is that when we think we have spotted him know that we look not out from a window upon such a sight, but that we are glaring fixedly in a mirror. And, perhaps, the other side of this coin is true as well. And if both are looked upon with a wish to free that which we see and to couple it with the actions to do so, it is inevitable that it will be so-

there goes no Devil but I
and therefore we know thine enemy
for which there is only one remedy
to go forth with swords to cut
and spears to pierce
that which is our only adversary

There goes no Savior but I
And therefore we know thine path
for which there is only one traveler
to go forth with swords to cut
and spears to pierce
that which is our only savior

And thus to the land not of alabaster
Myrrh and Sandalwood
nor of gold and pearls
wishing gems, Dakini's or
Virginal Houris
but the greatest of gifts
Freedom

I will end it here, with a thought, that how can a beast know of freedom that which has never tasted it. I imagine it and it is faint, a memory of light like a pale cave salamander must have. We are such, or even those that wish it-that crave it, maybe some are happy in their bondage, their Egypt-I am sure some were, if not happy, more frightened of the effort and reward of the Promised land-followers of the boundary.

Do not fear the end, for the end is a beginning, to where there are no ends, no beginnings and language is moot-to, in our coarse words, attain Freedom.

Be well

The Magnanimous Journey

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 19:41:19 GMT

Written on a stone column at Thermopylae

Go, Stanger, and to Lacedaemon tell
That here, obeying her behests, we fell.

Go tell the Spartans, though that passeth by,
that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

You who pass by, a moment pause;
We, here, obey the Spartan law

This is about death. Death is the only Truth in our lives that us lay people can touch and feel. It is honest. I think on it and think that to be alive and yet living, to be conscious of this precious awareness is to embark on the heroes journey. It is noble because it is tragic, and tragedy as we know needs the pre-requisite of there being able to have nobility. We live so briefly, a buttefly breath, and yet to be aware, to quest for goodness, understanding, even in what seems to be mundane tasks is a Spartan's promise. In this life, to accept its honesty is Heroic.

We cannot Know as the Bodhisattva's know, we can only tread through this life clinging to our only Truth-our death, our end. And since we are sure of this, the truth of it, we know that there is something before it. There is a story, and what is in it is unknown, but the display is there, we are sure, for all ends have beginnings.

I sit here and grasp at and try to pull this in me like some bone graft of smoke, to be a part of me. To never forget the Truth that is there. It used to instill fear in me, and, to be honest, it is still there in spurts, it must be. I don't trust a soul that says that they don't fear death-or at least anyone I don't think is beyond this and Knows. They are either non-human, lying, or ignorant beyond compare-it is the unknown, the cliff at the end of the road, and possibly there is undending fields of Elysia beyond, or perhaps an abrupt end, and to either we do not know-and Man is inevitably, at least, anxious of the unknowns and often terrified. It is our Truth, our terror and horror, our anxiety, and angst, but our liberation, the catalyst to our proof of our existence, and all that we do, we do despite, inspite, we offer a stiff chin to the unknown, a promise to those that come after that we Live. A reification of our understanding of our Life.

Tell them that we lived
Tell them that we were here
and despite the Law
We lived by our Law
set down by our Mind
and heart
of our spirit
Even with the Boundary
so we do
an exercise of our nobility and tragedy

Be well

Selflessness as an addition

Thu, 18 Sep 2008 04:36:32 GMT

Once, when I was a child, and I did childish thing, and thought as a child, I looked at the idea of selflessness as a nicety that one had to placate themselves too, if only in lip service. We had to think that it was polite to say so and then to lead a life of utter hedonistic abandon. I say the latter not as some Bacchanalian orgy, but rather what we have accepted as a normal state of being. When we ask even our children it is in terms of this selflessness i.e. what do you want to be (in terms of ability to attain some materialistic Brahamanism a cast system made up of the Merchant class) or what do you want-not in some ideal of higher calling but in a gluttonous expectation, to call them to the Feast so to say. But, lo' we are not to call it as such, this Horrid Last Supper, where the Gawd of this era turns the Bread into dough, and the Fish into silver. Not just in the act of particular consumption but in the act of making everything consumable, from our childrens education (I work in this field, it is awful to see-a School becomes not an arena for education and ability to wider thought and action, but a badge of separation, it becomes a tool to divide. Even the lovely most liberal when it comes to their children lament the horror other children have to go through but are not willing to accept their roles in this game. Kozol once was told by a parent who was watchign his children play baseball that Mr. Kozol was right, that if the poor black children were playing baseball with no mitts or cleats, no balls or bats, the other affluent teams parents wouldn't allow it. However, this parent, knew that in his divisivness, in his complacency he was doing this to their educations. And, ultimately was doing it for the betterment of his child, less competition, which, is the catch phrase that all Status Quo try to use-but if one is using bats and gloves and the other has bare hands and twigs, or if the race was started for the other child at 2-paid pre school starts here-and the other starts half days at 5-full day kindergarten costs money now-there is a three year head start for the other child. Is this competition? Or is it lip service and charades to cover a Feudal system in place in our great 'Democracy' where, us immigrants know, education is the only leveling field) to our very relationships with the Divine, Sublime, the Ineffable i.e. gathering votes with our play acting of piety-God, Gawd, Buddha and Oprah don't need legislative help-nope, omniscience, or omnipotence doesn't need Ted Kennedy or Jon Kyl. It has been commodified, and I want to say that it can change back, but, perhaps not. The age of Degeneration has to start somewhere does it not? All things that rise must fall, all that comes together must come apart. And it starts when we think we can label everything, when we can pigeon hole a thing, for, once this has been done it is inevitable to want to trade it, to render it into coin and market it. There is a price for everything, I am told, all things can be bought, and in the hearts of us all I think we can understand this to be true-not a Truth in the Ultimate sense, but a truth in our relative existence in the 'now'. Even our arguments are steeped only in this material realm i.e. the terms rich and poor have lost their non-material understanding. A few of us can still imagine being rich in spirit but it is a ghost of an imagination, the wealth of austerity is unknown, it is called poor now, and what poor really is, even though the imagination can spark some Disney ideal of the Richness of Spirit, it cannot fathom, really, anything that is poorness of spirit other than, perhaps, a Grinch, or Mr. Scrooge. That is because poorness of spirit, like racism, and all the other sorrows of this life are seen as something that is apart of our lives, and not a part of them. When we do the internal scan to determine if we are indeed Poor of Spirit, we see all is in order, that nothing is amiss, and thus conclude since the Otherness is not there we are not so. But such poorness, deciet and downright cheating of this precious human life we have attained, has become Us. If we all swim in a shit lake there is noone to tell us we are covered in shit for we are, if anything, creatures of comparison, our reality is based on it. It is this reason that we drive so hard to pull down those that strive to come out of the lake, why it seems so out of place for even a smidgen of kindness, and when this kindness leads to Moral change, or Character change, they are shunned. Even something as modest as becoming vegetarian for environmental reasons, see what happens to those that surround you who knew you best, or when a Christian says I will stand by this gay child and love them as my own, or even something as small as saying you don't want to drink anymore "And they were offended by him. But Jesus said unto them, a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house". I promise you that he spoke true, and it is why it is so difficult to be Good, because you become the beacon to light those around you, even on a small scale, to the filth they reside in. And if you do it kindly, not self righteously, all the more the vehemence will be. It is here that the saying, "misery loves company" is true, and it is because the Miserable don't want to know they are Miserable, and only in comparison is is possible.

I went off the track of what I was going to say but it is apropos. I wanted to speak of selflessness and a cloud of sorrow leapt over me. What tragedy it is that we could imagine a perfect society, and yet we have no belief that we can create it. Tell me what has been created without this very same imagination? It is not fancy. It is not entertainment that this skill arises in us. Imagination is the engine of reality and yet we spend so much time doubting this instead of partnering this engine with the means to create.

Selflessness is possible and the path, I think, first, is to realize it is not an exchange, the subtraction from one and the addition to another as we have been so taught. If we must think of it in the terms of commerce it is addition to both. It is the an offshoot of the ideal commerce in this sense, the ones imagined by the founders of such a form of Capitalistic thought i.e. Adam Smith, that one valued another thing more than what they were willing to exchange. In Selflessness one gives what another values and that the act of giving is, in itself, a value that is greater than that which was given. This transforms, after thought and practice, to the act of giving is no longer bound by reward (non commerce, transending the merchant class pinnacle) and the understanding that outgoing is expanding self to limitlessness. Or, less confusingly, that the act of giving is revealing the true nature of the indivisible nature of all things, or beyond even this, the removal of the subject object barrier. What is this then in laymans terms? Love. Paul said (goodness I am using a lot of Christian quotes here, but, I have been reading a few commentaries on it so I guess it is appropriate. For those that don't read my rants often, I am not Christian, but I would follow the Christ) in response to being a Christian, "there is Faith, Hope, and Love but of these Love is the most important" and it is this type of love he meant. Not the nasty Brothel like parody that is given to us now, or the dry, dusty Calvinistic Puritan Love of staid disgust for the cock and cunt, but that of selflessness. The moment when you realize that Her smile, or His, or whomever, has greater meaning than yours, and then you realize that there is no yours, that her smile is your, and then conversely her sorrows are yours, expand, and thus it goes, the ring on and one, until you feel you must burst. Who could sit still while so many weep-Atisha said that once one understands this beginning principal of universality they will weep for lifetimes.

Tears are not mispent
the world aches and cries
gnashing teeth and sputtering laughs
the mirth of drunks and deludeds
and a bare few, perhaps none, still wonder
what it would be if we all could crack a real grin
and a barer few, perhaps none, don't wonder
they do
and offer up their own grins in sacrafice
and find that just like when Abraham Offered up Isaac
that Gawd was just joshing
and you find your own grin,
which belongs to all and none.

Be well
G