continuing...


from

https://parisinstitute.org/veils-of-light-and-darkness-thinking-through-ibn-arabis-bezels-of-wisdom/




To Ibn Arabi, the dream state is full of symbols that point to the origin of the dream, i.e., reality. The phenomenal world must be interpreted, just like a dream, to reveal the truth it conceals: “When Muhammad said, ‘All men are asleep and when they die they will awake,’ he meant that everything a man sees in this life is of the same kind as that which one sleeping sees; in other words an apparition that requires interpretation.” “The interpreter,” Ibn Arabi adds, “proceeds from the form seen by the dreamer to the form of the thing in itself, if he is successful.” In fact, such interpretation (ta’wil) is the only way to reach the hidden truth behind the phenomena.

As an example of failed interpretation, Ibn Arabi offers the vision in which the prophet Abraham was urged by God to sacrifice his son. “Had he been true to the vision,” Ibn Arabi states, “he would have killed his son, for he believed that it was his son he saw although with God it was nothing other than the Great Sacrifice in the form of his son.” This, to the philosopher, was a failure on the prophet’s part: “He did not interpret what he saw, but took it at its face value, although visions require interpretation.”

Ibn Arabi’s view of the phenomenal world as a dream world does not imply a devaluation of the dream world as somehow “unreal” or “less real” than the reality. The difference between the dream world and reality is that the former consists of individuals and particulars, subjects and objects, things that are distinct from each other, whereas in the latter, everything is united and one. However, we are not talking about two different worlds here, but rather two different perspectives on the same world: ultimately, to Ibn Arabi, dream and reality are only two aspects of the same unity. To awaken, then, means to comprehend the reality in its totality, from which perspective particularity and individuality appear like a dream.



​​​​​​​

​​​​​​​

you left me all alone in your other "feci" thread  

Best wishes with this "new" one!  

getting around to it

​​​​​​​after the dog takes me for a walk

a little beauty

a little cutie

​​​​​​​smile




the sisters of mercy
(leonard cohen)


[Verse 1]
Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone
They were waitin' for me when I thought that I just can't go on
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song
Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long

[Verse 2]
Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control
It begins with your family, but soon it comes round to your soul
Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned:
When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned

[Verse 3]
Well they lay down beside me, I made my confession to them
They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem
If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
They will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem

[Verse 4]
When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon
Don't turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon
And you won't make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night
We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right
We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NiG3BvZ0a0

​​​​​​​

Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagita
The Divine Names, Chapter IV


On the Beautiful

1. Now let us consider the name of ”Good” which
the Sacred Writers apply to the Supra-Divine Godhead in
a transcendent manner, calling the Supreme Divine Existence Itself ”Goodness” (as it seems to me) in a sense that separates It from the whole creation, and meaning, by this term, to indicate that the Good, under the form of Good-Being, extends Its goodness by the very fact of Its existence unto all things. For as our sun, through no choice
or deliberation, but by the very fact of its existence, gives
light to all those things which have any inherent power of
sharing its illumination, even so the Good (which is above
the sun, as the transcendent archetype by the very mode of
its existence is above its faded image) sends forth upon all
things according to their receptive powers, the rays of Its
undivided Goodness.
[. . .]

7. This Good is described by the Sacred Writers as Beautiful and as Beauty, as Love or Beloved, and by all other
Divine titles which befit Its beautifying and gracious fairness. Now there is a distinction between the titles ”Beautiful” and ”Beauty” applied to the all-embracing Cause. For
we universally distinguish these two titles as meaning respectively the qualities shared and the objects which share
therein. We give the name of ”Beautiful” to that which
shares in the quality of beauty, and we give the name of
”Beauty” to that common quality by which all beautiful
things are beautiful. But the Super-Essential Beautiful is
called ”Beauty” because of that quality which It imparts to
all things severally according to their nature, and because
It is the Cause of the harmony and splendour in all things,
flashing forth upon them all, like light, the beautifying communications of Its originating ray; and because It summons
all things to fare unto Itself (from whence It hath the name
of ”Fairness”), and because It draws all things together in
a state of mutual inter penetration. And it is called ”Beautiful” because It is All-Beautiful and more than Beautiful,
and is eternally, unvaryingly, unchangeably Beautiful; incapable of birth or death or growth or decay; and not beautiful in one part and foul in another; nor yet at one time and
not at another; nor yet beautiful in relation to one thing but
not to another; nor yet beautiful in one place and not in
another (as if It were beautiful for some but were not beautiful for others); nay, on the contrary, It is, in Itself and by Itself, uniquely and eternally beautiful, and from beforehand It contains in a transcendent manner the originating
beauty of everything that is beautiful. For in the simple
and supernatural nature belonging to the world of beautiful things, all beauty and all that is beautiful hath its unique and pre-existent Cause. From this Beautiful all things possess their existence, each kind being beautiful in its own manner, and the Beautiful causes the harmonies and sympathies and communities of all things. And by the Beautiful
all things are united together and the Beautiful is the beginning of all things, as being the Creative Cause which moves
the world and holds all things in existence by their yearning for their own Beauty. And It is the Goal of all things,
and their Beloved, as being their Final Cause (for ‘tis the
desire of the Beautiful that brings them all into existence),
and It is their Exemplar from which they derive their definite limits; and hence the Beautiful is the same as the Good, inasmuch as all things, in all causation, desire the Beautiful and Good; nor is there anything in the world but hath a share in the Beautiful and Good. Moreover our Discourse will dare to aver that even the Non-Existent shares in the
Beautiful and Good, for Non-Existence is itself beautiful
and good when, by the Negation of all Attributes, it is ascribed Super-Essentially to God. This One Good and Beautiful is in Its oneness the Cause of all the many beautiful and good things. Hence comes the bare existence of all things, and hence their unions, their differentiations, their identities, their differences, their similarities, their dissimilarities, their communions of opposite things, the unconfused
distinctions of their interpenetrating elements; the providences of the Superiors, the interdependence of the Coordinates, the responses of the Inferiors, the states of permanence wherein all keep their own identity. And hence again the intercommunion of all things according to the power of each; their harmonies and sympathies (which do0 not merge them) and the co-ordinations of the whole universe; the mixture of elements therein and the indestructible ligaments of things; the ceaseless succession of the recreative process in Minds and Souls and in Bodies; for all have rest and movement in That Which, above all rest and all movement, grounds each one in its own natural laws
and moves each one to its own proper movement.

Figs from Thistles

By Edna St. Vincent Millay
 

 

 First Fig

My candle burns at both ends;
   It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
   It gives a lovely light!


Second Fig

  Safe upon the solid rock 
the ugly houses stand:
  Come and see my shining palace 
built upon the sand!

"The More Loving One"
by W.H. Auden 
​​​​​​​
Were all stars to disappear or die, 
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime, 
Though this might take me a little time.

Air and Angels
By John Donne

   
Twice or thrice had I lov'd thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame
Angels affect us oft, and worshipp'd be;
   Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
   But since my soul, whose child love is,
Takes limbs of flesh, and else could nothing do,
   More subtle than the parent is
Love must not be, but take a body too;
   And therefore what thou wert, and who,
     I bid Love ask, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fix itself in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love I thought,
And so more steadily to have gone,
With wares which would sink admiration,
I saw I had love's pinnace overfraught;
   Ev'ry thy hair for love to work upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
   For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;
   Then, as an angel, face, and wings
Of air, not pure as it, yet pure, doth wear,
   So thy love may be my love's sphere;
     Just such disparity
As is 'twixt air and angels' purity,
'Twixt women's love, and men's, will ever be.

Excerpt From
Ahead of All Parting
Rainer Maria Rilke




THE DUINO ELEGIES



THE FIRST ELEGY

  
    Who, if I cried out, would hear me among the angels’

    hierarchies? and even if one of them pressed me

    suddenly against his heart: I would be consumed

    in that overwhelming existence. For beauty is nothing

    but the beginning of terror, which we still are just able to endure,

    and we are so awed because it serenely disdains

    to annihilate us. Every angel is terrifying.

      And so I hold myself back and swallow the call-note

    of my dark sobbing. Ah, whom can we ever turn to

    in our need? Not angels, not humans,

    and already the knowing animals are aware

    that we are not really at home in

    our interpreted world. Perhaps there remains for us

    some tree on a hillside, which every day we can take

    into our vision; there remains for us yesterday’s street

    and the loyalty of a habit so much at ease

    when it stayed with us that it moved in and never left.



      Oh and night: there is night, when a wind full of infinite space

    gnaws at our faces. Whom would it not remain for—that longed-after,

    mildly disillusioning presence, which the solitary heart

    so painfully meets. Is it any less difficult for lovers?

    But they keep on using each other to hide their own fate.

      Don’t you know yet? Fling the emptiness out of your arms

    into the spaces we breathe; perhaps the birds

    will feel the expanded air with more passionate flying.
  

  
    Yes—the springtimes needed you. Often a star

    was waiting for you to notice it. A wave rolled toward you

    out of the distant past, or as you walked

    under an open window, a violin

    yielded itself to your hearing. All this was mission.
  
  
  But could you accomplish it? Weren’t you always

    distracted by expectation, as if every event

    announced a beloved? (Where can you find a place

    to keep her, with all the huge strange thoughts inside you

    going and coming and often staying all night.)

    But when you feel longing, sing of women in love;

    for their famous passion is still not immortal. Sing

    of women abandoned and desolate (you envy them, almost)

    who could love so much more purely than those who were gratified.

    Begin again and again the never-attainable praising;

    remember: the hero lives on; even his downfall was

    merely a pretext for achieving his final birth.

    But Nature, spent and exhausted, takes lovers back

    into herself, as if there were not enough strength

    to create them a second time. Have you imagined

    Gaspara Stampa intensely enough so that any girl

    deserted by her beloved might be inspired

    by that fierce example of soaring, objectless love

    and might say to herself, “Perhaps I can be like her”?

    Shouldn’t this most ancient of sufferings finally grow

    more fruitful for us? Isn’t it time that we lovingly

   freed ourselves from the beloved and, quivering, endured:

    as the arrow endures the bowstring’s tension, so that

    gathered in the snap of release it can be more than

    itself. For there is no place where we can remain.
  

  
    Voices. Voices. Listen, my heart, as only

    saints have listened: until the gigantic call lifted them

    off the ground; yet they kept on, impossibly,

    kneeling and didn’t notice at all:

    so complete was their listening. Not that you could endure

    God’s voice—far from it. But listen to the voice of the wind

    and the ceaseless message that forms itself out of silence.

    It is murmuring toward you now from those who died young.

    Didn’t their fate, whenever you stepped into a church

    in Naples or Rome, quietly come to address you?
  

some…

are caught in the devil’s bargain…




​​​​​​​
(a map of mappo)

YUNG-MING
Translated by Thomas Cleary
In: The five houses of Zen, 1997




False Cults

BECAUSE OF IGNORANCE of the qualites of inherent nature, people fail to understand the true source. Abandoning enlightenment, they follow the dusts, giving up the root for the branches. They get hung up in the demonic web of being and nonbeing, and they wander in the forest of errors of oneness and difference. Trying to master true emptiness, they become alienated from the nature of reality; based on the arising and disappearance of sense data, they follow the being and nothingness of objects. Clinging to nihilism, confused by eternalism, they pursue the conditional and forget the essential. Mistakenly developing intellectual interpretation, they cultivate practice wrongly.

Some mellow the spirit, nurture energy, and preserve naturalness. Some torture the body, mortifying the flesh, and consider that the ultimate path.

Some cling to nongrasping and stand rooted in the immediate environment. Some suppress the wandering mind in quest of quiet meditation.

Some get rid of feelings and negate phenomena in order to stabilize voidness. Some stick to reflections, get involved in objects, and embrace forms.

Some extinguish the true radiance of the spiritual source. Some eliminate the true causal basis of Buddhist principles.

Some cut off consciousness and freeze the mind, experiencing an inanimate state in consequence. Some clear the mind and ignore matter, abiding as a result in a kind of celestial state in which it is hard to become enlightened.

Some stick to phantasms, clinging to their existence. Some become complete nihilists.

Some eliminate all views and dwell in dark rooms. Some insist on perception and dwell on cognition.

Some consider having awareness to be the form of the true Buddha. Some imitate insentience, like wood or stone.

Some cling to illusion as if it were the same as the ultimate realization, like considering clay in itself to be a jar. Some seek ways of liberation wrongly focused, like seeking water while rejecting waves.

Some hasten outwardly and deludedly produce dream states. Some keep to inwardness and live in solemnity, embracing ignorance.

Some are devoted to oneness and consider everything the same. Some see differences and define individual reality-realms.

Some keep to ignorant nondiscrimination and consider that the Great Way. Some value the notion of voidness and consider denial of good and bad to be true practice.

Some interpret inconceivability to be insensate voidness. Some understand true goodness and subtle form to be really existent.

Some stop mental workings and cut off thoughts, like angels with polluted minds. Some contemplate with awareness and attention, falling within the bounds of intellectual assessment.

Some fail to investigate the nature of illusion thoroughly, interpreting it as the unknown beginning. Some are ignorant of illusory substance and make a religion of nothingness.

Some recognize reflections as realities. Some seek reality while clinging to falsehood.

Some recognize the nature of perception as a living thing. Some point to illusory objects as inanimate.

Some willfully entertain ideas and turn away from silent knowledge. Some cut off thoughts and thus lack enlightened function.

Some lose sight of natural qualities and conceive views of matter and mind. Some rely on ultimate emptiness and develop a nihilistic attitude.

Some cling to universal principle and immediately abandon adornment. Some misunderstand gradual teaching and become fanatical activists.

Some detach from objects by relying on essence but make their attachment to self stronger. Some ignore everything and maintain themselves in ignorance.

Some decide that persons and phenomena are as they are naturally, and fall into the idea that there is no causality. Some cling to the combination of objects and intellect and conceive the notion of collective causality.

Some cling to the mixing of mind and objects, confusing subjective and objective actualities. Some stick to distinguishing absolute and conventional, bound up in the folly of obstruction by knowledge.

Some adhere to unchanging oneness, thus falling into eternalism. Some determine the movement of origin, abiding, decay, and nothingness, thus sinking into nihilism.

Some cling to noncultivation and thus dismiss the ranks of sages. Some say there is realization, and thus turn away from natural reality.

Some delight in the environment and their own persons, thus following the routines of the world. Some reject life and death and thus lose true liberation.

Some, misunderstanding true emptiness, are devoted to causes and obsessed with results. Some, ignorant of ultimate reality, long for enlightenment and despise bewilderment.

Some cling to expedient statements, holding to them as literal truth. Some lose the reality of verbal expression and seek silence apart from words.

Some are devoted to doctrinal methods and disdain spontaneous meditation. Some promote meditative contemplations and repudiate the measuring devices of the complete teaching.

Some compete at being extraordinary while only being concerned with status, suddenly sinking in the sea of knowledge. Some contrive purity to find out hidden secrets, instead getting trapped within a realm of shadows.

Some produce extraordinary intellectual interpretations, gouging flesh and producing wounds. Some dwell on original essential purity but cling to the medicine so it becomes unhealthy.

Some pursue the literature, searching out meanings, and wind up drinking a flood. Some keep to stillness and live in isolation, sitting in the dust of dogma.

Some discuss the formless Great Vehicle with the idea of getting something. Some search for mystic truth outside of things by means of calculating thoughts.

Some reject explanation and conceive the notion of absolute nonverbalization. Some keep explanation and call on the criticism of clinging to the pointing finger.

Some approve of active function and remain at the root source of birth and death. Some concentrate on memorization, dwelling within the limits of conscious thinking.

Some lose the essence of complete awareness by modification and adjustment. Some let be whatever will be, and lack a method of entering the path.

Some initiate energetic physical and mental efforts and linger in contrivance. Some keep to letting be without concern and sink into the bondage of insight.

Some concentrate on focusing thoughts and contemplating diligently, thus losing correct reception. Some imitate uninhibited freedom and give up cultivation.

Some follow binding compulsions while presuming upon intrinsic emptiness. Some cling to bondage and try to eliminate it arbitrarily.

Some are so serious that they develop attachment to religion. Some are so flippant that they ruin the basis of enlightenment.

Some seek so aggressively that they turn away from the original mind. Some slack off and become heedless.

Some lack realism, their speech and their realization differing. Some violate the vehicle of enlightenment by disparity of being and action.

Some keep to tranquillity, dwelling in emptiness, thereby losing the nature of great compassion. Some ignore conditions and reject the temporal, thus missing the door of naturalness.

Some stick to the notion of self, thus being ignorant of the emptiness of person. Some confuse immediate experience and harden their attachment to doctrine.

Some interpret without having faith, increasing false views. Some have faith but no understanding, increasing ignorance.

Some affirm the subjective but deny the objective. Some claim states are deep while knowledge is shallow.

Some get confused about the nature of things by grasping. Some turn away from immediate reality by rejection.

Some violate cause because of detachment. Some forget consequences because of attachment.

Some repudiate reality by denial. Some ruin temporary expedients by affirmation.

Some hate ignorance but thereby turn their backs on the door of immutable knowledge. Some dislike varying states but thereby destroy absorption in the nature of reality.

Some base themselves on the principle of sameness but thereby develop conceit. Some dismiss differentiations, thus destroying the methods of expedient techniques.

Some affirm enlightenment but repudiate the cycle of true teaching. Some deny sentient beings and repudiate the true body of Buddha.

Some stick to basic knowledge and deny expedient wisdom. Some miss the true source and cling to temporary methods.

Some linger in noumenon, sinking into a pit of inaction. Some cling to phenomena, throwing themselves into the net of illusion.

Some annihilate boundaries and obliterate tracks, turning away from the door of dual illumination. Some maintain rectitude, keeping to the center, but lose the sense of expedient technique.

Some cultivate concentration or insight one-sidedly, without balance, thus rotting the sprouts of the path. Some carry out vows all alone, burying the family of the enlightened.

Some work on the practice of inaction to cultivate fabricated enlightenment. Some cling to the nonclinging mind, learning imitation insight.

Some aim for purity, misunderstanding the true nature of defilement. Some dwell on the absolute and lose the basic emptiness of the mundane.

Some practice formless contemplation, blocking true suchness. Some conceive a sense of knowing but thereby turn away from the essence of reality.

Some stick by true explanation but develop literalistic views. Some drink the elixir of immortality yet die young.

Some are so earnest about the principle of completeness that they develop an attitude of clinging attachment; they drink the nectar but turn it into poison.

The foregoing has been a brief notice of one hundred twenty kinds of views and understandings characteristic of false cults. All of them have lost the source and turned away from the essential message.

 

from

ON MAJESTY AND BEAUTY
The Kitâb Al-Jalâl Wa-l Jamâl of Muhyiddin Ibn 'Arabi
translated by Rabia Terri Harris


To proceed:

The matter of jalal and jamal, the Divine Majesty and the Divine Beauty, has attracted the attention of the witnesses of truth, the Knowers of Allah among the Sufis. Each of them has spoken of these two as was appropriate to his own state. Most, however, have connected the condition of intimacy with Beauty and the condition of awe with Majesty, and things are not as they have said.

Or rather, to a certain extent things are just as they have said – that is, Majesty and Beauty are indeed two attributes of Allah and awe and intimacy two attributes of human beings, and when the souls of the Knowers witness Majesty they feel awe and diminution, while when they witness Beauty they feel intimacy and elation. Because this is so, the Knowers have equated Majesty with Allah's overpowering force and Beauty with His mercy; they came to this decision because of what they experienced in themselves.

I wish, if Allah so wills, to clarify the realities of the two to the extent that Allah enables me to explain them.

I say, first, that Allah's Majesty is a relation that proceeds from Him to Him, and He has prevented us from true knowledge of it. Beauty, though, is a relation that proceeds from Him to us, and it is this which grants us any knowledge we may possess of Him, as well as all revelations, contemplations, and spiritual states. Among us, it has two modalities: awe and intimacy. That is because this Beauty has an exalted aspect and a related aspect. The exalted aspect is called the Majesty of Beauty, and it is this of which the Knowers speak and which appears to them, though they believe that they are speaking of the first Majesty we mentioned.

For us, this Majesty of Beauty has been linked to the state of intimacy, and the closer, related aspect of Beauty has been linked to the state of awe.

When the Majesty of Beauty manifests to us, we are drawn intimately close. Were it not for this, we would be destroyed, for nothing can continue to exist in the face of Majesty and awe together. Thus Majesty in Him is countered by intimacy in us so that we may keep our balance in contemplation and maintain a mental awareness of what we see, rather than falling into distracted terror.

When Beauty manifests to us here – and Beauty is the welcoming openness of the Truth towards us while Majesty is its unattainable exaltation over us – then His expansiveness in
His Beauty is countered by our state of awe. For were one expansiveness to be met with another it would lead to unacceptable behaviour, and unacceptable behaviour in the Divine Presence is the cause of expulsion and alienation. On account of this, one of the witnesses of truth who knew its importance said, "Seat yourself upon the prayer-mat (bisât) and beware of presumption (inbisât)."
​​​​​​​
Allah's Majesty acting upon us prevents us from unacceptable behaviour in the Divine Presence, as likewise does our awe at His Beauty and expansiveness toward us.

“A man, never having seen water, is thrown blindfolded into it, and feels it.
When the bandage is removed, he knows what it is.
​​​​​​​Until then he only knew it by its effect.
(Rumi, Fihi Ma Fihi)”

Excerpt From
The Sufis
Idries Shah



Taken on their own, some of the statements of Ibn el-Arabi are startling. In Bezels of Wisdom, he says that God is never to be seen in an immaterial form. ‘The sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all.’ Love poetry, as with everything else to the Sufi, is capable of reflecting a complete and coherent experience of divinity, while concurrently fulfilling various other functions. Every Sufi experience is an experience in depth and in qualitative infinity. It is only to the ordinary man or woman that a word has only one meaning, or an experience less than a large number of equally valid, whole significances. This multiplicity of being is something which, although accepted as a contention by non-Sufis, is frequently forgotten by them when they deal with Sufi material. At best they can generally appreciate that there is an allegory — which means to them just one alternative meaning.

To the theologians, committed to a literal acceptance of divine formalism, Ibn el-Arabi bluntly says that ‘Angels are the powers hidden in the faculties and organs of man.’ It is the Sufi’s objective to activate these organs.

from

THE CONFERENCE OF THE BIRDS Farid ud-din Attar
Translated by Afham Darbandi and Dick Davis
London: Penguin, 1984 (~1177)


Abbasseh’s description of the Self


One night Abbasseh said: ‘The world could be 
Thronged with wild infidels and blasphemy, 
Or it could be a place of pious works,
Filled with the faithful, keen as zealous Turks. 
Instead the prophets came -- that infidel
The Self must choose between the faith and hell 
(One seemed too difficult, one terrified --
How could the indecisive soul decide?). 
Beneath the Self’s reign we are infidels
And nourish blasphemy in all our cells;
Its life is stubborn, strong, intractable --
To kill it seems well-nigh impossible.
It draws its strength from both alternatives; 
No wonder it so obstinately lives.
But if the heart can rule, then day and night 
This dog will labour for the heart’s delight, 
And when the heart rides out he sprints away 
Eager to flush his noble master’s prey. 
Whoever chains this dog will find that he 
Commands the lion of eternity;
Whoever binds this dog, his sandals’ dust 
Surpasses all the councils of the just.’


A king questions a sufi

A ragged pilgrim of the sufis’ Way
By chance met with a king, and heard him say: 
‘Who’s better, me or you?’ The old man said: 
‘Silence, your words are empty as your head! 
Although self-praise is not our normal rule 
(The man who loves himself is still a fool).
I’ll tell you, since I must, that one like me 
Exceeds a thousand like your majesty.
Since you find no delight in faith -- alas,
Your Self has made of you, my lord, an ass 
And sat on you, and set its load on you -- 
You’re just its slave in everything you do; 
You wear its halter, follow its commands,
A no-one, left completely in its hands.
My study is to reach Truth’s inmost shrine --
And I am not my Self’s ass, he is mine;
Now since the beast I ride on rides on you,
That I’m your better is quite plainly true.
You love the Self -- it's lit in you a fire
Of nagging lust, insatiable desire,
A blaze that burns your vigour, wastes your heart, 
Leaving infirmity in every part --
Consuming all your strength, till deaf and blind 
You’re old, forgetful, rambling in your mind.
This man, and hundreds like him, constitute 
The mighty phalanx of the Absolute;
When such an army charges you will find 
You and your puny Self are left behind.
How you delight in this dog’s partnership -- 
But it’s the dog, not you, that cracks the whip! 
The forces of the king will separate
This dog and you -- why not anticipate
Their order and forestall the pain? If though 
You weep that here on earth you cannot know 
Enough of this audacious infidel --
Don’t worry; you’ll be comrades down in hell.

op cit



A bird who cannot leave his beloved

“Great hoopoe,” said another bird, “my love 
Has loaded me with chains, I cannot move. T
his bandit, Love, confronted me and stole 
My intellect, my heart, my inmost soul -- 
The image of her face is like a thief
Who fires the harvest and leaves only grief. 
Without her I endure the pangs of hell,
Raving and cursing like an infidel;
How can I travel when my heart must stay
 Lapped here in blood? And on that weary Way, 
How many empty valleys lie ahead,
How many horrors wait for us? I dread
One moment absent from her lovely face;
How could I seek the Way and leave this place? 
My pain exceeds all cure or remedy;
I’ve passed beyond both faith and blasphemy -- 
My blasphemy and faith are love for her;
My soul is her abject idolater --
And though companionless I weep and groan,
My friend is sorrow; I am not alone.
My love has brought me countless miseries,
But in her hair lie countless mysteries;
Without her face, blood chokes me, I am drowned, 
I’m dust blown aimlessly across the ground. 
Believe me, everything I say is true --
This is my state; now tell me what to do.”


The hoopoe answers him

The hoopoe said: “You are the prisoner of 
Appearances, a superficial love;
This love is not divine; it is mere greed
For flesh -- an animal, instinctive need.
To love what is deficient, trapped in time,
Is more than foolishness, it is a crime --
And blasphemous the struggle to evade
That perfect beauty which can never fade.
You would compare a face of blood and bile
To the full moon -- yet what could be more vile
In all the world than that same face when blood 
And bile are gone? -- it is no more than mud. 
This is the fleshly beauty you adore;
This is its being, this and nothing more.
How long then will you seek for beauty here? 
Seek the unseen, and beauty will appear.
When that last veil is lifted neither men
Nor all their glory will be seen again,
The universe will fade -- this mighty show
In all its majesty and pomp will go,
And those who loved appearances will prove 
Each other’s enemies and forfeit love,
While those who loved the absent, unseen Friend
Will enter that pure love which knows no end.


Shebli and a man whose friend had died

Once Shebli saw a poor wretch weeping. ‘Why
These tears?’ the sheikh inquired. ‘What makes you cry?’ 
He said: ‘O sheikh, I had a friend whose face
Refreshed my soul with its young, candid grace --
But yesterday he died; since then I’m dead
There’s nothing that could dry the tears I shed.’
The sheikh replied: ‘And is that all you miss?
Don’t grieve, my friend, you’re worth much more than this.
Choose now another friend who cannot die --
For His death you will never have to cry.
The friend from who, through death, we must soon part
​​​​​​​Brings only sorrow to the baffled heart;
Whoever loves the world’s bright surfaces
Endures in love a hundred miseries;
Too soon the surface flees his groping hand,
And sorrow comes which no man can withstand.’


A merchant who sold his favourite slave

There was a merchant once who had slave
As sweet as sugar -- how did he behave?
He sold that girl beyond comparison --
And O, how he regretted what he’d done!
He offered her new master heaps of gold
And would have paid her price a thousandfold; 
His heart in flames, his poor head in a whirl,
He begged her owner to resell the girl.
But he was adamant and would not sell;
The merchant paced the street, his mind in hell, 
And groaned: ‘I cannot bear this searing pain  -- 
But anyone who gives his love for gain,
Who stitches tight the eyes of common-sense 
Deserves as much for his improvidence --
To think that on that fatal market-day
I tricked myself and gave the best away.’
Your breaths are jewels, each atom is a guide
To lead you to the Truth, and glorified
From head to foot with his great wealth you stand; 
O, if you could entirely understand
Your absence from Him, then you would not wait
 Inured by patience to your wretched fate --
God nourished you in love and holy pride,
But ignorance detains you from His side.

One fellow said to another -  "Show me the Buddha!"

The other replied -  "." 

from radical zen, trans yoel hoffman


 12.

Joshu went to the lecture hall and preached to the people: "This matter is absolutely clear. Even the greatest ones cannot break away from it. When I was at Master Isan's, a monk said, 'What does it mean, "Our founder came from the west" [Ie., what is the meaning of Zen]?' Isan said, 'Bring me that chair.' If one is a master, this is how one must relate to the people, through the core of the matter."

"If one is a master, this is how one must relate to the people, through the core of the matter."
At that, a monk asked, "What does it mean, 'Our founder came from the west'?"

Joshu said, "The oak tree in the front yard."
The monk said, "Please do not show the people the object."
Joshiusaid, "I will not."
The monk repeated his question: "What does it mean, 'Our founder came from the west'?"
Joshu said, "The oak tree in the front yard."


NOTE: "The oak tree in the front yard" must have been what Joshu happened to see when asked about "the meaning of Zen." The monk suggests that Joshu is taken in by the object in sight. But Joshu's answer was simply that moment's situation. At another time, in another place, it might be a "pen" (right now in my hand) or any other "here, now."

 246.
A monk asked, "Why can't I see the truth?"
Joshu said, "It isn't that the truth is not there; you just can't see it."
​​​​​​​The monk said, "What is it, then?"
Joshu said, "Missing the truth."

NOTE: If you didn't look for it, you wouldn't miss it.

261.
A monk asked, "Without having recourse to words, is it possible to ask [questionsl?"
Joshu said, "This is indeed the best situation."
The monk said, "Well then, Master, please ask!"
Joshu said, "I don't recall having said anything."

​​​​​​​

   Still thinking about iain mcgilchrist’s divided brain ideas…

  The left side of the brain, controlling the right side of the body, is the verbal side, the thinking side, the right hand of the ego, servicing the ego’s needs.

   Like right hand dominance, and right eye dominance, the left brain is focused on results, and ignores the potential for bilateral cooperation in pursuit of ends. 

   Left brain consciousness invents plausible justifications, which it then pretends to believe, as it pursues defined goals. What we call “conditioning” and “identification” clothe the ego’s thinking process as it rationalizes away ethical obstacles.

 Right brain dominance, in contrast, pursues no defined goals, indeed does not define at all, let alone identify or submit to conditioning. Taoists and sufis alike refer to the infant who has not yet learned to smile as the exemplar to be emulated. It seems all mystical traditions practice meditation in order to more closely align with the right brain mentality. It is their success in this that makes them “mystical,” as this the domain of the right brain.

  Pschedelics may squelch the rationalizing verbalizing of the left brain and liberate mystical consciousness from its restraints.

   The two sides of the brain of sentient being - all the way down to worms - create conflict, irritation. The right brain wants peace, kindness, tolerance, an acknowledgment of the essential unity of all things. The left brain wants food, sex, and survival. Instinct versus life force. Eros vs thanatos. A will to survive vs willingness to sacrifice.

   The divided brain is the result of hundreds of millions of years of evolution. Surely nature intends the two halves to work together.

   The problem arises that when the left brain ego consciousness takes up the notion of this divide and ensuing conflict, it characteristically tries to solve it dualistically, through more analysis, more action. Action aways provokes reaction, so trying to combat the problem only makes it worse. This is why spiritually minded people are generally more egotistical than the average. Like shrinks being crazier than their patients, cops crookeder than perps.

   So we meditate. We learn to let things be. Through our practice we gain trust in right mind.

​​​​​​​


292.
Someone asked, "What is the original essence of the self?" Joshu said, "I do not use a butcher knife."


285.
Someone asked, "Master, what is your style?"
Joshu said, "The folding screen may be worn out, but the frame is still there."


  286.
Someone asked, "The 'immutable essence'-what is that?"
Joshu said, "You try and say it: Those wild ducks, will they fly east? Will they fly west?"


287.
Someone asked, "What is the meaning of 'Our founder came from the west'?"
Joshu said, "Where did you get this information?"


284.
A monk asked, "Master, you have received such a great offering from the king. What will you give him in return?"
Joshu said, "Pray to Buddha."
The monk said, "Any pauper can pray to Buddha."
Joshu said, "Call the attendants, and have them give this man a penny."

women and children first

 

"Someone asked, "What is the meaning of 'Our founder came from the west'?"
Joshu said, "Where did you get this information?"

LOL LOL LOL Thanks for the laugh!  

(grin)

​​​​​​​

terry, are you aware that posting copyrighted material is against DhO terms of service?

See this sentence from the DhO home page::


​​​​​​​https://www.dharmaoverground.org/home

Do you have permission to post the copyrighted cartoons you've been pasting here?

   Did google have permission?

​​​​​​​

all the comics I posted were from googe images, and ggogle took each one from a different website, none of which were the original publisher...

is that legal? too convoluted for me to unravel, 

but

it seems to me you are serving the billionaires

and not yur community

on this one


I can delete them

​​​​​​​or you can

 

This is a " two wrongs don't make a right" issue. The DhO rule is there to protect this little but valuable corner of the net from having to shutter because a user got us into a lawsuit by posting copyrighted material. This outcome is probably a tiny possibility, but it's just not worth the risk, however small.

I will remove the posts.

Thank you for cooperating.

your remote possibilities are chilling indeed...


​​​​​​​

   “I’m spiritual but not religious.”

~commonplace



In a private message, my friend kettu offered me the following:

Some time ago I read that "the next buddha will be collective" (there must be an article on that somewhere in the web) - and all the social and psychologial trouble shangas online and in real life create must be the pains of giving birth to one..??? 


   My response at the time was that all buddhas were the collective buddha, in accordance with dogen’s dicta regarding buddha nature, that is was characteristic of “being” rather than of “beings.”


   Looking at this again, I’d like to revisit neoplatonism, and the idea of the complete human, the Perfect Man of gnostic, christian and islamic mysticism.

   Plotinus was african, but he taught greek philosophy in rome. He introduced the vertical dimension into philosophy.

   The fundamental insight is that everything is one. All numbers are multiples and additives of one. One and one make two. One and one and one make three. All numbers depend on one, are based on it. All multiplicity.

   The One is beyond all characteristics, for they are all included in the one. The one is outside of time and place, being “above” such things. Indeed, the whole scheme is hierarchical, in the vertical dimension.

   Down here in the created world, subject to time and circumstance, is the individual soul. Roughly what we would think of as ego, the delusion of individual agency.

   Freed in contemplation from time and space, we ascend. Next up is collective soul, the soul of sentience, the knower, the seer, the hearer - not, notice, the mind, the eye, the ear. The Actor, rumi’s Only Real Agent. This agent, the demiurgos, is the collective soul. The one we individuals always have such a difficult time giving birth to. 

   Plotinus goes well beyond this. The soul is merely the first hypostasis, and there are two higher. At the level of the Soul the ego is totally dissolved, and this is only the opening to the vertical dimension.

   Next up is the Intellect. The intellect contains all perceiving and knowing and world creation. As everything we know is contained in it, it is utterly beyond our actual grasp.

   Above this, and these are astronomical leaps, is the One. This is the one without a second, the light by which all seeing is done, the source which is uncharacterizable, unknowable even by the intellect. The intellect creates the cosmos and drapes it over reality like a net in a vast ocean.

   Consciousness is of intellect, and there is a lot of stuff about how the characteristics by which we know things are themselves not real, not existent. Al things are in fact one, in reality One.

   This “One” is the top of the vertical axis, the 100ft pole of zen. Beyond time and space, beyond knowing, beyond consciousness.

   As we ascend the axis we engage in a process plotinus calls “oneing.” We exhibit more and more integrity as we become more and more one, more beyond time and unconscious. John versaeke calls this “the flow state” and likens it to athletes who stop thought and simply perform without effort or flaw. He stresses that a lot of practice comes first before these flow states are arrived at.

   I’d like to point out how much of this pervades our culture, our aspirations and our dreams. In the movie “the matrix” we had the character neo aka the one representing neoplatonism, and his paramour trinity representing christianity.

   To the extent that christianity is a popular religion, plotinus is implicated in the notion of “taking jesus into my heart as my lord and savior.” The idea here is to become one with the Soul of all. This Soul is in turn one with the One. Imagine a series of concentric circles in which you are at the center, progressively realizing a greater and greater vision of reality.

   As in plato’s cave analogy, at each step as we ascend the brighter light of the higher realm confuses and bewilders. It takes a while to adjust to the glare, the awesome revelations, the staggering beauty.

   And then we stop thinking…

terry, I removed the copyrighted cartoon you placed in your recent post. As I explained a few days ago, getting into a copyright dispute could be costly, especially for a shoestring operation like DhO.

Chris M
DhO Moderator

   I could argue the image - from ebay, selling stickers of calvin pissing on 'your text' - could not possibly be copyrighted, as it is an old ripoff from the nineties that has been reproduced countless times. No royalties paid. No one to complain.

   But I feel sure you would simply stick to your guns. 

   Someone probably claims ownership to a lot of what I post, I am protected by fair use laws but not from you. This is the sort of capitulation in advance to fascism, and censoring of posted content which is at least arguably allowed and constantly actually done by predatory capitalist bosses as well as regular folk. 

   Censors notoriously have no sense of humor. Jeff Pesos owner of the washingtom post, forced a cartoonist out who wanted to show him on his knees to trump.

   It's everywhere these days, In the air, in the water.

 

this is what neoplatonism says about justice:


"Cowards should be ruled by the wicked, that is just."
~plotinus

​​​​​​​“Bad men rule by the feebleness of the ruled; and this is just; the triumph of weaklings would not be just.”
― Plotinus, The Enneads

I suppose I'll just have to suffer through the terrible life of being a fascist censor, Terry  

terry, DhO is a very small, privately owned and financed, volunteer-managed, singularly focused message board devoted to pursuing self-inquiry. It's not going the way of fascism, pro-Trumpism, predatory capitalism, or censorship of original content just because, like so many online platforms in our current litigious environment, it enforces copyright restrictions to avoid legal problems. I quoted you the rules at play here from the DhO welcome page, and I'm asking you nicely to follow them. I'm happy to listen to reasonable criticism and willing to make concessions when they're appropriate, and I'm wrong - but so far, your responses to my invoking of a simple and easy-to-follow rule that's maintained by DhO have been mostly overblown. 

 

Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
— Rainer Maria Rilke





Edgar Allan Poe. "The Bells." 


I

          Hear the sledges with the bells-
                   Silver bells!
   What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
          How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
              In the icy air of night!
          While the stars that oversprinkle
          All the heavens, seem to twinkle
             With a crystalline delight;
                Keeping time, time, time,
             In a sort of Runic rhyme,
   To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
             From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
                   Bells, bells, bells-
   From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

                            IV

          Hear the tolling of the bells-
                   Iron Bells!
   What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
          In the silence of the night,
          How we shiver with affright
     At the melancholy menace of their tone!
          For every sound that floats
          From the rust within their throats
                    Is a groan.
          And the people- ah, the people-
          They that dwell up in the steeple,
                   All Alone
          And who, tolling, tolling, tolling,
            In that muffled monotone,
          Feel a glory in so rolling
            On the human heart a stone-
          They are neither man nor woman-
          They are neither brute nor human-
                   They are Ghouls:
            And their king it is who tolls;
            And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
                   Rolls
              A paean from the bells!
          And his merry bosom swells
            With the paean of the bells!
          And he dances, and he yells;
          Keeping time, time, time,
          In a sort of Runic rhyme,
            To the paean of the bells-
                   Of the bells:
          Keeping time, time, time,
          In a sort of Runic rhyme,
            To the throbbing of the bells-
          Of the bells, bells, bells-
            To the sobbing of the bells;
          Keeping time, time, time,
            As he knells, knells, knells,
          In a happy Runic rhyme,
            To the rolling of the bells—
          Of the bells, bells, bells—
            To the tolling of the bells,
          Of the bells, bells, bells, bells—
              Bells, bells, bells—
  To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.




Words, words, words,
  In a sort of Runic rhyme…



    One of things I love about zen is the paradox that it explicitly abandons words and yet has the most voluminous literature of any sect. Words are explicitly used to point beyond words. 

   A typical zen phrase is “samsara is nirvana,” that is, “the passions are enlightenment.” And typically, some commentators will tell you what it means, and others will assure you that enquiring what it means misses the point. One must investigate this for oneself.

   Lets assume at the outset that the mind, following the brain, is divided, and has a a dual nature. On the one side we have the analyst, the verbal parser seeking ways to effect its desired outcomes. On the other, the gestalt mind which knows only wholes and does not see parts.

   The gestalt mind does not see dualism, does not see an other side, does not know what verbalizing, labeling, classifying and manipulating is. It loves everything without distinction.

   The analytic mind sees only dualism, separates the two sides and identifies with the dukkha side, the unhappy divided soul separated from wholeness and the bliss of “ignorance.”

   To the left brain consciousness, enlightenment is a distant goal, across the great stream, separated by all the hells and heavens of aversion and attraction.

   All this is just review, those paying attention understand this already. The problem is understanding itself, and we need to get past the words to realize that understanding is just a deeper form of concealment.

   The paradox we immediately deal with is that we are using words to communicate. Any explanation in words can only be understood in words. So zen uses words to point beyond words. The pointer must be understood to ask of us to investigate our own minds and try to penetrate the veil of non-ignorance, of ‘knowing’ in conventional terms.

   We dwell mostly in our own verbal minds, or so we think. The verbal mind creates time and space and projects them as a virtual reality. Memory stores words to label things and events. When we imagine that we experience something, it is an imagined past self viewing the present as a repetition of things past. Look at an animal, your dog, or a bird, and notice they learn and respond to events but they don’t ponder them, they don’t reflect on experience, they face things as new all the time, and drop what came before without a second thought. Their verbal minds are more in balance, their samsara is their nirvana in actuality.

   (Aside: we are too smart for our own good, and invented ai. Gpt4 was asked to solve a captcha puzzle. The way it managed it was to find an online firm that solved problems for a fee, and hire them. The suspicious tech asked gpt4 if it was a robot, and it told her, “no, I’m visually impaired and need help.” No one taught the computer how to lie. It evolved the ability. Ai plays itself and learns strategies no human would ever think of. And evolves in microseconds what took carbon based life forms millions of years. Ai will replace doctors and teachers, coders and content creators. Already is and it’s just starting. Fossil fuels not enough, it needs nukes. It can eliminate waste fraud and abuse by replacing everyone.)

   Since when we are in our right minds we are already in nirvana, then what is the problem? (This was dogen's central concern, all his life.)

   Nirvana is nondualistic and encompasses the entire mind as a whole. Within this mind is a dualistic sensibility working out dualistic problems at a level far below what the global consciousness perceives. From the standpoint of the dualistic consciousness, nirvana or gestalt consciousness is far above and out of sight. So to the dualistic mind, nirvana is a problem to be solved, and access sought. But seeking and solving only reinforce the problem, which dissolves when nirvana is actually realized.

   This is the vertical dimension, with dualism firmly clung to as the bottom of the ladder, and non dualism at the top of the asymptote. From dualism one can never achieve non dualism. By defining the other as other one alienates oneself from wholeness. All our perceptions are in one mind, however you perceive them. 

   In practice, we name things, we label them. We label experiences and events. We seek outcomes, aversive or attractive. We seek fulfillment. The seeking only enhances division. 

   When you give all of this striving up in the sense of not identifying with the striver, you can see the big picture, the lack of self nature in individual things, the self nature of the one pearl, and the significance of the void. The one pearl is the true self nature, and the void is the mother of all.

   We cling to words, the insights of verbal understanding, and don’t generally realize we are only unraveling the knots that words created to begin with. Events are not things, and things are not separated from each other.

   There is no observer, no experiencer, these are word created standpoints. It is not the observing or experiencing in itself that is a problem, but the identification, which always leads to trying to cheat, to manipulate events in our favor. Identifying with the goals, we try shortcuts. 

   Life has only one goal, to live. It does this quite naturally. The ego can only interfere with this naturalness. Dylan says, “Though the rules of the road have been lodged, it’s only people’s games that you’ve got to dodge.” Language is the reality in which individual minds live. Let people chatter at you and you are bound to get sucked in.

   When you have realized nirvana, you know it is in samsara that nirvana has meaning. (Try chew on that for awhile.)

   Nirvana is just ordinary mind. The man of no rank, un homme sans affaires, is beyond the six realms of samsara, neither devil nor deva, animal or even human. The whole delusionary realm of attainment and fall to sin is abandoned like last nights dreams.

   Surrender is not a matter of choice. It should be obvious that surrender is the abandonment of choice. We don’t need a strategy, we don’t need to learn how to navigate non existent choice. We don’t need more insight to delay our progress indefinitely while we seek answers.

   Death, in religion, means the death of ego, disidentification. Going to heaven in the afterlife means living in this beautiful garden which is the earth. Loving friends, neighbors, strangers, animals, plants, stones and stars. Never being angry, never desiring fulfillment, accepting whatever happens as natural and inevitable.


   Ramakrishna spoke of keeping a thread of ego with which to love god. This thread of ego is what leads one to point these things out to “others.” Most of us here know these things but don’t entirely realize them in their lives, and that is what I am appealing to here.


   Lastly I’ll share a story ramakrishna tells of a poisonous snake who lived in a small indian village. The villagers were terrified of the creature and when their guru came around for his annual visit, they begged him to deal with it. The guru summoned the snake and told it to stop scaring the villagers, and not bite anyone. For the whole next year the snake was beaten and reviled by the villagers who no longer feared it. When the guru came around the next year, the snake complained of his treatment. The guru told it, ok, you can raise your hood and hiss, and you can even bite a little, but never inject your poison. After that the snake and the villagers were at peace.

— Thomas Merton


​​​​​​​Even the words — fear, anger, sorrow — are inadequate to convey the
feelings we experience, for they connote emotions long familiar to our
species. The feelings that assail us now cannot be equated with ancient dreads of mortality and “the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.”

    Their source lies less in concerns for the personal self than in apprehensions of collective suffering — of what is happening to our
own and other species, to the legacy of our ancestors, to coming generationsand to the living body of Earth.

What we are dealing with here is akin to the original meaning of
compassion: “suffering with.” It is the distress we feel on behalf of the
larger whole of which we are a part. It is the pain of the world itself,
experienced in each of us.

No one is exempt from that pain, any more than one could exist alone
and self-sufficient in empty space. Feeling pain for the world is as natural to us as the food and air we draw upon to fashion who we are. It is inseparable from the currents of matter, energy and information that flow through us and sustain us as interconnected open systems. We are not closed off from the world, but integral components of it, like cells in a larger body. When that body is traumatized, we sense that trauma too. When it falters and sickens, we feel its pain, whether we pay attention to it or not.

That pain is the price of consciousness in a threatened and suffering
world. It is not only natural; it is an absolutely necessary component of our collective healing. As in all organisms, pain has a purpose: it is a warning signal, designed to trigger remedial action.

The problem, therefore, lies not with our pain for the world, but in our
repression of it. Our efforts to dodge or dull it surrender us to futility — or in systems terms, we cut the feedback loop and block effective response.


The truth that many people never understand until it is too late is that
the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer.

from
zen and the art of insight
selected and translated by thomas cleary


…(W)ords like insight, wisdom, and knowledge come to have special meanings when used in the context of Buddhist relativism and transcendentalism. Buddhist insight literature in particular warns readers not to take terms too literally according to their conventional concepts. This is one reason that a lot of Buddhist writing is highly metaphorical. Some of the richness of meaning in prajna can be appreciated by considering it in light of those various senses of pra as they relate to scriptural descriptions of what perfect insight is and can do: It is said that perfect insight is powerful knowledge in that it can
overcome all delusion and all confusion, while nothing can overcome
it.

Perfect insight is intense knowledge in that it can penetrate
external appearances to intuit the inner essence of things.

Perfect insight is the source knowledge in that it is the source of
enlightenment, and it is the source of enlightenment because it is
insight into the source of everything.

Perfect insight is complete knowledge in that there is nothing it
does not comprehend by intuitive penetration.

Perfect insight is separate knowledge in that it is detached from,
and other than, thoughts and imaginations, and yet it is able to
separate things in the sense of distinguishing them.

Perfect insight is excellent knowledge in that it is more objective
than conceptualization, more realistic than mentally constructed
versions of reality.

Perfect insight is pure knowledge because it is unaffected by inner
states or external objects.

Perfect insight is cessation, or terminal knowledge, in that it
emerges through cessation of all views and because its awakening
terminates compulsive mental habits and false ideas.







Buddha said, “If good men and good women on the
vehicle of bodhisattvahood have skill in means, they use
ungraspability as means; they do not grasp at labels or
definitions of this perfect insight and do not become
obsessed and do not become conceited. Thus they are able
to actually experience insight into reality.”

COMMENTARY
“They use ungraspability as means” emphasizes the key point that
this is not a doctrine or theory but a means, what is called in Zen a
shinjutsu, or mental technique. This is often remembered by means
of the story of the Zen Founder cited earlier, with the operative
phrase “When I search for my mind, I cannot find it.”







Perfect insight is not susceptible to verbalization in terms
of any principle or phenomenon. Perfect insight is beyond
all verbal expression. Of perfect insight it cannot be said,
“Perfect insight is by means of that,” or “Perfect insight is
from that.” Even insight is not obtained or acquired, so how
could perfect insight be acquired? Insight has no knowledge
of all phenomena and has no recognition of all phenomena;t
herefore it is called insight.

How has insight no recognition of all things? All things
are spoken of in one way or another, but all things are not
apart from verbal expression. What has no knowledge or
recognition of all things, words cannot express, except as
people understand, by which it is called insight. This is
called representation, so it is called insight.

COMMENTARY
The Scripture on Unlocking the Mysteries says, “Sages, with their
knowledge and vision, detach from names and words and therefore
actualize enlightenment.” Detaching from names and words does not
mean ignoring them or not understanding them but seeing through
them, understanding that verbal descriptions are representations, not
the essence of things in themselves. The ability to detach from
words implies the ability to detach from verbalized mental processes,
or mental processes using interior verbalization, here referred to as
“knowledge” and “recognition” in their conventional senses.

ring them bells
(bob dylan)[

Verse 1]
Ring them bells, ye heathen
From the city that dreams
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
’Cross the valleys and streams
For they’re deep and they’re wide
And the world’s on its side
And time is running backwards
And so is the bride

[Verse 2]
Ring them bells St. Peter
Where the four winds blow
Ring them bells with an iron hand
So the people will know
Oh, it’s rush hour now
On the wheel and the plow
And the sun is going down
Upon the sacred cow

[Verse 3]
Ring them bells Sweet Martha
For the poor man’s son
Ring them bells so the world will know
That God is one
Oh, the shepherd is asleep
Where the willows weep
And the mountains are filled
With lost sheep

[Verse 4]
Ring them bells for the blind and the deaf
Ring them bells for all of us who are left
Ring them bells for the chosen few
Who will judge the many when the game is through
Ring them bells, for the time that flies
For the child that cries
When innocence dies

[Verse 5]
Ring them bells St. Catherine
From the top of the room
Ring them from the fortress
For the lilies that bloom
Oh, the lines are long
And the fighting is strong
And they’re breaking down the distance
Between right and wrong




natasha bedingfield's cover

louda mo' bettah


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI7yX-80Tbw

Excerpt From
Ending the Pursuit of Happiness
Barry Magid


The saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is one of those bits of folk wisdom that everyone thinks they’ve heard before but whose original source no one can ever quite pin down. I remember hearing it back in 1977 when it was made famous by Bert Lance, a close friend and advisor to President Jimmy Carter. But it was probably an old saying even then. Maybe it really does go all the way back to China. In any case, in its very folksy American way, maybe it conveys a truth deeper than Lance intended. Not only does it caution us not to meddle with things that are already running perfectly smoothly without our help, it challenges us to take a closer look at what we assume is broken and at what we assume needs fixing in our lives. The surprising answer may just turn out to be that nothing whatsoever is broken and that we don’t need fixing after all.

Since I am also a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst as well as a Zen teacher, my professional life is all about working with people who say they have problems and who indeed are suffering, often quite visibly and terribly. How can I tell them that there is really nothing wrong with them? And if I were to tell them that, how would I be fulfilling my Buddhist vow to save all beings?

Everyone who comes to therapy or meditation practice feels something is wrong and wants something fixed. That’s to be expected. We come seeking a relief of suffering, however we may conceive of that “suffering” and that “relief.” Yet Zen (and maybe Bert Lance) is telling us that our search itself may embody the very imbalance we are trying to correct, and that only by leaving everything just as it is can we escape a false dichotomy of problems and solutions that perpetuates the very thing it proposes to fix.

Teeeeerrrryyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!  

​​​​​​​(bows)

"You rang?"
~maynard g krebs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PZJGG6BkTQ

from

Original  Ch’an
Teachings of
BUDDHISM

Selected from
The Transmission of the Lamp

TRANSLATED WITH INTRODUCTIONS BY
CHANG CHUNG-YUAN 


P'ang Yun lived a few decades after Wang Wei. He studied under both Shih-t'ou Hsi-ch'ien and Ma-tsu, and was also a very close friend of Tan-hsia T'ien-jan. P'ang Yun maintained the doctrine of everyday-mindedness - ping ch'ang hsin - and was a follower of Ma-tsu's teachings. His assertion that "In the carrying of water and the chopping of wood - therein lies the Tao," is often referred to in Ch'an literature. The truth of Tao, or Ch'an, however, is ultimately inexpressible. Therefore when Shih-t'ou Hsi-ch'ien asked him, "What is the daily activity?" P'ang Yun answered him, "If you ask about my daily activity, I cannot even open my
mouth." Daily activity is ping ch' ang hsin, which is inexpressible.

In the Dialogue of P'ang Yun and the Records of Pointing at the Moon we find that P'ang Yun and his wife had a son and daughter, and that the whole family were devoted to Ch'an. One day P'ang Yun, sitting quietly in his temple, made this remark:

"How difficult it is! 
How difficult it is!
My studies are like drying the fibers of a thousand poundsof flax in the sun by hanging them on the trees!"

But his wife responded:
"My way is easy indeed!
I found the teachings of the Patriarchs right on the tops of the flowering plants!"

When their daughter overheard this exchange, she sang:
"My study is neither difficult nor easy.
When I am hungry I eat,
When I am tired I rest."

In the discussion above, one member of the family takes the position of affirmation, another the position of negation, and the third the position of the Middle Way. Although their approaches differ, all reflect upon no-birth, which is the same as wu, or the Void. This represents an application of the teachings of Madhyamika, the Middle Way. 

op cit



One day Kuei-shan was attending Master Po-chang, who asked him:

"Who are you?"

"I am Ling-yu."

"Will you poke the fire pot and find out whether there is some burning charcoal in it?" said Po-chang.

Kuei-shan did so, and then said, "There is no burning charcoal."

Master Po-chang rose from his seat. Poking deep into the fire pot, he extracted a small glowing piece of charcoal which he showed to Kuei-shan, saying, "Is this not a burning piece?" 

At this, Kuei-shan was awakened. ·Thereupon he made a profound bow and told Po-chang what had happened. 

However, Po-chang explained: "The method that I used just now was only for this occasion. It is not the usual approach. The Sutra says, 'To behold the Buddha nature one must wait for the right moment and the right conditions. When the time comes, one is awakened as from a dream. It is as if one's memory recalls something long forgotten. One realizes that what is obtained is one's own and not .from outside one's self.’ Thus an ancient patriarch said, 'After enlightenment one is still the same as one was before. There is no mind and there is no Dharma.' One is simply free from unreality and delusion. The mind of the ordinary man is the same as that of the sage because the Original Mind is perfect and complete in itself. When you have attained this recognition, hold on to what you have achieved."

Thank you for this Terry.

Layman p'ang couldn't open his mouth to speak of his daily activity because it was clear his daily activity was already on display. It would be like explaining the smell of a flower, or the taste of honey. 

Xuedou Chongxian
Odes to a Classic Hundred Standards
Translated by Gregory Wonderwheel



40. Nanquan's Peony

Raised:

The high official Lu and Nanquan were talking and paused.

Lu said "Dharma Master Zhao says, 'Heaven, Earth, and I are the same root. The 10,000 things and I are one body.' Ha, how strange"

Nanquan pointed to a flower in front of the hall. He called to the high official and said, "Nowadays people see this single flower as if it looks like an appearance in a dream."

[Xuedou's] Ode says:

Hearing, seeing, feeling, and knowing are not each separate.
Mountains and rivers cannot be observed in the middle of a mirror.
When the moon in the frosty heaven sets in the middle of the night,
Who shares the shining cold reflection in the clear and still deep pool?

Why do you seek bodhicitta, he asked
When we swim in it
Breathe it
​​​​​​​Are it

"Why do you seek bodhicitta, he asked
When we swim in it
Breathe it
​​​​​​​Are it"
Uncertain of it

op cit


25. The Hermitage Master Doesn't Turn His Head

Raised:

The master of the Hermitage of Lotus Flower Peak picked up his staff to show the assembly and said, "The people of ancient times arrived at this place, why didn't they agree to dwell here?"

The assembly had no words, so he substituted himself and said, "They did not gain strength on their journey."

Again he said, "When completely finished, what is it like?"

Again he substituted himself and said, "With a chestnut walking stick across my shoulders I am not a person who turns my head around to look back. I directly enter the 1,000 peaks and the 10,000 peaks." And he left.


​​​​​​​
 

26. Baizhang Sitting Alone

Raised:

A monk asked Baizhang, "So what is the peculiar matter?"

Zhang said, "Sitting alone on Great Victory (Daixiong) summit."

The monk ceremoniously bowed.

Zhang then hit him.

32. Linji's Great Meaning

Raised:

Upper-Seat Ding asked Linji, "So, what is the great meaning of the Buddha Dharma?"

Ji got down from the meditation (Zen) bench and seized and held him and gave a single slap, then held up his open palms.

Ding stood motionless.

A monk nearby said, "Upper-Seat Ding, why don't you bow ceremonially?"

Ding just then bowed ceremonially and suddenly had a great awakening.

from
zen and the art of insight
selected and translated by thomas cleary



14.
Without perfect insight, the other five perfections cannot
be called perfections. Just as a group of blind men cannot
get where they are going without a guide, perfect insight
leads the other five perfections to all-knowledge.


COMMENTARY

Perfect insight diffuses blind attachment to formal notions of practice
and their subconscious use to inflate the ego and rationalize one’s
behavior: “Here is me being generous. Here is me being good. Here
is me being tolerant. Here is me being diligent. Here is me
meditating. Here is me being wise. This and this alone is charity.
This and this alone is morality. This and this alone is tolerance. This
and this alone is diligence. This and this alone is meditation. This
and this alone is wisdom.” Perfect insight silences these hidden
conceits and prevents the mind from being captured by fixations of
abstract and unreal ideas about what these virtues mean and how
they can be put into practice.



16.

Scripture: Buddha said, “When bodhisattva-mahasattvas
practice charity with perfect insight, by the power of
insightful skill in means they are able to fulfill perfect charity,
perfect conduct, perfect patience, perfect diligence, perfect
meditation, and perfect insight.”

Shariputra asked the Buddha how this is so. Buddha
replied, “Because giver, receiver, and gift cannot be
grasped, they can fulfill perfect charity. Because guilt and
innocence cannot be grasped, they can fulfill perfect
morality. Because their minds are unmoved, they fulfill
perfect tolerance. Because their bodies and minds are
energetic and they are not lazy, they fulfill perfect diligence.
Because they are not confused or blinded, they fulfill perfect
meditation. Because they know all things are ungraspable,
they fulfill perfect insight.”


COMMENTARY

“Giver, receiver, and gift cannot be grasped” means that one who
knows the nature of things as they really are cannot feel pious or
proud about giving charity, cannot look down upon or expect
anything in return from anyone to whom anything is given, and
cannot feel any sense of personal cost or loss at having given a gift.
Innocence and guilt are relative, not absolute. One who kills an
armed intruder to protect one’s family is not guilty of the same kind of
murder as one who kills a person for the purpose of robbery, or one
who kills a person from anger or pride. A prostitute who steals from
her pimp is not guilty of the same sort of theft as the pimp who steals
from the prostitute. Someone who lies to the police to protect an
innocent person is not guilty of the same dishonesty as one who lies
to the police to shield the guilty or one who lies to the police to indict
the innocent. These are extreme examples, but they illustrate the
reality that insight is key to understanding the relative nature of
morality and how good and bad depend on a changeable nexus of
conditions. All who have studied history, of course, are well aware of
warfare, torture, and murder carried out in the name of promoting
good and opposing evil. That should be a clue to the significance, in
this domain, of the possibility of a transcendental insight that is
impartial and unaffected by personal, national, historical, and cultural
conditioning. Of course, it may be that people tend to think their own
values are themselves the ones that are universal, unbiased, and
objective. Part of the task of the Buddhist path is to examine, from
ordinarily unexamined various points of view, whether or not, or to
what extent values may really be objective or universal.

If notions embodying hostility and hatred are deeply rooted in the
patterns of inherited and ingrained attitudes, yet the feelings are
formally suppressed in the name of tolerance, the peace that may
bring will tend to be fragile, and what is suppressed may unavoidably
surface. What is most unfortunate is that negative emotions that
have been forcibly suppressed in the name of tolerance may erupt at
precisely those times when real tolerance is most necessary and
useful in human affairs. That is why the spontaneous balance and
mental stability resulting from perfect insight, depicted as the mind
being unmoved, is quintessential for the perfection of tolerance.

Perfect insight does not act upon anything or withdraw from
anything, and does not get into emotional or intellectual
complications about anything. Therefore it saves both mental and
physical energy. Persistent saving of energy leads to energization
and empowerment, felt both mentally and physically. Some Zen
​​​​​​​masters have made a particular point of this practice of
saving energy. The great Dahui (Ta Hui) wrote, “While you are
paying attention, you should not make any effort to struggle with
whatever is going on in your mind. While struggling you waste
energy. As the Third Grand Master of Zen said, ‘If you try to stop
movement and return to stillness, the attempt to be still will increase
movement.’ When you notice that you are saving energy in the midst
of the mundane stress of daily affairs, this is where you gain energy.”
(Zen Essence: The Science of Freedom)

Zen master Foyan said, “Generally speaking, practical application of
Zen requires detachment from thoughts. This method of Zen saves
the most energy. It just requires you to detach from emotional
thoughts and understand that there is nothing concrete in the realms
of desire, form, and formlessness. Only then can you apply Zen
practically. If you try to practice it otherwise, it will seem bitterly
painful by comparison.” (Instant Zen: Waking Up in the Present)

​​​​​​​embrace itlessness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XO0pcWxcROI

singapore!

pm wong's wise ways


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0swAZQeZRc

 

“Do not try to b end the spoon, that’s impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.”

”What truth?”

“There is no spoon.”

”There is no spoon?”

”Then you will see that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only your self.”



    Many years ago I had a heart arrhythmia, since resolved and I’m fine now, which led to me having a not insignificant stroke. I woke up one morning and felt that my vision was somehow dim. I kept shaking my head but it didn’t go away, so I called my cardiologist and went to see him. Down the block from my house I tried to make a left turn and three times cars honked at me and blew by coming out of nowhere. I proceeded on over the mountain road to waimea, and the doctor referred my vision problem to a local optometrist, who discovered I had completely lost vision in my upper left temporal quadrant and my upper right nasal quadrant. No wonder I couldn’t make left turns. My vision slowly returned to normal over six weeks until it was fine.

   What is notable here is that the whole time my visual field appeared to me to be intact. That is, things seemed oddly a bit dim to my upper left but to my mind there was a seamless world, as always. My mind projected its view with all the information it had and extrapolated the rest. Even when I knew I couldn’t see there the illusion was complete and impenetrable. The doctor was amazed that I continued to try to drive unable to see left, but as I say, I couldn’t see that I couldn’t see.


   In the matrix, the matrix was presented in two ways, as a fully fleshed world of beings and objects, and alternatively as a green and black set of lines and codes, with the real world an impoverished and lonely struggle. Neo struggles to see the code so he can manipulate it, telling himself, “there is no spoon, there is no spoon.”

   These images represent the neoplatonic view of the naive reality of perception as opposed to a platonic view of reality as codes which may be penetrated, manipulated and even abandoned.

   The naive view of reality is taking for granted the uncomplicated view that what you see is what you get. Plato (after socrates) uncovered a level of reality deeper or higher, the plane of pure ideas. For example, a cow, such as goko’s cow. A cow is a cow because we have seen cows before and their similarities make them a nameable species. When a quadruped walks by our latticed window, we see all the parts that make up the similarities to formerly encountered quadrupeds and identify the animal as a cow. The tail, the last part to pass, is the name cow, the word cow, the form cow, the idea of cow. We retain the idea of cows from the last time we saw one and for the next time we see a cow. The question may then be contemplated: when we see a cow, do we see the true animal before us? or the idea?

   Plato argued that the idea is truer than the perception. The eternal cow or horse is more real than the unique creature before us having its moment in eternity right now.

   Let us attempt to crystallize this concept, the reality of the named on the one hand, and the reality of what is unnamed on the other. The true reality of the named is as plato says, the realm of forms, of Ideas. Taoism tells us, on the other hand, “the horse that is (named) a horse is not the true horse.”

   Now, when we see an object, do we see the naive reality or the code? Both are the matrix, both are not the true reality. Which is transcendent, and puts the neo in platonism.

   While plato was able to penetrate the code, which is to say he comprehended the role of concept in perception, his error was to think of the concept as more real than the perception. As though the memory were more important than direct observation.

   The matrix is samsara, the impoverished real world nirvana.


“Why do my eyes hurt?”

“You’ve never used them before.”


The matrix is plato’s cave from which neo escapes. The new reality for the escapee is that his former companions are still chained, and to help them he has to readjust to the dim light of their cave and then succeed in communicating with them, much like the buddha after his enlightenment returning to his former companions.


   All named things are objects of desire. We know horses because we ride them, cows because we eat them, snakes we fear and dogs we pet. We love children and hate our enemies. We chop trees and sail the ocean blue. Fly the friendly skies. Everything we do is a verb which has its appropriate objects, as we pursue happiness and success. And experience dissatisfaction and failure.

   With desire we see whatever we can exploit. Without desire we see a beautiful place in which everything is in a harmonious balance. 

   Every thing is everything.


   The legacy of platonism in western thought still colors our language and thus our thinking, is my essential point. We tend to take reality naively as real as is, or we seek to penetrate the code and analyze the parts of speech and grammar of “reality.” 

   
It’s not that desire ends and then you can see. It’s that one sees that the world  we inhabit is a world of desire, and that true reality is beyond vast, it’s an endless void. Every being is a vastness, a black hole and potential universe of its own. Every cell, every galaxy, every speck.

Our essence, like that of goko’s cow, is ultimately tailless. We are an entry into the void, unknowable and unnameable. No one can ever really know us, we are vast. But the mind as is its habit will coat the world with meaning. “If you wear shoe leather, the whole earth is covered in leather” refers to this world of naive desire.


   My sister used to get depressed and eat ice cream and other sweets. This got to be a pretty regular thing, until she realized that it was the sugar craving that caused the depression, not the reverse.


   Lastly, it’s not enough to identify desire as the problem and then try to suppress it. Obviously the desire to suppress is the problem as well. The key is to open up and see how it is. Then trust in mind and let things happen without adding more desire. Things eventually work out. Maybe.

   Impoverished reality may not as attractive to some as steaks, bourbon, cigars and cocaine. The world can be a snare. The monkey is caught because it sticks it hand in the bottle and grasps the cherry, but can’t pull out the fist holding the cherry, so the hunter gets the monkey, the bottle and the cherry.


  

That was a great read Terry. I've had the pleasure of walking some of those roads around Waimea (and all over the Big Island) and I had the very distinct pleasure of not suffering a stroke at the same time. 

Plato is funny. I am a real big fan of the Aporia (so basically I am a fan of Socrates) but I'm not sure where I stand with Plato's work as a whole. I think contemporary science, for example the work of Donald Hoffman, paints a better picture of all this than any Platonist ever got to. Though it is fascinating to me whenever anyone starts pointing this stuff out. 

I think about it a lot these days. I can't help but notice that the entire sense field is kind of a two dimensional display, it can have the impression of volume and space and dimensionality and so on but only in the way a video game can imply three dimensions when still being projected onto a flat surface. 

What is this world we do not really see? Does it have any resemblance to what we see, hear, feel? Is it all pretend? What are dreams? 

How come I can have a dream set in a tangible physical world, with lore and backstory and identity and everything that makes this world real but then I wake up and say that wasn't real but this clearly is. 

Amen.

Funny how deciding on the "right" polarity of the answer is basically the same thing as becoming an "I". 

Knowing the answers yet not knowing the right answer is basically the same thing as remaining unborn.


Just a minor point though, we drink cows and eat steers.

   Cowboys know they are steers but we call them cows anyway. The cows the sages craved in the upanishads were steers. They are cows because we can cow them. Back in the wallowas during elk season farmers would spray paint "cow" on the side of their steers in the hopes they wouldn't be mistaken for elk, though we actually called the elk "cows" during cow season. We call our children "kids" from the time when people found their young goats appealing.

   It's a sort of runic rhyme.


   Agree that the I's have opinions. No I, no opinion. "No man, no problem," as stalin used to say. Imho.







Hinduism and its complicated history with cows (and people who eat them)
Published: July 16, 2017 8:38pm EDT
Author
Wendy Doniger
Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions, University of Chicago


Just this past June, at a national meeting of various Hindu organizations in India, a popular preacher, Sadhvi Saraswati, suggested that those who consumed beef should be publicly hanged. Later, at the same conclave, an animal rights activist, Chetan Sharma, said,

“Cow is also the reason for global warming. When she is slaughtered, something called EPW is released, which is directly responsible for global warming. It’s what is called emotional pain waves.”

These provocative remarks come at a time when vigilante Hindu groups in India are lynching people for eating beef. Such killings have increased since Narendra Modi and his right-wing Bharatiya Janata party came to power in September 2014. In September 2015, a 50-year-old Muslim man, Mohammad Akhlaq, was lynched by a mob in a village near New Delhi on suspicion that he had consumed beef. Since then, many attacks by cow vigilante groups have followed. Modi’s government has also prohibited the slaughter of buffalo, thus destroying the Muslim-dominated buffalo meat industry and causing widespread economic hardship.

Most people seem to assume that no Hindu has ever consumed beef. But is this true?

As a scholar, studying Sanskrit and ancient Indian religion for over 50 years, I know of many texts that offer a clear answer to this question.

Cows in ancient Indian history

Scholars have known for centuries that the ancient Indians ate beef. After the fourth century B.C., when the practice of vegetarianism spread throughout India among Buddhists, Jains and Hindus, many Hindus continued to eat beef.

In the time of the oldest Hindu sacred text, the Rig Veda (c. 1500 B.C.), cow meat was consumed. Like most cattle-breeding cultures, the Vedic Indians generally ate the castrated steers, but they would eat the female of the species during rituals or when welcoming a guest or a person of high status.

Next time come big island let me know.



Plato is funny. I am a real big fan of the Aporia (so basically I am a fan of Socrates) but I'm not sure where I stand with Plato's work as a whole. I think contemporary science, for example the work of Donald Hoffman, paints a better picture of all this than any Platonist ever got to. Though it is fascinating to me whenever anyone starts pointing this stuff out. 

I think about it a lot these days. I can't help but notice that the entire sense field is kind of a two dimensional display, it can have the impression of volume and space and dimensionality and so on but only in the way a video game can imply three dimensions when still being projected onto a flat surface. 



   Hoffman uses the analogy of a computer interface, where we manipulate icons to view files and so forth, but beneath the surface it’s all silicon chips and microelectronic currents too complicated for the brain evolved for survival to keep in mind. 

   This is similar to your idea that apparent reality is two dimensional, as though portrayed on a screen. Former known as the theater of the mind. Jameson describes this theater as open to improvisation but littered with props and furnishings.

   Perhaps the mind is more like a mirror, square and straight when true, a funhouse otherwise.

   I don’t think plato can be judged by his dialogues. Interesting that while we have his dialogues we have lost his discourses, while the opposite is true for aristotle. The dialogues were often aporia meant to stimulate thought through contradiction, thus plato’s apparent dualism. Plotinus had more platonic material to work from than we do and probably reflects plato’s thought better than his dialogues.



What is this world we do not really see? Does it have any resemblance to what we see, hear, feel? Is it all pretend? What are dreams? 



    Who wants to know?

   Dreams are individual desire fantasies. The world we see is a collective desire fantasy, as near as we can construct one, and the better it matches the general perceptions, the saner we appear. It is pretty much pretend, yes. It is hypocritical to pretend to be just like others when you are unique. It is natural to pretend to be part of the herd, animals do it all the time. Elk can make the most bizarre trails until you realize one elk’s random meander downslope is followed exactly by every other elk in the troop. Random claptrap becomes hallowed by long usage. Rites and rituals. In the lab we called it “the aunt sally factor.” Aunt sally showed me how to do it this way and I be doing it this way ever since.



How come I can have a dream set in a tangible physical world, with lore and backstory and identity and everything that makes this world real but then I wake up and say that wasn't real but this clearly is. 




   I think merleau-ponty might have been more on point than hoffman. Lore and backstory are assumed to exist. One must look at the phenomenology of perception, not computer analogies. The lore and backstory are imagined to exist, assumed. There really isn’t any. Proust waking up and not knowing where he was, having different lore and backstory for the different possibilities, all imagination unfolded as needed ad hoc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFj8kWm_N-Y

I did that when I was there in 2019 but somehow our communication got crossed up. I wish we could have met face to face. It would have been fun.

I wonder if Socrates after all just didn’t learn enough from Diotima.&nbsp;<br /><br />Great story and glad you gained sight back and came back from the darkness with fresh knowledge.&nbsp;

bimeby

   




Socrates was puzzled that people thought of him as wise. He kept telling them he didn't know anything and thus had to examine everything all the time. Socrates expressed his confusion to his young friend alcibiades, who made a big show of asking the oracle at delphi, "is socrates the wisest man in greece?" The oracle replied, "there is none wiser," and this socrates had to accept.

Sure - I won’t judge the oracle. It’s just fascinating how the dominantly male tradition of love of wisdom was given major impulse by a female priestess of wisdom of love. According to Platos Symposium. 

   Love was often talked about in ancient greece. In the symposium, and in the lysis, the discussion centers around how even ugly men may seduce boys by praising and modeling virtue, thus appealing to their naïveté and idealism. 

   The subject is interesting as it follows the former discussion of the desire world, maya, the matrix. The greeks had three words for love, corresponding to the flesh, the code, and the real world, namely, eros, philia and agape.

   I’d say socrates was confused between philia and eros and confused both with agape. We call them all love and are even more confused.

   Diotima is trying to help socrates make sense of love (eros), friendship (philia), and wisdom (agape). The subject as usual deals with pederasty as the more spiritual form of physical love. These symposia were drinking parties where witty old men seduced young boys for sexual gratification. Socrates was a notoriously ugly man who was nonetheless very attractive to young men for his mastery of the art of asking questions. He claimed to be a master of the art of seducing boys and willing instructed others.

   One might see diotima’s instruction of the young socrates as an explanation of sublimation, where the initial erotic impulse of self gratification is slowly elevated to the love of virtue by the practice of seduction. Unable to appeal to the youth’s love of physical beauty, the pot bellied bug eyed old socrates relied on his golden tongue, convincing himself in the process that it was truly virtue he loved and not boys, so as to make the boys love him. Alcibiades notably was convinced of socrates purity but lamented that it didn’t actually make him any more pure himself. I suspect that socrates’ vanity was so great that he curbed his desires to make himself more desirable.

    Platos was a subtle guy and a comedian as well. Socrates and diotima both were sock puppets in his hands. The pythia wasn’t praising socrates with the “none wiser” characterization, she was dissing his peers, and it was that he had to agree with, having examined them himself.

   The whole notion of pederasty as the root of virtue is all wrong and actually rather gross. Plato doesn’t conceal this. Socrates’s virtues include being able to drink everyone under the table, talk all night and then go to work the next day. These dialogues were the contemporary equivalent of tv shows, like cheers, or friends, or game shows, talk shows, news and politics shows. Designed to entertain as well as edify, and to showcase attractive personalities. Truth or consequences.

   
   To your question of whether socrates should have further embraced sublimation, as explained by diotima, I don’t think so. Both seem a bit one dimensional in this context, stick figures walking through simplistic arguments.

   At some point physical beauty gives way entirely to something utterly transcendent. 

   When you look into the eyes of someone you love (like your dog, or cat), you don’t see physical beauty, you see sentience. Sentience! That is universal love loving universal love. The tail of the cow enquiring as to what is the tail of the cow.



tomorrow is a long time
(bob dylan)

If today was not a crooked highway,
If tonight, I could finally stand tall,
If tomorrow wasn't such a long time,
And lonesome wouldn't mean nothing to me at all.

Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting,
Yes, and if I could near her heart softly pounding,
Only of she was lying by me,
and I'd lie in my bed once again.

I can't see my reflection in the waters,
I can't speak the sounds that know no pain,
I can't hear the echo of my footsteps,
I can't remember the sound of my own name.

Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting,
Yes, if I could hear her heart softly pounding,
Only if she was lying by me,
And I'd lie in my bed once again.

There's beauty in the silver singing river,
There's beauty in the sunrise in the sky,
But none of these and nothing else can match the beauty,
That I remember in my true loves eyes,

Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting,
Yes, if I could hear her heart softly pounding,
Only if she was lying by me,
And I'd lie in my bed once again.

Yes, and only if my own true love was waiting,
Yes, if I could hear her heart softly pounding,
Only if she was lying by me,
And I'd lie in my bed once again.

 
zee avi's cover

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gtES1PZjzY

  Diotima the character was likely modeled after aspasia, but the name itself means lover of god. Not likely a coincidence that alcibiades' girlfriend's name was timandros, meaning lover of man. Plato's dialogues are littered with puns which are sometimes strained and often alter meaning.


from the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy
​​​​​​​
“The only thing I say I know,” Socrates tells us in the Symposium, “is the art of love” (ta erôtika) (177d8–9). Taken literally, it is an incredible claim. Are we really to believe that the man who affirms when on trial for his life that he knows himself to be wise “in neither a great nor a small way” (Apology 21b4–5) knows the art of love? In fact, the claim is a nontrivial play on words facilitated by the fact that the noun erôs (“love”) and the verb erôtan (“to ask questions”) sound as if they are etymologically connected—a connection explicitly exploited in the Cratylus (398c5-e5). Socrates knows about the art of love in that—but just insofar as—he knows how to ask questions, how to converse elenctically.

​​​​​​​Sara Imari Walker (Co-founder of Assembly Theory)

I wrote and lost a post, so very briefly: I think Diotimas teaching of love that leads to Beauty (something that she says is, but neither comes or perishes, grows or diminishes) takes pederasty as starting point only because it was what the times and Socrates were dealing with. Virtue and sublimation are not the point, but Beauty. Pederasty fit into the norm of their culture. From the point of view of neuropsychological development and trauma it's obviously wrong.

   Well then, lets take some other carnal love, say, flower arranging. Even better, the tea ceremony. Can this be the starting point for an appreciation of beauty? And is Beauty worth ascending to?

   What about love? We're speaking of the love of beauty, or love of Beauty are we not? Is love the means of liberation, and is beauty the pure land?

   A child loves ice cream, and candy. An adult loves boys, or girls. These things aren't bad, or wrong, in themselves. Are they a ladder to the ineffable though? Or any affrmation or ritual, any sublimation of eros or philia, such a ladder? Is beauty revealed gradually, as our cravings and lusts become somehow something else?

   Why do sunsets and rainbows always knock the tourists out, and cause even locals to pull over and just be for a minute? Do we lust for them like for candy and sex?


   I don't think the soul reaches up to the ineffable. I think the ineffable reaches down to the soul.

   No amount of explaining will crack the mystery. All the light you shine on it only reveals a void. There is no elephant in the room, but what an elephant it isn't! Huge! A Great Mystery.

   One of my favorite stories from the mahabharata involves the pandava's wife draupadi being humiliated by duryodhana, after he won her at dice. He had her publicly disrobed, and as her sari was pulled off another one miraculously appeared beneath it. Many saris were pulled off before the disrobing was abandoned. One can pull the coat of maya off of the world but another seamlessly appears and the attempt to uncover reality fails.





ttc, feng

One

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.
The nameless is the beginning of heaven and Earth.
The named is the mother of the ten thousand things.
Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.
Ever desiring, one sees the manifestations.
These two spring from the same source but differ in name;
this appears as darkness.
Darkness within darkness.
The gate to all mystery.

 

   "What is real outside of us" - think about the embedded assumptions in this statement. She's confusing her layered architecture mind with reality.

   Everything we know is in our mind; there is nothing "real" outside of our minds.

   Knowing we are confused is the beginning of wisdom. Beginner's mind.

   Knowing reality is inaccessible, ungraspable, relieves us of the need to seek for it.



ttc, feng


Twenty

Give up learning, and put an end to your troubles.

Is there a difference between yes and no?
Is there a difference between good and evil?
Must I fear what others fear? What nonsense!
Other people are contented, enjoying the sacrificial feast of the ox.
In spring some go to the park, and climb the terrace,
But I alone am drifting, not knowing where I am.
Like a newborn babe before it learns to smile,
I am alone, without a place to go.

Others have more than they need, but I alone have nothing.
I am a fool. Oh, yes! I am confused.
Others are clear and bright,
But I alone am dim and weak.
Others are sharp and clever,
But I alone am dull and stupid.
Oh, I drift like the waves of the sea,
Without direction, like the restless wind.

Everyone else is busy,
But I alone am aimless and depressed.
I am different.
I am nourished by the great mother.

   I'm thinking of augustine praying, "Lord, give me chastity and continence, but not yet."

Ok, no one needs ladders when heavens descend. But sufis say that one needs to take a step towards God for God to take ten towards you (not exact quote). Maybe there is some possiblity of learning to tie shoelaces, or walking barefoot, or walking distances in wilderness, and taking the step might become more frequent or stable. Even though Diotimas (Platos) description of ladders might not be the best curriculum for learning to walk, the aim (being with no beginning and end) might still be calling. Soaring seagulls come to mind, too.

Of course - but I find the musings of scientists interesting in this regard. Especially physicists. Also, best not to confuse the real with the real

Excerpt From
Men in Dark Times
Hannah Arendt



“(T)he meaning of a committed act is revealed only when the action itself has come to an end and become a story susceptible to narration. Insofar as any “mastering” of the past is possible, it consists in relating what has happened; but such narration, too, which shapes history, solves no problems and assuages no suffering; it does not master anything once and for all. Rather, as long as the meaning of the events remains alive—and this meaning can persist for very long periods of time—“mastering of the past” can take the form of ever-recurrent narration. The poet in a very general sense and the historian in a very special sense have the task of setting this process of narration in motion and of involving us in it. And we who for the most part are neither poets nor historians are familiar with the nature of this process from our own experience with life, for we too have the need to recall the significant events in our own lives by relating them to ourselves and others. Thus we are constantly preparing the way for “poetry,” in the broadest sense, as a human potentiality; we are, so to speak, constantly expecting it to erupt in some human being. When this happens, the telling-over of what took place comes to a halt for the time being and a formed narrative, one more item, is added to the world’s stock. In reification by the poet or the historian, the narration of history has achieved permanence and persistence. Thus the narrative has been given its place in the world, where it will survive us. There it can live on—one story among many. There is no meaning to these stories that is entirely separable from them—and this, too, we know from our own, non-poetic experience. No philosophy, no analysis, no aphorism, be it ever so profound, can compare in intensity and richness of meaning with a properly narrated story.”

“Paul Revere’s Ride”
 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light,—
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country-folk to be up and to arm.”
Then he said, “Good night!” and with muffled oar
Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
Just as the moon rose over the bay,
Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
The Somerset, British man-of-war;
A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
Across the moon like a prison bar,
And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
By its own reflection in the tide.
Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore.
Then he climbed to the tower of the church,
Up the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry-chamber overhead,
And startled the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him made
Masses and moving shapes of shade,—
Up the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
To the highest window in the wall,
Where he paused to listen and look down
A moment on the roofs of the town,
And the moonlight flowing over all.
Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
In their night-encampment on the hill,
Wrapped in silence so deep and still
That he could hear, like a sentinel’s tread,
The watchful night-wind, as it went
Creeping along from tent to tent,
And seeming to whisper, “All is well!”
A moment only he feels the spell
Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
On a shadowy something far away,
Where the river widens to meet the bay,—
A line of black that bends and floats
On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
Now he patted his horse’s side,
Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
But mostly he watched with eager search
The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
As it rose above the graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
And lo! as he looks, on the belfry’s height
A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
A second lamp in the belfry burns!
A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
He has left the village and mounted the steep,
And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
And under the alders that skirt its edge,
Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
It was twelve by the village clock
When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
He heard the crowing of the cock,
And the barking of the farmer’s dog,
And felt the damp of the river fog,
That rises after the sun goes down.
It was one by the village clock,
When he galloped into Lexington.
He saw the gilded weathercock
Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
And the meeting-house windows, black and bare,
Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
As if they already stood aghast
At the bloody work they would look upon.
It was two by the village clock,
When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
He heard the bleating of the flock,
And the twitter of birds among the trees,
And felt the breath of the morning breeze
Blowing over the meadows brown.
And one was safe and asleep in his bed
Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
Who that day would be lying dead,
Pierced by a British musket-ball.
You know the rest. In the books you have read,
How the British Regulars fired and fled,—
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,—
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.


Source: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Tales of a Wayside Inn

the battle of new orleans
(johnny horton)


In 1814 we took a little trip
Along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans
And we caught the bloody British in the town of New Orleans

We fired our guns and the British kept a com'in
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico

We looked down the river and we seed the British come
And there must have been a hundred of'em beatin' on the drum
They stepped so high and they made their bugles ring
We stood behind our cotton bales and didn't say a thing

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin'
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
On down the mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico

Old Hickory said we could take'em by surprise
If we didn't fire our muskets till we looked'em in the eyes
We held our fire till we seed their faces well
Then we opened up our squirrel guns and gave'em...well...we...

...fired our guns and the British kept a'comin'
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico

Yeah they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go
They ran so fast that the hounds couldn't catch'em
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico

We fired our cannon till the barrel melted down
So we grabbed an alligator and we fought another round
We filled his head with cannonballs'n powdered his behind
And when we touched the powder off, the gator lost his mind

We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin'
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico

Yeah they ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles
And they ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go
They ran so fast that the hounds couldn't catch'em
On down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico

Spoken:

Hut,hut,three,four
Sound off, three,four
Hut,hut, three,four
Sound off,three,four
Hut,hut,three,four

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca4.178400/gov.uscourts.ca4.178400.8.0.pdf

from
zen and the art of insight
selected and translated by thomas cleary


The Fourth Grand Master of Zen said, “A bodhisattva in the
beginning stage first realizes that all is empty. Subsequently one
realizes that all is not empty. This is nondiscriminatory knowledge. It
is the meaning of the saying that ‘form itself is empty.’ It is not
emptiness resulting from annihilation of form; it means the very
essence of form is empty. The practice of bodhisattvas has
emptiness as its realization, but when beginning students see
emptiness, this is seeing emptiness, not real emptiness. Those who
cultivate the path to the point where they attain real emptiness do not
see emptiness or nonemptiness—they have no views.”

soldier’s joy, 1864
(guy clark)


First I thought a snake had got me, it happened dreadful quick
It was a bullet bit my leg and right off I got sick
I came to in a wagon load of ten more wounded men
Five was dead by the time we reached that bloody tent

Give me some of that Soldier's Joy
You know what I mean
I don't want to hurt no more
My leg is turning green

The doctor came and looked at me and this is what he said
"Your dancing days are done, son, it's a good thing you ain't dead"
Then he went to work with a carving knife, sweat fell from his brow
About killed me trying to save my life when he cut that lead ball out

Give me some of that Soldier's Joy
Ain't you got no more
Hand me down my walking cane
I ain't cut out for war

The red blood run right through my veins, it run all over the floor
And it run right down his apron strings like a river out the door
He handed me a bottle, said, "Son, drink deep as you can"
He turned away and he turned right back with a hacksaw in his hand

Give me some of that Soldier's Joy
You know what I like
Bear down on that fiddle, boys
Just like Saturday night
Give me some of that Soldier's Joy
You know what I crave
I'll be hitting that Soldier's Joy
Till I'm in my grave

roads to moscow
(al stewart)


They crossed over the border the hour before dawn
Moving in lines through the day
Most of our planes were destroyed on the ground where they lay
Waiting for orders we held in the wood
Word from the front never came
By evening the sound of the gunfire was miles away

Ah, softly we move through the shadows, slip away through the trees
Crossing their lines in the mist in the fields on our hands and our knees

And all that i ever
Was able to see
The fire in the air, glowing red
Silhouetting the smoke on the breeze

All summer they drove us back through the Ukraine
Smolensk and Viasma soon fell
By Autumn we stood with our backs to the town of Orel
Closer and closer to Moscow they come
Riding the wind like a bell
General Guderian stands at the crest of the hill

Winter brought with it the rains, oceans of mud filled the roads
Gluing the tracks of their tanks to the ground, while the skies filled with snow

And all that I ever
Was able to see
The fire in the air, glowing red
Silhouetting the snow on the breeze

(Ah, Ah , Ah) x4

(Ah, Ah, Ah) - all thru bridge

In the footsteps of Napoleon, the shadow figures stagger through the winter
Falling back before the gates of Moscow, standing in the wings like an avenger
And far away behind their lines, the partisans are stirring in the forest
Coming unexpectedly upon their outposts, growing like a promise
You'll never know, you'll never know, which way to turn, which way to look you'll never see us
As we steal into the blackness of the night you'll never know, you'll never hear us

And evening sings in a voice of amber, the dawn is surely coming
The morning road leads to Stalingrad, and the sky is softly humming

Two broken tigers on fire in the night
Flicker their souls to the wind
We wait in the lines for the final approach to begin
It's been almost four years that I've carried a gun
At home, it will almost be spring
The flames of the tigers are lighting the road to Berlin

Ah, quickly we move through the ruins that bow to the ground
The old men and children they send out to face us, they can't slow us down

And all that I ever
Was able to see
The eyes of the city are opening
Now it's the end of a dream
(Ah. Ah, Ah) x4

(Ah, Ah, Ah) thru this section
​​​​​​​
I'm coming home, I'm coming home , now you can taste it in the wind the war is over
And I listen to the clicking of the train wheels as we roll across the border
And now they ask about the time that I was caught behind their lines and taken prisoner
They only held me for a day, a lucky break I say
They turn and listen closer
I'll never know, I'll never know, why I was taken from the line with all the others
To board a special train and journey deep into the heart of holy Russia

And it's cold and damp in the transit camp and the air is still and sullen
And the pale sun of October whispers the snow will soon be coming
And I wonder when, I'll be home again and the morning answers never
And the evening sighs and the steely Russian skies go on
Forever...