Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VI, Patience – verse 14; reflectionary

Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VI– verse 14

Transglomeration: There isn’t anything whatsoever that can remain difficult by itself and that doesn’t become easier to accomplish through familiarity, through practice, through acquaintance.   And so through tolerance and habituation with slight pain and difficulty even great suffering and adversity is gradually rendered bearable as I learn to practise acceptance, endurance, forbearance.

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

Reflection: the beginning of meditation, just becoming familiar (cf. the Tibetan for ‘meditation’ is ‘goms’, familiarity), getting into the habit; accustomed, repetition, familiarity, acquaintance, practice, habituation; and not with the mind ‘I must endure this; I – will – not – get – angry’ with gritted teeth {scene of so many disappointments} but with the lightness and un-localised view of a slight smile, not letting my precious, little self become anywhere-near involved in it at all

Practice: … and this is to be practised with a courageous heart, a heart that has a Great Purpose in mind (in life), (in lifetimes), a heart which has realised – like a flash of lightning in the dark of night – that suffering is concomitant with living within saṃsāra, so therefore I will put up with it, I will work it through, it is only what it is, I will make use of it (with my wider, stepped-back understanding of what’s going on here), I will use it to motivate me to get out of this predicament of saṃsāra, I shall use it to develop compassion for others still involved within saṃsāra, and, as this verse describes, I shall just get more and more familiar with this attitude of volunteering to put up with it all – there it is, an attitude, with a fair bit of understanding, of putting up with it all, that’s all; possibly, even, joy if I really get behind this attitude – and this is just the first step of the practice of patience

Actual Practice: and notice, implicitly, how the practice of this is to be conducted: through familiarity, habituation, step by step; the implicit emphasis is, as Pema Chodron and Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche would have it, to start where you are; pay attention, Mark: not to start with where you’d like to think yourself to be when starting, not to start with where you think your decision to start puts you and certainly not to start with the result and arrogantly think I am going through the motions here for the benefit of others – it means start where you are right now, with your peevishness and your touchiness and your ‘I’ll do it my own way’-ness, and don’t indulge in any of this spiritual materialism which all just keeps you where you are, without change or development; and the development in this practice won’t be noticeable – there won’t be any sense of frontier-breaking, here – there’ll just be the impression, as you get on with things over the years, that you seem to be able to put up with more than you used to, that you are more even about things which happen in life; so I don’t need to go around looking for things to be patient about (unless I have perfected patience; and I haven’t), I could spend all day sitting in a chair and becoming familiar with the slight annoyances that come my way almost constantly, and bear with them, eventually becoming stable-enough in the practice to be able to get up from my chair and face the further annoyances of going about my business; maintaining an evenness, an equanimity, in any and (eventually) all circumstances, which is completely balanced in relation to the eight worldly dharmas; OK, Mark, don’t wait for your buttons to be pushed, practise familiarity with the smaller stuff that you can bear with equanimity now, make that strong and stronger, and naturally and effortlessly encompass things which now just push my buttons; ‘oh, so much to remember, there are so many different things which annoy me, most of which annoy me without me even noticing, let alone having to think why I shouldn’t be getting annoyed with them and what I should be doing …’ … and, of course, no: I should just be alert and honest with myself – a nice, clean grate through which all of ‘me’ flows – and just notice ‘uh, oh, you’re getting a little annoyed here, let-it-go-quick, stand down, soldier, there you go; oh, what’s over there’

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Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley

Tags

7*, black, bracken, brother, curtains, dark, doors, evacuation, eyes, faces, hills, horizon, house, listening, London, morning, opening, ponies, rock, rooks, sky, sleep, sound, streets, sun, time, truck, valley, Wales, water, wheel, wind, windows, World War

valley

we were evacuated during the war
from London to the Rhonda Valley
it was dark when we arrived

the sound of rocks woke me in the morning
I hadn’t heard them before
in such numbers

I looked at the strip of sky between the curtains
while my brother slept
a small cross a wooden chest minutes

ticked …
until he moved eyes already open
then two faces at the window gaping at bare hills

and one house
with three ponies in the paddock manes in the sun;
downhill was a black tower holding enormous wheels black

and then cables down to
a blacked hut and trucks and shacks dotted everywhere black
save the rail lines; shuntings

between the constant hisss, psssh
hooves in the street below pulling a float
‘cark’ of rooks above;

in time
doors opened: crystal streams before
racing the bracken which dipped and waved out to the next horizons

 

read the collected work of ‘Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]‘ as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

black & faces & hills & house & London & morning & sleep & valley & windows wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
curtains wormhole: at Kreukenhof
doors wormhole: there will be ovations
eyes & wind wormhole: breakfast
horizon wormhole: Candaka
listening wormhole: …zzh-vvttP*–… … …
sky wormhole: blue sky high
sound & water wormhole: psssssh
streets wormhole: THE ATTIC WHICH IS DESIRE: by William Carlos Williams
sun wormhole: ‘don’t look at it …’
time wormhole: everything is caused by something, which / something is caused by something else, nothing / stands alone where all pass as phantoms

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VI, Patience – verse 121; reflectionary

Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VI– verse 121

Transglomeration: And these ones, my own guides and masters, who all along, have given of themselves, who give up, even, their very bodies freely and without reserve, for the sake of all these beings; then, how can I, confused and self-deluded as I am, go about acting with such hubris and conceit among these same beings?   Rather, why do I not make of myself the ground of their lives like a servant and give devotion to them like a slave?   This, I will do.

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 120 repaying those Buddhas who have completely self-sacrificed for beings
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 121 I should be the slave of beings, as are the Buddhas, not keeping hold of my self-importance

Reflection: here is a goad of shame; I look to these models for guidance and inspiration, these beings who have perfected the life of having completely exchanged self for all other living beings to the extent that they have no consideration of their own happiness or desire (they have long left these things behind), and here I am wanting the same as what they’ve got, but I am strutting about all pre-occupied and anxious about my own happiness and the things I desire in life … isn’t there something fundamentally wrong, here, isn’t there a point that I am completely missing; this verse is trying to move me beyond ‘oh, it would be nice for the world to be nice’ – (‘I’d like to teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony …’) – by bracing me with a stark juxta-positioning with what this means that I have actually got to do, I can’t keep strutting around claiming ‘Mark Redford is doing this, Mark Redford has this to offer to the world’, building up some grotesque iron identity with which to tarnish the world leaving it alloyed, greening and toneless; I have to let all of that go – I can’t take the vortex and whirl of the problem of my insufferable and whining identity with me to liberation, let alone it be of any use to all living beings / I can’t pick up this iron ball chained to my leg and run around, claiming ‘I am free, follow me everyone’

Reflection: this is so much more than just being patient with others (this has moved far beyond just the ‘austerity’ that is patience of verse 2); this is going beyond to be their ‘servant’ and their ‘slave’; being a ‘slave’ used to bridle with me when I was younger – ‘this is going too far’ – but it feels more right now: “… during all of my lives may I become a protector for those who are protectorless, may I become a guide for those who travel, a boat, a ship and a bridge for those who wish to cross the water; may I become an island for those in trouble and a lamp for those who travel in darkness; may I become an abode and accommodations for sleep for those desiring them and a slave for those who want a slave; may I become a wish-fulfilling gem for those with special wishes, a lucky jar, powerful mantras and effective medicine; during all of my lives may I become a wish-fulfilling tree, an inexhaustible wish-fulfilling cow that satisfies all embodied creatures; just as the great elements of earth, water and so forth support the life of sentient beings, so may I too become the foundation of sustenance for all; may I become whatever is beneficial for all sentient beings in the realms reaching to the end of space until they attain full and perfect Enlightenment.” (III, 17-22); but it is not too much, it is the perfecting of patience; it (patience) is not just about insulating myself from the annoying world, it is seeing the whole world (and the beings therein, naturally) as a swirling mass of cause and conditionality and the only response one can have to beings wilfully and blindly trying to calm this maelstrom down to suit them, is compassion, and the only thing to do with compassion is act on it by getting behind beings’ very eyes in their experience and do what you can to ease them out of their double-bind; this is the great alchemy of compassion and wisdom, by taking the ‘self’ out of compassion and wisdom the activity becomes exponential to the needs it meets; and the needs of beings is (I think I’m going to stay with a ‘sic’ here unless you want me to use the word …) infinite (… infiniting); the natural follow-through and outcome of patience is: involved and boundless compassion

Practice: follow the example of my elders and betters who put themselves out for others without a thought for their own concern

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VI, Patience – verse 120; reflectionary

Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VI– verse 120

Transglomeration: How else might I recompense their benevolence, they so closely bonded to the benefit of beings, who would do anything that is good for them, who would dismember their own body and give it away, who would enter right into the deepest avīci hell, all for their sake; how, other than behaving towards all beings in the best possible way in all my actions, even when they might have inflicted the greatest harm on me.

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 119 – what other way of repaying the Buddhas (who have taken beings as their own) …
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 120 … those Buddhas who have completely self-sacrificed for beings

Text: this verse seems to have four lines in the Sanskrit whereas most verses have two: is this right (or is there some fault/conjecture about this verse), if right what significance is there that Śāntideva (or the settlers of the original text … from Magadha) delivered just this verse in a slightly different format; in the meaning of the verse itself it continues the line of thinking as started in verse 112 and seems to have no significant meta-point to make (like the lengthened verse lines of chapter 4, verse 47, which is the first explicit mention of meditation of emptiness in the text) and there is no change in the type of reasoning used from previous verses; in fact the point made in this verse is just answering the rhetorical question posed in verse 119, still …

Text: line 2 (of 4, this time), this is translated along the lines of ‘if we act poorly with beings, we thereby harm the Buddhas because of their close ties to beings, but I read it as they do the rending and relinquishing of their bodies ‘for the sake of doing good’ for all beings – as in ‘to the extent of’…; probably hubris, but I’m sticking with this for a while until I’m shown otherwise … as seems to inevitably end up happening, the seemingly contrary, or even contradictory, readings are a matter of ostensible and affective readings of the same thing – outside-in and inside-out: (Sanskrit) the Buddhas work for sentient beings to the extent that they would rend their bodies and enter the deepest hell for them (outer) (because they (the Buddhas) have effectively and actually relinquished all sense of self-grasping and self-concern and entertain only (Enlightened) thoughts of concern for others) (inner); (Tibetan) because the Buddhas have perfected the exchange of self for others such there is no sense of self where the needs of others are concerned (inner) then anything done to beings (those same ‘others’) is both affectively and effectively done to the Buddhas, a precept of conduct which is wholly detrimental to oneself if one acts negatively toward them (outer); the fact that many of the translators of the Sanskrit text – even the early ones – often take (what turns out to be) the ‘Tibetan’ reading, I would venture is the ease with which that line can be read either way

Reflection: this verse explores the effects of the relationship of the Buddhas towards sentient beings, being one of having exchanged self for other – the Buddhas have no sense of self from their realisation of emptiness, but also from their response to beings who are likewise empty of intrinsic existence and yet have not realised this, and so suffer; this affectively means that they have no sense of self (they have realised that there is no self), but from sentient beings’ (and obviously oneself’s) side they would perceive that there are Buddhas because they/we are still stuck in dualistic perception projected upon the apprehension of intrinsic existence; the trichotomy (Buddhas/beings/oneself) only exists from the deluded/saṃsāric point of view, it is not an absolute trichotomy, neither is it unchangeable, but that the perception that there are Buddhas to be perceived, and that once perceived, one enters a path to understand what the implication and nature of these perceptions of Buddhas means – it is the redress of the problem (1^st Truth of Suffering, 2^nd Truth of the Cause of Suffering) by entering into relationship with the solution of the problem (3^rd Truth of there being a Cessation of suffering (look, there are Buddhas!), 4^th Truth of the Path to Enlightenment)

Practice: again, these last verses of the chapter are establishing a whole perspective regarding the practice of patience, again, moved it far beyond the mere stopping of anger and rising it to accept the full implication of the distinction of the two truths (conventional and ultimate) and their reconciliation by practising the Perfections rather than merely stopping unfortunate and unskilful actions; the Perfections are presented as the practices of giving, discipline, patience etc. with the realisation of emptiness: a clunky understanding of this renders practitioners wandering around practising their virtues with emptiness in their minds as if they were stoned out hippies saying everything is beautiful and everything is alright; it’s clunky because it simply juxtaposes the two (practice of virtue & realisation of emptiness), there is little sense of integration there, emptiness is just tagged on behind the event as if an afterthought; realising emptiness is more than just concluding ‘oh, nothing exists inherently’ otherwise it has tended towards an extreme of (a perverse) realism (i.e. that a phenomenon’s real nature is its empty nature of existence, that its real nature lies ‘behind’ its apparent nature; the two truths, thereby, have not been integrated and they need to be integrated to ‘step out’ of the double bind of conceiving something to exist or not exist in co-dependence with one’s own sense of self existing or not existing); so how do you integrate the two truths, that all is conditioned and that all is empty of intrinsic existence: you do it through engaging with all sentient beings on a non-self-personal-grasping-or-cherishing level, responding to their needs within a conditioned and cyclical world with the mind of bringing them to realisation of their own nature liberated from the prison of perceiving the world as intrinsically real or intrinsically illusory; the key to realising oneself the union of the two truths is the indispensability of engaging all sentient beings within one’s practice, anything short of engaging all sentient beings I one’s practice limits one’s integration of the two truths and by default de-limits one’s realisation of emptiness; the practice of this verse is, therefore, realising the indispensability of sentient beings in one’s practice of patience and realisation of emptiness

psssssh

Tags

2019, 5*, afterlife, air, attachment, breathing, death, denial, fish, hands, hell, hook, identity, land, life, living, regret, self-cherishing, sound, water

                oh yes, lookit
                a morsel, just
                hanging there
                can’t believe my

                luck, maybe too
                good to be true,
                look, wriggling
                and juicy, ah

                what the hell
                openwide and
                chomp; hmmm,
                juicy, ahh: agh

                hook through
                my lip, no, I
                didn’t mean,
                it wasn’t me, I

                wasn’t there, I
                didn’t do nuffin’,
                quick, I’ll rip my
                lip, it’ll heal, just

                get away, no
                it’s up through
                my mouth, shit
                it’s sticking out

                through my nose
                how do I get
                out of this … but
                it was so juicy –

                ugh, where’s the
                air, where’s all that
                water I was
                thrashing around in

                where am I, who
                are all these others
                with no faces, keep
                still y’all, I can’t

                breathe, I can’t
                move through what
                I live in like I
                used to, what

                these hands
                like lands, who
                am I, where
                do I belong

                heating up
                heating up,
                this land is
                too hot, do

                n’t put me
                on it, I’ll
                disintegrate
                psssssh

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter VI, verse 89: These viciously sharp hooks cast by the kleśa-fishermen – these turbulent thoughts, these hateful emotions – and you, o pitiful mind, have been snagged on them again and again – [net-loads of you] – where you will inevitably be turned over to the guards of hell as raw ingredient, to be cooked-alive in the cauldrons there over and over again.

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

air wormhole: distance
breathing & life & living & sound wormhole: breakfast
death wormhole: in deed
hands wormhole: mandala offering
identity wormhole: eyes like petals
water wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later

 

mlewisredford is EIGHT years old today – yayy

it wasn’t until after I’d launched the site that I realised it was my late Mum’s birthday today, and there was a strange sense of ‘fitting’ with the realisation; this site is infused with my Mum

thank you to everyone who stops by and reads a piece or two from here: you do an ageing writer good, even though he is only eight

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VI, Patience – verse 119; reflectionary

Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VI– verse 119

Transglomeration: And furthermore, given that (the Buddhas) have become so closely and precisely related to the needs of beings, and that they manifest such immeasurable benefit for the world, and I, having previously given up and abandoned such conciliation with beings, how otherwise might I better recompense their kindness than by giving service to beings and making them happy?

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 118 – beings = part and condition of generating virtues \ worthy of recognition and veneration
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 119 – … and besides, what other way of repaying the Buddhas (who have taken beings as their own)

Elements: (Buddhas) = closely bonded to all beings, give immeasurable benefit; ourselves (having abandoned those beings), how else to reconcile (with Buddhas) than through (giving) close bonds and benefit; a rhetorical verse: in acting adversely with beings we create an infraction with the Buddhas because they are so closely tied to beings – the have completely exchanged self for other; the only way to rectify that infraction is to proffer that same bond and benefit back to beings

Reflection: (related to the trichotomy of Buddhas/all beings/oneself): just as the Buddhas have dissolved all trace of self-concern/care into care for all beings (such there is no ‘them’ but the care they have for others, the perfection of love (for others’ happiness) and compassion (for others’ suffering), such that there is no thought in their minds of their need over and above others’, a complete selflessness that doesn’t even conceive an ‘I’, let alone its needs, such that there is only the needs of others), then we (‘ourselves’) need to do likewise in order to complete the mutual-dissolution – there’s no other way; this trichotomy is a dynamic: when the elements are distinct, there is no dynamic, only a stasis, stuck within a mutual incompatibility, which, at best is a personal Nirvāṇa, but mostly is suffering and blind conditionality – conventional and ultimate natures have not been reconciled; when the elements are dynamic, then the path (to reconciling the two truths) is being worked to the benefit of all and no one

Embroidery: it recurs – up to verse 111 is the whole treatment of the problem of anger and the means to control and stop it; from verse 112 onwards is the treatment of taking it a step further towards recognising what is going on here from an overview: patience is more than just stopping oneself getting angry, it is actually following through with the recognition that all beings, things, and, of course, ourselves, are all wholly and inescapably conditioned within an infinitely intricate web of cause and effect; this recognition is used to deconstruct for us that there is really nothing substantial ‘out there’ for us to get angry with, so we use this realisation in order to curb our anger; but additionally, let’s step back from just ourselves, and reflect what this means:

• the Buddhas have completely realised and understand the intricacy of cause and conditionality
• their response to this realisation is to become – by default – infinitely loving and infinitely compassionate towards the infinite frustration and suffering that sentient beings experience because they don’t realise this interdependency
• they have become extremely close to sentient beings – far closer than sentient beings can become to each other, dogged as they are in self-grasping and self-cherishing – not close to the extent that they can’t tell the difference between sentient beings and themselves (i.e. they have ‘lost’ themselves in ‘others’), but to the extent that they have realised both their own selflessness and so too the selflessness of others
• and yet sentient beings remain limited by their own sentience, hence the infinite love and compassion, and hence the Vow that all sentient beings become Enlightened
• of course, ‘ourself’ (the reader of the text, the practitioner, the aspiring Bodhisattva) is one of the ‘sentient beings’, but the fact that ‘I’ am reading and studying and trying to practise this text – that I am trying to ‘bridge’ between being a sentient being and an Enlightened Being – creates the perspective from which I need to practise:
• up to verse 111 Śāntideva has been exploring that we need adversaries in order to practise patience, but we don’t just use sentient beings as a ‘springboard’ for our development, we take the condition of sentient beings to train ourselves – yes – but also to complete the process (the recognition of, and rectification of conditionality) by getting all sentient beings to recognise their own conditionality; if you only strived in the ‘field’ of the Buddhas only you would end up only sorting yourself out gaining a personal Nirvāṇa, you would have achieved neither your own full benefit (by not becoming fully Enlightened, a Buddha) or others’ benefit (by liberating them, you’ll just have escaped from where they are)
• this is why aspiring Bodhichitta is so important; of having the macro perspective from the beginning, even before you have made any gains at all, so that one’s practise of Dharma doesn’t become some limited personal project

breakfast

Tags

2019, 7*, blindness, blogging, branches, breakfast, breathing, canopy, coffee, dark, echo, energy, eyes, flash, gooseberry, ground, growth, jam, leaves, life, light, living, monkey, path, reaching, reading, samsara, seeing, shadow, sound, sunlight, toast, trees, walking, way, wind, woodland

                breakfast

                these shadows on a long walk
                through the woodland with only occasional sun

                all there, underneath the undergrowth
                cannot see the ground, the stems that grow from it

                branches reach, leaves envelope everywhere
                from nowhere; weave

                and grow round and entwine each other;
                if I lift the leaves to see my way forward –

                searching for light, searching for life
                to grow, to continue – and if I break the smaller branches to

                make way
                I will scratch my arms, sap will sting my skin, my

                eyes, I cannot see, I cannot see;
                and I won’t see; some trees

                are quicker and older (than me)
                they hold the path and reach wide,

                and creepers make them fat
                and vines hang like curtains of water;

                the canopy above, maximised
                to greatest energy, sent back down through rough wires;

                only when the wind leans
                or a monkey leaps, is there a flash of light, gone by the

                time I’ve looked back down to the path
                blinded, to see where I am

                there must be so much light somewhere
                out there, if only I weren’t stumbling around and bleeding

                … really; I come downstairs
                and breathe coffee and spiced home – made gooseberry jam on home – made toast                           

                while reading my posts … yes,
                a thousand hacks and sap in the dark

                where I cannot see
                and cannot know where I am

                a thousand ‘choks’ deferred
                the undergrowth too dense to echo

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter VI, verse 12: How can I attain happiness when the causes for happiness are obtained only through great effort and very rarely, and when the seeds­ of pain and sorrow are so prevalent, relentless and multifarious that they are realised easily and without any effort? And yet it is only from suffering that the thought and longing for escape and liberation from the suffering of conditioned existence will come about … therefore, O my deepest mind, hold yourself strong, patient, steadfast!

 

 

^{————w}(O)_{rmholes________________________________|—–}

branches & breathing wormhole: blue sky high
coffee wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
echo & path & walking wormhole: the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening
eyes & life wormhole: eyes like petals
leaves & living wormhole: everything is caused by something, which / something is caused by something else, nothing / stands alone where all pass as phantoms
light & trees wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
reading wormhole: {reading right to left}
samsara & sound wormhole: at Kreukenhof
seeing wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
shadow wormhole: alabaster balustrade
wind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara: Chapter VI, Patience – verse 118; reflectionary

Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Acharya Śāntideva

Chapter VI– verse 117

­Transglomeration: And, since a factor in the generation of these best of Buddha Qualities is readily found within all sentient beings, surely it is clearly understood that all sentient beings should be given due recognition and honour in accordance with just that.

~~~ “BCA” ~~~

V. 117 – because a fraction of that virtue is immeasurable
↑ Stitch ↓
V. 118 – and beings = part and condition of generating those virtues ∴ worthy of recognition and veneration

↓ {conclusion of 114-117} ↓

Stitching: all beings are to be venerated

Overstitching: since the smallest part of ‘Essence of All Virtue’ [condition of Path to Enlightenment] is present in all sentient beings [by virtue of their being infinite (-ly proliferating) and suffering] = correct to venerate them

Reflection: but if a tiny share of being the cause to realise these qualities exists in each and every sentient being, then every sentient being is due due honour and esteem because of this (and Tuffley mentions that each sentient being has the Buddha-nature in them, is this in the text?)

Reflection: these verses start to break down the absolute distinction between sentient beings and Enlightened Beings; yes, there is a distinction between Enlightened and not-Enlightened – Enlightened Beings have gone beyond all limitation and distinction, but they were once limited sentient beings themselves – but the distinction is not absolute, it is bridge-able (although the bridge (the raft) needs to be left at the shore; in fact from verse 112 onwards is a whole exploration of oneself <> sentient beings <> Enlightened Beings …

Determination: to respect all sentient beings as I would the Three Jewels because they give rise and condition to realisation

eyes like petals

Tags

2019, 6*, anger, Arya Lalitavistara, attachment, Bodhi Tree, Buddha, compassion, earth, eyes, government, hate, identity, life, lotus, lust, Mara, orbit, power, self-grasping, sitting, stillness, suffering

                the variety of grotesquery
                with which beings grasp their self

                the various grips of power
                through summits of council

                and various arrays of stake and brandishment
                appear as the armies of Mara,

                the thirty two ways of seducing
                that would fill life to the full

                over both his shoulders
                while sat under the Tree as endlessly still

                as the orbiting earth;
                the Bodhisattva turned his head,

                clean as no motivation at all
                to exposure and scattered diaspora,

                but looked on them all
                with eyes like petals

 

 

 

^{————w}(O)rmholes_________________________________|—–

Buddha wormhole: Candaka
compassion wormhole: at Kreukenhof
eyes wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
identity & life wormhole: none and all
power wormhole: the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening
sitting wormhole: quietly in my quiet house