birth in the world

Tags

2019, 7*, air, Arya Lalitavistara, Buddha, chords, crown, dawn, distance, glass, heather, lemon, light, Maitreya, mist, note, olive, rebirth, shade, silence, storm, windows

                the air refreshed
                and folded by several
                degrees as if to storm,
                the light became

                slightly shaded as if
                through olive glass
                but remained lemon
                in the distance, the

                silence dampened
                like mist as minute
                heather flowers turned
                to dawn, and all the

                abandoned instruments,
                their boxes taut to struts,
                their strings resigned
                to tonnage, discarded

                over couches, before
                windows, each creaked
                and let a single note that
                ne’er had pitched and

                held – chords
                o’er room and vale;
                it was time the
                effervescent crown

                were passed to the
                Regent and the
                Bodhisattva take
                birth in the world

 

bevelled up and out of the Arya Lalita Vistara Nama Mahayana Sutra: before the Buddha was born a prince in a principality in India, he was residing in a heavenly realm (with the gods), but his vows and wishes over endless waves of previous lifetimes urged him to one final birth to consummate them all in Enlightenment; the Regent is Maitreya, the next Bodhisattva to take birth in this world and show Enlightenment … in future

 

 

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

air wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
Buddha wormhole: and … // … sound
dawn wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
glass wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
lemon wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
light wormhole: St. Erasmus in Bishop Islip’s Chapels, 1796
Maitreya wormhole: Prajnaparamita // Maitreya
mist wormhole: to let be
olive wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118
silence wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
windows wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing

 

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and … // … sound

Tags

2019, 8*, allegory, Arya Lalitavistara, Buddha, conceit, hierarchy, hope, horizon, humanity, identity, ignorance, kleshas, lies, love, music, parents, renunciation, role, royalty, society, sound, teaching, time

                                and …

                … there, where humans
                have found themselves
                in ever-corporate cluster

                evolving mass of breadth
                and hope in horizon; see,
                they conceive their self

                in immaculate conception:
                pyramidically instilled
                and royal to behold;

                it is their that I will
                be, allegorical to there
                conceit, I shall higher their boat

                to get to the other
                shore, I will honour their
                parents, I will love

                their fulsome lies, but
                the time will come
                that I shall cede the role

                and break their fragile Is
                when the boxes with
                broken strings nonetheless …

                                … sound

 

inspired both from, and within, the ‘Arya Lalita Vistara Nama Mahayana Sutra‘, which is the life-story of the Buddha, the title of which is beautiful: ‘Arya‘ meaning ‘higher, exalted’ as in connected to reality; ‘Lalita‘ meaning ‘play, game, role’, that everything is not just as it seems … an allegory, although coupled with ‘Arya’ it is an allegory that doesn’t merely ‘point to’ a deeper/higher meaning, it comes from and dwells within that meaning … playfully, poetically, suggestively, also suggesting how the scripture is to be read; ‘Vistara‘ meaning any and all of ‘breadth, dimension, elaboration, enlargement, expansion, extension, spread, width’ – the ‘exponetialising’ means of coupling the ‘Arya’ with the ‘Lalita’ parts; ‘Nama‘, meaning ‘named, called’; ‘Mahayana‘ the spiritual way and means of exponentialising; ‘Sutra‘ a ‘discourse’ or ‘means’ given by the Buddha, yes this is an autobiography, but so much more if read with eyes wide open; there are several allusions to musical instruments that ‘sound’ (and sometimes ‘speak’) when not played, or when broken; ‘their’ and ‘there’ in the 4th stanza poem are sic and are meant to be questioning both identity and place in samsara

 

 

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

Buddha wormhole: with all love released
horizon wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
identity & society wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
love wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840
music wormhole: on facing the Have
sound wormhole: YOUNG SYCAMORE by William Carlos Williams
teaching wormhole: between
time wormhole: ‘there, …’

 

with all love released

Tags

2016, 8*, air, anatta, birdcall, blue, breathing, Buddha, change, civilisation, dark, earth, echo, finding, glow, groundlessness, impermanence, inspiration, karma, letting go, looking, lost, love, purple, red, shadow, shelf, time

                I still look for you on the
                shelves and by the way

                head tilted to one side
                feeling in the shadows

                under foliage between
                stems for something lost

                shining darkly red
                pushing up through

                purple earth – fold of
                blue shadow – I knew

                you’d be here somewhere
                without remembering

                where I’d let you go,
                mutated through cycle

                as wax will wane; and
                I know when I find you

                I’ll notice the glow
                where it shouldn’t be

                obvious when discovered –
                I knew it! – but now

                my daylight groping is
                done; I have found no

                ground to stand on
                I must let you go again,

                my friends, and face
                the only task … alone

                I could track back
                through centuries of

                millennia and tectonic
                inch and breathe the

                same air, amid forming
                civilisations, the only

                air replenishable, as
                the man who strolled

                through parklands and
                birdcall, all possible

                echoes collapsed, and
                I could breathe that

                same heir both in and
                out with diminishing

                return dispersing the
                hanging proliferation of

                ténèbres hautes and
                redoubtable as they may

                seem, as known as I
                am not, with all love released

 

 

 

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

air & Buddha wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
blue & time wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
breathing & letting go wormhole: travelling // arrival
change wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – reaping
echo wormhole: looking / ridiculous
groundlessness wormhole: 1964
looking wormhole: between
love wormhole: cinnamon / milkshake
purple wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
red wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
shadow wormhole: low afternoon

 

Sheffield Park Gardens

Tags

2016, 9*, air, black, blue, bluebells, branches, Buddha, Carol, children, contemplation, copper beech, creation, daffodil, dandelions, discovery, duck, eyebrow, face, family, fields, flag, future, garden, gem, girls, glance, green, hair, Have, humanity, India, kalpa, lake, land, life, limbs, living, mauve, May, name, passing, petals, plants, pollen, primrose, promise, rhododendron, seeing, serendipity, settlement, shade, Sheffield Park Gardens, sitting, society, stone-chat, talking to myself, transluscency, tribe, voices, walking, water, yellow

                Sheffield Park Gardens

                we walked
                upright
                across wide fields

                in scattered groups,
                family and tribe,
                private longing

                under shaded
                brim for a land
                of silk and money

                8th May 2016, with

                only childrens’ voices
                we walked into
                the garden

                dispersing to
                our hides to make our own
                discoveries

                by happenstance
                and peripheral glance
                held cold and fresh

                before name:
                that stone-chat
                that makes the

                copper beech
                transluscent;
                the cool stretch of branch

                yet to bud
                before the haze
                of dusty pollen;

                what to make
                of the solitary dandelion –
                butter yellow life –

                amid
                fain clusters of primrose; and
                there in the shade,

                mauve-bells and
                daffodil stalks make in-
                visible a steely blue;

                bluebells
                like raised eyebrows, relaxèd
                to see a future;

adult voices pass, now, talking ways of life; young girls practise handstands and routines in the fields;                

                let’s sit by the lake awhile:
                where a duck’s
                head

                sits
                just out the shade of exotic plants
                (let’s say, from India)

                the water lapping
                anywhere (let’s say, oh,
                 two thousand

                 five hundred
                 years ago), tucked
                immaculate

                black
                letting nothing out
                but the feint

                of blue
                or green that will form a gem
                in kalpas

                of contemplation;
                across the water a willow rests
                like a flag

                (girl’s hair
                 recovers from each upswing from each
                 hand-stand);

                turning home
                Carol stooped
                to smell the rhododendron flower

                “oh, …”

                pushed her face
                into the petals with lust
                was it

                because I’d
                said the branches
                were an orgy of slippy limbs

                or was it just me
                making things up
                as we walked along?

 

I know, I know, it’s mid February, and the poem was written and set in a May; it’s not seasonally right, but this was the next in line to be printed: them’s the chops …

 

 

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

air wormhole: Batgirl –
black & blue & Carol & passing wormhole: travelling // arrival
branches & voices wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
Buddha wormhole: om muni muni maha muniye soha
family wormhole: out
garden wormhole: slightly / uphill
green wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
hair wormhole: two profiles
Have wormhole: Coleton Fishacre
life wormhole: sweet chestnut
living wormhole: ‘still …’
mauve wormhole: snapshots about Totnes
seeing wormhole: glide
sitting wormhole: amid
society wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
talking to myself wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
walking wormhole: loss
water wormhole: without any buffet at all
yellow wormhole: greedy

 

om muni muni maha muniye soha

Tags

2015, 6*, beach, body, bones, Buddha, feet, fruit, gods, Gran Canaria, heat, identity, ink, knuckles, leisure, mantra, salt, Shakyamuni, sound, Spanish, stone, story, swimming, toes, water

                hola de nuevo Gran Canaria
                quiet crucible of dimpled buttock
                and all the beach furniture of recline
                balmy Spanish exchanged – warm water
                poured slappingly on hot languid stone

                om muni muni maha muniye soha

                hola de nuevo Gran Canaria
                with your reveal of dark ink identity
                your candid feet with no guile, each toe
                tells a different story to your tread – painted
                toes and slight bones between knuckles

                om muni muni maha muniye soha

                ah, you bodies you slink
                cool and day-glo all about me
                you bath-robe gods high above
                with your salt-water pools and fruit –
                the headland a giant sitting Buddha

                om muni muni maha muniye soha

 

 

 

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

beach wormhole: is there anything to write?
Buddha wormhole: child
feet wormhole: cinnamon / milkshake
identity & water wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
sound wormhole: Plumstead – Woolwich – Plumstead 220211
stone wormhole: St. Mark’s flies flagpole upwards / with the forelegs hanging down obscene / reaching some height blindly to connect / out from the long-stalk tri-separating up- / to-seeded rounds of pod like acacia what / is it called “‘hogweed’ I-don’t-know- / what-it’s-called-but-goats-love-it-and- / it-makes-them-burp-a-lot”

 

child

Tags

2017, 6*, becoming, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Buddha, child, samsara, Shantideva, trees

                     child

                     magnificent beings stepped
                     between the trees and undergrowth

                     time and again with beautiful
                     robes and hems of rare design

                     calling for lost ones to come gather
                     but I remained hidden, sure

                     I could remember the way
                     to them catch up later and

                     surprise them all tadaa … when
                     I can move from this

                     hollow tree I excitedly found … and
                     have become

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara, III 13-14

 

 

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

Buddha wormhole: out!
child wormhole: ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …
samsara wormhole: the purple mist between
trees wormhole: faintly apricot air?

 

my // shell – poewieview #19

Tags

1970, 2016, Bowie, Buddha, delusion, desire, echo, eyes, forest, happiness, identity, karma, lifetimes, monkey, others, samsara, shadow, shell, the Three Poisons, thought, words

                my

                                shadows whip `round me
                                sometimes before you’ve
                                thought your words

                                you cannot help it
                                I have echoes in my eyes
                                from all the “I”s that faded

                                too soon to cast open their
                                only desires left hanging tantalic,
                                your monkey’s hand held tight in the

                                                                                 shell^*

 

^* “the prince heard the cry of a monkey in the forest: it had been trapped by hunters who used a nut case which was so-shaped that a monkey’s hand could fit into the shell when opened flat, but not if the hand was held as a fist.   The hunters placed food in the shell which greatly attracted the monkeys; when they put in their hands to grab the food they could not withdraw their hands, and yet they wanted the food so much that they would not let it go.   And so they were trapped.   This seemed to the prince that it might be the answer: beings find no happiness in life because the very act of trying to get happiness binds them to frustration.   In selfishly trying to grab their own lives, they were trapped in them.   The enemies to fight were the delusions within oneself: selfishness, pride, greed, belief in the self, anger, jealousy, hate, desire etc, those things which try to grasp happiness in life.”

Read the collected movements in David Bowie: Movements in Suite Major

 

 

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

Bowie & eyes wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
Buddha wormhole: out!
echo wormhole: where the goblins leered – poewieview #14
identity wormhole: Shonagh – poewieview #17
lifetimes wormhole: thick thick fog
others wormhole: crescendoeing cascade of chordage – poewieview #10
samsara wormhole: Nostalgia for Samsara – poewieview #16
shadow wormhole: keep the light off
thought wormhole: strange / tarnish
words wormhole: crease and score of silver-morning sky

 

out!

Tags

2014, being, Buddha, conception, context, desire, discernment, habit, identity, looking, Majjhima Nikaya, meditation, microscope, Pali, passive, point, reductionism, seeing, talking to myself, telescope, the Poison Arrow Analogy, thinking, transitive, will, world, writing

                                is seeing transitive
                                              or passive
                do you look to see as the will will direct
                                or do you select what you see as
                                              desire will allow
                                is it a microscope that focusses down
                                              to constituents
                                or a telescope that conceives
                                              what there is from what isn’t
                                do I see the point
                                              or contextualise it
                                              does it come to me
                                                              or do I dwell in the world defined by my looks and habit
                                                              is it both or neither

                                or should I just get this damn arrow out!
                                              of my eye

                                                              –O~~~

 

                                                                                    ~~~O–

                                                              so, is
                                              writing or meditating
                                                              transitive or passive …

                                                              – SLAP! –

 

“It’s just as if a man were wounded with an arrow thickly smeared with poison.   His friends & companions, kinsmen & relatives would provide him with a surgeon, and the man would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the man who wounded me was a noble warrior, a priest, a merchant, or a worker.’   He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know the given name & clan name of the man who wounded me… until I know whether he was tall, medium, or short… until I know whether he was dark, ruddy-brown, or golden-colored… until I know his home village, town, or city… until I know whether the bow with which I was wounded was a long bow or a crossbow… until I know whether the bowstring with which I was wounded was fiber, bamboo threads, sinew, hemp, or bark… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was wild or cultivated… until I know whether the feathers of the shaft with which I was wounded were those of a vulture, a stork, a hawk, a peacock, or another bird… until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was bound with the sinew of an ox, a water buffalo, a langur, or a monkey.’   He would say, ‘I won’t have this arrow removed until I know whether the shaft with which I was wounded was that of a common arrow, a curved arrow, a barbed, a calf-toothed, or an oleander arrow.’   The man would die and those things would still remain unknown to him.”

from the “Cula-Malunkyovada Sutta: The Shorter Instructions to Malunkya” (Majjhima Nikaya 63), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu.   Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.063.than.html .

 

 

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

being & Buddha wormhole: de Boeddha // of light
identity wormhole: zok! and pow!
looking wormhole: dream 260815
meditation wormhole: between
seeing wormhole: now, the verticals go down as well as they go up
talking to myself wormhole: exactly equal
thinking wormhole: just saying, is all V: // … systematic and consistent disempowerment
world wormhole: Detective Comics #345
writing wormhole: enough

 

de Boeddha // of light

Tags

2014, Amsterdam, being, body, Buddha, compassion, doing, Enlightenment, giving, head, lifetimes, light, sentient beings, silence, time

 

 

 

                                                                                   de Boeddha

                                                     both clean and smooth
                                                     but wears limb and body
                                                     nonchalant and draping
                                                     sheer from head to toe
                                                     all ripples to behold
                                                     and wafting slight and
                                                     silent from time to times
                                                     through naked need

                                     of light

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: Eridge – Cowden
Buddha wormhole: Buddha / Shakyamuni
compassion wormhole: library: start where you are IV // all the distance I have travelled!
doing wormhole: exactly equal
giving wormhole: it is complete
lifetimes & silence & time wormhole: mauve / night
light wormhole: Railway Crossing, c. 1922-23

 

Buddha / Shakyamuni

Tags

2014, blue, Buddha, cliffs, Gran Canaria, mantra, progress, sea, shadow, Shakyamuni, sky, sun, swimming

 

 

 

                                Buddha
                            Shakyamuni

                                no matter
                the progress I thought I made
                paddling on my back away from
                the cliff head to the sun

                                the point
                at which the bluffs and crags
                the face-shapes and scars
                exposed-cracked shadowed-clean
                distant distinct and clear

                                met
                the sheer sky from top to bottom
                                didn’t shift
                                at all

                om muni muni maha muniye soha

 

 

 

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

blue & sky wormhole: Bodiam Castle
Buddha & sun wormhole: ambling around / the garden centre
sea wormhole: ‘discution poli / d’orage …’
shadow wormhole: library: start where you are IV // all the distance I have travelled!