the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening

Tags

2019, 7*, Arya Lalitavistara, Bodhisattva, Buddha, calm, dark, demon, earth, echo, elephant, food, ground, happiness, light, lion, lotus, mindfulness, mountain, omniscient, past life, path, plateau, power, river, samsara, spontaneity, stars, step, three poisons, Tree of Awakening, view, walking, wheel

                so he bathed in the Nairañjanā,
                he ate the food, his strength

                returned, and he began the walk
                toward the Great Tree; he walked

                with easy gait, grounded
                as a mountain, each step gained

                and graceful with no fight, dream
                or idea; the placement pad of a lion,

                the calliper-swing of an elephant,
                a stride that touched not the earth

                but left perfect wheels
                upon the ground, a step that echoed

                across the plateau, a step that
                levelled mountain paths, each step

                that lead to happy lands,
                each step sprung from past lotuses

                of love and stable intention,
                that rendered demons powerless

                that calmed all view, that evanesced
                the darkness and stopped the

                endless endless rounds; his
                walk outshone the distant stars,

                his walk becalmed the rulers;
                the walk spontaneous, the walk

                omniscient, the walk mindful
                of every ancient step, with such a gait

                the Bodhisattva set out
                for the Seat of Awakening

 

from the Arya Lalita Vistara Nama Mahayana Sutra – the life story of the Buddha – originally using the words from the translation by the Dharmachakra Translation 84000 Committee which is freely available online here (for which thank you, thank you) and then other words once my gaze had settled into the image; the ‘Nairañjanā’ is the river by which the Buddha practised his austerities, the ‘food’ was that given to him by Sujata

 

 

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

Buddha wormhole: Sujātā
echo wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
light wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
path wormhole: alabaster balustrade
power wormhole: in turgid reflection
river wormhole: Great Bridge, Rouen, 1896
stars wormhole: 11/1 by William Carlos Williams
walking wormhole: Valentine’s Day 2019

 

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Sujātā

Tags

2019, 8*, Arya Lalitavistara, asking, branches, Buddha, flow, milk, need, offering, passing, place, rice, river, sitting, Sujata, time, wisdom

                Sujātā

                the Nairañjanā flows,
                it always flows, Sujātā
                knows the flows, she had passed there

                every day, she passed
                the Bodhisattva parched
                as a blackened tree-stump,

                and every day saw only
                the low low reach of
                the tree wide and high

                waiting for the One
                to sit under, axial
                to the universe

                and before it was even
                apparent and the need
                had yet to ask she

                had creamed the
                sweetest milk with
                bursting grains of rice

                and offered it by the
                ever-flowing river, all
                absent of design and

                plot, but ineluctable
                in both place and
                process; so few found so wise

 

from the Arya Lalita Vistara Nama Mahayana Sutra:

                “The village girl Sujātā, who has done much good in the past,
                  Continuously makes offerings, thinking: “May this guide complete his discipline!”                
                  When she hears the request of the gods, she brings milk porridge with honey;
                  She goes to the river and happily sits on the banks of the Nairañjanā.”

 

 

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

branches & river wormhole: Pont Neuf, Paris, 1902
Buddha wormhole: in deed
flow wormhole: transferring
passing & sitting wormhole: Landscape, Pontoise, 1875
time wormhole: Cours La Reine, Rouen, 1890

 

in deed

Tags

2019, 8*, Arya Lalitavistara, austerity, being, birth, black, Buddha, children, consumerism, death, doing, ears, fear, grin, hate, identity, infrastructure, investment, karma, letting go, lifetimes, love, mother, nirmanakaya, nose, samadhi, shame, skeleton, society, son, thought, war, womb, world

                                I

                gave birth to you, I
                held you deep within my very womb,
                the very kernel of all the labour of all my life’s beings and I

                gave you up to being
                with all the love of whole investment
                placed in care of self in state, you cannot,

                                just
                                die

                                __O—

                … she addressed her son

                who sat unmoved
                to the whole world’s reach
                that only his bones leaned together
                dry and upright

                who sat unconsumed
                to the whole world’s glut
                that to feel his stomach
                was to grasp his spine

                who sat unloved
                to the whole world’s reflection that
                children poked grass in his ear ‘till it
                came out his nose

                who sat unknown
                to the whole world’s shame
                that he was dust-black as a
                tree stump hideously grinning

                                __O—

                and know, mother, I do not die;
                I embroiled with the world to show
                the terrible wake of uncoupling
                her greasy mechinations,

                                in deed

 

honnnnnnnned like the string from a lute, not too tight not too loose, from chapter 17 of the Arya Lalitavistara Sutra in which the Prince’s mother (who had died and gone to heaven) came to see her son after he had been practising austerities for six years and was on the point of dying; she feared he was taking his quest to extremes, but he calmly told her that (the point of the whole Sutra being called ‘Lalita’, a ‘play’) that he had to show, in human form, what the two extremes of living in life were, in order to then show the way between to two extremes to liberation

 

 

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

being & war wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877
black wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
Buddha wormhole: the old man;
death wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
doing wormhole: Entry to the Village of Voisins, Yvelines, 1872
identity wormhole: threshold to behold
letting go wormhole: the reach turned to love
lifetimes wormhole: Landscape, Pontoise, 1875
love wormhole: 10/28 ‘in this strong light …’ by William Carlos Williams
mother wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
society & thought wormhole: my uncomfortable life
war wormhole: on facing the Have

 

the old man;

Tags

2019, 8*, bougainvillea, Buddha, hope, life, lute, meaning, ochre, old age, open, pink, politics, power, purpose, renunciation, samsara, society, the Four Signs, time, walking, wind, windows

                the old man;

                by the open window –
                air of civic celebration

                flowering deep pink
                bougainvillea on ochre

                wind, but despite
                all iron machination

                the Prince of all
                that hope could keep

                had seen that Make
                held long-together only

                with foresworn and
                decrepit elapse

                that bent walking
                could behold;

                and the borough might hold
                but there were

                further portents
                on the way and a

                fourth that
                warranted all wasteland –

                when the lute-string
                snapped

 

An old man was the first of the Four Signs that tipped the Prince to thinking that there was more to life than privileged indulgence – there was a seriousness in life to consider which his father had designed to keep from him; when the Prince had been born, there was a prophecy that he would either become a great king enjoying power and influence far beyond, even, what his father had achieved, or that he would leave home and become a seeker of deeper purpose and meaning in life, but the father could not keep all of life’s questions at bay for the rest of the Prince’s life … the other Signs were: illness, death and worldly renunciation; this encounter fore-shadowed the Prince leaving his home to search for that deeper meaning and purpose

 

 

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

Buddha wormhole: birth in the world
life & time & walking wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
meaning wormhole: to let be
ochre wormhole: every step I take
open & windows wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
pink wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
politics wormhole: how to teach
power & society wormhole: Rain, Steam and Speed – the / Great Western Railway, 1844
renunciation wormhole: and … // … sound
samsara wormhole: Batman: Oddysey
wind wormhole: {reading right to left}

 

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

 

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?