my uncomfortable life

Tags

2019, 6*, abandonment, activity, anger, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, breakdown, broken, career, closed, compromise, contentment, context, Dad, disappointment, expectation, experience, eyes, feeling sorry for myself, frustration, greed, hope, injustice, laziness, life, management, no voice, people, politicians, powerlessness, Principal, requirement, resentment, self-cherishing, self-confidence, self-doubt, self-esteem, slogans, society, spin, teaching, thought, Tony Blair, turmoil, waiting, words, work

                I did not know contentment
                at work, what was required,
                what I thought, I never wholly
                got my teaching … sorted

                turmoil, and even when not
                outwardly angry, I was
                closed off and unapproachable,
                carrying anger and resentment

                like a thorny bush tied
                to my back since Dad left
                and people were ‘phony’ and
                society was stupid and words

                were insincere and all activity
                was a compromise and my equals cheated
                and laziness was always greedy
                and hope was rude and the politicians

                were tricksters and Tony Bliar
                and managers slogan-shifted like there was no tomorrow
                and the Principals
                wouldn’t know what to do with good practice if it writhed around suggestively on their desk in front of them and made them delicious promises of future dangerous liaison                      

                and by default I am
                at least disappointed, usually frustrated
                and often impotent-angry with them
                when they invariably reference me

                (and they always reference me)
                or when I am actually wronged,
                and then I’ll blow, beyond all immediate context
                because I have already been smouldering,

                waiting for the wrong to happen,
                expecting the wrong to happen,
                experiencing the wrong happening
                even before it has manifested;

                and I am right, it is wrong
                and compromised and greedy and unprincipled
                what they have done, even
                when they haven’t

                given expression to it, in fact
                especially when they haven’t
                given full expression to it
                and are sloganising and spinning

                that what is happening
                is entirely something else;
                and the powerlessness of
                not being able to have a voice

                no appeal to a universal
                right and wrong … built me up
                with no recourse and, I get broken;
                look at my tired eyes – my uncomfortable life

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, 3: A mind which walks with, which harbours, which is in the grip of, which is poisoned with anger and hate can neither establish nor enjoy any state of calm or peace, any sense of well-being or equipoise, any contentment, any resolution, neither can it feel any joy or delight, any sense of kindliness or love, nor can it sleep or rest, when the shard of aversion and hate is stuck and buried deep in one’s heart; but … I have retired now, I, am coming through

 

 

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

abandonment wormhole: south horizon
breakdown wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
career wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
compromise wormhole: raised brow
Dad wormhole: the reach turned to love
eyes wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
life & society wormhole: the old man;
management wormhole: how to teach
people wormhole: Puerto del Carmen
teaching wormhole: and … // … sound
thought wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
waiting wormhole: all // are // none
words wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
work wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873

 

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letting them go

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2017, 6*, attention, awareness, b/w, blues, branches, chords, comics, doors, guitar, identity, improvisation, laziness, letting go, life, living, morning, mouth, notice, passing, perspective, retirement, sound, talking to myself, twilight, world, writing

                I used to be lazy and cast wide
                with absently open mouth
                greedy to capture every
                snippet of notice to write:

                finding the secret doorway
                in the b/w reprint vista
                that will be the perspective
                with which I will return, noticed

                finding the lingering trill
                and the shifted-chord refrain
                across the neck of my guitar
                inexorable in-tangent flight

                finding new twilight between
                turning bare branches in which
                to pace the following
                mornings in strange new worlds;

                but it was a laziness difficult
                to maintain, this finding of access
                through letting them go …
                into awareness – much more alive

 

 

 

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

attention & identity wormhole: to arms, then;
awareness wormhole: loss
branches wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Making Hay
comics & mouth wormhole: 1964
doors & life & retirement wormhole: lost the search
guitar wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
letting go wormhole: chuckling
living wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
morning wormhole: abandoned sound mirrors
passing & sound wormhole: cross-section
talking to myself & writing wormhole: oh, alright then
twilight wormhole: without any buffet at all
world wormhole: ‘when travelling astrally …’

 

to arms, then;

Tags

1907, 2017, 8*, attention, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, body, carelessness, eyes, fate, fields, fire, focus, hell, ideals, identity, inner-self, karma, kleshas, laziness, Louis de la Vallee Poussin, mind, mindlessness, monster, mother sentient beings, narcissism, opportunity, over-reaching, phantom, practice, rebirth, resolve, smoke, staying, suffering, superhero, surprise, talking to myself, torture, translation, war, Warrior

                but there are plenty of opportunities
                to shave off indolence

                there are too many surprises
                to meet-off heedlessness, and stay;

                no use wailing and whimpering
                enfeebled by narcissism,

                when being unremittingly tortured
                of body and mind

                it’ll be way too late,
                I shall have nothing left but bad fate;

                the thing is, they don’t plot, they don’t
                manoeuvre and they

                hardly ever show
                themselves, so how is it I walk eyes-

                wide-open into each of their snare and
                realm; there, monsters

                slavering astride horizon cower me to
                craven identity, fires

                hot to match all my defences, afflicting
                me without notice

                or even much effort
                fires of the sun, fires of the atom, I’ll be

                engulfed but not
                consumed to blessed oblivion … oh, give me

                a break! – I’m
                ongoingly consumed even now, as long as I

                continue endlessly playing
                this solitaire, hitting the ‘new game’ button

                again and again
                until I … stop; but the cleverer I get

                with them the cleverer they already are,
                like shadow-boxing –

                these ancient enemies
                of mine; … to arms, then; not super-

                heroically, trying all the more better
                than I only am and

                then finding myself (on acrid fields –
                the smoke of fallen

                ideals and bombed aims) wanting, but
                inwardly, with

                attention and focus, the Way of the
                Steely Warrior; I shall

                be `ard with suffering, I can take it,
                I shall wear my

                oozed bowels and fallen head like medals
                in this, the War

                to End All Wars, not Mr Redfordman
                who is or isn’t

                good enough, but the wish and drive to fight,
                as long-suffering as mothers …

                … nothing to do with Mark Redford;
                ‘Je ne garde qu’une

                passion: celle de détruire les passions!’,
                these phantoms

                that stir the entire world; ‘dépouille-toi donc’
                the best translation prescribed

 

Bodhisattvacaryavatara IV, 43, French translation by Louis de la Vallee Poussin, Introduction à la Pratique des Futurs Bouddhas, 1907

 

 

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

attention wormhole: travelling // arrival
eyes wormhole: animus rises – powieview #37
identity wormhole: stuck in lower realm
mind wormhole: circuitry
practice & talking to myself wormhole: the turtle and the yoke
superhero wormhole: the quiet whale
war wormhole: looking ahead

 

the turtle and the yoke

Tags

2017, 8*, arrogance, benefit, blindness, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, breathing, facade, faith, glamour, honesty, kleshas, laziness, meditation, ocean, potential, practice, rebirth, self-indulgent, spontaneity, talking to myself, turtle, voices, windows

                the turtle and the yoke

                here is something cold-sweaty
                and uncomfortable to face –
                so much potential, so little use –

                seduced by the whispers of maybe
                I am arrogant, I am lazy, I am
                self-indulgent; they advance

                tempting as bright sweeties
                unchecked by doesn’t-really-
                matter and giddy spontaneity

                facing them will not be entertaining
                or glamourous or noble, it
                won’t even feel good

                but that it would magnify
                longer term benefits if I simply persisted;
                but I have such weak and

                feckless faith: the befuddled
                turtle disturbs the sea-bed slow-motion
                it is time to rise to take the breath

                when civic façade fades to window,
                but there is so much ocean,
                I cannot see which way is up

                but trust to hope and buoyancy
                that it could be
                that this time will place my neck

                in the life-yoke brightly adrift
                about the shoreless sea, to realise
                I could be a radiant being

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara IV, 20

 

from … Human Life is Extremely Hard to Find, by Geshe Sonam Rinchen; full article found: HERE

A blind turtle lives on the ocean bed and surfaces just once every hundred years. A golden yoke floats on the vast ocean, blown here and there by the wind. What are the chances of the turtle surfacing at just the right time and in just the right place to be able to put its head through the yoke? Our chances of gaining a life of freedom and fortune are just as improbable. You may think it couldn’t possibly be so difficult, but cyclic existence is like a vast and stormy ocean and we are like the turtle that spends most of its time in the depths and only surfaces very occasionally. For most of our lives we have been in bad rebirths and it happens only very rarely that we emerge from these into a good rebirth.

The yoke is made of gold and is therefore heavy, so it often sinks and is invisible. The yoke symbolizes the teachings of an enlightened one. An age of illumination is a period dur­ing which an enlightened one has taught in the world and those teachings are still extant, but there are much longer dark periods of time when the world is without such teachings.

The yoke does not remain in one place but is blown here and there by the wind. Similarly the teachings first flourish in one country and then in another. They thrive where people take an interest in practicing them and die out when they cease to be alive in people’s hearts. Sometimes the turtle comes up to the surface but in a place where there is no golden yoke. This is like taking a good rebirth but having no access to the teachings.

The turtle must actually put its head into the yoke, which signifies that the only way into the teachings is by taking refuge in the Three Jewels. Our lack of interest in the teachings and our reluctance to engage with them is due to our lack of intelligence, which is like the turtle’s blindness. No matter what good circumstances we enjoy, our life is not truly fortunate and free from obstacles if we have no interest in the Buddha’s teachings.

 

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

breathing wormhole: where did the silence go
meditation wormhole: may the supreme and precious jewel bodhichitta … // … take birth where it has not yet done so … // … where it has taken birth may it not decrease … // … but may it increase infinitely
practice wormhole: ‘still …’
talking to myself wormhole: next unexpected step
voices wormhole: Sheffield Park Gardens
windows wormhole: quiet river

 

because

Tags

2013, acceptance, armchair, distraction, green, grey, laziness, letting go, living, mist, naïveté, posture, practice, pride, relief, scaffolding, sitting, staring, wonder

 

 

 

                                even the crap sittings
                                where I waft around anywhere
                                but where I am

                                even the lazy sittings
                                where I sit on a chair and stare
                                feeling sorry

                                even the workaday ones
                                where I sit fussing around the posture
                                like a scaffold

                                all are valuable
                                if I accept the sheds of pride as they are
                                because

                                later in a day
                                as life wafts and rolls by itself
                                allofasudden something
                                is just not done anymore
                                and I let it go naïvely
                                cast adrift in a grey green mist which
                                I accept
                                with relief
                                and fresh
                                wonder

 

 

 

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

acceptance wormhole: sooner or later
distraction wormhole: start where / you are II
green wormhole: Saturday
grey wormhole: library windows
letting go wormhole: Seven A.M, 1948
living & mist wormhole: ‘went up to London and what did I see; …’
naïveté wormhole: poessay X: soul love
posture wormhole: grrr
practice wormhole: when / ever
sitting wormhole: when writing // stay

 

birthday poem

Tags

2014, being, birthday, laziness, travelling, writing

                                birthday poem

                can I only write now
                                with change of scene
                                              to be in state of mind to write

                or am I just lazy
                                not being where I am
                                              enough to filter loosely

                in word to see
                                what isn’t apparent
                                              but nevertheless true?

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: sooner or later
birthday wormhole: sit
travelling wormhole: ‘passing overhead …’
writing wormhole: offer the victory and accept the defeat