the mantra of Maitreya

Tags

2018, 8*, acceptance, anger, attachment, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, delusion, emptiness, falling, fire, flower, ground, life, love, Maitreya, mantra, openness, others, peace, sentient beings, suffering

                                                                the mantra of Maitreya

                                oh my loves,

                wriggling on the very thorns you couldn’t live without
                struck by the match over the gasoline you just poured
                falling like a stone through the emptiness you cannot evade

                you wave your arms at me
                you entice me in your dancing embrace
                you collide with me completely oblivious

                let me place the flower in the barrel of the gun
                let me accept-wide your disfigurement, your awkwardness
                let me be the ground, flat as the palm of a hand

                                open
                                open
                                open

                                SOHA

 

Maitreya will be the next being to manifest as a Buddha in this world after the teachings of the current Buddha have been lost; the mantra is actually OM MAITRI MAITRI MAHA MAITRI ARYA MAITRI SOHA; insofar as it can be translated it reads ‘OM love, love, great love, sublime love SOHA’, where ‘OM’ is ‘regarding everything from the most-bottom line’ and ‘SOHA’ is ‘let it be so, as it already is’; the poem flowered quite petally from Bodhisattvacharyavatara, chapter VI, verses 37-38: [37] And like this, when they are so bewildered under the spell and influence of the kleśas, they will even destroy and, finally, take their own treasured life, then, how might it be hoped they would hold themselves back from harming or killing the bodies of others? [38] Even if I have lost, or cannot develop, compassion for these beings intoxicated and driven mad by their kleśas, who are engaged within their own self-destruction – lost in their own perdition, chained within their own fall – and who are, even now, committed to my destruction, then, how could I develop anger towards them? The least I could do would be to restrain from anger.

 

 

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

acceptance wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
emptiness wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840
life wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
love wormhole: the reach turned to love
Maitreya wormhole: birth in the world
openness wormhole: transferring
others wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra

 

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the reach turned to love

Tags

2018, 20th century, 7*, breathing, childhood, Dad, doing, growth, identity, letting go, love, question, reaching, role, secret, self-confidence, society, space, speech, superhero, walls, world

                told that he was the man of the house now
                he felt he had to do something; when the

                engine was turned off, and being in the front
                seat, he said “Daddy, can’t you just come back

                home” and didn’t hear that it’s not as simple
                as that because: he’d asked the adult question,

                took responsibility (how it works…); this
                is what Dads should not do, they should

                come back because they are Dads; why
                does this have to happen to us; and ten years

                being a be-cowled and frustrated superhero
                in a world where things just happen secretly,

                he wondered (does it work); there was something
                wrong, there are somethings wrong, in the world,

                and there was definitely something wrong with
                this 20th century, I am not sure there is a Man

                of the House to be – the wall just sticks to my
                foot when I swing to kick, my lungs are already

                full when I breathe           –           and           there
                is                      no                     space; for

                fifty years I have built this world toxic to my
                sense of worth and undermined to my sense

                of identity; there is nothing fruitful with
                discontent in my heart as long as I cannot

                step outside to see that it is not just about me;
                the hurt which reaches for vindication must

                release, the reach turned to love

 

supporating out of Bodhisattvacharyavatara Chapter VI – verse 10 … (when adversity strikes), if anything can be done about it what is the point in getting upset about it; if nothing can be done about it what is the point in getting upset about it.

 

 

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

20th century wormhole: tram
breathing & speech wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
childhood wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872
Dad wormhole: to rescue something
doing wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
identity & love & walls wormhole: …zzh-vvttP*–… … …
letting go wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
society & world wormhole: faulteous beings
space wormhole: horizon
superhero wormhole: glamour of saṃsāra

 

…zzh-vvttP*–… … …

Tags

2018, being, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, identity, listening, love, mind, reliance, smile, sound, walls

                splitting
                headache

love me, love me, need me, need me, hold me, hold me, smile me, smile me, feed me, feed me, let me, let me, worship me, worship me, obey me, obey me, listen to me, listen to me, insist on me, insist on me, let me be, let me be, rely on me, rely on me, be me, be me, remember me, remember me-nng, nng, nng, nngzz…

                                …zzh-vvttP*–… … …

                just woofer
                after-rumble
                and tweeter
                tinnitus
                between six
                precisely-
                crafted
                and hi-fi-
                reverberating
                wallszz…nng nng nng nng

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara Chapter VI, verses 57-59: [57] Consider: a person sleeps and dreams of encountering happiness after happiness for a hundred years wherever they go; and another has a dream in which they experience pervasive happiness for just an instant. [58] Surely once they have woken from their dreams, their happiness will also just disappear for them both. Similarly, everything is lost, whether life was long or short, when the time of death arrives. [59] Likewise too, having long savoured all of my many, stored-up pleasures and acquisitions, having enjoyed my long life to the full, at the time of death, just like that, I shall nevertheless have to leave this life as though I had been stripped bare and broken by thugs, left to go forth with empty hands and naked.

 

 

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

being wormhole: horizon
identity wormhole: faulteous beings
listening wormhole: {Ellen Terry’s house}
love wormhole: prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams
mind wormhole: SPRING AND ALL XI by William Carlos Williams
smile wormhole: travelling / back
sound wormhole: and … // … sound
walls wormhole: La Route, Effet d’Hiver, 1872

 

prose piece 2 from POEMS 1927 by William Carlos Williams

Tags

1927, 7*, air, April, aspiration, bed, birds, breathing, cemetry, cherries, Christian Science, city, death, elderberry, grandmother, house, kiss, laughing, love, memory, sea, smell, speech, Spring, summer, talking, William Carlos Williams, wine

2

When I think how my grandmother flirted with me I often wonder why I have not been attracted by women of her type.   SHE was a devil if ever there was one.   When she’d move into a neighborhood she’d go out and clean it up, tonguewise.   She’d lay ’em out, male and female – and then sit back in peace to her mysterious memories and awkward aspirations toward heaven and the hold she’d have still on the world and its accessories.   She buried the keg of elderberry wine under the side of the house, and the stuff she’d eat, not to waste it, would make you shudder.   This was especially after she’d gone nearly blind and had taken up Christian Science so that you couldn’t trust her.   Boy, them was the days.   And the rags she used to wipe the dishes on when she’d have the family up to a meal in her shack on the shore over the Fourth.   Baby, I can still see Pop wiping his knife on the edge of the tablecloth – or something, before he’d use it.   But talk was her best weapon, she could lay you an argument like a steel fence and you might try to get through it for a day or a week or till doomsday and there she’d be still back of it laughing at you.   The only fault she confessed to was a lack of self-assertion.   She was right too.   She liked no society, no gadding – except on some wild pretext, such as a fascination with the bicycle at sixty.   She fell flat with the handle in one eye, but she did it, bloomers and all.   Yet she–   The city stifled her, she could not wait for the spring.   School or no school (they suffered for it later) out she would yank the two grandkids and off she’s track it for the shore, April to snowfall there she’d make her stand.   Nobody could budge her, not even old man Nolan who had his wife eating out of his hand, big and burly as she was.   He never got the best of Emily.   That was it, she had it.   She wanted to be out, away, alone, in the air, by the sea, breathing it in.   She’d lie in the water’s edge every summer’s day till she was eighty.   Sometimes she’d be so weak, all alone there, she couldn’t get up with her wet rags dragging on her.   She’d turn blue with the effort to lift herself on her hands and knees, laughing self consciously the while but doing it, doing it–   She’d envy the birds the cherries they’d eat, or she’d sit and watch them playing and go get crumbs to throw them, or half scrape a fish the boys would be too lazy to clean, disgusted with its smallness–   Lord what a bed she’d sleep in!   I would carry you away with what it had in it.   When she’d come to kiss you, you’d want to but you’d go easy and there’d be a good smell out of her scalp and up her neck–   She liked me, I’d stand up and fight her by the day trying to get her to have clean dish rags or whatever it would be – some moral issue.   All she wanted was to be alone and to have her quiet way.   She had it.   And love.   She wanted that, hot food into the grave, you couldn’t get her without it.   Took my father up to the cemetery the night before he married and made him promise her things over the grave of his dead sister.   God pardon her for it.

 

from Poems, 1927
a most vibrant biographical sketch of a person; I know her so well just from this; I wish biographical sketches of famous people were like this – sinewy fibres of life that tell no story, but reveal all that you need to know; and straight-forward language that doesn’t beguile but nonetheless jabs out into the universe

 

 

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

air & William Carlos Williams wormhole: YOUNG SYCAMORE by William Carlos Williams
birds wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
breathing wormhole: it’s / not what you do or what you say / if it ain’t got that swing
city wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
death wormhole: on facing the Have
house wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870
love wormhole: and … // … sound
sea wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
smell wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
speech wormhole: between
Spring wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
talking wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’

 

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, …’

 

sun setting over a lake, 1840

Tags

1840, 2018, 6*, clothes, emptiness, groundlessness, hills, lake, love, no-boundary, now, possibility, shore, space, speech, standing, sunset, timelessness, water, William Turner

                                                quick
                let us stand close as our wadded
                       clothing

                                               will allow,
                the watery expanse will dissimulate all
                       possibility

                                                of shore
                at the precise moment that the sun
                       perches

                                               lastly
                over hills before the wider gulf
                       of ever

 

Sun Setting over a Lake, William Turner, 1840

 

 

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

emptiness & space wormhole: The Passage of the St. Gothard, 1804
groundlessness wormhole: with all love released
love wormhole: only
speech wormhole: SPRING AND ALL VI by William Carlos Williams
sunset wormhole: we held cold hands
water wormhole: on facing the Have

 

only

Tags

2018, 7*, beauty, commentary, contrast, day, heat, land, landscape, language, lava, living, love, night, orange, passing, people, perspective, phone, profile, raspberry, sand, silence, sky, sound, speech, stone, sun, talking to myself, twilight, violet, voluptuous

                                only

                from the point of stand
                the dunes are sharp
                against speechless sky

                in passing they rise
                flatly up and up in
                broad brush of land

                blistering from a distant
                sun, in approach they
                are voluptuous cleft

                and hip – raspberry
                stone in orange – the
                Venusian ring-tone

                doesn’t interrupt the
                commentary skip
                across three languages

                                –O___

                OK, the contrast
                between the profiles
                of lifeless heads of lava
                and the twilight-violet sky
                of no day and no night
                is beautiful

                but I could
                have spent the day
                amid peoples’ peeks
                and primal landscapes
                open for to behold
                instead …

 

excursion to Timanfaya National Park on Lanzarote, Jan 2018

 

 

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

beauty wormhole: good going into / that gentle night
living & talking to myself wormhole: THURSDAY by William Carlos Williams
love wormhole: we held cold hands
night wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
orange wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
passing & people & speech wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
silence & sun wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
sky wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118
sound wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey
stone wormhole: `whappn’d!
twilight wormhole: letting them go

 

we held cold hands

Tags

2018, 6*, acquamarine, airport, bardo, beach, buoy, Carol, clouds, cold, electric, engine, glasses, grey, hands, holiday, horizon, Lanzarote, love, Morecambe, morning, pink, planes, sea, sky, sound, streets, sunset, time, volcano, walking, waves, white

                we walked by the airport with tinted glasses
                flights coming in going out while the

                sun set behind; without tripping
                the waves lapped and swashed as they do

                but broke electric white and fetched
                electric aquamarine all along under

                the gauzy pink and far horizon
                while jet engines cracked their power and

                streets of new villas hung like morning belts
                of cloud before the still-dormant volcanoes;

                finding noway round an air port
                we about-turned to vainly chase the sun

                down; the sea, now, met the sky
                in bardos of grey and buoy, the belts

                of cloud had turned electic, the planes
                taxi’d twice their size before take off and

                we held cold hands through it all
                like first we did in Morecambe decades ago

 

see also: the Last Day of Morecambe Illuminations for the prenouement

 

 

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

beach & sea wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron
Carol wormhole: `whappn’d!
clouds & glasses & hands & love & morning & time & waves wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
grey & sky wormhole: THE DESOLATE FIELD by William Carlos Williams
holiday & white wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
horizon wormhole: mauve
pink wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
sound & streets wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
sunset wormhole: that
walking wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams

 

What You Are by Roger McGough

Tags

1967, accident, advertising, apple, blood, books, buildings, canal, cat, cattle, children, city, clock, clouds, cuckoo, curtains, dawn, death, depth, derelict, dew, distance, duty, eyes, feet, fish, flesh, flowers, found, frog, glasses, God, goldfish, grass, green, hands, heartbeat, Hiroshima, humanity, innocence, ivy, kiss, leaves, library, love, Lusitania, madness, measure, midnight, mirror, moment, morning, moth, mother, murder, neurosis, peace, petals, plastic, poem, politicians, power, prayer, pride, Roger McGough, rosary, sand, seeds, silence, Spring, stage, station, subconscious, sun, sword, symbol, teacher, tears, teeth, time, torpedo, treason, trees, van Gogh, voices, walls, war, water, waves, wind, windows, winter, womb, world, World War, yellow

                What You Are

                you are the cat’s paw
                among the silence of midnight goldfish

                you are the waves
                which cover my feet like cold eiderdowns

                you are the teddybear (as good as new)
                found beside a road accident

                you are the lost day
                in the life of a child murderer

                you are the underwatertree
                around which fish swirl like leaves

                you are the green
                whose depths I cannot fathom

                you are the clean sword
                that slaughtered the first innocent

                you are the blind mirror
                before the curtains are drawn back

                you are the drop of dew on a petal
                before the clouds weep blood

                you are the sweetfresh grass that goes sour
                and rots beneath children’s feet

                you are the rubber glove
                dreading the surgeon’s brutal hand

                you are the wind caught on barbed wire
                and crying out against war

                you are the moth
                entangled in a crown of thorns

                you are the apple for teacher
                left in a damp cloakroom

                you are the smallpox injection
                glowing on the torchsinger’s arm like a swastika

                you are the litmus leaves
                quivering on the suntan trees

                you are the ivy
                which muffles my walls

                you are the first footprints in the sand
                on bankholiday morning

                you are the suitcase full of limbs
                waiting in a leftluggage office
                to be collected like an orphan

                you are a derelict canal
                where the tincans whistle no tunes

                you are the bleakness of winter before the cuckoo
                catching its feathers on a thornbush
                heralding spring

                you are the stillness of Van Gogh
                before he painted the yellow vortex of his last sun

                you are the still grandeur of the Lusitania
                before she tripped over the torpedo
                and laid a world war of american dead
                at the foot of the blarneystone

                you are the distance
                between Hiroshima and Calvary
                measured in mother’s kisses

                you are the distance
                between the accident and the telephone box
                measured in heartbeats

                you are the distance
                between power and politicians
                measured in half-masts

                you are the distance
                between advertising and neuroses
                measured in phallic symbols

                you are the distance
                between you and me
                measured in tears

                you are the moment
                before the noose clenched its fist
                and the innocent man cried: treason

                you are the moment
                before the warbooks in the public library
                turned into frogs and croaked khaki obscenities

                you are the moment
                before the buildings turned into flesh
                and windows closed their eyes

                you are the moment
                before the railwaystations burst into tears
                and the bookstalls picked their noses

                you are the moment
                before the buspeople turned into teeth
                and chewed the inspector
                for no other reason than he was doing his duty

                you are the moment
                before the flowers turned into plastic and melted
                in the heat of the burning cities

                you are the moment
                before the blindman puts on his dark glasses

                you are the moment
                before the subconscious begged to be left in peace

                you are the moment
                before the world was made flesh

                you are the moment
                before the clouds became locomotives
                and hurtled headlong into the sun

                you are the moment
                before the spotlight moving across the darkened stage
                like a crab finds the singer

                you are the moment
                before the seed nestles in the womb

                you are the moment
                before the clocks had nervous breakdowns
                and refused to keep pace with man’s madness

                you are the moment
                before the cattle were herded together like men

                you are the moment
                before God forgot His lines

                you are the moment of pride
                before the fiftieth bead

                you are the moment
                before the poem passed peacefully away at dawn
                like a monarch

 

from The Mersey Sound, 1967
when I first read this poem in 1978 I was too young to let go associations enough to get the metaphor; after a lifetime of being obligated to associations which stood idly by while I wildly floundered without ground, I can let them go with glee and relish and relish the metaphors to the portrait’s content (… still not sure about the ‘lost day of the child murderer’, however, and I’m still not sure why I’m not sure, but I’m not; but I can’t think McGough just slipped up over one couplet … (and I can’t find any discussion of this line in the pages-that-proliferate-like-spores-wafted-across-their-own-private-amphitheatres))

 

 

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

books & love wormhole: `whappn’d!
buildings wormhole: cowled
city & windows wormhole: moon- // washed
clouds & green & silence & time & wind wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
curtains wormhole: ‘the Bat-Signal …’
dawn wormhole: between
death wormhole: beguiled / desire
eyes wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
feet wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
glasses wormhole: … the underleaves show
hands & water & world wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
leaves wormhole: sufficiently away
library wormhole: two profiles
mirror wormhole: DANSE RUSSE by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: TO A SOLITARY DISCIPLE by William Carlos Williams
mother wormhole: granny
power wormhole: I
Spring & sun wormhole: SPRING STRAINS by William Carlos Williams
trees & voices & yellow wormhole: TREES by William Carlos Williams
walls wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
war wormhole: to arms, then;
waves wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron
winter wormhole: where did the silence go

 

`whappn’d!

Tags

2018, 5*, being, books, cafe, cake, capitalism, Carol, clothes, living, love, marriage, sponge, stone, water

                                `whappn’d!

                over bakewell tart and
                carrot cake in the garden shop
                café: what we got now …

                we shed our clothes and
                books and find that capitalism no
                longer works; the stone

                will also exhude mineral
                when wet with water from
                the slightly squeezed sponge

 

on 25th August 1981, Carol and Mark got married in a registry office – in, signed, out within 15 minutes; 37 years later found them in their local garden shop cafe on Ashdown Forest looking at each other across the table … he had been like a stone giving little that was needed, she was like a sponge taking all that was available and still dry …

 

 

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

being & love wormhole: THE DESOLATE FIELD by William Carlos Williams
books wormhole: lost the search
capitalism wormhole: growth
Carol wormhole: … the underleaves show
living wormhole: cowled
stone wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – old George
water wormhole: transferring