a far grander / Sangha

Tags

2019, 6*, identity, mother sentient beings, Priory, Sangha, self, self-image, Swarthmore Hall, thinking

                went to Swarthmore Hall
                brandishing my fragile self
                to open up to all beings

                went back to the Priory
                with rising grandeurs
                of delusion; shall I

                relinquish this flaw
                of expecting I am so much
                more than I appear if only

                I were understood …;
                then perhaps I could be
                more than I could ever

                understand and recognise
                these beings as already
                my own and take

                my one and lonely
                place with a far grander
                Sangha than I could ever have allowed

 

‘Swarthmore Hall’ is where the Quakers began, Carol did a course there; it is in Ulverston in South Cumbria where we lived soon after we married and started our family, we were aware of the place at the time, but not as students; ‘the Priory’ just outside Ulverston is the Manjushri Institute, a Buddhist college that we lived in; this was the first time I’d been back to visit in 32 years; and … this is the last poem I wrote – 4th September 2019 – I haven’t written one since, not seized to, not tipped towards; I have been letting a lot of things go during these beginning years of my retirement, even my Batman comics … maybe more a spiral than a circle …

 

 

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

identity wormhole: ‘not sure …’
thinking wormhole: silence

 

allowed all gain

Tags

2018, 7*, beach, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, concentration, currents, distance, fetch, floor, karma, kitchen, light, mother sentient beings, movement, others, prayer, quiet, recitation, sitting, tide, waves

                every time the
                supreme and precious Jewel
                Bodhichitta prayer was
                recited, quiet and

                somewhat quirky,
                on flattened cushions and
                neon-lit in kitchens
                only the

                breaking waves
                and tides were noticed,
                occasionally, on the beaches
                but all the while

                the waves were
                swelling and fetching over
                distance and the currents
                pursued their

                unique and necessary
                paths, while the concentration all about the wide and holding floor supported                
                all movement and
                allowed all gain

 

all 913 verses in ten chapters of the Bodhisattvacharyavatara can be encapsulated in the Bodhichitta prayer: “May the supreme and precious Jewel Bodhichitta take birth where it has not done so, where it has taken birth may it not decrease, but may it increase infinitely”.

 

 

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

beach & waves wormhole: we held cold hands
kitchen wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
light wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
others wormhole: cinnamon / milkshake
quiet wormhole: raised brow
sitting wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees

 

scintillating to mind’s content

Tags

2017, 6*, being, blogging, browse, centre, counting, doing, emptiness, growth, heart, internet, love, mantra, mind, mother sentient beings, publishing, sharing, sitting, true nature, world, writing

                things happen according
                to my published pages or
                didn’t need writing at all

                so I stopped coiunting mantras
                and let the world sit and
                browse all around me with

                as near to the love I can
                muster, now, at the centre
                and all of the love we

                could share if we but knew
                the empty centre at our
                heart from which we grow

                scintillating to mind’s content

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
doing wormhole: all // are // none
emptiness wormhole: anxiety
love wormhole: LOVE SONG by William Carlos Williams
mind wormhole: sometimes
publishing wormhole: next unexpected step
sitting wormhole: ash leaves
world wormhole: that
writing wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin

 

amniotic avenue

Tags

2017, 5*, ageing, avenue, bay window, Bodhisattva Vow, change, conditioned existence, Eastbourne, Have, life, lifetimes, mother sentient beings, passing, people, perspective, promenade, shadow, shops, society, step, time, walking

                                                                amniotic avenue

                ah, here they come
                out from under the receding bay windows above

                people emerge
                by the flanking promenade of shopfronts that come and go over decades                

                ageing with each step
                and pass

by

 

 

 

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

change & life wormhole: polystyrene / boulderscape
Eastbourne & walking wormhole: perspective
Have wormhole: it’s all about…;
lifetimes wormhole: stuck in lower realm
passing wormhole: skeins of candy pink and lilac
people wormhole: I am not yet ready
promenade wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call
shadow wormhole: with all love released
shops wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
society wormhole: growth
time wormhole: {Ellen Terry’s house}

 

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

 

Tara mantras

Tags

2014, 7*, being, flying, green, head, land, looking, mantra, mother sentient beings, sound, speech, Tara, travelling, trees

                from ground to thirty
                two thousand feet

                with Tara mantras for
                every head

                that crisps and scrunches
                and overhead cl’cks

                looking left then right
                then down with their ‘like’s

                and occasional ‘I
                was …’s while the

                turning trees carousel
                over green green land

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: reating & wriding
green wormhole: the sitting room
looking wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles
sound wormhole: I turn to wake up
speech wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop III
Tara wormhole: thar she perched
travelling wormhole: forgotten anything
trees wormhole: this time

 

so pleased to see you again

Tags

2017, 8*, Bodhichitta, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, compassion, desire, doing, echo, eyes, faces, gravity, lifetimes, light, love, memory, mother sentient beings, others, seeing, Shantideva, sky, space, speech, true nature, vanity, will

                oh, my loves, who look at me
                with eyes that dull-echo from

                lifetimes back “don’t I love you,
                don’t you owe me?” but cannot

                remember; yes, yes you do, yes
                I do, with so much real interest;

                I will love, I will do, what needs
                to be done, and short-circuit all

                this vanity and indifference;
                enough of peripatetic desire and

                unsustainable will, I owe your
                dear sweet faces (so much to

                account, so much to invest) a
                truer nature to acknowledge,

                a current in to which to plug,
                a circuit around which to light –

                exponential to the bursting sky –
                space-walking gloriously around

                the gravity of our own true natures,
                so pleased to see you again

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara I, 17-19

 

 

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

Bodhichitta wormhole: inbreath
compassion wormhole: transmuted
doing wormhole: everwhile
echo wormhole: open window
eyes & lifetimes & sky wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
faces wormhole: Sylvia
light & love wormhole: writing: // in turn
others wormhole: ‘field of corn …’
seeing wormhole: ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …
space wormhole: within
speech wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – intemperance

 

writing: // in turn

Tags

2017, 6*, breathing, karma, light, love, mother sentient beings, painting, rebirth, Shantideva, sharing, sibling, sight, twilight, warp, weft, writing

                writing:

                to the extent
                that I brush

                with warp and
                with weft with

                light and with
                crepuscule with

                sight and with
                love may any

                lost sibling
                and all of my

                mothers of
                equal humour

                as we have
                shared breathe

                awhile together
                in turn

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara chapter I, verse 3; IF we are reborn, for each rebirth we would need a mother to give that birth to us and to bring us up; if we have had former rebirths without beginning, we have had infinite mothers – good, bad and indifferent; were ARE all these former mothers now …?; and what has this to do with writing (or any other creative endeavour)?

 

 

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

breathing wormhole: 1966
light & writing wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
love wormhole: ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …
Shantideva wormhole: passersby
twilight wormhole: relief