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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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

 

stuck in lower realm

Tags

2017, 6*, anatta, Bodhisattva Vow, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, buffalo, choice, identity, karma, lifetimes, morality, perfect human rebirth, perspective, rebirth, self, self-containment, snake, spontaneity, thought

                stuck in lower realm

                … OK

                when in woeful state
                I grunt like a buffalo
                and sting like a snake

                but when human
                I have the choice
                to exercise: I – won’t –

                do – that; except the
                swarm ‘oh, it doesn’t
                matter’ or the won’t-

                think-but-lunge-in-
                thrill-of-spontaneity;
                every time I acquiesce

                I create propensity to
                tip to wrong perspective,
                which predisposition

                magnifies as a whole
                realm of being after
                this human is done;

                but for a silent vow
                I made despite my-
                selves and which I

                keep despite myself
                to hold myself to check,
                is my only identity

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara VII, 19

 

 

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

identity wormhole: growth
lifetimes wormhole: looking ahead
thought wormhole: turned backs of saddened victory

 

‘never look up’?

Tags

2017, 7*, anxiety, being, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, death, doing, identity, karma, life, lifetimes, rebirth, self, Shantideva, skandhas, the Three Poisons, transition, true nature

                I fell from myself and
                felt the need
                to build myself up otherwise
                out of anxiety

                every single
                closed-eye assent and
                grapple made on the way down
                left me scabbed and arthritic

                hoping I’d reached the bottom
                or found a ledge
                but who was I really kidding,
                I ceased to be

                every time
                I thought to pause, I passed
                from being a who or a what to
                no more, each time,

                save the legacy I left
                in a life somewhere –
                ‘wha’, whossedhat!’ –
                and the potency I carry

                to some other sorry
                hope like the sack of thorns
                that won’t sit comfortable;
                who is it keeps teaching me

                ‘never look up’?

 

weaving from out of chapter 2, Bodhisattvacharyavatara by Shantideva

 

 

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

anxiety wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
being wormhole: ah … // oh … // meanwhile … // … // tha ya ta …
death wormhole: 1966
doing & lifetimes wormhole: so pleased to see you again
identity wormhole: what wounds have you got?
life wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – agricultural show

 

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

 

and here I am

Tags

2016, 5*, alchemy, contain, Granada, karma, pot, questioning, rebirth, recipe, self, talking to myself, travelling

                and here I am again all
                shiny and buffed clean

                from wherever I came from
                before and slowly tarnishing

                from burn and deposit
                especially in the edges

                forgetting to just contain
                and allow the alchemy

                to happen with upright
                ethical gleam and wanting

                all the while to question the
                whole purpose of recipe

 

 

 

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

talking to myself wormhole: moment
travelling wormhole: travel

 

AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!

Tags

1960s, 2013, 6*, abdomen, attention, birth, emergence, evening, eyes, feeling, flower, heathland, history, identity, infrastructure, life, light, lime, looking, meaning, mist, possibility, posture, reading, rebirth, shade, shoulders, sitting, streets, time, womb, writing

                AT-tennnnnnnn – waitfrit waitfrit – SHUN!

                decade of ever-immanent emergence
                but yet womb-like misty with heathland-lime streak

                forefeeling borne and colourful possibility
                then birthed starving and naked into too local streets

                with all their historynfrastructure; born within
                two months of the 1960s, towards the end

                I was flowering, but with a knuckle in the
                stem below the petal receptacle, made me

                always look downwards to the ground: I sit
                for hours hunched over a table writing, I sit

                for evenings correcting a tendency to
                close my eyes, I sit slouched in all manner of

                chair reading and reading; it will take decades
                of shade and whither before I raise

                my face to the startling of light and correct
                my shoulders and abdomen

 

in the immortal words of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche: “the path is the goal”

 

 

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

abdomen wormhole: trying to focus / on walking
attention & writing wormhole: magnetic field
emergence wormhole: the / bright yellow / world
evening wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I suddenly / remembered
eyes & light wormhole: languidly close the portal
history wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Safe Home
identity wormhole: travel
life wormhole: 35 years ago …
lime wormhole: weight of high sash windows – poewieview #33
looking & streets & time wormhole: through the pane – poewieview #34
meaning wormhole: tiling
mist wormhole: the purple mist between
posture wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
reading wormhole: lonely and free
sitting wormhole: even / a second

 

Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – moment

Tags

2016, 8*, above, air, below, black, breathing, breeze, brown, bull, calf, cause and effect, curtains, dream, earth, east, echo, elm, emptiness, energy, evening, eyes, field, green, grey, head, horizon, Jupiter, leaves, logic, Michael J Redford, moment, momentum, moon, morning, mother, night, nightjar, noise, owl, pattern, purple, questions, quiet, rebirth, roads, shadow, silence, silver, sound, space, stars, thought, time, twilight, ultimate reality, valley, walking, whispers, white

                moment

                when the day is done and the green is brown
                and shadow is the deeper purple, and when
                the earth gives up its warmth to the stars, I
                walked one evening, direction of Jupiter to the
                darkening east, while the nightjar echoed empty fields

                I stood where smaller noises become: dusk
                to night, the tethered bull, the calf’s raised head,
                the creaking elms, whispers above, stems below,
                depths of space; silence; was it Selene within
                the lap of dusk or the white barn owl, that

                blackened or, then, silver-plated, the night
                with a quietude that freed me from the tired eyes
                of day to reverie while the planet turned; morning –
                it is half past five when I start the milking,
                I arrive beforehand with the spaciousness of valley

                where breezes end and leaves are still and
                no longer conscious of breath and vale; a thought
                is born, from one come two, coruscating within
                seconds, each one nearer to the vertex of
                ultimate truth; the stars in their patterns

                out of time; questions asked and answered at
                accelerating rate, brutal logic ceding to the
                preceding cause – reversal of effect; but the pace
                is too much, I flounder and sink as I lose
                momentum; but I have brushed the grey curtain

                aside and my cup runneth over as the Left hand
                lifts the veil on the eastern horizon we are reborn
                with the stripling day; no energy lost, just changed;
                the air is scented green along the unused road,
                within a mother’s arms again

 

read the collected work as it is published: here
this is an appliquiary to: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment

 

 

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

air & black & evening & time & white wormhole: the figure “46” / in frosted glass
breathing & sound wormhole: “Darling” – poewieview #28
breeze & brown & curtains & field & green & grey & horizon & leaves & moon & mother & night & purple & quiet & silence & silver & space & stars & thought wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment
dream wormhole: bavardage
echo wormhole: constant hummm
emptiness wormhole: more than effigy
eyes & shadow wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
morning wormhole: one day / in 1956
roads wormhole: tired
twilight wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
walking wormhole: with endless love

 

The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Precious Moment

Tags

1967, 3*, air, answers, beauty, being, bells, black, breath, breeze, brown, bull, cause and effect, childhood, clarity, clouds, cows, curtains, dancing, dawn, dew, doing, dusk, earth, east, Einstein, elm, energy, evening, field, freedom, grass, green, grey, heat, hedge, hills, horizon, identity, Jupiter, leaves, life, light, logic, meadow, mind, moment, months, moon, morning, mother, mouse, nature, night, nightjar, noise, openness, order, owl, questions, quiet, rabbit, rebirth, scarlet, September, silence, silhouette, silver, sky, slow, space, stars, summer, the Boats of Vallisneria, thought, time, truth, ultimate reality, uncle, universe, valley, velvet, white, wind, wings, woodland, words

A Precious Moment

As after the heat of a summer’s day the face glows in the mildness of evening, so the face of the countryside glows in the mildness of early autumn.   The summer months have infused the merest suggestion of brown in the deepening green of the foliage and the face of the earth gives up its warmth to the stars above to see them dance.   It was into this calm that I walked one late September’s eve.   The evening star cast her unblinking eye across the heavenly dome to Jupiter in the darkening east and the nightjar echoed its song above the empty fields.   I stood at the end of the stack-yard and returned the disinterested gaze of a cow in the field beyond.

It is during these slow hours when the pace of the day has declined, that the smaller noises of the land become apparent.   The bull, who was tethered a full two hundred yards away in the next field could be heard to rattle his chain and blow down his nose at a particularly juicy clump of grass he has found.   Behind me in the ‘maternity’ box, a freshly calved heifer mooed huskily yet very softly as its offspring raised its head suddenly at a strange sound.   Perhaps it was the sound of ancient timbers creaking under the weight of centuries, or that of the leaves above whispering to the bowed stems in the hay meadow below.   Or maybe it was the very silence that enshrouded these small sounds that attracted its attention, for silence is so startling in its rarity and its beauty.   Dusk gave way to night and I became aware of the immense depths of space, the dizzy height of the mackerel sky, and although it was the clouds that moved, it seemed they were stationary against the clear black silhouettes of the elms and that it was the motion of the gibbous moon behind the clouds that alternately blackened and silver-plated the night.   Even at the tender and romantic age of sixteen I was aware of this quietude, and in one enlightened moment jotted down these few words on an old envelope:

         Soft, soft, the bell that tolls the evensong
         Across full summer’s empty fields serene.
         And slowly draws the scarlet cloak, the hem’s
         Black velvet, diamond specked, communes me with
         The white barn owl, who with his noiseless wings
         Doth glide and swoop upon the luckless mouse.
         Selene set within the lap of dusk
         Transmutes the living green to silver plate,
         Enshrouds my world with immobility.
         And with a quietude that frees the mind
         Of bondage from the peering eyes of day,
         I fain become the earth, the sky, the all.

But it wasn’t until my late teens that I realised there are two times during the twenty four hour cycle when such a quietude exists. One is just before the dusk and the other just before dawn.   Although both seem to be divisions between day and night, the prelude to dawn seems to me to be the more startling and more satisfying to experience.   In the evening the mind is released into a reverie bound by personal conscious thought, but during the morning pause one experiences a freedom and profundity of thought that is rarely to be found in any other part of time.

It is barely half past five in the morning when I start milking, but often I arrive at the cowshed half an hour before in order to experience this precious moment.   Although at this hour the ‘Stone that puts the stars to flight’ has yet to be flung, I can sense the great spaciousness of the valley before me.   Again the trees move softly and the long grass in the hay meadow sifts the breath of night, and I wait.   I wait for that incorporeal beauty that is the union of soul and nature.   It begins where the breezes end and the rustling leaves are stilled.   A serene stillness envelopes the woods and meadows and even I am not conscious of breathing.   I am drawn into the quietude and become part of it; become part of the very earth on which I stand; part of the universe through which I move.   I have become part of each blade of grass in the valley before me, part of every hill.   I feel myself part of the earth, feel its very movement through space.   Unfortunately mere words can no longer be the conveyance of the emotions involved (and I use the word ‘emotions’ for want of a better noun) for they become so expansive and so personal.   No longer can mere words impress the reader’s soul with such profundity of emotion that this experience releases within me.   Each must go his own way, search alone and experience it first hand and with an open mind.

A thought is born and from that thought comes two more.   The two are made four and the four made eight, a self-multiplying chain reaction of thoughts has been set in motion that flows with great haste through the mind; in fact a torrent of thoughts in one brief second, and yet each one is startlingly clear and leads the mind one step nearer the truth.   The heavenly dome is vast above the valley and the stars, thrown into their mythological patterns by the great cosmic hand, impress their presence on the mind with unusual brilliance and time is no more.   Now the mental hosts are converging, and step by step I am racing towards that vertex which is the ultimate truth.   The questions are being answered at an ever increasing rate, the startling, brutal logic disclosing the result of a preceding reaction which itself, reveals a cause.   So through to the highest plane the mind soars upon an ever accelerating reversal of the law of causation. But the pace is too much.   The mind flags and begins to flounder.   At this juncture the mind can be likened to a water skier who, while the pace is kept up skims along the surface in the sun, but immediately he slows down he begins to sink, until at length he finds himself floundering with no forward movement.   Now the mind has become weak and cannot comprehend the unfathomable thought.   But I have brushed the grey curtain; I have seen a light faint though it may be and both my physical and spiritual selves have been revitalised and my cup runneth over.

For most of our lives we are lost beings out of tune with life around us.   Only during such precious moments as these do we fit into the great harmonious chord; all things round and above have their special place in it, from the fat brown rabbit throbbing in the cornfields to the fleecy pieces of golden cloud that sail upon the pale green skies of dusk.   Worries, anxieties, tensions, all are reduced to their proper size in relation to life, and as the imperceptible ‘Left hand of dawn’ lifts the veil on the eastern horizon, we are cleansed and reborn with the stripling day.

It is only during such periods that nature can be reduced to anything approaching order, and that there is an order I am in no doubt.   Einstein’s inquiring mind was working on the universal equation when the workings of that very same equation stilled his physical being; perhaps now he has solved it, we in this life never shall.   The perpetual motion of nature is the perfect machine and we are part of that machine.   It is complete within itself, recreating its own new parts from the debris of the old.   No energy is wasted or lost, just charged in form.   Nature permits us a marginal tolerance within which we may make one or two adjustments to suit our needs and requirements, but beyond this we dare not go for we merely create more problems than we solve.

         So does she pass, the gentle night,
         Slow seeps the dawn upon the scene.
         Dew sparkling in the first light of
         The new day shows where she has been.
         The eyes of day now open on
         The dewy sward and gossamer
         Bows low beneath its pearly load,
         And hedgerows faintly scent the air
         With green along the unused road.
         And I am born once more and see
         The day as I once first beheld –
         A child within his mother’s arms,
         Another, within its mother’s arms.

 

read the collected work as it is published: here

 

 

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

air & field & morning wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – autumn
beauty wormhole: the policies came to nothing
being wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Introduction
black & wind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – A Bowl of Gourds
breath wormhole: inbreath
breeze wormhole: and that’s where I are
brown wormhole: Michael Redford: triptych
childhood wormhole: 1964
clouds wormhole: reaching branch
evening & silhouette wormhole: tired
green & space & uncle wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – the soft canticle of the gourds:
grey & horizon wormhole: being in love – poewieview #26
hedge & hills & life & light wormhole: tag cloud poem IX – haiku is awkward / the more that is left in / like uncombed hair
identity wormhole: with endless love
leaves & mother wormhole: The Boats of Vallesneria by Michael J. Redford – Autumn Thoughts
moon wormhole: don’t look / at her eyes – poewieview #18
night & silence & sky wormhole: a crack of lightning / in the dark of night
openness wormhole: ‘on second thought …’ – poewieview #27
quiet wormhole: Jericho
silver wormhole: Jon
thought & time wormhole: inbreath
white wormhole: mauve
words wormhole: bloogying