• Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Introduction
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
    • Chapter 8
    • Chapter 9
    • Chapter 10
  • collected works
    • 25th August 1981 – count Up
    • askance From Hell
    • Batman
    • The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford
    • Bob 1995-2012
    • Edward Hopper: Poems at an Exhibition
    • David Bowie Movements in Suite Major
    • Eglinton Hill
    • FLOORBOARDS
    • Granada
    • in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …
    • Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]
    • Miller’s Batman
    • mum
    • nan
    • Portsmouth – Southsea
    • Spring Warwick breezes / over Bacharach fieldwork and boroughs with / the occasional shift and chirp of David / in the pastel-long morning of the sixties
    • through the crash
  • index
    • #A-E see!
    • F–K, wha’ th’
    • L-P 33 1/3 rpm
    • Q-T pie
    • U-Z together forever
  • me
  • others
    • William Carlos Williams
  • poemics
  • poeviews
  • teaching matters
  • wormholes

mlewisredford

~ may the Supreme and Precious Jewel Bodhichitta take birth where it has not yet done so …

mlewisredford

Tag Archives: sitting

YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams

25 Thursday Jun 2020

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

1934, cheek, child, glass, hands, innocence, lap, nose, passing, sitting, tears, William Carlos Williams, windows, woman

YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW

While she sits
there
 
with tears on
her cheek
 
her cheek on
her hand
 
this little child
who robs her
 
knows nothing of
his theft
 
but rubs his
nose

 

YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW

She sits with
tears on
 
her cheek
her cheek on
 
her hand
the child
 
in her lap
his nose
 
pressed
to the glass

 

from Poems 1934
I prefer the second one, but I can’t fully appreciate the second one without the bed of the first one; which is why WCW had them this way, I guess; this is observed compassion, not getting-in-the-way compassion, not judging compassion; it is the compassion of a passing stream

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

child & sitting & windows & woman wormhole: silence
glass wormhole: Four Noble Truths
hands wormhole: psssssh
passing & William Carlos Williams wormhole: IN THE ‘SCONSET BUS by William Carlos Williams
tears wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough

 

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silence

28 Saturday Mar 2020

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2019, 5*, being, blue, child, clothes, doing, emptiness, light, mother, others, perseverance, Quakers, shadow, shape, silence, sitting, sun, thinking, walls, windows, woman

                                silence

                there –
                in the round

                some threw fluting gapes
                three to engulf the fourth

                some were cleaved peacefully
                head from leading shoulder

                some wore a chemise, others a shalwar,
                others a collar, one a hand-towel draped quickly over the shoulder be back in a minute

                one projected flanks like enveloping wings
                unaware as she nodded

                her neighbour bathed in the same return, the other sat
                comfortably on nothing at all

                the man held the frame
                with perseverance to allow the shape

                the woman privately understood
                most of what everyone thought, only the

                child contained in the mothers’ arm
                watched the walls dance phantasmagoric

                and only the windows let in
                the blue blue sun

 

Quakers sit in light to worship

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

being & sitting wormhole: ‘and is there homage …’
blue & windows wormhole: ‘from the cathedral window two stories / high …’
child wormhole: LIGHT HEARTED WILLIAM by William Carlos Williams
doing & light & thinking wormhole: Four Noble Truths
emptiness wormhole: none and all
mother wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
others & shadow wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
silence wormhole: travel // when I die
sun wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
walls wormhole: looking hard enough
woman wormhole: Pont Neuf, Paris, 1902

 

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‘and is there homage …’

20 Monday Jan 2020

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2019, 6*, being, doing, equipoise, fields, geranium, immanence, leaves, mantra, rain, river, sitting, sound, Tara, trees, words

                and is there homage to the
                Venerable Arya Tara who sits whole

                within the river crucible one
                and severally to behold; her

                laughter of TUTTARE always
                through those trees, her huge knee

                bent graceful in a thousand diminutive equipoises,
                her right leg stretching out and out

                over rolling fields and far away;
                does she hum with

                proximate mass, does she remain
                when words have stopped –

                no, shh, listen to the fluvial rains,
blink, look at the geranium leaves

 

this is the running couplet to here today and …

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

being & trees wormhole: here today and …
leaves wormhole: looking hard enough
rain & sound wormhole: travel // when I die
river wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
sitting wormhole: poessay XI – piquant love
Tara wormhole: Tara mantras
words wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – I took my camera into the fields

 

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poessay XI – piquant love

06 Wednesday Nov 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2019, 6*, arch, cause and conditionality, compromise, crane, doing, identity, intuition, knowledge, letting go, life, love, not knowing, obscuration, opportunity, others, poessay, scandal, self, shadow, sitting, thought, writing

poessay XI –

                lookitallathisabouttheplace –
                both the obscuration and the opportunity difficult
                either to see or to take:

                                I don’t know what to do –
                                inject into causality
                                project over condition (whatever

                                I’m sure that’s not the way to do) –
                                I can only know what I intuit
                                usually de-spite “I don’t know

                                but will step in line
                                if you let me join the gang”
                                best served unnoticeable

                                but not really
                                me no matter how deep the cover;
                                so back to the hunch –

                                crane reaching from the crumbling arch –
                                written up on giddy foolscap
                                (given half the chance, or notice)

                                but this is not me either
                                just a more clever ‘I don’t know’
                                than all the others who don’t know at all

                                or know by some rote too lazy
                                or compromised to know (what I
                                might know) or those who

                                say they know holding me deficient
                                that I don’t behave as they know
                                (compromised to behold), or then

                                there are those who seem to know
                                despite the prevalence and norm all about
                                from whom I absorb

                                through my very xylem
                                and then heavy-shadow them all about
                                but they don’t know either

                                just more mystically or glamorously so
                                until the scandal;
                                so don’t try to know at all

                                because any of this knowing
                                is just a whorl somewhere
                                within cascading causality

                                making sure my specious self;
                                just let the self go
                this knower, this knower so much better and deeper than anyone else who does not even know what is to be known,                

                                let it all go
                                and sit with the not-knowing,
                                watching all the fluidity with

                                                                                                piquant love

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

compromise wormhole: looking for the right exit
crane & doing & identity & thought & writing wormhole: travel // when I die
knowledge wormhole: Dulwich College, London, 1871
letting go wormhole: at Kreukenhof
life wormhole: psssssh
love wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – The Valley
others wormhole: quietly in my quiet house
shadow wormhole: breakfast
sitting wormhole: – creak —

 

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– creak —

10 Thursday Oct 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2019, 6*, church, dome, echo, hoping, kleshas, listening, mind, passing, quiet, sitting, sound, talking, time

                                                sitting
                in St. Ludwigskirche again
                      five years on

                                                hoping
                for the quiet of mind free of overlapping conversations
                      passing like pedestrians

                                                someone
                explained something quietly echoing
                      across the dome

                                                so I listened
                to the German vowels and consonants
                      proliferating everywhere

                                                understanding
                nothing, I sat comfortable in the pew
                       – creak —

 

a return to: St. Ludwigskirche all those years ago

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

church & mind wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Sky
echo wormhole: breakfast
listening wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
passing wormhole: distance
quiet wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Rain
sitting wormhole: eyes like petals
sound & time wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – An Old Piano
talking wormhole: ‘don’t look at it …’

 

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eyes like petals

07 Saturday Sep 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2019, 6*, anger, Arya Lalitavistara, attachment, Bodhi Tree, Buddha, compassion, earth, eyes, government, hate, identity, life, lotus, lust, Mara, orbit, power, self-grasping, sitting, stillness, suffering

                the variety of grotesquery
                with which beings grasp their self

                the various grips of power
                through summits of council

                and various arrays of stake and brandishment
                appear as the armies of Mara,

                the thirty two ways of seducing
                that would fill life to the full

                over both his shoulders
                while sat under the Tree as endlessly still

                as the orbiting earth;
                the Bodhisattva turned his head,

                clean as no motivation at all
                to exposure and scattered diaspora,

                but looked on them all
                with eyes like petals

 

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

Buddha wormhole: Candaka
compassion wormhole: at Kreukenhof
eyes wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – sooner; / and later
identity & life wormhole: none and all
power wormhole: the Bodhisattva set out / for the Seat of Awakening
sitting wormhole: quietly in my quiet house

 

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quietly in my quiet house

03 Monday Jun 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

2019, 6*, anger, Anita Ekberg, fountain, house, identity, La Dolce Vita, others, quiet, sitting, society

                look at this one sitting to one side
                smouldering

                why does it sit there seething about
                it it it, while others

                get on doing stuff making
                a world-wide society of life

                with all of its crowns and repeated
                acts of shame

                look at their talent, their love,
                their art, their smile

                look at it, indulge in it; in fact,
                step into the pool and hold up your hair

                under the fountain for all to share
                glue-like to the society in which I sit

                quietly in my quiet house

 

drenched from under Bodhisattvacharyavatara VI, 76-77: [76] If someone is attuned enough to spiritual things to find delight and joy in recognising the appearance of excellent qualities and worth in another and praising them as a good person, and if this makes them happy and draws people close together, why then, oh (sulky) mind, don’t you join in with the recognition as well; why are you not rejoicing too and taking the same delight too? [77] (But isn’t feeling joy and delight an attachment, and therefore bad?) But this pleasure, this delight cultivated through praise of another’s virtue, is an entirely virtuous activity, a spring, a fountain, of joy, which is not prohibited, but, even, a precept, taught by those of Ultimate Quality and Worth, an excellent way to bring people together of which one should take full advantage.

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

house wormhole: Cote des Bœufs à l’Hermitage, Pontoise, 1877
identity & society wormhole: Renunciation
others wormhole: The Atlantic City Convention: 1. THE WAITRESS by William Carlos Williams
quiet wormhole: A Corner of the Garden at the Hermitage, 1877
sitting wormhole: Sujātā

 

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Sujātā

01 Saturday Jun 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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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

 

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Landscape, Pontoise, 1875

15 Monday Apr 2019

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

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1875, 2018, 6*, clouds, fields, garden, growth, horizon, houses, life, lifetimes, passing, Pissarro, Pontoise, progress, sitting, standing, trees

                Landscape, Pontoise, 1875

                they sit and stand bent
                in the fields,

                in the gardens, while trees grow
                past the stories of

                house and only
                passing clouds behind the low

                horizon show
                the rapid progress of growth

 

about three storeys at right-angles into the Landscape, Pontoise, 1875, by Camille Pissarro … and oh, I’ve not been able to find a copy of the painting to paste here:

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

being & passing & sky wormhole: Hastings: neither all or nothing
clouds & horizon wormhole: horizon
garden wormhole: {reading right to left}
life & trees wormhole: Vue de Pontoise, 1873
lifetimes wormhole: waiting to be heard
passing wormhole: Rain, Steam and Speed – the / Great Western Railway, 1844
sitting wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

 

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early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych

23 Tuesday Oct 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in announcements

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

2018, 8*, action, being, black, body, British Museum, civilisation, clouds, column, concepts, crane, day, fields, gap, Germany, glass, Have, horizon, horse, Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro, jar, Jon, language, life, lintel, liquid, London, looking, message, mind, mist, morning, movement, passing, pediment, plane, reading, rooftops, settled, sitting, speech, stone, sun, sunlight, tertön, text, Tibet, time, train, travelling, Uckfield-London line, vertical, world

                                                early

                the sun
                blankets flat across the fields

                a glint
                wipes along the banking plane;

                the terton,
                settled and comfy in the deepest

                mind, enough
                to reach down a text in an

                unknown
                language and read it with ease;

                60 mph
                on the lines into town, one long

                finger of
                cloud between the sun and train

                ever not
                moving; he said he saw no need

                to burden
                the world with yet more babble

                from a
                conceptual mind; even now

                looking
                sharp forward through the glass

                approaching
                London there is a ripple in the

                glass makes
                the cranes on the rooftops

                twitch

 

                -\\O___~~                                                                ~~___O//-

 

Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum

                there was
                mass of body the length of recline

                the height
                of seat and stone bath the end

                of time,
                but the keep of store and brim

                of handle (the
                maximum bulb upon impossible base)

                were lithe
                of all action scratched into blackest

                liquid
                despite all the belts of mist between

                each day;
                and those lintels planted in weight

                upon the
                lip of each column and across all, the

                heavenly
                pediment; having was being,

                transcendent
                of bound, the message leapt from

                behind,
                across the impossible gusts of gap,

                the wrap
                of robe, loose and sun-dried to the

                crease of
                agitation, there, O beast with power

                standing
                over me, will you take me from

                here

 

early: my son was moving to Germany to live with his girlfriend, he was spending the last week or so with his parents before leaving; there was a sense that this was a Major Life Move both for him (and for us watching a child move to another country … even though he is 31 years old); he wanted to do a ‘final’ trip up to London and took his old man with him, we went up early – I watched the horizontal morning sun over the fields become vertical up London’s sandstone buildings; a “terton” is someone who has developed his or her mind to be subtle-enough to find and decode Buddhist teachings hidden by Guru Padmasambhava in places or in minds so that they will be ‘discovered’ in time when the conditions – and minds – are right: I had just finished the biography of Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Lodro who was a renowned terton and teacher in Tibet who declined to publically reveal many of his found texts because, as he commented, he didn’t want to clutter up peoples’ minds with yet more babble from a “conceptual mind” (although seasoned ‘readers’ of life in Tibet at that time would have ‘understood’ this statement to mean that the prevailing karma of mind in Tibetan society at that time was not up to appreciating them – Jamyang Khyentse Chokyi Londro died in 1959, the year the Chinese seized control of Tibet and the religious infrastructure of Tibet was decimated); the Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum: we spent most of the time in the British Museum, Jon wanted to have a final look at the early Minoan and later Mycenaean Greek exhibitions … I haven’t fully worked out how these two pieces are joined as a diptych, but present them as such nevertheless

 

 

————w(O)rmholes________________________________|—–

being & looking wormhole: blister on me thumb
black wormhole: THE LONELY STREET by William Carlos Williams
clouds & travelling wormhole: space for probing thought
crane wormhole: that
glass wormhole: SPRING & LINES by William Carlos Williams
Have wormhole: you
horizon wormhole: we held cold hands
Jon wormhole: Mark & Jon at the coffee shop IV: right angles
life & sun wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
London & mind & speech & time wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
mist wormhole: BLUEFLAGS by William Carlos Williams
morning wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Pigs
passing wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
reading wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – With Cows
rooftops wormhole: PASTORAL by William Carlos Williams
sitting wormhole: allowed all gain
stone wormhole: only
train wormhole: A Solitude by Denise Levertov
Uckfield-London line wormhole: mother and daughter
world wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – both fawn and grey

 

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… Mark; remember …

"... the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe to find ashes." ~ Annie Dillard

pages coagulating like yogurt

  • Bodhisattvacharyavatara
    • Chapter 1
    • Chapter 10
    • Chapter 2
    • Chapter 3
    • Chapter 4
    • Chapter 5
    • Chapter 6
    • Chapter 7
    • Chapter 8
    • Chapter 9
    • Introduction
  • collected works
    • 25th August 1981 – count Up
    • askance From Hell
    • Batman
    • Bob 1995-2012
    • David Bowie Movements in Suite Major
    • Edward Hopper: Poems at an Exhibition
    • Eglinton Hill
    • FLOORBOARDS
    • Granada
    • in and out / the Avebury stones / can’t seem to get / a signal …
    • Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters]
    • Miller’s Batman
    • mum
    • nan
    • Portsmouth – Southsea
    • Spring Warwick breezes / over Bacharach fieldwork and boroughs with / the occasional shift and chirp of David / in the pastel-long morning of the sixties
    • The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford
    • through the crash
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