this pocketed being

Tags

2022, 8*, atoms, being, Buddha, dharma, discipleship, kleshas, Mahayana, pocket, profound, sentient beings, teaching, vast

                                          there was only one of him
                            yet he proliferates –

                atoms to the power of atoms –
                constant huddle of teaching,

                the sublime to the ridiculous,
                all of them held:

                this relationship regular as cog-work,
                this being mountain-deep, ocean-high

                this inponential relationship
this pocketed being

 

inhaled from the verses of the Arya Bhadracarya Pranidhana Raja, the ‘Sublime’ ‘Way of Acting’ ‘Vow-Entering’ ‘King’ … in retrospect, now, I feel a theme coming on here, so I shall call this one: episode 0 – the ground of all pocketed being … just come along for the ride, I promise to get you back before the streetlights come on

 

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

being wormhole: taking birth
Buddha & teaching wormhole: Journey

 

Journey

Tags

2018, 8*, birds, blue, breeze, Buddha, city, clouds, day, death, departure, eclipse, evening, fire, flame, form, Ganges, gold, grass, green, hills, horizon, India, Kusinagara, life, looking, morning, night, salvation, sleep, sound, speech, stage, step, stone, stream, teaching, time, town, trees, Vaisali, valley, voices, walking, wandering, wondering

                        the evening before when at length he’d departed,
                Vaiśālī no longer glowed
        like some future city –

                        recent stones of monument
                seemed already unaligned,
        boroughs swallowed by evening hills;

                        we walked wide by the trees across the Gangetic plain,
                robes flupped with each step,
        we lost form as we wandered

                        and we wondered ‘born but to die’,
                still wanting any intoxication
        before the execution;

                        but he looked, always bittersweet,
                to the next horizon – this
        vast and empty stage;

                        in the morning he’d said
                ‘always bite and heat your gold’ and ‘never
        hold the sword by the blade’;

                        ‘I shall lay between those two trees’
                he said in the evening – forks
        around which the whole of time tuned;

                        I prepared grasses about
– I never usually made particular preparations for the night, he would end the day sitting by some copse or stone, away from where we slept glowing like embers,
        as we turned through the night –

                        but he pillowed his head on his hand
                that night, the grasses
        preened green and blue

                        the birds stopped
                as if there were eclipse, the trees ignored
        the breeze,

                        and with shaking headdresses
                dignitaries came to visit from the town
        supplicating –

                        but he spoke with a voice like a cloud, both proximate
and spanning valleys, yearning and teaching to lay down this dried and splintered weight, ‘salvation does not come from the mere sight of me’,
        ‘control the mind’ –

                        and the flames of the fires were low
                as they returned to Kuśinagara
        as if against the stream

                                

Postface Overduction: end of life of the Buddha; narrated by Ananda, close attendant; itinerant life teaching from town to town, area of a few hundred kilometers around central Ganges; left Vaiśālī last, stopped just outside Kuśinagara, town dignitaries came to honour him, had known him before; ‘two trees’ are ‘sal trees‘ tall trunk, no branches until the canopy, northern India, 6th-5th centuries BCE (although there is dispute about this);

        

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

birds wormhole: threshold to behold
blue & city & horizon & morning & time wormhole: under the blue and blue sky
breeze & clouds & valley wormhole: here today and …
Buddha wormhole: eyes like petals
death & speech wormhole: travel // when I die
evening wormhole: nowhere / that can be seen
grass & life & trees wormhole: sweet chestnut
green wormhole: ‘she shook the sweets …’
hills & sleep wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – valley
looking wormhole: looking hard enough
night & sound & stone & walking wormhole: meanwhile
teaching wormhole: c’mon – keep up
voices wormhole: travelling / back

        

c’mon – keep up

Tags

2019, 6*, acceptance, career, change, CPD, identity, measure, music, Pink Floyd, principle, reputation, system, teaching, wind

                c’mon – keep up

                I was a teacher
                I was sometimes
                very good, I cut edges;

                things changed,
                (they’d never
                 quite coalesced)

                I stuck to
                principle, fatal
                to behold,

                couldn’t shimmy
                with the wind (there
                was never a wall

                that created the
                draft) I was
                still, sometimes,

                very good,
                but things just
                changed –

                                ~ O —

                wazzat I hear,
                music, far away,
                can’t make it out:

                “I don’t need no reputation
                  I don’t need no CPD
                  no starkly standards by which to measure

                  system leave them selfs alone … … …
                  hey, system, leave yourself alone …
                  all in all I’m just another brick in the wall”

 

from Bodhisattvacharyavatara, VI, 90-93: [90] And as for praise and fame and status, these will not necessarily affect my life at all; they will not bring me virtue or recognition, they will not extend my life-span or give me strength or free me from sickness or even make me feel good.   [91] If I truly knew what was of benefit and import to my life, what value would I hold in pursuing such things?   If all I want is some nominal, transient mental entertainment, perhaps I should just indulgently devote myself to gaming and getting high and such.   [92] And yet if, in pursuit of fame, I squander everything I have or even get myself killed for some point of honour, of what use would be the mere sound of words to anyone?   Once I am dead, to whom, of all the people I knew, would they bring satisfaction?   Can you eat words as if they were flesh?   When I am dead, what comes of my honour?   [93] When their mud-houses (and sand-castles) collapse, children spontaneously burst out crying in despair and anguish; and, likewise, when my approbation and renown dry up, my own mind reacts just like a silly child.

 

 

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

acceptance wormhole: the mantra of Maitreya
career & change wormhole: Renunciation
identity wormhole: looking for the right exit
music wormhole: there will be ovations
teaching wormhole: my uncomfortable life
wind wormhole: the old man;

 

my uncomfortable life

Tags

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

 

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, …’

 

between

Tags

2018, 5*, ambition, being, between, birth, career, doing, eyes, growth, justice, living, practice, reference, Salinger, Sartre, speech, study, teaching

                                                                                                between

                                there’s something not right about all this
                                the mismatch between what is said and

                                the delay of their eyes, between justice
                                and making living, the ‘bad faith’ and

                                the ‘phoniness’, the study and the reference,
                                the practice and the ambition, the birth

                                and the growth, the teaching and
                                the career – leaves you betwixt

                if you’re at all
                lucky

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: Fishermen at Sea, 1796
career wormhole: how to teach
doing wormhole: on facing the Have
eye wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
justice wormhole: London refugee march – 120915
living wormhole: Victorian pipework
practice wormhole: to arms, then;
speech wormhole: somehow
study & teaching wormhole: coterminalism – there is nothing happens by itself, / 070118

 

somehow

Tags

2018, 5*, corridors, dream, embracing, forgiveness, head, looking, manager, now, retirement, school, speech, teaching, time, visit

                                somehow

                                I was visiting back
                where everything seemed to have changed
                                … ‘I’ll let Simon, here
                take you there’, I let
                                Simon know
                that I knew these corridors,
                                had worked here a time ago
                for quite a time …
                                and in the lunch hall
                the manager who’d watched it fall apart
                                in unmoveable brief
                was making her way
                                my way we,
                would have to meet, I looked down
                                to greet, she looked down
                to avoid hoping there
                                was anything else to notice,
                I took her head in my arms
                                because I think it’s
                OK to say “it’s OK”
                                now

 

 

 

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

dream wormhole: on facing the Have
looking & retirement & school wormhole: to let be
school wormhole: sun setting over a lake, 1840
teaching wormhole: ‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’
time wormhole: The Diligence at Louveciennes, 1870

 

‘… and yet I think I am so modest: …’

Tags

2018, 8*, achievement, anger, ants, arrogance, beauty, Big Issue, Bodhisattvacharyavatara, books, buying, Carol, cat, cause and effect, chrome, comics, conception, conditioned existence, dark, doing, evening, eyes, giving, glass, Hulk, human, identity, insight, isolation, kids, life, lightning, marbles, mind, modesty, night, offering, patience, perfect human rebirth, quality, shrine, standing, strangers, talking to myself, teaching, teeth, time, tin, white

                … and yet I think I am so modest:
                      I think I have gathered such quality and beauty in life,

                      all the coloured glass and marbles I offer to the shrine,
                all the Big Issues I generously buy

                all the time given to Carol and the kids,
                      to abandoned strangers, all the vistas I gave at school,

                      all the insights from comics and books, I think I
                know what’s what; I stand colossal

                      on the paving slab, so much more and in so many ways
                than the ants that circle across it,

                so much more, even, than the cat
                      that comes and uselessly rubs about my legs, I stand

                      human to the height of all achievement; all of this
                I have already destroyed

                      a thousand times over in a thousand different ways
                with even the most slight

                      annoyance (and the thing is I am always annoyed), let alone
                the hulked, mindblanked and white-eyed

                teeth and howls; when this dent,
                      this sudden crease in what looks like flimsy tin (from

                this axe from some other side) that
                      holds the calm and flow of all the cause and conditionality,

                      everything bent sharp over a refusal, that creates me adverse
                and isolated; I won’t

                      become human again for so long I’ll need
                another, far-future,

                flash of lightning
                      in the darkest of darkest nights before I’ll

                ever get another chance
                      to even conceive what’s happening to me; let’s

                ease out all these creases, let’s
                      polish all that chrome, before evening comes again

 

Bodhisattvacharyavatara, Chapter VI, beginning verses

 

 

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

beauty & books & identity wormhole: ‘a blacknight fitted perfectly …’
Carol wormhole: we held cold hands
cat wormhole: What You Are by Roger McGough
comics wormhole: letting them go
doing wormhole: the moon, the moon
evening & eyes & white wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J. Redford – Trees
giving wormhole: both modern and en-slaved / to life
glass & life & mind & time wormhole: early // Minoan & Mycenaean Exhibitions in the British Museum – diptych
lightning wormhole: ‘… plane is upright …’
night wormhole: THE GREAT FIGURE by William Carlos Williams
talking to myself wormhole: blister on me thumb
teaching wormhole: how to teach

 

how to teach

Tags

2018, 4*, Academy, accountability, betrayal, career, classroom, corridors, flowers, game, ideas, infrastructure, management, OFSTED, politics, Principal, requirement, resentment, school, special measures, teaching, teaching craft, thinking

                I suppose it’s not actually your fault
                that I brought to the point of fruition

                those things which you were required
                to require to keep your sorry arse out of

                special measures and you didn’t have the
                first or second idea what to do with them

                because you had long since moved on to
                eleventh and twelfth ideas playing

                some stupid game about infrastructure
                and accountability and completely forgot

                how to teach

 

about and dedicated to the former Principal of the former school (oh, sorry, Academy … what was I thinking) where I spent the whole 29 years of my former career which had calcified even as it flowered it’s most beautiful petals and eventually snapped under so much pretty weight and fell silent and unnoticed to the ground (and a good job too, it would have been a light, colourful mess in the corridor or the classroom); all of which I am required to not name if I’m to keep the paltry amount of money given for me to just shut up at long last; even after years of escape it seems I still bear a grudge – I really must find a honey pot for it somewhere …

 

 

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

career wormhole: I am not yet ready
game wormhole: [once a] dilemminal [always a dilemminal]
management & teaching wormhole: new blue porsche
politics wormhole: looking / ridiculous
school wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
teaching craft wormhole: Structure & d y n a m i c
thinking wormhole: Khandro Tsering Chodron

 

new blue porsche

Tags

2018, 5*, blue, cleaning, ducks-in-a-circle, investment, management, managerialism, performance management, public service, quiet, reform, results-led education, silence, speech, teacher, teaching, vacuum-cleaner

                one day
                some poor bastard
                got handed a broom
                and was told to
                clean the place up

                but I’m a teacher
                he said no you’re
                a janitor but we’ll
                pay you well if you
                keep it clean and quiet

                so he pushed some dust
                around and lo when
                he turned round it was
                there behind him
                so he invested in a

                state-of-some-bastard-
                industry vacuum-cleaner
                sucked up everything
                that wasn’t bolted
                down, whirling around

                in the drum all in the
                same direction and then
                switched the power
                off; everything was
                quiet and squeaky clean

                and all the right colours
                and he wondered at the
                eiree silence but not
                for long as he drove about
                in his new blue porsche

 

 

 

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

blue wormhole: I don’t need to go out / onto the balcony to see behind me / to know what’s going on
management & performance management & teaching wormhole: someone’s got to do it
managerialism wormhole: I turn to wake up
results-led education wormhole: what wounds have you got?
silence wormhole: fifty-eight // and silent prayers
speech wormhole: presence