• 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: true nature

‘the practice …’

25 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

2017, 6*, arm in arm, being, blossom, Bodhisattva Vow, colour, compassion, finding, growth, identity, journey, others, practice, requires chewing, root, Sangha, sharing, true nature, weaving, writing

                the practice
                of writing

                to weave
                myself between

                the threads, to
                thread myself

                between the
                fibres to form

                tiny root hairs
                to form the root

                to reach deep
                and to reach

                high and wide
                to glory in the

                synthesis of
                all the light

                to be found
                to be found

                colourful and
                blossoming to

                my own true
                nature; and that

                others, sibling
                to my reach

                and wonder,
                might find the

                growth to
                journey too

 

lookit: `found this one in my notes; possibly four years old; forgotten I’d had it; found stuck like a leaf between BCA I,3; not sure if it reminds me of the quote, top left of the web page, that I put there to remind myself … sure, on reflection, it does; how can I not: offer it up, and out

 

 

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

being wormhole: sweet chestnut
blossom wormhole: Lapping Reflections [Deep Within Waters] – pageant of the trees
compassion wormhole: eyes like petals
identity wormhole: under the blue and blue sky
others wormhole: silence
practice wormhole: so, how long is, a piece of string?
writing wormhole: ‘not sure …’

 

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scintillating to mind’s content

14 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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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

 

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sometimes

08 Sunday Jul 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems, poeviews

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1966, 2017, 7*, action, armchair, Batman, between, building, city, cowl, fence, gap, immanence, mind, moon, outline, pavement, perspective, shadow, sky, skyline, space, streetlight, thought, true nature, turning

                sometimes even the
                broadest flow of thought –

                fan-pivoted about cowled
                head, turning tightly – cannot

                breech the tightening gap
                where casts the shadow,

                sometimes the mind
                must suspend in space

                and enfold
                its natural shape

                      he vaults
                the fence straight down the center
                      of the city
                and the outline of the moon
                      becomes
                the outline of the downtown skyline

                      between

                the streetlamp on the pavement
                and the moon above the sky

                      stood

                the building like a giant armhair –
                immanent perpsective

 

Detective Comics #354, August 1966; cover: Carmine Infantino; “No Exit For Batman!”, writer: John Broome, artist: Sheldon Moldoff: tight-corner thinking and evasion – the redaction to zero, then out, again, the other side

 

 

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

Batman & thought wormhole: thought
city wormhole: sufficiently away
mind wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin
moon & sky wormhole: SUMMER SONG by William Carlos Williams
shadow wormhole: cool / tiled flooring
skyline wormhole: 1964
space wormhole: glancing up from the text / searching for ground …
streetlight wormhole: where did the silence go

 

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all // are // none

28 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2017, 8*, arrival, being, billow, Buddhas, creation, desert, doing, end, everything, gargantuan, journey, light, love, mountains, night, quote, reaching, samsara, start, suffering, true nature, tuning, waft, waiting, waves

                                all

                that Enlightened beings do
                is be, but without
                flinch, reach or

                conjuration; a wave-
                length with neither
                start nor end which

                tunes the few to their
                own true nature
                with neither start

                nor end, the basis
                both from and to
                which they might

                both journey and
                arrive; external light
                that caps the peaks

                of mountainous
                night lost in waft
                and billow;

                                are

                they on the edge of
                everything gargantuan
                and frightening in all

                their detailed beneficence,
                are they everything that
                gives me the nod and

                wink waiting for me
                to get it, are they in
                amongst us suffering

                the arrows that we
                sling all about in outrageous
                discontent, are they

                la porte etroite or the
                desert of love, are they
                always there for us,

                are they never there;
                they are none of these,
                they are all of these

                that we make them
                to be – light neither
                emanating nor pervading

 

 

 

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

being wormhole: all the low clouds keeping pace / through the train window, / always arriving, whether fast or / slow, but never actually moving
doing wormhole: I
light wormhole: so / do I keep on writing now I’ve retired, or … / Rumplestiltskin
love wormhole: ‘oh my girls and muse …’
night wormhole: transferring
samsara wormhole: inner / hegemony
waiting wormhole: Bexhill 140215
waves wormhole: and ‘naerrgh’ a mention of a seagull’s call

 

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the balance necessary between

01 Tuesday May 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

2017, 7*, appearance, balance, being, cause and effect, checking, coagulation, denial, doing, empty, fortune, healing, holding onto, karma, legacy, life, lifetimes, lunge, morning, path, Refuge, relationship, room, self-grasping, shutters, statue, trauma, true nature, urge

in my corner of the room
                I have only just noticed the shutters ajar –
                                wondering if I dare push them further apart –

the dynamics of past lifetimes
                rebirths of exact measure to the traumas
                                round which they coagulate; but then, also, the

healing of relationships
                which tip towards fortune however
                                you make them, the balance necessary between doing

all that holding and checking
                of all those causes and effects which
                                comb-through the tangles of legacy but which

can so-easily become the
                local point of selfish, and being
                                insight through the skein of appearences into

their respective empty
                nature enabling them all to
                                appear in the first place which can so-easily

become a stoney denial
                of causality into one’s own statue
                                stuck in pose; the path through which neither

aggravates nor heals;
                the practice of Refuge in the
                                morning and at the urge to lunge of all

my doings, alongside
                all the other 6-fingered and 4-
                                thumbed sisters of this world

 

this teetered out of a comment made in response to one of Jana H. White’s posts, but I’ve been all the way through her site and can’t find it – she must have taken it down: it would make sense of the ‘corner of the room’ and the ‘6-fingered and 4-thumbed’ references, but, maybe, if you tune out a little, it works nonetheless…

 

 

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

balance wormhole: green and / luminant / to behold
being & doing wormhole: behind / glass walls and wan and hooded eye
life & lifetimes wormhole: amniotic avenue
morning wormhole: The Boats of Vallisneria by Michael J Redford – Working
path wormhole: in the / Citadel / Park / a leaf / new / ly fell

 

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Christmas 2015

24 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

2015, 4*, Carol, Christmas, clouds, film, glance, living, sky, The Tree of Life, thought, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, true nature, view, vow, worry, writing

                Christmas 2015

                paced a day with Carol like a spread of cards
                walked under cloudy skies, watched the thoughts
                behind the glances of ‘Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy’;

                stopped worrying enough to write: I renew
                the vow to mix all that I live with its true nature;
                watched the view of glances in ‘The Tree of Life’

 

 

 

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

Carol wormhole: out
Christmas & thought wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
clouds wormhole: city streets
film wormhole: just
living & writing wormhole: before any writing
sky wormhole: river

 

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without any buffet at all

15 Monday Jan 2018

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2015, 5*, acceptance, being, depression, green, identity, notice, panic, pointlessness, self-compassion, silence, surface, true nature, twilight, water

                                                surfacing
                                from a quiet sag – only noticed when
                surfacing amid the twilight sump,

                                                only
                                the silence of lapping remembered when damp seam and sole
                feel cold and slimely green –

                                                still
                                I do not know my true nature, panicking and gasping,
                wanting to float, wanting to hover,

                                                even,
                                without any buffet at all, without taint, and
                the local too close to distinguish

                                                myse-

 

 

 

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

acceptance wormhole: prelude: // travel
being & depression & identity wormhole: lack of center
green wormhole: river
pointlessness wormhole: is this it // all the time
silence wormhole: the silent night of the Batman
twilight wormhole: and // do your ears burn red?
water wormhole: om muni muni maha muniye soha

 

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cape and cowl

24 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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2014, 7*, Batman, breathing, cape, cowl, edge, identity, life, lifetimes, rest, stillness, true nature

                cape and cowl

                only in the midst
                of billow and flurry

                from lifetimes passed and
                current wafts breathing

                hardly sometimes at the edges
                between lifetimes to happen

                can you rest
                your battered identity enough

                to think with true nature enough
                to be still

 

 

 

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

Batman wormhole: between
breathing wormhole: reating & wriding
identity wormhole: ‘God, who am I …?’
life wormhole: good going into / that gentle night
lifetimes wormhole: make your rickety / constructs strong with / unbending grids / of attention and wide- / open grates of let
stillness wormhole: wakeoutofadream

 

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slow enough / to have love

26 Monday Jun 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

2013, adjustment, ageing, breakdown, choice, confusion, consistency, doing, freedom, land, living, love, Martin Luther King, mountain, option, presumption, quiet, recognition, saviour, secret, shame, streets, stumbling, true nature, wasteland, work

                I used to skip and side-step all the
                too-presumptive adjustments
                for consistency and do it all

                in my own sweet way
                secretly hoping for recognition
                shamefully thinking to be the saviour

                now I’m confused and made old
                stumbling and doddering by the
                too-many prescriptive options to

                exercise the choice I am offered
                so I continue to do it all in my
                own sweet way, quiet enough

                to be effective, ignored enough
                to have scope and slow enough
                to have love; I have come to

                the top of the mountain and I have
                escaped a promised land
                four times injured to within

                an inch of my own true nature
                and I roam the streets and wastelands
                now, free at last, free at last

 

 

 

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

breakdown wormhole: strain
doing wormhole: lesson from watching two crane flies work the evening / skating across the panes flying and pushing legs grappling / the glass crossing repulsive over themselves and clinging akimbo / for a rest until lifeless just to get their stickly bodies through to the light
living wormhole: written relief to / creeping anaesthesia / through palimpsest / and crankled page
love wormhole: handsome
quiet wormhole: open window
recognition wormhole: not / the Catcher
streets wormhole: landscape of cloud over London / with differing depths of grey
work wormhole: just saying, is all VII: // `spolitical

 

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wakeoutofadream

10 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by m lewis redford in poems

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Tags

2013, 6*, career, circular poem, contentment, CPD, defensive, defining, dream, freedom, gap, history, identity, KUE, lesson observation, loneliness, measure, process, professionalism, propaganda, sitting, stillness, struggle, teaching, time, true nature, waking

                                                                                wakeoutofadream
                       both content and free                            where I struggle
                   that is your true self                                         to take the measure
      and inhabit the loneliness                                              of the class I track and train
               and go with neither                                                  brilliant to my design
between define and defend                                                      and told upon inspection
           (nothing to stand on)                                                      I should be engineering them
                        to find the gap                                                   by process
to history or the propaganda                                                and should have been
   moving neither left nor right                                         for years now
                                   keep your seat                            what have I been doing?
                                                              just

 

 

 

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

career & identity wormhole: weight
circular poem: no / thing
dream wormhole: that comicbookshop … // … in dreams
history wormhole: cut while you’re ahead/cut while you’re a thread – poewieview #35
loneliness wormhole: lonely and free
professionalism wormhole: retirement
sitting wormhole: bud
stillness wormhole: still
teaching wormhole: Virginia
time wormhole: Salisbury Cathedral // suspended in everything

 

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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
  • index
    • #A-E see!
    • F–K, wha’ th’
    • L-P 33 1/3 rpm
    • Q-T pie
    • U-Z together forever
  • me
  • others
  • poemics
  • poeviews
  • teaching matters
  • William Carlos Williams
  • wormholes

recent leaks …

  • “…and may the great elements…”
  • paisley // implicitly
  • this pocketed being
  • the inevitable tock // when we close our eyes
  • time
  • the simple prayer // the tattered poem // the bitter lament
  • taking birth
  • mirror
  • long / road
  • ‘in my car I pass…’

Uncanny Tops

  • me
  • Moebius strip
  • YOUNG WOMAN AT A WINDOW by William Carlos Williams
  • 'in my car I pass...'
  • 'the practice ...'
  • 'I can write ...'
  • like butterflies on / buddleia
  • meanwhile
  • 'hello old friend ...'
  • under the blue and blue sky

category sky

announcements awards embroidery poems poeviews reflectionary teaching

tag skyline

'scape 2* 3* 4* 5* 6* 7* 8* 20th century 1967 1979 1980 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 acceptance afternoon air Allen Ginsberg anxiety architecture arm in arm attention awareness Batman beach beauty bedroom being birds birdsong black blue Bodhisattvacharyavatara books Bowie branches breakdown breathing breeze brown Buddha buildings career Carol cars change child childhood children city clouds coffee shop colour combe end comics communication compassion compromise crane creativity curtains dancing dark death distraction divorce doing doors dream Dr Strange earth echo Edward Hopper Eglinton Hill emergence emptiness evening eyes faces family father feet field floorboards garden Genesta Road girl giving glass gold grass green grey growth haiku hair hands Have hedge hill hills history holiday hope horizon house houses identity kitchen leaf leaves lemon letting go life lifetimes light lime listening living London looking lost love management managerialism mauve meaning mind mist moon morning mother mouth movement Mum muse music night notice open openness orange others park passing pavement people performance management pink Plumstead poetry pointlessness politics portrait posture power practice professionalism purple purpose quiet rain reaching reading realisation reality red requires chewing river roads roof rooftops samsara sea searching seeing settling shadow shops silence silhouette silver sitting sky skyline sleep smell smile snow society sound space speech step stone streetlight streets sun sunlight superhero table talking talking to myself teaching teaching craft Thames thinking thought time train travelling trees true nature university voices walking walls water waves white William Carlos Williams wind windows wood Woolwich words work world writing years yellow zazen

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