Monthly Archives of: September 2024

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Understanding the Whole…

September 26, 2024
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Understanding the whole is not possible if the mind is distorted. So, obviously, the instrument of the mind must be orderly and uncontaminated for clear, holistic perception and understanding to occur. A mind full of antiquated patterns, opinions, and fragmented systems that include conflict, friction, copying, and learned anxiety, is likely not what is capable of perceiving purely (beyond the distorted). A mind burdened with the conditioning of a violent, primitive society — such as ours is — is likely too stagnant and adulterated to perceive purely.

So the first step is to perceive beyond — and without — the past conditioning. Many of us may agree, but few will actually deeply look into doing it. Most of us are tethered to the “old ways” in ironclad habits and stagnant patterns. To leave those patterns seems frightening and too unconventional. So we keep reacting (rather like lemmings). Most take the easy path (which is, really, an unalive path).

The old, fragmentary ways of looking at things via separation, conflict, psychological distance, pigeonholing, and using symbols (such as words) as if they are realities, can drop away without needing secondhand methodologies, techniques, and calculated systems. Such calculated systems take time, and they are limited and fragmentary in themselves. Looking without contamination and conditioned parameters does not take time. Time may be a postponement and an easy excuse. Organized religions all take time and emphasize “gradually improving.” True inner silence and profound awareness do not take time, nor are they necessarily two separate things.

Leaves of Grass … Photo by Thomas Peace c.2024

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The story of Lo Zu and the Rocks and Stones… (yet another Lo Zu tale)…

September 19, 2024
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(Note: Coincidentally, there are five evergreen trees — in a row — in the middle of my front yard.)

Away from the village, at a great distance from the orthodox temples that he never frequented, the great, aged sage Lo Zu — as he often had done — was sitting in silence on a large boulder, with his twisting, meandering walking-cane leaning against him. Among many serious spiritual students in the region, word was spreading that sometimes those passing around the vicinity of Lo Zu could, at times, feel some emanations of what seemed like a divine, radiant energy coming from his being.

Indeed, when some students were passing by Lo Zu sitting upon the boulder that particular day, they say they saw the elderly sage crouched forward with his hands tightly clenched; the meandering-cane had fallen down, having slid to the ground. As they approached him closer, they could feel that radiant energy (that was rumored about by others). After a while, Lo Zu sat up straight, and they could see an amazing, blissful smile on his gleaming face. (Was it the universal blessing, the nirvana, that some said had often visited him?)

The students gathered around Lo Zu and they then asked him to share more of his great insights with them. “Alright,” he said, leaning down to grasp his walking-cane lying (horizontally) in the rocks and stones around the big boulder. There were many stones and colorful rocks in that particular area, situated all around that huge boulder that Lo Zu was sitting upon.

The students sat on the stones on the ground around Lo Zu, carefully listening. Lo Zu said, “What the mind sees is what consciousness consists of. The perceiver is the perceived.” He then said, “If you look at a tree, the image of the tree is what your consciousness is, (not that you merely become sap and the actual, physical tree).” He then went on, “If you look at the stones around this area, your consciousness is what the stones appear as. Please wisely exist beyond accepted separation and conflict. If you are fear of ‘not fitting in with your peers,’ that fear is what you are. You are not something separate from what that fear is.” A bit later, Lo Zu said, “Not too many years ago, a man named Jesus said things very similar to me, but stale orthodoxy (as it so often does) came around and destroyed and twisted the essence of his message. Please learn to stand alone and independently ponder and perceive for yourselves.”
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Excerpt from the Gospel of Thomas (which was once a popular ancient text that eventually became banned by government-controlled orthodoxy):

(19) Jesus said: Blessed is he who was before he came into being. If you become disciples to me (and) listen to my words, these stones will minister to you. For you have five trees in Paradise which do not change, either in summer or in winter, and their leaves do not fall. He who knows them shall not taste death.

Stones … Photo by Thomas Peace c.2024

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The Perceiver is the Perceived

September 12, 2024
18 comments

 

 

Let’s dive deep
into shadowless realms of unsleep
far from the web of callous indifference

Let’s be whole
no fragmented pieces taking the toll
and streets driving as congested arteries

Let’s tread ages
leaving these words still on the pages
as a bored television tries to turn itself on

Let’s take time
as stolen money runs from the crime
while handcuffs are frowning with remorse

Let’s look down
while a missing wallet looks to be found
and credit cards fret with anxiety

Let’s be joy
while the white crib rattles her toy
as a happy nest with gray friends is singing

The Edge of the Nest … Photo by Thomas Peace c.2024
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Psychological Suffering…

September 5, 2024
12 comments

Thoughts are, as one has said many times, symbolic representations. The word “butterfly” is not the butterfly. The word “frog” is not the frog. Words are often necessary, but most of us are almost constantly churning with thought after thought, even though these thoughts are just fragmentary symbols. Symbols are tokens for the real thing; they are not the real thing, (be they words or pictorial images in the brain). In our past — in school — we were spoon-fed with words and the symbols within books (as if they were the real thing). We were instructed (for years) to believe in that symbolic/artificial methodology, accepting it as real and true.

A life that habitually clings to one series of symbols after another is, unfortunately, clinging to representations that are (in a big way) superficial. Endlessly clinging to symbols may take away a lot of the true joy, compassion, and true relationship in one’s life. Unfortunately, remaining mostly as symbols and as mental patterns consisting of symbols can tend to make the mind operate in (and “as”) stagnation. Such stagnation consists of sorrow. It is sorrow.

Instead of foolishly trying to escape from this sorrow by means of alcohol, recreational drugs, or expensive vacations, one can likely do much better by not running to outside (purchased) modalities. We can look joyfully just by looking without merely seeing through a mental screen of habitual symbols, labels, and distinctions. “Looking simply” does not require a lot of mental effort, energy, and technique. Since no effort is needed, no time is needed. But we tend to habitually and endlessly employ effort and time. We need not always take time pigeonholing everything with symbolic labels, categorizations, and separate differentiations. Going beyond constant, fragmentary symbolism, and psychological distance is joyous and liberating. In doing so, love is involved… so love then flowers. Words, as rather dead symbols, are protrusions from the past (i.e., from past learned memory). The living present is not of this learned, old past; it is fresh and beyond the old adulteration. Real meditation, without all of the silly techniques and time-oriented methodologies, is the freshness and joy of perception beyond the stale and secondhand.

The word is not the thing. … Photo by Thomas Peace c.2024