All Posts Tagged ‘enlightenment’

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Eyes of Starry Nights

October 15, 2019
26 comments
 
 
 
Prepare the later afternoon of me myself—prepare my lengthen-
ing shadows,
Prepare my starry nights.   — Walt Whitman
 
 
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Being that
the perceiver is the perceived,
these soon to be starry nights
find themselves in your foreseeing eyes.
 
My long shadow and yours will coincide.
May we blend in a timeless wholeness
so very much vaster than mere ending
and so very truer than mere fragments.  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Grasshopper Shadow & Eyes … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2019

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Meditation

October 11, 2019
20 comments

 

I’ve read statements by people, in blogs and elsewhere, where they say, for example, “I meditate for 20 minutes a day.”   

Please!

Meditation cannot be practiced.  It is a quietude of the mind that is not made by some projected image of a central controller.  There is no central controller, or “I,” or “me” that can cause meditation.  Meditation is not a mere sequential effect or event (in time) brought about by some predetermined cause (i.e., by some form of causality).  True meditation is timeless and is not what can occur by any methodology in (and “as”) psychological time.  If you think that you are causing so-called meditation to happen for a specified period of time (each day or whatever), it is —  unfortunately — a form of glorified self-hypnosis. 

Real meditation is not even what one can “know” is happening.  It is beyond the field of the known.  One can neither practice it nor know that it is happening… and that is its beauty.  But most people are so addicted to their need to categorize and “know” things that they feel frightened or insecure with not existing (mentally) as the known.  They perpetually cling to the apron-strings of the known.  They have to know that they are meditating or know that they are practicing meditation… all of which are not real meditation whatsoever. 

Or they say such things as, “Well I am working on perfecting my meditation,”… or “I am practicing my meditation more and more each day.”  Who (or what) is this so-called “I” that is supposedly doing such things?  Really, if we are at all honest, it is a protrusion of thought (i.e., an image created by thought) that takes credit for being a central controller or central (mental) orchestrator, of which it is (in actuality) neither.  Most people — plain and simply — are afraid to transcend the false sense of security that the primitive notion of a central “I” projects as.   However, a false (fabricated) central “I” that thinks it is meditating is neither meditating, nor an actuality, nor truly central.  (Past blogs that one has written explain this more; read them if confusion exists at this point.) 

Real meditation may occur when the mind, without effort, is aware beyond superficiality.  That means that it is not merely attached to the field of the known.   The known is always limited; it is grossly circumscribed.  Wisdom is meditation, a non-concocted quietness, which may happen throughout the day without deliberate intent.  Then, perhaps, what is eternal, sacred, unlimited, and beyond words may enter.  But it does not enter if false notions, false practices, and false images are perpetually clung to.   

Real meditation can be a blossoming of the mind.   But if you (metaphorically) cling to fake, fabricated flowers all of your life, nothing profound will happen.

 

The Beauty of Real (not fake) Flowers. … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2019
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My Visit with T.S.Eliot

March 1, 2019
21 comments

 

 

 

Let us go then, you and I,
Eliot said, and so we went,
After the cups, the marmalade, and tea,
Beyond the porcelain, beyond the talk of you and me,
When the evening was spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
We went, we went through certain half-deserted streets.
We went to the bright retreats that muttered endlessly.

Some overwhelming question always had to ask,
Though it didn’t have to ask, “What is it?”
We went along and made our visit.

And at the first turning of the second stair
We turned and saw below, not far from the rose garden,
A familiar shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapor in the fetid air
Struggling with the business fool of the stairs who ascends
The deceitful steps of hope and despair.

At the second turning of the second stair,
We left them twisting, turning below;
At the third turning of the third stair
We finally went past all of the melodious distraction,
Music of the flute, stops and steps
Of the mind over the third stair,
Fading, fading; wisdom beyond hope and despair
Climbing and being the third stair.

We were the stairs,
We were the shapes and distractions,
And at half-past one,
The street-lamp sputtered
The street-lamp muttered,
The street-lamp said, “Regard that woman
Who hesitates toward you in the light of the door
Which opens on her like a grin.”
My visit with Tom in the rose garden never came to an end.

 

 

Jumping Spider in the rose garden, near the door we never opened. Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2019

 

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Enlightenment

February 15, 2019
42 comments

 

 

Wanting to become enlightened — to be in nirvana or satori or whatever it is — is a form of avaricious behavior that depends upon thought and psychological time.  Desire and thought create psychological time.  This time is always limited and based upon the past.  (We are referring to psychological time, not necessary physical/chronological time, here.)  In (and “as”) a person (often), there is a gulf (i.e., a chasm) — psychologically — between what one is and what one wants to become.   Most of us do not mind such a gulf/chasm to exist psychologically; we were brought up and educated (or miseducated) to accept such a gulf fundamentally.  We don’t see anything wrong with it.  We don’t (ever) question it.

Additionally, there is often a tremendous gulf or chasm between “what one considers oneself to be” and “other people” or “other organisms.”   Many people look with separation and see “their race” as better, “their culture” as better, “their family” as better, “their species” as far better,  and “their being” as much better.  Others are “at a distance” and they are separated from “oneself” by a gulf (a chasm), much like the chasm mentioned in the aforementioned paragraph.

You know, it is so easy to be duped.  It is so easy to be deceived and defrauded to think that one is rich in the things of life.  Fragmentation and psychological time are one hell of an illusion (wholly grasped by restricted minds).  Be careful and attentive. 

 

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[Note:  My wife, Marla, is doing better following her recent shoulder surgery; she, however, will still require further surgery on that shoulder.]  

 

 

Snow Crystals … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2019

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The Story of Lo Zu and the Young Firefly

July 13, 2018
32 comments

 

A young student asked Lo Zu, “When a firefly is full of light, does that mean that it is undergoing satori or full enlightenment?”

“No,” the sage answered, “Fireflies groom themselves often, making themselves orderly and spotless, but that is not enough for them — insects who live with separateness and competition — to receive immeasurable enlightenment.”

“What will happen if I receive such enlightenment?” the lad asked.

Lo Zu then answered, “If the limitless, unadulterated energy of the cosmos visits you and flows through you,  you will look slightly physically different but you will not physically glow and, additionally, the fingers of the hands may contract (making it difficult to move), but usually that visitation occurs when one is alone and not among others.”

“I see,” said the student.

“After the visitation,” said Lo Zu, “you will look just like everyone else and, of course, the hands will easily move again; however, your mind will be much different.  You will be glowing on the inside and will have seen.”

“Seen what?” the young lad enquired.

“Seen what is unseeable; met what is indescribable,” said Lo Zu.

“Is it the sacred?” the young boy asked.

With a tear in his eye and a concomitant smile on his face, Lo Zu answered, “Perhaps!”

Then Lo Zu graciously remarked, “Listen, Firefly, surpass fireflyness.”

 

 

Firefly Grooming Itself… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018

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That Eternal Visitor

May 11, 2018
19 comments

 

 

It came when we weren’t expecting it to come
             beyond the moonlit glow
It came when we weren’t expecting it to come
             beyond the realm of know
It came when we weren’t expecting it to come
             such bliss energy and love
It came when we were not existing separately
             that eternal immeasurability from above

 

 

 

Budding Beginnings… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018

 

 

 

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Thinking and Harmony

March 25, 2018
20 comments

 

[To find great Turkey Tail fungi, one must go deep into the woods.  To really understand truth, one must go very deep.  With the later, most people are not passionate enough regarding going there; they, unfortunately, are too fixated merely within the well-trodden paths and routines.]

 

Thinking and complete harmony: can the two exist together (as one) or are they what cannot ever be united?   There is a type of harmony of thinking in poetry.  Likewise, there is a type of harmony, involving thinking, in songs and music.  A truly wise man’s words, of course, can reflect a holistic harmony (to a limited point) in a very possibly pertinent sense (if one is intelligent enough to perceive the depth that is there).  However, no words can ever come even a little bit close to reflecting the whole. 

The tool of thought/thinking can try to point to the whole, try to point to the immeasurable.  However, it may be that thought/thinking is not (and never will be) a integral part of the true whole.  What is virtual, what is fabricated, (what is spurious in essence) may think and insist in (and believe in) all kinds of sensible and nonsensical things… but it cannot ever be one with what is truly whole.  

A mind of inattention, of self-delusion — such as what most minds consist of — cannot decide when to meditate.  The sloppy mind, the mind of disorder, cannot decide to be what order is.  True meditation is not the absurd result of a concocted will; it is never the result of a traditional, bourgeois ego or of a learned (spurious) central-self. 

When healthy and necessary things need to be done prudently, compassionately, with care and consideration, thinking is oftentimes very beneficial.  Other than that, it is usually indicative of inattention and non-harmony.  For instance, if one is walking through a park and the mind is chattering away about all kinds of silly things (as so many brains incessantly and habitually do)… that “thinking” is indicative of inattention/non-harmony/unintelligence.  The fragmentary nature of thinking has, as its intrinsic value, incompleteness (which is incapable of total harmony on its own).  A vast amount of human thinking consists of inattention/incompleteness/unintelligence.  Throughout the day, thinking — which is, more times than not, superfluous — is often a very good indicator that inattention and incompleteness are taking place.  If any movement of thinking, no matter what it is, is incapable of that immense intelligence beyond mere fragmentation, then any movement of thinking, no matter what it is, is indicative that holistic completeness is not taking place.  Though it might sound silly, “thinking per se” (in a very wise mind, throughout each and every day) can be an excellent gauge or indicator of incompleteness/non-harmony.  Thought (no matter what it is or consists of) can never really adequately point to the whole… because thought is limited, fragmentary, with a profound essence of delusion and disorder.   Additionally, the whole is not composed of united fragments… (fragments that the distorted mind has accepted at legitimate); the whole is not the mere opposite of any fragments.  For the whole to occur within the human organism, there can be no fragments.  Illusory fragments within the mind, however, do not prevent the whole from existing; illusory fragments are virtual (i.e., unreal) and the unreal doesn’t supersede truth in any real sense whatsoever.  

From old Confucius:    

“When the wise man points at the moon, the one who is unwise remains with the finger.”

 

The following is an excerpt from the poetry of R.D.Laing (whom one read way back in 1972)…I was appreciative of the poetry of Laing’s Knots but never read (or cared to read) anything else by him.  

 

A finger points to the moon

 

Put the expression

a finger points to the moon in brackets

(a finger points to the moon)

The statement:

‘A finger points to the moon is in brackets’

is an attempt to say that all that is in the bracket

(…………………………………………………………………… )

is, as to that which is not in the bracket,

what a finger is to the moon

 

Put all possible expressions in brackets

Put all possible forms in brackets

and put the brackets in brackets

 

Every expression, and every form,

is to what is expressionless and formless

what a finger is to the moon

all expressions and all forms

point to the expressionless and formless

 

the proposition

‘All forms point to the formless’

is itself a formal proposition

 

Not,

…….as finger to moon

…….so form to formless

but,

…….as finger is to moon

…….so

………….[all possible expressions, forms, propositions,

………….including this one, made or yet to be made,

………….together with the brackets]

…….to

 

What an interesting finger

let me suck it

 

It’s not an interesting finger

take it away

 

The statement is pointless

The finger is speechless

 

 

Turkey Tails (1) Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018

Turkey Tails (2) Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018