All Posts Tagged ‘Fungus’

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Fungal Egg Nests

October 20, 2018
13 comments

 

 

fungal eggs aplenty 
ready to bounce into sweet life
far from all of the utter madness

 

 

 

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Per Michael Kuo (0nline):

These odd and fascinating little fungi look for all the world like tiny birds’ nests. The fruiting bodies form little cuplike nests which contain spore-filled eggs. The nests are called “peridia” (“peridium” in the singular), and serve as splash cups; when raindrops strike the nest, the eggs (called “peridioles”) are projected into the air, where they latch onto twigs, branches, leaves, and so on. What exactly happens next is not completely clear, but eventually the spores are dispersed from the egg. They then germinate and create mycelia, which eventually hook up with other mycelia and produce more fruiting bodies.

 

Bird-nest Cup Fungi  (each one was around 5mm in diameter)… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018

 

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Flaming Passion Flows… Haiku

August 22, 2018
42 comments

 

 

Flaming passion flows
past inconceivable now
spilling into we

 

 

Flaming Calocera cornea fungus found deep in the woods… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018

 

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Love…Beyond measurement

May 13, 2018
10 comments

 

 

The mind, for many, is incessantly measuring things, comparing, acquiring, accumulating and labeling.  Can the mind, without a continuing effort — which isn’t laziness — simply perceive without all those things habitually going on mentally?  Measuring and labeling have their place but there is also a time when they are not necessary and, if still used, are merely habitual and robotic in essence.  Total separation, between the “perceiver” and “that which is perceived,” demands measurement, requires a type of psychological wall and resistance.   Resistance occurs as an opposing force.  If you separate yourself from all other life forms, that is a form of resistance, a manifestation of conflict.   Indifference and conflict go hand in hand; there is so much of it in the world these days.

Perceiving without separation is not what most people are involved with.  Perceiving with (and “as”) the standard norms (that were taught), because of the conflict, because of the resistance, because of the robotic repetitiveness of it all, leads to depression and psychological suffering; then many turn to drugs or alcohol as an escape (which really is no escape at all).  There is an order that goes beyond all this.  Mere measurement does not take one to that order.  It is not within the realm of accumulating or acquiring, (yet so many are willing to pay money for instructions or systems to get there).  

Its beauty includes its being beyond mere accumulation and “getting.”  You can’t obtain what is beyond mundane getting, having, and measuring.  Real love is not merely a product of accumulation; however, if one is very fortunate, non-fragmented, and serious, it is there (beyond measure).  If one merely remains within the mental realm of getting, having, and measuring, one will stay miserable and secondhand (though one may erroneously think that one is doing marvelously).  Deep awareness and profound psychological transformation are not a matter of time.  Measuring and accumulation take time.

 

[A variety of crust fungus, Milk White Toothed Polypore (Irpex lacteus) seems to have “teeth” that, in actually, are tubes or pores in the spore-bearing surface which break apart with age and become tooth-like.  This is a very small fungus; it was on a small, dead tree branch; the pictured portion was around one centimeter long.]

 

Milk White Toothed Polypore Fungus… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018

 

 

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Free Will

January 1, 2017
21 comments

 

Happy New Year!  (even though there isn’t anything new about it)   Hoping that the following year is full of insight, compassion, and care (radiating from all of us).    🙂

“If the moon, in the act of completing its eternal way around the Earth, were gifted with self-consciousness, it would feel thoroughly convinced that it was traveling its way of its own accord…. So would a Being, endowed with higher insight and more perfect intelligence, watching man and his doings, smile about man’s illusion that he was acting according to his own free will.”  —  Albert Einstein

Many people ardently insist and feel that they have “free will,” an ability to freely choose without being bound by limitations.   They each think that some central agency (i.e.,dominator/controller), apart from the contents, is (somehow) freely acting.  Thoughts and thinking involve physical processes within (and “as”) the brain, and these physical process are not exempt from the cause and effect sequences that our universe moves as. The very notion of will implies the power of control that the mind has concerning its own actions.  If all of these actions are (inherently) reactions, however, that opens up questions concerning what is actually taking place.  (Never feel, however, that conditioning and the lack of free will constitute some kind of get out of jail free pass or “excuse” to whip up; we are, each of us, responsible for helping the world to be orderly and pain-free.)

Did real (free) volition not exist in the worm-like chordates and fish that we evolved from but sprang into existence with us?  May it, whether we refuse to see it or not,  be that free will, in essence, is a concept that has little or no validity for our current mental states?  Most of us, either consciously or unconsciously, cling to the notion of having free will.  If the mind has control over its contents, who is the controller?  Is the controller separate from what the controlled (psychologically) is?  If the controller is not something magically separate, then that has an altogether different meaning and significance.

Sensitively perceiving (not merely conceptually) that most all of what we think and feel is totally conditioned and is part of a cause and effect continuum can allow the mind to come upon a new and vital challenge.  Can the mind not merely continue to operate in (and “as”) the same old ways (of conditioning) but, instead, function and live (at times) beyond mere reaction?  Real liberty and emancipation may come when the mind sees itself as totally conditioned (when it is conditioned) and deeply ensnared in (and “as”) cause/effect patterns and, then, changes (not through reactions, as in the past), but in a wholly different manner.  Then there is a possibility of real order, insight, and compassion to function, beyond the norm.  He who clings to prison bars forever thinking that he is free will never run disentangled from all the bondage.

Fungus on Fallen Oak (1) Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2016

Fungus on Fallen Oak (1) Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2016

Fungus on Fallen Oak (2) Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2016

Fungus on Fallen Oak (2) Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2016