I heard the Voice

say this morning, as I sat

on my bike atop a bridge

overlooking this mountain-range-surrounded valley:

When you try to pinpoint the wave

you find a particle

when you try to analyze your inventory of choices

you will discover you have too few or none at all

when you attempt to comprehend

or express

some ultimate grounding

the Unmoved-mover

a universal foundation

you will find yourself unable to catch up with it

it will fall out

right under your feet.

It is the unique
behavior of humans
to
create
and posit somewhere
a reason for our actions
or our thoughts
or feelings
in order
to find
one
when
we
believe we
need it.

By lack

of a

singular

vessel;

in virtue of

the collapse and

expansion

of

influences,

of conversion;

the air does not

fill my lungs

the words fall

not from my mouth

but

supplement,

transmogrify,

the expanse.

Translation

is migration;

there

are not

as many

words for

snow

as there are

flakes

that fall in

the arctic

sky.

There comes the moment:

you are somewhere you've never been before

or maybe you've been there a hundred times before

you try something you never tried before

or maybe compared to every time you've tried it

you do something

some odd little thing

different

your feet become roots in the ground

your hand quivers

your upper body jolts

or a bizarre taste spreads

throughout the recesses of your mouth

the depth envelopes you

it takes you in and raises you

years of life in just a

moment

you can see within that glimpse

of a glitch

that

one moment

you can see

even with your eyes closed.

女子の涙には

教師の僕が

対等にならせちゃって。

please turn your speakers up for this one

Dear Friend
find me right here
find me
right now
I am
spellbound
gutted removed
without a past
thereby too
with no expla
nation
for my future.

mouths talk
tongues
speak
and
teeth nash
The lips are without
a function.
There are
no faces.

Swallow always
swallow.

And let your hands
do the talking;

one is no-
thing
with out
them.
lost.

The discrepancy between
one
and multiple
lives is one as well
between statehood and
change.
A fascination
with the universal singular
demands a heaven.
Attention to
the impermanence within
heat & movement
characterizes
borderlessness
and
metamorph
osis.
Thriving by the heat and cold
our dead remind us of
our living.

The truth doesn't change
the truth
is change.

An interesting discovery: the past,
comprised of memories
and
incarnate
material shifts,
can most direcly
be altered
perhaps
through our dreams.


I now
again
practice flying,
and the speed
and stamina of my run
has rewritten the
history
of my childhood character,
through a time 'relived'
for this
very purpose.

An important lesson in
日本人心理学:
the
裏表
individual stands
in distinction
to he who is
本音　・　多々前.
Unlike the latter,
whose actions
and words
remain disparate by habit, he is not burdened
by an inside
and outside,
a
front
and
back.
He exists
instead
in a single dimension,
an honesty incarnate.
From this standpoint, he lacks the

complexity
of multifarious levels
and convoluted circuitry inherent to
the permutations
within a
dichotomous structure
between
what one says and what
one does.
Instead,
he is ingrained
with the
complexity
that substitutes bureaucracy,
one that represents the non-dualist,
rhizomic
philo
sophy
of the
sayer-doer,
the ordination of the
心.

It's a
real problem
for
the
writing
prolific:
we leave
our trail
wherever
we
go
.

Just across the way
from me
there is
what appears to be
a
crematorium.
Its smoke has charred
the rim of its
column
and floats just
above
the
roofs of our houses
toward the
wall of
black mountains
nearby.
These
reach up
toward the colored
clouds,
thus simul taneously
touching life
and
passively
encountering
death,
recalling
the stature of the samurai.
Hereby the
local
morgue
feeds our
archetypal
imposition as
well as our
scenic
constitution.

Parallel and fragile
are these times.
The destiny
of one
with the
shifting
of the continents.
Can't you smell the
burnt leaves of tea
that motion
the
slow breath of the jihad?

christian doing

from journal entry, 6.4月

Luther understood: no matter how diligently, how strenuously your fight for goodness and purity (at least their less popular forms) might be, there is no salvation by these deeds alone. Try as I might, I cannot fight -- and certainly cannot win -- every battle for a mindful earth-society. Purity is not only beyond our reach: it is not even in our field of vision

Instead, it is invisibly inherent to the manner of our reaching. In being so caught up in trying to become pure (in the more popular sense), we lose our insight to how. How do we make our children smile? We give them chocolate Easter eggs, over which they laugh, and embrace you, and become the star feature for Nestle's advertisement. Is it important for us to know that that chocolate was processed from cocoa beans imported from a country that employs children with little or no choice to work under brutal and inhumane conditions (that they cannot get adults to work under!) to gather them? The moment we become aware of this, the purity of the popular (simultaneously, of the ignorant) vanishes from their smiles, for the systemic violence that purported such purity is smeared across their mouths and between their teeth -- dark and vile.

No -- a purity of ends (which has not even an ontology per individual) cannot justify our means. We cannot truly expect to enter the Kingdom if our eyes are cast only to the clouds. Furthermore, we cannot call ourselves true Christians (as in those who follow Christ, in thought and action) if we believe that by our deeds alone we are saved. We must purify our intentions. By this, one cannot say, 'I had only meant to make my child happy in giving her chocolate,' if we do not further intend to stop or to invest in only organic sweets. Good intention can only beget good intention. If we mean to do good, we must carry it out to the furthest extents of our awareness and beyond the conventional understanding of what is pure and impure.

And by what are we saved? It is only by good intention that we can truly create good results. As it is, this intention requires the totality of one's awareness and consequent compassion. And such awareness is beget only by and event of grace. Indeed, it is only by God's grace that we can be saved. Let us never stop reaching.


>>><<<


and there continues to be the opportunity for 'christians' to learn from 'non-christians' -- beyond the conventional understanding of faith being personally significant (if it all possible) without affirmative experience: "The Buddhist point of view is that we do not have to believe in anything we cannot experience for ourselves. When asked, 'How do we know whose teachings to believe?' Buddha replied, 'Do not believe something to be true just because it is spread by word of mouth, practiced as a tradition or sensationally spread far and wide. [...]'" (more, click on 'Believer Profile' toward the bottom)

eclectic past

those of you who know who i am may or may not care to look around at the most recent added link -- Eclectic Travelers. of course, like always, it's never really me anymore.


また変わってきた。なんども変わりなおしたのだね。

the vibrating of sky and clouds

today's teachings, too, are a bit overdue. these are from bhante on march 21st last week...

Once there were two monks who conversed about enlightenment. They corresponded the sky to mind and the clouds to thoughts. The first monk believed that we should look past the clouds to try to see the sky through them; that is, that we should focus only on mind and ignore thoughts. The second rebuked that we should watch the clouds to find the empty spaces in between where we can expand; that is, that we should focus on thoughts to better see and understand the mind. One monk represented the Mahayama tradition of Buddhism. The other represented the Theravada tradition. In the end, both became enlightened -- both were essentially right.

We must remember that the tradition is not the Buddha's teachings. However, it can help us learn it the lessons within the teachings. Expanding our meditation beyond our breathing exercises, ask yourself, as the monks in the story did, ‘how am I thinking right now’? Just observe it how you think. There is no need for judgment, no 'good' and 'bad’; in fact, judgment can hinder how well we can observe our thinking.

If during your observations you see something harmful, acknowledge it and consider avoiding it. If something is helpful, acknowledge it and affirm it. This is the way of cleaning the mind.

bhante then went on to teach us a vocal technique to help us focus our minds and tune in to the moment during our meditations. many of us are familiar with the verbal chant ‘ohm’. in this technique, we work with each of its three syllables: ‘oh’, ‘ah’ and ‘mn’. we begin by taking a deep breath and slowly sounding the ‘oh’ syllable, slowly and all the way through our exhalation. we sound this syllable three times in this way, then carry on to the next one, ‘ah’ three times, and then three ‘mn’s. finally, we chant the full ohm three times, separating as we did each syllable throughout the exhalation: ‘oh-ah-mn’. when you get a whole room of people doing this, each in tune to the other as to when to change the sound and when to end before the next breath, a most awesome chorus seems to vibrate the whole room, and i remember thinking, as i sat in participation, how far the sound seemed from anything human i’ve experienced.

essential message

the teachings i'm sharing today are from a visit on march 14 by venerable ani pema, who taught in place of bhante (who was visiting cancer patients in canada) that evening. let me start with a short biography before moving into her teachings.

Ven. Ani Pema was born in India and studied in a Catholic school through her childhood, of which she said she received a good education. In 1988, she came to the United States to visit a Benedictine community for five months. Over time, she began to feel that Christianity was overall something of an extensive misinterpretation of the Benedictine tradition and teachings. One day, Ani Pema saw the Dalai Lama and from that moment on wanted to become a Buddhist nun (which she later felt had been her destiny all along as determined by a previous life connection she witnessed). She became a Buddhist nun at fifteen years old and immediately began to acquire responsibilities she had never had before.

Today, Ani Pema works in the community of Mankato, training students in meditation and studying with Native Americans in shamanism. She believes that she has made a beneficial habit of asking for blessings in the holy places of wherever she is, Christian, Buddhist or other.

Gathering the lessons from her multicultural life experiences, Ven. Ani Pema teaches that even among different religions there is an essential message whose tenets they all tend to share: loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom. These tenets are what give us values and eventually bring us to enlightenment. The message they comprise teaches us yet another valuable lesson, the subject of today's teaching: nun, monk, or layman, there will always be emotions and suffering and pain. Against common assumptions, the lives of nuns and monks too have their sufferings. Perhaps the difference we can observe, however, is that they particularly practice and take the opportunity to overcome their sufferings, to gain lessons from their turmoil. This is in fact hardly a selfish endeavor on their end, for the lessons they discover can be used and practiced by all who listen.

As spiritual practitioners, we must realize that suffering is not negative. Sufferings provide us the opportunity to learn and discover enlightenment. It is indeed favorable to have these sufferings to overcome for this purpose.

We are most often burdened by the five poisons,[1] so we must train through awareness to learn of the essential message (loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom). We must learn forgiveness like that which Christ demonstrated. For those who we often think of as ‘evil’ are in fact those worst poisoned, trapped in their own prisons, and thus need our forgiveness more than anyone else. The peaceful demonstrations of the Tibetans in their conflict with China today provides a good example of this. In the same manner that we should be grateful for our sufferings for the opportunity toward enlightenment they provide, so should we recognize our enemies as our best teachers, for it is from their poison-induced mistakes that we learn what not to do.

Acknowledging our sufferings and our enemies as our teachers is the way of discipline for the spiritual practitioner. Among the six realms of existence,[2] humans are the most fortunate (especially with having body, intelligence, and etc.). Through these lessons and capabilities, only we among the beings of the realms have the opportunity to reach enlightenment.

Through our training, however, we must remember that it is not our responsibility to worry on others, for this only causes more confusion for us all. Whether we are on the right path and using our time meaningfully is our business. Where we worry on others, we condone expectations, which become obstacles to our practice. We must instead remain diligent to our own path, which eventually brings insight into the essential message. The way is always a discipline. Remember that Buddha too was like us in understanding life as a never-ending practice.

In our diligence to our path, we may not see the full extent of our work as it affects others around us and far from us. However, once we have committed dutifully to our path, secure in our diligence, then, we can become closer to one another to generate the loving kindness we discover through it. Thus, the value of intimacy is to share the benefit you reap with others through the diligence you alone must sow.

This benefit can come from anywhere, depending on who we are; you do not have to be Buddhist or Christian necessarily so long as the path you follow brings you to what is holy. As not all of life is suffering, we should remember as well our good qualities such as our Buddha nature, our ‘God-in-us’. At the very least, our training brings us personal satisfaction, but through it we also encounter this potential to become like Buddha, to become like God. In becoming Buddha or God, the essential message works through us into those around us in loving kindness, and so we build our pure motivations to help ourselves for the sake of helping others. Like the always smiling Dalai Lama, we too can create positive energy and harmony through our training. This is the power of our discipline and our prayer.

---

[1] Confusion (Skt.: moha), pride (mana), envy (irsya), hatred (dvesha), and desire (raga). (http://www.khandro.net/about_numbers.htm)

[2] Gods (devas), demi-gods (ashuras), humans, ghosts, tormented/‘hell’ beings, and animals. (http://www.khandro.net/about_numbers.htm)