Actually a fantastic, skillful, guide!

Click HERE to enlarge . . . that's what she said. 

For the Hypomnema

Pretty much, yeah. 

Free Write #4

Lonely Tree

Cough, cough hack, hack; who needs to breathe anyway? The rain falls down in the breezeless October morning, drab, gray, smoky in its texture, the taste of acrid volcanic sulfur.

Talking about processes, process, processes. Essence is Process. Self, other, love, hate, life death, all appearings of the Process. Ah, the joys of philosophy that is gleamed from experience and that also informs it. The interactions of expectation disappointment, and hope, and madness. Sully not the name of the philosopher for they have made everything we know. 

Pause to take a drag. a black and white cat sits perched in the window sill watching the drops plummet toward the ground, curious, inquisitive, never pausing to reflect, perpetually nowness. Another plays with a toy, a jingle ball, fun, entertainment, so similar are we. So many jingles and baubles I enjoy.

Do they weigh me down? They definitely can. It's been a life's work untying myself from lead weights. Sinking, sinking, I will not! God damn it! I will not sink! To float and swim and glide and soar, that is the desire. To sink? Fuck no! Fuck that! Shove it up your ass! But maybe, just maybe sinking is "where it's at?" The ultimate insight, the profound unraveling. To let go and sink down, down, down into the depths of mind and reality. Fear. Such fear of losing these harmful habits that I've collected. "I am" is a habit, a collection of habits bundled and labeled, copyrighted under my name. Default settings. 

Anon wakes and gets coffee, his negative presence immediately filling the room, his aggressive motions, and sounds, an utter lack of delicacy and finesse. Such sorrow I have for him. Waking and always complaining, ah the urge to leave here is strong but the obstacles nearly insurmountable. Dozens and dozens of job applications but no call backs. His constant nagging secretly driving me mad, but that's down, down, down. Deep down there in the drowning zone. He's unaware that my constant hypochondria, the constant feeling that I am dying, makes all his complaints hollow to these ears. Someday he and I will have an earnest discussion. I love him dearly for all that he's done, and I feel his sorrow, but someday I will let my secret world be known. 

In that world, he is both a character of love and scorn. He is samsara, the Anti-Buddha. He is another reason for me to let go, to sink, to understand. I think it's a lie, that practice is solely practical, that we can carry on as we always have. It doesn't feel that way to me. 

It feels that if I dive in, I will transform; I won't be able to carry on as I currently do. That's what both charms me and scares the shit out of me at the same time. Because I want to change, to transform into the Path - but at the same time, I want to continue on this road of self-destruction. 

Buddha's Enlightenment

Blue Buddha in my Backyard

The grass whispered across his aching legs. So many miles without an answer! Hours sitting in rock-like equipoise; enduring monsoons, gales, and blistering heat. He’d handed over his mind and body to so many different teachers, but each path just led to disappointment. Why do we suffer? That’s his only question. That question ripped him away from luxury, power, and family. It tore him away from his wife and infant son. Why do we suffer?

He never lost hope, never lost the drive to understand. Each failing was a success, a process of elimination bringing him closer and closer to the answer. The trees parted and revealed an intimate grove. A clear stream giggled next to a geriatric tree. Traceless birds and bluing sky, his aching bones drug across the green toward the sanctuary tree.

Sid folded himself against the trunk; his eyes sighed across the grove. So many miles without an answer. Ah, Sujata. Her beauty is that of the grove’s, and her kindness the autumn yield. She saved Sid from himself. He was practicing with five other ascetics, starving himself in the name of spiritual purification. Sid was a skeleton, his ribs like prison bars beneath a thin, dry hide.

Near death, Sujata begged him to eat and drink. Sid looked up and saw a rainbow, her loving smile the warm, welcoming sun; her tearful eyes compassion’s rain. Sid ate and drank, returning from stasis thanks to Sujata’s inherent Buddhahood.

Sid’s five ascetic friends took their leave. Look at how disgusting Sid is! He’s eating, drinking, and speaking with a beautiful woman! Such a disgrace, such a disgrace. Sid, in Sujata’s care, found his health again. She didn’t want him to leave, she loved him, but he was a seeker. There could be no happiness, no reality until he found what he sought.

These images and more flash before him as he sits beneath the Bodhi tree. He lets them flow, like sun-glimmers on water-crests. The birds come to roost, night falls, and moon roses. The glimmers sleep in cerebral silence.

A single raindrop plops into the dark water. The moon sets and Sid lifts his eyes. Venus, the Morning Star, a brilliant flickering ember racing toward the horizon. Speechless, the mystery de-cloaks and stands naked in the mirror; his question has been answered. Sid wasn’t Sid anymore.

The night birds give way to mourning doves, the ghost of dawn flirting with the Nepali sky. The sun emerges from the nocturnal womb. The Buddha unfolds like a morning glory, limbs popping and creaking, but to him, there is only luminous space. He smiles with the terrain. This could be home, why not stay? A life of alms rounds in Uruvela, the neighboring town; the giggling stream and Bodhi tree. Why leave?

Sujata’s love whispers through the swaying grass. The world is suffering. Sickness, old age, death, loss, and hatred reign outside this quaint panacea. He closes his eyes, an imperceptible nod. Each ending is a beginning. 

Buddha begins his trek to the Deer Park, where the five ascetics are in retreat. Sujata’s love is what the world needs, the Unbinding he found should be given to all. 

Just as she had fed him, he must now feed the masses. 

Starvation is not merely a curse of the flesh, the heart and mind can starve as well. The body hungers for food, the mind and heart hunger for truth. Buddha left Uruvela to feed the world.

Free Write #3

Cemetery near my house

I always feel that I should give more. More love, more time, more attention, more, more , more. But I can't. 

Mindfulness forces me to watch myself engage in the behaviors I'd like to change The harmful habits, the closed-off-ness, the selfishness; yet like watching a home movie in real-time, the patterns are strong, the habits ingrained. the desire to change isn't enough, though I do desire such.

To show affection more readily, to love and not take for granted the loved ones near me. To dedicate all of my time and breath and energy to the ones I love. Yet I cannot. I am silence.

The feelings within are expressed in words but not in actions, the hugs and kisses seldom come form me seldom initiated by me. My cat Zoe asking me to play as I sit here self-indulgently rambling on about how self-indulgent i am, yet I cannot force myself to be who I want to be, who I wish I could be for them.

My loved ones deserve better than me, they deserve someone who not only returns their love in feeling but in action. Who can dedicate themselves and be open and tender. I'm not this man. Pause. I wish I could hug my mom everyday when she wakes up, wish I could play with Zoe anytime that she wants to play. Wish I could connect with friends more instead of allowing a distance between conversations.

Yet there is nothing. There's awareness without freedom. The disposition is a rope, a noose , a cord strangling me and forcing the current to flow in a certain direction against my will. Imprisoned by the habits and genes that have formed me. When there are breakthrough, like the sunlight beaming through a nest of clouds, they are temporary. Habits always prevail when energy fades. Habits always prevail.

Free Write #2

Quarter past eternity, the winds blow without a care. Laughter on the breeze without origin or destination. Simple, simple all the way to the bottom, without a dose of aspirin. Tickle the funny bone, tickle my testes, the roundabout way to liberation.

A silent mind pregnant with the next line. The next line the manifestation of the next line. What nonsense! Nonsense and irreverence! Such is the way of the psyche, the rabbit hole of the human mind. Such is the inner monologue, the absurd twisting nonsensical stream of associations echoing down neural corridors.

The beat, the breath, the flowing, the surging and power and passion and energy, the warmth and heat and life and death. The will to be and survive and grow and learn and try and fail and feel. The will of ages flowing amidst inhuman mystery; the patterns and pulses of time and nature bleeding through the cracks of indifference.

What does the blue sky have to say today? How do the trees feel about the coming winter? Their display has not yet begun here, though It will soon enough. The vibrant colors of nearing death and hibernation adorning the soon to be cropless landscape.

Bird shit glowing on the roof of a black car. Cats napping on shelves, and in boxes. The early hours, the only one awake, this mad writer without a plan.

I lost something recently, I lost an identifier. Pause, silence, listening. Tranquility.

Free Write #1

Sunrise block quoted armadillos walking across frozen ponds without a goal in the mind. 

The wind slowly caresses barren branches who never see the embrace of a lovers welcoming warm arms. The will to be, the will to believe, the coursing shadows of forgotten memories racing beneath the flowered adornments of casual underpinnings.

How long will the earth turn? How long will the words flow before they are dried? Which way is up when the moon seems to laugh? Seventeen hours of mindless wanderings, 18 years of confused fumbling. The love of a woman, the tender smile of a close friend, the cool morning, the gray clouds. I wonder what the day holds in store?

The coffee warm, sliding down the gullet without leaving a trace. What use is it really? I've indentured myself to its graces. The browser window hangs open without a mind of its own, now use, no use. nose use. what will be the outcome of this porcupine? Head down in the dirt, head up on the mountain.

Tears drying from decades past, hours spend reading, writing, fucking, laughing, crying, breathing, sleeping, eating, dying. I wonder in the absence of time is there still ice? What will there be? What was there? How many in the hall? What shall we find when we turn over the aging rock? 

Scratch, scratch, scratch the face, a pause of words, a lapse in thoughts. 

Free-writing is hard, the never ending flow of the keys without focusing on where one was or where one is going the only goal to write until the time is up, to write without purpose or plan or goal or message to write, to write to, write to write. What will the day hold? I wonder, I wonder what Winnie the Pooh would say. And Tigger too.

Ah, calling a friend soon, the morning chat, a pleasant ritual. The sun may come out today. A week of clouds, wool, ashen, strangling the mind, delightfully depressing. Such inspiration sadness brings, much more than joy. Much much more than joy. I will never disparage depression, it is the eternal muse, the ajf ;ie f;lals fie of writers and poets and philosophers and revolutionaries.

I wonder, I wonder, I wonder how long how long will the whipper-will sing? How long, how long will this go on before it becomes something else?. Leaving no traces, the time jumping between branches, whithered, blooming, strong, weak, mutating into some other creation before my very eyes without intention or direction simply being, simply being, who really gives a fuck anyway? 

Life is short, eat cake, get laid, drink rum, enjoy the water while it lasts. Enjoy the beaches while they last. Enjoy, enjoy. I wonder, I wonder how long until it's all swept away? How long, how long, how long?