You’ll find this recording from the drop-down menu under Audio/Video….in the header above
O.D.E is top of the list…click, then scroll down to the bottom…
When I abbreviate the book’s title in that way… a mental association arises, linking with the music Beethoven composed … and enjoying performances of Ode to Joy over the years (the link is to just six spectacular minutes, on YouTube) !
Although these teachings are not typical odes… as they are without conventional poetry or music…through our open attention, in time they reveal more of what they offer…
Their poetry and musicality shows…as they start to sing for us they ring many different bells…
Arising from appreciation of the truth… these are invitations to a different, and more profound, kind of joy from that which can arise in duality.
Each act/ performance/chapter is for us, with all sentient beings…and our engaged participation – bringing the teachings close to our hearts as we read listen and meditate on them… and into our lives… helps us to loosen out of our conditioning, into the freedom of our full potential
The ticket is free of charge…we don’t need to travel to get there…and we can sit wherever we like…!
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The featured image may have had you thinking… ‘what is that?’…and… ‘what’s that got to do with this recording?’
Here’s another…
Both are displays of shape and colour … but maybe we’re thinking and imagining…’there is a bird’…or ‘bits of the bird are missing from that’…..
I included the less defined image because as I looked it seemed to invite more appreciation of shape and colour than the foreground/background invitation where the bird is figural…just noticing how we can see differently with a relaxed uncritical eye…
‘What kind of bird is that?’ would be a likely thought…
Well some people would call it a ‘Monal’ …but those two syllables Mo nal don’t bring us much closer to it, do they?……so, feeding our urge towards mastery of knowledge, we want to know more ‘about it ‘…
However more knowledge… and post hoc labelling… ‘It’s a…’. or ‘I saw a….’. is just more dry stuff….whereas…
…the experience in the forest or on the hillside…being with the scents and temperature of the air, the feel of the feet in boots on the earth…and seeing the flash of colour, the movement and sound..it’s just ‘Wow’, vivid and fresh…then gone.
In different areas where this bird is found… it’s called by other names…but one thing we can be sure of is that any name we humans call it is as relevant to it as ‘pie in the sky’…and also, that what we ‘know about it’, as is the way with knowledge, is changing.
It seems that, in response to the increasing noise that humans are generating in much of its habitat…with construction and developments in areas which previously were quietly inhabited by native creatures and fewer humans … the birds in those areas are changing their tune…
In order to communicate effectively and find a mate, they are adapting to the changing circumstances in which they find themselves… by simplifying their song…. and turning up the volume…
That’s sad to hear…some consider bird calls to be one of the most sophisticated forms of sound-based communication in the natural world.
It’s also sad to see how, as the turbulence in the world increases, the great potential for nuanced and attuned human to human communication is tending in the same direction… with nuance decreasing as volume increases.
These teachings that we’ve had the luck to encounter… invite movement in a different direction…into the warmth of inclusivity arising from the hospitality of openness…
…and towards increasingly finessed expressions of connectivity.
Towards seeing ‘the other’… not as some knowable, judge-able entity… some ‘thing’…but instead, seeing their face of – ‘soft skin and water-bubbly eyes’ JL …and receiving how they are presenting…and responding from the openness of our potential… as a participant, finding a way of dancing together… connecting in the shared and open field…
Hope you enjoy the recording… Just to note that at 17.34 p.181 there is a sentence ‘We tend to mediate all that occurs through our conceptual discourse…telling stories about life as if it was composed of a stream of existents‘ (not existence)…it’s hard to make that difference clear with speech : )
Photo credit: Dr Rajeev Lochan who, in collaboration with others in Nepal and China, has been studying the impact of environmental changes on the Monal’s calls.
