The recordings of these next two sections of this text …
‘Seeing how lost we are’ P.104 and ‘Practice: Meeting our Actuality’ p.110…
are now available for you … at the bottom of the list of recordings of this book under the audio/video tab here … ❣️
Thanks Molly, for the stunning image to go with this….
This is now available if you look under the Audio/video tab…or click here
In response to James suggestion, and with his encouragement and advice …
On the first Sunday of each month, any of us who… whilst bodily separated … would like to come together as we are – like a flock of birds, settling into sitting practice… can meet for some sustained mediation practice together on-line.
If all goes well, this will continue on the first Sunday of every month.
We’ll be practising the Guru Yoga of the white ‘A’ followed by shamatha meditations… in five sessions:
9.45 -10.00 UK time …. Brief explanation/revision
Session 1 10 ~ 10.35
Session 2 10.55 ~ 11.40
Session 3 12.05 ~1.00
Session 4 2.00 ~ 2.45
Session 5 3.05 ~ 4.05
Starting each session with 3 mins of the Guru yoga, the sessions length increases (except for the sleepy after lunch shift!) throughout the day… until the final sit is for an hour.
Check at home at home to see how long three minutes is and get a sense of that…and how much of that time is open before fusion with arising thoughts, feelings and sensations occurs…
Relaxing back into openness maybe once or twice on the out-breath…but then, rather than getting into a struggle to stay open…
shifting to the light shamatha practice…or if that’s too subtle for the circumstances…being with the breath of the infinite flowing into the body… and releasing back into the infinite
The intention is to maintain the energetic connection of the group throughout the day if possible…but people are free to join and leave as they need…so people in different time zones are welcome to join in when they can…
Also if you’re new to this and the time seems too long …maybe just have a go…and see how it is…
You can always leave when you need and build up gradually… struggling isn’t helpful…but stretching might be …and relaxing into it, out of limiting thoughts certainly will be !
If you’d like to join us …just send me a message via ‘Contact Me’ on the home page…
If this work well then I’ll post an event for the 5th of October… so you can let me know in advance of that that if you’d like the joining details…
When I heard James say back in 2003 that many people didn’t know themselves very well…I was thinking of brain damage and also wondering about being ‘more myself’ what that might be!
‘You belong in awareness…’ Your mother is awareness….’
Oh…that sounds like a good mum…our actual mum… the one we’ve forgotten in
our shaky ego’s ungrounded efforts towards stabilising the unstabilisable and grasping at the vanishing.
In meditation we can begin to settle as we relax out of continuous involvement with arising thoughts feelings and sensations … towards being settled as presence with awareness as our abiding continuity… How we ‘take/make it to be’ seems less tasty… and more of ‘how it is’ – how we actually are, is revealed.
The previous post the Open door of Emptiness Ch.3 part (ii) is a gesture towards that exploration… (iii) and (iv) continue it…
The recording of the next section of the book is now published and inspired what’s below:
This image might make you go ‘Wow’…because to me ‘how it is’ is impactful…
The variations in colour and shape, are startling……
There’s nothing to be done with this…we can just receive it, be at one with it as it is…
If we stay relaxed and open…with this…we get the revelation of its fullness …
Then… the moment’s display refreshes…
But it’s rare to for us to engage with appearances in this way… We’re not used to tasting the freshness of experience and finding that enough…so our interest in this first and direct appreciation is very brief…
We ignore the unspoken invitation it gives to ‘Mind the gap’… stay open, don’t go abstract … and we step onto the ‘thinking about’ train of dualising consciousness… and straight back into samsara.
Separating in duality to… there’s ‘it’ there, a special something in the experiential field… and there’s ‘me’ here… We get busy…adding, and and then relating to, an overlaying web of thoughts…
These thoughts have little to do with what’s actually there…and a lot to do with ‘me’ and what I can bring to the party. ‘Me’ can be like a big handbag full of intoxicating spray – cans of dry knowledge, of biases, beliefs, stories, memories and opinions… which will surely help the party go with a swing!
Psst…Maybe not…and anyway… there is no party!…the image did not send out an invitation…
Never mind!… here I come ; )…mobilising in with my conceptual elaborations…
And as we shift to relating on that secondary and relative level… any freshness that the image offered is ignored… in favour of its potential utility as a springboard for whatever flavours of mentation come to mind.
Starting with ‘I like’ or ‘I don’t like’ as a feeling tone… we can divide the image it up into different parts.
There’s foreground and background depending on our interest… Our attention might be caught by what is central… we are used to that being the position for what’s most important.
We can label…naming the colours and shapes and separate with words like ‘flower’ and ‘wood’ and
We can dissect and label each part of the flower – as in a biology exam… …
We can classify – ‘it’s a nasturtium’ – though it doesn’t know it! As far as we know, flowers do not use human language to communicate among themselves.. or they would turn their heads in recognition : )
We can compare and contrast ‘this’ type with another…and know the conditions of soil water nutrients and sunlight that the plant might find ideal…
We can discover whether it’s an annual or perennial, whether it’s frost-hardy or not…
…and we can know that ‘its’s edible’.
We can drift into memories of grandma’s garden…or be glad that their leaves provided food for the butterflies…
And then there’s the wood. … the relationship between the wood and the flower– seeming brighter on a darker background…and on and on..
Does any of this thinking bring us closer to the showing… or does it distance us, enshrouding the freshness with a dusty veil?
The me-goic aspect of ourselves is however more than happy to engage in all this busyness …’I exist as someone who can add value… who knows what’s what… and can explain….’Yay – go me!”
And, having told myself what’s interesting and true about this… comes …’Let me tell you how it is…!’
Puff… puff… puff…the seemingly individuated self-bubble inflates…whilst at the same time, investing an air of importance and truth into… whatever is expressed!
None of this is a problem in itself…knowledge has its function, as does thinking…but all this agitated and agitating movement is occurring on the non-stop train… moving through awareness with the windows closed and the blinds down…
‘I know….’ chuff chuff chuff…
‘It is…’ chuff chuff chuff…
‘I think…’ chuff chuff chuff…
‘I think…therefore I AM….’ chuff chuff chuff!
The value of Descartes’ statement seemed obscure when I first heard it…a self-validating sealed loop of an idea, offering no useful insight… later seeing how this conclusion precludes any enquiry as to the nature of the thought, or the mind… the one who is thinking…or how it is to ‘be’?
It was later critiqued by Pierre Gassendi…with a response that makes more sense to me, and dharma before that would agree… that the most he could honestly conclude is that ‘thinking is occurring’.
And that is far from proof that there is an individual who is thinking!
As we can see it’s so easy to fall asleep into our soup of ‘knowing about’
However our interpretation is not what is in front of our eyes …
The dharma offers the possibility of being awake and present as presence… which doesn’t tangle with arising thoughts…nor reject them… they dance as petals in the breeze. As a petals we can dance with them or not, within the openness..
The invitation of ‘a flower’ to be simply received is unspoken…and direct reception is without words…
The dharma transmission from Shakyamuni buddha was received by Mahakasyapa in that way, with a smile.
So, maybe the lily/nasturtium/ petal-thought arising turd… is fine just as it is… without my gold or lead or other colour of spray paint?
Well, what do you think?
Could it be that varnishing these self-liberating expressions of the truth is…err…both unnecessary and problematic?
The stale megoic automaticity of thought-engagement can diminish…as the freshness of the open spacious of the truth of ourselves as home-base… becomes more familiar and wonderfully easing to us.
Then ‘My bag’ can shrink… as the spray’s sticky and condensing effect is realised… that the hand of the sprayer is caught in the act…entrapped….not free to be…
There is a lot to engage with in this twenty-five minute recording…and it’s my experience that listening and reflecting, again and again and again, may be necessary to the allow the message to penetrate deeply… rather than just be some words that we heard or read, that bounced off…like a down-pour of rain onto bone-dry soil.
That’s really not because we are stupid… but because we become stupefied – made stupid or senseless – by our attachment to unexamined beliefs. Beleifs which seem foundational… but have no basis in truth.
It invites us to look at beliefs that we take completely for granted… beliefs that, without these teachings, we would never dream of questioning in a million years.
Beliefs about who we are – such as that I am ‘Me’ …. a self-existent, individual, with autonomy – can be put into question and their falsity appreciated.
Hearing that the experiential field is panoramic and undivided.. inclusive of what we take to be self and other… and that there is a direct unmediated response to that which arises… prior to interpretation…
can put into question the value and function of all the interpretations that we make….and challenge the unwitting privileging of this second-order activity.
So we might become curious as to how to desist…or relax out of this …
The dharma teachings shine a light on how we disguise ‘how it is’ from ourselves in so many ways ……but old habits die hard.
Living the samsaric dream/nightmare lifetime after lifetime as a ‘thing’ amongst other ‘things’ with the five poisons running wild… is no picnic, and if we’re clear about how it is construed, we can see that trying to ‘think our way out’ is a impossible task…
and the invitation to mediation practice makes more and more sense…
We’ve had many…and one more follows …
in the Simply sitting Sun-days post
Road-runner… nose to nose with Wyle E. Coyote…
from the Warner Brothers film To Beep or not to Beep !
Sentences from James’ teachings have often – thankfully – ‘stopped me in my tracks’… and caused me to reflect…sometimes for a long time, acting like a koan…
‘Stopped me in my tracks’ is rather a telling phrase … it’s as if we have train-tracks underneath our feet… that we are unwittingly running on until we shift tracks, the tracks shifts… or something shifts us!
The audio-recording of the Introduction to Chapter 3 of the book, the Open Door of Emptiness is now published… and I was struck by this sentence referring to the construction of the different stories that we tell to different kinds of people: ‘The stories may seem quite true as we tell them, yet we can’t quite escape the knowledge that they are constructs, that in the telling of them we are creating the ground we are standing on.’
As I was unpacking that…as I see it … that the ‘ground’ we create in this way acts as a temporary platform, or jumping off point, for further expression and is, of course, not the self-existing ground… but more a moment by moment investment in selected aspects of the of the mind’s creativity … yet how in a confused way, as we busily link one thought-formation with another, we imbue the result… (which, if one were to give shape etc. to it… would have the all the integrity and strength of home-made polystyrene tile)… with stability validity and credibility … some vivid imagery arose – of a new scenario for a Looney Tunes cartoon!
I watched these cartoons a very long time ago!
There was Road-runner… the very tall ‘chicken’ who was such an incredibly fast runner…
So amazingly fast that he left a trail of smoke behind him as he happily sped through the Arizona desert…often fanatically pursued by the hapless Wyle E. Coyote…who was intent on destroying him.
As humans we are a bit like Wyle E. Coyote…with a plan to fulfil our desires by deploying a special dualistic conditioning kit bought cheaply from the Acme store (don’t buy from them – believe me, they never work!).
When Road-runner comes to an obstacle, like a canyon…no problem… down… and then up the other side he would go… quick as a flash.
So in this imaginary scenario Wyle Coyote plans to catch him as he shoots back up the other side of the canyon… by getting across the canyon before him, crossing directly… in a straight line – through the air… After all, the fastest way between two points is a straight line, isn’t it?
(Some wiser ones will know that this is not always so…it would depend on the terrain and many other factors… and also be thinking, look before you leap…but anyway…!)
So he buys an ‘air-suspension-bridge’ kit from Acme.
On delivery, he discovers the kit is comprised of a generous supply of short wooden planks in a bag … and the instructions for their effective deployment.
The instructions tell him to carry the bag under one arm and run very very fast towards the canyons edge… then use the other arm to start laying out the track, throwing the pieces out in front of him so quickly that, letting momentum carry him forward … he would be able to run onto the next piece before it fell to the ground.
So much quicker than going down one side and up the other…he thought!!!
Maybe you can picture the scene as he runs onto the track… as it briefly extends towards the other side … through the air across the chasm…
before panning down to a coyote-shaped depression in the canyon floor…as road-runner passes going ‘Beep Beep!
Life in samsara ; )
If he had turned the plan over, perhaps he would have found its deconstruction…another sentence from the introduction… and given up the dualistic chase, for:
‘To locate a moment in the arc of time, you have to apply an interpretive structure…which disguises the immediate actuality of the moment’
…and finding his way to the truth of that, would surely be a less painful and more satisfying way of spending his days!
Screenshot–image thanks to Wikipedia…under fair use policy…
This beautiful picture, accompanied by the words below…invites engagement with the recently published video of the talk which James gave in Macclesfield in spring this year…
‘Wisdom and Compassion are often said to be like the two wings of a bird. With their collaboration, we can fly free of the snares of samsara and its false dualism. We will integrate the wisdom of emptiness, which reveals how all our experience is like an illusion, with the kind compassion, which brings us into authentic contact.’
Bringing our confusion into direct connection with dharma James Low illuminates it’s profound truth using very relatable examples… from life’s experiences and world events…
With it’s relevance allied to the meditation practice he invites… life can open up as we lighten up…
There is also an audio recording of this talk prepared with great care by Gareth Williams if you’d like the option to listen.
You’ll find the audio and video listed as talk 23. on the Index to these talks (it’s also on the home page introduction)… along with all the others.
Talk 4, from back in 2006 has the same title – the same topic…but a different flavour which you might also enjoy!
A peaceful place for practice…. and placing of a tsa-tsa …
These images of the photos I took there may evoke the peace of stillness … yet they are dynamic, continuously reproduced every moment on the screen in front of you…
And the place itself was full of movement… … the shiffling leaves…the watching heads of the sheep…the clouds changing form…all, as the mind’s movements, arising and… dissolving
…..but the basis for all movement, the heart of all manifestations, is not another movement of the mind.
No words can put a handle on this because it isn’t encompassable by our vocabulary…yet it is that from which, for us, these movements arise.
And responsivity from openness arises feely as the dynamic aspect of non-duality with this…
It’s available whatever the location or situation … as James and others with this realisation have through time displayed…
Some of us are lucky enough to go on retreat this summer, and we may experience a bit of a shift out of our habitual fascination with whatever arises in the mind.
As we relax and open we can have a clearer sense of how we are… as the energy involved in that fusion releases a little bit.
However there can be a sense discombobulation after a retreat as we re-engage with the increasing turbulence of worldly affairs…Sometimes one of the five poisons pops up its head…you know the one… ‘aversion’….
If we get into that, rather than letting it move through, it brings rigidity and an increasing sense of solidity and separation, defined by opposition, as we react to dualistic ego-driven behaviour…in a dualistic ego-driven judgmental way…
With this we loose touch with the inclusive hospitality of openness to how others are showing… and act from a defensively limited position.
We are always in truth bigger than the event which catches us…or rather we get caught in as we catch…and however we respond has an impact on others ourselves and our world.
In samsara, karmic activity drives behaviour, choices are not free…
but the dharma invites us to the realisation of the the unchanging, uncompounded absolute at the heart of our being… and with that, comes freedom from suffering and…
if we can be as we truly are… seeing clearly both how it seems, relatively speaking… and how it is in truth, which brings equanimity… our momentary impact will be beneficial …and ungraspable.
If it were easy the world would not be as is it…but we can following the scent of openness from the retreat …with practicing and studying…there’s two new books just published (check the simplybeing website)… along with so much else…there to encourage our journey of dharma discovery and relating in the middle way…
Not nothing at all empty, empty – nihilisn… not strongly real – eternalism
Many of us have planted Earth pots and placed tsa-tsas, around the world …spreading out in a web of connectivity… invoking the compassionate aspect of wisdom to shine forth for the benefit of all sentient beings, illuminating the way out of delusion.
I came across this lovely spot by chance, and placed a tsa-tsa at the foot of this tree with the prayers James gave us… and reciting the last prayer in his book Aspiration for Happinesss in the World. (No.32 in the audio series of the book Longing for Limitless light under Audio/Video on this website)….and, as an echo of the profound wishes of so many prayers, prayed …
‘May we all realise our true nature….so that the tensions which distort views and close hearts are resolved in openness…as presence, free from free of dualistic judgment’
‘The approach offered in Dzogchen is helpful in its depth…
it is helpful in its radiance…
and it helps to make us more aware of our intrinsic connectivity…’
James Low
These words are from the closing paragraph of this section of the book…which is published as an audio recording, this new-moon day in May.
At this time it is as if the sun and moon come quietly together…
and from this darkness, through the lunar month, brightness increases to a peak, …followed by diminution to darkness with just a little light…
The life of the body… and many systems both within and without it… parallel this cyclical display, over a shorter or longer time frame…
and so it is for all compounded phenomena…for all constructs, as the Buddha noted…
His final exhortation… to keep going until the truth of the uncompounded was realised… was given to the monks around him at the time …
That which does not wax or wane, that which does not change, is the basis for the expressions of both wisdom and confusion.
Through time teachers with that same realisation have arisen, who show, indicate, and invite us to look in such a way that we also might find freedom from the constrictions and suffering which flows from taking the unreal to be strongly real…and with that release, the realisation of our full potential
There is a big difference between how it actually is, and what I think it is … but this is medicine that our egoic attachment makes difficult to swallow.
However, if trust in ‘my certainties’ diminishes as trust in the teachings of openness or emptiness increases…and I keep looking with a gentle eye… then the invitations in this text to ‘relax and open’… and ‘doing non-doing’ may help us see more clearly how it is before… my ‘doing’ casts a shadow …
…perhaps so that, in the dusty and deserted mid-west town…… moved by the wind that’s passing through… the one remaining door of the ego-saloon bar creaks a little as it swings listlessly… back and forth… hanging from it’s bent hinge
doing no harm, no-one inside…no-one outside, blocking no-thing…
Sounds like crap to your dualising consciousness? That’s ok …just relax back into spaciousness…it’s gone… : )
But we can enjoy /appreciate the flavour of ‘crappy prose’ without judgment …and however emptiness arises as the mind’s display, as our experiential field…trust that will vanish by itself…then there’s this…
….so how is ‘this’ before I appropriate it into consciousness, into my labelling value systems, and put my stamp on it?
Photo credit : I’m not recommending, nor have I looked at the content of the site but appreciating the sense of numinous radiance evoked by this photo – thanks to Lifereader.co.nz.
Trying to ‘inwardly digest’ James’ writings has been an education for me in different ways…
Sometimes I’ve followed unfamiliar threads of connection….out and back…trying to look from the different perspectives of connectivity with the teachings that journey invited.
Early on I came across an image of a buddha underneath which,
referencing the words in René Magritte’s famous painting ‘This is not a pipe’… , he had written ‘this is not a buddha’.
I puzzled over it for quite a while…thinking… umm…well, it looks like one to me!
But I was curious to know… in what way was I mistaken?
So then I found an image of Magritte’s painting of the pipe and pattern-matched it, like in a game for young children, with the pipe my dad used to smoke.
This one has a curved stem, his had a straight stem…but surely both were pipes…?
Eventually …as my view was put into question…the penny dropped
So, in a similar vein…is this… a ‘banana’?
Part (v), the penultimate recording of the second chapter of the book the Open door of emptiness, has just joined the others in the series.
You’ll find them all under the audio/video tab… along with other book recordings …
Depending on how you hover/ click you may also come across the introductions to them.
If it’s just this series that interests you at present, you’ll find part (v) at the very bottom of the page.
When you’ve engaged with this you may never look at a ‘banana’ in the same way again…for it’s a great exposé … not just about bananas but also every other ‘some thing’ …
If you can find the time, i think there is also great value in listening to the original recordings which form the basis for the text ‘Love and Impermanence’, both in the book and this recording.
These are, necessarily, abridged…and you may find that your appreciation deepens if you listen to the full length originals…where James expounds and circles around a topic…such as representation!…to help us get the point.
May these ‘wisdom massages’ … help us and all sentient beings, retire from our full-time jobs as mental construction-workers… so that our dancing together in space is free…fresh… light… and easy…
~ completed on the full moon day of May ~
I bought this book, Machig’s Way, to read on my birthday…
it was so very moving…
I’ve just got around to writing a review of it on Amazon…and thought I’d also publish it here so more people might have the pleasure and appreciation of this work of art and heart, with it’s invitation to us all…
‘About twenty years ago I read a book which had a profound impact on the course of my life…
It was ‘The Yogins of Ladakh’… by John Crook and James Low…
It offered many extraordinary insights, including a sense of the depth of James’ wisdom and capacity… which, as a student, deepened and confirmed my confidence…
It also introduced me the story of how, despite the many obstacles in her way… the great dakini Machig Labdron persisted until her goal… of a life of dharma practice… was attained.
Her example illuminated that possibility, and stayed with me …
She had inexorable determination and courage… and although In our day and age, we may have much more freedom to follow the dharma path than she had, these qualities are vital if we want to to use our freedom wisely… and do as she did – responding to the dharma’s heart call and ‘walking the walk’, freeing ourselves from samsaric snares as we go…
This wonderful book, arising as the flower of warm collaboration, is a vivid re-telling of her life.
It brings together Diana’s beautifully evocative images… and James’ expression of Machig Labdron’s words of wisdom…into a dance with us…
so as we immerse ourselves in this, we may resonate with their truth…
She was an inspiration to practitioners of long ago …. and still is, through time, today.
The invitation offered by the dharma, by Machig Labdron, by this book (buy this book!!!) is, as James writes is…
~ to be returned to our own simplicity… and set our own lamp of awareness ablaze ~ ‘
Wonderful indeed!
This dharma ‘easter egg’ is now added to the other recordings from the book ‘The Open Door of Emptiness’.
You’ll find it, with other book recordings, by clicking on the Audio /video tab.
As James has explained, the dharma is here to help us in our life.
Maintaining a dharma view as we engage with the day to day turbulence of the world…not getting lost in the nonsense…is no easy task…
Yet if we make full use of the help that’s been offered so freely… it surely will get easier…
The teachings are provided… whether in person…in books…recordings – in whatever form the dharma shows up for us…so we can absorb what we need from them
Then contemplating, as we massage them into us over and over again and again… our rigidities will gradually soften… so that their deep meaning can in time, sink into our heart…
When this occurs so completely that dharma-wisdom becomes the basis for expression…then compassion will be every-ready, at our finger tips – the fulfilment of our potential…
I can remember unwrapping an egg, as a little girl, one Easter Sunday …peeling off the shiny foil…and breaking in with a cracking bite. Also the slightly disappointed feeling ‘oh there’s nothing inside this one’ on finding it was hollow.
I hope you’ll feel no lack in the empty-ness of this particular egg…paradoxically it’s both empty and satisfying!
With zero calories, no artificial additives…and absolutely no saccharine …it can be eaten again and again…
As each mouthful re-minds us of the truth of us… unlike with a chocolate egg, we get healthier and lighter with every bite!
Offerings….
an eyeful, a heart full, a mind full of blossoms…
Blossoms arising for every mother…
springing directly as love from the heart …
For ours, in this life-time…
and each who is sharing
life in this world, although feeling… apart
For all sentient beings…
in every direction
our mothers of life-times,
where gratitude starts…
Blossoms of wisdom showing as teachings
Blossoms…of love… for each wandering child
to find peace and ease in truth’s generous welcome…
always an aspect, and never apart…
not weighed in the balance…
The mother we share as the basis for being
shows perfect reflections,
and never departs….
In one Macclesfield teaching James said to us ‘you’re fine as you are’…’you could be more you’… offering us the possibility of acceptance with an invitation to be curious…
and… ‘Your nature is completely pure’…’
Really!?… Yep, the buddhas are not liars… that is how it is…
But in ignorance of this, our dualising consciousness will be working with whatever concepts of ‘our nature’ and ‘pure vs impure’ bring to mind… in a vain attempt to try to match our sense of self with some extraordinary words…
And as we reify, attribute value by comparing and contrasting, and define ourselves and others according to ideas and activities….
all this ‘normal human’ activity acts like an on-going smoke-screen, obscuring the truth of the statement.
On becoming a mother I had the luck to come across a book by Penelope Leach which suggested that when the behaviour of a toddler seems problematic the disliked behaviour can be worked with… without interrupting love for the child.
It seemed that the invitation was for the parent to see that the child is in need of a creatively helpful response…to collaborate with them as they are, in the specific situation… rather than allowing judgment to trigger an automatic behaviour which may be familiar from their own childhood as a means of exerting control. Maybe instead of withdrawal of affection or some other punishment, to hang in there and be curious as to ‘how best to be for them’ at that time.
Similarly we can treat ourselves with this kindness and be curious and non-judgmental about what we are up to.
As we explore the talks we find that ‘being more you’ did not mean being more authentic to our notion of the truth of ourselves…and indulging this. Acting out onto others an impulsive expression of whatever arises in the mind is clearly not the height of our potential…but rather, ‘being more you’ is about coming closer to how we actually are.
And this opens us to the possibility of acting skilfully, ‘with finesse’, into the situation.
There are many dharma methods which may be helpful in re-parenting our anxious little orphan ego-selves… these transient shapings formed by linking constructs…the patternings with which we habitual identify as ‘Me’.
Each method, if applied correctly, produces a result….some may act as temporarily beneficial ‘holding patterns’ but all tend towards the Buddha’s realisation of the uncompounded the uncreated…the absolute truth of ourselves.
All unhelpful tension-driven activity may relaxed out of…in the arms of Prajnaparamita, in the wisdom of openness… from whence arises the true love of ultimate compassion.
With the teachings so generously perpetuated and carefully transmitted through time we have encountered what we need to be at home wherever we find ourselves, non-dual with the generously spacious hospitality of awareness and emptiness.
May we make good use of our rare opportunity…
Flowers for Mothers day and everyday:
The audio of Love and impermanence part (iii) is now published
The latest writings by James 23rd and 25th of March are essential for keep our boats on course and afloat in the increasing turbulence of this time.
In our time the Radio 4 program (9am thurs 27th march) was about Maurice Merleau-Ponty…who was part of the movement known as phenomenology. The Phenomenology of Perception is one of the books he wrote…and ‘Wonder in the face of the world’ is a beautiful quote from that…
James once described the practice as ‘applied phenomenology’… you might find it an interesting program.
However his book ‘Love your Mother’ would be today’s recommendation : ) … the fund set up for anyone needing help to purchase books is still open.
The wishes were made in the morning…but posted in the evening!
Meeting up with a group of us, one sunny Saturday in Macclesfield, James said he had been ‘crocussed’ on his way there.
I remember sharing his enjoyment… and earlier had seen the grounds of the cemetery of the nearby churchyard, through which he had walked on the way. They were spangled with this amazing array of freshness…of shape and light, of colour…
The mind, metaphorically ‘mirror-like’, was momentarily filled with an un-mediated perception….a display including masses of what, in the English language, are reduced to the label …’crocuses’!
I’d suggest that revelation…no ‘thing’ in itself…yet stunning and heart-opening …was available in its fullness through receptivity…through presence.
In one of the macclesfield talks, maybe that one, I learned from James about how perception comes first and is direct…but is so quickly veiled by the secondary movements of abstract conceptualisation.
We make our own ‘sense’ of the perception through applying and incorporating an interpretational overlay … formed from whatever thoughts feelings memories associations come to mind in the moment.
Often there’s so much that we don’t even register what’s around when we’re walking… maybe hurrying… along the path towards ‘something’…
We’re busily thinking about what might happen, has happened, or is happening…maybe how something or someone else is…
So, partially abstracted from life, within the dimly-lit thought-cupboard, we’re distracted into giving our own meaning to whatever imagined absent ‘something’ which arises for me..
As we look… and then conceptually conceive ‘through a glass darkly’… the spacious bandwidth available for receiving and responding to ‘how it is’ is artificially constricted by our egoic pre-occupations.
And so we become more estranged from the ‘happenings’ of the broad experiential field of now – whilst also being a non-dual aspect of that field.
If this strangely estranged view…a view from a window in an encapsulation within openness… is the starting point for our engagement with others, then being able to respond into a situation from the fullness of our potential… appropriately, as required – is a very long shot!
And the more we believe that view to be more than situationally true for me, within relative reality … well, the world’s non-sense shows how that goes…
We happily have the luck to come across the dharma teachings and meditations which offer ‘de-encapsulation medicine’ free of charge!…
They can invite ‘bursting the bubble of self’… which sounds dramatic and painful…and something the ego wouldn’t want to do…but we have a nascent wisdom which moves us in that direction…
And we can see how actually…it’s locating oneself inside the bubble which is a cause of suffering and a painful constriction of our potential.
The teachings facilitate our softening and relaxing out of any circumscription, any fixed shape.
A release from the constrictions, being breathed by the life of the moment into….?… let’s see… : )
Evening-time now…the crocuses have closed their flowers…for the night : )
P.s. This post links with the previous one, of the new recording… part (ii) of Love and Impermanence
The recording of Part (ii) of the chapter Love and impermanence is now available from the Audio/Video tab above, in The Open Door of Emptiness series.
If you were listening on Saturday 1st March to James’ teaching on ‘Effortful Selectivity and effortless non-selectivity’ you’ll maybe find the contents unconsciously resonating with the themes he explored.
If you didn’t get to see that live, then you might find that video complements this teaching and vice versa.
Each time a fresh expression …
In my experience these ripples of dharma act like the sea on my egoic sandcastle… a form built of and from the open sea’s shore …
As the tide comes in…each little ripple of arriving water has an impact on the apparently given stability of the structure…
At first the sand gets wet.. then dries as the water retreats…
But gradually, as ripple follows ripple…
the outer ramparts, rigid constructs… soften… and then slide into the sea…
Then the inner structures strictures or constrictions…the grasping at, and that which is grasped at…
give way to the truth… and all releases…
and freshly emergent experiences, in openness, arise and dissolve naturally…like the waves of the sea
P.s. There’s also a new post about being crocussed! …which comes and goes with this…
These are not Valentine’s Day flowers! : )
The image is of some flowers from 2023 …that I took to thank the sender.
The image remains but the flowers…long gone..
No valentine flowers today? No long-stemmed rose ; ) ? No problem…!!!
From this link (Heart Sutra search results, SimplyBeing) you’ll find an abundance of flowers with perennial freshness…
Talks… and texts which flower and manifest their scent through our engagement…
Their bright and vivid display glows with the illuminating commentary!
James has encouraged reading the Heart Sutra every day…
But to help us do more than ‘ just recite’ or ‘run our eyes over the words’ …to help us take it into our hearts and lives, and have it’s truth as the basis for our existence…
we need (well I certainly need!) the explanations and commentaries…
With the help of these we can receive a fresh delivery each time…each gently touching and opening our hearts… to the truth of how it is.
Saying or singing the mantra is another way of having it’s truth run through and impact our embodiment…
Back in 2014 Adrian Freedman visited the summer retreat at Emerson College to teach us the tune he had composed for the Perfection of wisdom mantra…and it was truly beautiful experience to sing that, all together : )
It now features as track 9. in his new album of sacred songs… but if you download the PDF of James’ revision of C.R. Lama’s translation of the Heart Sutra from the page linked above or click here you’ll find it included there…so you can listen or sing along…
I’ve seen a variety of translations offered for this Great mantra…
from E. Conze’s:
Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond, O what an awakening, all-hail !
to James’ 2013 revision of C.R. Lama’s 1978 translation :
In this way, gone, gone, gone beyond, fully gone beyond. Awakened – as it is!
to my memory of what we sang with James at Emerson:
Gone, gone, gone beyond…gone beyond the river… to the further shore
to the words Adrian has used in his album:
Gone, gone, gone beyond…gone beyond the ripples of the further shore…
There’s another bunch of flowers that complement this!
From the Index to the Macclesfield Talks …
you’ll see that the Heart Sutra is the topic of Talk 13. The illusory nature of experience.. the heart sutra… Here are links to audio and videos of the talk…
If you like to read, here is the edited transcript. Editing this was a labour of love which took me a long time to complete. But I think eventually the clarity of the talk shines a bit brighter and the repeated engagement is like ploughing a field. It helps to soften up the accumulated rigidites …so the dharma can penetrate a bit deeper !
I’ve just found it on the SB site but currently it’s not not linked with the audio, so it’s a bit buried and you may be one of the first few to read it… If you do : )
Flowers everywhere!!!
With other sweet heart work …. we can be making Tsa tsas.
This is a beautiful practice… from understanding what why and how (lots on the website, writings from James, as well as from the link above) all the way though to their placement in the world…and dedication.
We can of course do this on our own but Hannah Holtbernd, details on the linked page, sometimes organises this as a group activity… and facilitates this in a lovely gentle way…
If you are interested in doing this together with others you could get in touch with her…
In a similar vein we can make and create and plant Earth pots…
You’ll find there is a link for information about that, and to Anna who facilitates that activity, at the bottom of the Tsa tsa page, linked above.
Again this is, in my experience, a beautiful thing to do. Making/creating filling and placing all done with profound intention to bring benefit to sentient beings and to the world…
Placing Tsa-tsas and Earth pots can take us out into nature…and as you probably know and I learned through time… nature, the arts and spirituality can all bring healing on different levels…
Which brings me to Gareth William’s bouquet ; )
He’s a long-time student of James… and his beautiful offering is of connection through music… as a movement for peace and global harmony.
From his website: ‘Gareth leverages the universal language of music to make a positive difference in the world. His unique blend of musical talent and psychological insight fuels his dedication to fostering unity, compassion, and sustainability.
Calling all artists, producers, music enthusiasts, and everyone who is passionate about using their talents for a greater cause. Please join or contribute to the project and help create a positive impact through music.’
You can see from the piece of work that he composed/created in relation to the destructive pollution of the river Wye, a beautiful river which flows near where he lives …how he is showing and sharing a way to be with sadness and respond in ways which are not aggressive nor passive… but creative and connective and healing.
Last in this message but not least, as James mentioned along with Tsa tsa making in the Q&A on Wednesday evening…we might, if we have some money to spare, give sponsorship towards funding ways for others to connect with the dharma.
I’d add that you can give dana/make a donation towards the functioning of that website, spreading the dharma and various dharma activities on this link on the Simply Being website. Generously sharing some of what the world has shared with us is an intangibly enriching gesture of connectivity, in the movement towards the greatest benefit for all.
May all flowers… and vases …come together in perfect harmony…and the scent of wisdom pervade in all directions!
