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…
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 ~ ‘
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…
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…!!!
On the theme of Love and Impermanence…( the recording in the post before this)…here are many flowers…a big bouquet!
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!
So maybe it’s a good day to say that: The second chapter of the book ‘The Open Door of Emptiness’ is called ‘Love and impermanence‘ …and the recording of the first part of the chapter is ready to listen to now… If you look under Audio, you’ll find it at the bottom of this set…
Here, in a kindly way, without judgment, we are invited to look very precisely at what we get up to… What are we assuming?…What are we ignoring?…What is the basis for our beliefs?…Who are we?
If we were to just sit there and think… What am I assuming? What am I ignoring? On what are my beliefs based? Who am I?… it’s not likely that we’d get very close to the heart of the matter. Not because we are stupid… but because we begin the investigation with a squint which distorts our perspective…
However when the squint… our tinted view, in the recording… is recognised as such and its causal factors are explained, then the possibility of seeing clearly, without any wool over our eyes, opens up. We have been given a chance, with skilful methods to help us…
‘Old habits die hard’ as the saying goes…and ‘patterns insist’, as I have learned… but the key and most unusual question is raised… about their ownership…and this can help to dissolve the dualistic glue…
The bit in the introduction ‘About the book’ gives a sense of the great love behind all this … Arising from the good heart energy – from the teachings themselves to their reproduction in different ways – as the work of many…evoked by many…for the benefit and freedom of us all
I am humbly and profoundly grateful… For without this dharma, and these many explanations…then what???
‘The old man of the village called us back to drink three cups beneath the crooked mulberry.
Mankind is small but this drunkenness is wide and great– where now is Japan, where is your Korea?’ *
Just thought- lines in the shifting sand drawn in the mind by the wind-fingers of karma… Yet in identifying more with one side it’s as though we see through just one eye… and define and reify with the other
And a deeper sense of fragmentation with agitation and polarisation occurs through biased interpretation of the contra-distinction of conceptualisations
Yet… all this mental activity comes to naught for what is really made by thought? Where does it take us to ? Nowhere – still here, but not quite simply being
See how, with just a little space… ‘Nowhere’ becomes ‘Now here’ … my little joke : ) … opening to our potential **to live in equanimity, calmly and contentedly
free from all care, acting naturally and reasonably Not striving to avoid delusion nor seeking after the truth… …knowing delusions as baseless and truth as ourself**
So… may dualistic tensions be recognised as baseless … and dissolve in the deep peace of their origin… May we and all beings fully realise how we actually are…
Morning Glory ~ Epiphany 6th Jan 2025 ~ “Womens’ Christmas” in Ireland…
This plant, without my glasses on, looked dead… so I was about to take down its drying stems and leaves… but on closer inspection noticed what looked like buds and so left them, and instead watered the pot… and was surprised by flowers in January!
Will there be flowers from new growth…maybe… Will there be flowers from old stems ?…maybe…
Botanically… the potential for flowering may be present but it is latent, unless and until the necessary causes and conditions are in place…
If the bud’s not fully developed then it cannot not open to the warmth of the sun’s rays…and the viability of the plant itself depends upon so many factors… activity in the stem and leaves and roots, survival of the greenfly onslaught, fertility of soil, nutrition, freedom from disease…sufficient watering… space… and light
Dharmically… our potential to realise how we are is ever-present…and although realisation is not a product of conditions… dharma ‘re-conditioning’ can bring about a softening and loosening … easing out from fixity and rigidity…to more spaciousness and lightness…
Perhaps we had some presents to unwrap at Christmas… but we already have so many riches – all we need to help us unwrap from the beliefs which constrict own potential.
We currently have ‘on loan’… and (ahem…) we don’t know how long the lease is! ~ this human body, along with the faculties and freedoms which allow us to appreciate and connect with the stream of dharma we’ve encountered… ~ access to so many of James’ and others’ clear dharma explanations… with the opportunity to ask questions to clarify our understanding of what we’ve read and seen and heard… from this, and also from example… ~ connection with compassion which arises from openness… free of assumption and appropriation, free from the objectification of dualising consciousness
All this… as movements of the mind… which is not on-loan…but ‘the chief’…. a given and enduring treasure… can evoke the scents of ease and freshness and act as a catalyst for the realisation of our own potential freedom.
Inviting that slight, yet deep adjustment, from being not quite here… to being fully present as presence… so we too may flower from openness, unconditioned…
Above: the ragged tulips dance… free from convention : )
A bit more on connectivity to follow …but this, is plenty long enough!
* from William Wray’s Sayings and tales of Zen Buddhism
Many years ago James gave me a CD of C.R. Lama chanting prayers.
I have played this a lot. The energetic quality of the sound impacted, resonated with, and changed the field of experience of myself and the environment …helping to open the bandwidth of receptivity and connectivity to the lineage… and what flows with that…
The chants themselves are available to listen to and download from the simplybeing site. If you’d like to listen…just go to the C.R. Lama page (top left) on the home page, and click ‘listen to C.R.Lama chanting and talking’.
The images below are from the CD including further information… and echoing the dedication of merit linked with the creation and gift of these recordings…for the benefit of all…
i) The shining moon of wisdom…the clarity, or energy of the mind’s display… inseparable from open emptiness
ii) and this?
Below image i) there are some shapes that we call ‘letters’, arranged in groupings we call ‘words’ … They don’t say anything from their own side…but as we attend to them, the concepts that we apply make them meaningful for us (or not) in different ways… according to our conditioning.
If we have a dharmic orientation they may resonate…but how to attune with the truth that they gesture towards and live from that? This book offers a way in…and it’s first chapter ‘Getting to know how we are’ is, in my opinion, so very helpful with this. Part (iii) the final part, is now available to listen to… illuminating how to practise the middle way, beyond extremes…(too tight is at 3’52 and too loose at 11’58)
The creativity of the mind shows itself continuously… As I look at image i) …the central whiteness of the ‘moon’ seems more brilliant than the whiteness of the ‘page’ on which its set… …and if I look a while longer, this white disc becomes grey with a white ring around it…
Image ii) could be another visual metaphor…perhaps for wisdom and its absence… A vision of ice shelves fissuring and melting into the seas….with, just below the centre, a radiant peacock, its extravagant tail hanging down… Above and to the left of that… Padmasambhava…surrounded by many beings, some enshrouded by their beliefs, others awake or awakening to how it is…and becoming lighter…
But both images are the same, in nature – the showing of no-thing…
Samsaric ignorance or stupidity is not innate but is an on-going ignoring… not looking to see, not opening to receive, ‘how it is’… Instead we trust in our blind beliefs that ‘how I think it is’… ‘how I imagine it to be’…is how it actually is So we are pixilated – bemused, bewildered, slightly crazy, intoxicated – as we take the product of our egoic con-fusion of concepts and pixels of light … to be veridical ; )
As we heard in one of James’ teachings, many yeas ago…light + concept equals pseudo-entity… Image (i) is of the full moon November 2024, (ii) is of the residue left in a grey washing-up bowl…a few days after emptying out the clothes-soaking water! : )
Buddhists have made tsa-tsas imbued with prayers… sometimes placing them in stupas and other holy places… for centuries. Over the last few years many of James’ students and those connected with them have being doing this around the world… and following the invitation and instructive help of others… and linked with the Earth Healing group, I’ve also made quite a few. Sometimes making them on my own, sometimes with others…sometimes placing them on my own, sometimes with others…Sometimes others have placed them locations meaningful to them… all these connections have been delightful!
Tending towards perfectionism, I spent a while checking out different types of clay…where it can be purchased….and fired (though that’s not essential)… This brought me into connection with Devon potters and others… but in the end a local ‘decorate and make your own pot’ shop cum café offered the solution for me. The friendly lady who runs it gave me a large tub of clay for very little cost and fired the tsa-tsas destined to be buried in the earth pots free of charge…and I happily enjoyed her cooked breakfast! : )
It’s a soothing activity in itself to work with clay…and the image formed in the process is imbued with prayers for the most profound welfare for all. So the wisdom and beneficial capacity of the deity…and our own latent/ nascent potential…are clearly connected in the process.
Then the placement of these tsa-tsas takes us out into the world, into sites of beauty where, with the prayers we offer, we can see them as acting as ‘place-holders’, focal points of beneficial energetic radiance…and bringing healing into areas where activities arising from ignorance have despoiled land and sea… and the lives of those connected with such exploitation.
Many people are suffering through feeling isolated, disconnected, and impotent; we are very fortunate in having the practices that we do… Being able to do what we can that’s beneficial, in a way that resonates with and for us, is such a blessing and as these tsa-tsas are placed across the world we can imagine a physical ‘web’ forming, infinitely illuminating the interconnectivity of our hearts and those of all sentient beings within the illusion of duality, with the infinite potential of emptiness…
Julie joined me in making some tsa-tsas a month or so ago and mine went up onto Dartmoor a little while later. The images above are of Julie’s …as they recently found their place… in Dartmouth.
On a gloriously sunny late-autumn afternoon and evening we did some prayers on the harbour wall… and then she gently lowered the flat tsa-tsa into the water… for its blessings to dissolve into the seas…
Later we found and followed some steps down to and old fort…part of the defence of the harbour and the prosperous town that grew up around it. Now open to the sky it was quiet in the early evening and we could say prayers in the arched embrasure close to the water, where armed guards would once have kept look out ready to fire one of the two canons which covered the entrance to the port in case of attack.
Julie then placed the rupa in a niche, high up in the external wall …disguising it with jasmine, ferns and daisies…and, with the dedicating prayers…there it remains, transitioning… as the rain washes it, particle by particle… into the sea
It was indeed a beautiful evening…
… So if this connective activity takes your fancy, Hanna Holtbernd is kindly offering two days of opportunity to connect with each other around this 17 Nov. and 15 December. You’ll find the details on the Simplybeing website
Part (ii) is now published and includes Finding a method that works for you, Deconstructing our assumptions, and… Seeing things as real and being attached to them.
As dharma birds in the dharma tree
…this branch suits you
and this suits me
temporarily…
we may find some stability
nested
symbolically…
as a prelude to flying
invisibly
free
As we come into connection with the truth of emptiness …what happens to the fig-leaves of identification that, in taking ourselves to be some’thing’, we firmly hold in place?
If we gently examine this seemingly essential and definitional ‘clothing’ in the light of wisdom…its unsubstantial, non-essential nature becomes clear.
We do the same with the ‘self’, the one who is the wearer of the clothes…who is attached to these gossamer web-like ‘threads’ of mental clothing…
And we can see that… as the energy that flows with our attention is invested in particular beliefs… the shapings or ways of relating, that we adopt… become habitual… limited and limiting. Yet ordinarily these views are assiduously strengthened and bolstered by linking them with associated arising thoughts of a similar ilk…and then, like the cuckoo… our sense of self, our identity, settles down to sit in that nest we made…our ‘home sweet home’ !
Unless we are fortunate we won’t leave its, in time foetid, cosiness. But if we are, we get to turn around a bit and see that, inadvertently… we’ve turned our back on our unshaped, unborn naked awareness…within which both the nest and cuckoo rest!
If we see that our true home is awareness then we can see that putting on different ‘clothing’ that’s fitting to the situation, like an actor in a particular rôle…just as and when appropriate…is not so difficult. If the no-thingness of everything is clear then no clothes /’threads’/thoughts are special… true, our very own …
I’ve just started to record this book by James Low…and have finished the first section of ‘Getting to know how we are’. You’ll find it in the collection of other book recordings… under Audios/Video from the menu-bar.
Traditionally, if we follow that path, one can be re-born in Sukhavti or Dewachen, sitting inside a Lotus with the dharma spontaneously re-sounding all around….We sit… and listen… and reflect… for a very long time until the meaning of the teachings has been realised.
In this world it’s not so easy to find the time to listen to and engage with the dharma ….but currently we have a chance. May we find enough time for that which is most important…and benefit deeply…from all the dharma-heart’s treasure that comes our way.
Photo of embroidery: Qing dynasty (1644-1911), Qianlong period (1736-95) The Metropolitan Museum of Art
If write ‘above you’ll see my neighbours tree’…well would I lie to you?
That saying ‘seeing is believing’ is so often what we do … but the believing is deceiving… and it confounds the seeing!
Looking with wider eyes, is there just a tree?… – no sky, no clouds or sun?’ Okay… so maybe there is a tree and sky and sun and clouds in front of me…
Or maybe not…
Are there simply dots… showing variation of colour on the screen… (mostly back or white) which I take to show defined and separated shapes quickly pattern-matched to words with the easy familiarity of of one steeped in human concepts…
Connecting these words creatively… with echoes from the senses from memory… and beliefs, from ‘me’, I weave an artificial-a-tree!
Although it seems that there is, really, truly, something there…some self-existing ‘thing’ independent of the movements of my mind… That’s a belief…a thought taken to be true, invested with certainty by the energy of another thought (or two, or three…or four or many more!) Mum says to six month old tugging at what’s within it’s grasp from the back pack as we chat …that’s a tree! A silver-birch tree!!! it goes on and on from there…it’s a this…it’s a that…but whatever we call it that’s not what it is.
Then I could investigate further…this propensity to reify imaginings! Does something similar happen when I’m out in the garden looking at ‘my neighbours tree’… Do I separate dualistically, there’s me-subject and tree-object…do I interpolate a screen of interpretation between the tree and me? Or do I see what’s there prior this activity…the radiance, light or energy of my mind showing as forms of emptiness…none which are ‘things’.
In Shakespeare’s play Hamlet he says ‘there’s nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so’. But although it’s less poetic isn’t it more true to say thinking makes it ‘seem’ so, for the thinker…? And we can also look deeper… to the possibility of realising that there are no self-existing things onto which such an attribution of value could be stuck…Thinking, believing, that there are!.. won’t make it so… and closes the door to a vital question… regarding the nature of this confident labeller, the ‘sticker’ !
Adding concepts to light forms is the recipe for making samsara… a world of pseudo entities where, as we fall into reifying interpreting and identifying with arising thoughts… utilising them as the basis for our fabrications, the light of the mind seems obscured… And as we feel more dense solid and certain about our existence as individuated things we forget how much we have in common…most profoundly the equality of the empty ground or basis of our manifestation. It’s always there but ‘unseen’ by our way of looking… until we desist…and relax out of our hungry egoic fascination with any movement of the mind…in meditations which facilitate this realisation.
Can I relax out of my solidifying busyness enough to allow the showing of the energy, ‘the tree’ , to impact me, to open to it, relax into… allow myself to be at one with the tree? Then maybe I’ll see that the dry and dehydrating concepts which I, as ego-self, might usually unwittingly apply …making it seem more interesting to me… are not only superfluous … but a distraction. It’s a bit like putting a big wedding dress over it… you look so pretty! I say, relating to the dress/ing that I just added…I’m appreciating my creativity not what’s actually there.
Maybe you like Wordsworth’s poetry…and can kind of imagine the daffodils…but if really you want to ‘get’ a daffodil you’ve really got to be there, present..relaxed…soft gaze, absorbing, sniff… and put your face in it! Then…what can you say about that? …it’s ineffable! and more of life would be as that if we weren’t so quick to deaden it with our ‘knowing’ words
So, if you like, you can imagine me in the garden enjoying the display…
At eight a.m….morning tea, blackbird looks out from the neighbour’s tree… By nine… both gone!
…sawdust… logs… and chippings…!!!
Is there a gap in what I see… a hole left in the mind by the missing tree?…Happily not..it’s self-healing, always complete …
I appreciation of the tree I wrote:
For many years this full grown, vital tree offered generous hospitality… to birds and many beings
Nesting mating resting singing, playing fighting shouting screeching warming wings and preening feathers
shade and shelter from inclement weather, the smaller from the big predator
In conversation with the soil; fungi bacteria and all surrounding trees, and more, the clouds… the sun and moon… and stars
Drinking the rain and swapping gasses with the air It swayed and danced and bent in gales, and swished it’s branches in the breeze…
then suddenly…
first legs and arms, then head, then trunk,
erased from view
chunk after chunk like slow-mo etch-a-sketch…
Apparently…
my neighbour’s neighbour… is troubled by needles!
Eh!!?… Oh!… not the sharp and shiny ones but the browny and piney ones Riding the wind they sometimes fly from the tree and, thoughtlessly, some land… in his gutters!
Laughing or crying…??? which to do ??? sadness and laughter both move through…
Illusions arise that we call ‘you’ and ‘me’ ‘the bird’ ‘the chainsaw’ and ‘the tree’
but as they arise and we let them go free, we can play in the play… with equanimity
Appearances – as experience shows – Come as they come and go as they go!
P.S For some reading this, it might be a first taste … You’ll find that the You-Tube Videos of the recent retreat James gave ‘The practice of Meditation’ explain this and much more with great clarity! Releasing out our habitual orientations is not a task for the anxious ego…but, softening in the dharma rain and feel safer, closer to the truth..reliance on the ego-self construct diminishes and so we see more clearly
