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Getting Real

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 18:02:45 +0000

Here's an essay -- Daode Jing & The Names Of God -- which doesn't feel quite complete, as it stands, but oh well. I welcome your comments and suggestions, which I'll weave into the next re-vision. In the meantime, enjoy!

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Cosmic Sadhana

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 11:01:27 +0000

[photo: Alaska's Mount Redoubt displaying her ferocious beauty]

On the recommendation of a friend, I attended a talk this past Friday by Anam Thubten -- a Nyingma practitioner and teacher who was here in Boulder for the weekend. Though Rinpoche has years of training in a particular Tibetan Buddhist lineage, he speaks from the core of nondual mystical insight -- insisting that Truth is not and could never be "owned" by this or that tradition. Very inspiring.

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Peaceful & Wrathful Deities

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 14:30:48 +0000

A passage from Rumi -- one with a decidedly confrontational edge -- that I posted last week, drew forth an interesting exchange, between a reader who felt the remarks to be way too harsh, and someone else who felt them to be a legitimate means for, shall we say, shocking into wakefulness those who otherwise may have remained asleep.

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Simultaneous Mind

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 19:33:53 +0000

In Tangled Hierarchy & The Mysterious Pass I played around a bit with Escher's well-known hand-drawing-hand drawing, wondering, first of all, whose hand was "really" creating the sketch, and then, whether the actual artist could be perceived within the visible creation? Or, in relation to Taoist practice: can Tao (or Wuji) be directly perceived within/as the ten-thousand things?

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Something Strange & More Beautiful

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:45:39 +0000

Benedicto

May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous,
leading to the most amazing view.
May your rivers flow without end,
meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells,
past temples and castles and poets' towers
into a dark primeval forest
where tigers belch and monkeys howl,
through miasmal and mysterious swamps
and down into a desert of red rock,
and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm
where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs,
where deer walk across the white sand beaches,
where storms come and go
as lightning clangs upon the high crags,
where something strange and more beautiful
and more full of wonder than
your deepest dreams waits for you--
beyond that next turning of the canyon walls.

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Vitality & Consciousness, Once Again

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:44:10 +0000

Last week we briefly explored a couple of translations of verse ten of the Tao Te Ching. Here's a more extended commentary on the same verse, which suggests, in various ways, an integration of Congenital Nature and Life Force, which have a way -- once we're born into human form -- of playing hide-and-seek with each other, until we make some kind of effort or surrender in the direction of re-membering their original unity.

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Has Anyone Seen My Horse?

Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:48:47 +0000

Whatever men chatter about these days, it is not love's way.

God gave the blind man a stick so that he may grope to a Jesus and gain sight. Look at all the blind men bashing one another with the stick of intellect! Some even swing the stick at He who gave the stick!

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Carrying Vitality & Consciousness

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:54:22 +0000

Carrying vitality and consciousness,
embracing them as one,
can you keep them from parting?
Concentrating energy,
making it supple,
can you be like an infant?
Purifying hidden perception,
can you make it flawless?
Loving the people, governing the nation,
can you be uncontrived?
As the gate of heaven opens and closes,
can you be impassive?
As understanding reaches everywhere,
can you be innocent?
Producing and developing,
producing without possessing,
doing without presuming,
growing without domineering:
this is called mysterious power.

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Li Po & Tu Fu: Eternal Friends

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:33:24 +0000

Each in his own right a truly great poet, Tu Fu and
Li Po were also the best of friends: spending time together, writing poems to each other, and generally greatly enjoying each others company. Both are remembered as wonderful Taoist poet-sages, still here sharing, through their written words, their intimate playful wisdom. Enjoy!

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Leveling All Things

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:40:39 +0000

"There is nothing under the canopy of heaven greater than the tip of a bird's down in autumn, while the T'ai Mountain is small. Neither is there any longer life than that of a child cut off in infancy, while P'eng Tsu himself died young. The universe and I came into being together; I and everything therein are One."

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