omnium-gatherum

the birds come to my birdbath

 

Philip Sutton, The Tree, 1958

 

emelle says:

I’m a fool with little need of company.

There’s no one deemed respectable here,
so how could I demand respect?

When recognition only brings busyness,
how could I not love invisibility?

Knowing that mind is the slayer of silence
why would I want “the last word?”

Saturated by streaming aliveness
how could I be lonely?

I cherish the extraordinariness
of ordinary suchness
but few know what that looks like,
so I’ll tell you:

The birds come to my birdbath.

The dogs wag their tails
when I open my door.

My luna-lover beams at me
without reproach or expectation.

My cup runneth over
and the ants make the most of it;
they even cart off my toenail clippings.

When the tide of breath runs out
they will claim every scrap of this body
and have a banquet with the worms.

And their scats will feed the earth;
new grass will grow in the summer,
sap will rise in the trees
and they will exhale my smile.

I will be breathed back
into the fecundity of space.

Just like that.
And that’s enough for me.

 

Image: Philip Sutton, The Tree, 1958
philipsuttonra.com

 

zen moments of the senior kind

Happy Hermit

 

The continuation of the spiritual journey really depends on how crazy we’re willing to be.
– Reggie Ray

I had no idea I’d end up this crazy. Or this contented. Or this fulfilled. Don’t ask me about happiness – it’s a sub-category these days. Imagine being happy to be unhappy? Imagine being contented to feel like shit? Imagine being at peace with pain and weariness? Imagine being ok with depression, flatness, confusion? If this isn’t your version of liberation I totally understand. (We all start out on this journey imagining ‘waking up’ will magically erase all discomfort from our experience.)

But this absurd liberation lives here, and this is what the crazy cow offers tonight: five three-liners of the slightly nonsensical variety. They like to think they are haiku, but would duck and hide in the presence of ‘real’ haiku. Apologies for my warping of noble zen aphorisms, koans and haiku. I mean no disrespect; after all these years they are deeply embroidered in the fabric of this brain and have a life of their own.

My sanity does too. Where the hell did I put it?

–

old flesh, old bones

on the zafu, aches come and go

just like I used to

–

~

–

weary old mind

data flows in, data drops out

plop!

–

~

–

music to my ears…

the sound of someone else

chopping

–

~

–

puddle on zafu

old cow’s melted-down stories

moo!

–

~

–

relentless koan:

what is the sound of my neighbor’s dog

barking?

 

~

 

About the image.  This delightful brush drawing comes from the cover of an exhibition catalogue: L’Au-delà dans l’art japonaise. Paris 1963. Nowhere in the book does it mention the name of the artist whose work is featured on the cover. My instincts tend towards Sengai… what do you think?

 

alive . aware . presence

Miriam Louisa Simons - Breathscribe series: I am here, detail

 

This year
on the day they call Christmas
Team Emelle wakes up
wondrously severed
from its culture’s insidious story
about stars and shepherds
wise men, stables and saviours.

 

Team Emelle is curiously deaf
to the seductive calls
of collective consciousness
to make of this date something special.
It greets the day with a deep bow,
celebrating its everyday sanctity
with gratitude and wonderment.

 

It tends the Great Light
known as Primordial Wisdom Awareness
(as befits its Dharma name, Yeshe)
with its own private rituals
custom-created
on its unique journey
through time’s long now.

 

It tends creation’s original Word
by sitting,
breathing,
in solitary, silent, stillness.
Breath is its prayer
and its practice.
Breath.

 

It tends the manger
in the Heart’s stable
– the soul’s sanctuary –
where the ever newly-born,
uncorrupted
Child
dwells in comfort and safety.

 

Team Emelle doesn’t buy
into the marketplace mindset.
It knows of only one present sure
to give happiness and joy,
one (omni)present that can’t be bought,
wrapped, given or owned…

 

a l i v e  .  a w a r e  .  p r e s e n c e

 

Artwork by Miriam Louisa Simons – Breathscribe series: I am here, detail.

Since the Miriam Louisa composite is made up of of many characters, to say nothing of 37.2 trillion cells and a roughly equal population of bacteria, I have come to think of it as Team Emelle.
Emelle = ML
ML = Miriam Louisa
All smiling and bowing at you right now!

Primordial Wisdom Awareness is also known as The Great Perfection

my tuppence-worth

One of my father’s nick-names for me was ‘Tuppence.’  Perhaps it was because I was always eager to offer my “tuppence-worth” (i.e., the state-of-the-world according to my all-knowing self), and irritatingly persistent with my questions – “But why?” “Who says so?”  When he was really mad at me he’d say, “For two pence I’d give you the hiding of your life!”  I was always relieved no one came along with those pennies.

I never out-grew the tendency towards contrariness and insatiable curiosity.  From here I regard them as having been essential companions – both tools and fuel – on the rather erratic life path that unfolded for the ‘Tuppence’ character.

The days when I held court in my pram are ancient history, but the questions that matter for me remain fresh and alive.  My responses to them are an ever-morphing ontology.  Here’s the current version – a crone’s tuppence-worth.

 

Tuppence (Miriam Louisa)

Tuppence in her pram: Well then. What’s this all about?

 

What does the “God” word mean for you?

The Unknowable

dressed up and dancing as the knowable.

…

Is Consciousness all there is?

I don’t know.

I can only say it’s all I ever experience.

…

But what knows the contents of Consciousness?

You’ll never find it.

(You’ll never escape it either.)

…

What is “enlightenment”?

An idea those who believe they are not already fully alight

like to entertain.

…

“Already fully alight” – how can one know that?

It can’t be known.

It’s quietly evident when all hunger for knowing drops away.

…

Can there be a partial or ‘damaging’ awakening?

Presence is already perfectly and completely just so.

But ideas about it can be experienced as wrong/bad/incomplete.

…

The sages say the observer is the observed. How is that so?

I’ve spent a lifetime on this koan…

I only ever experience all-inclusive observing.

…

Is there an Almighty God?

Too constricted and limited a notion, I’d say.

How about an Unlimited and Almighty Godding?

…

Is it true there’s “only One”?

From the perspective of Presence,

One is one too many.

…

Is there a purpose to life?

I ask Life. It grins:

Get onstage – it’s The Full Monty and you’re the star!

…

What is death?

That’s easy because I’ve been across and had a look.

It’s a little side-step, from one theatre into another.

…

Is it true that thoughts create reality?

Reality transcends thinking entirely.

However, thoughts and beliefs determine the quality of experience.

…

Is life a dream?

Maybe.

We’d know if we could find a dreamer.

…

What is surrender?

Abdication. Effortless, voluntary relinquishment

of the ME-project.

…

Is the world an illusion?

If it is

you’re the magician.

…

What’s the difference between illusion and delusion?

Illusion is the mirage in the desert;

delusion is believing it’s real.

…

Is there anything sacred?

Nothing knowable

could ever be sacred.

…

Is it true that “I am That?”

No.

You are the glorious “am”.

…

Are there any true concepts?

I don’t know

any.

…

Is there any valid aspiration / intention?

Yes.

K I N D N E S S

…

What is freedom?

Being 100% present as the capacity for passionate engagement with life

and not minding what happens.

…

What brings your greatest fulfilment?

Nothing ever brings fulfilment.

It’s one’s natural state when there’s no need of fulfilment.

…

And your deepest peace?

S I L E N C E

(no contest)

…

Do you have any plans?

The GPS is set to nth – now! this! here!

Presence is driving.

…

What is Grace?

The Beloved

sneaking up for a kiss.

…

What are you?

I am whatever Presence wants to be

in response to whatever It meets.

 

[The words Awareness, Presence, the Unknowable, Reality, Grace, the Beloved, all point to the same ‘thing’. Except it’s not a thing. If anything (ha!) it’s an event-ing.
I like the Godding word; I might patent that one!]

dances with bunnies

She-who-scribbles has been in d-e-e-p retreat for some weeks; don’t expect sense anytime soon.
 

Beatrix Potter - Dancing to a Piper, detail

 

Everything is dancing today.

 

Light,

sound,

motion,

all movement.

 

A rabbit pulls a pipe

from his waistcoat pocket,

then winks.

 

Breathes deep and fingers

a scatter of twinkling

starlight.

 

This causes a few planets and I

to go nuts

and start a little jig.

 

Someone sees us,

calls a

shrink,

 

tries to get me

committed

for

being too

happy.

 

 

Listen: this world is a loony-bin.

It’s only real if you’re chronically

sane,

if you haven’t made the

free-fall

into wild foolishness.

 

Even with its firmness

beneath my feet

and the mailman knowing

my street number

 

I hang out somewhere else:

with partying bunnies

and a cosmos spinning

in giddy delight.

 

Reading Hafiz’s poem Then Winks catapulted my brain over to Beatrix Potter and her partying rabbits. Or was it the other way around?
Purists will protest my highjack and mash-up of Hafiz’s words, forgetting that they aren’t even his – rather, they are the Hafiz-inspired outpourings of Daniel Landinsky.
Beatrix – who knew the truth about bunnies and most things – would smile knowingly.
Daniel – well, he knows what it is to be gripped by a verse and taken for a ride.
As for Hafiz – I’ll ask him next time we’re in our cups and jiving…

Beatrix Potter watercolour from bibliodyssey blog.

Then Winks, by Hafiz [Daniel Landinksy]

on the road

 

Brunswick Heads - Soldier Crabs

xlvii

unblinking eyeballs

on the march at low tide

sky-gazers!

[the river mouth at Brunswick Heads, NSW]

 

Sulphur Crested Cockatoos

xlviii

a smokers’ dawn chorus

shatters azure silence

cockies aloft

[near Armidale, NSW]

 

Wellington Caves

xlix

eyeless emptiness

gazes at its ancient artistry:

on the road

to now-here

[Wellington Caves, near Dubbo, NSW]

 

Image credits:
Soldier Crabs by yours truly.
Sulphur Crested Cockatoos from ABC News.
Wellington Caves from juliusbergh.com – see more stunning images of the caves on this blog.

please take these offerings

Today – another tick in the annual count for she-who-scribbles while her spacecraft steers itself around the sun.

Sitting watching the morning star rise in the pre-dawn coolness, I thought back to this offering, which I posted exactly a year ago on this unlit light blog. It wants to be shared here. I fancy it might be my yearly birthday post, since I can’t find one word I’d change. And I need these words.

Birthdays are a good time to reflect on one’s blessings, and to offer gratitude to our friends for their kindness and thoughtfulness. I always begin my birthday with a gesture of thanks to my mother, who not only gave me the miraculous opportunity for life, but also fostered, nourished and inspired the flourishing of that life in every way possible.

Now in my eighth decade, and delighting in life regardless of its curved balls, I feel to share some of the observations that have delivered me to this joy. It’s the best I can offer; may your mind and heart be able to receive.

 

Miriam Louisa Simons - Offering Bowl

 

Life hurts.
But what you are never feels pain.

Everything changes.
But what you are remains unchanged, eternally.

You’re flat and exhausted and depressed.
But what you are is forever poised as equanimity.

You’re broke, stressed, squeezed dry, homeless and hungry.
But what you are is unaffected and impartial.

You’re smashed by disappointment, betrayal, abandonment.
But what you are is ever calm, accepting and unbroken.

You’re afflicted by physical and mental aberrations, abnormalities, imbalances.
But what you are never suffers for one second.

 

So what you are is clearly something with which you need to become very familiar. And it’s e-a-s-y to do so. You don’t need a formal introduction. You don’t need a manual or a map or a guide book. You don’t need to change your religion or your beliefs (although changes may well occur as a result). You don’t need a 12-step plan or a meditation practice.

What you are is more obvious and closer than the tip of your nose. It’s the one experience you can never escape, 24/7.

What would you call that? Your aliveness? Your awareness? Your presence? All these words come close, but none are ultimately true or exact. Why?

Because they aren’t yours. Or mine. Or anyone’s. Drop the personal pronoun, and there you are – radiant all-knowing alive presence. The Light of Knowingness, self-luminous, always-on, never-needing fuel or flint…

And that is what you are – free, fulfilled and flourishing as all you conceive, perceive and experience. All of it.

How wondrous that this is possible – that this primordial awareness is huge enough to hold the entirety of creation, excluding nothing – yet be unaffected and unmoved by any expression of its handmaiden, consciousness.

It is truly The Beloved, the Godhead of the saints and sages and poets.

And it is what you are.

 

Image – Bowl, Miriam Louisa Simons, Japanese washi, threads, cardboard