fulfillment

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?

 

it was a damn good deal

Ceramic sculpture by Haejin Lee

 

Until I woke up
to my unconscious insatiable insanity
it was the tireless weaver
of the fabric of my life.

It wasn’t enough to have mentally unpicked
and clearly seen-through
the myth and mirage
of the solid-state ‘me’ story.

Unconscious residue of that ‘me’
I thought was done and dusted
remained, and so, another unpicking began
– a second-level unpicking if you like.

Waking up to what one isn’t is utterly mind shifting.
It’s tempting to rest in the inevitable sweet relief;
it’s tempting to assume one has attained
the ultimate wisdom.

Yet, although thought likes to tell itself otherwise,
the thrust of cellular conditioning forges on
below the limn,
obvious to everyone but oneself.

I am driven by curiosity –
especially concerning creativity and freedom.
What might I not know about this multi-layered energetic playground
called my life? An investigation was called for.

I saw how the old unconscious imprints
ran deep; how their effects can’t be denied
yet are avoided, by-passed, rationalised
by a self-idea facing sure extinction.

Have you ever unpicked knitting?
You take the single thread responsible for the fabric’s form
and simply pull. The stitches unravel with ease.
If there’s a knot, you tease it free.

Just like that: I grasped the master lie,
and pulled. Stitch by stitch the network of neurology
unravelled. Each stitch was an imprint of pain:
fear, anger or grief.

Separation ceased as each imprint was fully felt
without one word being brought to the alchemy.
(Commentary, analysis, explanation
are neither required nor helpful.)

The howling insatiability that fuelled
my craziness was slowly sated. An incomprehensible
fulfilment surfaced that has no idea what words like
sanity or insanity might mean.

These days I find it absurd to claim that I am
anything – even “That”, or “Life”, or “Nothing”.
To say “I am” is a lie, yet as a sage once observed,
“the universe is myself”.

The universe chuckles to itself:
“It was a damn good deal – an imaginary ‘me’ for an immensity!
It only cost me everything … and everything
came back, marked perfect, wondrous, eternal.”

 

“I am not, but the universe is myself.” – Shih-T’ou, A.D. 700-790

Ceramic sculpture by Haejin Lee

 

the shock of seamless intimacy

 
Miriam Louisa Simons: the shock of seamless intimacy

 

when the myth of separation erases itself

from the mind’s story-trove

one free-falls into a view (there’s no choice about it)

that’s viewerless

the shock of seamless intimacy is usually hair-raising

devastating, humbling

no separation! outside & inside – same!

repeat: same!

– – –

all those stories one tells oneself about oneself

and the mythical others

all those resolutions made in the aching lostness:

practice! diligence! discretion!

all those stern exclusions: the egotist, the phoney

the ignorant, the ‘evil’…

all those fantasies about embracing

some Unknowable Immensity

aye

all those comforting conclusions; certitudes acquired

along a streaming lifeline

gone – synapses wiped

– – –

only this Nothing that excludes nothing

remains, on Its knees

utterly undone

fully full

and excruciatingly sweet

– – –

 

Image source unknown. Please notify me if it’s yours, so credit can be given. Thank you.

three haiku for the road ahead

Leaving Cloud Mountain

 

xxii

How to heal a heart:
stand alone, drop your stories,
fall in love with this.

 

xxiii

When my aloneness
smiled with simple contentment
love loosed its wild song.

 

xxiv

Now that I’m clueless,
emptiness dances naked
wherever I gaze.

 

 

Life moves. It’s taking itself off the mountain and into the marketplace again. Who knows what will unfold? The only thing I’m certain about is that gratitude and fulfillment go with me – one’s my left leg, the other my right…

three haiku from cloud mountain hermitage

 

can you, do you, live this savage wisdom?

 

impossible! see

this ultimate knowingness
isn’t a teaching, a path, a doctrine
one can ‘live’ or embody

(although the earnest peddlers
of nonduality apps
would love you to buy the notion)

you can’t “live this savage wisdom”

it’s what’s living you

and not just when you’re clear and angelic
oh no
it’s living you when you’re a mess: lost, confused, angry,
seducing and story-telling

its play is infinite

it has no preferences;
it loves all that it creates and beholds

and because You and It are inseparable
your recognition of this
is ITs total fulfillment

it’s how IT gets its jollies!

 

"It's how it gets its jollies!"

 

(c’mon, wake up, don’t be a party-pooper!)

 

Uncredited image found in an archive on my hard drive and played with in Photoshop. Please contact me if you recognize it as your work and I’ll add your name.

 

a willingness to disappear

363

analyze and adapt
diagnose and dialogue
formulate and fix
trance, track, tap:
so many ways to place
kiss-it-better
patches on the pain
of fragmentation

we call it healing
and invent new modalities by the minute
to ease the symptoms, which also
multiply by the minute, fattening the catalogue
of official psychological disorders

but until the trickster called time
is exposed and deposed
our little healings are just brief remissions
from the ache of incompleteness

to heal is to make whole

that’s why the true sages carry no band-aids
but go straight to the root of fragmentation
– time –
conjurer of the ‘me’-mirage
with its default sense of separation
and its insatiable appetite for union

they know that the ending of time
restores immeasurable wholeness
– no faith, no belief, no training required

only a willingness to disappear
into now and this and here

~

an instantaneous sightless seeing

228

This morning what’s striking me as utterly wondrous is the sheer inevitability of everything.  Sometimes I would wonder whether this is a gift of ripening age – one can see far enough back down the tracks to be aware of how the dots connect over the span of decades.  But nowadays I notice this wonderment being expressed by those who are youthful – and wideawake.  I’ve come to see that wonderment, awe, and an unbidden humility arise in the naked encounter with ‘what-is’ – unadorned suchness. This brings me to my knees.

The inevitability of ripeness and readiness for awakening – but always in their own time and on their own terms.

Eventually, when ripeness was ready, there was an instantaneous sightless seeing that everything I believed I was doing was happening in its own way, by its own accord, at its own pace.  There was seeing that nothing happening has anything to do with ‘me’ and that beyond the craziness of appearances everything flows harmoniously.

Retiring, relaxing, ml slips out of the time/space grid, returns to the womb of One-derment, where, neither watching nor waiting, ‘I’ is totality and sweet fulfillment.

~