profisee 49 - unsaying consciousness

there’s a me here that could say—

you don’t have consciousness

but consciousness has you—

but we are consciousness—

so there’s only i

profisee 48 - four scientific unknowns

what science doesn’t know:

what came before the big bang—

missing 95% mass of the universe—

grand unified theory—

how and whys of consciousness—

six more imajins [from zuni to matsushima]

6

on the road to zuni,

i see a white buffalo—

it’s rising in the sea of tranquility

chanting—

you are the moon

you are the moon

you are the moon

7

anasazi ruins fill

a cavernous canyon wall—

thru the desert floor flows

a lively current—

a raven soars on

satori

with its silent unknown call

8

in the hollow of a maple tree

a screech owl sits silently—

it blends with the bark perfectly—

seven birders look thru scopes

just to see it be

9

down from south rim i stop—

the desert silence is absolute—

as if the sage had soaked

the world away—

and only i were left

to be that emptiness

10

a dock on a midnight lake—

this scintillating stillness—

the moon beholds

the eye of the universe—

and we two vanish

into quicksilver depths

11

invoking matsushima bay—

an opalescent peacock is slipping by

a phosphorescent dragon—

two forms passing in the emptiness—

ah beauty! ah truth!

five imajins

1

driftwood flowers blossom

in a sea of buddha nature—

on the beach, natives search

for grains of sand…

2

in the desert

there's this single candle—

all around is nothing

but creosote and sage—

it is burning incessantly

but it burns without a flame

3

there's a house that sits on a bluff

above the sea—

its windows look out upon

a precipice of sky—

when its doors fly open

no one is at home

4

out of nowhere came

the mountain—

it fills the sky with a vacancy

of rock and clarity—

even the undertaker laughs

at such transparent

presence

5

coyote is crossing

the interstate—

it’s headed for the other side

below sky city—

an attentive focus narrowly avoids

a black infiniti

profisee 47 - as universe so you

the light of consciousness

freezes into the material

and then in a process known

as evolution

melts

as above so below

the light of consciousness

freezes into the ego

and then in a process known

as self-inquiry

melts

as ice is never not water

the light of consciousness

is always

the light of consciousness

profisee 46 - that fifteen-second spot

the desire

to know what one is—

the intelligence

to know what one isn't—

the maturity

to know one is unknowable—

the simplicity

to just be

that

profisee 45 - a/0

to respond to division

with division

always equals

more division

but to respond to division

with nothing

is the end of that story

Merrimack River Nows — selected - Jan 2014

Jan 1

ice sheets in continental collision—silver shards thrust-faulting into fantastic arctic mountain ranges—a geologic era now taking seconds

Jan 6

fog, like a conceptual identity, lifts, and the silver waterway is there, as it always is, open, spontaneous, and never the same river twice

Jan 14

rain falls, fog forms, and the river appears to disappear on the way out to sea—sometimes i get a great notion to jump in the current and be

Jan 15

scintillating ice stars in a sky of river

Jan 17

sparkling high water has made this low-lying reach a no man’s land—the yawp of geese, laughter of ducks, rushes of being

Jan 22

a tugboat fragments polar vortex ice—an eagle’s wings divine the mystic currents

Jan 24

stopping by the roadside on an open bluff above a frozen river in zero degree wind chill sunshine, i grasp the raw stillness—changing a tire

Jan 26
in the wind-swept mirror of perfect ice—eastern white pines

Jan 27

reflections on thin ice—shadows and light—an engine of wind—sounds like shattering glass—the scrape of a leaf—absolutely no one is here now

Jan 29

ice floes leaving the mouth of the river like words defining infinity

Jan 31

black and white notions relentlessly swarming in confusion—feeding the seagulls

profisee 44 - the great wave off the absolute

human civilization is

just this slight crazy detour

in the universal evolution

of light returning to light—

there's no fixing a detour;

there's just getting back on the way—

before the great wave returns to the sea,

it curves, breaks,

and crashes in upon itself—

in this way of the great wave,

the wave comes to know it’s a wave,

the false knows it’s the false,

and only the truth of the sea is

.

Merrimack River Nows — selected - Dec 2013

Dec 1
hawk eye looks within the high slack tide mirroring a wild december sky and cries ten thousand miles of recognition

Dec 3
trawlers docked at the newburyport waterfront and a clear river running high tide blue back to its open mouth and the maw of the sea

Dec 6
king high tide swelling at the seam of low climactic shores

Dec 7
river keep on flowing, winter sun keep on lowering

Dec 10
first, three white swans appear on the river. then a light snow begins to fall

Dec 13
afternoon sun flashing on the first ice of the winter, vast slabs flowing downriver in the aftermath of deep tidal fracturing

Dec 19
an airboat maneuvers through an archipelago of ice floes—buffleheads dive beneath a photovoltaic array of suns—the winter solstice looms

Dec 20
ice floes riding tide upriver—loons diving toward reflections—eagle chasing eagle

Dec 24
above the lonesome christmas eve impassive river—three birds of prey

Dec 25
delicate blossoming ice like wild mercurial chrysanthemums

Dec 31
the graceful sail of another eagle, another year

sunderance philharmonic pseutra

the wise one points back to the earth while the idiot howls at the moon—

any holistic directions for personal benefit maintains the person which is inherently divided—

true spiritual instruction arrives from being and is directed to being without any personal benefit whatsoever—

unconditional love is the fool that doesn't know how to divide—

we create each character in this dream and when one fails to act its part, we hold it responsible for not playing the role we created for it—

it’s remarkable how one may understand the non-volitional role each has in this dream, yet still rant against another’s actions—

when the false is deeply fathomed as false, all action initiated from the false is drained of its font of energy—

as if one could divide the undivided into sides and take one—

the mind is a dividing machine incapable of conceiving the nondual—

turn the mind machine off and rest in the pure electricity of being—

only pure being is informed in the buzz of truth by the potentiality of its source—

a great paradox—the false doer often takes the shape of not-doing—denying the spontaneous moving of the heart by logical control of the mind—

a great confusion—emotions are often confused as heart—but emotions are the filtering of heart by thought—so colored light does have energy—

a great practice—if one wishes to see the trickiest false as false, feel and see emotions—this is where the fact of being meets the lie of the person—

a great resolution—shift the intent of the mind’s control from the heart to the mind—see the false as false—the heart, unfiltered, is moving—

  

it’s not so much the relative is an illusion, but that it’s an impossible position, the holistic seen divided, and thus inevitably violent—

to take one’s stand in the relative is an act of war—not that there's anything wrong with that, but be absolutely clear about the stance—

i am that—standing as awareness—in the world but not of the world

profisee 43 - thirteen ways of looking at the way

in awareness and

the garden of consciousness—

a phenomenon always involves

an aspect of phenomena

usurping noumenon—

you are the writing on the wall

you are response to your own call—

everything that happens to you

is just a sign there is no you—

most never listen to the said

but interpret it instead—

consciousness is all she wrote—

fear and loathing in nirvana—

thinking fails to see

what intuition always knows—

there is one and there is all

which are always never two

but there's not a single other—

this aspect of the happening

moving as the moved—

fog like conceptual identity

lifts and the silver waterway is there

as it always is spontaneous open

and never the same river twice—

bask in your own light—

love is the mover

and love is the moved

profisee 42 - the truth in a notshell

the answer to the question is

no question—

being is the only fact

but not the truth—

truth is spaceless and timeless

although one can know the false as false—

one can never know the truth

but only be it

profisee 41 - scare tactics

pray for that frightened child

in futile search of a safe answer—

you can never love another

because love knows there is no other—

sometimes i get a great notion

to jump in the current and be—

to go inside and view the show

from the outside...

fair and balanced one way pseutra

detail from the blue god - salma arastu

from the illusion of two, the only door to absolute zero is the one—

despite scientific claims, one is never truly objective; one is always completely subjective—

objectivity is a conceptual process dividing one into object and objective-subject—

objective subjectivity is an impossible condition leading to a divisional world of want and desire, suffering and violence—

true subjectivity is resting in consciousness; aka i-am, being, unconditional love, the one—

true knowledge, meditation, love and devotion: all variations of pure awareness in one—

the objective-subject is deafeningly removed from reality but reality envelops the silent one

profisee 40 - the way of venus

you can't wake up

for all the words in china—

nothing is substantial

but everything has a point—

if the truth doesn't kill you

then the paradox will—

there are zero degrees of separation

between you and the absolute

profisee 39 - an opening

the days i have

nothing to say are

my most telling ones—

the person is like

a cocoon that never was

and i am the butterfly

which never wasn’t

new year now here nowhere mythopoeic pseutra

the mind-self creates a world-mind according to its own evolutionary rationale, but i’m not this world-mind, despite its sensational attempt to divide & conquer—

the beginning of one’s self-recovery program requires all the energy one is, unclouded by the usual poisons; it’s nothing pious or ethical—

and in the beginning, mistaken identity will return in moments of crisis such as physical trauma or emotional grief, or just general forgetfulness. be patient; nothing lasts—

just as there are material poisons to avoid that sap one's energy, there are conceptual ones as well—religion, politics, ethics, culture, chitchat, or any argumentative condition—

basically, avoid (or, if unavoidable, see through) all poisons (clouds) and embrace (know that you are) one's intelligent aware energetic (the loving sun of satcitananda, so to speak) self—

as the light of awareness seemingly descends

toward the molecular world of the divided material

and then ascends in response to its own loving call

in an evolutionary movement of energy being aware

culminating in the mind’s own sudden understanding

it is now, never not and has forever always been that

timeless light of pure affectionate awareness

(and the universe nothing but a smoldering illusion),

this residue of individual smoke and dream still remaining

is now embodied by my one eternal self of light

mindfully, with full attention, in affectionate awareness,

calling all within that most divided delusional material dream

back to the truth, this undivided light of unconditional self

profisee 38 - now where's eve

the person is prologue

to no beginning—

the whole orange of it all

is just to see an apple

through the ripe bananas—

getting stuck

in unbecoming the false is not

unbecoming the false

but being the true is—

one cannot feed the tiger

nickels forever—

i am infinity of the power

and potentiality of the station

Balancing Chan: Southern—Northern; Sudden—Gradual; Wu-nien—Li-nien; Knowledge—Purity

These three paragraphs by Yanagada Seizan may be the most concise, clearest, balanced view of the complex dialectic involved in early Chan and its later development that I've yet come across, and in turn, sharp pointed guidance to the inherent errors involved in following any concept of the non-conceptual too far in any way.

from: Yanagida, Seizan. "The Li-tai fa-pao chi and the Ch'an Doctrine of Sudden Awakening." Transl. Carl Bielefeldt. in Early Chan in China and Tibet

The teaching of sudden awakening, which split the Ch'an movement in the eighth century, finds its most concrete expression in Shen-hui's central doctrine of "no-thought" (wu-nien). This doctrine was originally put forward as a criticism of the Northern school's teaching of "detachment from thought" (li-nien). The notion of li-nien is later described by Shen-hui's follower Tsung-mi (780-841) as the practice of "wiping away defilements and viewing purity" (fu-ch 'en k'an-ching), a characterization based  on the famous verse attributed to Hui-neng's Northern school rival Shen-hsiu (606?-706) in the Liu tsu t'an ching. The Northern school believed in the original purity of the mind—that is, in an original self free from all defilements; its practice was to maintain and to magnify this self. This teaching is common to the Ta sheng ch'i hsin lun [*Mahayana-sraddhotpada, T.1666], the Vimalakirti-sutra [T.475], and many other basic Mahayana texts. But the belief in the original purity of one's own mind can itself become a form of attachment, in which one becomes bound by the notion of purity. The danger of such attachment is recognized in the Vimalakirti-sutra itself, and the Northern school was by no means unaware of it. In fact, despite the criticism leveled against it by the followers of Hui-neng, the Northern school taught a sophisticated and coherent system of Buddhist philosophy. Nevertheless, by emphasizing purity it seemed to be in danger of falling into a form of quietism. It was this point which Shen-hui attacked.

Shen-hui summarized what he considered the mistaken practice of the Northern school masters in a four-line maxim, which was later used by Lin-chi (d. 866) as well: "To concentrate the mind and enter samadhi, to settle the mind and view stillness, to arouse the mind and illumine the outside, to control the mind and verify the inside" (ning-hsin ju-ting chu-hsin k'an-ching ch'i-hsin wai-chao she-hsin nei-cheng) According to Shen-hui, the Northern school's doctrine of li-nien, taught on the basis of the Ta sheng ch'i hsin lun and the Vimalakirti-sutra, involves a bondage to purity: it is the practice of intentionally attempting to look at one's own pure mind. Shen-hui's summary of the Northern school teaching is, in fact, a criticism of a form of Ch'an sickness, in which one is attached to the detachment from thought and the contemplation of the pure original mind. Historically it does not seem that the masters of the Northern school were particularly attached to the practice of li-nien, but it must be admitted that philosophically their thought left them open to such criticism. At least Shen-hui saw the school as attached to li-nien, and taught his own doctrine of wu-nien in opposition to it.

Shen-hui's wu-nien doctrine is based on the notion of "natural knowledge" (tzu-jan chih) or "original knowledge" (pen-chih). The emphasis on such knowledge is the key issue separating the Northern and Southern schools. For Shen-hui, no-thought is itself sudden awakening, and as such there must be knowledge at work within it. The centrality of original knowledge for the Southern school's wu-nien dotrine was later recognized by Tsung-mi, who held that "the single term knowledge is the gateway to all mysteries" (chih chih i-tzu chung-miao chih men) Tsung-mi's emphasis on original knowledge was an attempt to defend Shen-hui's concept of wu-nien from misinterpretation by his contemporaries. On the one hand he was warning against the rise of the Ma-tsu school of Ch'an, which had transformed the teaching of no-thought into an emphasis on vital activity within everyday life. Such was the thrust of the school's famous sayings, "The ordinary mind is the Way" (p'ing-ch'ang hsin shih tao) or "This very mind is the Buddha" (chi hsin chi fo). For Tsung-mi this emphasis on the concrete function of the mind suggested blind activity devoid of original knowledge. At the same time, as we shall see, Tsung-mi's teaching was a criticism of the followers of the LTFPC [Li tai fa pao chi] who, while adopting Shen-hui's doctrine of no-thought, had in Tsung-mi's eyes forgotten that wu-nien is based on the functioning of knowledge.