Ode to Instant Shiva

What’s all Greek to me is Chinese to the Greeks. Consciousness only is the revolution! Words belong to the empire.

There are no new ideas. There are only old ideas dressed in new languages. This is why no one speaks Old English anymore.

Even Einstein couldn’t think his way to a new paradigm. Enlightenment is sudden. Of course one can’t step in the same river twice. I am the river!

Zeno’s paradox is not a riddle. Love is the answer and I am unquestionable! Which came first? Absolute awareness or self-awareness.

Space-time is another name for body-mind. Literally. As to this day, separation has yet to be proved. Do not hold your breath.

Leaves fall in golden autumn, trees go down in microbursts, earth erodes in ashes, the sun fades suddenly to black. Now breathe out. 

notes on chinese lyric poetry (shih)

1. beginning with book of odes (shih ching) in 6th-c bc (to 10th-c bc) as 4 character lines (although use of interjection and nonsense characters could mean 2 or 3)

2. at this time, characters were one syllable but later sometimes 2

3. characters:

a. noun characters do not indicate number (thus no singular or plural)

b. verb characters do not indicate tense.

c. characters were not used in context of a picture poem.

4. shih form kind of fades away until it reemerges in later or eastern han dynasty (2nd c) as 5 or 7 character (each with full weight)

5. each line is a sentence. couplets are connected via parallelism and end rhyme between couplets, but no connecting words

6. caesura at 2 in 5 and 4 in 7, creates 2,3 or 4,3 units

7. anon Nineteen Old Poems is earliest most influential 5 shih

8. ts'ao chih (192-232) 1st major poet of chien-an period and 1 of top 3 poets in pre-tang era according to burton watson (see tao chien and hsieh ling-yun)

9. in tang time, shih undergoes a formal development. divided into 2 groups.

a. old style (ku-shih) with no fixed rules of number of lines or rhyme scheme

b. new style (chin-t'i-shih) in 2 types limited in rhymes scheme and number of lines

1) regulated verse (lu-shih) with 8 lines, parallelism in most lines, and elaborate tonal patterns

2) broken-off lines (chueh-chu) like regular verse but a single quatrain

10. in sung times begins the practice of 'rhyme following' (tz'u-yun or ho-yun) in which one composes a new poem utilizing the same rhyme or rhyme words as a previous one, usually responding to a poem of a friend or visitor. when copying one's own poems, it's called tieh-yun.

Bhakta Story

All emotions are love diminished. Memo to me: don’t deny emotions in some nihilistic way. 

Either deconstruct the thoughts behind them or melt into the love as one directly undiminished.

The former is the error of all religions including scientific materialistic atheism. The latter are jnana or bhakta. 

In the nineties, nature was my lover. She drove me like a Cadillac. I embraced her with my Frenchman Bay.

My nineteenth nervous breakdown was in 1984 when the Thought of God scared the Dying Jesus out of me.

In late September of 2005, a great blue heron lifted from a glacial island boulder in the middle of a cloud-colored pond like revelations in a vision quest.

Two years later, I am slowly climbing one thousand sacred stairs of Yamadera where Basho writes within his Oku no Hosomichi, stillness and cicadas.

Meeting in the River of Stars

As being is in the blood, self-awareness is its fountain spurting from the mind.

My insides are turning inside-out as the sea engulfs the universe in the curl of its crashing electromagnetic waves.

Every object is in the mind and the mind is in my being reflecting this non-objective omnipresence.

From black hole to self-awareness is just a big bang away; suns are falling back to black like saturn rockets

falling back to earth as this Apollo is forever pointing and always moving towards that moon in which I drown.

1. consciousness is glass. mind is lens and mirror.

2. the gospel according to the ouroboric universe.

3. in the name of the dreamstate, universal being, and that absolute self-awareness (by knowing i am the unknown, the unknown is fully known).

4. gimme shelter in the storm.

5. Li Bai drinking alone (with the moon, his shadow, & 43 translators)

Consciousness Is The Cure

Lightning

Just because you may believe it doesn’t make it so even if it is. Are we on the road to Damascus or just slouching more towards Bethlehem?

These days of viruses both biological and psychological, it’s no longer one day at a time; it’s stopping everything—to be timeless.

As one attains nirvana through samsara, one arrives at self-awareness via dream.

Revelation is the lightning of the absolute striking consciousness. Thunder is the inspiration of consciousness talking to consciousness. Call it self-awareness.

Sometimes I live in quiet desolation, sometimes I have a great notion. I forgot what I was going to say. Wait for it.

Myth is where attention is placed. Dream is where attention is misplaced. I’m giving it fifty-fifty he’s faking it or fifty-fifty he dies.

Thunder

Although it’s source is known, no one knows the cause of thunder.

One is to consciousness as zero is to personal deconstruction.

Everything appears in consciousness and that which doesn’t is its source.

All one really knows is consciousness and the rest that’s not unknown is belief.

And consciousness is god from the point of view of the mind for it’s the only unborn concept.

If belief is disease, consciousness is the cure. As belief is viral, consciousness is the cure. If consciousness is the cure, consciousness is the cure.

2020 Happening

You know the universe is one but still pretend there’s multiplicity because we are addicted to the other. Knowing there is only one is not a thought to be believed in some philosophy or god forbid religion but experiential only. For the self so loved this self-awareness that it sent its being into matter to be resurrected.

Although legitimate experience records the happening into memory, the happening does not originate in memory. The happening in memory turns into thought. The happening is not a thought. There are no words for Tao. Being was happening before memory built its empire and being is still happening now.

In this feature, self-awareness is happening. What’s happening in the Buddha over there? I remember when Monument Valley was the playground of the gods. Turning attention from memory for a moment and resting it on the infinite eternity of being is like self-awareness. I am sitting in Death Valley. I am standing in the Garden of the Gods.

Mapping Self-Awareness

A funny thing happens on the way to self-awareness. This axe of thought begins to think that it's the hand which wields it.

This fall of intentional tool to chaotic weapon is comic from the point of view of the hand of the heart but tragic as seen through the eye of the weapon.

Separation is the weapon. Division is the ammunition. The universe is the target. Compassion is the witness. Love is acting for the defense. There's nothing wrong with the tool. 

Primordial conditioning sharpens it. Self-awareness requires a razor's edge. That the mind is conditioned from the big beginning to usurp the absolute proves its innocence.

Divine imagination is the mythical map of kundalini thunder emanating from the mystical lightning of the absolute black whole.

footnotes

I like dreaming. I love waking up.

Consciousness is the only knowledge. Only the unknown knows this.

There is no self-awareness without the molecular structure of pink cadillac granite.

Mind and no mind. Manifest and unmanifest. Knowledge and knowing.

The power of three. Positive, negative, and neutral. Love, compassion, and forgiveness.

2020 Consciousness

Consciousness is the big bang. Consciousness is the immaculate conception beyond the yin and yang of wave and particle or sex.

Consciousness is the only knowledge and what the world calls knowledge is like dividing the indivisible and ciphering the value of exactly two.

Everything appears in consciousness even all the vain absurd attempts to prove appearances create the consciousness in which they are appearing.

My projection is my mirror. The sixth matriarch calls it Chinatown. Attention paradise the fall arrives in just three days.

It's not the goldenrod sitting in the sun but the ragweed in the shadows making tears. It's not the transformation that hurts but believing in the form.

Last year on this date I was in Avon on the Outer Banks watching the silvery walls of a hurricane above the tumbling surf.

Prescription 2020

Deconstruction is the negative. Love is the positive. The absolute is neutral. Don’t fall in love with the negative. Don’t disintegrate the positive. Look, this never happened.

Cherry blossoms fall. Get over it. An emerald hummingbird! Don’t overthink it. Space-time is the stuff of dreams and self-awareness is the greatest show on earth.

The narcissistic nihilist with a knife in the dining room is your clue. Surrealistic pillow is the soundtrack. Absolute-awareness being self-aware.

Whether one calls this the holy trinity, trimurti, or some other power of three doesn’t matter. It’s spontaneous.

Psychological deconstruction is like lighting a fuse. Get it started. Then step away as soon as possible.

Myth or any other guided meditation is there to be your runway only to consciousness only.

Believing consciousness is a product of the brain is the greatest virus ever told.

64 hexagrams of the I-Ching. 64 codons of DNA. Zero gravity.

Thorn of Belief

If you believe in materialism, you’ll believe in anything. If you believe in a personal god, you believe in materialism. 

Whether it’s religious materialism or scientific materialism or esoteric materialism, it’s all materialism. 

Thought is utilitarian. But belief itself is materialistic. Thought deals in transformation. Belief deals in form.

The more belief one is entertaining, the less wisdom one is contemplating. I used to believe but I’m younger than that now. 

One deconstructs belief with wise thought. Throw away that thorn of belief. But you can share this thorn of thought.

Focusing Consciousness

Consciousness before sensation, before imagination, before identification. Being before before and after.

Like a lens is glass ground from glass, the mind is consciousness ground from consciousness.

Absolute awareness is reflecting in consciousness. The mind is focusing awareness into self-awareness.

There are seven evolutionary stages. The first is light. Two, nuclear probability of particle and wave. Atomic identity is three.

The great turn is in the fourth sub-stage of the fourth molecular stage as organic chemicals and sex hormones come into separate being.

Vegetable, animal, human: in the big picture, consciousness is focusing consciousness.

Appointment at Long Sands

Not exactly like the summer of love, the summer of 2020 is more the summer of compassion.

After deconstructing a continent of the personal, one comes to the sea of compassion.

Appointment at Long Sands: either sail into the unknown or return to disappointment.

Note one sails into the unknown on the sea of compassion. Nihilism is materialism in more ways than none.

Without compassion, one is nothing. Compassion is the eye of the needle. Compassion takes a lifetime; money can't buy you love.

Compassion processes emotion seeing through the clouds of belief occluding self-awareness. Note emotions come in waves. 

Pure awareness may be unspeakable, but I can't say enough about compassion.

I was going to say when Truth broke in

Fighting thinking is playing whack-a-mole. Seeing through thinking is consciousness dancing. You are not the mind but the mind is yours.

Thinking is not actually perpetual motion. Fighting thinking only makes it look this way. 

You can't fight city hall but you can see through we the personality. As everything appears in consciousness, 

and consciousness appears in the absolute, self-awareness is now appearing. 

Consciousness emerges from the mouth of the ouroboros, learns to focus in the body of a snake, 

and in sudden self-awareness swallows body, mind, and being. “I’d like to go by climbing a birch tree.”

For there are seven Labor Days in Labor Day Week and this is the second one. I still feel association with each one, 

as the music of ten thousand summers dies, and the conditioning of the fall beckons again, as if I'm not perennially unborn.

This is just to say that thoughts are secretly appearing in emotions. Each one is universal being filtered by belief. 

And seeing through emotion is like the black belt of personal deconstruction.

Don't get me wrong. I love the autumn. As the poet says, earth is the right place for love.

 

Rhapsody in Two

Sexual energy isn’t bad. Thinking it’s bad is unnatural. After all, the first sign of duality is one identifying with a gender.

After the root has taken hold, the priesthood of conditioning grabs you by the sacral chakra and so the heart becomes deformed.

Fighting one's conditioning is still conditioning. This is the dirty little secret of the empire’s priesthood. 

Seeing through conditioning is the only revolution. This is ultimately called turn, turn, turn. Or awakening.

Whether it's fundamental religion, scientific materialism, or new age magic, stop believing in your latest meta-paradigm.

And follow the bliss of this intentional kundalini to that enlightenment of self-awareness!

They say it's the end of August and time to put away all childish things. But Lord, I was never born. 

The leaves will drop but trees remain. An oak will fall in the forest but the planet abides. 

The earth is ground away but the sun still shines. A star collapses in an absolute black hole and I am that.

 

Original Math

Division can't be solved with more division. Any number divided by itself is one; any number divided by one is itself. Any number divided by zero is undefined. Any number divided by any other number is another number. 

This is not new math. This is original math. Disidentifying with universal consciousness, and identifying with a separate thought or set of thoughts or meta-paradigm of belief, is the original glitch.

There is no fundamental sin; there is no error—self-awareness requires an appearance in the mirror. The definition of religion is a point of view no longer seeing through itself. 

This explains why scientific materialism is the empire's new religion. My projection takes all seven billion paroxysms. Every paradox involves a god and goddess. If loving two is wrong, I don't want to be one.

 

Dreaming 2020

Conditioning is like pinball. This the pinball wizard knows. Projection is the pinball wizard's game. By calling out the next move, you're blinded when it happens.

Listen closely, algorithms are a thing of the past. Projection is the future. The only limitation is the cloud cover.

As consciousness is the expression of pure awareness, imagination is the expression of pure consciousness. Conditioned consciousness is conditioned imagination. Imagination is its own frontier.

Personal deconstruction frees imagination. Imagination is naturally compassionate, despite what priests of conditioned imagination are saying.

One is imagining the world already in a lazy kind of way while depending on one’s conditioning to do the work. Between conditioned dreaming and lucid dreaming is the entropy of dreaming. Call this dreaming dreaming, like 2020 dreaming.

Lie and conquer is like divide and conquer in the virtual world. Warning Will Rogers! Compassion doesn't take a side. Compassion is like evolution; it naturally intends. Call this unconditional love.

Christian science is a primitive form of true deconstruction as post-modernism is a late form of science. This will be on the test. The postmodern science of deconstructing science is better than nothing.

Let's speak about the unspeakable. Call this self-inquiry. Without it, poetry is just another business. What begins in Samsara and ends in Nirvana stays in Nirvana. I'm Nirvana, who are you?

This Unbelievable Formula

Belief makes the person. In the world of unnatural separation, belief is like security. You can never have too much.

When belief is threatened, a stronger belief is required. Belief is like gambling on the unknown. When your horse loses, you double down.

If one’s not willing to die for belief, it’s not belief. It’s a whimsy. Believe me, it’s a whimsy. Separation is original imagination.

Consciousness is like the force. The mind is like a resistor. Self-awareness is the amplification of awareness reflected in consciousness.

Focusing the force is called samsara. Compassion is the practice. Meditation or contemplation is the living.

footnotes:

1. money can’t buy me love. money buys unconditional belief.

2. gambling is an addiction to belief. war is its symptom.

3. paradise is universal consciousness; call this love. hell is identifying with the mind; call this belief.

4. universal force. the personal transistor. song of self-awareness.

5. if the product of deconstruction is not compassion, it’s not deconstruction. it’s just more mind games.

afterword:

Without compassion, meditation is still personal. Only bodhicitta is enlightened. One not crying is either the one in samadhi or the one in politics. Enlightenment is sudden. Compassion takes a lifetime. Bodhicitta is enlightened mind. Teaching your children compassion is teaching your children well. The rest is the latest math.

This week’s sermon is compassion. Last week’s sermon was taking sides. Postmodern deconstruction equals primordial compassion. Compassion can’t be taught; it’s lived. An old dog knows all the tricks. You haven’t lived until compassion. Without compassion, one is born. With compassion, one is unborn. Compassify, compassify.

My Rumi 10 (lament and the law)

I’m never full of you. That is my only crime. Please do not finish loving me, my haven of both worlds.

But his cup grows tired of me. There is no carrier, no receptacle. And every moment this fish out of water grows thirsty.

Break the pitcher and tear that waterskin for I am heading for the sea. Make clear my way!

How long will the earth be swamped in my tears? How long will the sky be darkened by the smoke and ashes of my grief?

How long will my heart lament my heart, my desolate heart? How long will I howl before the specter of my sovereign?

Go to the sea where my wave of joy approaches. Watch my house and sanctuary as they drown within its breakers.

Last night the holy water of life overflowed my courtyard. The moon tumbled into the well like Joseph cast into the pit.

The rising waters flooded my harvest. Smoke rose from the heart of my home. Both grain and chaff were devoured.

My crop is gone but I shall not grieve. Why grieve? Just that halo of light around the moon is more than enough for me.

He pierced my heart. His likeness was that of fire. Its flames engulfed my skull. Even my prayer cap was consumed.

Do our ceremonies diminish dignity and ruin our respect? Who cares about my dignity. His love is my respect.

I thirst for neither intellect nor wisdom. His knowledge is enough for me. His faint face at midnight is the light of my dawn.

The forces of sorrow are gathering but I do not fear them, for our cavalry, legion on legion, has captured eternity.

But at the end of every ode, my heart laments the coming discourse. The law of God is summoning my heart again.

~transcreated from an Arberry translation (A-225) of a Rumi ghazal (F-1823)

After Transcreating My Ninth Rumi

After nine Rumi transcreations, one of the things I’ve newly noticed: each stanza (couplet, verse, whatever) is locked into another. I’ve read there is a question as to the unity of a Rumi ghazal, and this is one of the reasons why Coleman Barks edits the ghazal in his versions. 

I’ve found the opposite to be true. In fact, I find that a subsequent verse will send me back to a previous one to revise, after seeing the poem was going somewhere I hadn’t imagined. Like building a bridge one slat at a time, and returning to a previous one to correct the slack. 

In my Rumi 9 transcreation, the first 8 verses contain paradox after paradox about fish and the sea but slowly builds into something like a portrait of an enlightened fish. But verse 9, to me, is the key of the entire poem. 

Barks speaks of Walt Whitman when talking of changing Rumi into free verse, and verse 9 reminds me of Whitman’s sudden stop in Song of Myself, when after a litany of Whitmanic desription, he says: ”Enough! Enough! Enough! / Somehow I have been stunn’d. Stand back!” 

After all the paradox, Rumi says something like this: “How long shall you speak in riddles? Paradox bewilders the mind. Now speak clearly so the heart may hear.” In other words, he has successfully confounded the mind, put it out of the way, and now is free to speak to the heart. 

And the next verse is the clear heartfelt expression of his love for his ‘guru’ Shams Tabriz: “The venerable Shams is both my Lord and Master. By his grace, the land of Tabriz is perfume and ambergris.” And this is basically the climax of this love poem. 

In his version, Barks does refer to this in a way: “How / Long will I keep talking in riddles? Shams is the master who turns the earth.” But it’s too much of a gloss for my taste. It doesn’t present the power of this heretical statement. The next 2 verses are, of course important, and not completely anti-climactic. 

The last verse describes the effect Shams has had on Rumi, if there were still the soul of Rumi to describe. It goes something like this: “May I never have my soul again. For after tasting his wine and being drunk on his beauty, I am one in self-awareness.” What a poem! 

My Rumi 9 (fish and sea)

The sea will always offer up more fish, for fish are lesser than the sea.

You shall see the sea is the soul of a fish, for the sea is the fish of God’s own ocean.

The sea is like a nursemaid. And fish are like its feeding children. The woeful child is always looking for its milk.

The sea appears to be indifferent but its compassion for all fish is an infinite grace.

A fish that knows the sea is always caring no longer moves with pride but is ascending through the air.

For that singular fish, the sea is now its counsellor and no task is done without its consultation.

One could say this favored fish is like an emperor and the sea its prime minister.

If anyone were to call this fish a fish, every drop in the wrathful sea would be an arrow.

How long shall you speak in riddles? Paradox bewilders the mind. Now speak clearly so the heart may hear.

The venerable Shams is both my Lord and Master. By his grace, the land of Tabriz is perfume and ambergris.

If this world of thorns were to know his grace, all people would be soft and delicate like silk.

May I never have my soul again. For after tasting his wine and being drunk on his beauty, I am one in self-awareness.

~transcreated from an Arberry translation (A-108) of a Rumi ghazal (F-853)