Buddha Dada

It's just another day

2008-12-23T15:14:00.000-08:00

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Cold rainy day here. I see on the news that humanity is bumbling right along, hoping for the best. But just think of the context! Here we are, hurling through deepest darkest coldest infinite space on this microscopic spinning dirt clod we call Earth. The round lump boils red hot rock, cools down just enough for water and life to somehow briefly appear, and for a split second animals can be seen romping about the place. We human animals, beings of light and sound, sit right at the top of our planet’s awareness chain. Not only aware of ourselves and each other, but aware of the vastness, and even more, aware of awareness itself. It’s a stupendous thing that’s happening here, right near the tail end of this 15-billion-year outbreath of the cosmic dreamer, fast asleep well beyond even the idea of the furthest star.` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` (Dec 22, 2008)
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Picabia porch view fantasy
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Generic Buddha meditation

2008-09-05T18:39:00.000-07:00

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In essence:
Just sit (or stand, walk, lie, sleep, whatever) fully, completely, inclusively. Be awareness itself, be consciousness itself.

Meditation in short (while sitting):
crossed legs
straight back
open eyes
(no) thought

To someone else, it may look like this:
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To you, it may feel like this:
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Meditation: there’s nothing to it

In meditation let there be a continuous non-verbalizing awareness of posture, breath, environment (context).

Nothing, such as breath, needs to be singled out for special attention.

Maintain an effortless awareness of everything simultaneously. There is no need to zero in on any particular subject/object of awareness, nor to flit from one to another.

Verbalizing (thinking), when noticed, may be dropped mid-sentence, with feeling/awareness returning naturally to posture, breath and over-all context.

breathing in -

nothing is left out.

breathing out -

in disappears.

Dream

2008-09-01T17:08:00.000-07:00

I had a long, strange dream this morning as I was sleeping in late. I was back in Bangkok, walking barefoot down Sukhumvit Road. Feeling really good to be back after six years. Could hardly believe I was there. Thought that maybe I was dreaming and determined that nope, I'm not dreaming, I'm really here. Cool! People back home will be surprised I'm here. Stuck my head into a couple of go-go bars along Sukhumvit. Decided I'd come back later. Then things started getting really weird. It was Bangkok, but everything was different. It was like the 1960s architecturally, but on a massive scale. Sukhumvit petered out into a walking mall street, there was no Skytrain. An Indian family had set up an outdoor sidewalk bunk-bed dormitory business, 200 baht per night. I thought I can get a cheap hotel for that much. The cops on Sathorn Road were beating up a guy who had crashed his Corvette in the ditch. Gary and Joy took me to a pizza place called The Bomber. But we didn't quite get there. A girl standing on the walkover bridge near the Ambassador Hotel was shocked to see a clear hole in the polluted sky, but I could see that it was just an optical illusion, and I pointed this out to her. Huge white Concord-like US Air Force jets swooped acrobatically over the city. My bicycle got harder and harder to pedal and I stopped and examined the tires. They were both ripped to shreds.`````(Aug. 6, 2004)

Bangkok’s Rama IX Bridge: closing the gap - 1987

2008-08-29T16:23:00.000-07:00

Construction started on Thailand’s first cable-stayed bridge, the Rama IX Bridge, late in 1984. As it was located a few kilometers downstream from the heart of Bangkok I didn’t take notice until midway through 1987 as the two sides were approaching their meeting point, and I found that image fascinating. The site office of the international consortium of companies building the structure loaned me a hardhat one day and allowed me out unto it to take pictures. I climbed the access scaffolding to the deck, entered the base of the east tower and climbed up inside to the top. Later that day I was invited back to take pictures early the following Saturday morning (June 6, 1987) when the final segment of the span was to be lifted into place from a barge. The job had to be finished before heat from the rising sun would have expanded the two sides and made the gap impossibly narrow. At the time, the Rama IX Bridge was the second longest of its type in the world.

5:00 am Saturday, June 6, 1987

Note:

Images are scanned from film photos. Click to enlarge. All images are copyrighted. Email me for info.
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Dog Dream Press

2008-08-27T16:35:00.001-07:00

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Books published by Dog Dream Press, San Diego, CA:

Mass Cull: the Approaching Cataclysm in America's Workforce
A comic book - 2006

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Dattatreya's Avadhut Gita (Song of the Free), 2006
Robert O'Hearn, trans. ..... (click here to read first chapter)

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Oblivioid, 2002 ```` (read below)

_____________________________________________________________________

OBLIVIOID
and other poems
1982 - 2002

by
Paul Wagner

Dog Dream Press
San Diego

________________________________________________________________________

Copyright © 2002 by Paul Wagner
All rights reserved.

FIRST EDITION
First Printing June 2002

Two poems translated by John Stevens appeared
in One Robe, One Bowl: The Zen Poetry of Ryokan
1977 Weatherhill, New York - Tokyo

Printed in USA
paul_wagner@hotmail.com

__________________________________________________________________________

CONTENTS

No One Knows...................................1
Bathtub Baptism.................................2
Oblivioid..............................................3
Ryokan and After, 1 & 2...................4
Day Job................................................9
God & GOD........................................10
Other...................................................12
Easter Buddha...................................13
Play.....................................................14
Drop It................................................15
What One Wants.............................16
Wake-up Call....................................17
Genesis..............................................18
Lucky Winner...................................19
Light Life...........................................20
Dream Dream....................................22
Even the Stars are Lost in Space...23
Psalms 151.........................................24
Imagine..............................................26
In the Beginning and the End........27

dates/places
1982-1984 San Francisco
1985-1998 Bangkok
1999-2002 San Diego

==========================================================

NO ONE KNOWS

This evening is too perfect to believe
rain against the windows
deep yellow lights turned down low
one burning log in the fireplace
oozes magic across the floor
Leonard Cohen sings "and no one
knows where the night is going"
and I wonder over and again
Where is that woman I love?
where is she in this splattering
black night?

Nov 18, 1982
___________________________________________________________________________

BATHTUB BAPTISM

Bathtub filling, shower on
I slide under the pelted surface
and am baptized in strange voices
messages from some remote present
soothing babble, spirit talk
Rising, I know I am the Ancient One
the wise old man
the very SAME person

January 1984

___________________________________________________________________________

OBLIVIOID

Lying awake at night
excited by money-making prospects
The money to be used
for extending my life
in various ways
My life being a process
of launching
from a foundation of oblivion
through the atmosphere of oblivion
into oblivion -
the life of an oblivioid

Feb 29, 1988 1:26 am

___________________________________________________________________________

RYOKAN AND AFTER, 1

My hut lies in the middle of a dense forest;
Every year the green ivy grows longer.
No news of the affairs of men,
Only the occasional song of a woodcutter.
The sun shines and I mend my robe;
When the moon comes out I read Buddhist poems.
I have nothing to report, my friends.
If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after
so many things.

---Ryokan (trans JS)

My room is in the middle of a huge metropolis;
Every year the buildings and the traffic increase.
No words of wisdom to be heard anywhere,
Only the incessant blatting of racing motorcycles.
The sun shines and I sit and sweat;
When the moon comes out I go to sleep.
I have nothing to report, my friends.
If you want to find the meaning, stop thinking about
exotic destinations.

---PW, after Ryokan

__________________________________________________________________________

RYOKAN AND AFTER, 2

A cold night - sitting alone in my empty room
Filled only with incense smoke.
Outside, a bamboo grove of a hundred trees;
On the bed, several volumes of poetry.
The moon shines through the top of the window,
And the entire neighborhood is still except for the cry
of insects.
Looking at this scene, limitless emotion,
But not one word.

---Ryokan (trans JS)

A hot night - sitting alone in my cluttered room
Thick with diesel smoke.
Outside, a forest of skyscrapers;
On the bed, several volumes of Thai porno.
Construction spotlights shine through the top of the window,
And the entire neighborhood is still except for
The pile-driver across the street and several howling dogs.
Looking at this mess, limitless emotion,
But not one word.

---PW, after Ryokan

Bangkok, about 1989
Ryokan translations by John Stevens in
One Robe, One Bowl 1977
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DAY JOB

Vast space on all sides
nothing at the center
I pull on my shirt and pants
and head off to work

Mar 3, 1994

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God & GOD

If we're going to talk about God
let's talk about GOD before God
GOD within which God the creator,
the God people worship
and fight over, appears to appear.
GOD is not an object
GOD is not a guy
GOD is not feminine
GOD is not describable
nor is GOD something that is indescribable
GOD is the essence of what is
GOD is not buried somewhere within things
nor is GOD apart from things
GOD is not dead
Praise God, submit to God
Call on God, fear God
And when you're through with
all that, take the final step
and simply, effortlessly, be GOD.

Sept 24, 1999

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OTHER

?
who IS this "someone else"
who I'm holding back from
who I'm afraid of
who I hesitate to stand before
- revealed
?

around 1995

____________________________________________________________________

EASTER BUDDHA

Yippie!

The cross is

empty. The

tomb is empty.

Your own self

is also empty.

I used to be

a Baptist-Buddhist.

Now I'm not.

Sitting, just

sitting.

Such joy!

1999
___________________________________________________________________________

PLAY

Our lives
neither difficult nor easy
just play - forever
Not as selves in situations
but as the entire situation
as it continuously
dreams
itself
into
hard edged being
- and out again

1997
___________________________________________________________________________

DROP IT

Why not drop it now?
Stop being somebody
(before it's too late
and somebody gets hurt)
A real life is an inconceivable life
anything else is a fantasy
To live in truth
is to hardly be around to enjoy it
Take the world as it is
Stop complaining
Let others figure it out for themselves
Sit down and shut your mouth
you're nothing but dust in the wind
Stand up and let loose
you're the one who swallows the sun

1999

___________________________________________________________________________

WHAT ONE WANTS

not getting what one wants
illuminates the great illusion

not getting what one wants
one knows he is living in truth

not getting what one wants
is the door of liberation

not getting what one wants
is what one wants

2000

___________________________________________________________________________

WAKE-UP CALL

My body the consistency
of a cluster of galaxies,
held together by a train of thought
Jarred awake by the sound
of motorcycles
whirling through my ribcage
Is this satori or what?

Feb 11, 1996 2am

_________________________________________________________________________

GENESIS

Take two particles of nothing,
toss them into empty space
Notice the hum they generate
Stand back and quickly count from one to infinity
Watch the entire cosmos spring to life

2000

__________________________________________________________________

LUCKY WINNER

May this California Super Lotto Plus ticket
Be a reminder
That the Mind that is always freely arising
Is one of infinite abundance.
- You Have Already Won!

Oct 7, 2000

___________________________________________________________________________

LIGHT LIFE

Yes! Finally!
It has all come together. This morning!
The radical way of unknowing is completely manifest
- in Joy!
I AM the Way. I AM the Light. I AM the Truth. Yes!
And so are you - of course!
How could it be otherwise?

Have I gone mad?
Well, I hope so.
The shell of conventionality has cracked open for good
And we are all soaring freely on
Infinite wings of light.
No longer will conventional self get away with
appropriating those brief awakened moments
The awakened moment has finally swallowed up
our pathetic little storybook selves for good!
Jah Rastafari! Bom Shiva!
Hallelujah, Praise the Lord!
Om Tat Sat. Bodhi Svaha.
Ahhhhh.......

Nov 28, 2000 10am, immediately upon getting out of bed

________________________________________________________________

DREAM-DREAM

Okay now, This is reality
and That is a dream
But what, I wonder, is this dream-dream
where I find myself living?
Blissfully
Painfully

2000

___________________________________________________________________________

EVEN THE STARS ARE LOST IN SPACE

Nothing is as it seems
Even the stars are not where they appear to be
Where they appear to be is where they were
millions and billions of years ago,
their light from that moment having
just now reached us.
Who knows where they are now?

April 12, 2001
___________________________________________________________________________

PSALMS 151

GOD is all there is. There is nothing but GOD.
GOD is light. You are light. Completely. Forever.
In all directions.
GOD is not an object of worship. GOD is not other.
GOD is that to which there is no other.
Undividable.
You could not possibly, even for a moment,
be anything other than this.
Not merely a part of this GOD, but it itself,
as it is (but not really an it).
Seeing God as creator, as savior, is merely a way
to pretend to extend for a time the illusion
of separateness, selfhood - until you are ready,
until you spontaneously drop the effort
to perpetuate yourself and are naturally
returned into GOD, as GOD,
your true condition which was always the case.

Your big deal spiritual search never even took place.
It was no more than a figment's flickering fantasy.
You are that which you thought you were seeking.
There was never anything that needed to be done.
No search required.
No effort expended.
You were never lost,
never separate
- and no one was ever saved.
Hallelujah
Amen

April 18, 2002

_______________________________________________________________________

IMAGINE

imagine you are
not dreaming -
imagine this is
real, substantial

March 25, 2002

____________________________________________________________________

IN THE BEGINNING
- AND THE END

As I remember, I started out
hopping around on one foot
on a linoleum tiled kitchen floor
in a little house in an old date grove
I didn't know how I got there
and I still don't
I was about three feet tall, just
tall enough to see the top of the stove,
and our baby sitter Barbara Clark
was making my brother and me a snack

The baby sitter was the second woman
in my life, and the first one I remember
Until then I was so close to my mother
that I didn't notice her
But I did notice the baby sitter
She was twelve or thirteen.

One evening she and I ended up
back in my parents' room up on their bed
We were sitting on our heels,
facing each other,
knees spread wide, up close and naked
She touched mine
and said I could touch hers too
It was warm to my fingers and nice,
and I told her so
I brought my mother into the room
when she got home
and told her what we had done
I never saw Barbara Clark again

The Date Festival and Parade was
the big annual event
Leggy baton twirling girls high-stepping
down Miles Avenue
Red, white and blue bunting lining the street
A contingent of old men in maroon fezzes
I could never figure out what all those
Arabians were doing in our town for
the parade or why my mother
sewed sequinned costumes for their wives

When I was ten the Lord called my father
out of his accounting career
and into the ministry
But first, Bible school in Oregon,
in an old school for the blind with tubular
emergency escape slides from
the upper floors
The next year his Gramma Grace
back in Indiana, my great grandmother,
died and went to Hell
It was a family scandal
She had stubbornly refused to accept
the formula that would have guaranteed
her admission to an eternity of
gold paved streets and non-stop hymns
like The Old Rugged Cross
and Onward Christian Soldiers
For several months following
Gramma Grace's death I put myself
to sleep up in my attic bedroom
falling headlong into an endless
mental spiral, tumbling through
the dark spinning tunnel at impossible
speeds trying to reach the end of eternity,
then back the other way
looking for its beginning

Years later, what bothered me most about
the religion I was brought up on was
its exclusivity. I refused to believe that all
those natives out there beyond the reach
of missionaries would be spending
eternity in Hell
How could I have accepted such absurdity
right up into adulthood? I had been tricked
I knew deep down that Truth,
whatever it was, just had to be
universally accessible
Big Truth, Big God, Total Being,
All-Inclusive Higher Self - whatever one
called it - in some way had to be
everyone's most fundamental identity
That was justice, and it made sense
No ism could corner the market
This grand identity was here for all to feel,
to know - initially glimpsed in the
space between things, the space
between ordinary habits and thoughts
And finally seen
- even in those things themselves
The idea that we are permanent,
separate beings
in a fixed system fell apart
Finally I was Home. Free

I had encouragement. Zen eccentrics
and Himalayan yogis had been
leaving tracks for centuries,
some muddy and nondescript,
others rather elaborate
When His Holiness the 16th Karmapa
of Tibet first came to the West in 1974
to perform the Black Hat Ceremony,
I was living in a little cedar-shake dome
I built in the woods along the
Skokomish River on the
Olympic Peninsula, and I bussed and
hitch-hiked up to Vancouver, BC
for the event, held in the ballroom of
a grand old downtown hotel with
a steep green copper roof

At the moment the Black Hat
was produced,
horns blared, cymbals clanged and
all those in attendance attained
unsurpassed complete perfect
enlightenment
Nothing else necessary - ever
All doubt was removed,
all personal agendas resolved,
confusion and unease replaced by
perpetual clarity and bliss
At the end of the ceremony
the hundreds of participants lined up
and as we filed slowly by the Karmapa
he said something to each of us,
like a blessing, and tapped us
on the head with an implement
An assistant monk tied a red long-life
string around each neck,
another passed out jujubes,
and yet another poured an endless supply
of an alcoholic beverage into
each person's cupped hand
from a four inch pitcher
without ever refilling it
I wore the string
until it fell off several months later

END

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"life is short - smoke weed"

2008-08-27T16:34:00.001-07:00

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f0134cf3do

who is this guy?

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Paintings: 1967-2002

2008-08-24T14:13:00.000-07:00

Cirlces Cubed

2008-08-21T13:55:00.001-07:00

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Uprising in Bangkok, Thailand - May 1992

2008-08-20T19:18:00.000-07:00

Popular revolt against the government of un-elected military strongman Gen. Suchinda Kraprayoon. Hundreds of thousands gather on Sunday, May 17, 1992, at Sanam Luang. Grand Palace in the background.

As the day grows dark, folk rocker "songs for life" frontman Ad Carabao performs for the protestors at Sanam Luang.

After the peaceful gathering, tens of thousands march toward Government House, only to be confronted by riot police at the halfway point, Pan Fah Bridge.

Opposition leader Chamlong Srimuang appeals for calm.

Mayhem and violence erupt over the next several hours.

Somehow, this guy acquires a riot-police helmet and standard-issue wicker shield during the melee.

Police and other government vehicles are targeted.

Just 10 feet from me, a policeman smashes a brick against this guy's face. His crime? He came to retrieve his motorcycle from behind police lines.

Protesters commandeer a firetruck from nearby station and coast it towards police lines. Police gather and charge back.

The people score another point.

By 2am of the 18th, with word of large army units approaching, this anything-but-intrepid photographer has seen enough and heads home to clean up, cool off, and sleep.

I sit it out at a safe distance that day as the Army, under the command of coup leader Gen Suchinda’s brother-in-law, Gen Issarapong Noonpakdi, kills nearly a hundred of the demonstrators, injures several hundred, and carts off thousands more. The following morning I sneak back into the now cordoned off Sanam Luang and Ratchadamnoern Road area and survey the aftermath.

A block away from Pan Fah Bridge, Nang Lerng Police Station was gutted by the mobs in the early hours of May 18.

Another tempting target, the Revenue Building, between Sanam Luang and Khao San Road.

Soldiers fired on this bus when protesters, some of whom were on the roof, attempted to drive it into army positions near the Royal Hotel on Ratchadamnoern Road. I saw no blood inside.

Ratchadamnoern Road

Manning the perimeters during the three-day operation, soldiers keep protesters and onlookers out of the central area.

“Suchinda the dog” (in Thai). Graffiti is rare in Thailand, especially this sort of thing. All graffiti, and all burned-out vehicles, were removed before the public regained access to the area a couple days later.

Krungthep (Bangkok), City of Angels (fallen). Democracy Monument is in the distance.

On May 20, King Bhumibol Adulyadej intervenes. Suchinda and Chamlong, leader of the Palangdharma Party, are called on the royal carpet.

Editorial staff of daily newspaper The Nation watch as the King works his magic on live TV (belatedly, in the opinion of many). Suchinda resigns four days later.

(Nation chief editor Thepchai Yong, white shirt, in foreground.)

“Where soldiers killed the people.” Blood-stained, debarked tree becomes an impromptu sidewalk shrine, on Ratchadamnoern Road.

Piles of sandals and other personal items left behind. Another memorial to the dead, the injured, the missing, and the scattered protesters.

Note:

Images are scanned from film photos. Click to enlarge. All images are copyrighted. Email me for info.

More photos of Black May '92 at 2Bangkok.com

Buddha Dada mascot

2008-08-20T16:37:00.000-07:00

. . . pays homage - to you . . .

Excerpt

2008-08-20T15:44:00.000-07:00

( from Dog Dream Press ..-.. click here )

The following is the first chapter of The Avadhut Gita (Song of the Free), published in 2006 by Dog Dream Press, San Diego. This version is an illumined rendering by Robert O’Hearn, based on the seven-chapter Hari Prasad Shastri translation of 1968.

Shastri writes in his introduction that the Avadhut Gita is a well known classic among those who have risen to the non-dual pinnacle of realization, and that one often hears them singing this Gita in the calm of the Himalayan valleys and along the banks of the Ganges. These high yogis, sannyasins and sincere aspirants, who have renounced books along with everything else, having found everything worth knowing in their hearts, still keep this little Gita in their caves and huts, he says.

Lyrics 1

1. Fear is perpetually exceeded by the power of Love. I bow down to Love!

2. How can I bow down to Love, when I am Love, and Love is indivisible from Itself? Nevertheless, there is bowing, bowing.

3. I alone am, arising and dissolving within myself. How simple – I die into life! What Love! Join me?

4. Love is all, bondage and freedom both. What a great mystery – nothing is bound, so why talk of freedom? Just love, and see if you exist!

5. This is the whole substance of Wisdom; this is the essence of knowledge, theoretical and intuitional. Just so, discard it all – find out what remains. No one can say a word.

6. Love, which is the heart of all, impersonal and changeless, life itself, neither pure nor impure – Yes, that’s what I am. Personal and changing too – ordinary enough.

7. The heart has no memory for poison, what need I fear?

8. The activity of mind, judgment and interpretation – what a carnival side-show! I am the light that still burns when the clowns bed down.

9. Some say the mind is like space, having no independent existence. Look – a ghostly acrobat flies through the air!

10. Say I am limitless, say I am not. What is it to me? I alone am – no one sleeps, no one wakens but me.

11. Awareness – beyond creation, beyond destruction, informing all beingness perpetually, dark womb of all light.

12. I am indivisible. How can perfection be divided?

13. A song to myself – I am all of this, this is all of me. The Holy Books say I am this or that, but who is there to agree or disagree?

14. Since I am, you are too, so we can all relax about that.

15. Neither unity nor separation have a place to land in you or me. All that is, is alone. “I”, “you”, “the world” – no substantial existence. There is no victim. Relax.

16. The subtle faculties of touch, taste, smell, form and sound which constitute the notion of an external world are not you, nor are they inside you. You are bigger than anything you can know.

17. Losing oneself in the One, finding there’s nothing to lose. Birth and death – no, not you, nor any kind of limitation. Why worry? We’ve no name, no number.

18. Oh mind, why run around like an addict on the dope of fear? Recognize the innocence of your Original Nature and be happy.

19. In the midst of endless modification, you are what doesn’t change. You’re impersonal about the whole thing -- nothing to attach to, nothing to avoid. Just understand desire.

20. The Holy Books speak of a soul without attributes, ever pure, imperishable, the eternal Truth. Check it out – that’s you! But you’re not in a book or a body.

21. Recognize it all, physical and subtle, as a projection of your own mind, an illusion. The underlying substratum is eternal. By allowing this Truth to live, how happy are we! All the baby love words rhyme spontaneously to me!

22. Wise Folk call this, “Just Being”. By practicing letting go, the mind sees neither duality nor unity. Let go of even that – let there be duality, let there be unity. In any case – we’re bigger than that.

23. In the same way that you can’t hold onto a dream, you can’t hold onto yourself. "Is" and "is not" don’t apply to you either. In this happiness, how does searching for happiness make any sense?

24. Immaculate innocence, that’s what we are. How can we even say: "I am a friend” or “I am a stranger”?

25. The Holy Books say, “That’s You, You Are That!” They also say, “Not this, not that!” It’s no contradiction to you, and that’s that!

26. Hindus call you “Atman”, the spirit breath of all. In you is neither practitioner nor object of practice. Why, O mind, do you meditate?

27. I don’t know what I am, so how can I speak of myself? I don’t know who I am, so how can I worship myself?

28. I am myself, the only one like me, in fact, the only reality. Aware space is my nature. This is not an imagination, there’s neither one nor any, you nor me – we’re free!

29. Free from subject and object am I, how can I be self-realizable? Uncreated is my nature, nothing else exists. Love Supreme is my nature, nothing else exists. Really, nothing exists! How mysterious! Yet everything Is -- how ordinary!

30. Not death, not what dies, I am the Absolute Reality, the Witness of my own death. I die into life, yet neither live nor die.

31. Break a bottle, space melts into space. Purity into Purity.

32. I alone am, awareness itself. Really, there is no bottle, no glassy space, no embodied soul, not even a trace, no nature, no story, no once and future glory.

33. There is no world, no holy teaching, no gods, no surrender, no religion or politics, no tribe and no gender, no smoke-ring path, no image to defend, no pretender.

34. To speak of dualism or nondualism entirely misses the point. There is only What Is, Reality itself. Speak as you will!

35. Still, how can the supreme Reality be described, since it is prior to perception? How can what comes after know about what precedes it?

36. "I eat," "I give," "I act" . . . such statements do not apply to you, Birthless One!

37. When there is only One, who speaks, who listens? Who the Teacher, who the student? Who the lover, who Beloved?

38. Know for sure, “I am timeless, taintless awareness, unimaginable Love!” Know it beyond belief as what’s true! It isn’t difficult!

39. From here to there, nothing but light; see for yourself. What part is evil, what part good, what use of such conflictions?

40. The absolute void and its composite opposite, in emptiness and form -- all I am. There is humor here, and poetry, should one take a shine.

41. Even to say “Happiness” is a kind of sly comedian’s trick.

42. The Truth of what you are is not modified by spiritual practice, and yet we practice. Emptying the mind makes It no clearer. The Guru does not magically reveal It. Jai Guru! It is, simply is, in Itself, by Itself.

43. I am neither bound or free, nor separate from my pristine nature. The universe rises and dissolves in me, nor do I regret it.

44. Neither doer nor taster of deeds am I. Neither archer nor arrow nor target am I. When the arrow is flying, I am the flying. When the arrow hits home, I’m that sound! Can you hear it? Even now?

45. Water pouring into water – just so, form and spirit are one. Empty into empty, bliss within bliss! Pleasure and pain, good fortune or ill, beyond these shades, Relax!

46. Why ask, “personal or impersonal?” You’re neither. Before the mouth opens, unsay yourself! Then hear who’s talking now!

47. We’re not a problem to be solved, there’s no prize for a winning story. Close the book and exhale. There is nothing broken, nothing to fix.

48. Oh mind, why struggle? Fall into the heart, drown in the ocean of your own bliss! Let what happens happen, yours is none of this!

49. Not the fruit of a tended vine, I am not what changes. Source of sweetness and thirsting both, spilt wine drops lifting into air, Love’s own intoxication.

50. Neither formless or form, inconspicuous in my own absence, the true word is “Silence”. Before we knew, we all knew it.

51. Nothing to cling to, nothing to grasp, why wander, restlessness, dear mind? Relax!

52. Does the night complain when the stars come out?

53. If you say, “Infinity”, that’s what I am. If you say, “Finite”, I’m that too! And yet, I am neither. Neither are you!

54. O mind, Beloved – keep quiet! Be still!

55. Impervious to the forcefulness of intellect, weary of the beguilements of sensation, just fall into That! Don’t be confused, or be confused, absolutely!

56. This is dying beyond death, the death that grants eternity. What Grace to fall, to fail completely! What enormous silence!

57. Where knowledge and desire end, there I am. Nothing has changed, nothing has happened. Yes, what Grace!

58. The Happy One, the Avadhut, in unshakable equanimity, alive in the holy nothing-special temple of nothingness, walks naked, as this Grace, knowing all to be Love’s own plaything, looking straight into every face, every face one’s own, the Happy One.

59. If you imagine that you understand anything about any of this, you have not been paying attention. Regardless, fall in Love and Understand. You and Love are not two, not even holding hands!

(end of Chapter One)

First Printing, January, 2006

aka Bob O'Hearn