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Spaces & Enlightenment

Recognizing the Buddha in You

“Do not worry about enlightenment; the Buddha is within your mind already, ready to be seen. But because we cannot turn inward and are constantly distracted, we fail to recognize the Buddha.
When past thoughts have ceased and future thoughts not yet arisen, in this space between fixations, you can glimpse the nature of mind abiding like space; this is the Buddha. If you remain within this nature continuously, you are enlightened.” 🧡

~ Garchen Rinpoche

Posteed by Jannice Tan

OK, again with the space. Space between the musical notes, space between the thoughts, space between the thought and the action.

*Sigh*

Again with this I so wish I could see. I try. Sometimes at night I practice this. I try to achieve an awareness of the spaces. I do believe this is true though I have yet to accomplish it. And there is a little bit of nagging that goes on too. Is this grasping?

*Double Sigh*

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Friendship

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”
Henri Nouwen

I love the painting below. If I could copy it I would, and hang it in my living room. This was posted by Ravenous Butterflies.

Gerda Wegener – Women Under an Umbrella, 1920. 

I don’t know. I have friendships sustained for years, some from high school, others from work mates. The problem is that they are not close geographically. I have one friend nearby but she’s in a strangely different place currently, having given up her home to her nephew and moved in with her sister. There it is Invasion of the Body Snatchers as she has ever so slowly—step by step—become like those living there, in her sister’s house. (Forgive the mixed metaphor but it is so necessary.) She has let her hair grow long and longer. Now she can’t wear it down as she used to like it as it is too scraggly. It is always back in a type of French bun. It is now dyed the same color as her sister’s. She was an absolute coffee fiend. Now she drinks a soft drink, a cola, the same as her sister. I could go on. An outward manifestation of an inward surrender of self. I don’t know how she manages but she seems ever so happy these days. That’s what I don’t know, don’t understand. Can we be happy in the surrender of our very self? The philosophers say we cannot. Maybe they’re wrong.

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Sleep & Bill Hayes

A new discovery for me in Bill Hayes, the paramour of our own Oliver Sacks whom I must have written about in here somewhere. That’s not the point of it of course but only an anchoring place. Somewhere for us to tether a reference. Not so much for the reader as for my own needs I’m afraid. I’m not at all sure that’s a universal need. Although it (a reference tether) makes sense.

From Bill, as reported in Marginalia: “I was born dreaming. Deep in REM sleep, I was taken from the womb, my closed eyes furiously scanning for images that could never be retrieved, redreamed, or remembered. In this regard, I was identical to every baby. With a slap to the ass, it was over. Birth jolted me from a state of sublime unconsciousness to which I’ve spent the rest of my life struggling to return.”

And there it is. So well put. Hence our struggle for the illusive, the dream, Death. The Big Sleep.

Bill writes about this in Sleep Dreams which I have already ordered, naturally. A simple turn of some screw in the mind that allows me to act without thought when it comes to the purchase of some book that will further allow me to enter into that Other of the sublime—the right book with the right words. I’ll report back on the read, though I fully expect it to be delicious.

Before closing, a further thought. Did you know that Nietzsche believed that dreams are an evolutionary time machine for the human mind? Oh my. So much to think about. So much to dream about.

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Happy Birthday

The great poet Charles Bukowski was born on this day in 1920. 🍺

“…great writers are indecent people

they live unfairly

saving the best part for paper.

good human beings save the world

so that bastards like me can keep creating art,

become immortal.

if you read this after I am dead

it means I made it.”

Posted by Poetic Outlaws

Ugliest Poet on the Planet. But I’m sure glad he made it. And now he’s one of the Ugliest Immortals—yay! and rock on!

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Just Wondering

What ever happened to all of those fidget things that everyone had? You held them between your thumb and index finger and pushed down for it to spin. Continuous action was supposed to give you something to do. When you just wanted to fidget a bit. Some of the toys became quite elaborate and they were everything from a flying bird to a simple top. And a variety of colors of course. Everyone had one. There was even a bit of fidget envy. And then they disappeared. It was one of those things that is gone and you don’t notice until sometime later. And then it’s not because you want it. It’s just a stray thought that ambles in and shrugs itself off again. So where are they all now? It was years ago and there were millions of them. Maybe there’s a giant warehouse somewhere dedicated to the sole purpose of giving discarded fidgets a last resting place.

Botero Posted by Ravenous Butterflies