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Posts Tagged ‘Dharma’

Road to Where . . .

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 20, 2012| 2 Comments »

Lately, it seems, life has been focused on journeys and going to concerts. Often life lately has been about journeys to concerts. I’m sure this has been influencing my writing accordingly . . .

The Poet’s Favorite Word

Going where I’ve heard the scent lingers from a rose the color of the sun’s light. They say when you enter the same room with it, you smell it in your soul. The rhythm flows through your blood, and you dance to the voice that commanded each and every star by name. They say that if you look upon her, the pain you suffer in life is joyous for it allows you to know that she exists.

Her thorn is known to kill, but her flower caresses your cheek without the asking if she likes you. It is said that in the town she resides, peace enters the heart; that in the town beside, people dance to her breath. Her music is known far and wide. Where she blooms, the universe knows why it exists.

When I arrive where I am going I pray only to feel I am passing those who have been in the same room as her; perhaps experience their presence in the same several-block radius. Should I find myself drawn to her without my own thought directing, it is her smile that will shine from my lips forever.

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Outside The Wall

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 19, 2012| 3 Comments »

This week I wanted to write something with a moral, and this is what entered my head.

Smiling Wall

Snareoth sat down to write upon the wall. Surrounding him, men of the faith praying to the last remaining vestige of the ancient form of their religion; a religion they pray often their Deity resurrect by raising the other walls of the temple to make the vessel of their faith whole. Many a tear they shed that only this single wall remained of times glorious since past. Many a garment rend when initially the other three walls were brought down, and millennia later, still tears shed that what was once has not again been made whole.

In the center of the convergence of faiths that had brought much blood to brothers of species, Snareoth sat with his bag and prayed silently as all around him others in the sacred garb bent there knees, chanted and recited, and stuffed messages to God into the cracks in the wall. Raising his head from his reverent request for guidance and assurance of his faith, he raised his head to the wall erected as the home of his people’s God, and opened his bag. From it he removed mallet and chisel.

He unrolled a small piece of paper inscribed with his most ardent of prayers. He looked it over and placed it on his lap; he wished to see the words to God he wished to express from the wholeness of his being. Those around him, over him, took no notice of the peculiarity until his hammer struck the first faithful blow. Before the second fell he felt a kick in the head.

The paper upon which was written the prayer he wished to inscribe upon the wall fell from his lap as he was dragged from the wall; 50 screaming at him, a couple being held back from further striking out at his head. The women praying toward the wall at the other end of the courtyard stood on there toes to watch the commotion breaking out amongst the men.

One very old holy man turned his head when he had heard the hammer’s blow and surveyed the scene from a distance as it unfolded. He saw the small piece of paper fall from the man being carried away who had held the chisel and mallet that now lay upon the bag from which they had been taken before etching a single mark into the wall’s face. He picked up that paper wondering what word would dare be inscribed into this most holy of all his people’s shrines. His eyebrows raised.

But for those closest by, the strike of a hammer was barely heard throughout the courtyard. Those few turned from the sight of bitterness to this new scene, as they wondered how it could be that such a sound could ring out again so soon. Turning to those still watching the original man being carried away, they tapped the shoulders of those close at hand that they might hear the third blow against chisel, against rock. Known throughout the land by many as a great teacher of the prophets’ words of the divine, none close by could fathom stopping the old man as he continued chiseling where Snareoth had left off.

By the 10th blow of the hammer, far on the other side of the courtyard, those carrying Snareoth away stopped too and turned toward where they had come when the initial slight had been done to their sacred space; they listened to the sound make music where once they had heard blasphemy, though confused, they knew not how to this music dance. From a place on the ground where he had been released from the mob’s grasp, between legs Snareoth tried to see from where he had come as he heard clearly the chisel’s strike through the dead silence of all who could not conceive what they were witnessing.

But none made a motion to stop the old holy man as they watched him inscribe into their holiest place letters forming words. And because none of them could fathom raising a hand against him, or dissenting to the reverence they held for him, in silence they all watched as something new emerged upon the wall’s face. Snareoth crawled past the mob and slowly rose to his feet; a tear rose and fell to his rising lips as he beheld a miracle enacted.

Many were gathered ’round as the final chippings of the last word were embedded into the wall’s side. They began to murmur amongst themselves as the message was discerned clearly before the last flecks of stone fell to reveal fully the final letter. All those watching from further back were anxious to hear what those in font saw the message to be that could be so important this holy man would deface their most sacred monument.

Snareoth heard the last strike of the hammer as the man beside him asked the man in front of him what they said the message was. Said the man, “It is a prayer!” As he finished his sentence Snareoth beheld the falling of the wall into dust where before the great temple had been. The answering man looked dumbfounded to see the open air before him as a great deal of dust began its decent to finally settling to it’s home of the Earth where it had not rested for a long time, and almost absentmindedly he spoke the prayer that those before him had recited that those closest had seen etched into the wall, “May I not be harmed as I write a prayer to bring all of mankind peace.”

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Koan . . .

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 4, 2011| Leave a Comment »

What does God think of God?

Follow up question: Does God think of God?

Or at least, if the first question could be classified under the heading of Koan, perhaps then the follow-up question is a good place to begin the train of thought that might lead to a state of mind that is more helpful for one’s subsequent usage . . .

It seems to me that the only way to be able to conceive in terms of divinity is, firstly, to turn off the thoughts one typically associates with one’s “self.” Or at least turn away from those thoughts. And I’m not necessarily just talking about one’s typical identity of person-hood.

For example, a person might identify with “their” country. A person might identify with their “God.” A person might identify with their planet, etc . . .

Now, don’t get me wrong, as long as I can remember my cells have formed strands of DNA classifying me as a human being native to the planet Earth. What I’m saying is merely that in order to get into a “mind-set” a little more in alignment with a state of being capable of perceiving the divine of which all existence has sprung, it seems helpful to me to stop calling the cells commonly attributed to my consciousness “mine; it seems helpful to conceive I might be something transcendent of species; it seems that it might be helpful to consider that as life itself, I need not concern myself with the planet I happen to be tethered to aside from my day to day life.

In point of fact, when attempting to consider the divine, it seems as though trying not to conceive of myself at all might be most beneficial in attempting to conceive the divine.

Let me put it another way . . .

Dear reader, if you ceased to be entirely, what would there be?

And all the rest of existence working, apparently incapable of existing without being so intertwined and interconnected, what would that look like if there was no concern whatsoever with one’s own discomforts of existence? I mean, even if you happen to find a moment of perfect comfort, aren’t you only perceiving the comfort you find yourself embodying, perhaps at most only your immediate comfortable surroundings the only conception of “outside” beyond your person? What happens when comfort is transcended and there’s no you nor your immediate surroundings to consider? When you cease to be, what remains?

Personally, I think it a little funny that one would think that in death finally “God” would reward them with personal physical comfort. I think it a bit odd that so many people perceive that a divinity that created them is so flawed that it must have gotten existence so wrong that only in apparent non-existence, from the perspective of all other existence, is perfection finally realized. I contend that if even for a moment one could transcend their own minds, one could catch a glimpse of why one need not die to realize Heaven.

Of course, consciousness at our level is rather divided, isn’t it? I wonder if we truly have the potential to transcend our separateness in interacting with each other to fulfill what may be a potential unique only to conscious individuals, of sharing realized unity for the sake of enjoying our common existence . . .

Peace

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To Serve

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 19, 2011| 1 Comment »

When I think about organized religions, especially the western ones, and I compare them to the way I perceive God, it looks to me something like this:

Many, maybe most, not all, who subscribe to the organized bunch generally seem to have some, if not in the very unfortunate cases all, of their thoughts on the matter written for them somewhere in some book, or thought into their minds, without a direct experiencing of what it is they think they believe. I have trouble believing something in a book, no matter how old it is or how many people buy it, because, I have read a lot of books. What is on a page, and what I can feel with my hand, seldom mesh. Mother Goose and Grimm is nice in its way. Porridge is better than starvation, and when one falls down a hill their likely-hood of death does increase. But, on a whole, I’m able to perceive that a story is not necessarily written to be congruous with my life as I am living it. It may contain a good example of something. Maybe make me think of something that does have an actual, real world, application. But on a whole, a story is a story, and when I’m not a crazy person, I can usually leave it in the book it came and walk away happily.

But when one can’t tell the difference between a story in a book, and the life they are living, there seems to me to be a problem. When a person takes the words of some man, or woman, and believes that the validity of their life rests solely in the words written by a human being, they have stopped seeking their own individuality and have stopped seeking their own connectivity to the divine form the perspective of their own unique individuality.

So, since everything, from my perspective, is God, and since every person is given the capacity to choose, if they choose to use that capacity, I see a metaphor for two distinct approaches to God. In this metaphor one has no choice but to serve the divine. One may be serving the adversarial aspect of the divine, HaSatan, but nonetheless, no one has choice but to serve wherever they are best suited to serve, within the context of an Omni-Divine universe. That being the case, the choice lies in this: In one version, in which one lives out the words of a book as though it were their own perspective, one chooses slavery to a God they choose never to want to have a direct interaction with. In the other version, one chooses to serve God and take their orders directly from a living entity creating existence in real time.

Because they think that stepping outside of their book and having a real relationship with God is too scary, one would bow their eyes below the light of the divine and see its light cast only on a man-made representation of the world. In the other version, one serves actively the creation of the world as it exists and is being made to exist by the light provided; their eyes resting where the intention of creation is at hand.

Not that one can’t derive good inspiration from some words passed down over the ages, but at the point in time in which one has been conned into being afraid that someone believing something different is damned to Hell, they seem too over-joyfully to begin creating that Hell amidst us on Earth in order to save us from the very thing they are so anxiously afflicting upon us living folk. At which point the desire for death to “go to Heaven” or in different terms “make it stop” suddenly becomes all too clear.

The alternative seems to be to eat our food with bits of salt. While understanding what we are creating in some moments hinges on once glancing and cognizing a handful of words in a book, it is the results we live outside that book that is the real test of the validity of our capacity to serve all creation in all its form. And may we be able to serve all its forms well, for appearance may deceive, but a kind action from one’s own hand never lies.

TTFN

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