For Shelter, the World

Happy New Year 2009

2009 is an 11 year (adding 2+0+0+9, you get eleven). In numerology, eleven signifies spiritual transformation and understanding, and the interface of the physical level of existence with the mystical, the mundane with the archetypal. It represents the embodiment of the principle "as above, so below".

The number eleven is what's known as a Master Number, and with good reason. It takes mastery to contain and use that kind of energy constructively. It requires a lot from us, but in return, it gives a lot, too.

The eleventh chapter of the Tao Te Ching:

11

We join spokes together in a wheel,
but it is the center hole
that makes the wagon move.

We shape clay into a pot,
but it is the emptiness inside
that holds whatever we want.

We hammer wood for a house,
but it is the inner space
that makes it livable.

We work with being,
but non-being is what we use.

Namaste, and see you next year.

 

Ripe

Little Zen Calendar entry for December 16, 2008, my 55th birthday:

A single red berry

   has fallen

      on the frost in the garden.

 

 -- Shiki, haiku

And it came to pass ...

Random chapter from the Tao Te Ching:

74

If you realize that all things change,
there is nothing you will try to hold on to.
If you aren't afraid of dying,
there is nothing you can't achieve.

Trying to control the future
is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.
When you handle the master carpenter's tools,
chances are that you'll cut your hand.

And from Osho's Transformation oracle, number 35, "Mastery of Moods":

Everything passes, but you remain. You are the reality; everything else is just a dream. Beautiful dreams are there, nightmares are there... But it does not matter whether it is a beautiful dream or a nightmare; what matters is the one who is seeing the dream. That seer is the only reality.

Not a bad place to be

My mind has boggled. It's still trying to figure out how to "be" in life, how to know whom to trust, and whom not to trust, and what to say and do, and when; and all the thinking has led down a blind alley. Nothing makes any sense any more. I give up.

In the absence of a self-centered or isolated perspective, our moment-to-moment functioning spontaneously manifests our natural embeddedness in life. This "true" self is neither inside nor outside; it is neither an inner life plan nor a union with a greater or transcendent Being. There is nothing "beyond" being just this moment.

 —Barry Magid, Ordinary Mind

200

I've been cheated
been mistreated
When will I be loved?

I've been put down
I've been pushed round
When will I be loved?

When I find a new girl
That I want for mine
She always breaks my heart in two
It happens every time

I've been made blue
I've been lied to
When will I be loved?

I've been cheated
Been mistreated
When will I be loved?
When will I be loved?
When will I be loved?

 

-- lyrics and music, Phil Everly

 

I don't know about you, but I've had about all I can stand of living this way. Are we ready to let go of our precious, closely-guarded identities as "victims", and find other ways of being here, individually and together, on this beautiful small planet?

 

Are we ready to actually enjoy life?

 

Are we willing to let go of everything that stands in the way of that?

 

Do we really have a choice?

 

To everything

Turn, Turn, Turn
There is a season

Turn, Turn, Turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

To Everything

Turn, Turn, Turn
There is a season

Turn, Turn, Turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to build up

A time to break down
A time to dance

A time to mourn
A time to cast away stones

A time to gather stones together

To everything

Turn, Turn, Turn
There is a season

Turn, Turn, Turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace

A time to refrain from embracing

To everything

Turn, Turn, Turn
There is a season

Turn, Turn, Turn
And a time for every purpose under heaven

A time to gain

A time to lose
A time to rend

A time to sew
A time to love

A time to hate
A time for peace

I swear it's not too late

 

-- "Turn, Turn, Turn", words and music, Pete Seeger

 

There's only so much raging and weeping and fighting that a person can do. I've done my grieving and raging, and struggling to make things work for myself and for other people that simply aren't meant to work. I'm tired of trying to make sense of insanity. Trying to get people to listen to me and see me who cannot hear and see, and then descending into despair because I can't get them to do so; and feeling their pain and my pain, all mixed up to where I can't tell the difference.

Trying to make tigers not be tigers; or worse, not recognizing that they are tigers until it's too late. And doing things that aren't mine to do. Some of them never were, to begin with, and others have outlived their time. I'm tired of beating up on myself for not having realized that, and for having made mistakes. I'm tired of hurting.

I'm ready to move on. Anyone want to come along?

Season of Change

Late autumn has come to the Pacific Northwest. Yesterday was the first day I felt a real chill in the air, and we've already had some snowfall at higher elevations. So far, it's mostly melting during the daytime, but you can see traces of snow in the photo below. (It's high on the peak above the prow of the barge). You can also see a little valley between peaks where low clouds were forming and then pouring out into the Gorge proper.

 

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
Thy winds, thy wide gray skies!
Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with color!  That gaunt crag
To crush!  To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, world, I cannot get thee close enough!

Long have I known a glory in it all
But never knew I this.
Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart.  Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year.
My soul is all but out of me - let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

-- "God's World", Edna St. Vincent Millay

 

Last week the maple, alder and birch trees were in full flame, gold and red, forming a dramatic contrast against the fixed green of the Douglas firs and cedars. Now every gust of wind brings the leaves drifting down; sometimes just one or two, sometimes in flurries. Soon the trees and bushes will be bare skeletons again, stark against the gray sky and wet pavement of winter.

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

-- "Nothing Gold Can Stay", Robert Frost

Practice

Observing the current bizarre and vituperative state of U.S. politics (and after all, the personal is political, and I've found that my own life is often a mirror of the world at large) ... for some reason, despite everything I know and have learned about life, it sometimes still surprises me to find out I'm not alone, that I'm not the only person to whom irrational and seemingly unfair things happen.

That sounds silly even as I write it, because it seems so obvious, and it is obvious. But I guess when you're in the middle of it, slogging your way through the swamp amid the "slings and arrows", it's easy to lose perspective and see the situation as confirming some shameful personal failing all your own, or a burden of pain that you alone are carrying.

Then I am reminded of how universal my experience is; that I am, after all, a member of the human race. I think, in fact, that's one of the most profound lessons this year has given me.

(14) A bodhisattva’s practice is,
Even if someone were to publicize throughout the thousand,
million, billion worlds
All kinds of unpleasant things about us,
To speak in return about his good qualities, with an attitude of love.

(15) A bodhisattva’s practice is,
Even if someone exposes our faults or says foul words about us
in the midst of a gathering of many wandering beings,
To bow to him respectfully,
distinguishing that he’s our spiritual teacher.

(16) A bodhisattva’s practice is,
Even if a person whom we’ve taken care of,
cherishing him like our own child,
were to regard us as his enemy,
To have special affection for him,
Like a mother toward her child stricken with an illness.

(17) A bodhisattva’s practice is,
Even if an individual, our equal or inferior,
were to treat us insultingly out of the power of his arrogance,
To receive him on the crown of our heads respectfully, like a guru.

-- from Thirty-seven Bodhisattva Practices by Togmey-zangpo
(Translation by Alexander Berzin, 2006)

At ease in my life

Today I feel as if I am standing on a balance beam, poised on one toe, in the middle of an earthquake; yet life feels solid to me, that everything is as it needs to be and I am all right. Something to do with non-resistance, perhaps? Or maybe, just maybe, everything actually is all right.

A random chapter of the Tao Te Ching:

14

Look, and it can't be seen.
Listen, and it can't be heard.
Reach, and it can't be grasped.

Above, it isn't bright.
Below, it isn't dark.
Seamless, unnamable,
it returns to the realm of nothing.
Form that includes all forms,
image without an image,
subtle, beyond all conception.

Approach it and there is no beginning;
follow it and there is no end.
You can't know it, but you can be it,
at ease in your own life.
Just realize where you come from:
this is the essence of wisdom.

Poem for the Autumn Equinox 2008

If I had to create a poem to describe these final days of Pluto in Sagittarius; with Chiron, Neptune and the lunar North Node conjunct in the middle of Aquarius; Uranus and Saturn at opposition; and the personal planets all cozied up in Libra, including Mercury getting ready to do its fall retrograde, this would be it.

You'll probaby think I'm nuts, but I find reading this poem a joyful experience. It has been such a long road (and as another early 20th century poet said, we have miles to go before we sleep), and in this poem I find some sort of validation and comfort.

P. S. If you don't understand the "astrologese", don't worry about it ... just read the poem ;). There'll be time enough to talk about the cosmos later.

The Hollow Men

Mistah Kurtz—he dead.

                    A penny for the Old Guy

I

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats’ feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death’s other Kingdom

Remember us—if at all—not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams

In death’s dream kingdom

These do not appear:

There, the eyes are

Sunlight on a broken column

There, is a tree swinging

And voices are

In the wind’s singing

More distant and more solemn

Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer

In death’s dream kingdom

Let me also wear

Such deliberate disguises

Rat’s coat, crowskin, crossed staves

In a field

Behaving as the wind behaves

No nearer—

Not that final meeting

In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man’s hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this

In death’s other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here

There are no eyes here

In this valley of dying stars

In this hollow valley

This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places

We grope together

And avoid speech

Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless

The eyes reappear

As the perpetual star

Multifoliate rose

Of death’s twilight kingdom

The hope only

Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear

Prickly pear prickly pear

Here we go round the prickly pear

At five o’clock in the morning.

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

 

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

 

Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

 

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

-- T. S. Eliot

The Journey

The first time I read the poem "The Journey" by the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Mary Oliver, something inside me said "Yes." That same something impelled me through my own "wild night" this past summer. Once you make that decision to live your own life and stop living others', there is no going back; and oh, such a relief when you begin to see those stars shining in the clear night sky.

Never give up

No matter what is going on
Never give up
Develop the heart
Too much energy in your country
Is spent developing the mind
Instead of the heart
Be compassionate
Not just to your friends
But to everyone
Be compassionate
Work for peace
In your heart and in the world
Work for peace
And I say again
Never give up
No matter what is going on around you
Never give up

-- H.H. The XIV Dalai Lama

Do without doing

Random chapter from the Tao Te Ching:

43

The gentlest thing in the world
overcomes the hardest thing in the world.
That which has no substance
enters where there is no space.
This shows the value of non-action.

Teaching without words,
performing without actions:
that is the Master's way.

And the wheel keeps turning ...

The wheel is turning and you can't slow down,
You can't let go and you can't hold on,
You can't go back and you can't stand still,
If the thunder don't get you then the lightning will.

Small wheel turn by the fire and rod,
Big wheel turn by the grace of God,
Every time that wheel turn 'round,
Bound to cover just a little more ground.

-- from "The Wheel"; lyrics and music by Jerry Garcia, Robert Hunter and Bill Kreutzmann

The Grateful Dead Family Discography site has an interesting bit about the creation of this song:

The Wheel was composed spontaneously in the studio during the recording of the second side of Garcia's first solo LP.

Garcia spoke about it in an interview:

...that side was really almost one continuous performance, pretty much. When a song would come up in there, or just a progression, we'd play with it and work it through a few more times. And The Wheel came out of that. It wasn't written, I didn't have anything in mind, I hadn't sketched it out.

The engineer on the recording session, Bob Matthews, spoke in an interview about the addition of the lyrics:

As we were playing it back and doing some of the overdubs, Hunter was there and he had a big piece of paper and he was writing on it up on the wall. He was writing words while we were listening to one of the playbacks and it turned out to be perfect. It was The Wheel. That song came from nowhere and just happened like that.

"The Wheel" was first performed in public by the Dead on June 3, 1976, at the Paramount Theatre in Portland, Oregon.

In Labor

It feels like I've been in the delivery room for years. Starting in early 2002, I've experienced periodic waves of depression, panic, despair, and overwhelming sadness. As anyone who's been there knows, this is not just emotional but physical. At first, they'd arrive sporadically over time, like the initial pains of labor do. This summer, it's been almost constant. ("The contractions are coming every five minutes now.")

I could attribute it to menopause, to various personal or world events, PTSD, Hurricane Katrina, genetics, my childhood traumas, collective human evolution, or whatever personal challenge I happened to be going through at the moment. Many times I'd talk to other people who were experiencing the same thing at the same time. At this point, I'm not sure the reason matters as much as what I do with it.

Surrender to the process, use the breath, and let life emerge through me. 

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

-- Jalāl ad-Dīn Rumi

Patience and presence

Random chapter of the Tao Te Ching, on this peaceful and sunny Friday afternoon.

I bow to life as it is.

15

The ancient Masters were profound and subtle.
Their wisdom was unfathomable.
There is no way to describe it;
all we can describe is their appearance.

They were careful
as someone crossing an iced-over stream.
Alert as a warrior in enemy territory.
Courteous as a guest.
Fluid as melting ice.
Shapable as a block of wood.
Receptive as a valley.
Clear as a glass of water.

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?

The Master doesn't seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting,
she is present, and can welcome all things.

The Eternal Return

Random chapter from the Tao Te Ching:

40

Return is the movement of the Tao.
Yielding is the way of the Tao.

All things are born of being.
Being is born of non-being.

Where we are

These days, I've been waking up feeling depressed and afraid ... almost an existential panic, feeling lost and alone and helpless. Once I get up and reconnect with myself and the ground I'm walking on, it passes. (But not completely; the feeling seems to be forming a background to my life right now, something of a basso continuo to the interplay of emotions.)

It's not surprising, given what's going on with me. On the other hand, my personal issues seem to be reflected in those of the world at large. We're casting off old patterns, old beliefs and ways of being, at yet another "ground zero", so I know I'm not the only one feeling this.

A friend of mine told me he's been going through my blog archives, reading the old posts. He came across one that had special meaning for him and emailed me about it today. It contained a couple of quotes that were just what I needed to hear now, so I'm posting them again here:

Sometimes I go about in pity for myself, and all the while,

A great wind is bearing me across the sky.

-- Ojibwa saying

In three words I can sum up everything I know about life: it goes on.

-- Robert Frost

Thanks, Lewis. :)

Heart Advice

A random chapter from the Tao Te Ching:

35

She who is centered in the Tao
can go where she wishes, without danger.
She perceives the universal harmony,
even amid great pain,
because she has found peace in her heart.

Music or the smell of good cooking
may make people stop and enjoy.
But words that point to the Tao
seem monotonous and without flavor.
When you look for it, there is nothing to see.
When you listen for it, there is nothing to hear.
When you use it, it is inexhaustible.

-- Lao-tzu; from a translation by Stephen Mitchell

Making the Jump

Little Zen Calendar, April 22, 2007:

Lighting one candle

   With another candle

        This spring evening.

-- Buson

The answer

Today's Little Zen Calendar entry:

There ain't no answer. There ain't gonna be any answer. There never has been an answer. There's the answer.

-- Gertrude Stein