The Nonsense that Pervades

Excerpt from Where Love Lives by Michael Kewley:

The world is filled with un-awakened beings. That’s why it is the way that it is. That’s why you see what you see. It’s why you see the violence and cruelty, segregation and gender inequality and it’s why you see and feel the fear and nonsense that pervades everything.

That constant, endless distraction away from simply being still and meeting the simplicity of the mind. Reflect, where can you go now to find a silent place? They are really rare. Music, aeroplane noise, traffic, and everything else.

And be honest, even if you do manage to find a place where you can sit alone and be still, you’re there with your smart phone and tablet keeping in touch with the foolishness of the world. Silence is very disturbing for people. It is the environment of awakening. It is the place to hear the heart whispering it’s message, that it’s ‘time to wake up, it’s time to live your life, and the world is not the way it is presented to be’.

This is why we really emphasize silence on retreat. Once you surrender into that beautiful and deep place you will meet you, and you will be able to be with and serve yourself with respect and integrity. This is called love. The moment you know how to love yourself you will intuitively love all beings.

101

 

I'd like to recommend a book to you, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick.

I'm not an architect, but I learned a lot from it.  Knowing the problems an architect faces and the processes he uses to create gave me an appreciation for buildings and spaces that I didn't have before.

The book was a lot of fun to read and changed the way I look at the world.

The More You Know

Fun Fact:  Before healing the sick or feeding the hungry, Jesus ALWAYS asked to see their papers.  If they weren't supposed to be there, he had them deported.  "Not My Problem," sayeth the Lord. 

Moral Clarity

Excerpted from The Cancellation of Russian Culture by Gary Saul Morson:

In the medieval era, when a thinker successfully claimed divine revelation, he placed his words beyond dispute. Only the hopelessly benighted or demonically inspired could doubt him. In recent decades, the claim of “science” achieves a similar result. Politicians maintain they “just follow the science” while supportive mass media platforms banish questioners as enemies of science. Pseudoscience never had it so good.

There is another way to silence opponents today: Claim an issue is one of “moral clarity,” a phrase that signals the question is “settled” and allows for no further discussion. In such cases, facts don’t give rise to a narrative, the narrative determines the facts. When an issue is declared “morally clear” in this way, the implication is that only the immoral could entertain the slightest doubt. The world divides neatly into good and evil. There can be no conscientious skeptics. And when people are unqualifiedly evil, anything one says about them or does to them becomes justified.

You can read the full article HERE.

Not but Just Not

"The point is not to get rid of thoughts or feelings, but just not to feel located inside of them."  ~ Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing ©2006

Step Lightly

"Every step you take should be a prayer. And if every step you take is a prayer, then you will always be walking in a sacred manner."  ~Black Elk 

Do You Remember?

 Songs with "September" in the title:

• September Morn by Neil Diamond (YouTube)(lyrics)
• September Song by Jimmy Durante (YouTube)(lyrics)
• September by Earth Wind and Fire (YouTube)(lyrics)
• Wake Me Up When September Ends by Green Day (YouTube)(lyrics)

Pause

"Poetry calls us to pause. There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own."  ~Naomi Shihab Nye (via)

Mine Was a story without a plot.

Last Poem
by Ted Berrigan

Before I began life this time
I took a crash course in Counter-Intelligence
Once here I signed in, see name below, and added
Some words remembered from an earlier time,
'The intention of the organism is to survive.'
My earliest, & happiest, memories pre-date WWII,
They involve a glass slipper & a helpless blue rose
In a slender blue single-rose vase: Mine
Was a story without a plot. The days of my years
Folded into one another, an easy fit, in which
I made money & spent it, learned to dance & forgot, gave
Blood, regained my poise, & verbalized myself a place
In Society. 101 St. Mark's Place, apt. 12A, NYC 10009
New York. Friends appeared & disappeared, or wigged out,
Or stayed; inspiring strangers sadly died; everyone
I ever knew aged tremendously, except me. I remained
Somewhere between 2 and 9 years old. But frequent
Reification of my own experiences delivered to me
Several new vocabularies, I loved that almost most of all.
I once had the honor of meeting Beckett & I dug him.
The pills kept me going, until now. Love, & work,
Were my great happinesses, that other people die the source
Of my great, terrible, & inarticulate one grief. In my time
I grew tall & huge of frame, obviously possessed
Of a disconnected head, I had a perfect heart. The end
Came quickly & completely without pain, one quiet night as I
Was sitting, writing, next to you in bed, words chosen randomly
From a tired brain, it, like them, suitable, & fitting.
Let none regret my end who called me friend.

Wow, This Is Awful

 I love Dean Martin, I really do, but this song where he and Nat King Cole decide to go home and beat the crap out of their wives is absolutely dreadful:

Disappointment

 Disappointment
by Tony Hoagland

I was feeling pretty religious
standing on the bridge in my winter coat
looking down at the gray water:
the sharp little waves dusted with snow,
fish in their tin armor.

That's what I like about disappointment:
the way it slows you down,
when the querulous insistent chatter of desire
goes dead calm

and the minor roadside flowers
pronounce their quiet colors,
and the red dirt of the hillside glows.

She played the flute, he played the fiddle
and the moon came up over the barn.
Then he didn't get the job, —
or her father died before she told him
that one, most important thing—

and everything got still.

It was February or October
It was July
I remember it so clear
You don't have to pursue anything ever again
It's over
You're free
You're unemployed

You just have to stand there
looking out on the water
in your trench coat of solitude
with your scarf of resignation
lifting in the wind.