Officially an Old-Fart

   I don't remember exactly when I became an old-fart. It was sometime between AARP sending me a card and now. I watch TV and the ads come on with I-phones and so on... flashy ads jumping around with images and devices that make the laptop I finally got last summer obsolete. I walk into a store, or look on Amazon, and damned near everything is way over and out of my price range. I miss the times when a store on State Street called Banks sold stuff from packed to the rafters office supplies and I could get a ribbon for my Remington Noiseless typewriter there. I miss the times when one could walk into any Art Museum anywhere free of charge unless there was a special exhibition. I miss the times when I could write out a letter in longhand and send it snail-mail for a dime's worth in stamps. I miss the times when I could browse in a record store.... when record stores had a booth where I could try out an album before purchasing it. I miss the times when a rock band stood on the stage and played music... when the most action up there was Chuck Berry duck-walking to songs like Maybellene, No Particular Place to Go, or Mick Jagger prancing and posing to Satisfaction! No one had to be lifted into the air on a string and spun around while lipsynching some banal piece of crap like last night's Grammy's (Does anyone know what a Gramophone was and that this is the word that the Grammy Award came from?).

   I am unashamedly an old fart.... no longer concerned with keeping up-to-date and relevant or am I enamored of the mixed up and confusing non-linear plot of "The Followers". The Followers.... my God, what a piece of crap! How many holes in the plot can they get by with? How dumb can the FBI be portrayed and how magically-smart a group of murderous maniacs be portrayed? Still, I watch it... I admit I'm hooked. Yes, I am hooked on that, as I was The Wire and Breaking Bad (those two at least had some good writing and an understandable story). I do secretly wish I were younger and could understand why I need an I-pad or similar device to watch my favorite movies or TV programs. But I really don't care to stare into a tiny screen as I walk and text, taking pictures of myself in exotic places. Speaking of that, I do wish I had hairless abs and pecs. I do wish I could parkour around town like a chimp on steroids. But I am resigned to being designated to a park bench instead and am rapidly sinking into the murkiness of passé.

   Ahhh, but youth. Can I at least admire you for the way you are handling the Brave New World we have left for you to create within. I guess so. Why not? Enjoy the life I have and let go of it. It is your world now and I am gradually backing off... run with it!

geo 5,599

The Bull by the Horns

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with an impure mind a person speaks or acts, suffering follows him like the wheel follows the foot of an ox.

Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief; they are all mind-wrought. If with a pure mind a person speaks or acts, happiness follows him like his never-departing shadow.

Dhammapada 1-2

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People in my Sangha (fellowship of AA) usually say; “Bring the body and the mind will follow.” If I want to argue the point I miss the beauty of the paradox. A good friend from my distant past used to say, “Watch what you think because thoughts have density.” These two notions don’t contradict each other if I look at them as a paradox and not a contradiction.

            The instant I accept that I need help the action of reaching out for it follows. The two, thought and action, are tied together sometimes so close that it is difficult to grasp which came first. For instance; an alcoholic walks past a bar, looks inside, sees old friends and next thing he knows he is sitting at the bar with a drink in his hand. No one ever got drunk thinking about a drink because an action of taking the drink is required. This is but one example… a version with slight variations of the theme. For the alcoholic the action of reaching into his pocket to pull out a phone is sometimes sufficient to reverse the thinking preceding that first drink. In the end it doesn’t matter whether it is mind over matter or matter over mind if I get away from linear thinking and embrace the dialectic of the paradox. This is what philosophers call, "Taking the bull by the horns."

geo 5,598

Mental Vigilance

And those who have no mental vigilance,

Though they may hear the teachings, ponder them in meditation,

With minds like water seeping from a leaking jug,

Their learning will never settle in their memories.

Sāntideva; Bodhicaryāvatāra 5.25

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Ninety-nine-point-nine-percent of the time I am not thinking about “the teachings” and I don’t care one whit about them. Then something happens… someone or something pisses me off …  some minor annoyance perhaps; like the line too long at the bank at noon and only two teller windows occupied with several bank people behind the tellers flipping through files at what looks like a ruse of being busy. This is one of the times when meditation kicks in and I pause… one… two… three and so on. Take a deep breath… maybe strike up a conversation with someone else in line. It is wise not to start with a complaint… “Why aren’t there more tellers at noon? Don’t they know…?” Naw, because a negative approach only encourages a downward spiral… a bitching session and the line seems to move even slower. But, even if I start out negative it can be turned around. It is better, however, to start off with something positive… a beautiful day… a nice dress… where did you get those shoes? etc. If that goes well the time in line passes quickly and it can become a bodhisattva moment.

            Ah, but what do I know of mental vigilance. I don’t think about this stuff ninety-nine percent of the time.

geo 5,594

Space & Time

I have had more than one event in which I lost consciousness… there was no time… there was no recollection… I came-to as though I’d never left even though, in one case, I’d been unconscious for over a day. In another incident I had a spill on my bike that cracked my skull from ear to ear. I got up several hours later and tried to ride home as though nothing happened. I often wonder where I went during those lapses in time. Sogyal Rinpoche’s reflection, in today’s Glimpse After Glimpse, addresses this by saying that I didn’t have any idea or sense of who I really am during these bardos. I awoke with no memory of it and cast about for an identity that matches my beliefs. I was asked by the doctors my name and so on. This seems perfectly normal for the purpose of medical diagnosis but I wonder what that experience would have been if a lama was there instead of a doctor when my eyes opened. I believe that the answer is in that void. Surely I was there. So it is with the period of time… the space before I was born and after I die in the eternity (of Kurt Vonnegut's chronoclastic infantibula) in which I live today. It could be that this is why the word, infant, is so closely tied to the word, infinity.

geo 5,593

Squiggly Things Squirm

A powerful and vast sea appears to rest quietly beyond the horizon where its deeps are hard to perceive.The mind is a sea beyond the horizon of my limited perception. If only there were a bathysphere to plunge into the Mariana Trench of an obscure consciousness. Is there really any way of knowing anything for sure… especially things like God, the mind, life beyond death or before birth? The best I can do is to float along on the surface in a boat that can be tossed about by emotional storms and gales of circumstance that come out of nowhere. I try to navigate the shoals and sometimes have to toss the storm anchor of faith on a thin chain of hope into the maelstrom to keep the bow of my very small boat determined against the waves.

Sit, wait for the weather to clear... for the seas to calm... for the waters to magnify the depths where squiggly things swim... ahhhh. It is worth it. If I fear the hazards of the adventure, I might as well never leave the shore. After all, the breakers look so very nice from the beach and the squiggly things wash up now and then.

Ah, I get carried away with the metaphor, I think I'm so clever. Carried away with my cleverness, I babble on... trying to work these things out for myself. Then I post them and look back embarrassed at the cheek of thinking my opinion means anything to anyone other than myself. Maybe if I had the surety of an answer it might have a meaning for someone besides myself. But, it is that kind of surety that churns the gall in my gut and I refuse to go there until I know the squiggly things by name.

A Positive Simplicity

A Typical Chinese Style Poem:

I am stricken with grief for my

     father’s passing.

He worked hard and provided us

     with a good life.

I slept well last night and

     didn’t have dreams.

Upon rising I made a 12 cup

     pot of Coffee.

geo 5,591

Dreams and Visions

Doesn't everybody hate it when a friend tries to tell them about a dream... Yes, they do. You always begin with, "I had a dream last night..." see, you know you hate it when it is done to you, and you know everyone on the planet hates it, but you have to tell it... all about it... anyway.

     I had a dream last night and, as soon as I wanted to tell someone about it, I completely forgot all about it. Oh yes, it had a character from the novel I am currently writing in it. The details aren't important and it is the details that people hate to hear anyway. My consciousness must know this and shuts out all memory of it and says to my subconscious... "Hey, let's keep this one a secret... tuck it away so that he won't remember it. It is our dream, so fuck him."

     Perhaps the biggest frauds perpetuated on anyone are dream interpreters. Not just the palmists and astrologers with a booth in the back of a holistic spiritual bookstore, but even the most scientific... the Freud, Jungian and etc, ones. The reason I say they are frauds is based on my own experience with telling someone about a dream. When I tell a dream and it makes no sense, I tend to make up stuff that does make sense. So you see, the reason it is a fraud to me is that I know that, even when it comes to telling people about my own dreams, I am a fraud.

     This is true with the exception, of course, of Martin Luther King's famous dream. Then again, he was saying I have a dream and not I had a dream. Past or present tense makes a big difference. When I have a dream I have a vision of the future... an ideal... a clear one. Martin Luther King's dream was a nightmare for every racist at that time but, for most of us, it was more than a good idea... it was a great vision. He was a young man then and the old ways of America's apartheid  had to step aside for that vision. It was the completion of an ideal far greater than any of us could imagine at the time... not even those attending that day.

     A quote from the Old Testament comes to mind from the Book of Joel (verse 2:28): "and it will come to pass that I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, and your young men shall have visions. Even upon your menservants and maidservants in those days, I will pour out my spirit." Young people have clarity of vision even when they can see no practical means of fulfilling those ideals. At least, that is something practical I can take away from this scripture

     Dreams and visions are necessary but it is my belief that a vision is more powerful than a dream. These are times when a vision is necessary for our very survival and, as the proverb recommends: "Without a vision the people perish." A couple more accurate translations say that is when "the people have no restraints"... but the point is well made.We need to break away from old ways... of dreamy expectations and unreal certainty... of visions made up of conclusions drawn from partial recollection. These are times that require the impartial clarity of a great vision, in which individual responsibility is taken, in lieu of a dictated one that comes down from the old mechanism of failed authority from government or the pulpit.

The Egg of Creation

What is the manifestation of compassion, is like this: Imagine a sky, empty, spacious, and pure from the beginning; its essence is like this. Imagine a sun, luminous, clear, unobstructed, and spontaneously present; its nature is like this. Imagine that sun shining out impartially on us and all things, penetrating all directions; its energy, which is the manifestation of compassion, is like this: Nothing can obstruct it, and it pervades everywhere.

Sogyal Rinpoche

Glimpse After Glimpse

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I am drawn to what I am obsessed with no matter what I believe to be true. History doesn’t repeat itself so much as it spirals. It comes back to similar themes but always one step above or below itself: so it goes. It is either a negative spiral, spinning its way to annihilation, or it is revolving into an entirely new evolution from a baser form of itself. This is true for history and it is a theorem that applies directly to the life I think I own. It takes a bit of reflection to see it sometimes but history provides examples of it working when I look at the Big Picture. I.e., there will never be another Attila or Hitler. Evil devolves as neatly as does the good evolve. This view works and rings true when we see that conditions will never recreate another Christ or a Buddha. However, here is another truth that encourages me; it only takes a few enlightened souls to raise consciousness to matter how many little Nero’s are stomping about. Great minds go to great places, good minds go to good places, and small minds go to small places… We see the tyrants pass as new forms of the tyrant take to the ego gone goose-stepping towards destruction. We see the little acts of selfless compassion everywhere swimming upstream like spermatozoa to the egg of creation. It only takes one to fertilize the ova and each of us has that capacity.

geo 5,585

The Middle Path

Whoever lives looking for pleasure, exercising no restraint over his senses,

Immoderate in his enjoyments, indolent, inert,

Him Māra overpowers, even as the wind overpowers a tree of little strength…

Dhammapada 7

I once dismissed verses as these sorts as priggish admonitions towards piety and moralistic hypocritical preaching. Nevermind, I thought, pleasure is what we all seek if we are honest. Even the most pious monk who scourges himself is practicing what he thinks will be some kind of future pleasure beyond the Pearly Gates. To a large degree these exaggerated forms of self-denial are a deeper form of narcissistic self-indulgence as much as buying the right meditation cushion, incense and bells are of the fasting of a flagellant.

            The Buddha understood this as he broke his meditation to stand away from the Bodhi tree to receive a donation of rice from a village girl. From that point on he recommended the middle path: eat when you are hungry and enjoy it; sleep well when you sleep and don’t fight it; wake when you are awake and don’t deny your senses because the time will come when troubles outnumber the pleasures of life. Age will approach with ills and pain enough… there is adequate suffering in this life without inflicting ourselves with any more.

            This opposite approach can become nothing more than hedonistic if it is taken to the extremes. Again, it is the middle-path… especially for alcoholics and addicts… but it applies universally. Enjoy life! It is a fact that I can’t enjoy life if I am bound by unreasonable demands for pleasure.

            The quoted verses from the Dhammapada continues in verses 8:

Whoever lives looking not for pleasure, exercising restraint over his      senses,

Moderate in his enjoyments, endowed with faith, exerting the

 power of his will,

Him Māra does not overpower, even the wind does not over-

 power a mountain of rock.

geo 5,784

Love Your Lunacy

The greatest thing about the creative arts is that I have the permission to be wildly insane.It is altogether a different thing to know I am stark raving sane and I must avoid that delusion at all costs. As was pointed out in Catch 22, if you know you are insane, you aren't. This artist thinks he has to pretend he is sane and doesn't know he is insane. All the while the rest of the world goes completely baboon pretending to be the opposite. It is one thing to get all nihilistic about the insanity of it but is is another thing to try to create some kind of sense out of the inherent confusion of the world around me. Look, I've already jumped off the bridge as far as the rest of the world is concerned and that gives me more than enough liberty to make my own rules as I go along. I am aware, however, that this attitude only contributes more fuel to the fire and that is where my pretense kicks in. It is an art more than it it a science but some sense has to be made of it.

     Here I am at my desk on Sunday morning while these words come tumbling out from the depths of my heart. I have this need to write, paint, sculpt and so on, because I am compelled to be completely honest about myself and the world as I see it. Furthermore, I am inflicted with an ego big enough to fill all fifty States and beyond and have always believed that I have something worthwhile to contribute to the babble of the internet. Ya'll can thank God I don't use Twitter!

      I was once told that I ought to get sober in order to become a "contributing member of society". That suggestion kept me drunk for years. Why would I want to contribute to the meat-grinder that is Twenty-First Century society? I might as well sit on my couch and attempt to keep up with the Kardashians. NO, NO,NO,NO, NO, NO, NO, NONONONONONO! I belong to another age... the age of oil paint and canvas, when turpentine still smelled like turpentine, photographs on silver solutions, of pay-phone booths, of TV antennae on every house, when there were no laws against not wearing seat-belts, when you could still smoke in a bar, and the Cadillac was the car of status... a two ton hunk of steel with with 500 cubic inches (not meters) under the hood from Detroit!

     How many civil liberties did we give up today for the common welfare of the peeps?

     I have skittered around clinging to every cause and misadventure imaginable. In my life, at one time or another, I have been a liberal Democrat; a civil rights activist; a Bakunin style Anarchist; a conservative Republican;  a radical leftist; a libertarian atheist agnostic; a Christian Pentecostal Holy Rolling Bible Thumper; damn near a Buddhist monk; and a plain ole drunk. There are several other tributaries of all these I've canoed up over the years and I'm not done yet. I'm sure that I don't impress, or try to impress, anyone with the mention of these but I do so to make my point: that I am a nut case and I know IT! That is why I consider myself an artist and why I sit down at this desk damned near every morning and pound these epistles out just in case there is someone else out there as insane as I am and knows the sanity of it. I.e., I love my lunacy.

geo 5,582

Writer's Block (Continued)

I have been blessed... don't ya hate that phrase... it's true though. I have been blessed with several creative outlets. Sometimes I sculpt; sometimes I paint; sometimes I carve and print a Linotype; and at other times the muse might strike me and a few lines of what can be called poetry urges my pen to paper. These are great ways to keep the juices flowing. Mind you, they don't have to be great, earth-shaking, works of art. They are simply an outlet to keep the pond from becoming stagnate.

     Other times, quite frankly, it is best for me to get completely away from my little office/studio and take a walk on the beach. I live in a magical place where the mountains hug the coastline above our town and the ocean splashes on the shore within a mile of my place. Another important thing for me is that, when I go out from my den, I don't think about art at all. I enjoy the moment. It all comes together and my spirit is refreshed.

   Simple things do it. After all, what is living about? I can waste this life I have been given fretting about politics or my failures... the list goes on and on... or, I can pause and take a few deep breaths before my body gives up on breathing altogether. It may be that this is my one shot at it. I'll be damned if I want to spend my last few precious breaths on a ventilator with tubes and wires (which is the most likely way most of us go). No, let me breathe the fresh mountain air or the oceans pounding surf one more time... that is all I ask: One more time one day at a time.

geo 5,581

Writer's block

Nothing to panic about... really?

I was once cavalier about these unscheduled creative hiatuses. I'd assure myself that it was a break...  a period to be utilized by doing something else... doing something else could have been easily transmuted into doing nothing and doing nothing became the art of doing nothing. Time takes its toll, however, and I look back thinking, what a waste?

Age... Age imposes a perspective on my perspective. A universal perspective overlaying a limited and personal one. The two merge into one at certain turn-offs on the hi-way.... vista points: not necessarily rest stops. Rest stops are places where perhaps a little park, a restroom, maybe some trees... travelers can park... take a nap... nothing spectacular is promised in these places though they are sometimes beautifully placed.

However, a vista point starts out with a promise... hey, stop... check this out... there is something to see here.... usually no facilities.... just a view. A precipice where the winding road can be seen and so on. My favorite Vista Point was one west of Le Grande Oregon. It overlooks a valley on the Oregon Trail and there is a marker that tells of how there was a lone pine tree on the plane that was chopped down for firewood by the pioneers. It was so green it couldn't be used for fire and the pilgrims traveled on.

It is an interesting Vista Point to me because the view is of something that is no longer there... that was chopped down too soon.... that was wasted and mourned. Ah, maybe I'll write today.

geo 5,579

The Lone Tree

Oregon Trail emigrants entered the Baker Valley after days of arduous travel through the Burnt River watershed, where James Nesmith, emigrant of 1843, considered "The roads rough and the country rougher still."  Early emigrants crested the south flank of Flangstaff Hill, and with the Blue Mountains looming to the west, the rolling valley below present d a single tree -- the Lone Pine.

"We at last found the top of the mountain   at a distance we could see what we suppose to be the Blue mountains and they struck us with terror  their lofty peaks seemed a resting place for the clouds.  Below us was a large plain and at some distance we could discover a tree which we at once recognized a "the lone pine" of which we had before heard.  We made all possible speed and at 7 1/2 o'clock the advance party arrived at the Tree nearly an hour before the cattle.  The Tree is a large Pine standing in the midst of an immense plain intirely alone.  It presented a truly singular apearance and I believe is respected by every traviler through this Treless Country."  Medorem Crawford;  September 8, 1842

I stole this from this website: tomlaidlaw.com

Mediation Base Camp

There are times when the spell is broken… clarity of mind breaks through the fog… the senses are alert amidst calm… deliberate… focus. I had one of these moments this morning as I sat in meditation. Warmth… opening of the Heart of Compassion… I didn’t will it into being. It caught me by surprise. I didn’t resist.

Most meditations, truthfully, are little more than breaking even at best. I sit expecting nothing. I pray… I surrender without conditions and go about the business of the day. I am grateful…

I become grateful when I pray. Gratitude takes me a long ways towards well-being and balance. I go forward from that base. Like climbing Everest… ya gotta have a base camp. Meditation in the morning is my base camp for climbing the Everest of my day. Hell, most days aren’t comparable to climbing Everest… little more challenging than walking to my mailbox. But, because I have no idea what is around the corner I prepare. No longer motivated by fear because I have the assurance of that peace and am carried by the grace of a heart that is full.

geo 5,577

The Wound That is The Mind

In the same way that someone in the midst of a rough crowd guards a wound with great care, so in the midst of bad company should one always guard the wound that is the mind.

Sāntideva; Bodhicaryāvatāra 5.19

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To think of the mind as a wounded organ explains its sensitivity to the influence of the company I keep. It isn’t so much that I ought to avoid or shun the so called “bad crowd”, but rather that I protect my mind from negative and destructive group think… or, the group conscience. I have to become alert and aware of fearful and divisive complaining and gossip if I am to maintain a positive outlook. To always look towards healing is sometimes a difficult thing but it is a must if I am to have equanimity of spirit and open to the higher calling of grace.

The Saint Francis Prayer advises that, if I am to be a channel of peace, these suggestions prescribe what is required of me: Where there is hatred, I bring love; i.e., resist the temptation to pile on more fuel for the fire. That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness. Forgiveness is a most important and subtle principle because I am drawn into all kinds of abuses by preaching against the wrongs of others instead of first forgiving them where they err. This is easy to do when the differences are minor but when the conflict is between questions of more sensitive issues, my peace is challenged. Consequently, it comes as no surprise that the next phrase of the prayer suggests that I bring harmony to discord. In other words, I am to seek out where we can agree. If the dispute is due to an error of judgment or thinking then I must seek the truth… even when the truth is not friendly to my cause. It takes faith to overcome the doubt that arises out of this suggestion but faith is the answer that dispels despair with hope… brings light to the shadows… and elevates sadness to joy.

To seek comfort rather than to be comforted… to love than to be love… to understand than to be understood… these are remedies prescribed for the healing and protection of the wound that is my mind.

geo 5,572

Happy New Year

Starting my New Year with this reflection puts 2014 in order for me. To begin it this way is the first step towards an acknowledgement of a truth I have owned through bitter experience. To look at life through the prism of despair would seem dour to those who have not passed through it but, to those of us who have, it is the benchmark of a joyful and miraculous recovery. Were it not for this fact I would have no faith at all in spiritual remedies. It was in this state… this physical and mental state… that my ego was set aside enough to allow the Heart of Compassion to get a foot in the door.

            Tributary to this thought is one I have held about certain spiritual paths that use our excesses as one way to “get it”. I was mistaken, as many are, to believe that these indulgences were the path of the “good life”. I had no understanding that my debauchery was only a tool used break my ego down enough to attain it. This turned out to be a dangerous and a near fatal error in my case. This life of hedonistic indulgence led to a meaningless one where I threw up my hands and cried out in despair, “What’s the use?”

Most of us who have passed through this stage have no regrets about it except, of course, for the damage we have caused those we have harmed. Would it have been better for all of us had I been able to take a more moderate course? I suppose so… but this is how I got where I am today and I am grateful for that. It is called the breaking point or hitting bottom in the literature of recovery… (Terms exploited in Alcoholics Anonymous). It is echoed beautifully in the Poetry of Saint John of the Cross: The Dark Night of the Soul. It is the place of beginning; the starting point of a spiritual awakening.

geo 5,570