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

&

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

&

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.