'seeing that one cannot see the absence-of-things is true seeing.'
shen hui
'all matters without exception are lies and gibberish...'
Shinran
Gibberish...
"Just give me something to remember quickly when I'm stuck in the shit."
Shit is it! Shit is it!
*
This body-mind-self is composed of grasping.
It is 100 percent grasping.
It is only grasping.
As grasping it does one thing only: grasp.
Any doing on its part is grasping.
Every mental/physical effort is grasping.
Grasping is emptiness.
*
‘No’-mind (the mind that doubts).
No-mind (where ‘no’-mind lives).
*
The thinking/dualizing mind—that human thing—is itself, fortunately, incapable of achieving fixed-object status.
Because of that, it’s forever untamed and…inhuman.
*
‘Horizontal’ life is linear, lateral, common sense, usual, mundane…Or even exceptional, exciting, but still, lacking verticality, like a number line.
‘Vertical’ life is the perpendicular line that bisects the horizontal at every point. The number of horizontal points is infinite and the number of vertical bisections per point is infinite!
(Another way of saying it: The number of events that comprise, compose, and decompose a single event is infinite.)
People in a room talking, agreeing, disputing—that’s conceptual-horizontal.
The room itself—the containing space—is nonconceptual-vertical. It is the sane container of madness, a.k.a. compassion. It is the pause between argumentative and agreeing comments and thoughts. It is the pause (the space) that bisects every pixel of every letter of every word countless times:
a+r+g+u+m+e+n+t
a+g+r+e+e+m+e+n+t
The plus-sign represents the vertical bisection of the horizontal. It represents the space around, in, and as apparent non-space.
This is a law. It cannot be otherwise. The moment of doubt is the moment of suffering. But the moment of suffering is itself the doubtless, compassionate buddha pointing your own crooked finger at the truth.
*
Bodymind as fear-greed is the accidental teacher.
*
Tangential thinking...a fleshless lidding of the eyes.
*
I note the compulsive effort to improve 'me' and 'mine.'
How does that effort feel?
Unimproved!
*
Singular sacred object and gesture:
that breath I took, and gave back.
*
The best 'chakra' is always wide open and always just outside the bodymind.
*
This is not cured, head-to-tail: the bodymind.
Except — except! — by awareness of the compulsive effort-to-cure.
*
Panic at exhalation’s tip is instantly replaced by greed.
*
A fanatical goal of 'no suffering' or a violent ideal of 'peace of mind' would postpone the inherent and universal righteousness of being.
*
Tragically?
Happily
this (impermanence-truth)
will not be reduced
to an artifact of language
or memory.
*
The bound person is the free person.
The free person is bound.
Don’t follow.
*
One barrier: one gate.
*
There’s been a misunderstanding.
There will be no correction.
*
To whom do I owe deference in the present moment?
To what?
*
The snake swallows its tail until it gags awake.
*
When my distressed friend is lost in thought I don’t go there with him.
I wait outside in comfort.
*
No matter the words, the direction, the words’ direction, it all leads to the same point here, now:
self-power caught in the act—self-power confessed!
(Emptiness greedy for emptiness.)
*
It’s impossible to recall all the words that moved me, that might have transformed me, but it’s easy to return to doubt and fear.
So I return to doubt and fear, and what contains it.
*
Death-fear pokes the grey until it sparks.
*
The flow of blood through ruts:
‘Ah, me again.’
As the ruts flow.
*
The absence-of-entities, untaught, unknown, undemocratically rules the mystified.
*
I study the dharma, then I try to live it.
But I only live my own confusion-dharma.
I’m a certifiable master.
*
Not really a breakthrough.
Not really broken through: this absent barrier.
The breakthrough experience is just open eyes.
*
Brainstem as periscope: which end am I peering through?
*
While I'm thinking/inverting, every window's a mirror.
*
Horizontal mind—one of many.
Vertical mind—just one.
*
Where do you live?
In ataraxia.
But you’re agitated!
I’m a human being living in boundless ataraxia.
*
There's a life-saving pocket of air inside despair!
*
The 'no problem' state is not a state at all!
It's the blazing realm where this bodymind and its tiny heart-lamp burn.
*
Here, aphorism-as-thesis, composed of dull contradictions, declares itself while antithesis-as-aphorism decomposes at the speed of light.
*
Helpful exploiters would have me believe that I must produce my own value through effort.
But my inherent value makes effort and oppressors and exploiters
optional.
*
A fanatical goal of 'no suffering' or a violent ideal of 'peace of mind' would postpone the innate and universal righteousness of being.
*
I notice a fearful grasping sensation in the gut.
It radiates to my limbs.
I notice how breath stops for it like waiting for a bus.
No bus.
Breathing resumes.
*
In progress...
Ah! I’m enlightened! I’m the Enlightened One!
How wonderful for you. But you’re afraid of something?
Hazards! Hazards everywhere!
*
Fueled by light, I take off my cap. My head fills up as it drains.
No residuals. Not even fumes.
*
I make this mental pudding in my anxiety-pot just like mother did.
It’s her mother’s recipe, and her mother’s mother’s…
Someday I’ll quit stirring and I’ll be free.
*
Those of us who have reached the point where hope dies and our nihilism drops its ‘cynic’ mask—we icchantikas, try as we might, can’t kill the light without.
*
The ‘Pristine Dharma’ is here. It’s you. It’s everywhere you go and everything you do.
It’s unmissable. It’s pulsing blue.
(…On your GPS before you type, it’s the dot.)
(Of course you’ll say ‘it’s not’!)
*
Where-when?
Here-now.
Coordinates?
Zero-zero (cosmic ‘Null Island’).
*
Fact-statements about the Dharma, about the mind-blowing truths of existence: helpful but not usable.
Alas?
*
Ho-humming on a rock on the rim of the Grand Canyon reading a book about the Grand Canyon...
*
Preconditions? Only one:
The reckless rejection of every conceivable precondition!
*
"Just give me something to remember quickly when I'm stuck in the shit."
Shit is it! Shit is it!
*
This body-mind-self is composed of grasping.
It is 100 percent grasping.
It is only grasping.
As grasping it does one thing only: grasp.
Any doing on its part is grasping.
Every mental/physical effort is grasping.
Grasping is emptiness.
*
‘No’-mind (the mind that doubts).
No-mind (where ‘no’-mind lives).
*
The thinking/dualizing mind—that human thing—is itself, fortunately, incapable of achieving fixed-object status.
Because of that, it’s forever untamed and…inhuman.
*
‘Horizontal’ life is linear, lateral, common sense, usual, mundane…Or even exceptional, exciting, but still, lacking verticality, like a number line.
‘Vertical’ life is the perpendicular line that bisects the horizontal at every point. The number of horizontal points is infinite and the number of vertical bisections per point is infinite!
(Another way of saying it: The number of events that comprise, compose, and decompose a single event is infinite.)
People in a room talking, agreeing, disputing—that’s conceptual-horizontal.
The room itself—the containing space—is nonconceptual-vertical. It is the sane container of madness, a.k.a. compassion. It is the pause between argumentative and agreeing comments and thoughts. It is the pause (the space) that bisects every pixel of every letter of every word countless times:
a+r+g+u+m+e+n+t
a+g+r+e+e+m+e+n+t
The plus-sign represents the vertical bisection of the horizontal. It represents the space around, in, and as apparent non-space.
This is a law. It cannot be otherwise. The moment of doubt is the moment of suffering. But the moment of suffering is itself the doubtless, compassionate buddha pointing your own crooked finger at the truth.
*
Bodymind as fear-greed is the accidental teacher.
*
Tangential thinking...a fleshless lidding of the eyes.
*
I note the compulsive effort to improve 'me' and 'mine.'
How does that effort feel?
Unimproved!
*
Singular sacred object and gesture:
that breath I took, and gave back.
*
The best 'chakra' is always wide open and always just outside the bodymind.
*
This is not cured, head-to-tail: the bodymind.
Except — except! — by awareness of the compulsive effort-to-cure.
*
Panic at exhalation’s tip is instantly replaced by greed.
*
A fanatical goal of 'no suffering' or a violent ideal of 'peace of mind' would postpone the inherent and universal righteousness of being.
*
Tragically?
Happily
this (impermanence-truth)
will not be reduced
to an artifact of language
or memory.
*
The bound person is the free person.
The free person is bound.
Don’t follow.
*
One barrier: one gate.
*
There’s been a misunderstanding.
There will be no correction.
*
To whom do I owe deference in the present moment?
To what?
*
The snake swallows its tail until it gags awake.
*
When my distressed friend is lost in thought I don’t go there with him.
I wait outside in comfort.
*
No matter the words, the direction, the words’ direction, it all leads to the same point here, now:
self-power caught in the act—self-power confessed!
(Emptiness greedy for emptiness.)
*
It’s impossible to recall all the words that moved me, that might have transformed me, but it’s easy to return to doubt and fear.
So I return to doubt and fear, and what contains it.
*
Death-fear pokes the grey until it sparks.
*
The flow of blood through ruts:
‘Ah, me again.’
As the ruts flow.
*
The absence-of-entities, untaught, unknown, undemocratically rules the mystified.
*
I study the dharma, then I try to live it.
But I only live my own confusion-dharma.
I’m a certifiable master.
*
Not really a breakthrough.
Not really broken through: this absent barrier.
The breakthrough experience is just open eyes.
*
Brainstem as periscope: which end am I peering through?
*
While I'm thinking/inverting, every window's a mirror.
*
Horizontal mind—one of many.
Vertical mind—just one.
*
Where do you live?
In ataraxia.
But you’re agitated!
I’m a human being living in boundless ataraxia.
*
There's a life-saving pocket of air inside despair!
*
The 'no problem' state is not a state at all!
It's the blazing realm where this bodymind and its tiny heart-lamp burn.
*
Here, aphorism-as-thesis, composed of dull contradictions, declares itself while antithesis-as-aphorism decomposes at the speed of light.
*
Helpful exploiters would have me believe that I must produce my own value through effort.
But my inherent value makes effort and oppressors and exploiters
optional.
*
A fanatical goal of 'no suffering' or a violent ideal of 'peace of mind' would postpone the innate and universal righteousness of being.
*
I notice a fearful grasping sensation in the gut.
It radiates to my limbs.
I notice how breath stops for it like waiting for a bus.
No bus.
Breathing resumes.
*
In progress...
Ah! I’m enlightened! I’m the Enlightened One!
How wonderful for you. But you’re afraid of something?
Hazards! Hazards everywhere!
*
Fueled by light, I take off my cap. My head fills up as it drains.
No residuals. Not even fumes.
*
I make this mental pudding in my anxiety-pot just like mother did.
It’s her mother’s recipe, and her mother’s mother’s…
Someday I’ll quit stirring and I’ll be free.
*
Those of us who have reached the point where hope dies and our nihilism drops its ‘cynic’ mask—we icchantikas, try as we might, can’t kill the light without.
*
The ‘Pristine Dharma’ is here. It’s you. It’s everywhere you go and everything you do.
It’s unmissable. It’s pulsing blue.
(…On your GPS before you type, it’s the dot.)
(Of course you’ll say ‘it’s not’!)
*
Where-when?
Here-now.
Coordinates?
Zero-zero (cosmic ‘Null Island’).
*
Fact-statements about the Dharma, about the mind-blowing truths of existence: helpful but not usable.
Alas?
*
Ho-humming on a rock on the rim of the Grand Canyon reading a book about the Grand Canyon...
*
Preconditions? Only one:
The reckless rejection of every conceivable precondition!
*
