Leopard Leotards

The other morning, as I was sitting on my back deck, I was suddenly struck by the pattern of shadows on my leg.  Just like that, I heard the first line of the poem below.  So, following once more in my tradition of boldly sharing my “bad poetry,” here we go.  I also hope it helps span the gap between relating personal experience to descriptions found in text books.

Me in my leopard leotard of wholeness

The weight of light and shadow on bare skin

reveals the super supple:

Silence gulping, “Brahman eating”

as I sip my morning coffee.

How to move without tearing these finest of silk stockings?

Oh, that I might rip a hole in wholeness!

A hole in wholeness -

Impossible, I know, and yet the tear is felt in every cell

and the very Silence.

Paradox is simply That: here, there and everywhere.

Which is different from “not knowing” or even being “lost.”

I remain the Queen of Contradictions and Conundrums.

Don’t look to me for answers

but good inquiry can be quite useful

until it’s not

not when god gives morning coffee,

cicadas humming their Samaveda

thru the perfect summer air

as my Retirement unfolds

and leopard leotards appear

out of Absolutely Nowhere.

It took a big effort to haul myself out of the silence of the leotards and pick up pen and pad.  That effort in itself shattered the direct perception.  But, it was so paradoxical the mind couldn’t let the issue drop.  I recalled Harri Aalto recently emphasizing that one can indeed see the Absolute – a seeming impossibility and contradiction.   I also immediately recognized these leotards as a version of Wang Liping’s practice with his reflections and shadows.  I couldn’t recollect exactly how the story goes, so I looked it up:

One day the Wayfarer of Pure Serenity took Wang Liping to a small reservoir, where he had prepared a large plank.  The Wayfarer had Liping sit cross-legged on the plank, then eased it out into the water, where it gradually came to a stop in the middle of the reservoir.  Liping sat on the plank in a state of silence… [When] the Wayfarer was sure that Liping had reached the right state, he disturbed the surface of the water with his hand, sending a wave of ripples toward the center of the reservoir.  When the ripples approached the plank, Wang Liping’s reflection in the water was shattered; he himself just felt a shudder in his heart…  When the ripples had passed, the surface of the water again became smooth as ever, and Liping’s body and mind returned to their former quietude…

The young apprentice told his mentor all about the sensation he’d had on the water, finding it quite beyond his understanding.  … [Through cultivation] the yang celestial soul and the yin earthly soul in his body had both been strengthened and sensitized.  From the ordinary point of view, shadows and reflections are unreal, things have form but not substance… From the Taoist point of view, however, these “unreal shadows and reflections with form but no substance” also have ethereal force, which can be felt by the body on contact…  This is why Liping’s body and mind stirred when his reflection was disturbed in the water.  When one gets to the “middle three realms,” shadows and reflections are no longer insubstantial forms; now they have form, they also have substance.  This is the principle underlying the practice of curing illness by working on people’s shadows, as Wang Liping later learned from his mentor.

Opening the Dragon Gate:  The Making of a Taoist Wizard, translated by Thomas Cleary

Interestingly, once you compare these experiences, you realize that both Wang Liping and I found it “quite beyond” our understanding.  This is confusing and new territory of what’s normal. It’s not what the mind is used to.  There are new rules and possibilities.  Or, to site Nisargadatta:

A good measure of spiritual maturity is the degree to which one can appreciate paradox and ambiguity.

Settling into this maturity comfortably requires both experience and intellectual understanding. … to wit, the effort at bad poetry as I try to get the words precise.  I hope it helps.

Writing Poems

Omega garden, a photo by Seeking Tao on Flickr.

Say it again
Say it again I didn’t hear.
I could not understand.

And so, once again the sun rose
through the trees
illuminating translucent leaves
and the most delicate of tendrils, just so.

Just so I might hear.

Yesterday, while having breakfast on my back deck and mostly sitting quietly, this poem came to me. I just noticed hearing it as I was looking at the woods.
I liked it a lot and jotted it down.
It helped me notice there's such patience and love within Nature's mechanics; patience and love as aspects of that ineffable being, the Light, that shines through your eyes and mine sometimes so brightly.

Today, I came across these words.
Once again, such perfect timing:

At one time I was composing poems.
Poems used to flow out of me and, in this flow, I just added Nisargadatta.
I was reveling in composing poems until my Guru cautioned me, "You are enjoying composing these poems too much; give them up!"
What was he driving at?

His objective was for me to merge in the Absolute state instead of reveling in my beingness…
When this beingness goes, the Absolute will not know "I Am".
Appearance and disappearance, birth and death, these are the qualities of beingness;
they are not your qualities.
Consciousness and the Absolute: the final talks of Nisargadatta

... ok, I was going to stop here, but let me take this a bit farther as I seem to have many friends thinking about death these days.
Nisargadatta also has this to say:

the knowledge "I Am" must go back to its own source.

Now, consciousness has identified with a form.
Later, it understands that it is not that form and goes further.
In a few cases it may reach the space, and very often, there it stops.
In a very few cases, it reaches its real source, beyond all conditioning.
It is difficult to give up that inclination of identifying the body as the self.
I am not talking to an individual, I am talking to the consciousness.
It is consciousness which must seek its source.
Out of that no-being state comes the beingness.
It comes as quietly as twilight, with just a feel of "I Am" and then suddenly the space is there.


In the space, movement starts with the air, the fire, the water, and the earth.
All these five elements are you only.
Out of your consciousness all this has happened.
There is no individual.
There is only you, the total functioning is you, the consciousness is you.
You are the consciousness, all the titles of the Gods are your names, but by clinging to the body you hand yourself over to time and death—you are imposing it on yourself.
I am the total universe.

Many of these words link up to experience for me. 
When things shifted back in 1975, I found the space. 
I saw how air, fire, water and earth arise as movement starts.
"No individual" is becoming more and more apparent.
And yet, overall, mostly I live in "and there it stops."

Still, I do know from experience of a place beyond all conditionings, all words, all mentation.
And as Nisargadatta says, "the consciousness is you" and "consciousness must seek it's source."
Otherwise, we impose time and death and suffering upon ourselves.

The Genjokoan

Winter light on Quan Yin
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

Zen master Baoche of Mt. Mayu was fanning himself. A monk approached and said, "Master, the nature of wind is permanent and there is no place it does not reach. Why, then, do you fan yourself?"

"Although you understand that the nature of the wind is permanent," Baoche replied, "you do not understand the meaning of its reaching everywhere."

"What is the meaning of its reaching everywhere?" asked the monk again. The master just kept fanning himself. The monk bowed deeply.

The actualization of the buddha-dharma, the vital path of its correct transmission, is like this. If you say that you do not need to fan yourself because the nature of wind is permanent and you can have wind without fanning, you will understand neither permanence nor the nature of wind.
From “The Issue at Hand,” the Genjokoan, by Dogen.

The complete koan and other translations are here: CLICK

I’m thinking this is just another way of saying:
If you believe that there is something lacking, it is not quite so. But if you think there is nothing to do, nothing needed, that is not quite so.
Elihu Genmyo Smith

Which is to say, even though the Self unfolds Itself, by Itself, to Itself – it can feel like you’re working your butt off.

But, hey, I may be wrong… it’s a KOAN.

And it doesn’t seem to tally all that well with Nisargadatta:

There are no steps to self-realization. There is nothing gradual about it. It happens suddenly and is irreversible....Just like on sunrise you see things as they are, so on self-realization you see everything as it is. The world of illusions is left behind.

But then, dawn is not at all like high noon.

As I waited for the bus to approach, something in consciousness was loosening somehow. And when it got there--I am sure it had nothing to do with the bus driving up--this reference point of an "I," a someone that everything was about and that everything that occurred in life was structured around, was gone. It was like a switch had been turned off. And it was never to turn on again. The first response that the mind had to this completely ungraspable experience was absolute terror; but that terror never changed the experience for a moment… Towards the end of the ten years, there was a clear awareness that this was not something that was going to go away…

[So] I found a Zen teacher up in Northern California who told me that I was seeing with the eyes of the ancients; his assurances that the fear reaction was just a season and that spring would come were very helpful. …I saw that the presence of fear meant only one thing - it meant that fear was present. …

Shortly after realizing this, I had the experience while driving that I was driving through myself to get to someplace that I already was, because in fact I was everywhere. I wasn't going any place because I was already everywhere. There was a shift from no personal self, no "me," to seeing that this experience of no personal self was actually the substance of everything.
That is when the springtime began…
Suzanne Segal

Don’t Think Twice

dandelion 2
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

When the mind is quiet, we come to know ourselves as the pure witness.
We withdraw from the experience and its experiencer, and stand apart in pure awareness, which is between and beyond the two.
The personality, based on self-identification, on imagining oneself to be something: "I'm this, I'm that", continues, but only as a part of the objective world.
Its identification with the witness snaps.
Nisargadatta

The other morning as I munched my breakfast granola, I began to wonder if I was simply depressed.
My life seems incredibly empty and has been these past many months now.
Nothing seems to really capture my interest and when it does the motivation that gets stirred doesn’t seem to last.
I have been trying not to run away from this emptiness, this sitting doing nothing, going no where, no great meaning, no great purpose.
But, it goes against the Protestant ethic big time.
And too, I turn sixty my next birthday – now is not the time to be wasting life.

It’s easy to panic and the only antidote I’ve found is faith.
Faith lies in a non-dual teaching that runs something like this:

There are traps that can come up with this process of going from an initial glimpse of awakening to abiding awakening.…
there is still a human being with a human mind that is trying to make sense of things. The mind is even trying to make sense of awakening itself…
The mind will start to say, “Oh God, I no longer have any purpose or meaning.”

…It’s as if the ego was a big balloon, and now all the air has been let out.
Through the perception of reality, the balloon has been deflated, and all that’s left is this limp piece of rubber.
But, the balloon is still there, and it’s asking, “What happened? What happened to the air? What happened to the meaning in my life?”
Adyashanti, The End of Your World

There are also little snippets of direct experience:
When for the briefest, clearest moment I see that “I” simply don’t exist. Instead there is an infinity of Nothing.
Or, walking along I notice screwed to the sidewalk a metal plate of such stunning - what? “Beauty” falls so short it’s totally inadequate – it’s the merest tip of an infinity of “what?”
Again, it’s Nothingness – Incredible, infinite, stunning beauty of Nothingness blasting through the metal plate and sidewalk. The intensity makes me double over and wonder about throwing up.

No, this is not depression.
But, there are many similarities.
So, this morning I was open to the possibility…
When out of the blue this song comes from my car radio:

It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
It don't matter, anyhow
An' it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe
If you don't know by now
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn
Look out your window and I'll be gone
You're the reason I'm trav'lin' on
Don't think twice, it's all right.
Bob Dylan,
except the Four Seasons were doing this ridiculous falsetto version that made me laugh out loud.

I’ve loved this song from the moment I first heard it many years ago.
Because it was written by Bob Dylan and sung by the beautiful, beautiful Joan Baez,
I mistakenly assumed it was ex-lovers having bitter banter and twisting the knife.
But, not today.

This morning a whole new interpretation seems so obvious.
I have been in love with my little ego self and now that relationship is coming to a close.
True Self is separating from false self.
It hurts.
It’s confusing.
The relationship is dying...

When the rooster crows at the break of dawn, look out your window and I am gone... just like that. I'm Nothing. History.

But hey, how wonderful to be getting on with a more awakened life…
So, Don’t think twice, It’s alright!
I didn’t know and now I do.

It was all a simple misunderstanding, a misidentification:

I'm a-thinkin' and a-wond'rin' all the way down the road
I once loved a woman, a child I'm told
I gave her my heart but she wanted my soul
But don't think twice, it's all right

Yes, I loved that ego.

I thought she was a real woman, but now I see she was just a begining, a child -

and she wanted my soul - my entire being!
But having seen infinity, I must be true to that, where ever that may lead.

I'm walkin' down that long, lonesome road, babe
Where I'm bound, I can't tell
But goodbye's too good a word, gal
So I'll just say fare thee well
I ain't sayin' you treated me unkind
You could have done better but I don't mind
You just kinda wasted my precious time
But don't think twice, it's all right

No, this is not depression.
It’s just a strange, uncomfortable period.
Time is precious and not to be wasted, if that is even possible, and I’m not sure that it is…
So, don’t think twice, it’s all right.

Enjoy the music instead.

What the Light Was Like

Eye of the Storm
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which lies on the other side of silence.
George Eliot, Middlemarch, Book II, Chapter 20, sited in the notes for “August Darks” a poem in What the Light was Like by Amy Clampitt.

The “August darks” what is that, and are we not in April now?
I don’t know.
I am in week three of vertigo and dizziness unassuagible by any drug or Epley maneuver.
And I realize now that Nothingness – one version of that clear perception of Infinity or Silence – can arise from simply a dizzy brain, a troubled middle ear.
I think of Scrooge telling Marley's ghost, “You’re nothing but a bit of undigested meat.”
So, much for spiritual pursuits.

I am not at all clear anymore as to causes or effects,
and was thinking it was to to give up on trying to explain or understand
when I came across this Nisargadatta quote that seemed to only emphasize the point:

Your needs are unreal and your efforts are meaningless.

What a swift kick.

It seems enough to get through the day when most steps shake the floor a good six inches.
I seemed to have lost all sense of shock absorbers.

When nothing stays in focus,
when your world arrives through the wrong end of binoculars,
when gratitude finds inspiration in the fact there is no nausea,
what wonderful support for the practice of letting go.
Let Go.

Nothing can make you happier than you are.
All search for happiness is misery and leads to more misery.
The only happiness worth the name is the natural happiness of conscious being.
Nisargadatta

Conscious Being...
Beyond the Silence there can be a crushing roar of dissolution.
Or having settled into That, there is the opposite, the outward stroke - the roaring of that March lion, Creation, springing forth.
Did George Eliot realize this? Or do I misconstrue?

Anyway, this poem and these quotations caught my eye,
middle March, middle ear.
I also completed this version of a painting this past weekend.
It’s done upon a photo I took of my bathtub drain and shadows on the water.
It doesn’t seem your usual bathtub. Not at first – but, every child knows just such a tub exists and has explored these waters.

The August Darks

Stealth of the flood tide, the moon dark
but still at work, the herring shoals
somewhere offshore, looked for
but not infallible, as the tide is,
as the August darks are –
…
sanguine with labor, but effortless:
as is the image, far out, illusory
at the dark’s edge, of a cruise ship
moving, seemingly unscathed by effort,
bright as a stage set…

out where the herring wait, beyond
the surf-roar on the other side of silence…
Many
have already died…
Amy Clampitt

And I try to keep the faith that everything is as it should be even as I maintain the delicate dance of playing my part with best efforts, even while I accept
this is how things are.

Drawing the Line

Mosaic II
Originally uploaded by Seeking Tao

Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”
Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise
someone would call the authorities.
Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect.

Why not become the one who lives with a
full moon in each eye that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language,
what every other eye in this world
is dying to hear?
Hafiz

The other day my family got into something of a heated political debate via email.
It doesn’t really matter now what the issue was.
In the midst of the swirl my nephew wrote, “It doesn’t affect me, so I don’t care.”
Last night, I realized, “I care and so it does affect me.”

Apparently, self interests are determined by where we draw the line between my self and Other.
Dealing with this very line is the real task of spiritual cultivation.
For instance, we may come to understand:

The heart of a mother is full of tenderness, but it is limited to her child only;
but the heart of the Saint is all inclusive,
it knows the how and whence of the origin of each one and the vicissitudes they have to go through.
Nisargadatta

Or, as in politics, we might describe the issue from a very different angle:

Know that the outward form passes away,
but the world of reality remains forever.
How long will you play at loving the shape of the jug?
Leave the jug; go, seek the water!
Rumi

I found these poems and words at a wonderful site, Seeker After Truth.
It’s Sufi sponsored, but covers much Advaita and refers to itself as “A Mystic’s Reference Repository.”
I find it soothes my heart.

Enjoy exploring it. Meanwhile, I don’t think I’ll be writing here as much as in the past.