Poor BP

"Nobody's got more to lose in this deal than BP."
--Mississippi's Governor, Haley Barbour, in an interview with Melissa Block on npr, June, 29, 2010.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/06/29/128188757/miss-gov-was-shocked-by-coast-guard-s-gulf-spill-coordination

Untitled

Continuing within the silence of this vehicle,
Yet weathering karmas of body, speech and mind,
Beginningless time still is,
And
No one's going anywhere.

Anaftermath

I am dreaming of toxic remains,
transitory elements
loosening from residual silken desire,
falling leaves.

The burial is me as is rebirth.
There is in this motion
a momentary loss of energy
yet a gain in vantage point.
Fallen leaves:

Up here,
the dead on the shores are also visible,
as are our trails, before and after
that traumatic sojourn.

The tent is the color of trees at night,
the forces of time holding it together,
while we slumber within the shadows of its folds.

As the dream goes on,
you breeze in
wearing a cloudy headband
which disperses as you move,
wafting a trail of mist behind you.

I stand like a tree as you approach.

Aspiration

presence,
current,
sea:
current
being
in the heart
of the
Faceless Buddha.

Energy Forms

I am carrying this, whatever it might be, listening to the music and fashioning myself as I write. You have dreamed me into being, but you must understand by now that the reality, no matter how close to the vision, is never the same as the vision. This is necessarily so, since what was in your head cannot be standing before you. Nothing can be 2 places at once, as far as our limited understanding is concerned. And anyway, who is ever who you thought they were? They can only be who you think they are, and yet the new thing you just learned about them is now a new version of who you think they are and not who you thought they were, for good or ill.

At this point, I am committed to nothing, so there are many possibilites as to what could happen next and there’s no reason to commit. I would just find myself disappointed, crammed into a choice. And from inside that choice, I could watch my other worlds sail by without me. But I suppose this is always true.

Who am I and what does this entail?

I am color and light and sound fixtures. I perceive with the five senses and awarenesses, process it all with the sixth, find I am more confused than ever.

I am colored patches of light moving through, or at rest in, space: a momentary composition of ceaseless vibratory frequencies continuously finding patterns defining the boundaries of the physical I am. I am a soundless voice I can’t really physically hear droning on in my head. I am wisps of dreams I have forgotten. I bring with me the memories of my now nonexistent past. I am a limited being living in a world of limited beings all with limitless capacity. Almost all of them are strangers--yet who am I? While some might appear or act incomprehensibly to me--and I, most definitely, to them--on some level I know that we are all the same in that we are a multitude of limited human beings with limited human views, needs, desires and understandings. I feel, though, on an even deeper level, that there can be no disagreement about the way things are, really, because we are all expressions or gestures of the essence of the universe. This space of reality I find myself in is infinite, and is that which causes me; and if Buddhist thought is as accurate as it feels, this mindstream has been cycling from beginningless time, karmically crashing into others throughout the boundless expanse of time, all attendant causes and conditions to bring me to “who I am” today with this particularly precious human existence.

Agree or disagree, we are having some fun now while time "flies" as this precious human existence passes us by in the wink of an eye and next time round where will we die? I don’t know from this point, this infinitesimally tiny spot in this limitless expanse of space. And I think it's likely that even if one becomes a Buddha, one doesn’t know, exactly. It is beyond that. Knowing, perhaps, becomes the Buddha, beyond such limiting concepts of knowing. The universal, the infinite, the Unknown, the Buddha's Mind, becomes the “known” in-the-flesh, here all along.

If looked at from beyond vision--if looked at from further than the limiting confines of that mind which abnormally uses this body/mind--to really tune into this now, free from all its insecurities, true knowing is beyond knowing and is not possible.

And such limited knowing ends, perhaps, with a kind of flashpoint of awareness, something like that: It is always now and it is always the Big Bang.

It is so infinitely brilliant, so infinitely intense, so powerful that it can’t be perceived on the human level and must be relegated to the distant past in order to even begin to think about it. And we're witness to it: every ceaseless moment of its birth.

Just what does energy form?

Impermanence?

Set this down now, right here...wonder what's in it...is this? is this garbage?

Submachine Gun

After doing a short meditation on a quote of the Buddha's I'd read in HHDL's book, How to Practice--"In the mind, the mind is not to be found; the nature of the mind is clear light"--as I was about to finish, Leslie Nielsen and Christopher Walken showed up in my mind. When I wondered, is this some kind of symbol or something? Christopher Walken, doing a rather poor impersonation of himself, said something along the lines of, "What?! Of course we're symbols. We're symbols of how you aren't living up to your full potential." He went on in this vein, in a way, kind of saying, c'mon, pal, what are ya doin? and coaxings to that effect, politely. I went ahead and finished up with the dedication and couldn't help but laugh out loud.

I thought about other "visions" similar to this: one with Jackie Gleason pointing out the cartoon globe from our cartoon airplane, another with Woody Allen as my neighboring molecule in a silent, jokeless laugh; and now, with this quite sober "vision," just what is it about these particular guys?

They're all kind of the straight guy who gets big laughs just by apparently being their seriously flawed selves.