It's Friday. There was work today, so much that I didn't stop for lunch. On a television in another office, weekly prayers in Tehran seemed loud amid what has until now been mostly silent upheaval. I imagine crowds swelling with hope again, day after day, along tree-lined boulevards in soft Persian afternoons. I think of [...]
Happy Bloomsday, one and all! Like Leopold Bloom 105 years ago today, you're the hero of this day. Look around! It's all worth celebrating, morning to night. As Molly said from beginning to end: Yes. And with Stephen, remember simply: Cease to strive. With a nod of eternal gratitude to that wily penman, Mr. James [...]
D.H. Lawrence said that the soul can get to heaven in one leap but that, if it does, it leaves a demon in its place. It could also be like this: The soul that thinks it has made the leap to heaven can only see the demon it has left in its place.
Realize it's been a week since previous posting. Much coming and going (nowhere): In the Métro, in the streets, in the newspapers, on the radio and television, everybody's coming and going (nowhere), too. A plane vanishes (nowhere). Obama quotes the Koran: Keep your eyes on God and tell the truth. What other truth than brilliant [...]
Welcome, O life! A weekend of sitting and study practice around James Joyce's Ulysses with Amy Hollowell Sensei June 13-14 Paris *** (version française ci-dessous) *** Jung called it so profoundly an "Oriental" book that it constituted a bible for the West; the British and American courts called it obscene and banned it, as did [...]
We just sit together. It starts like incense smoke, a fine strand rising straight, direct, unmoving. Without warning it suddenly disperses, broken and scattered in a thousand directions, wildly, freely disappearing into the splendid chaos of what is, unseen, ungraspable, unknown. Then the bell struck twice means it's time to rise. Still, here, I am.
Today ceremony/ritual on "receiving" the precepts for T., "Terre d'Eveil." I transmit what can't be transmitted to him and to all. Each becomes one and all, acknowledging this, our very life, as the natural expression of our essential awakened nature. The ground of awakening (terre d'éveil) is nowhere but here, wherever you are at this [...]
Retreat notes, Day I, Les Longues Bruyères: Brilliant sun all day, as if a blessing. For no apparent reason. Slept restlessly, with strange dreams in the night. As if something hard didn't want to go away. Long stretches of sitting, with birdsong, light wind, clouds outside the bay windows thrown open, drifting. Willow the cat [...]
Here, an "absence" is a "presence" enhancing the experience of what I call the no-escape-universe: quiet holiday street, sun dipping in and out of clouds, bag packed to go. What next? The afternoon is everything, a burst of blossoms and leaves, asphalt littered with cigarette butts and a pink cup. The doorbell rings. Time to [...]
Sitting here wondering about torpor at midday, pausing for no apparent reason amid translating work that I like. I am turned to thoughts of what to say. Thoughts of having to say something. Cars come and go outside. The cloud cover thins. Cat upset when moved. Voices pass in the street. I am stillness passing [...]