Monday 29 November 2010

SAME SOIL, DIFFERENT SEEDS

The soil is always the same; made up entirely of the corpses of uncountable bodies. These have lived and fed upon each other and died and rotted down and been digested into soil.


Each body is a life in which the experiences of becoming, the sangsara, are tested and its sweet and bitter fruit digested. All is recorded on a timetrack which has neither beginning nor ending.  Each body is the fruit of its past.  Each fruit spills out its seed (murmuring "please some more!") into the soil (which is always the same).


Same soil.  Different seeds.

The splendour of a hundred kings
fades like the bloom on a butterfly’s wings.
The meanest flower that blows
goes the same way the forest goes.
All is consumed by worm or fire;
nothing needs building any higher.
The rattling of teeth within the jaw
mocks the tongue murmuring:
“Please, some more!”



NEW PROJECT: LISTEN

Monday 22 November 2010

INSIDE OUT OR OUTSIDE IN?


INSIDE OUT indicates the direction of flow: from the Centre outwards into the Universe of Becoming. Obviously, everything "out there" has come from the Centre, the Point of Origin.  Our Point of Origin is in the centre of our physical bodies but is unnoticed and forgotten by most beings that have physical forms.  If we don't overlook or lose sight of it, then all of our behaviour (thought, word and deed) is grounded in the Centre, flows from it and is in harmony with everything else "out there" which has the same origin as ourselves.  We are therefore able to sustain contact with our Point of Origin.  We do not go astray and, in the end, we return to it.

OUTSIDE IN indicates a flow in the opposite direction: from the Universe of Becoming "out there" into our minds.  Everything "out there" seems separate and competing with everything else for survival and happiness.  Points of views and knowledge arise based upon this separateness, self and other, me and you.  A cloud of thinking founded on multiplicity obscures our ability to see clearly.  We do things which cause suffering to ourselves and others.

INSIDE OUT OR OUTSIDE IN.  We have to chose.  Worldly values (the World) or ethical values (the Centre)?

Ethics shows us that it is wrong to kill (Who cuts off his own hand?).  Worldly wisdom says that we need the protein from meat and explains that if, for example, a country like Denmark gave up exporting meat and dairy products, it would be a very poor country indeed.

Indeed.  But it would also be richer spiritually and happier.  Because the more you tune into the Centre, the happier you are.  And the more you adjust to the wisdom of the world (compromise), the more you cause suffering (and suffer).


Ethics is the highest science,
concerned with surviving,
not merely knowing.

A man without Ethics
is already drowning;
ever sinking
ever lower
in a sea of being.



New Project: SAME SOIL, DIFFERENT SEEDS


Saturday 13 November 2010

The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month


POPPY


What does it mean?
(does it mean anything
 to whom
 when)

What difference did it make?
(did it make any difference
 to those who died
 to those who survived
 did anyone survive)

What difference has it made?
(to me
 to you
 to those)

Where are those now?
(where are the others)

The bullet links shooter and shot?
(if one goes up can the other go down
 if both go up…
 if both go down…)

And you?
(and me
 and those)


11TH HOUR, 11TH DAY, 11TH MONTH

November Rose.
Pink and white and mauve.
Solitary, still,
among the rosemary and late autumnal gorse.


Sea winds have blown.
The first frosts have frozen the short grass.
Spring and summer are memories,
midwinter an echo in reverse.


November Rose for the dying.
November Poppies for the dead,
who cannot sleep
but stream towards new birth;
whose pain outlasts
the bitter Flanders earth.






REQUIEM: ARMISTICE DAY 1995

This year
the dead are blind
and do not seem to hear
our prayers.

Nor do they seem to mind
that we now own
what they once thought was theirs.

Here
they shed no tear
at all the pain
they left behind.

Now,
when they come again,
they only find
echoes of the long-ago,
and landscapes that they hardly know;
deserted buildings, unpeopled streets,
lonely corridors, empty rooms,
where each his own image meets
in every shape it now assumes.




New Project: INSIDE OUT OR OUTSIDE IN ?
Normally, if something is inside out (like a sock for instance) it will be outside in as well. So the conjunction would be "and". In this case the conjunction is "or".


Tuesday 9 November 2010

BLONDIN


 Hermit in the forest,
 the mind begins to play.
 Māra’s hosts are grinning.
 Every thought is Judgement Day.


 


NEW PROJECT: The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day of the Eleventh Month