IF NOT NOW THEN WHEN?

Doing is only possible Now. If it's an intention for tomorrow, the intention is done now. The action may be done tomorrow. But, among other possibilities, tomorrow may not come and you may not be alive.

    NOW 
    Now.

    Sit down.

    Let go.

    Tomorrow’s now will be no more than this

    - another was.

    Nothing is enough

    to distract

    your present thought.

    And your present thought

    is only a movement between two points,

    a wave that leaves the water behind,

    plotted by an electrical mind.

    So take your nothing.

    Now.

    Old Dhong says "if you have noodles, eat them Now!"

NEW PROJECT: THE POLITICS OF DESPAIR

SINNER MAN

There is nowhere outside where Sinner Man can hide. The karmic results of one's sins are within and you take within with you wherever you go. Medieval Christians were taught that the only things you can take with you at death that will be of any assistance to you are your Good Deeds.  In the Tibetan rituals, which attempt to guide the dying man over the bridge of death, he is constantly reminded "Remember your Good Deeds."

But you can't remember your good deeds if you haven't done any.

Undoubtedly you have done not-good deeds.

When are you going to stop the not-good and start seriously doing good deeds?

It will certainly be too late if you wait until "that day".

And they need to be genuine.  Nowadays the emphasis is increasingly on packaging and labelling which hide and disguise what the product actually is.

In the Egyptian Book of the Dead, it is described how the dead man's heart is weighed on the scale of Maat against the feather of truth.  If his heart is lighter than the feather, he is allowed to pass into the afterlife.

Maat = Truth, law, morality, justice.

Book of the Dead: better translated as "Book of emerging forth into the Light".

NEW PROJECT: IF NOT NOW, THEN WHEN?

THE JUNGLE OF SPEECH

AFTERNOON TEA AT THE WARNEFORD*

Speech
reaches out
to whisper and shout,
praise and curse,
across a silent universe;
making of molecular vibration
a means of human communication.

It wasn’t always quite like this;
the groans
and moans,
the hiss
and howls
in the warm pre-Cambrian mud
were eloquent enough avowals
of love and hatred, fear and blood.

Even now,
it isn’t always quite the same;
the grunts and lowing
of pig and cow
in farmyard barn and shed
make no poetic claim
but express the cosmic suffering
of the living and the dead.

When fragile humankind
comes here to peer,
through spiralling downwards mind,
into thorny jungles of raw sensation,
it loses its clear articulation;
the fine distinction
of the human word
is dislocated and blurred
into jabbering of animal and bird.

* Warneford Hospital, formerly Warneford Lunatic Asylum, two and a half miles east of Oxford city centre where the professional and middle classes, including senior and junior members of the University, came (come) when they could no longer cope with the lives they had created for themselves.

NEW PROJECT: SINNER MAN

"Hey Sinner Man,
Where you gonna run to?
Hey there Sinner Man
Where you gonna run to?
Hey Sinner Man
Where you gonna run to
All on that Day?"

ECONOMY OF SPEECH TWO

Are you married?

"Yes."

There's economy of speech, for you! But wait a minute. Listen again.

"Yes," she said drily /sadly/ thoughtfully/ explosively / miserably / happily / dully / laughingly /tearfully / defensively / aggressively / quizzically / triumphantly / humbly / proudly/ coldly / cheerfully / hopelessly /regretfully / confidently / doubtfully / angrily / stubbornly / sexily / hopefully / lugubriously / manically / suicidally /dreamily / shyly / breathlessly / untruthfully / arrogantly / gratefully /discretely /painfully / mournfully.

The fact is that the word is a neutral statement of the case. But it is often accompanied by feelings or emotions. A piece of speech not only indicates something but also reflects and reveals the speaker's mental (or physical) state. It is a mental footprint. Even when the mind attempts to use speech to hide something, it becomes a footprint of the mind attempting to hide something.

NEW PROJECT: THE JUNGLE OF SPEECH

ECONOMY OF SPEECH

Everything that can be said, can be said clearly. What one cannot speak of one should be silent about.

Question: If one is asked for a bunch of carrots from the garden, why does one struggle in with an overflowing wheel barrow? (To be sure there may also be carrots in there somewhere.)

Answer: Either the mind is confused (garden garden must bring something from the garden).

Or it is deceived (it doesn't really know what carrots are). Why doesn't it admit this and ask?

Or it is deceiving (if I can ramble on long enough, I can bury the answer and he won't notice that I don't answer the question or he might even forget altogether).

Question: What is the aim of this project?

Answer: To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle.

NEW PROJECT: ECONOMY OF SPEECH TWO