It's enough

In the West there doesn't seem to be a good emblem for those who starve even while they gorge themselves, or at least not one that's related to a spiritual tradition. Perhaps in apochrypha; the cannibalistic giants in the Book of Enoch, half human and half angel, rooted neither in heaven or earth, are so famished that they eat everything they can and they are still starving. They wreak such havoc on the world that God drowns them and everything else in a deluge that signals the necessity of a new beginning.

That never-enough syndrome of those prediluvian monsters wasn't washed away with the waters, it seems to have crept back to reflect to us the phenomenon of broken receptivity in human souls. They thirst but they cannot drink. No pollination can happen. It doesn't matter if God is immanent or transcendent, either way his rays aren't absorbed, nothing is ever enough.

In the Buddhist tradition Hungry Ghosts have huge bellies but needle thin necks, they can't receive even though they have the means of holding much. Thich Nhat Hanh explains the situation this way but I suspect the issue goes back to a lack of mirroring in early childhood. He writes "Our society creates thousands of hungry ghosts every day. Looking deeply, we see that they are everywhere around us. These are people without roots. In their family, their parents did not demonstrate that happiness is possible. They did not feel understood or accepted by their church or comminity. So they have rejected everything. They don't believe in family, society, or religion. They don't belive in their own traditions. But they are still looking for something good, beautiful, and true to believe in; they are hungry for understanding and love." Understanding Our Mind, p. 66

I've been watching the Hungry Ghost in me for a few years now, studying the way it takes everything for granted and is so rarely satisfied. Yesterday in meditation I saw my heart opening and closing; closing to the outside world in defensiveness so that I could receive no nourishment from it; opening to the world like petals emerging from a flower, ready to soak the astonishing beauty and freedom of the world deep down into the pours, ready to radiate whatever perfume of openness the mystery of the heart offers the world in return. I was stunned.

mudra

I found these budding leaves unfurling on a Blue Ridge mountain top in Virginia. There's a lot of room in me to be filled with all that these latent ambassadors of sunlight can hold. I opened up my needle-thin throat.

a little appalachiana

We drove back from the Fort Valley yesterday, it took about 6 hours, I completely forgot it was Good Friday. We thought about making a stop somewhere along the way but passed most all the attractions, Crystal Caves, Antietem, Roadside America, Hershey, the Crayola Factory. We did stop at the Pat Garrett Sheepskin Trading Post and Ampitheater but only for coffee. The kids oggled the assortment of knives through the glass counter and we didn't stay long. For most of the trip the ridge of grey-purple mountains in the distance flanked our left side, but as we drove North the name of the ridge changed, Blue Ridge as they call it in Va and Tuscarora in PA. Once we turned due East we passed over ridges that got increasingly smaller but were high enough to grant views of valleys full of developments whose angular forms sprouted in the lowlands like crystal aggregates. But none of those aggregates compares to that of Brooklyn.

Above, the Shenandoah at sundown winding in front of Virginia's Massanutten Ridge, taken at the Shenandoah River "Andy Guest " Campground.

soggy blossoms

strange tissue

The clouds above the neighborhood were very odd yesterday around dinner time.

glycerin and camillia

I came across the top two images hanging in Ted & Honey's where I stopped to recover from the procedure I underwent at LICH and rectify my caffeine deficit. These images by Aaron Fedor hit the spot in many ways but especially by underscoring how impossibly beautiful, delicate and transient life is and how miraculously tender and marvelous the tensions that give structure to our lives are. Not so unlike this camillia blossom I found wilting under a bush at the Botanic Garden Saturday, smelling like tea at its best, coating my nose with its pollen.

I gather Aaron's eloquent bubble photos are for sale, inquire at Ted & Honey

Divining Perforations

This hangs in the waiting room in the basement of Long Island College Hospital (LICH) located in the Cobble Hill section of Brooklyn, a catapult's launch from the Buttermilk Channel. I was there yesterday for a little blood letting/needle biopsy ceremony. I'm so glad for the hypnotic effect of the faux fish tank in which swam faux fish whose bodies seemed to swell irregularly as they perpectualy circled their tank.

I'm confused about all this tissue business and kind of surprised that anyone reems long needles into anyone else but I suppose things like that have been happening for a long long time, and far worse, as this parable from 350 BC that I came across moments before the PROCEDURE indicates.

Lord Yüan of Sung one night dreamed he saw a man with disheveled hair who peered in at the side door of his chamber and said, “I come from the Tsai-lu Deeps. I was on my way as envoy from the Clear Yangtze to the court of the Lord of the Yellow River when a fisherman Yü Chü caught me!”

When the Lord Yüan woke up, he ordered his men to divine the meaning, and they replied, “This is a sacred turtle.” “is there a fisherman named Yü Chü,? he asked, and his attendants replied, “There is.” “Order Yü Chü to come to court!” he said.

The next day Yü Chü appeared at court and the ruler said, “What kind of fish have you caught recently?”

Yü Chü replied, “I caught a white turtle in my net. It’s five feet around.”

“Present your turtle!” ordered the ruler. When the turtle was brought, the ruler could not decide whether to kill it or let it live and, being in doubt, he consulted his diviners, who replied, “Kill that turtle and divine with it--it will bring good luck.” Accordingly the turtle was stripped of its shell, and of seventy-two holes drilled in it for prognostication, not one failed to yield a true answer.

Confucius said, “The sacred turtle could appear to Lord Yüan in a dream but it couldn’t esape for Yü Chü’s net. It knew enough to give correct answers to seventy-two queries but it couldn’t escape the disaster of having its belly ripped open. So it is that knowledge has its limitations, and the sacred has that which it can do nothing about. Even the most perfect wisdom can be outwitted by ten thousand schemers. Fish do not (know enough to) fear a net, but only to fear pelicans. Discard little wisdom and great wisdom will become clear. Discard goodness and goodness will come of itself. The little child learns to speak, though it has no learned teachers-because it lives with those who know hot to speak.” Chuang Tzu, Basic Writings, page 136

This sentence "Discard goodness and goodness will come of itself" seems to travel at light speed in all directions at once. It's an anarchistic statement if nothing else, but let's not get caught up in politics. It's the internal anarchy that matters as it airs the soil of self and grants relief from the long standing oppression of the short-sighted presumption of sanctimony. That standard that everyone should be subject to? Just another chimera.

narcissists

Word Play

I hate shopping very much, but this article that I just came across when googling the terms "theodicy in the odyssey" may help me see much more in it than the mundane. In case you didn't know theodicy is an attempt to show that evil in the world doesn't negate the goodness of God, so it makes a toothsome subject.

a few more dragons

new life

double blind

You woke up this morning considering the difference between the stupidly idle and the profitably zealous? Me too, I'm not sure I really see it yet. I defer to the tongue of a man whose tongue led him to its end, so beware. Here in this introduction Giordana Bruno writes "He is double blind who does not see his own blindness" and later " The stupidly idle are buried in the lethargy of the incapability of judging their own blindness, and the profitably zealous are aware, awakened and prudent judges of their own blindness, and for that reason are in quest and on the threshold of the attainment of the light from which the others are banished for a long time."

It's been a strange day, the morning was bright, then dark, then bright again. I went to bed sick of myself but not losing hope that today really could be a new day for me, not knowing what would emerge from the other side of my cataracts. I tried not to fill the well. It's already full. So I tried not to. With more sloth the zealotry.