7 x 8 x Y

Bodies are only looking to survive. Politics is the war of which body gets what. War is politics gone huge. Love is patient. Love is kind. Writing as a lapsed Roman Catholic who entertained the priesthood until 1968 happened, love is what the average Christian cannot believe. There's the rub. Or a mystic is one who can't believe. Six of one. A baker's dozen of the other. To let samsara be samsara is the gateless gate, "something there is that doesn't love a wall." Poetry is the art of letting love talk. It took me 50 years to write that sentence.

When love believes, actually attaches to a thought, all hell breaks loose. This is called e-motion. But love is not virtual. Love is furthur. Love is unbelievable! Love is basically what I'm willing to physically die for. Without the question of belief, that would be everyone I love. And yes. Love is always at first sight. (I sweat. Therefore I am.) Zhuangzi 2 is exactly this ad infinitum. Love is the genius of the early Christian message. But belief is empire. Love is Buddhism without the Buddha. Love is.

I’m at the point where watching fireworks on TV is the way I watch fireworks. But I’ve got the windows open and there's no western wind. I should hear the ones over Salisbury Beach in fifteen minutes. (I would bet money but not my life that I heard the fireworks in Boston a few years ago. Not the Pops though.) The 1812 cometh. Discernment minus judgment is love. My daughter taught me this. Finally. I come for the overture. Ah Tchaikovsky! He was an inspiration to me 45 years ago. Should revisit.

I do believe I saw the Pops once. With Randy Newman and Ry Cooder. Maybe the Pops weren't there. It was definitely Symphony Hall though. I saw Randy Newman at Paul's Mall. With Jim Croce. This is politically incorrect. But from my experience, it's mostly parents who really get unconditional love. But my experience is admittedly quite limited. I mean I only have the number one daughter. And a number one granddaughter by the way. God I can't begin to tell you how or why I am so blessed! Yesterday I saw a picture of me forty years ago and a granddaughtervideo.

I would be dead if not for love! Her mother and I separated. Twelve years later we divorced. Love does not mean compatibility. Belief is conflict Belief minus love is war! The problem with all mathematics is depending on observer and observed never changing places. Only getting old is when I saw the patriarchy as it is. I am a white male, yes in an empirical way, but I’m no longer in their demographics. I find a certain freedom in this forest stage. Because I’m white and male of course! But Bodhisattvas are pansexual.

I remember learning the meaning of sexy—from how I remember it, my mother disapproved but my father said it's natural but unwise! I've said enough tonight for any id. So simple. Love is love. The story is a love story unless believing something else. Like Santa Claus. Love is all there is. Thinking otherwise will be the death of me. Wait! Belief minus love is belief. Don't overthink it. Deconstruction ends in being. Not believing something darker. Science is the process. Not the story!  The basic ignorance of scientific materialism is the one of really believing theory.

Look religion is not about belief but belief is religion. Belief minus religion is love. Ananda, what is jnana minus bhakti? Nothing? As you were. Some find it difficult to disbelieve. Even though it's as easy as not thinking. From my point of view. It's not about eliminating thought. Unfortunately, that way is mostly madness. It's all about seeing through each thought. Simply seeing each belief is made from thought. Left or right depends on where you take your stand, yellow hair. I was brought up believing love-talking is not ambitious enough. Love!

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 5

I’ve lived for untold autumns here on Cold Mountain

alone and carefree, uttering songs to myself.

My makeshift door doesn’t shut yet there’s calm and quiet.

A spring is murmuring fresh ambrosia in its natural flow.

Within my chamber of rock, an earthen cauldron boils

pine pollen potions, cypress elixirs, and aromatic herbal brews.

When I’m feeling hungry, I merely snack on perennial weeds.

My point of view is so agreeable, I rest on precarious stone.

105-tanahashi; 193-red pine; 194-rouzer; 193-henricks; 21-snyder

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 4

Supremely independent in the clouds,

this mountain needs no landowner.

In descending to the pass, I use a walking stick.

Ascending to the peak, I climb the vines.

In the valley, the trees are evergreen.

In the gorge, the rocks are variously colored.

Although I’m cut off from companions,

when spring arrives, the birds sing dawn dawn.

219-red pine; 105-tanahashi; 64-henricks

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 3

Breathtaking and mind-boggling, the waters of the Yellow River,

on and on without end, its way is coursing eastward—

drifting drifting slowly, obscure and never clearing,

slipping by body after body, whose lives appear to pass instead.

But if you wish to ride majestic white clouds,

how can one develop wings?

While your hair is still jet-black, begin—

active or at rest, drop away completely.

from translations: 67-red pine; 100-tanahashi; 64-henricks

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 2

Wang, the Literary Master,

laughs at my unsophisticated poetry—

I know nothing of the 'wasp's waist'

and never incorporate a 'crane's bill'

and as for metric feet, I’m completely ignorant,

and my words are nothing special, and misused.

But I’m laughing at the poetry he writes—

a sightless man creating handiworks about the sun.

from translations: 283-red pine; 28-watson; 95-tanahashi; 286-henricks

New Cold Mountain Transcreation 1

Yesterday I saw these trees by the riverbank

injured and damaged so—unbelievable!

Only two or three were still left standing

scarred by ten thousand axe-blade wounds.

Their ragged leaves had been stripped by frost.

Countless swells had withered their festering roots.

And this is what it’s like to be born—

why would anyone blame eternity?

from translations: 198-red pine; 65-watson; 90-tanahashi; 191-henricks

Epistle to the Americans

Everyone in the world enjoys a paradigm. If it isn't lucid dreaming, it's believing someone else's. Maybe one is waiting for some nirvikalpa Sunday samadhi. Exactly that is someone else's dreaming. And most of you accept the scientific explanation that the mind will know the great unknown in time.

You cannot petition the lord with science! You cannot know the great unknown with mind. One can only be it, and in being, know it. The one that worships at the ordinary, but secretly believes the specialist, is just another religious crusader.

You will know them by the PhD they follow. Physician, know appearances in consciousness. Lucid dreaming is another name for embodiment. Not to drop a name on you.

The only respect an honest teacher expects from an earnest student is disbelief. It's the student's job to build an honest myth. S/he not fully manufacturing a meta-paradigm is busy as a parasite upon another body-mind.

There's nothing right nor wrong with rhyming. It happens. The interpretation of a happening is always after the fact and never without some bias from the interpretation of previous happenings.

Pure awareness being self-aware is the essence of my myth and I interpret every happening as such. Myth is how I stand. I'll sit when I'm dead. Love without myth is to be continued. Myth without love—see 20th century scientific materialism.