Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Acadian Consciousness


In deep sleep is the absence of duality but in awakening is the presence of non-duality.

In duality, there are ten thousand concepts. In personal misconception, there’s identification with one of them.

In the sudden presence of non-duality, there’s an absence of such identity. Some call this awakening, profound revelation, kensho, savikalpa samadhi.


It’s why I started hiking mountains in the middle of the journey of my life. It’s why Acadia became exclusive to those efforts. There’s something about

that first glimpse of horizon-wide deep-blue Atlantic Ocean after scrambling up the slope of desert-like pink granite mountainside scree

like love at first sight. It smells like meditation.











footnotes

open head, spill identity.

awareness. deep sleep. dreaming. waking. spiritual exercise. awakening. self-awareness. the magnificent seven.

it's not about the ten thousand objects. it's all about the one with which i identify.

taking care of someone other than yourself is good exercise too.

do not dismiss your roots. either tell them a bedtime story or go to sleep.

don't bite off more than you know.

and don't believe what you don't know. don't forget what you can't believe. that's my myth but i'm not sticking to it.

let this be made perfectly clear. true meditation is like hiking ten thousand mountains.

materialism is the new fundamentalist belief.

political ideology is the new apostle's creed.

thank god mysticism is the same old heresy.



Tuesday, July 6, 2021

Nondual Shakespeare? A Few Quotes & Notes from A Midsummer Nights Dream

1.

Out of this wood do not desire to go;

Thou shalt remain here whether thou wilt or no.

I am a spirit of no common rate,—

The summer still doth tend upon my state;

And I do love thee: therefore, go with me,

I’ll give thee fairies to attend on thee;

And they shall fetch thee jewels from the deep,

And sing, while thou on pressèd flowers dost sleep:

And I will purge thy mortal grossness so

That thou shalt like an airy spirit go.—

~WS (MND, 3.1: 129-138)


2.

"I have had a dream—past the wit of man to say what dream it was.—Man is but an ass if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was—there is no man can tell what. Methought I was, and methought I had,— but man is but a patched fool, if he will offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen; man’s hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was."

~WS (MND 4.1: 204-213)


3.

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name.

Such tricks hath strong imagination,

That, if it would but apprehend some joy,

It comprehends some bringer of that joy;

Or in the night, imagining some fear,

How easy is a bush supposed a bear?

~WS (MND 5.1: 14-22)


Some random notes

so i'm currently watching 3 midsummer night dreams while slow reading it. 1968 hall. 1981 bbc. 1996 noble. in the 1968, a 22 year old helen mirren is hermia and very good. but the play is of its time. i've just begun the 1981. but i'm really liking the 1996 after forgiving its conceit of being about a macaulay-culkin-like boy and his miraculous dream. it's contemporary without being too dated, like the hall. and the cast is really good without being too starry. tho' there's kevin doyle from downton.

as to the play itself, at the half-time intermission, and considering shakespeare is a great mystic putting on a show, it is deconstructing romantic love (or robin goodfellow is) while positing the fact of non-doing. but robin/puck steals the show. although apparently the tool of oberon, this trickster spirit loves to improvise. and oberon loves the improvisation and so on. there's something about titania though.

being that its philosophy in places appears to be nondual, it's curious all the transformation revolves around an indian boy. oberon wants him and titania will not give him up, 

For Oberon is passing fell and wrath, / Because that she, as her attendant, hath / A lovely boy, stol’n from an Indian king; / She never had so sweet a changeling: / And jealous Oberon would have the child / Knight of his train, to trace the forests wild: / But she perforce withholds the lovèd boy,/  Crowns him with flowers, and makes him all her joy: / And now they never meet in grove or green, / By fountain clear, or spangled starlight sheen, / But they do square; that all their elves for fear / Creep into acorn cups, and hide them there. ~WS (MND 2.1: 20-31)

so he drugs her with some flowery eye drops, and for a lark, the athenian men. and so begins the reverie.


In reviewing these quotes and notes, I’ve concluded there is an important speech here from three of the four groups represented in the play. There is Titania to represent the fairy world. There is the mechanical, Bottom. Lastly, there is Theseus of the court nobility. But I am missing something of the lovers themselves. Ah but here is Helena on the subject of love:

4.

Things base and vile, holding no quantity, 

Love can transpose to form and dignity. 

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; 

And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind.

Nor hath love’s mind of any judgment taste; 

Wings and no eyes figure unheedy haste: 

And therefore is love said to be a child, 

Because in choice he is so oft beguil’d. 

As waggish boys in game themselves forswear,

So the boy Love is perjur’d everywhere:

~WS (MND 1.1: 236-245)


So in the end, there are 4 segments in the play that point to some kind of wisdom, each representing a group in the play: love, spirit, dream, and imagination. What does it mean? It is past my wit to say.








Saturday, July 3, 2021

An American Consciousness

First, the body is consciousness, so there’s no body to identify with, in the first place.

Second, thought is consciousness as well, so even the concept of a body is consciousness.

As everything in a dream is of the dream and by the dream and for the dream, so is everything in consciousness. America!

As democracy is government by the lowest common denominator, materialism is the science of basic unawareness.

Western enlightenment, by throwing away the baby of mystical wisdom with the bathwater of religious belief, is actually unenlightening.

There’s nothing wrong with this. Like nirvana through samsara, one only comes to self-awareness through unawareness.

Here is what we know to be self-evident. Everything appears in consciousness. All appearances are consciousness. Thus consciousness is the only knowledge. Fireworks!














footnotes


the new haiku

1. awareness is self-aware, naturally. wholly.

2. awareness is absolute consciousness; conditioned consciousness is unawareness.

3. consciousness is literally here and now.


Sonnet Version

First, the body is consciousness,

so there’s no body to identify with, in the first place.

Second, thought is consciousness as well,

so even the concept of a body is consciousness.

As everything in a dream is of the dream and by the dream and for the dream,

so is everything in consciousness. America!

As democracy is government by the lowest common denominator,

materialism is the science of basic unawareness.

Western enlightenment, by throwing away the baby of mystical wisdom

with the bathwater of religious belief, is actually unenlightening.

There’s nothing wrong with this. Like nirvana through samsara,

one only comes to self-awareness through unawareness.

So here is what we know to be self-evident. Everything appears in consciousness.

All appearances are consciousness. Thus consciousness is the only knowledge. Fireworks!









Wednesday, June 30, 2021

A Midsummer Night's Consciousness

Forget the egg and chicken. Which came first? The person or the world of objects. It’s a trick question, my interdependent co-arising friend.

Sooner or later, all people get bored with the latest object of interest and their survival depends upon finding a new one.

It’s either that or make the latest object of interest your personal universe and go down that particular star-crossed rabbit hole.

For example, I’m revisiting Shakespeare, beginning with a Midsummer Night’s Dream, appropriately, and intend to binge his other comedies in the coming weeks.

It’s only much ado about nothing but I like it, I like it, yes I do. “And she, sweet lady, dotes, devoutly dotes, dotes in idolatry, upon this spotted and inconstant man.”









footnotes

then there's an open head as absolute subject and every object including yourself is within brahman

attention spans aren't growing shorter as much as the world is getting faster

i went down the rabbit hole of fundamental christianity once in my early thirties but thank god its angry god dropped me one night

shakespeare is more than a recluse. did not publish. left behind no diary or memoir. some even question authorship. shakespeare is ten thousand recluses.

i am i without an object. and i have given up my only begotten self to be an object in this play of self-awareness.









Saturday, June 26, 2021

Foolish Consciousness

Ain’t no consciousness like show consciousness. The deconstruction of personal consciousness is universal consciousness and that’s not nothing.

Actually universal consciousness is self-shining consciousness like atman is brahman. So many consciousnesses!

And personal consciousness may be divided into waking consciousness, dreaming consciousness, and sleeping consciousness. Oh my!

Or deep sleep consciousness is big bang consciousness, and dreaming consciousness is dna consciousness, and waking consciousness is dream-state consciousness, and so on.

There are so many names for consciousness because consciousness can’t be named, fool.











footnotes a la ghazal


the ouroboros must be fed.

that's what orgasm and ice cream is for.


the consciousness that can be named is not the tao of consciousness.

who wrote the book of love?


no mirror, no filter, no no.

it's not that consciousness can't be named. of course you can. i can't.


if meditation is the name of consciousness without a name, i forget the logic.

sometimes i wake from dna dreaming so god-damned sad.


it's not easy dropping mourning first thing in the morning every day.

all fog burns off.


for every seven valleys, there are eight mountains.

there's a very nice gibbous moon in the massachusetts time zone tonight.


i know consciousness when i am it.

only consciousness heals consciousness. the mind is to be trained to not interfere.








Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Being in the Ruins of Empire

It’s not die before you die, or be unborn before you die, but I’m unborn and undying despite whatever I’m believing otherwise.

It appears you can’t take memory with you but I don’t know this for a fact. Who’s to say consciousness isn’t performing a backup every night?

The world of personal computers may be the best metaphor we have to date for the metaphysical.

Furthermore, it’s not as if stars are imploding into black holes, but a star is an expression of the unknown whole.

And the body is the ash of consciousness like planets are the dust of suns. In such ruins is conceived the stuff of self-awareness.








Saturday, June 19, 2021

Consciousness Working


i.

Matter is consciousness at work. And it takes the furthest reaches of the universe to make a central nervous system capable of self-awareness.

Identifying with the high-tech apparatus at the end of this universal assembly line is not a glitch but an integral aspect of the process.

Don’t ask how the mirror is made for it appears to be a dirty business. It’s consciousness in and self-awareness out but in-between looks like the heavens and a world of hell.

In the end, all the mind can do is know what’s not and make a myth of what appears to be left over, while waiting on the finished goods.


ii.

Matter is more like bliss incarnate, like form is bliss and bliss is form.

It’s actually quite logical: artificial intelligence must identify with the artifice in order to see through artificial intelligence.

No one wants to know one's feeding on oneself. It’s easier to go vegetarian.

Hey you, don’t believe in the absolute. Be the unknown whenever I remember.


iii.

Satbang. Citgo. Anandaanddada.

Non-duality is the latest avant garde.

If deconstruction without love is nihilism, is love without deconstruction suffering?

Thought is a tool –

I’m not the tool nor the heart that holds the tool –

I am the self of self-awareness –

I'm writing this paraverse.







footnotes

satcitananda is absolute quality

nonduality is a very good year

love and deconstruction is an excellent blend

forget no exit, there's no on-ramp