This is a painting of Zambhala, a Tibetan Buddhist divinity that some will call upon as a practice in their spiritual walk hoping for spiritual prosperity. They can use this Mantra among others: "Om Padma Trotha Arya Zambhala Siddhaya Hum Phat"
Buddhism does interesting things when you start looking through various filters. That is why I can't leave it alone even though I am far too deist to really take it seriously, Tibetan Mahayana schools notwithstanding. For example, it makes complete sense to me that I can in all arrogance ask God to come near and participate by leading me in Bodhisattva activity, thus allowing me divinely permitted if temporary elevations justified in the service of getting this whole entangled thing over with.
In the meantime, while we continue to do mean time, I also dare to ask to serve at God's permission in saving the world right now, holding it together in all patience and compassion. Saving the world right now is the true subversive activity that Hippies once yearned to perform. That's another post.
Saving the world right now is also, by the way, the deepest activity of the mage, that for which he gathers his familiars and his power, and it is the esoteric activity of the alchemist, why he dares to transmute the elements. It also is the work of Shambala, of the hidden masters who reside in the mystery. When the shaman calls upon the Golden Age of the Ancestors, the Dreamtime and shifts his shape to all good purpose, it is to save the world right now. And when Carl Jung struggled to express the mechansim of divine eruptions, arriving at archetypes and synchronicities, he too was engaged in this rich subversion of ordinary days and ordinary mind.
How's that for a prose poem?
However, deist or no, here is a pointed discussion about how an open mind in a technically specific sense sidesteps conventional knowledge and information for a more direct universal approach to all that's real, striding right past all illusion.
Found in my mailbox, Tricycle Quarterly's Daily Dharma talk for January 13, 2011:
Nirvana is an Open Mind
Nirvana, or whatever you want to call it, means the complete deconstruction of all of our rigid mental patterns and habits as well as the deconstruction of all of our limiting beliefs. This deconstruction creates a space for true inquiry. When we open our hearts and our minds completely, we are in a place where we can experience something new, a new truth, a new reality, a miracle that we haven’t experienced in the past. We can see things differently and they present new, expanded opportunities, new horizons. Therefore an open mind is required. This is true not only in relationship to the truth but in relationship to everyday life as well.
- Anam Thubten
As a young child growing up in Tibet, Anam Thubten was intent on entering the monastery, where for much of his childhood and young adult life he received the benefit of extensive academic and spiritual training from several teachers in the Nyingma branch of Tibetan Buddhism. He conveys the Dharma with the blessing of teachers Khenpo Chopel, Lama Garwang and others gone before in a lineage of wisdom holders and enlightened masters. Also during his formative years in Tibet he developed a special affinity with a yogi and lifetime hermit Lama Tsurlo, who became a deep source of inspiration that continues to manifest in Anam Thubten’s expression of the Dharma.After arriving in America in the early 1990’s Anam Thubten began to teach the Dharma at the request of others. Today he travels extensively in the U.S. and occasionally abroad, teaching in fluent English and offering in a direct experiential manner the essence of Prajnaparamita, the timeless, non-conceptual wisdom teachings of the Buddha. These teachings, free of any sect or dogma, point directly to the recognition of one’s true nature as boundless love, unfettered by the false notion of a self that is separate from others, and free from any limitations of egoic mind. In his teachings and presence with others, Anam Thubten invites the heart-opening, mind-emptying awakening to one’s true nature that is already enlightened.
Anam Thubten is the author of various articles and books in both the Tibetan and English language. His first book in English appeared under the title ‘No Self, No Problem.’ He is the founder and spiritual advisor of Dharmata Foundation based in Point Richmond, California.
Weaver's Work
If I took the weave
apart and collected space
I found between, space
I put in the jar
I keep on the old oak shelf
above our heart's fire,
if I did this thing
it would be for hope, for you,
in the name of love.
October 15, 2009 12:22 PM
i just read the poem, because i hope that lets me know the space, in between the weave, that you are in.
ReplyDeletebeautiful poem
Well.......
ReplyDeleteYour prose for a poem.
waiting......
O O I'm a hippie, late stage, but still.
Oh, just what is a diest??????
This post falls because I try to say too much at once. And yet, I wanted to clarify the man as well as share what he said, and I wanted to say a little too.
ReplyDeleteWhen I read, it still says all that and then the poem says all that too.
Jozien chooses to only read the poem and that's a good response. Love you Jozien.
Ms RZ, you spell "diest" with the vowels reversed and spelled your way, it is nothing. When you spell it deist it comes from deus = god with "little g", god at his most generic, and when the term is used in a more formal sense than I have, Deist means a specific sort of belief in a distant creator God who works through science and reason now, a God who is absent from His creation because He is only necessary at Creation. All we can ever know of Him is the knowable science, the shadow of His original Presence.
As Deus, there is a separate stream as that is the formal Latin for God, as used in Catholic Liturgy, as an example, Deus Irae, the Wrath of God, literally God + Wath Of, the ae being the possessive of Ira, (holy) wrath. Thus Deus in this stream is the Christian God the Father.
That shows how Deism arose as a Christian heresy, replacing reason and science for the Trinity and Christian faith. Deism was held in America by some of the founding fathers (Thomas Jefferson for one) who would attend Christian services out of social necessity but would nonetheless prefer to engage in or contemplate science on most days.
Glad to see Zambhala making an appearance. ^_^
ReplyDeleteAnd as always, you find these wonderfully expressive ways to write a poem about concepts that are so ephemeral and abstract... you tickle me right in the jealousy!
Do you still have it? I could use that space, right about now.
ReplyDeleteOh, and like Jozien, I skipped straight to the poem. I always do that. :) Sometimes I go back and read the rest, and the other comments as well. I suppose that means I'm the kind of person who would bite into a gobstopper, just to get at the seed in the middle.
ReplyDeleteJoseph, yes, I visited your site and got the idea of Zhambala and chased him down, so he is not here by serendipity but because I especially like how the Tibetans have kept at least remnants of their old pre-Hindu religious tradition, adding Buddhism and Hinduism both to it.
ReplyDeleteRachel, unfortunately this space beyond the weave must be found and cannot be easily shared without considerable magic. There are some who think magic is imaginary and its results do not exist. That's why magic fits in poems and stories but maybe not so much in the pocket of my apron.
I had to google gobstopper to discover the jawbreakers of my childhood.