You didn't like how I said it last time? How about this one? You did like how I said it last time? How about this one?
Indra's Net. Maya's Play. Om namah Shivaya. Sat chit ananda. Truth, love, bliss.
I Sadly Swim Away
Put the hammer down
and come teach me how to live,
I call out to you
and you tell me, watch.
I will find, you say, the way
in my chapped sore hands
and it will do no
good to attempt escape from
the sea we swim in.
You say work ripples
the surface, cannot be
pulled away from it,
that trying creates more.
Your answer is not what I
Seek. I sadly swim away,
Create more ripples.
February 13, 2009 9:20 AM
Contraction
1 week ago
Great poem, excelent.
ReplyDeleteBut as you know you have to learn by yourself how to live, and during the bad time do as my name indicates: sing your own lullaby to yourself. When you do not need desperately the help of anybody is when people will want to get close to you and help you with things.
Bye bye
सच्चिदानंद
ReplyDeleteMariana thank you for sharing and I am grateful for that picture of how you live.
ReplyDeleteGhost, I know you love to manifest out of the different cultures on the planet. I am not sure why you chose a picture of pollution. Indeed there is pollution in India. It is frankly difficult to avoid the traveller's lament they call "Delhi belly".
I carry scars on my liver today from a parasitic infestation of amoeba I picked up in East Pakistan. The Brit doctor who treated me fed me arsenic doses to make my liver too toxic for the amoeba. I am sure it worked but I got pretty sick from the treatment.
I came back to the States also with a non specific urinary tract infection that periodically came back for a few years, and a planters wart on the bottom of my foot that survived about five years before its root grew out to the surface and killed itself.
from my perspective paradox Christopher.
ReplyDeletein some ways the picture is a metaphor for how i feel about religions in general....
human- produced garbage, yes.... but it is bright and colorful garbage, and when its not being used to suffocate humanity, it is at least harmless and at best the artifact of what is apparently humanity's motivation to pursue/understand its spiritual dimensions, and of course manufacture religions... which of course have bi-products clogging the flow of our spiritual ecology with colorful stuff.... flowing through the waterworks of our existence.
the orange peel is mine.... or at least what looks like an orange peel.... you can have the spot of coagulated orange paint powder...
by the way, if you meet the Buddah, you know what to do.
if you have a long history and a lot of gods and demigods, too much to cram into a monotheistic scheme, you can just stack them all up in one place..... a colorful artifact..... ironically i think there is a lesson here within Hinduism as well..... a path to a higher level of enlightenment, perhaps, concretely demonstrating an accumulation of religion......
ReplyDeletelink
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ReplyDeletefor some reason my link is just delivering HTML code to the browser....
ReplyDeletetry this:
http://www.lanka.com/sri-lanka/images/483-1-sacred-hindu-shrines.jpg
Wow. I am so thoroughly into my own thing in these matters that I have stopped concerning myself with the care and feeding of the masses. I understand your point of view, I think, but I am also more hesitant at this point in my life to think I am wise enough to understand the linkages between spiritual doorways as they actually are and the accumulations of tradition.
ReplyDeleteFor one, I am certain that the traditional accretions of Hinduism are records of genuine lives and are not cynical formations emplaced by priests to solve monotheistic problems. There are philosophical schools that exist alongside the religious expressions for those who wish a disciplined expression of mind.
Hinduism has tended to keep the remains of once vital expression because of a fundamental reverence for anything that once worked. In other words, what you might call garbage because it doesn't seem to work now is not discarded because, who can judge what works?
It seems to me that if you start from a premise of a willingness to support the spiritual aspirations of others you get one form of answer to the accretions of tradition. If you start from the premise of power and control, you get another. To me Hinduism has always seemed the most democratic spiritual system with the least requirement of specific dogmatic control precisely because there are so many possible organizing structures to choose from.
The constrictions in Hindu society arise in the system of caste and other social features that regulate family structure and the like. The treatment of women has been abysmal in some areas, but not in others, not as it works out in practice.
Because I am a man, I have trouble keeping all that happens to women intuitively in mind. What I can keep in mind easily is that for men there is always the opting out option in the last third of life. The shedding of most of the social constraints for a "forest life" of minimal possession, begging bowl, and attention to the inner life is actively supported and honored. The assumption is that you have done your duty, raised your family, and now you purify yourself. This option can include an association with some community of spirit, or not.
I am presently compelled to remain in this daily grind because the option of spiritual freedom is not socially and psychologically supported, either from without or from within me. I suspect I would not live as I do were I Hindu in a Hindu society. I think it is very hard to understand from the vantage of actually living in a tradition if you approach it from the outside.
Thanks, Ghost, for giving me the opportunity to wander down these tracks once again. I am not rising to the defense of anything here, not really. I live in the attempt to be beyond all that. My days as part of the revolution are over.
I will say this: that I am convinced that there are enough threads of logic and heart from so many directions that it is not philosophically required to assert that Hinduism is an accretion of spiritual pollution. The case can be made, but it is not the only case.
of course i used the garbage term in a non-judgmental way.... a more reverent way of saying it would be "artifacts" of spiritual seeking. religion is the ferment of a process of reification... a hardening.... every path leads to the manufacture of a fossil.... something to touch.... something material.... something solid from the abstract. put another way, each identifiable religion is a different answer to the basic questions about those things toward which finite human existence points but does not comprehend.... seeks but finds only evidence of its own seeking.
ReplyDeleteI got caught in that exact same argument once. Early in my partnership with my soon to be Social Worker and wife, I uttered the phrase "garbage collector" thinking about the job of shepherding the unwanted children. It is certain that I could never do that job, and also certain at that time that I felt defensive in some way as I said that.
ReplyDeleteIt led to an unfortunate and difficult time while we sorted out what the hell I was doing being with this woman. She had taken a deep offense.
I think many if not most of us would if our cherished vision was associated with garbage. The next question becomes how do I reply to this? The term garbage linked to notions that others place in high esteem is an agressive word.
aggressive..... pretty much a product of preditory religion and culture here but do occasionally exhibit transcending qualities..... link....
ReplyDeleteI'm never did find the 'one' I would stop swimming for.
ReplyDeleteI'm pretty sure this is a blessing, most days :)
xx
I one of the teasers in the water. I like to play there, glide and weave in a slow smooth motion, conserving breath and energy and sensing as much as possible all the different strokes of water along my body. I like looking up at the air from underneath, how the light dances the way it does.
ReplyDeleteThis reminded me of The Alchemist, somehow. How when we are searching for our life's path if we allow it to happen, if we give in to the current, life will take us there. If we flail about and try too hard, well, we make no progress, so we?
ReplyDelete(And why don't I listen to myself?)
I am not sure how it happens. I was intervened on more than once in my life. First by the Army, then by God, then by Mom, then by my wife. Each of these were major turns.
ReplyDeleteAlso by being in the right place at the right time, a couple more turns happened.
Nothing I have ever planned has turned out. What?