Taoist Offerings in the Hall of Dreams

Kannon in YUMEDONO (Hall of Dreams) by Tokyo Bijutsu Gakko 

Summer grasses /
 all that remains /
 of soldiers dreams.

Basho interpretation by Lucien Stryck

Kannon is the Goddess of Compassion. Her Chinese name is Kuan Yin, and in Sanskrit, Avalokitesvara. A statue of the Kuan Yin stands, similarly as pictured above, in my apartment. My wife, a Taoist-Buddhist, cares for the sculpture with a love beyond regard for high art. Standing behind an attendant bodhisattva, the Kuan Yin is a living recipient of our most momentary aspirations and our immanent longings, as they rise and fall into the sky of the figured form with our sound, breath, movement and speech. With a physical offering, the life of the seemingly inanimate sculpture gives way to immortal reckoning. The statue has received such offerings as the favourite pleasures of my late grandfather (a can of sardines and a cigarette), as well as my Shakuhachi breathings. 

__________

I see my wife, long braided hair, in full red dress, dimmed by the party ambiance, she wails on her mother-of-pearl Egyptian doumbek, with the percussive force of a musical heart, true bravura of heartened artistry. 

Two Drummer Girl by Isaac Israels 

As I wade into a kitchen room, I feel the presence of sheer evil at my side. And looking down, blood pours delicately from a soft wound. The ghost of death blinds my nerves as my eyes fog with principal madness, looking at the mean-faced ignorant sex-fiend of my abusive past. 

Sitting young woman in Dutch Kitchen by Henrik Nordenberg

That shared abuse, culminates in a shot, straight through the gut, though strangely a painless death as the water of my eyes bleeds my vision into an all too wakeful death.        

__________

Boiled threat of another animal’s blood

Given over to the insect mind,

A natural reason, the rational cycle

Filling 0’s with my precious un-devoured anchor

That holds human bread to the sand of the unfed

Screaming over shopping carts, cringing with nicotine blinks

...

Ruined men and women whose hearts run dry

Like the rivers that once fed their ancestral lungs,

Filled with the mythic bird

And they rise from the ashes of Hindu lore

In the European brain,

A tell-tale crime, getting skinny in between

...

In exchanging monetary behaviorisms

In the psychic deep of abundant perceptions

Closed doors sink into the undertow’s warning

excerpts from "Bless the failed pilgrim's march"

Prophecy in Dreamland and Other Spells of Creative Literacy

Portrait of Rasputin by Ana Theodora Krarup

"Unconscious actions, mass unconscious actions have certain momentums, something that Tolstoy tried to explain more philosophically in the narrative of War and Peace, how the individuals with their own lives could be carried off by history's great forced floods this way or that. He was trying to describe often what I encounter in my study of prophecy, that there is a wave of mass human stupidity that is carrying even intelligent people into its current, that is converging on a collision in the Middle East...what I get wrong also is a helpful study of how the human mind misinterprets a sign with its own expectations and hopes and I think it helped me be a better interpreter as well as a predictor of the future..." John Hogue on Whitley Strieber's Dreamland: Journeys to the Extreme Edge

I first read Whitley Strieber's Communion, which stretched my understanding of non-fiction as a young reader, surveying a gamut of fiction, history, philosophy, mythology in my family library. 

Another genre-bender, who influenced my appreciation for literature in a more grounded way, was Jack Kerouac, who together with Allen Ginsberg, prophesied a shift in American social norms through their collective literary breakthroughs. They had noted that in the second half of the 20th century, Americans would shift from their hardline Christian upbringing to a more Buddhistic sensitivity. 

Reading both of their writings thoroughly, I soon interpreted within their work an interesting relationship to what we now call prophecy. More than to pin prophecy within the highly skeptical sensationalism of conspiracy theory, prophecy, in a more mythological sense, is simply the attuning of the intellect to certain eloquence in creatively utilizing timeless wisdom and ageless archetypes, reattributing them as signs. 

More often than not, prophecy in mystic circles is not an outward momentum, toward predicting profane outcomes, but simply one of the many old ways toward self-realization. One is inevitably of the infinite. Popular prophets are heady mixes of conspiracy theory or what Terence McKenna called, "epistemological cartoons". In Hebrew mysticism, my understanding is that prophecy is a numerological science, beheld within the Hebrew language of the Torah, encompassing a unitive vision of interpretive science as it meets with spiritual practice. 

Recently, I viewed the film, Rasputin, which was another prophetic figure portrayed on the literature on my shelf as a young man impressed by the literati. Rasputin certainly opened the popular discourse of prophecy on the world stage, especially as regards political intrigue, out into broad daylight. His eyes still transfix. 

________

With a mug to mirror the inescapable frame of Kerouac’s joual-toughened jaw, bespoken with the silent glimmer of streetside grief, walking alone and alone for the infinite mileage of American wanderings, a cyclical tongue of ruthless freedom, to free the passions from the word-order of choice and splay will on the open pain of roadside heat with a thumb and a meek treasury of manly poverty 

Pauper by Petr Brandl

that drunken cry that rang throughout the humbling scope of spectral telephone wires following with the unheard voice of millions distanced by the wiry nerves of a social neurosis towards mobility, and with the rootless leisure of a need to travel as a way of being, that holy rope burned the traveler’s hands as the writing cooled mind’s belonging on a land of no-land opening

_________

“American body,

May you be cooled,

May the dog days of the final moon in your Roman clock tick no more,

May your fires be dampened in the Fall,

May your body always be replenished,”

“This is a prayer from your navel,

Your own son”

excerpt from "American; Columbian Men and Women at the Edge of Civilization and Meaning"

The Diamond Truths of New American Colonization

Detail of the Frontispiece, Diamond Sutra from Cave 17, Dunhuang, ink on paper (the oldest, dated printed book, 868 CE), universal distribution made possible by Wang Jie

"If a good man or good woman develops the mind of a bodhisattva and maintains this sūtra, even with as little as a four-line gāthā, and accepts, maintains, studies, recites, and explains it to others, then the merits of this surpass the others...

All conditioned dharmas
Are like dreams, illusions, bubbles, or shadows;
Like drops of dew, or flashes of lightning;
Thusly should they be contemplated."

- Vajracchedika (The Daimond Sutra), 32

________

Only a few days prior I had only passed by the reserve, Tsuu T’ina. The dilapidated rodeo stadium seemed dwarfed beside the traditional tipi stands, piercing through the pine forest canopy. Though, their well-worn canvas was visible in the instant of passing. And on down the highway, the billion dollar estates of cookie-cutter middle class residential colonies staggeringly featured on hillsides and valleys with the shallow, crooked smiles of worldwide settler ignorance.

Invited on reserve, what was I to expect. It became all too real and just so warming when in the presence of two young women, sitting on felled trees in a forest glade. They were humble, kind and open. They told me about the human experience, the incomprehensible ways and wherefores of corruption and the weary distillation of progress with or without wealth, on or off reserve. The original crime is at hand, though, truly, the unforgiving hand of an all-deceiving colonial contemporary oppresses us all.

This was my realization, though she didn’t have to say it as such, just kept flashing her warm smile and welcoming presence. A tea offered with such candor on a land infused with such bitter rumors, emptying on your heart with the depth of tragic realization, as viscerally near, as your own heartbeat struggling to course blood through your veins before the awe of an expectant spiritual confrontation. And here we were, sitting in the quiet peaceable forest. Three youth, peering out through the sun-cast opening towards a picturesque vale of mythic proportion. The warning sky cleared, as with ethereal empathy just for us at that moment. The sunrays cracked through the forest shade, enlightening the smoky dust. Looking at such wide-open beauty, I drank in the wild vocation of rapture at the mere sight of ecological wisdom in its simplicity. Yet, to the north horizon, as we looked west, a mountain had been reddened, as an eviscerated body, heaving the dim breath of laborious, earthly pain. I shrugged in careless abandon, questioning the lady to my right. She told me, briefly, of the catastrophe; a mistaken excavation, fruitless for all, rendering the mountainside clean of life.

Walking back through the town, I was led to meet others.

________

Interpretation: In Our Colors and Dreams We Are All Daughters of the Sun 

________

names tearing at the throat from the machete claw
breaking apart the vocal chord forests
dreamt in saw-cleared eyes
during the infamous winter of English settlement
from the prized mouth and stomach of burnt corn and lacrosse 

pages, ruffling in the French-Canadian afternoon

who remembers with sterling grace
and an ease unbeknownst in the blank wilderness of Western memory,
the oral grave of intergenerational strife
digging itself extra corpses to save face in the final rain of time

- excerpts from "New America, Go Forth!" 

To Dream Is To Conceive An Other

"I had a dream also before you were conceived which was quite interesting, there was a being there standing in the corner, it was a male, and said to me in the dream, said, 'please will you give me a place in your body.'" - Mother of Tulku, from the film by Gesar Mukpo

I have a friend whose named their first son a Tibetan name after she reportedly had seen the child himself appear in full bodily form prior to conception, asking if he could be born through her. Is he a Tulku? What does this say about the mother? Do you have any similar experiences, first-hand or otherwise? 

As a reclusive student of Buddhism, who became delightfully initiated into Green Tara devotions with a Rinpoche Geshe Lobsang Tsetan at a chance meeting, and in that series of meditational initiations befriended a forest hermit who's been a lifelong supporter of my work ever since, I will add my opinion on tulkuhood (please see my Green Tara Post for more). 

In my reading and meditation, I see Buddhism as an enlightened practice of seeing, in the way that Joseph Campbell saw myth as creative perception, and the way that Terrence McKenna saw shamanistic hallucination as an archaic mode of seeing through the phenomenal nature of human subjectivity.

In other words, I see tulkuhood as a universal expression of a natural phenomenon that is experienced every day, in every moment, by every one always. That easily said, without having redacted with much scholarship on the matter, I can humbly reflect on the notion that a Tulku is simply the ancient wisdom of indiscriminate practice, which resides in all social and personal forms, within all sentient beings. 

_______

We met in bars, malls, cafes, and sidewalk parks. The entire time, it was as though we met in the privacy of his home, even more, in the secrecy of his mind. He had let me into his imagination of himself. The way he was so sweet, surreal. Figments of smiles and laughter lit up our shared space as from a shared brain. He spoke with a borrowed voice.

The duplex works well for me, a single man on one side, my best friend and his family on the other. One day, they show me their leaking roof, a madhouse of water and anxiety. Unable to help, we attend a nearby gathering, an awe-inspiring array of human diversity, as an earmarked page in an unassuming book. A busker presents his CD release. On a new accordion, he plays the delight of all, while my best friend retreats back into our house, ready to subsume the difficulties of an entrenched domestic struggle. I continue on through the peopled havoc, stirring blindly with blissful listening and warm-hearted aspirations, to embrace the heart of our local culture and be drawn into its imperfect cultivation.

This is the last day, he said. No visitation, no indrawn temptation, not a flicker of need. What happened? I decided to see for myself, the state of this new loving presence, his shape-shifting personality beckoned me, although I had not seen another side, I knew his face does change.

Entering his house, no one welcomes me. Walking up the austere mahogany stairway, the banister is buffed and shining with inestimable taste. The doorway to a study is slightly open. A deep, unwavering silence overtakes my curiosity, I am driven through with the pain of loss, a reality I had known all along, though served so politely, mind-to-mind by the loving acquaintance. He sits at a high leather chair, bearded as not before with elder white beard, square-faced and unmoving. His countenance, exposed in the antiquated sepia light, is only recognizable as an acrid tinge of sentiment and memory, subtly issuing as from within, between our speechless minds. The instant is nigh, as he looks at me, stone-faced, an unseen floodgate opens from his untamed eyes. Then it fades and I leave, pained with eternal mystery of who.

_______

Age

"To dream of age, portends failures in any kind of undertaking." (iDream)

When I read the dream above, I immediately think of McKenna's statement, "you become unrecognizable to yourself" 

_______

donating beautiful soundless hearts
through world music motion

our one universal language emotion
& the commonly evolved ground broken through violent social awareness

meant to survive generations
with the traumatic blessing of the great earthly groan

from
MA, virgin, temptress,

my Kuan Yin

- excerpt from "I drank in the stupor"

On another poetic note: check out my latest publication, a very buddhistic haiku posted today on Marco Polo Arts Mag

Training Our Brain to Welcome the Spirit of Dream

"In the altered state of consciousness of people who meditate, we often see theta activity appear. Theta activity is associated with dreams. It is a relaxed state, but something is happening in terms of cognition. It's not easy to maintain theta activity for a long time. It takes a lot of training to do that."

- from "Mystical Brain" by Isabelle Raynaud

________

Meditation with Mahakrishna 

Transcendence transpires. The transpersonal takes effect, dryly in the humid gathering. With rich clothes and frayed seams we sit before the elephant-headed Krishna. Ganesha-Elephant man! Seated before, equally clothed, he prefers to be addressed Mahakrishna. I vanish!

_______

Krishna

"To see Krishna in your dreams, denotes that your greatest joy will be in pursuit of occult knowledge, and you will school yourself to the taunts of friends, and cultivate a philosophical bearing toward life and sorrow." (iDream)

_______

we create

inspired music
unheard by earthly tones       nor human ears
harmonious voices                calling towards a presence

a welcoming home
within the space known as I
an eternal resting place
where through our music we share that space

with peoples     creatures      beings      spirits
places ways times and manifest ideas
through instinct's thoughtful mentation
recognizing all as one
we sing and play an emergent force
calling all forth
from within shells
hardened through travel

- excerpt from "Celestial tONES"

Tara Sadhana for the Anthropomorphic Newborn

Three Bodhisattvas Witness World Compassion Harmonizing by Vi An Diep

Praising Tara by her divine actions of dispelling conflicts and bad dreams

Homage to you who are honoured by the kings of the hosts of gods,
And the gods and the kinnaras.
Through all your joyful and shining pervasive armour
All conflicts and bad dreams are dispelled.

Last stanza from “Offering the Mandala” 

Thus, O Sublime object of refuge,
Please quickly protect all living beings
From fears such as sickness, spirits, obstacles,
Untimely death, bad dreams, and ill omens.


Colophon: This sadhana has been compiled from traditional sources by Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche in response to requests made by students of Tara Centre, and translated under his compassionate guidance. September 1989.

Excerpts from Great Compassionate Mother. Geshe Kelsang Gyatso Rinpoche. Tharpa Publications. 1990, 1993. 

______

It's a very ordinary day. It feels like afternoon to early evening. I feel the constant presence of an animal. My albino rabbit, named Salt in life, visited me. His head is in my hands. I pet him. I let him out in the yard. It was snowing heavily, and he, white as the snow, only appears through his beady, red eyes. Then, I notice a child running through the snow. The child came into the house and laid its head next to my lap, and proceeded to nudge into my hand to pet him. It's a boy, a mute boy. He looks at me with colorless eyes. I figured, how wonderful Salt shape-shifted into a young boy. Salt, now a boy, would hop out into the snow around the trees just like a rabbit. Immediately, he shifts back to a rabbit who hops out of my vision. 

A very silvery, glowing white cat with stripes. Upon recognizing the face of this cat, it was evident that it was my deceased cat. All the features of my cat were displayed. His charm and energy radiates. My hands are warm as I pet him. Suddenly, I cradle him in my arms, looking behind my shoulder, I see my husband smiling and laughing. I am speaking to Max, now as a child. He is an infant with the same eyes as a cat, but with the face of a child, staring back at me with such love and affirmation. I speak in English and say, "I want you to learn Chinese because I am your mother. I would like you to preserve my lineage through learning Chinese." My husband, the love of my life, is laughing in the background. In synchronicity my husband and young son speak in English. My husband says laughingly, "he already knows how to speak Chinese." The child says, "Mother, I already know how to speak Chinese." In my surprise I notice my cat turned child changed to four to six months old. Beyond a brick stone ledge, dawn approaches as a beautiful golden sunrise. His dirty blonde hair glistens. His eyes, expressing inquisitive curiosity and a loving recognition, are deep emerald green and brown. Sitting on that ledge, I taught him to say, "eyes (gnan)" in Cantonese. He stuttered, but was able to repeat, the word for eyes in Cantonese. "Gnan" he says. My husband smiles as if to say, why are you trying to teach him what he already intrinsically knows from you, his mother. The child chuckles and says, "eyes, ears, mouth and nose (gnan, yee, hoaw, bae)" I was shocked with such gladness and immense pure unconditional love for this being before me. "Ma" he would exclaim. I already know. He became a toddler and hopped off the sandstone ledge. His head rested next to my thigh as I stroked his beautiful dirty blonde hair, glistening in such glorious light. 

He, in another dream, the third of the sequence, shifts back to a silvery glowing, white, very happy cat. 

________

as her son climbs the dismembered mountain,

trembling with rocks of tragic failure

rolling down to kill my boulder of trash

damming the flood of human night

- excerpt from "My New Bride"

Overcoming Fear through a Koan of Dream

Stairwell Lighting at Night by Adolf von Menzel

Buddhist Hermit

"if you see through this world and let go of it...this is wisdom
if you see through this world and but don't let it go...that's just "talking Zen"

here, for you:

[the hermit hands a handwritten koan to the filmmaker]

'ten thousand things
all in this breath
grasping hold of emptiness

there's really nothing to say'

'ten thousand things, all in this breath...' why are people so busy?
just for one breath
they say, 'busy busy, mine mine...
busy a whole lifetime for 'Me'

when this breath is cut off...you let go of the whole universe...why not let go from the start?
'grasping hold of emptiness...' you want to talk about 'real'... show me one thing that is real...there's nothing real from the start

every day morning to night, gathering things...big and small, valuables...money, name and recognition...gathering it up into your lap...like you're holding the golden key...busy your whole life for nothing...acting like a thief...why not put this energy to liberation?

put this mind to the Path"

from the film "Among White Clouds"

__________

I’m in the middle of a desert wilderness outside of a concrete shack which seems to be fortified with wood in various parts. I am with my Dad’s family, specifically I can see my step-sister and my father. They seem very concerned with the time. My father asks us all to be aware of the time, yet he seems very confused and distracted. I ask why would we pay attention to the time, when we are here! I look over my shoulder, and the sun immediately dips down like a perfectly circular satchel of black tea into the boiling water of an endless Sahara horizon. Our surroundings turn to darkness, and suddenly I realize where I am. I can see the Sphynx, with its eyes aglow. Beside the Sphynx are other ruins, unseen in the light of day or at all in the modern ruins around the Great Pyramid. There are faces, of Pharaonic royalty and monuments indescribable. I don’t know how we got here, but I begin to become nervous as I see a local Egyptian, appearing to be a Bedouin trot down a nearby path on a camel. I asked them if they understood where we are and how this place seethes with forbidden territory. They don’t listen and wish to stay permanently, enamored and convinced this is the place they should be.

Together with my wife, we set off. On the road, we find ourselves boarding a mine cart and fleeing swiftly through a desert mountain landscape. As we near insurmountable cliffs, our cart somehow hovers blankly over the cliffs as if their steep inclines were lined with tracks. Upon a deserted hill, we come upon what appears as a Zen dojo or Buddhist shrine of some kind. I enter, leaving my wife behind to wait for me.

Inside the dojo shrine is a hermitage group in the presence of Allen Ginsberg. He is leading a hermitage in exercises of dreaming and fear; that is, how to overcome your fears through dreams. On the walls are psychedelic video art installations. There is an unspoken air of poetic thinking in the room, however subdued by a collective attitude of spiritual practice. When it is finally my chance to endeavor to see out the exercise before me, I am keen to try and overcome my fear through this dream. I am led, to enter myself in the other quarters of the dojo shrine. Its paper walls open at my approach, as I survey the empty quarters. A lightly carpeted staircase leads up to a dark upstairs room. I feel this will be my test. Inside the room, there is a table, upon which my fear resides. Adrenaline rushes. My scalp tingles uncontrollably. I look up, to see an alien figure, hairless and gray-skinned, shriveled and wrinkled, with inflated head. This figure seems relatively docile, however he holds a rope in his hand. Above his left shoulder, a smaller version of the same alien species lies hanged upon a noose. I look into this alien torture victim’s eyes and I see a piercing evil reverberating into every corner of my being with pure driving intensity from the only light in the room, emanating like diamonds from the pupils of the emaciated skull drooping with a deathly gaze, directly at me. I am overcome with fear and immediately exit, having failed at the exercise. I return to the room, the air is a polite majesty of compassion. I leave for my wife outside, who waits patiently.

What was Ginsberg trying to show me or trying to lead me towards; something old, withered with age or neglect, something so inhumane and non-human, yet so eerily resembling our human form, or something hidden deep within me, a part of myself that is all of those things and more, a thing I'm afraid only to confront?

________

Leaving nowhere

loopy adolescent
limping
and boasting

a raucous
and numb
pride
for nowhere
leaving

Tuesday, February 16 2010

3.18pm

Waiting for plane in ugly dim light of celebrity photograph restaurant in Calgary airport. 

Beer and soup.

The Mother of Buddha Had A Dream

Thai Buddhist Art by Anonymous

Twenty-five hundred years ago, nestled in a fertile valley along the border between India and Nepal, a child was born who was to become the Buddha. The stories say that before his birth, his mother, the queen of a small Indian kingdom, had a dream.






A beautiful white elephant offered the queen a lotus flower, and then, entered the side of her body. When sages were asked to interpret the dream, they predicted the queen would give birth to a son destined to become either a great ruler or a holy man.

One day, they said, he would either conquer the world, or become an enlightened being—the Buddha.

from "The Buddha" a PBS documentary by David Grubin

Dream of Phra Khru Bah Neua Chai Kositto

Buddhist art in Cambodia by Pwordissony

"I only remember the times I lost...I lost only four times. Most of the time I won with a knock out. I must have had many hundreds of opponents. But I became tired of fighting...for many different reasons. Tired of the whole scene.

And then one of my closest friends was killed in a car accident...and I started to wonder when it is my time to die...would I have achieved peace of mind?

The last time I boxed...was on December 20th, 1990. A month later...after having a vivid dream...I became a monk.

The moment I became a monk, my heart and mind changed...I felt a great calm that I just couldn't explain...I ended up sitting on a rock for 15 days and 15 nights.

I felt such a peace...and then a swarm of bees...built a nest around me and I couldn't move.

It was like a dream in which...the forest was filled with wise men...who taught me their Buddhist ways...When I finally awoke after the 15 days...the sun was bright and the bees were gone.

So I walked further into the hills and saw the villages there. I saw how poor the hill tribe people were.. and I saw their drug addiction. And I asked myself why were their lives so difficult?...why did they have such sorrow?"

from the documentary film "Buddha's Lost Children"