Being Social

It’s probably best to begin at what we think is the beginning, that is, what we think we are, a human being.

The fact is we are socially conditioned to be a human being. From the moment of our birth, it's the grand plan. We are nurtured and we are schooled. We are forced and we are fooled. We are given a name, a catch-all, and we gather an identity as an individual, like so much string wound tight around a ball.

But of course, it was all here before we got here. So where did this beginning begin?

Self-Evident

I am, but we declare. In what’s known as spirituality or nonduality, pointers abound. There’s a multi-thousand years tradition in which teachers and schools have created the ten thousand ways and means of getting to the one truth.

Call it That, Mind, Spirit, Consciousness, Emptiness, Now, etc., you’re still calling something nameless a name. Too often that name, that pointer, becomes an end in itself. Thus, religion, or something real close to it. Often the names and metaphors just intersect, cross, contradict, and ultimately confuse.

Not to mention the practices! Too often the practice becomes the point, when it too is just a non-verbal pointer.

Ultimately it is up to each individual (from the viewpoint of the relative) to determine the one truth. But because it is nameless, it may be necessary to look at it in many ways. These are mine.

(to be continued)

Hailstones (a retweeter)

On the dark blue waters of ten thousand waves, one white swan.

To seek earnestly to know one's real nature--this is said to be devotion. ~Shankara

Ego is nothing other than a thought; there is nothing inherently bad about it. The only error is believing it.

You are not the conditioning that causes suffering, nor are you the pleasures that temporarily evade the pain. You are always The Healing.

Nature witholds nothing from itself, until there is nothing to give. ~Byron Katie

On the shore, I think, boats are like thoughts on the river. November is a time for such clear meditation. Only the river!

To know you are God with the mind is madness; to know you are God with the heart is enlightenment.

All pointers, like all metaphors, ultimately break down. They are, like everything in this world, impermanent.

Truth is not attained; Ignorance is dispelled.

It's not about wording; it's about disspelling.

The ocean of Brahman is full of nectar... My mind fell like a hailstone into that vast expanse... Touching one drop of it I melted away...

... ~Shankara

Only Heart (retweet poem)

Domesticated self-conditioned
dream-state ghost is thinking up
a virtual reality
to die for.
History, geography,
religion, quantum physics,
general relativity,
but most importantly
psychology self-validate
their own creation.

The mind is but a spider web
that keeps on spinning.
The mind is caught
within that spider web
created by the mind.
The mind can never free itself;
at best it can convince itself
it’s spun a great big web
in which it has ensnared itself.

Only the heart can know
there never was a web.
Only the heart can know itself
and in that knowing know it all.
Only the empty luminous
pure and bliss-filled heart.


~SonRivers 2009

There’s No November Like A Sutra (Retweet Poem)

In New England, November is
the Empty month:
no leaves, no snow,
no nothing.

The summer birds have all flown away;
the winter birds have not yet arrived.
The ever-present ever-shining
chickadee is reigning!

Still, the Blue Jays squawk.
Let them squawk!

I forgot the docks!
And every single boat
but for a lonely kayak or two.
Gone, gone!

The mighty river flowing
pure and free
to the empty beach-lined
empty sea.

The only sutra is
the sutra of the sea.


~Son Rivers 2009

Chop Suchness, Carry Brahman

There’s a difference between questioning the paradox of a Zen koan until your mind disappears, and answering it, or worse, mistaking the question for an answer.

For example, take the ‘chop wood and carry water’ comparison. The same occurs before enlightenment and after enlightenment, the saying goes. But to accept this as some answer involving an ordinary continuum is entirely missing the point. Yes, chopping wood and carrying water happens before and after. But there’s a world of difference, and that’s the paradox, and the point.

Then there’s the Zen triplet made popular in the Sixties by Donovan: “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.” It’s similar to the previous wood and water, except it presents the fulcrum in the middle, the mystical point of the absolute truth.

Not to travel too far off course, but Prabhavananda speaks to three ways that the Upanishads approach the concept of Brahman, what he calls three “spontaneous records of mystical experience.”

In the first, Brahman is presented as something almost separate from the world. It’s the unmanifest presence behind the manifested universe. It’s the duality of body and soul. The first mountain, objective, though in an enlightened view.

In the second, the fulcrum of our proposition at hand, there is no Brahman, just silence, that which is not seen by the eye, but that by which the eye sees. No mountain. Prabhavanada says this is the mystical union with the truth, “the peak of unitary consciousness,” from which one will return to...

The third, the intermediate stage. Here, one witnesses the world, but sees that it is Brahman. The Upanishads refer to figures of clay as a metaphor for the names and forms of the world. But all is the clay, all is Brahman. Shankara’s famous statement: “The world is an illusion, Brahman alone is real, Brahman is the world.” Our mountain of clay is a mountain of Brahman.

And this is the point. In the first wood or water or mountain, there is the objective reality of wood or water or mountain. But in the second wood and water and mountain, there is Suchness, there is Brahman.

There is not a continuum of the ordinary. To suggest so is either irresponsible, ignorant, or lazy, depending on where “you” are, and to "whom" you are speaking to. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

But of course, these have been a lot of words to say something that can’t be said. And that is the real point of the koan, after all.

An Empty Wood

Shanti,
shanti,
shanti.

Lately
the ten thousand
multi-colored leaves have fallen

and the woods are now
this timeless revelation
that

the living crystal waters of
this long lost hidden pond
were always there,

like a bright blue inner eye—
reflecting endless depths
of empty sky.


~Son Rivers 2009

Such Suchness!

When I visited Japan two years ago, I became aware of the Japanese appreciation for the microcosmic nature of things. For example, when the Japanese view cherry blossoms, they, in fact, view the cherry blossom, one at a time. I know this is somewhat a generalization approaching a stereotype, but I did witness this tendency a number of times in other areas, touring around each island of Matsushima and even in the viewing of a leaf in Oirase Gorge.

I like to think that this is some kind of cultural translation of the Buddhist concept of Tathata, or suchness. I am certainly not an expert on this term, but I know what it means to me. It is a recognition of the essential reality of an object or experience beyond the sensual and conceptual apprehension of it in the mind.

Today, I revisited Plum Island (officially, the Parker River National Wildlife Refuge and the Sandy Point State Reservation) and grooved on suchness. It’s become a tendency of mine as of late: first, seeing the dream state for what it is, and second, looking beyond to its suchness, although these two actually happen in a single state.

In autumn, it’s almost a state religion in these parts to go look at the foliage, the panoramic display of a landscape filled with deciduous color. But today, besides appreciating the landscape filled in limes and oranges, reds and rust, I looked at single leaves, and flowers, and reeds.

I remember a particular leaf, multicolored, and in an advanced state of decay. There was the suchness of impermanence itself! It’s easy to turn mystic in this practice. You look at a single leaf and realize its infinite suchness and ultimate impermanence, and then you look at all the leaves around you and realize the infinite variety of infinite suchness and impermanent transformation manifested all around in every direction...!

But when you come back to the heart, the feeling of Being itself, and realize it’s all the manifested display of the One, and that you are That, you begin to see that maybe this is what the self-conscious dream state is all about. Just the groovy trip of seeing your suchness in such a display. What would Richard Alpert say?

To Be (a retweet post)

What is called the mind is within what is called the body, a pattern within a pattern. But what I am is neither. Simplified, I am Being.

This statement is paradoxical in many ways, but its essential paradox stems from the fact that is language, a tool of the mind.

It (language) is a tool of the mind fashioning a truth (I am Being) that is beyond the scope of its domain.

Therefore in order to realize the statement, the point, one has to leap away from the language, the pointer. One cannot think it through.

That leap will probably entail a practice, trajectory, to get 'me' there, be it meditation, koan, or a combination of both as self-enquiry.

This leap travels at light speed to a union that can't be thought. It is felt, not with the senses; it is felt in a manner of being. It be.

The Mystic and the Keeper

The mystic experiences the world as something
almost otherworldly. Sitting underneath
an apple tree, Mae Tang doesn’t think
about the laws of physics. She sees spheres
of red within a loving universe
dancing about in photosynthetic winds.
Stay with me tonight and understand
the ecstasy of leaves, she gently sings.
Caress the flesh of God with every longing
taste of succulence you take! She falls
upon the supple ground and sleeps a dream-filled
sleep. While passing by, the orchard keeper
picks the apple from her open hand
and takes a mindful bite. This is such
a good and juicy apple, he observes.

~Son Rivers 2009

rev: L14 mindful for knowing

Old Koan Blues (a retweet poem)

The traffic jam is flowing
freely; the open road
is closed.

The filled-up parking lot is full
of emptiness; the single open
space is closed to all.

I love my job with absolute
disdain; I hate my boss
with beatific affection.

I drive home to be united with my own
uprootedness; I'll go out tonight
to leave my wandering behind.

My life is like a selfsame
dream; my dreams are like
a different life.


~Son Rivers 2009
composed from previous stand-alone tweets
(with some little revision)

Silence Redux (a retweet poem)

Honk if you love Silence.


Breathe in the awesome empty silence
as if it were love itself
because it is.

Drown in the sea of silence
and live in the depths of your Self.

Drink the root beer of silence
and feel the fizzle of extraordinary bliss
blow up your brain.


Silence is a palpable structure
built upon the three dimensions of reality:
consciousness, being, bliss.

Shape the clay of silence
with the fingers of your love
creating little statuettes of emptiness
that shape your rocky thoughts away.


Thinking I was the noise,
I did not know
I had always been the silence.

Silence isn't something precious in the world;
the world is something precious in the Silence.

In silence comes the simple realization that
there is nothing to do to be silent.

In silence you are what you always were.
Silence.


Not listening is not
the way into silence.
Just as not loving is not
the way into liberation.

When you listen to silence
your ears disappear.


~Son Rivers 2009
composed from previous stand-alone tweets

The Surrender at the Great Marsh

I left the house but knew not why,
and drove along the river towards the sea.
Something other than my will was driving me.

Across the bridge, I saw that amplitude of marsh
between Plum Island and the mainland;
like a migratory bird, I followed.

By the pool of water called the Salt Pans,
I saw eleven swans, all curving fine
extended necks into their elegant reflections.

Further on, surrendering the car within
the lot at Hellcat Swamp, I filed along
the boardwalk to the middle of the marsh.

Surrounded by a sea of reeds,
I contemplated as the carefully constructed path,
its substance, angles, course, and lines,

just disappeared beneath the open sky.
There's thought no more and knowing why.


~SonRivers 2009

The Real Feel

There is no crying in emptiness. Except when there is.

I remember a chapter in ‘The Voice of Knowledge’ by Miguel Ruiz called Emotions are Real, in which he simply states: “Our emotions are real. Every emotion that we feel is real, it is truth, it is.” But he goes on to clarify that “the emotion is true, but what causes the emotion, which is judgment... is not true.” In other words our thoughts as beliefs influence our emotions, our integrity. In the end, “emotional pain is a symptom of being abused” by one’s “knowledge—your own thoughts, judgments, and beliefs.”

I come to this remembrance via a new blog post by Phil Burton entitled “Helen Keller, Consciousness, Bliss.” In this post, Phil (whom I really know through Twitter as qjohn) suggests “that Feeling is actually the core of sentience.” But I’d like to quote in length a telling section:

The final note concerns the Vedantic triad Being-Consciousness-Bliss, Sat-Chit-Ananda. Bliss is seriously distorted in favor of equating it to a particular experience of expansiveness or release. As if the ultimate is a permanent orgasm.

But bliss is essentially just Feeling. But Feeling as I have indicated which is the very nature of consciousness, which subsumes the other senses as well as brain activity.

It may seem shocking to say it but here it is. All feeling is bliss. All feeling.

I once heard Ruiz say that emotions are a spectrum of the white light of love filtered through the perception of thought. I remember being blown away by this simple metaphor when I first heard it. And Phil seems to be saying something similar, but equating it with the Bliss of Sat-Chit-Ananda. Beautiful.

Not only is there truth in all of this, but there is practice in the relative world as well. Emotions are telling. They tell us what untrue thoughts we still believe in at some level. Therefore, emotions are something to be truly felt and recognized, embraced. They certainly are not to be avoided or repressed, but they are not to be wallowed within either.

Because behind the painful emotions, the emotional suffering, lies the lie. There is the thought we believe in which is totally untrue and is causing this suffering. Feel the painful emotion and trace it back to that thought.

This is not to say that the truth doesn't simply lie in resting in awareness. It does. It is. But there comes a time sometimes when the veil of thought hides this truth, and this is merely a way, a practice, to unveil awareness from the darkness of suffering, and really feel real again.

Adam in Agawam

We empty into spirit; rivers empty to the sea. Here, on the barrier island called Plum Island, the Parker and Ipswich Rivers empty into the Atlantic.

Sandy Point is one of those places where you can see the natural impermanence of landscape. It’s been a year since I walked here and things are radically different.

The sands are always shifting here because of the swirling currents, but this time they’ve shifted so much I feel I’m in a different world.

It's the ever-changing impermanence of paradise. Nothing remains the same here. Not even Adam remains the same, not even Adam remains.

There’s absolutely nobody here. Nobody on the shore. Nobody on the water. In truth, I'm not here. Just this emptiness, this consciousness, this nothing Adam would call God.

And what is paradise but forms without names, without thought intervening, no ideas intervening, just the manifest as is.

Small clouds are passing by, wisps of clouds representing some kind of form that associates with something in my subconscious.

And Adam would come to say the river is mild and powder blue, and the sky is mild and turquoise blue, and the sand is mild and russet, and the grass is mild and emerald.

Adam would come to say this is the sacred inner arm of Sandy Point, in the place Masconomet called Agawam.

But Adam isn’t here.

Immaterial Matters

Patterns interact
with other patterns
in the fabric of
this manifested
moment in the marsh.
A great design
we call an osprey weaves
through non-apparent
filaments of wind;
another motif
called the great white heron
flashes fair
devices in a scheme
of rising and
descending composition;
thus this fancy
figuration called
myself dissolves
in immaterial
delineations.

~Son Rivers 2009

Nature and Self

What is nature anyways? It’s a trick question of course. As posed, it suggests a difference between nature and human. This is a classic misconception, and one that’s replayed in much of human civilization and its approach to the world.

I am part and parcel of nature. So the question could as well be asked, who am I? That self-enquiry can’t be answered with words, nor can it be experienced. Experience presupposes a subject that experiences and an object that is experienced. The question is never answered, but reveals.

Nevertheless, within this relative world, we can point to an answer. And that is: Consciousness. Or Spirit, Being, Self, even God when used as such a pointer and not some supernatural being. Thus, nature, as such, is Spirit made manifest.

And when we walk within nature, we are walking within ourselves, within manifested Spirit. Too often we walk within the human environment, which although not unnatural, is a reflection of human thought. And it is the belief in thoughts as true reality which is the veil that hides our true nature from ourselves.

Possibly then, the best way to become one with the manifest world would be to go naked in a wilderness. While the best way to become one with the unmanifest world is meditation, resting within awareness.

To be in the element of nature is to be manifested in Manifest Spirit. That snowy egret that flashed its white wings in the distance is a movement of a pattern within the One. The feeling of wonder that arises in my heart as I watch the snowy egret rise and fall is a movement of a pattern within the One. It’s all physics of the One made manifest in equal and opposite actions and reactions.

And this is the spiritual practice of nature. The 19th century Transcendentalists knew most of this, especially Henry David Thoreau. Communing with Nature is a form of meditation, in which one communes with Spirit, discovering one is That. It’s a transcendence, a revelation, a meditation on the ultimate koan of ‘who am I.’

Thus, the triad of seer, seeing, and seen is saw through. No me, no experience, no nature: the sublime emptiness of One is. Being-Consciousness-Bliss.

Absolutely Snow

Snow falls
before the leaves
completely do,
but everything
has fallen in
this world including
me and you
and all the world—
completely true.

The snow collects
a little on
the ground creating
something white—
a such a something
representing
something that
is absolutely
absolute.

Such snow won’t last
a day before
it melts away
becoming kin
to someone whose
inherent lasting
motivation
has dissolved
in such a way.


~Son Rivers 2009

Same Diff

Let the seasons go, or else suffer the whether. Summer has left the building, and winter appears to be coming early this year. Temperatures rose no higher than mid-forties this afternoon and wet snow was seen by some this morning. It’s not normal, but neither is it abnormal. Nature swings like a pendulum do. There’s only one sure thing in this manifested universe: change. Though some might call that article impermanence. Same thing.

Curtains!

It seems the old identity doesn’t die at first
but lingers like a ghost.

And when I find myself within that specter,
naturally I feel that something’s missing—
just about everything, that is.

A feeling of depression settles in,
an old association
with some previous lack
of confidence, direction, something.

But now there’s too
this understanding
there’s a lack of me as well!
Depression doesn’t exactly deepen,
but flattens.

I’m in Kansas once again.
And stay there until something stops
to rest within that,
of which I am—
then depression (and me)
disappears.

Hello Oz!


~Son Rivers 2009