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

Mirroring

Brightness is observing
ever-changing manifesting
strings of sensual
experience in wondrous
mirroring of mind.

Not a meaning in this great
display—no logic but
the unintelligible self-intelligence
translatable as love,
but only in the barest way.

Such translated love is like
a blazing bonfire on
an autumn night but love
original unchecked and true
is nuclear and always new.

Mirroring of mind
experience in wondrous
strings of sensual
ever-changing manifesting
brightness is observing.


~Son Rivers 2009

My Guru

She wasn’t yet a year,
and her eyes were looking
up at mine,
alive
with joyful awareness:
I had met my guru.

This month she’s turning 29,
a lovely adult living
in a foolish land,
but every time I see her eyes,
I recognize
my guru.

My guru has no name,
no form,
no permanent disguise,
not even eyes.
It’s far beyond
such creature compromise.

To say my guru is
the stuff of love
is as to say this universe
is just the sum of every star.
Yes, that!
And so much more.


~Son Rivers 2009

Maya Poem

One either walks through Maya, or Maya walks through you.


Although he knows the world is just illusion, he wishes things would go his way.

He loves the fact that everything is but the suchness of the Absolute; it's just the nature of the world he'd like to change.

Of course he knows that Consciousness is all there is, but sometimes he looks around his life and asks--is this here all there is?

He says he treasures Truth more than anything, but he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t lying.

He thinks he's nothing but a thought.

He knows it’s not the thinking, but believing, which has made it all so fucking unbelievably excruciating just to think.

He knows all the right words, but knows the meaninglessness of words.

He knows the answer must be silence: now there’s a concept!

He’s become attached to non-attachment.

He could go on forever but he never was.

Satchitananda tells his tale doo-dah doo-dah.


~Son Rivers 2009

begin poem

begin at the beginning, before there was something, beyond the realm of thought

begin before there was even beginning, before there was nothing, before there was even before

begin at being, beyond not being, before such being had been

begin at being, aware in being, beyond not being aware

aware and being, in bliss of being, beyond not being in bliss

aware and being and bliss, aware and being and bliss


~Son Rivers 2009

The Nixon Koans

Why does everybody like you, Dick asked Jack. Don't you like me, Jack replied. Not really, Dick answered. Jack smiled, that's why.

Dick asked Jack what his secret to charisma was. Do you shave, Jack asked. Of course, Dick replied. So Jack slapped him in the face.

Why are you always smiling, Dick asked. Jack smiled.

You make it look easy, Dick frowned. That's because it is, Jack smiled. But I've so much on my plate, Dick scowled. Jack grinned, then eat!


~Son Rivers 2009

Luminous Afternoon, Plum Island

they stop their car thinking I've pulled over to observe some colorful migrating bird; it's just an empty stretch of marsh and sky

everywhere I look the shapeless forms of dunes and cumulus clouds unshape the fabrication of the mind

this man-made heart-shaped pond in the middle of the wildlife refuge on plum island--what surprising silence!

three white swans appear to be objective shadows in mercurial reflections of the setting autumn sun

all alone with wind and waves and why: the beach and dunes are absolutely empty but the sea is full of sky


~Son Rivers 2009

watch that last step; into the void

America as a Spiritual Metaphor

crossing the old north bridge in concord, a woman is enumerating all her real estate; her friend is looking at reflections in the water

a guide is telling tourists they've rebuilt this old bridge seven times; but every person builds it new each crossing

it’s not the metaphor itself that matters; it’s the depth of space between the ground and figure

thoreau once sold a boat to hawthorne and gave him rowing lessons on this stretch of river; today just autumn leaves are floating by

the shot heard 'round the world was fired here but it's the silence now that kills you


~Son Rivers 2009

shanti shanti concord river underneath the revolutionary old north bridge

Early Ghost Poem

(Welcome October! In New England, comes in like a painted clown, goes out like a ghost.)

brisk October breeze; a cormorant sticks it's neck out of the river; a single cricket chirps

the myriad houses on the shoreline rising out of the arc of spacious pure river water like my thoughts

if I were to dive in that ever-flowing river, this world of two shorelines would disappear


~Son Rivers 2009

The Wine Tweets

The Wine Tweets

I'm positive the gibbous moon before the sun has set appears to be an almost mathematical cloud or maybe it's me

before I opened up the Cabernet I saw no moon within the river so I did not jump in after it

after the wine the world became much easier to understand; I pointed to two moons

my midnight conversation with the moon was certainly one sided; it is and I listened

when the moon advised me I should open up another bottle of a little something California, the Atlantic nudged upriver

before the dawn I traded places with the moon and understood the sun is always shining

if there had been another night, I could have been the moon for days; but now I am the sun--the moon is just another phase


~Kokoro Sonzai 2009 (trans. by Son Rivers)

the tide is going out

five islands off the shore are just five senses and the sea is merely my mind breaking off in waves of thought

the sun becomes 10000 suns rising from the sea

the mind lights the world but the mind has no light of its own

the tide is going out and the waves recede

a single sailboat meditating in the clouds

underneath the sea is something formless without a name

Captain Ahab knew it well

name it god name it consciousness or name it moby dick

I am the sea and the sea is That


~Son Rivers 2009