Showing posts with label Underneath. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Underneath. Show all posts

Saturday, September 29, 2018

Here, not there...


Jizos


I ended the Instagram stream, 'the.jizo.project', a few weeks ago. I took it down for three reasons:
1.) The Instagram presentation of Jizo was turning the.jizo.project into a mail-order scene. I spent way more time than I wanted to boxing up Jizos, mailing Jizos, and closing the loop with people who asked for them.
2.) I grated at the nice things that complete strangers were saying about me. It really got to me. I wanted to respond back something along the lines of "You have no idea about me - none whatsoever.", but of course I didn't.. 
3.) [This is the main reason - buried at point three] A month ago, I had to go to the wake of someone's father who had recently passed away. I had no desire to go at all because this person was a Trump supporter.  In fact, I grew angry and belligerent at the very thought of it.
Terrible, right?
Here I was on the one hand posting things on Instagram like "May we be peaceful. May we be happy. May we be safe. May we awaken to the light of our true nature. May we be free." and on the other hand I was having trouble mustering the very smallest amount of decency it took to attend a wake.
Talk about being a sham, a fake. 
So - I'll still be making Jizos and writing about them, but I'll be doing it here at The Great Wide World. The difference is night and day. You know me. You know me better than almost anyone else in the world. You've seen my pettiness, my smallness.

You know that this Jizo project is born out of my despair and brokenness and not because I'm 'nice'.


~



Sunday, June 24, 2018

Already and Always Everything



Stone

~
"Siddhartha bent down, picked up a stone from the ground, and weighed it in his hand.
"This," he said playing with it, "is a stone, and will, after a certain time, perhaps turn into soil, and will turn from soil into a plant or animal or human being. In the past, I would have said: This stone is just a stone, it is worthless, it belongs to the world of the Maja; but because it might be able to become also a human being and a spirit in the cycle of transformations, therefore I also grant it importance. Thus, I would perhaps have thought in the past. But today I think: this stone is a stone, it is also animal, it is also god, it is also Buddha, I do not venerate and love it because it could turn into this or that, but rather because it is already and always everything-- and it is this very fact, that it is a stone, that it appears to me now and today as a stone, this is why I love it and see worth and purpose in each of its veins and cavities, in the yellow, in the gray, in the hardness, in the sound it makes when I knock at it, in the dryness or wetness of its surface. There are stones which feel like oil or soap, and others like leaves, others like sand, and every one is special and prays the Om in its own way, each one is Brahman, but simultaneously and just as much it is a stone, is oily or juicy, and this is this very fact which I like and regard as wonderful and worthy of worship.
--But let me speak no more of this. The words are not good for the secret meaning, everything always becomes a bit different, as soon as it is put into words, gets distorted a bit, a bit silly--yes, and this is also very good, and I like it a lot, I also very much agree with this, that this what is one man's treasure and wisdom always sounds like foolishness to another person."
~ Hermann Hesse ~ 

Siddhartha


~


Wednesday, February 7, 2018

That's Ok if That's What You Like..


Parker river wildlife refuge


Unless and until someone shows you
their messiness in all its tangled glory and
unless and until you share your ugliness,
with them, everything is play acting,
just well-mannered play 
acting.

~



Sunday, August 27, 2017

The Violence of Crowds



"What is a crowd?
A crowd is mindless, unbearable, fickle, unpredictable beast with no name. It's a flock of sheep...a pack of wolves. A horse tame in the harness, but dangerous when set free. A crowd is a burning fire raging out of control. It's a contagion - a fever filled with delirium - a concrete surface of crowded breaths - clouded souls fallen into empty eyes - child wards liberated by the sway of the pack descend the ladder of civilization - morbidly nervous and excitable they boil up to the surface of the cauldron of a city and reduce down to the primitive. Abandoning intelligence, judgement and thought, they are vulnerable to agitators, infiltrators and desecrators. A crowd needs to be ruled. Thirsty for obedience, it seeks out its patriarch, its despotic father - cheap tyranny - commander - to be manipulated - controlled.
What is a crowd?
A crowd is not us"
~ Bill Buford ~ 
'Among the Thugs: The Experience, and Seduction of Crowd Violence'

2017-08-19_03-38-22

 I was in Boston on the 19th for the counter-protest against
some he-men Nazis and white supremacists.
I was in there on the Common with 40,000 others. 
I could sense the mindlessness of the throng.
I could sense the ever-so-subtle edging into violence...
The whispering urge to strike "at them"...

It wasn't fun.

One can notice the same phenomena
in all sorts of gatherings, not
just protests....


~


Saturday, July 1, 2017

Friday, May 26, 2017

Breach

 Austin TX 


What pads quietly behind us? 


~

 


Saturday, February 18, 2017

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

People think it's the moon, but no...



Parker River Wildlife Sanctuary

 

Between tides, the shoreline is so bereft

of the sea that it weeps rivulets of

salty tears. They trickle down

its wide face to deep

water, coaxing

the sea's

return.

 

Parker River Wildlife Sanctuary


~