Journeys
Images
Cloud
Timothy M. Leonard's books on Goodreads
A Century Is Nothing A Century Is Nothing
ratings: 4 (avg rating 4.50)

The Language Company The Language Company
ratings: 2 (avg rating 5.00)

Subject to Change Subject to Change
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Ice girl in Banlung Ice girl in Banlung
ratings: 2 (avg rating 4.50)

Finch's Cage Finch's Cage
ratings: 2 (avg rating 3.50)

Amazon Associate
Contact

Entries in compassion (23)

Monday
May152017

Puppet Masters in Tibet

The endless Tibetan knot is the cycle of existence, said a monk.

Existence is attachment, loss and suffering. Grasping is suffering. Suffering is an illusion.

You either let go or get dragged along.

Regrets and fears are monkey mind movies.

Pure joy, compassion, gratitude and forgiveness are clear.

Easy to say, hard to do be do be do.

Work like you don’t need the money. Dance like nobody’s looking. Love like your heart’s never been broken.

Nothing behind. Everything ahead, said Meditation.

Chinese puppet leaders in Lhasa informed monks they would increase patriotic re-education classes in monasteries. Re-education Through Reform, ideology, propaganda and fear-based thought control is the way comrades. We have Power and Control using fear and intimidation.

We wash your brain daily.

The Chinese, after looting and destroying 2,700 monasteries and killing millions in Tibet before, during and after the Cultural Revolution restricted the number of monks at the three major Lhasa monasteries, Sera, Drepung and Ganden. They recruited Tibetans as spies to live and work in monasteries.

This system proved effective from 1966-1976 when family members reported on each other neighbors and capitalist running dogs. It was a practical peoples’ campaign of fear and suspicion creating paranoia and ideological control.

Monks and nuns in monasteries who resisted or questioned this form of subtle or overt patriotic brainwashing risked imprisonment, torture and death. They knew what happened to monks and nuns at the notorious Drapchi Prison outside Lhasa.

 

“There are two kinds of suffering,” said a girl weaving wool carpets outside her yurt on the Tibetan plateau hearing wild blue rivers sing below mountains. “Suffering you run away from and suffering you face.”

Inside Drapchi, Chinese guards beat nuns and monks with rubber hoses filled with sand. They applied electric cattle prods to genitals, sending wire-cranked juice into skeletons, extracting screams.

“Denounce the Dalai Lama,” ordered an illiterate PLA soldier from Human Province. He tightened metal around a nun’s wrists until she screamed.

“Never.”

He wiped her blood off his broken glasses and increased pressure. Someone had to do this dull job.

“Save my face,” sang a Fujian university student, an innocent ignorant invisible victim of the one-child genocide policy. She wrung out a mop of spider webs creating water rainbows before swabbing a classroom.

15,001 students had failed higher-level exams for more prestigious institutions. They settled for this. No choice. She washed uneven crumbling cement floors with strands.

Operatic actors offstage fashioned animist death masks for a performance with a funeral formula.

“This is not a fucking rehearsal,” directed Altman. “Get to the verb.”

“Arrive on time, know your lines and wait for the check,” said the Tibetan weaver as radioactive light shafted mountains.

Rational speaking animals mumbled sounds, words, coalescing consonants, vowels and syllables.

Etyms dancing with atoms made up everything with axioms of choice. 

 

Tuesday
Jun142016

Ambition & Betrayal = Greek Tragedy

He hears foreigners process anxieties, fears, strengths (in limited proportions) and listening skills. After dark.

Famous Cambodian cultural saying: I am sorry. Goodbye and good luck to you and your family. Genetic engineering.

Courage.

I am the walrus.

I am a solitary clairvoyant.

Compassionate detachment.

Tai chi watermelon. Slow movement. Circle. Move.

Erupting like a volcano, everything I do is an experiment.

A writer has homework everyday. A writer is a word terrorist. They say what others are afraid to say.

Memory is desire satisfied.

Today your life and destiny are the same.

David Foster Wallace : Fear of fame. Fear of failure. Fear of being ordinary.

What was your original face before your parents were born?

I was born dead and slowly came to life.

I don't seek. I discover.

Mind movies.

Thursday
Jul232015

Fried ego - TLC 21

In Ankara and elsewhere Lucky suggested to students they pay attention.

Many were too poor to pay attention, pay themselves first, or practice meditation calming their tortured heart-minds.

“Feel light about it, let go of your fragile ego. Fried ego is dust floating on the fluid of your eyes.”

Some released expectations. Others relaxed from grasping imaginary fears perceived as reality.

Reality is a crutch, or as Freedom said to his once-in-a-lifetime paramour, a crotch. So-called reality is a crock of shit said a passive girl getting a leg up. Hurry and finish money said to time. Take your time didn’t listen.

Other, acknowledging deeper emotional feelings, sensing heart’s wisdom-mind of intent practiced simplicity, serenity and compassion with gratitude.

Saturday
Feb142015

improve happiness

be grateful.

be optimistic. visualize your ideal future.

count your blessings. write down three good things that happened to you this week.

use your strengths.

practice acts of kindness.

Monday
May052014

a Japanese friend translates a poem

We met in Bhaktapur, Nepal three hundred years ago.

He has a famous beard, laughs a lot and writes haiku.

His wife is known for her oils and watercolor paintings with a touch of fantastic harmony and mystery.

Every morning we sat near a Hindu temple when a man rang a huge iron bell at 7:30. Exactly.

Ame ni mo  Makezu (Be not Defeated by the Rain)

 

standing against the rain,

standing against the wind,

standing against the snow,

the intense heat of summer

keeping a strong body

 

free from desire

free from anger

regardless, smiling peacefully

 

four bowls of brown rice

miso, a few vegetables, enough for a day

putting myself aside in everything

taking care of others first

watching, listening carefully to the inner meaning,

appreciating

never forgetting

 

beside the pine forest in the field

sitting in a little thatched roof house

 

hearing news about a sick child in the east

I go and nurse him

hearing news about a tired mother in the west

I go and help her, rice bundles on my back

hearing news about a man on his death bed in the south

I go and comfort him

hearing news about a quarrel or lawsuit in the north

I go and tell them not to be so petty

 

weeping with them in a drought

aimlessly wandering around with them in the cold summer

being called useless by others

never being praised

never receiving complaints

 

such a person

I want to be

Ame ni mo makezu (Be not Defeated by the Rain[1]) is a famous poem written by Kenji Miyazawa,[2] a poet from the northern prefectureof Iwate in Japan who lived from 1896 to 1933. The poem was found posthumously in a small black notebook in one of the poet's trunks.