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Entries in zen (79)

Thursday
Feb092017

Fried Ego

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.

The Language Company

Monday
Feb062017

It's not a problem. It's a surprise.

Between wild bonsai and Bamboo he regained consciousness at 5:18 a.m. outside Jakarta.

“Twilight in reverse,” sang a full-throated songbird in a Banyan tree stretching gnarled roots, “be diverse and grateful.”

It warbled a short trill, trilled a long solitary note, trilled short and silenced.

Bye-bye blackbird.

He lit Tibetan incense and unlocked the front door. Hearing bolts slide the bird sang. He stepped out. He whistled in return, establishing a connection. Mimicry. White and purple orchids shared aromas. Inhaling petals and bird melodies he scattered breadcrumbs on a path. Black snails snaked through roses leaving slime trails. He watered apple trees, flora and fauna.

His mind reflected a diamond.

Dew on a spider’s web glistened silver pearls.

Villagers awoke before dawn. Girls swept leaves from stones. After wringing flesh fibers dark eyed laconic women wrapped raw silk around female skeletons before hanging laundry on portable stainless steel structures to dry inside gray billowing fumes from fired garbage dancing over a sky high chipped wall decorated with green glass shards and oxidized barb wire.

Plastic bags, banana and coconut leaves, discarded clothing, feathers, Styrofoam happy meal containers, cardboard, chopsticks, plywood, grammar textbooks, comprehension checks and balances and IMF social network addictions LIKE ME burned with ferocious addictive intensity.

Phobia sang a rising middle class song accompanied by an Indonesian servant spoon-feeding Chinese infants before boys were stolen by coastal trafficking mafia retailing for $3,500 - $5,000. Negotiate. Keep talking about price. Always Be Closing.

The one-child family planning genocide policy created a desperate daily search for heirs. Losing face with facile piety meant public humiliation. Shame.

“There are 119 males for 100 females,” said Chinese Statistics at The Office of Mandatory Abortion and Population Control next door to The Morals and Re-Education Office down the street from The Ministry of Truth Myth & The Dark Arts.

“All the A men with a career, condo, cash, credit card and car are taken. Single women will have to settle for a or C man.”

Millions of women facing single status shame committed suicide to preserve filial family honor. Goodbye cruel world. Good luck to you and your non-family.

Before an Indonesian girl swept she wept. Birds whistled. Humans yapped emotional SOS distress signals as leaves veined. Rats, geckos and butterflies laughed. A faint step slapped gravel. A piano note reverberated. Broom music whisked stone. A crescent moon sex slave on her back massaged ink in sky islands floating on blue water. Awake for the living.

Be a work of art or wear a work of art.

Art is what everything else isn’t.

Lucky survivors composed tongue bone oracles inside Tibetan meditation thangkas creating a Kalachakra ceremony with rainbow sand particles.

Mandala. Center. Release.

Silk weavers fingered golden threads. Miners harvested Blue Zircon near Ice Girl in Banlung. Read everything backwards. Backwards everything read. Write right left to the imagination sitting on a Metro subway sandwich as sensations explored labyrinths without a center. Mystic Arabic dervish dancers spinning on the Wheel of Life rejoiced in ecstasy. Angels danced on a pinhead.

Give female orphans sewing machines training and they’ll change the world with endless job opportunities, low population growth, free medicine, clean water and free education, said The Dream Sweeper.

Your needle leads thread, said Kairos. I am a compass without a needle, said Lucky.

The heart-mind gift of writing allowed Zeynep to meditate in the present as a stranger to herself: Mindfulness gives me time and time gives me choices. Choices, skillfully made, lead to freedom. I’m not swept away by my feelings. I can respond with wisdom and kindness rather than habit and reactivity.

I love the crazies, it’s the fools I can’t tolerate.

A Zen writer is an artist, said Zeynep the younger, heroine of The Language Company.

They love making a big bright, beautiful mess, cleaning it up and making another mess. You are a Lone Wolf blessed with R/7. Free is your quality of life.

The world is a stage and we are but the players. The play’s the thing. A risk taking adventure using asemic language sensing joy and mystery winds down. A poem begins in wisdom and ends in delight. Visionary mystics blossom radiant beauty.

Water-stone. Yin-Yang.

Wear a star on your forehead. 

Small powerful stars sing with their light.

Zeynep, a curious star visited a blue marble hurtling through space. What is Earth like? Are inhabitants gentle and compassionate? Do they share calm heart-minds? Do they create archetype wisdom art using multi-colored pigments on cream-colored paper dreaming with their eyes open spilling rainbows in meditative blissful silence? 

What is life? Autonomy. Personal growth. Self-acceptance. Purpose. Environmental mastery. Positive relationships. Eudemonia.

 

Sunday
Oct092016

Lashio Burma poem

old woman

deep lined face

gray hair pulled back

meditates on emptiness

begging bowl

woman without arms

sits under umbrella

empty begging bowl

loving their phones

market people laugh

selfies - easily amused

wicker basket on her back

silver coins jingle jangle

light passage humor

red thread solid black background

how’s it feel this magic show

meditation, caught in the quiet

absorbing diversity wandering,

sitting in visual symphonies

cement shell zones

steel shutters, mercantile 

set it up…sell…tear it down…go home.

Saturday
Oct082016

Conversation's Dexterity

Dawn’s orange lightness spread over the Black Sea.

Curious enrolled in a Push Them Through English School. I need vocabulary and the courage to use it with meaning, dexterity and humor. I know my English is not grammatically perfect but I know my English is fluent, said Independence.

 

Casablanca

I know what I don’t know, said Z. The more I learn the less I know. Real eyes see real lies.

You are the teachers, Lucky said to Turkish beginners brain-washed by parents, media and education system. I am a student.

They expressed fervent Denial, an Egyptian river. No, you are the teacher. We have no free choice or logical imperative to accept responsibility for our learning. If we accept responsibility we have to accept the consequences and do the work BUT we are lazy. We live in a never-ending existential crisis. We are conditioned to sit, listen and memorize. We blend in, like Leo's history teacher warned. We just want to pass the fucking exams. It’s your job to create a facsimile of grammar book learning.

The less I do the fewer mistakes I make, said one smiling with cunning social intelligence. The fewer mistakes I make, said their twin with cunning social intelligence, the less I am criticized.

You got that BS write, said Lucky.

Light my fire, said Jim Morrison trying to impress two girls.

Feed me, said another. I am not a participant. I am a victim.

I know what you mean, said another SAD student. It’s fun being a victim. We can blame everyone else with our projected fears and loss for our failure to be real, human and brave.

See with soft eyes, said Lucky. We see through our eyes, not with our eyes.

Thanks for life lesson #7, said a past tense grammar addict injecting a lethal dose of acquiescence into their heart-mind.

You’re welcome. Next.

I have two scissors and one brother.

How are you? I am 21 and you?

How old are you? I am fine and you?

Speak memory.

Oh yeah? The safest memories are those you never remember.

Memories are all you have.

Are your needs being met?

That’s a fundamental quest-ion. Right there with the What Is Life quest-ion.

You get one chance with dignity and grace. Get is the joker word in English.

 

 

I am Curious. It’s a pleasure to see you again. Go with the flow. Flow with your glow. Flow and grow is an honorable quest. I sing and live in a flow state in Giresun, said Lucky. So I heard.

A traveler passing through brought good luck to silversmith, cook, baker, candlestick maker, fish hawker, cheese seller, broom maker men, women sewing cloth, merchants selling knives, banging copper, punching leather, women brewing tea, men cutting roots, laughing children and students saying yeah, yeah we’ve heard all this before, as singing musicians overcoming temporary anxieties with flowing confidence speaking in tongues wandered narrow alleys of becoming.

Poetic inspiration. Short, fast and deadly.

A wandering minstrel in Trabzon played his Kemil with love inside shadows of tolerance and charity. His broken orange shoebox collected currency from enamored strangers. A young girl turned to her mother, you know the words mama and I know the music - he plays loss, hope and memory. It’s our cultural history sweetie.

Crystals reflected an island where Amazon women warriors took no prisoners. They had sex once a year and abandoned males in pine forests.

A busy busboy checked his obsessive watch. Out. Pulsating tick-tock. Big time waits for no one.

Office hysterics. A young English teacher from Plymouth expressed his quest. I need empathic accuracy. Look it up, said Lexicon opening his heart.

The Language Company

Sunday
Oct022016

Listen to wisdom and beauty

I am a person who listens for a living. 

I listen to wisdom and beauty.

Hold your space.

Listen deeply.

Zanshin - "the mind with no remainder." The mind is completely focused on action 

and fixated on the task at hand. Be constantly aware of your body, mind and surroundings

without stressing yourself.

- effortless vigilance

- live your life intentionally and act with purpose

- the act of iving with alertness

- awareness and focus.

You arrive in a village. So long, so far you are a stranger to yourself.

Your mask eats your face.

Eight red monks dance through a walking meditation.

Silence feels the gentle rhythm inside labyrinithian joy.

Play the blues harp on the back of a motorcycle.

Your journey is shorter than a breath, in-out.

You have arrived.

Poetry is in the street. It goes arm and arm with laughter.

Words are insufficient.