Neural Buddhists

"The phrase "neural Buddhists" calls up the ways in which the conclusions of modern neuroscience and a collection of ancient meditation practices developed in Asia have come to similar experiential and empirical conclusions about a number of things, including the ultimate nonexistence of the individual self or surface social ego. Such ideas, of course, are part of a much broader interest in "mysticism" and "spirituality," themselves, perhaps ironically, markers of that quintessentially modern and eminently democratic turn to the individual as the most reliable source of religious authority and insight." more...

Aldous Huxley. Brave New World. Doors of Perception. Island.

Masks.

Metta.

Smile Shutter

As the lazy crazy hazy days of Christmas past and present approach, you will be pleased beyond words to know your Smile Shutter has been activated. 

This automatic facial feature allows you and strangers, the Other, to perceive, imagine and realize clarity. 

Two fish are swimming.

One fish turns and asks, "How's the water?"

Later the other fish turns and says, "What the hell is water?"

Smile shutter. Click. Squeeze gently. Open your aperture. Let in the light. All of it.

Tonight is the largest full moon of the year. Dancing in the light.

Speaking of art, Martin Ramirez, more...

Art and mental illness, an exhibition of Ramirez's work...more...

Metta.

Hammers and chisels

Bamboo leaves float with birds. Lotus leaves the size of baby elephants wave hello from their repose.

Construction work on a habitat across the way echoes with hammers and chisels. Yesterday the worker ants installed two clear glass windows in a microscopic room. Function vs. form design mavens on drums. They sleep on cardboard beds. They use stereo foam for pillows to soften and enhance dreams.

Plural tight animal skins. One plays a Komodo lizard lull-a-bye-bye. A flute made from animal bone echoes off stem sell stellar star dust dancing in their artificial cave.

Grinding out a hollow form.

Paleolithic stone age tool styles evolved from fashionable operating systems. Nanokernel.

Enjoying "Elixir" by Marilyn Mazur and Jan Garbarek. 

Metta.

Bamboo

It's just another lousy amazing day in paradise, oh my, such a comedic tragedy, such an oral transmission.

Such is the way of planting. Digging soil, edging out the supporting cast, red clay, stones, pebbles, harvesting snail shells, rusty musical instruments, soundless bird wing music on piano keys at dawn, pink light. 

Bamboo hustled in at twilight. Seven twined secure groups, some exposing green leaves. Ah, the joy of bamboo. Inherent resilient, dignity and calm way. This resilience, factored by leaf. Root word. A stem. Resiliency.

Metta.

 

Feeding Warmed Over Death

Around 9:11 a.m. on a fine soft morning promising to be tropically hot by high noon and after washing three green long sleeve cotton teaching uniform shirts and hanging them out to dry, stabbing a tall beautifully formed naked bamboo pole into the back garden brown soil next to a strong climbing pink flowering plant needing support under dancing green, blue, yellow, white, and orange Tibetan Lung-Ta prayer flags, watering ten orchids on the front porch gathering early sun and visiting with sparrows I watched a middle-aged Javanese woman working for a family across the street feed soft rice to an old woman sitting in her wheelchair, feeling the sun on her wrinkled face.

We are all death deferred.

So it goes. Finished with the feeding program the Javanese woman gently wiped the old woman's mouth. placed the spoon in the bowl and wheeled the woman back into the room out of the sun. She closed the brown door.

The old woman said, "Thanks for the food, the warm sun and your love."

She closed her eyes and dreamed.

Metta.