The autumn air is clear, / The autumn moon is bright. / Fallen leaves gather and scatter, / The jackdaw perches and starts anew. / We think of each other – when will we meet? / This hour, this night, my feelings are hard. — Li Bai (701-762)

Being capable of a certain kind of cognition or a certain degree of awareness is not the same as applying that to oneself – behaviors, habits, values, beliefs, ideals. Or indeed, to one’s practice itself. Turning the light of attention around has never been easy or comfortable.

RIP Harold Budd.

“The primary value of the Grand Tour lay in its exposure to the cultural legacy of classical antiquity and the Renaissance, and to the aristocratic and fashionably polite society of the European continent.”

“All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!” — Camille Paglia

Goal(s) can do different things. Goal as an end will focus & limit one’s awareness. Goal as an aim will enable one to find or rectify direction. Goal as purpose will put us exactly where we are. In different contexts, each of these may be appropriate. Choose wisely, fail better.

Godspeed 2020!

On this Christmas, a prayer for those who do what must be done, whether through selfless service or bold dissent, or as voices of integrity and wisdom, or as lights in the dark. They give of themselves every day, often at a heavy cost. Without them, the rest of us are lost.

2021

A year is what you make of it. How was your 2020?

The importance of being sanctimonious is ridiculously underrated.

Dalmatian lockout.

Western cultures, developmentally speaking, are going through an intensifying review phase.

Frailty, sickness, death. Powerful allies or dreadful foes?

It’s easy to despise in another what one refuses to face in oneself.

Homage to the luminous unwavering state, free of elaborations.

Daily news now approaching the combined output of Machiavelli, de Sade, Ionesco, Marquez, Kharms, Beckett, Kafka and Adams. Dread the day when Burroughs joins in.

Why do you follow me on Twitter? Asking for myself.

Let the whole great universe quiver, tremble, quake, wobble, rock, sway, vibrate, shudder, and reel. Let great lightning flashes strike, let the gods cause the sound of drums to be heard. Let me take refuge.

Balance of devotion & humor is key. It gives birth to twin virtues of confidence & courage in face of inner hesitation & outer intimidation, which operate by triggering survival instincts & bypassing conscience. Whatever happens, one must live with oneself.

“Making the world a better place” has become an unfailing symptom of heroic self-inflation, a transparent promotional ruse, and a meta-virtue signalling device. It may be what others risk saying at your funeral, not the motto of your business or organisation. Just do what you do.

As exemplary lean Dharma, Heart sūtra reveals the radical meaning of “no pain, no gain.” Moreover, does same with WYSIWYG for all experience, “fear no evil” for result, plus “say it as it is” as chosen method of practice. Also manifests as stunning goddess. All in one page.

In 1970, in the earlier days of Buddhism in the West, a tipsy master coined “spiritual materialism” as a dire danger, something to “cut through.” It was a cautionary tale. Fast forward 50 years and it’s the flagship of Buddhism “making itself accessible.” Bless you, Rinpoche.

Fourth wall is a concept in acting performance and movies. There is no such wall in contemplative practice, yet some introduce it, and some methods, as presented, encourage it. Don’t watch yourself watching yourself. Tear down the wall.

Note to practitioners everywhere. Be careful lest the cure is also the poison. (*If going at it alone, have a solid understanding of what does what.)

Few things can be used against you as your respectability and comity.

Know your boogeyman.

“They make a desert, and call it peace.” — Calcagus in Tacitus’ Agricola … There are methods of meditation to which this martial observation applies.

Decades of practice & depth of practice are not the same. Not unrelated, yet separate. Decades of relative shallowness & inconsistency are common. Depth born of longterm practice less so. Depth before decades is rare, talent & hard work notwithstanding. And then there’s scope.

If seeking freedom & peace, one cannot skip renunciation, namely outgrowing the dictate of basic urges. As method & stage, it’s not optional. As goal & orientation, it’s valid yet limited. But it’s universal. Make sure to look at these issues in proper context.

Devotion is the essence of the simple (pureland) and the complex approach (tantra). Also strong in trad Theravāda & Zen. It reverses attention from absorbed navel-gazing to a spacious acceptance of & engagement with everything. Tiresome self-obsession won’t meditate itself away.

If there’s a single important Buddhist contribution for troubled times, it ain’t moderation, or mindfulness, not even compassion, important as they are. It’s valiant self-reliance in body, speech, and mind.

Social distancing, but no privacy.

It is accepted that humans cannot stand too much suffering and/or reality. But it’s not accepted that too little suffering and/or reality drives humans insane. The accepted notion of sanity is obviously broken.

Experience is erotic. Mind is passionate. Heart is aching. This was never a problem. Experience is also terrifying. Mind is also an unrelenting mess. Heart is also treacherous. Hence, problem.

An important aspect of sense making is that sense making has a limit, no matter what. Do not fear what lies beyond.

Quelle horreur! My antediluvian .info website became nsfw after i moved to hokai dot eu, abandoning the old domain to internet vultures. Be warned, those who may wish to link, update url.

“I saw … no holiness, no devotion, no good work or exemplary life … among the clergy; instead, lust, avarice, gluttony, fraud, envy, pride.” — The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375)

Call me naive, but to my mind, the mere existence of billionaires is obscene. No matter who or how or what or where.

Dhāraṇī is ubiquitous in Mahāyāna. Few modern teachers explain its functions, or instruct the practice. Dhāraṇī covers a range of contextual meanings from retention & recall to incantation & spell.

“Stoicism is self-tyranny.” — Friedrich Nietzsche Partially, yet importantly, true. As a measured method, stoicism is useful and salutary, indeed necessary. As a comprehensive approach, it’s a dead end. Hence, tyranny.

What happens when the path to ten percent happier is ten percent shittier? Or vice versa.

“Intellectually orgiastic.” An expression I haven’t heard in a long time.

“Mañjuśrī’s Magical Display” in fresh translation, featuring god Great Light, as well as a cameo appearance of Māra himself. Text was a chartbuster among Indian bodhisattvas in the golden age of Mahāyāna.

初心 shoshin. First intention or original purpose. Also, first awareness, fresh mind, beginner mind, implying openness, eagerness, curiosity without preconception. It’s basecamp, not a stage in practice.

On Dharma transmission by Zen master Muhō Nölke: “…when you receive shihō after, say, eight or nine years, you will have sat for 15,000 hours of zazen with your teacher. Not only that, you also shared many thousands of meals with him, worked together in the fields for thousands of hours, spread manure, cut grass and wood together, side by side, you sweat together in the summer and froze together in the winter. You cooked for him and filled the bath tub for him, you know how he likes the temperature both of his soup and the bathing water. You also shared many drinks, probably. In each of these activities, the Dharma is transmitted. None should be left out.” Just so, none should be left out./

“Spiritual” and “religious” have been abused & molested in a variety of ways in different quarters. Definitions cancel each other in predictable ways. But let’s play a game, pretending it ain’t so, allowing for some sense and good faith. Where *do you* place the real?

When in Rome, time for food porn. Ossobuco (cross-cut veal shank braised with veggies and white vine) with gremolata on top and a three grains side by yours truly. One of my favorites.

“Kūkai” (空海) from 1984, a movie by Junya Satō (RIP). Watched it only recently with Russian subtitles, made better English subs just for fun, and now working on Croatian, just in time for Kukai’s birthday on June 15. Namu Daishi Henjō Kongō!

“Amateur” is used to mean unprofessional and/or unpaid, but also incompetent. Yet it means lover, devotee, or enthusiast, similar to aficionado. If you’re an amateur practitioner, don’t feel bad about it. Commitment and competence arise from engaging heartily and honestly.

A culture that refuses to ritualize its bacchic frenzied drives ends up eating itself alive. An important function of spirituality is to establish and cultivate “spaces of exception” in a variety of ways, where possibilities are open and unrestrained by social demands.

“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss – an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. – is sure to be noticed.” — Søren Kierkegaard

Outsourcing some or much of sense making is inevitable, unless you live a sequestered life. It’s only a problem when it’s mindless, accidental and opportunistic. Please consider the following. Where do you outsource sense making? Who to? Why? To what purpose?

According to “thus have I heard” story, Siddhartha Gautama was not an early starter. Gifted yes, but it took him awhile to get started, and he had *a lot* to undo. Also, his path was not one straight arrow at all. This fact is often neglected. And it’s genuinely heartening.

Truth does not “always win” in the long run. What is, does. Be true.

“Keep alive something that might otherwise disappear.” Invested some time lately with this simple phrase, having it inform how to live, relate and practice. There’s a lot more there than I can fathom. It’s deep, rich & rewarding.

“Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.” — Simone Weil

Ten years, wow. https://flickr.com/photos/albill/5997199980

“Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn’t.” — Erica Jong

Contemplative practice & psychedelics do not overlap in *any special, intrinsic way.* Not any more than intimacy or art or nature or ascesis etc. Yet in emaciated cultures, to alienated selves, any glimpse into depth will be seen as analogous, like any food to a starving person.

On the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism, and attempts to reconstruct it. Of course, behind it looms Parmenides of Elea, “father of metaphysics” and “father of logic” and much more.

Faith is useless if left untested.

Everything gets hijacked eventually.

Attachment is healthy or unhealthy, or mixed bag. Same with anger, anxiety, depression etc. That is, adaptive or maladaptive. Medicating or meditating them out of existence just bc they arise is insane. Whether healthy or unhealthy, there’s wisdom to be found therein.

Groups & cultures are a matter of deliberate complicity at every level. No individual training & education, no degree of talent & interest, no level of skill & expertise, no motivation & ambition, will substitute for shared values, shared purpose, and shared code of conduct.

The realm of phenomena is alive and well, despite appearances. Have a good Sun Day!

A sure sign of a path is threefold. First, engagement & acceptance become synonymous. Second, advancing & returning are reconciled. Third, doubts are resolved, one way or another, as exploration opens in unexpected directions.

To get somewhere with anything, one must commit, thus renouncing the bogus freedom to change mind or change course whenever it becomes too much (or too little, or whatever). Stick to it, have faith, persevere, generate momentum. Keep going, looking, learning. That said, avoid rigidity. Be sensible & sensitive to your body. Cultivate a sense of balanced effort, with gentle perseverance. Same with emotional challenges, that are unavoidable. If you cannot relax with something, just pushing harder won’t help. Be kind./

Buddhist yānas differ by view and method, but a point that has not been sufficiently raised is how strongly they differ in their treatment of arts, aesthetics, and symbolism in general. A slow thread. Early forms of Buddhism were strongly renunciative, almost aniconic in visual sense, but nonetheless produced a large scriptural canon, replete with imagery, metaphor & allegory. Simple rituals arose during Buddha’s life. Depicted: Buddha’s footprint, sun wheel, three gems. Even modern vipassana retains a marked disinterest in arts, which remains the strongest evidence of its roots. Its aesthetics usually frugal, clean & simple, encouraging & suggesting detachment, which speaks as loud as teachings themselves. Arts developed slowly and gradually until exploding in Gandharan Greco-Buddhist art at the gates of Silk Road, making way for nascent Mahāyāna and later Vajrayāna intense involvement in arts. Along with sculpture, painting, architecture, this period gave rise to sacred songs and dances, which all quickly spread eastwards. Other artistic strongholds were Eastern and Southern India, as well as Java, Sumatra etc.  Buddhism reached China from 1st and 2nd century AD, and quickly became known as 像教 xiang jiao, the teaching of [many] images, descriptive of both Mahāyāna and later Vajrayāna. Pic: Vajracchedikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra, oldest dated printed book AD 868.  Buddhadharma is expressed in ¹sounds (speech, writing, music etc.), ²images (drawings, prints, carvings etc.), ³symbols (shapes, hues, objects etc.), and ⁴actions in any medium at any scale ‐ all of these may be external or internal, deliberate or spontaneous. Art is upāya. History of Mahāyāna & Vajrayāna is both a history of texts & practices, as well as a history of many arts, often by best artists of the time. Quite a few classical masters were great artists or innovators or craftsmen themselves. East or West, same story.  With Mahāyāna, art reveals mind & matter, appearance & emptiness, object & subject. With Vajrayāna, art is a potent practice of weaving the discrete & displaying the formless, thus enacting five elements and revealing luminous presence. Most importantly, it’s for everyone. No art like sacred art. No kitsch like sacred kitsch. Garden buddhas, pop dharmas, decoration thangkas, exhibitions & museums & collections. Dead art is dead Dharma. Art is alive, like Dharma. Find art that speaks to you & start doing art, that’s practice.  It can be soothing or shocking, elaborate or simple. Art is not to impress, nor to express. Like Dharma – to engage, discover, appreciate, enjoy, and release. /

Avoidable suffering can lead to a better life, if – and only if – one can change behavior or circumstances & knows how to. Unavoidable suffering can lead to awakening, if – and only if – it is embraced & engaged in full awareness. In both, one has to be willing, of course.

An important function of multiple languages & cultural streams in an increasingly global system is the metabolizing – instead of metastasizing – of local bad ideas, reducing their global impact, as well as adapting & diversifying the good ones. Could be optimized.

A question for Western Buddhists, Buddhist Westerners, Buddhists in the West etc. If u could improve, fix, change or remake *one thing* in Western Buddhism, what would that be? One thing u’d love to see more of, less of, or just different. (Trust the first that comes to mind.)

Semiotic siblings: χαρακτηρ, charaktēr (exact image, likeness, as in God’s image), contrast with χάραγμα (charagma, stamp or imprint, mark as in mark of the beast). Mūdra (seal, sign, as in awareness-seal, jñānamūdra, or great seal, mahāmūdra), contrast with nimitta, lakshana.

From without, Buddhist forms are still a “transplanted” element in the Western cultural ecology. They best justify their presence through radical potentials, those untapped or forsaken by established Western approaches. Hybridization is the worst outcome for both guest & host.

Loss of mythic structures correlates with impotence in the long game.

Practice in any form is repeated exposure. Implicitly, an ongoing act of confession & consent. So it’s like a conversation, intimation, confiding, disclosure, unveiling. In short, a relationship.

Goodhart’s law: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” Apply this to hows and whys of practice. Making progress sounds good in the abstract, yet how you define it can easily get in the way. Learn to clarify purpose, method, effects, and results.

Absent religious puritans and fanatics, pseudo-religious ones fill the void.

Hidden materialist or physicalist assumptions are widespread among modern practitioners. And few actually see it as a problem that won’t go away without considerable engagement & digestion. A simple idealist switcheroo won’t help.

Mastering a corrupt discipline makes one an expert at nonsense.

Almost everything in Western culture wars is Christianity having a nervous breakdown, wounding its body in a desperate attempt to heal the spirit.

Techno metaphors for “mind” and “brain” – such as dashboard, interface, simulation, software, hardware, operating system etc – are not the new poetry, they’re not even true metaphors, but mere analogies, reductive at best. Living beings are not machines or artefacts.

When clarity on worldly issues isn’t obtainable, try hilarity. In fact, do it anyway.

Was asked about the script here in profile. It’s Glagolitic, used from 9th to early 20th century, the oldest known Slavic alphabet. Specifically, the Croatian or Angular Glagolitic in this case.

Happy Easter to everyone!

Culture wars are accelerating, because reality can’t wait. Btw, concept of culture *war* is misleading. I think of it as autoimmune disease, even though, as they say in medical context, cause is generally unknown. Strenghten foundations, clean up your act, be creative & adaptive.

The proverbial benefit of hindsight isn’t much of a benefit if one cannot articulate what happened. Attention is scarce, so it happens a lot.

Merry Christmas.

Best wishes and a Better New Year to everyone!

2022

Homage to intrepid compassion, free from disgust or agitation.

No need to go where it is difficult. Go where you are afraid of going.

It waxes and wanes.

What one holds dear and what one holds sacred are commonly not the exact same. There’s the rub.

As meditation is looking, and prayer is listening, so ritual is touching, study is smelling, and living by vows is tasting. Practice, then, is ‘common sense’ in its old meaning.

Any solid map of awakening is useful for understanding how path unfolds in a generalized manner. Also inadequate as substitute for a keen sense of where one is with specific challenges & capacities. Get clear on those & work with what you have. It’s feature, not bug.

It barely matters which doxa or praxis or ethos is dispensed with or emphasized. Unless there’s a compelling new aesthetic, nothing really happens. And there is none.

“Are we still unable to see that man’s conscious mind is even more devilish and perverse than the unconscious?” — C. G. Jung

Overheard myself saying: Most problems are caused by incomplete exhalations. Somewhat right.

Space and clarity are to insight as silence and sound are to music.

“Whoever deceives is more just than whoever does not deceive and whoever is deceived is wiser than whoever is not deceived.” – Gorgias the Trickster

Elrond: “Ónen i-estel edain.” (I give hope to men). / Aragorn: “Ú-chebin estel anim.” (I keep none for myself.)

Soak in silence / To heal senses / Drink devotion / To restore sanity / And be grateful / For such graces…

To whom it may concern: No spots available in mentoring for the rest of 2022. A waitlist is now open for registration through the regular contact form.

Bodhisattva is an awakening *sentient* being.

A conceptual descent from soul to mind to body in society has close to nothing in common with descent of awareness along the same path in individuals, commonly *after* an ascent has been accomplished. The resulting modes of being in the world are incomparable.

Basic goodness is not a social construct. Nor a biological thingy. It’s empty, yet also not empty.

– Do you like our owl? – It’s artificial? – Of course it is. – Must be expensive. – Very. I’m Rachael. – Deckard. 40 yrs ago, like yesterday.

How to identify genuine Dharma? Clarity/urgency in faith & virtue, depth/verticality in method & outlook, release from reactivity & confusion, peace beyond conceptions. One missing is bad enough. These are related to four seals of Dharma, also three trainings & their result.

According to Recollection of Dharma, the sacred Dharma is – well expounded – to be examined – timeless and immediate – to be seen for oneself – to be experienced for oneself – to be realized for oneself These are routinely memorized.

In teaching Dharma, instruction is secondary to example. In learning Dharma, aptitude is secondary to motivation. In practicing Dharma, effects are secondary to efforts.

How to reliably evaluate oneself? Regular feedback from trusted others. Attention to periphery of awareness (spot aberrant behaviors, non-medical symptoms). Know what you’re afraid of (at least be actively curious). Write. Be honest. There’s more, but that’s a good start.

On philosophy: necessity, adequacy, coherence. Necessity is not stating the requisite, while ignoring the obvious – awareness. Adequacy not possible w/out establishing the limits of conceptual scope. Coherence isn’t merely logical, but also practical – what it results in. There.

Śamatha is relative and temporary alignment of attention, thought, emotion, instinct, sensation. Śamatha methods are many & diverse, some nonobvious, like prayer. It is not, however, an end in itself. Once aligned, one can sense precisely, aim accurately, and reflect clearly. Outcomes or rewards of śamatha are varied. Stillness, inner silence, sense of balance, mental & physical pliability, brightness, clarity, smoothness, wellbeing, content etc. arise during or between practice sessions, often after their opposites surface to be resolved. Best learned supervised & practiced in relative isolation with carefully upheld routines, involving postures, diets, settings, activity etc. Cathartic events common. Once established, it becomes fairly accessible. Yet, there’s also a strong individual propensity factor. Buddhist schools of thought & styles of practice differ in emphasis & interpretation of śamatha, as they do with traditional cosmology & phenomenology. Always better to have the yāna framework in mind when making sense of different aspects of path, such as three trainings./

Recall what you loved when you were 7 or 12. Where are such loves now? What happened? Do they play a role in your life & practice & work? If so, have they grown? Grown old & tired, or grown wider & deeper & brighter with time-tested curiosity? Would your story fit in a tweet?

Who you need to be now is revealed by who you wish to die as. How you do that is mostly a matter of staying course. If informed by *what* you are, it’s the only way to be anyhow.

“Study of Buddha Way is study of self; study of self is forgetting self; forgetting self is being actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, one’s body-mind as well as others’ body-mind drop away. No trace of realization remains and this no trace continues endlessly.” Dōgen Zenji 道元禅師 (1200-1253) It’s all about experience and awareness as path, not ontology or metaphysics, or notions. Body as experience, mind as experience. Study as awareness. Forgetting and drop away as experience. Actualized and realisation as awareness. No trace, experience. Continuing as awareness./

“Saṃsāra is notorious for being without end.” — Gampopa

In the world, but not of the world – a noble orientation. How about *with* the world? With *a* world? There’s world as convention, there’s world as experience, and the two shall never be one, except they’re both like dreams.

Whatever spirits have gathered here, — on the earth, in the sky —let us pay homage to the Buddha, the Tathagata worshipped by beings human & divine. May there be well-being. Whatever spirits have gathered here,— on the earth, in the sky — let us pay homage to the Dhamma & the Tathagata worshipped by beings human & divine. May there be well-being. Whatever spirits have gathered here,— on the earth, in the sky — let us pay homage to the Sangha & the Tathagata worshipped by beings human & divine.May there be well-being. Ratana Sutta from Sutta Nipata/

Consistent formal practice of meditation is the bone marrow of spiritual health. Just so, devotion is the heart and lungs.

Lineages differ on bare essentials of view, meditation, and conduct at any stage of path, kinda Backpack Dharma, a less is more approach. Know your checklist. Those who venture off track will have a bespoke version based on experience, yet everyone has a first aid kit. BSTS

A peaceful arhat chanting mantras, attended by a fierce demon with a sword. Quite a pair.

Bodhisattvas may have an associated icon-animal. For Samantabhadra (All-Good), it’s a six-tusked elephant (power of six pāramitās). For Mañjuśrī kumārabhūta (Gentle Glorious, youthful prince) it’s a lion, here in playful mode. Wisdom as playful curiosity joined with learning.

Homage to the luminous unwavering state, free of elaborations.

More often than not, those of us believed to be in the know, or in some reputed position, really have no idea. Or no deep understanding. Or no willingness to step out of our comfort zone. Most people do their best, and it shows, for better or worse. Few excel, support them.

Radical subjectivity is the path.

Religious faith isn’t going anywhere. It’s just become a matter of personal responsibility.

Devotion is an attitude, an ethos, a practice, and a path. Not a feeling.

Many ways to resolve doubts. None painless.

Small is beautiful. Simple is powerful. Subtle is meaningful.

Awe & wonder are to inner life as necessity & practicality are to outer life. Signs of life without which obstacles arise endlessly. Good news is they’re not unrelated, as both inner & outer signs of life are predicated on curiosity. Nurture curiosity, revisit basics.

Ritual or ceremony, when properly done, celebrates the timeless in the confines of purpose and occasion. In some, it fosters a humble deference. In others, it exposes rigidity or hubris. For everyone, it gives expression to what otherwise remains tacit or forgotten.

For generosity, nothing to do, / Other than stop fixating on self. / For morality, nothing to do, / Other than stop being dishonest. / For patience, nothing to do, / Other than not fear what is ultimately true. / For effort, nothing to do, / Other than practice continuously. / For meditative stability, nothing to do, / Other than rest in presence. / For wisdom, nothing to do, / Other than know directly how things are. — Milarepa / Translation by @kenmcleod … “Nothing to do, other than” is an exquisite rendering, whimsical and sharp at once. Superior to the earlier translation. In the source text, Milarepa continues with explaining pāramitās 7-10, namely method, power, aspiration, and pristine awareness./

Confucius (孔夫子; Kong Fūzi, Master Kong; or commonly 孔子; Kongzi; c. 551 – c. 479 BCE). In Western circles perhaps the most undervalued Chinese philosopher.

Bonten (梵天) aka Brahmā. As Brahmā Sahampatti, encouraged the Buddha to teach those few who are receptive. Lord of Akaniṣṭha, highest of subtle form realms, though generic “brahmā” is used for many realms, depending on school, just as “akaniṣṭha” may be used more broadly.

Deeply ingrained are / Patterns of attraction, / Aversion, and confusion. / Poisons to eradicate, or / Afflictions to cure, or / Forces to transmute, or / Phantoms to release? / Caught in their spell, / Err on the side of caution. / As in medicine, it is better to prevent what can be prevented. The four strategies apply to different levels of reactivity & distortion. In this regard, yānas differ in emphasis, not in substance. Aptitude, motivation, skill, maturity, situation & instruction are key factors./

Chaos comes from ancient Greek χάος, meaning emptiness or void before creation. Related to χώρα, open space or place. That it should come to mean disorder is in fact the history of Western philosophical thought in one word, namely from empty space to utter confusion and disorder. No wonder smart folks look back at neoplatonism, stoicism etc. Yet one must go further to find solid foundations on which to rebuild a sane outlook. In short, to begin with, where everything comes from is not disorder, and what arises is not order, whether natural or man-made. Wikipedia [quote]: Use of chaos in the derived sense of “complete disorder or confusion” first appears in Elizabethan Early Modern English, originally implying satirical exaggeration. [unquote] The joke was obviously lost on most, whether educated or uneducated. Thus, fast forward. Wikipedia [quote]: “Chaos” in the well-defined sense of chaotic complex system is in turn derived from this usage. [unquote] ‘This usage’ refers to the satirical exaggeration, the joke that was lost. We’re stuck instead with a joke that was never intended./

Is there more good, or is there more evil? Do both provide meaning and purpose? Is one more fundamental? Is one easier? How so? Is there a blueprint of sorts? Is it all relative? Is it a matter of decision made every single day? Worth pondering. Or, as some say, sitting with.

Some worldviews are better than others. Agreed. Yet, better how? Better for what? Better for whom? It’s better to know.

Some things can only be hinted at. Argued for only implicitly. Taught only tacitly. If openly demonstrated, only situationally. Such things tend to be subtle, yet fundamental to understanding. This seems true in many fields of human endeavour. Not least in spiritual practice.

Functional instinct, intuition, and imagination are necessary before one can reason and discern. Without them, reason is mute, deaf, and blind.

One reliable evaluation of spiritual practice is rather simple, yet powerful. Namely, how have your questions changed? Both what the question are, and how you engage them.

13 years ago this day with extraterrestrial maverick artist Stuart Davis in Boulder, CO.

A sense of true direction (another meaning of “refuge”) is a balancing act. One never knows for sure, but one keeps moving into it based on sensitivity to feedback, as with balance itself. That’s also what “middle path” suggests beyond merely conceptual formulations. As one gets better through erring and trying, returning and trusting, the feedback becomes increasingly more subtle. Just the same, when directional balance is ignored, the feedback gets increasingly more severe. It’s an ongoing process of attunement, so keep going./

Every great tradition has “hidden” teachings. Not secret in the sense of being kept away from uninitiated through some kind of restricted access to texts, or private oral transmission. Not arbitrary. Hidden in plain sight, an inner meaning revealed through faith & practice. What makes these hidden is one’s own confusion, reactivity, and overall habitual density, crude patterns of experiencing, namely sensing & acting, while seemingly true to oneself. It’s oneself doing the concealing while engaged in seeking, obtuse & careless./

An amazing practice tip in this latest newsletter from @kenmcleod. It’s dense and layered, touching on many key points. Please have a look and take what you can. Unfettered Mind newsletter practice tips contain some of the best pith material available.

Vaiśravaṇa (jap. Bishamonten or Tamonten), guardian of north among four kings of Indra’s heaven. All-hearing, bright as a thousand suns, commander of the yakşa, rākśasa and kinnara, protects holy places, also known as god of war.

Great master Bodhidharma aka “blue-eyed barbarian” (碧眼胡), cca 5th century, his teaching based on Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra (cca 4th century), mostly Yogācāra and buddha-nature (referred to in the sūtra as “nonself-buddha-womb”).

Homage to the luminous unwavering state, free of elaborations.

Devotion is a practice, first & foremost. Prostrate, kneel, bow, lower head, thousands of times. Sing hymns to buddhas & bodhisattvas, chant praises, whisper prayers, thousands of times. Release your aspirations, one by one. Let heart glow steady, mind clear, awareness bright.

As Frank Zappa bluntly put it, “You are what you is.” Wise words.

Implicitly, any vajrayāna approach takes semantics and semiotics seriously. Not as mere theory or academic pursuit, but as a practice of meaning. Thus we find statements like “every object of six senses is a letter-sign.” Awareness as deep literacy.

Full moon, symbol of bodhicitta and buddha-nature, is a frequent motif in Japanese art, both ancient and modern.

Fra Serafin Sabol (1946-2017), OFM, Custos of the Our Lady of Trsat Sanctuary. A virtuous friend, simple and spirited, taught me a thing or two about devotion. Memorable quote: “Mary is a saint. Satan is a sinner. Rest of us, we’re somewhere in between.” RIP.

The most famous Japanese poem is a haiku by Matsuo Bashō (松尾 芭蕉, 1644-1694) composed in 1686. In kanji 古池や蛙飛こむ水のおと In hiragana ふるいけや1 かわずとびこむ みずのおと Furuike ya Kawazu tobikomu Mizu no oto. Here’s one translation. Old pond¹ Frog jumps² Sound of water³ My teacher explained the poem as follows. ¹Time is threefold, yet present now. ²Space is revealed in union of movement & stillness. ³Sudden sound is coming out of samādhi, awakening from the dream of time & space. Note: kawazu (frog) can also be read kaeru (to return). So, coming back to what is there. A leap of faith, a return to presence, with a splash. Rinzai master Sengai (1750-1837), author of painting below, wrote, 古池や芭蕉飛こむ水の音 Old pond Bashō jumps Sound of water /

Buddhist teachings on emptiness are uniquely splendid. As any splendid thing, often misunderstood. So, uniquely misunderstood.

Mantra has a miraculous 50/50 rate of efficacy. It either works or doesn’t. It’s notorious for not working when not applied, whatever the aim. The efficacy is not with the mantra-as-such, but with the union of mantra-method and awareness.

Homage to the luminous unwavering state, free of elaborations.

Bodhisattva Kṣitigarbha.

Daigo-ji (醍醐寺) is a Shingon temple in Kyōto, founded in 874. Main deity Yakushi, Medicine Buddha. Also has a hall with Juntei (Cundī Avalokita), part of 33 Avalokitas pilgrimage. Emperor Daigo fell ill, abdicated, and became a monk here, named Hō-kongo (Dharmavajra), thus receiving his posthumous name, meaning ghee, i.e. creme de la creme, referring to most profound Buddhist teachings. His actual burial place is unknown. It is emperor Daigo that gave the Shingon founder Kūkai (shown below) his own posthumous name, Kōbō Daishi (弘法大師)./

Cintāmaṇicakra Avalokitasvara shown here lacks a few objects (lotus, jewel, rosary). In some Shingon lineages, one of main deities (s. iṣṭadeva) in the 4fold ritual practice (j. shidō) that culminates with fire ceremony.

Jigoku 地獄 (pictured right to left) or hell realm. Sometimes naraku 奈落 from skt naraka. In Buddhism, hell is not a divine punishment, nor is it eternal, though it may feel like both.

Mahākāruṇika Avalokitasvara. The little fellow is Maitreya, future Buddha, now residing in Tuṣita, as bodhisattva Nātha. Gautama also resided there – before his birth – as bodhisattva Śvetaketu.

Everything begins, proceeds, and ends with outlook. True beliefs matter.

“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” – Francis of Assisi

Youth Mañjuśrī.

Mahābodhisattva Samantabhadra on six-tusked oliphant, embodiment of bodhicitta and six pāramitā.

Buddha (historical) had a tremendous, somewhat sardonic, sense of humor. Too bad most of his jokes and quips, that come to us unfiltered, came to be taken by some as literal reality claims.

2023

Happy new year! Sarva mangalam!

Acalanātha Vidyārāja (Immovable Lord, Wisdom King) holds a sword and a noose. Also known as Caṇḍamahāroṣaṇa (Violent One of Great Wrath).

A graceful Dakini displaying a sword and triple gem, with six-spoked wheels tiara, riding a fox on a cloud-and-mist dragon throne. Sun, moon, and triple gem in the sky above.

Treasured teacher, I pray to you. I pray for my heart to turn to practice…

One of the scariest books one can read without ever realizing how scary it is. Thank you, Eric Neumann.

I like Padova. And I just love the friends I had precious little time with. You know who you are.

Believe it or not, there’s an ethic to every aesthetic. Thus, aesthetic curiosities can lead to ethical discoveries, if given a chance.

To paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, “everything in matters of life and death is simple, but the simplest things are difficult.”

If all goes well October > California… March > Japan… Fingers crossed

Deep red wood of sukha, Bright blind beach of siddhi – A day with a friend.

There is no such thing as ordinary experience. Experience – in and of itself – is no ordinary thing. Non-ordinary experience only serves as a reminder. *Just back home from a trip to a strange land.

Passed 3000 online mentoring sessions. Keep calm and keep going.

2024

Jet-lagged in Tōkyō.

Aspiration to awakening, the way-seeking mind, is the willingness to live without an answer, to know without an answer, to rest and move and be moved – in response, yet without answer. There’s more, but that’s where it begins.

A few spots open for practice mentoring. Also, drop-in consultation available.

For your practice to flourish, don’t limit it to formal periods. In fact, don’t limit practice to meditation or devotion alone. Adopt a weekly art discipline, as well as weekly visits to nature. While you’re at it, simplify everything else to have regular times of nothing to do.

You can overtrain. And we know what it does, most of it not good. Can you overmeditate? Easily. How much is too much? It depends where u’re at and what u’re aiming at, but it is almost certainly less than u imagine. Of course, u must do it well. Well enough. And maintain balance. How hard is good? Just hard enough to respect, not so hard to fear it – doable. Noone to impress, no enemies to defeat. A good edge challenges motivation, skill, and capacity, yet isn’t overwhelming. Consistent and sustainable, one day a time, a long game. Again, balance./

Change is inevitable. Cheer up!

Check this new conversation. @kenmcleod’s recent translation of Diamond Sutra with a new commentary. Diamond Sutra is one of the most influential early Mahayana sutras. It describes a way of being & acting that is not mediated by the conceptual mind.

A robust practice routine is the best expression of what you already are. #deepDharma

It’s that time again. Olive harvest (+10k yrs) and oil extraction (+5k yrs) are like nothing else. At this stage fruits are violet and black, giving a mild bittersweet flavour. Only first cold press, mostly for daily consumption, a special batch for anointing and fire ceremony.

Dragon taming arhat, sanskrit name Nāndimitra (Joyful Friend), likely derived from Mahākāśyapa. Note the items on the platform: two vajras in

Meta-rationality remains unattractive because it’s challenging and requiring growth, both personal and organizational, which then forces change to how things are done. I suspect there are other reasons, but those might just be excuses.

Passed 3333 online mentoring sessions. Looking for novel ways to maximize benefit of individual instruction and guidance, knowing I will not be doing this forever. Best wishes for 2025 to everyone.

2025

Back in 2005, Skype was the only game in town, and mostly free. Before it, online mentoring was limited to email. RIP Skype, and thanks for good 15+ years. Switched to Google Meet Premium.

Garbhakoṣadhātu aka Mahakaruna-garbhodbhava mandala, the “womb of great compassion,” one of two main great mandalas in Japanese Vajrayana, the other being Vajradhātu.

Hi fellow x/tweeps! A short update on practice mentoring services. Two new offerings in the pipeline. 1 starter kit for novices 2 practice clinic for wayfarers Both programs are 6 sessions over 3 months of individualized check-up, support, and instruction. Read on. (1) starter kit for novices Whether you’re starting from scratch, or struggle with false starts, it’s crucial to have clarity on motivations, potentials, and methods – the whys, the whats, and hows of starting a practice, and having it take root. (2) practice clinic for wayfarers You’ve been at it for awhile, found purpose and reward, yet feel it’s time for checkup and review, or to get unstuck from a loop. Perhaps looking to clean up, gear up, and revitalize your practice. Plan to elaborate a bit on these on my website, but if this piques your curiosity and you have questions, or want to learn about admittance, let me know. Also, thanks for spreading the word to whoever might benefit./

Don’t drink Lethe’s waters, seek Mnemosyne instead. Or, remember to remember to remember.

Hosted an excellent Q&A (Ask Ken Anything) with @kenmcleod and a dirty dozen of practice apprentices from four continents. Thank you to everyone who took part.

Buddhist teacher and translator Ken McLeod meets a group of practice apprentices from four continents for an ad hoc event. Hosted by Hokai Sobol. Duration 1 hour 24 minutes.

Word cloud from last 5 years of posting.

Life good to almost perfect is not a path, so keep going. #fourthignobletruth [Accepting a heavy price gladly makes the good life almost perfect. #thirdignobletruth] [Knowing this, and living accordingly, comes at a heavy price. #secondignobletruth] [Life is good. #firstignobletruth]

Déjà vu and jamais vu. Already seen vs never seen. A “discovery!” for “future insights!” Both happen routinely as soon as one starts paying close attention to how experience arises, especially with repetitive patterns. But it’s the “brain!” doing stuff.

Just realized – duh – that Achilles Heel and Hoichi the Earless convey the same basic principle. As you learn to wield attention, get to know the blind spot. Include everything.

Four pairs for a well rounded practice lattice, irrespective of yāna or lineage. ¹formal & living practice ²ritual & meditation ³moderate & intense ⁴solitary & group … When it comes to the dizzying variety of styles and methods of Buddhist practice available, combine the musical and culinary approaches. A closer look follows. In general, hands-on learning supported by need-to-know theory & history. Know your basic materials & concepts through direct experience. Mentors & peers are essential. Also immersive learning early on, relevant plus relatable. Learn groceries, sourcing, cooking, and serving self and others simultaneously, securing a steep curve and solid foundation early on. Raw to long process, simple to complex. Feeding, health, taste, and presentation in synergy. Eg three fives of Japanese cuisine. Cook to eat, feed others, know digestion. Explore one culinary tradition per decade. Know tools & techniques, recipes & sequences & pairings. Watch “The Taste of Things” (2023), indulge palate by visiting pro chefs, try street food anywhere. Never let budget limits thwart you. Tone deaf or pitch perfect? Learn to listen. Hum, whistle, tap, and singalong. Find a tutor, learn about voices, instruments, genres, traditions, and periods. Learn to listen. Pick an instrument each decade, and have fun with fingers, scales, chords, and harmonics. Listen deeply. Once you have a solid repertoire, challenge your horizons. Drink from sources virtuoso to amateur, trad to trans. Listen to nature, get intimate with silences, resonances, reverbs, pauses… As you listen, notice surreptitious and auspicious accidents of harmony. Keep going. Be grateful to the muses, devoted to the art. Invest curiosity, patience, and playful exploration. Never stop having fun./

Cintāmaṇicakra (Wish Jewel Wheel) is the chief Avalokiteśvara deity (orig. Avalokitasvara) in Japanese Vajrayāna, the central deity in first of four empowerment trainings, the backbone of mikkyō practice (¹Eighteen ways, ²Vajradhātu, ³Garbhakośa, ⁴Homa Fire).

Many principles, practices, methods, symbols, ritual forms etc accepted as Indian by origin, just because we find them in Indian traditions, clearly have been introduced to India from other places at different times. Earliest Vajrayāna maṇḍala (700 to 900 AD) present 12 astrological signs – still today. Not Indian Vedic (skt. jyotiṣa) which had a rather long history in India, but Babylonian ones (2,000 BC) – same 12 signs Greeks used since 400 BC, which today we find in Western astrology. Why would a new Indian tradition use non-Indian astrological symbols, easily replacable by Indian ones, and preserve those same 12 signs until today? And Vajrayāna teachers are not even aware that their maṇḍala contain what are now modern Western astrology symbols. I’m using a most obvious exampe, but there are more than a few such elements, hidden in plain sight. Again: names and attributes of deities, seed syllables, visual and gestural symbols, procedures, methods, principles, seemingly out of nowhere. And mostly ignored. One of the reasons why Buddhisms resonate with Western cultures is that wheel turnings and yānas contain grassroots elements that are part of the same rhizomatic history that had Mediterranean cultures, Persia, India, and China in a web of trade. It is not trivial. There’s more. The wheel (skt. cakra) originated from steppe 2,000 BC Sintashta culture, known as Aryans, an *eastward* migration of European Corded Ware and Yamnaya cultures. Wheel travelled & spread like nothing before it in all four directions. Wheel also became a symbol of Sun, of mighty sovereign, called in India cakravartin, and the earliest symbol of buddha dharma. Now, Gautama Buddha came from an ancestry of Sun worship, not from Vedic cults. Fire-moon-sun worship was basis for one of his earliest honorifics – “kin of sun” – and 10 centuries later the Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna timeless buddha is called Sun or Great Sun, while wheels, suns, moons, and fires remain central symbols in art, scripture, and mystical practice. Ofc, the sun wheel is a circled cross, itself a basic maṇḍala of five genera. Drawn with seal (skt. mudra) and emptiness mantra to make one’s body a maṇḍala, it goes right chest to left, then heart to forehead. Western cross sign gesture is same in reverse. There’s ofc more. A lot more. / Oh and… Wishing you x/tweeps a blessed Vaiśākha Buddha Purnima!/

Bliss or sukha, what’s in a word. You know duḥkha? Pain discomfort unease trouble agony grief distress sorrow misery suffering struggle frustration… Duḥ is bad, difficult etc. Kha is open empty space when/where awareness meets experience, empty meets clarity. A slow thread… Sukha is pleasure, joy, ease, bliss, enjoyment, delight. Ofc it has specific connotations in context. Duḥ/su is exactly dys/eu in Greek: eu- vs dysphoria, eu- vs dystopia, eu‐ vs dysdaimon, examples of duḥkha sukha. These prefixes are used in many langs to denote – +. Aside. Early Greek accounts of Eros and Psyche and their daughter Hēdonē are interesting, depending on who tells the story. Later, Epicureans are ambivalent to hēdonē, Stoics say it’s bad, yet Heidegger embraces bliss as movement of the soul, precursor of tranquility. Go figure. Let’s look at 3 meanings of sukha, as with 3 aspects of duḥkha. First, sensory pleasure is absence of pain. Second, good impermanence ie positive change. Third, good way of being. These are all used in early scripture, either bad as illusion, or good as metaphor, or either/both. R-rated Mahāyāna brings sukha-bliss as 1 of 4 synonyms for nirvāṇa. Since nirvāṇa is end of bad, must be true good. It’s also true being, true permanence, and true purity. As genuine marks of buddha being buddha, these go beyond their conventional +/- pairs. Yes? Or… Not so fast. Those 4 align with 4 demonic forces (māra): reactive emotions, death terror, delusion of self, clinging to special experiences. And bliss is special, innit? And nirvāṇa is true peace, not some bliss. Isn’t true peace true bliss? Can I have it and eat it? Now bliss appears as 1 of special™ experiences, along with clarity and no-thought. As subsiding of desire, bliss can be delicious, rapturous pleasure and joy, but also unfiltered waves of deep pain and sorrow. If you’re lucky in a weird way, it’s both, alternating or at once. Same with clarity and no-thought. Clarity can be enhanced transparent 4k in every way, and also an acute superclear awareness of chaos *and* confusion. No-thought can be rock solid silence, or paralysis etc. Having these is mostly good, holding unto not so much. Bliss™ energy flows free, and highlights blocked flow. Like doing strength feels weakness, stretching feels rigidity, relaxing feels tension. This is dynamic phase-shifting bliss, between usual (habit pattern) & unusual (open empty). These shifts can be unexpected & unintended. Going deeper, a tacit knowing takes hold. An nderstanding becomes possible, tho uncertain. Pleasure & pain give way to ever subtler blisses. Timeframe: ∞/∞ Now it moves into mahā‐bliss and vajra-bliss. Not hype. ‘Mahā’ and ‘vajra’ signal deep shifts in sense & meaning. Enter advaya: not two, not one. Vajrasukha or mahāsukha is bliss beyond bliss and/or pain. It’s also already-there bliss without beginning or end. It’s union of bliss and empty awareness in naked clarity. A joy not so much of release, tho this may at times be overwhelming, but of simple being – of empty presence, dreamlike presence, and immediate presence, all in one. Thus, no limits (mahā), no buts or ifs (vajra). Just so. … Now life of joys and sorrows goes on & one is not separate from it. And something happens now and again. DMs open. Let me know if you enjoy these threads. Is something amiss? Is there something you’d like to see more of? Thanks for feedback, much appreciated./

Weeping Maitreya (Loving One), aka Ajitā (Invincible). Why? Cuz loving compassion is the way. Also cuz that way is a path through an endless valley of sorrows. No way around it. It’s hard sell if coming from a “make my life better” angle, not that it hasn’t been tried. Forever.

We are legion. Each and every single one. Or, as my teacher often encouraged me, “Not small. One!” Just do your part. It *always* tips the scales.

Create a void. Then fall into it.

Knowing history is laudable. Not repeating past errors, remarkable. This isn’t about that. It’s about what one becomes. Knowing itself. So… Hindsight is lazy wisdom. Always right. A would-be should’ve. Judging the dead. Someone said, “Let the dead bury the dead.” Look. Act.

Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī embodies insight & discerning wisdom ie intimacy with empty knowing. Mañju means beautiful, sweet, while Śrī is a honorific, meaning glorious. Other names Mañjughoṣa (Lovely Voice) & Vāgīśvara (Lord of Speech), shown as either youth prince or old hermit. Full icon 1. Sword, prajna-scripture, five top knots, script reads “a ra pa cha na” 2. Riding lion of buddha-roar, right arm and leg cutting samādhi (self), left arm and leg spreading prajñā (others)./

Whether learning attention, skills, concepts, or ways of being, inner or outer or liminal… whatever learning is about, from, of, towards etc. it has five implicit domains. – learning environment – unlearning – how to learn – how to know – pointing beyond the learnt…

Medicine Buddha (skt. Bhaiṣajyaguru, jap. Yakushi, tib. Menla) statue in Japan, flanked by Moonlight and Sunlight. Some years ago I’ve put together a simple Medicine Buddha ritual practice. Still available for download [link]

What is intimacy? A deepening movement from knowing about to knowing thru experience to knowing thru being known to empty knowing to natural direct knowing. Each step opens possible cycles for each previous step. While it feels like emergence, it’s a genuine descent.

Most of “mindful” now is humans trying to somewhat compensate for making many aspects of ourselves obsolete – ie physical emotional spiritual social atrophy – thru seeking safety comfort convenience. Same tracks, same drive behind both.

Any demystifying by blinding oneself to mistery is bound to fail. Mistery is always at the core of every meaningful pursuit. Every aspect, every level, every mode. Learn to embrace and appreciate mystery.

A tiny little bit of genuine kindness goes a very long way. And it doesn’t matter one iota where one’s at. A little bit more – and it’s a different world altogether.

Round and round. Lost and found. Revolving or going around the sacred is a key practice in many spiritual traditions East and West. In Sanskrit, parikrama (path around) or pradakṣiṇā (to the right, clockwise), means walking around sanctum sanctorum: holy relics (śarīra), stūpa, caitya, sanctuary, mountain or water, circular pilgrimage etc. One walks around Buddha, keeping the teacher to the right, showing respect before sitting down in seeking guidance. Proper decorum, basic recognition of what comes first, setting orientation & favorable conditions – both outer and inner – for learning. This pūjā is a form of active meditation that *anyone* can do (and tbf ought to). In the West, the term is circumambulation. Abrahamic traditions strictly uphold the practice in various formats. Circle dances across cultures reflect this sacred method, moving in the path of the sun, left to right. Same in Japan. In Zen, it’s jundō etiquette. In Shingon, henro or junrei pilgrimages as well as indoor dōjō walking. Pilgrims carry wooden vajra staff, just like monks would carry khakkhara, at once staff, instrument, and weapon. West again, religious pilgrim (lat. peregrinus) carries staff, as does Hermes (see caduceus, petasos), as do bishops. Yet pilgrimage and sacred revolving is older than any present tradition, whether East or West. Finding one’s way by moving in circles, “there and back again.” It’s one of cakra and maṇḍala practices, rituals as old as language, it’s the original mystical path. It’s about birth life death, space, time, center, depth, wonder awe, devotion, timeless awareness, awakening from confusion to natural presence, revolving in circles like sleep, dream, waking, then sleep again. It begins, and it ends, by finding one’s feet. Just look skt. pāda > patha, eng. foot > path. Let that sink in. /

Individuals are oriented in Buddhist practice in different ways, 3 main modes follow. ¹Therapeutic thru healing and improving one’s experience of life. ²Being part of community thru organized group activities. ³Spiritual or mystical calling, seeking inner transformation. These & other modes may intersect somewhat, but their motives & aims are different. Beyond individuals, the 3 modes give rise to different adaptations in modern world (not just the West), as well as different meanings of terms and distinct practice languages. For example, mindful awareness, a key term, will have a diff meaning in each of these contexts, ditto devotion, purification, emptiness, compassion, power, or freedom. A tension persists at their intersection, exactly because of the resultant confusion. Motives & aims matter. Know yours.  Note: academics, translators, even teachers-who-know-stuff, regularly flying blind in this semantic haze, must be aware of it, right? Well, the meaning of “aware” depends on *their* motives and aims. Never assume. Follow up. ¹-²-³modes (or more) can fail within & between at discrs level. To make sense, look within mode, and between modes. “Rearranging deck chairs on titanic” may refer to bad therapy vs good therapy, but also used to separate therapy *from* mystical practice. Know which. State chasing can be good or bad ¹therapy – always bad ³mystical. Group hopping, insight illness, king-of-the-hill taboo (yikes!) are used in discourse without addressing this within/between meta fallacy. Just so, ¹shift is not ³shift. Call it what you like, then live with it. Mindfulness, vipassanā, jhāna, basic ethics, good or bad, are apples & oranges & avocados, depending on mode. “All fruits!” does zero to help & ∞ to obfuscate, thus failure. At culture level, tower-of-babel mess. Any yāna coming blind into this wherever will fail across modes. Paths, maps, stages do help, imperfect as they are, territory as they’re not. If it’s a process, there’s no skipping. Take 8-fold path in reverse & be the train wreck. Also, whether it’s oneself or loved ones, know by fruits. It’s ok to err. It’s better to learn. Good luck./

Awareness is uncontroversial, as is experience. Any controversy is a social construct, a squabble. Don’t waste precious time proving you’re effortlessly experiencing stuff, and knowing it. Look at experience, rest in that looking, and see all controversy dissappear. Hallelujah. <> Oh dear, *disappear./

Out of the blue, one wakes up to a layer of reactivity & confusion. After some work, one wakes up from that, only to soon wake up to a new layer of reactivity & confusion, raw & primitive. Doubts ensue.

Hanshan “Cold Mountain” and Shide “Foundling” (jap. pronunciation Kanzan, Jittoku) reading scripture and pointing to the moon. Quite a few collections of Hanshan’s poetry in English available, recommended “The Poetry of Han-Shan” by R Henricks and “Cold Mountain” by B Watson.

Mahāvairocana (Great Sun), the original dharmakāya of early Guhya Mantra (Vajrayāna). <> As five elements: Oṃ a vi ra hūṃ khaṃ <> As awareness: Oṃ vajradhātu vaṃ <> As dynamic union of awareness and experience: Oṃ amogha vairocana mahāmudrā maṇipadma jvala pravartāya hūṃ

Aspects of Buddhist ethos / pathos / logos poorly conveyed: 1. power, capacity (śakti, bala, indriya, vīrya, vibhūti, sāmarthya etc) 2. sorcery, magic (ābhicārika, kṛtyā, śambara, ṛddhi, siddha, kārmaṇa etc) 3. peace, ataraxy (śānti, śama, sama, kṣema, abhaya, nirbhaya etc) Plus a few intense qualities arising in practice but regularly underplayed like faith, devotion, reliance, enthusiasm, fervour, ardour, heightened sensory awareness, visions (too many skt to list)… Mostly cuz trying too hard to not sound like a religion. Or mystical path. Also, consistently desacralized & psychologized: samadhi, insight, vows & oaths, compassion, mandala, mind (!), body (!), emptiness, awe & wonder, purification, bliss, grace, consecration, sacred beings, mystical birth & death & rebirth… the list goes on. Note 1: meditation is made to sound more accessible than observance, art, and ritual, even tho minority of Buddhists ever meditated à la cold turkey with any genuine result. Plus, outlook / view is *not* “scholarly philosophy” by any stretch etc. Note 2: ofc most people don’t look for these in teachers (ofc most teachers wouldn’t know what or how to do) and when they do there’s a ton of problems on both sides. In its legitimacy seeking, Consensus Buddhism chose to be part of [problem in] modern desacralization. Note 3: there’s a better take on this layered, messy thingy – quite a few senior teachers in any yāna are aware & skillful, doing what they can. There’s an unacknowledged, unserved demand for such guidance. Meanwhile, consensus will do what it does best – play ball for perks./

Fingers crossed is a basic hand mudrā. All-knowing Intelligence says “The gesture has historical roots in superstition, with origins in early Christianity where it was used to invoke the protection of the Holy Cross.” Roots = origins, thus superstition = early Christianity. Similarly with holding thumbs. It’s superstition, or symbolism at best. It cannot possibly be a somatic way of shaping energy and recollecting one’s mind without thinking or forcing attention. Vajrayāna has dozens of major and hundreds of minor mudrā, many secret. Ofc, every gesture imaginable has a sacred or secular meaning. Whether blessing or curse, prayer or profanity, it’s emptiness to form and out into space. A sign, a seal. Check the etymology of “behave.”/

Hārītī, former demon child kidnapper and cannibal witch, who converted to protect children and discipline bad parents, becoming goddess of fertility across Buddhist schools. Strong Greek and Scythian connection. Hārītī takes her iconography from Tyche and Demeter, and their Scythian equivalents. Mythic conversion is outer symbolic of a key inner practice in Vajrayāna, namely turning of bewildering confusion and habitual reactivity into timeless awareness and compassion. Coda: Hārītī often holds a pomegranate (as above), the “apple” that Adam and Eve eat in the Garden of Eden. Pics: Persephone tempted by Hades, and Mary with child, both featuring pomegranate. And yes, it’s very healthy./

Suffering is what it’s like to want to feel or be or not, honey on razor blade, a consuming fear of outcomes. What makes the sandwich of birth & death more than just a bittersweet, spellbound dream. Accepting such raw predicament is where path begins. Only if. Or maybe not? Impermanence is about facts, namely their emptiness. Not only certainty of death & uncertainty of when, or constancy of change, but what one never sees coming – everfresh permutation of knowns & unknowns. Now, how do u feel about that? Is there awareness? That’s most of path. Nonself is what one is, not how one feels, or who one becomes. Not seeing that, the other two become a consuming obsession. Knowing thru & thru, down to the marrow of mortal bones, is fruition of any path worth its name. If that sounds bad, unbound compassion is its reward./

A 4yo thread on Buddhist art across yānas was mostly history, past to present. Have a look at it first. What about future tho? Is there a future? Or futures? And why it matters. Here’s another slow thread. Background to consideration of Buddhist arts (BA) must be fate of 21st century arts & crafts in general. Obv not going to elaborate on that elephant (in room, china shop, blind men). Instead, going to focus on three hesitations for BA: ¹arts as binder, ²culture code, ³yāna. ¹BA as binder itself has 3 aspects: it binds ¹scripture (& wisdom), samādhi (& meditation), ritual (& ethics); ²awake (& teacher), aware (& student), alerts everyone else; ³codes based on one language (local), on one experience (global), and one deep time commons (cosmic). ²BA as culture code has 3 aspects: ¹fixed code (mountain) for body, ²moving code (waves) for speech, ³space code (sky) for mind, each in ¹self (psyche), ²others (culture), and ³world (nature), bound by artistic activity. ³BA reflecting yāna has 3 aspects: ¹union of form and emptiness beyond yāna, ²revealing spectrum aniconic <> iconic <> transiconic, ³arts’ function particular to each yāna. These account for essence, nature, and potency of BA as Dharma beyond lineage, language, or culture. The three hesitations result in BA failing to ¹bind, ²recode, and ³guide. Hesitation arises from ¹ignoring the key role of BA as binder, ²fixation and/or rejection of past BA forms, ³blindness to potentials of untapped cultures, such as present desacralized post-secularity. As binder, BA are fascia of Buddhist practice-and-path as whole, vital to health, integrity, proprioception, movement, and pain perception. Going forward, it’s the missing link in Buddhist adaptation in 21st century. Recognizing this is key to a new curiosity. BA as culture code bridges multiple illusory rifts at once. Groups evolve cultures by refusing to copy/paste. East & West are still stubbornly treated as binary, instead as poles of a gate (skt. torana) into a sacred world. Active recoding overcomes Buddhist ethnocentrisms. As for yāna – effectively different religions – it only takes a glimpse to grok them, especially thru simplified BA done right. A fuller resonance is possible in addition to conceptual scholarly schemata. You should know it’s a match when you see it, hear it, and touch it. Even Indian Buddhism isn’t all Indian. Each Buddhism is a result of robust cross-cultural transfers of practices in renunciation, sorcery, meditation, philosophy, energy, and also *massive* artistic adoptions & innovations. It never did, and never will, work any other way. Coda: this thread was done extempore, impromptu. If you find it helpful, please like and share. /

Feminine wave (L) and Masculine wave (R) by Japanese painter and printmaker best known as 北斎 Hokusai (1760-1849), who influenced Vincent van Gogh and Claude Monet. The two images are usually displayed separately, somewhat annoying imo. Side by side, they flow from each other. Gentle to violent, light into dark. No separation. He also did the famous “Great Wave Off Kanagawa” (shown below). /

Disdain of world (contemptus mundi) is common in sūtric Buddhism, not to mention Abrahamic religions. Undertone in Hīnayāna, overtone in classic Mahāyāna, it is recycled in Secret Mantra & followups: first replaced with equanimity and compassion, then with love and joy. Disgust for saṃsāra as charnel ground (skt. śmaśāna) is a method to face fear & disgust only to merge with a vision of clear buddha-field (skt. viśuddha buddhakṣetra). World is a mystery, enchanted & terrible, a presence beyond one’s self, shaped by purpose, intention, and action. Shadow of death valley becomes the place of wonder & awe, and also the sole abode of true peace. A fertile challenge that sprouts *manifold* wisdoms for many confusions, all different faces of what has no face, is each & every face, known only as just so, always new itself. /

Trying to figure out how to write about deity union in a way that works here. Not there yet.

Is there a best time for daily silent meditation? Yes, the hour before dawn. [Option, go back to sleep for 90 minutes.] Second best time, after waking up, before breakfast. Third best time, whenever consistent. As add-on, a short period before sleep is good.

I make baklava and call it peace. And then, we eats it.

As thick as thieves we were, but grew estranged. My dear friend moved on, and now he’s dead.

Fun learning about different lineages of medieval trivium today (ie “three ways” of grammar, logic, rhetoric). With quadrivium (astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, music) it’s seven liberal arts of proper classical education. Trivium is somewhat similar to Buddhist three kinds of knowing (learning, thinking, cultivation), for example as proposed by Spinoza. ::: Trivium in etymology leads to trivia in modern usage, which in Roman times was a name (“Threeway”) for Hecate, Greek goddess of magic, witchcraft, crossroads, doorways etc. Shown in 3 bodies, like Indian trimurti or Buddhist three-faced deities. As maiden – mother – crone sorceress, rules over earth, waters, sky & underworld. Her signs moons, wheels, keys, torches, daggers, ropes, polecats, dogs… In short, Greek Dakini.  :::  So, trivia & trivium./

Etymology of “etymology” goes back to Greek etymon, etymos (true) and logos (word). Etymology traces meaning through time. What this actually does mean is tracing how meanings originate from other, prior meanings, but as often also how prior meanings are lost in the process. In shameless display of form and empty, meanings persist and subsist enough to make sense of words. And the more a word is heavy with meaning (e.g. logos), the more it loses itself in traces through time, giving rise to changing etymologies. Greek true (etymos) is synonymous with alethes (adj form of aletheia, truth) genuine meaning of which is unconcealed or unforgotten, as when lost is found again. ::: Fun fact: etymos+logos into sinojap makes 真言 (c. zhenyen, j. shingon, true word), which translates the Sanskrit word “mantra” (spell)./

Mr Eno, who brought us *ambient and *scenius, with Mr Frost – on mentorship, answers vs questions, how to start and finish – short and sharp.

Most of what is troubling anyone stems from being persuaded early on that something is wrong with them, or others, or the world. Such distortion has been perpetuated for ages as if it was a venerable tradition.

“This Unexpected Jewel : Reading the Diamon Sutra” by Ken McLeod

Hi, 5 years ago did two cool AMAs here. Is it time for another one? Would be great to hear from folks who contributed back then. [*AMA here allows asynchronous interaction over a period, as well as translation. YT live would require scheduling, not sure the interest is there.]

南 無 大 師 遍 照 金 剛 🙏

So… Paglia tells JP that if universities consulted work of Neumann (student of Jung, author of “The Great Mother” and “The Origins and History of Consciousness”) and/or asked for his guidance, the culture wars would not happen. Yes, but hubris would never let *that* happen.

So, let me get this straight: one can freely use “mystery” and “mysterious” in physics and natural sciences, but not so much in the context of Buddhist practice. Generally, it’s ok to speak religiously in science as long one speaks scientifically in religion. Did I get it right?

Kūkai (774–835) 即身成佛 [soku shin jo butsu] “this body become buddha”

Dōgen (1200-1253) 即心是佛 [soku shin ze butsu] “this mind is buddha”

Mañjuśrī asked, “Blessed Lord, with how many names are you active in the world?” Buddha said, “I am called [and known by some as] Śakra, Brahmarāja, Maheśvara, I am called naturalness, earth, tranquility, I am called nirvāṇa, heavenly god, asura, I am called sky, the supreme, I am called meaning, unreal, samādhi, compassionate one, benevolence, water god (Varuṇa), dragon (nāga), nature spirit (yakṣa), seer (ṛṣi), lord of three realms, light, fire, lord of demons, being [itself], nonbeing, thought [itself], non-thought, [mount] Sumeru, vajra, permanence, impermanence, I am called mantra, great mantra, ocean, vast ocean, sun, moon, cloud, great cloud, lord of men, great lord of men, dragonlike elephant, I am called arhat, unchanging, not unchanging, life [itself], non-life, mountain, great mountain, unextinguished, unborn, thusness [itself], nature of thusness, apex of reality, nature of the apex of reality, I am called totality of experience, what is, nondual, I am called ‘having sublime attributes.’ Mañjuśrī, I have made in this world countless names to attract and direct beings. With no effort tathāgata turns [like a wheel] with innumerable kinds of mantras, powers, and miraculous appearances.” — excerpt from Bodhimaṇḍa /

There’s a phrase in Italian “traduttore, traditore” meaning “translator, traitor” first applied by irate Italians to French-language translations of Dante’s poetry. Not the feeling about Bunglish and other lazy Buddhish idioms, but close. And not just translations, either.

“Una civilización que niega a la muerte, acaba por negar a la vida.” — Octavio Paz

1,200 yrs ago: “As for the text [of a scripture], there are three kinds. First, the [vast, boundless] text that arises spontaneously & perpretually, the mandala of Dharma of all Buddhas. Second, the larger text that circulated in the world, the sutra of thousands of verses. Third, the abbreviated text [writen] in fascicles. However abbreviated it may be, it embraces the broader texts. Because its each and every word contains countless meanings, and every single letter, even every single stroke or dot, encapsulates within it countless truths.”

Never Let Me Go (2010) is something else. So was The Remains of the Day (1993), as well as Living (2022). Kazuo Ishiguro’s writings make splendid movies.

Translations have different outcomes when weirding Bunglish – or other Western Buddhish – vocabularies originate from different Asian sources. Given that translations of Indian materials to Chinese, Tibetan etc. are far from faultless, one does allow for unintended fails. But the resultant coldness & avoidant neutrality of some terminology continues to astonish. Words that breathe and live are translated into abstract cold terms that sound more like engineering than poetry, like “matrix” for womb for example, a stillborn idiom unfit for practice. /

Watching some insane CGI of Caracalla’s Baths (Rome, AD 216) and having annoying thoughts about the nature of progress.

No such thing as writer’s block. Ditto spiritual practice. Impasse, deadlock, obstacle… sure. But that’s no excuse, that’s where you give your all, and live to see another day. In short, never give up, never turn away. Do what you’d rather not. One way or another, say yes.

For a confused sentient being with an endless karmic burden, a skillful guide is useful. For a fledgling bodhisattva eager to help all beings, a master is recommended. For an already aware and awake, a perfect buddha teacher is essential. See how it works?

Shocked watching an otherwise reasonable secular naturalist insist that meditation does not involve any assumption (or was it presumption), while prayer assumes the existence of God. Not even wrong. Religion makes secular people say stupid things.

Meanwhile, law-abiding citizens are unaware how unsavoury Buddhist Tantra can be in its most sacred thoughts, words, and yes, deeds. And how excessively sanctimonious its upholders. Well meaning Buddhists are similarly unsuspecting. As public interest goes, not a bad situation.

Seeing Burnt again, favorite lines before it even begins: “I was good. Sometimes I way almost as good as I thought I was.” Next, The Taste of Things (again), then Jiro Dreams of Sushi (again).

Gaṇḍavyūha is the last chapter of the huge Buddhāvataṃsaka. It’s also an independent sutra. It’s also a record of proto-tantric Mahāyāna. A new 2025 version here [link] 1,200 pages in pdf, translated from Tibetan. Fwiw I prefer Supreme Array as title.

Just as reflections in a mirror do not invert sides, the seemingly lurid or lewd in tantra is not to offend or shock – right is right, good is good. Even with mahāyoga and niruttara, and it does get frisky – one is born, panics a bit, then dies. No bonbons, no X or AO ratings.

Good effort turning into dead end. ○ True openings leading to unbearable pain. ● Curious insights of trivial practical value. □ Deep practice spawning challenges for years on end. ■ At best, all of the above can be minimized and used for learning. At worst, one gives up.

Somewhat perplexing to see decent, too smart folks invest a better part of their life in Dharma practice and study – only to create or reproduce an eerie spitting Buddha in their own glorious image. It’s like Imago Dei, but in reverse. Perhaps not what “mirrorlike” means.

Nothing left to say? Say that. Nothing left to do? Do that. Nothing left to feel? Feel that. Nobody left to be? Be that.

Modes of spiritual discipline differ in terms of difficulty or challenge. Can be compared to walking, running, burpees, somersault. Like walking, the least difficult & suitable to everyone is also the most reliable & long distance one – namely devotion in body, speech, and mind.

Reading this warning “The outcome [of practice] will be conventional, potentially disastrous” and thinking, yeah sure, plus conventional and disastrous are often synonymous. I mean, no need to die if you’re already as good as dead. Same with illness and insanity. Yet so many recommend methods of awakening exactly in terms of their “conventional (disastrous)” benefits. A bit like advocating death because it makes one’s problems go away, and everyone else’s too. It’s unskillful means, where message fits nobody at all. Unwisdom for unpath.

A good way to introduce “vast” and “boundless,” or anything that takes one there – like unlimited apramāṇa, far-going pāramitā etc – is to show how it’s wherever one deigns to look, feel, and listen closely. Awareness is vast because it’s everywhere, every moment of experience. Emptiness is boundless because it’s never separate from anything, meaning it’s everywhere with everything. As with “Lift a stone, and you will find me there” from the Gospel of Thomas, what one is seeking is found here and there, near and far, but most where one least expects. And disciplines that help locate the all-pervasive – like four “immeasurables” or six “perfections” – serve to make one appreciate the ignorable and know anew the seemingly common. In a word, suchness.

I have 2k “followers” here but if a dozen see my post and half deign to click it’s a wonder to behold. Go figure. / / /

This trip was long in the making. How long? 25 years.

In fact, it marks the silver jubilee of Ajari Tanaka’s first visit to Rijeka, Croatia.

One week in Tokyo, though far too short, was much better than anything planned or expected. Ajari Tanaka was available daily, and we had plenty of time to catch up on all things, since our last meeting was in 2017 in Vermont, during the Goma ceremony training. Five minutes after exchanging greetings and pleasantries, it was as if the passage of time was nothing, bonds and kinship strong as ever. On the second day, a brief encounter with Sensei Kane just before his return flight to United States, an auspicious coincidence. In the following days we managed to visit Asakusa Kannon Senso-ji, Takahata Fudoson Kongo-ji, the Tokyo National Museum, and finally Naritasan Shinsho-ji.  At Asakusa we entered the inner shrine to recite mantras in front of Kannon, Aizen, and Fudo. We also managed to attend two Goma ceremonies, one at Takahata Fudo and one at Naritasan. On the last day before departure, an intimate dinner with Ajari Tanaka and his wife Yukiko-san, part reminiscing and part discussing future plans, an appropriate way to seal a nearly perfect week.

またね

2014

“Canon in use” is a very useful notion to delineate relevant scriptures of a living tradition, as opposed to comprehensive “library canon.” > A dozen sutras, a dozen commentaries, and a dozen practice manuals, tend to suffice for a coherent practice mode.

The idealistic notion of “beyond” is used quite indiscriminately in spiritual lingo. Is “in the midst of” not where it all ends up?

Of many tropes in Buddhist scriptures, hyperbole is the most used, and very skilfully, throughout the long literary history. Hard to say who has more difficulty with hyperbole today, the conservative apologist or the rational detractor, both prone to literalism.

“Everything you know is dead wrong.” ~ tantra authors “No, old Buddhism is good.” ~ tantra commentators (sometimes same people)

There’s always the danger of self-improvement. #thingsisaywhenmentoring

“The world worlds.” — Heidegger Meanwhile, selfs self.

Student says: “I have not realized it!” Teacher replies: “I have not realized it either!” Student packs up and moves on. #storiesofsiddhas

Faction: neo-feudal overlords embrace neo-vajrayana, while rewarding their serfs who practice mindfulness at home and at work.

“Life’s barely long enough to get good at one thing, if that long.” — True Detective
Fantasy, sex and violence in books, movies and TV shows abundant. Mainstream spiritual discourse avoids all these.

Everything that begins – ends. It’s that simple.

If spiritual practice passively integrates into and vindicates the existing socio-economic political order, it’s amoral & visionless.

We are redeemed by those among us who do what most felt or thought impossible.

Next time you order dim sum, remember the original characters mean “bit of heart” but can also be rendered “pointing out mind.”

Murderer: “There is no God.” Hannibal: “Certainly not with that attitude.”

Ceci n’est pas un tweet.

“A revolutionary career does not lead to banquets and honorary titles, interesting research and professorial wages. It leads to misery, disgrace, ingratitude, prison and a voyage into the unknown, illuminated by only an almost superhuman belief.” ― Max Horkheimer

One man’s everyday life is another man’s psychedelic experience.

Russian film adaptations of Shakespeare refreshingly free from the usual mannerism.

Change and improvement mostly come from below, not from on high. True in society, but also with individual experience.

Life is good. #firstignobletruth

So refreshing when a philosopher or thinker says, “I was wrong. I see things differently now.”

14th century Francesco Petrarca ie Petrarch is reputed as first man to climb a mountain to enjoy the view. Surely not.

Isn’t the world one big cautionary tale? #anotherignobletruth

Perhaps European post-secularity is paralleled by American post-spirituality.

Dependent origination brings together chaos and order, accident and inevitability, without reducing either to the other.

Blessing comes not from without, nor from within.

Japanese say “Nanakorobi Yaoki” which means “seven times down, eight times up.” That’s what practice is.

Ritual is myth in action. #opendharma

One cannot love without embracing the cruelty of life. Or understand without renouncing what one already knows.

Somatic dialects and inflections are as pervasive as linguistic ones, but poorly understood. Our cultures are very much physical regimes.

“Whenever feasible, one should always try to eat the rude.” Dr Lecter

The word psychologia was first used by the Croatian humanist Marko Marulić in late 15th or early 16th c. Who knew:)

What we often referred to as ignorance and confusion, is really twisted and distorted imagination.
Marxist and capitalist make same error by assuming economy comes before everything else, and thus create a world where it kinda does.

It may be so tempting to define who and what we are. #openpractice

Birth and death appear separate. Closely observed, however, becoming and unbecoming approach simultaneity.

99,9% of what we think may very well not be original thinking. At best, it’s mostly conceptual digestion.

Conceptual diet and fasting are as important, or even more so, than our eating and drinking habits.

Imagination, just as attention itself, can be passive or active, distracting or presencing, confusing or clearing.

What happens when growth driven profits dry out? Society, that’s what.

Buddha: ” “Monks, I will teach the All. Listen well.”
Vajrayana: “Everything holy.”
Zen: “Nothing holy.”
Now go and practice.

2015

Avoiding disappointment, disillusionment, disenchantment, and discouragement, we end up holding beliefs that defy our own experience.

Every body is an erotic metaphor, and the meaning of all these metaphors is always the same: death. — Octavio Paz

Warning: this life contains content that some may find disturbing.

2016

One of original Chinese terms for Buddhism was 像教 xiangjiao, the teaching of [many] images, descriptive of both Mahayana and Vajrayana.

Result of modern naive suppression of ritual is pseudo-ritualization of everything, including the most trivial and banal.

It’s rather common to ask whether a view is true or not, correct or wrong. What if we asked what it does.

To cultivate insight is to embrace not knowing, to cultivate compassion is to feel pain. Day in, day out. And that’s the good news.

Internet makes forgetting impossible, and thus remembering seemingly pointless.

Essence of ritual is embodiment. Its character, devotion. Its function, energy transformation. Its result, spontaneity. #opendharma

Buddha nature is human nature seen clearly. #allsaints

Segregation of life and practice is a modern contrivance. Their integration is futile, since they were never separate. #opendharma

To speak of “meditation” is similar to speaking of education or exercise. Scope and variety defy generalization. #opendharma

行善障生 gyōzen shōshō [When you] practice goodness, hindrances arise.

Spontaneity is the ultimate form of mastery. To be free is to be natural.

2017

The “world” appears crazy now and then. It’s only as crazy as normal is assumed. To itself, it is just so. To awareness, words fail.

The Young Pope is gorgeous and smart, quite refreshing and deep. Of course, pomo critics hate it.

Imagining a different world is quite useless, unless you are also imagining a different self. Same with acting upon such imagination.

Freedom is not a feeling. To feel free is not to be free.

Simulated society creates a simulation of life that only permits a simulation of spirituality. HT to Baudrillard

Deep practice puts one in touch with primitive emotional material, usually not much fun, but pure gold nonetheless.

2018

Attention engineering *could* mean something positive, but it doesn’t, not even remotely, with huge implications both private and public. The attention being engineered is the habitual *passive* attention. Not just harnessed, rewarded, exploited, and monetized, but also drawn further away from the already slim possibility of becoming *active* alertness, much more difficult to manipulate. Socio-economic dead-end, public health issue, parenting challenge, psychiatric concern, and spiritual malaise — all in one, depending on your hinge point question.

Found on the web: “Everything is politics in the adult world.” I hope not.

“First do no harm” never appears in the Hippocratic oath. It’s basically an example of a samaya vow, concerned with apprenticeship to a teacher, lineage, and sacred healing.

2019

Two journeymen were spotted at the edge of my hometown, on their way. Viel glück, gesellen!

“Mantra” has been adopted and bastardized in many colloquial languages – eventually to express a debased, negative, derogative meaning. Same with “guru” and “zen” and “nirvana”, along with buddha statues for massage rooms and gardens…

2020

Counter-sorcerers, instead of making a world out of nothing, make a nothing out of a world. — Nietzsche in “Human, All-Too-Human”

Truths cannot compete with lies, or other truths, without our consent. On what was, what is, what could be, lies are cheap and comforting. Truths, costly and demanding. What is referred to as belief can be either, both, or none.

Sharon Stone: “Can’t the Bible be upgraded?” New Pope John Malkovich: “Alas, the Bible is not an iPhone.”

Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Paranormal romance is a huge subgenre dominated by female authors and audiences. Though anglophone by origin, it’s translated & sold as pulp in many languages. A supplement & vent for culture’s omissions? An orphan of religion’s shadow? An alternative to woke fantasy?

No need to be epic, just persevere. Keep failing, keep trying again. Keep deviating, keep correcting course. Keep learning, keep going. “Nana korobi ya oki.” Seven times down, eight times up.

For a practitioner, the challenge is now, as always, to abstain from making it into a story about how things are, from being right.

A simple ceremony of Medicine Buddha, as promised. Downloadable in pdf format.

Progressive circles flirting with scientific jargon self-helped to remove wonder from spirituality. Result is such that meditation practitioners publicly cringe at mere mention of mysteries. Tempora mores etc.

Current crisis exposes inherent contradictions of contemporary institution-dominated mainstream story in *every* domain – finance, law, economy, politics, religion, science, arts, humanities, education, media, technology, and health. Not sure there’s a silver lining. Yet.

“One day the fish, who were by this time very smart, decided to have a revolution, to change everything. Let’s start, they said, by destroying the water.”

There’s a pace to everything. So, what is called life unfolds at a pace of years and decades. It may hinge on “now”, but only when that now is stretched over years and decades. It took me decades to figure that out.

Naively applying spiritual principles to cultural spirituality is overkill, plain and simple. And it doesn’t matter which tradition one considers. The semantic gap is collosal and multimodal.

Catholic Cathecism on meditation: “Meditation is above all a quest. … The required attentiveness is difficult to sustain. … There are as many and varied methods of meditation as there are spiritual masters.”

Catholic Cathecism on contemplation: “The choice of time and duration of prayer arises from a determined will, revealing the secrets of the heart. One… makes time for the Lord, with the firm determination not to give up, no matter what trials and dryness one may encounter.”

Aside from serving a perplexing variety of purposes, spiritual practice is basically an extremely decelerated, daily-based, self-administered hybrid of Gom Jabbar test and Voight-Kampff test, its accuracy verging on 100%.

Etymological siblings: duhkha ≈ dystopia sukha ≈ eutopia * τόπος being place, kha being space; duh/dys is bad, while su/eu is good. “utopia” is from 1516.

An interesting slide for utopia (noplace) to end up meaning eutopia (goodplace). A semantic alloy fusing cynical and idealist elements into a januslike riddle.

Esoteric etymological siblings (based in phonosemantics) 1. YHVH/JHVH – Hebrew name of God in four letters (hence, in Greek, tetragrammaton), articulated as Yahweh or Jehovah. 2. Jah Hum Vam Hoh – central Yoga and Mahayoga mantra syntax used in deity union. Unrelated? Hardly.

Syllables-and-letters as sound symbols are liminal with visual symbols, their shared phylogeny resistant to reductionist demands. LJJ Wittgenstein was right, words are deeds. And so are images.

Being true to oneself is a long journey. First you discover there’s more than one in oneself, at odds. Then such self goes through a series of hoop jumps reinventing itself. By then, the you to be true to is altogether different. And that’s just a start. Now you look deeper. > Generalities of what follows are same for everyone. Specifics are different and unique for each. Nothing can be said with certainty, except now you no longer decide when, where, or how to go.

Virus was a trigger, and a test. Fragility, safetyism, intolerance of uncertainty, media frenzy, hesitation in decision making, brutalist measures, and ill-preparedness did the damage. Blame culture will do some more.

There are *so many* ways to enjoy, engage, relax, heal, connect to the body, emotions, each other, and be creative doing it, without feeling virtuous or special about it. And they all work, and have worked for thousands of years. That whole segments of society would turn to psychotherapy, physical exercise, and even meditation, to serve these ends, while eroding and dilluting the very notion of spirituality, speaks volumes about the never ending confusion. There’s obvious need for taking it easy, enjoying cooking, keeping company, reading a book, writing & painting, playing an instrument, singing & dancing together, getting lost in nature, & most of all – doing nothing. No special effort, no virtue, no cost involved. /end > Addendum/ Then there’s the whole question of hobbies and I mean virtually *anything* pursued diligently and passionately b/c it’s rewarding in a quiet, implicit and unimposing way. Fast forward 10 or 30 years and you’re *really good* at something.

Mind vs body, doing vs being, masculine vs feminine, good vs evil, reality vs illusion, mundane vs sacred, society vs nature, matter vs spirit, light vs dark, human vs god, knowledge vs ignorance, object vs subject etc. Tension is fruitful. Separation is catastrophic.

Space and time for formal practice sessions, decoration & cleanliness, clothes to wear, arrangement & setup of altar & procedural manners strongly affect one’s experience, as well as the outcome. Contemplative practice is psychoactive. Set and setting are worth cultivating. > A further dimension to explore is the structure of sessions, a syntax of sorts. Not too much, nor too little, like composition of a painting or a piece of music, it serves a purpose, enhancing the details, while holding balance and supporting spontaneity.

“Mountain-brush and ocean-ink,
Heaven and earth a box of sutras,
Every stroke holds miriad forms,
And desires of six realms are also texts and writings,
Gleamings [of dharmakaya] echo like a bell in a valley,
A conversation sharper than a tip of a blade.” — Kūkai (774-835)
> Lines 1&2: everything is involved in meaning making; Line 3: so meaning is abundant and unfixed; Line 4: as emotions articulate their own sense making; Line 5: truth itself resonates throughout; Line 6: conveying what sharpest minds fail to grasp. > Six realms in this instance isn’t about hells, hungry ghosts etc. It’s the realms of six senses, ie sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and thought, varieties of “sign-letters” imbued with meaning. In short, all experience is a text of sorts. So, do read between the lines… Radical literacy.

Anecdotal from a reliable Central European Buddhist: even when a teacher tolerates students educating themselves wider (which isn’t standard practice), most students will self-impose an intellectual and spiritual quarantine to create a safe and simple existential oasis. Wow. > I wonder if teachers who actively encourage robust spiritual education (across Buddhisms *and* including basics of Western legacy) fair badly with oasis seeking students, or are they just extremely rare. Could be both.

thread: Reverse engineering spiritual teachings and methods betrays a dangerous tendency to control, manage and predict a process that should be one of learning, epistemic humility & genuine curiosity. Instead of working it, let yourself be worked by it. > Only ≥50 yrs since most recent east-west encounter. Idioms have been changed to suit modern sensibilities. Organizational forms adapted. Problematic notions done away with or psychologized. Refuge non-essential, precepts optional. Teachers replaced with apps. What’s next? > With the benefit of hindsight, this is no pragmatism, it’s devolution and involution. It’s corrosive, barren and clueless, an inverse cargo cult, with locust for its totem. “Only shallow people do not judge by appearances.” — Oscar Wilde > Change is due, for sure. If anything b/c this is a time of tremendous change. But it has to come about through returning afresh to first principles. Not the answers, the questions. Not the methods, the attitude. Not the extraction of goodies, but the sacrifice of indulgence. > Asked “what’s next” earlier in this thread. Well, as it turns out, politicizing orgs, then teachings and practices, each of three trainings. Also, bastardizing the notion of bodhisattva along the way. It’s already happening, and it’s thought of as progress, a good thing.

To reiterate a simple point: to even think of “hacking” the genius of prophets, visionaries and giants is to suffer from heroic self-inflation and delusion. To build a “culture” around such attempts would be pitiable, if it wasn’t outrageous. Nonetheless, there’s competition. > Competing camps are the institutional and the start-ups. The institutional is concerned with canonizing, monopolizing & diluting/distorting the original. Start-ups are mostly about repurposing, parasitizing & “disrupting” the institutional game, hoping to get in on the action.

For practice sessions, dress like you’re hosting the most important person in your world. For life, work and leisure – “Dress like you are going to meet your worst enemy today.” — Coco Chanel

Social media & constant access are effectively blocking local original developments from taking shape in any domain. By preventing relative isolation, everything ends up being the same. An endless mesh/mush of beige vanilla flavoured frustration. > Social structures mirroring that have no origin, no aim, no memory, no leaders, no betters, no message, no viable strategy and no coherent meaning. That’s spooky.

Etymological siblings: skt. jñāna ≈ gr. γνῶσις gnosis jña-, gno-, kno- as in knowing. Rendered as pristine awareness, wisdom, understanding, knowing etc depending on context. In Slavic languages it’s rather straightforward: cro. znanje, rus. знание.

What is, teaching, religion, practice, quality, phenomena, all experience, thing, virtue, law, proper conduct, devotion, duty, character etc. In one word, dharma. Semiotic sibling gr. λόγος logos Both terms shape-shift used in a variety of ways with rich and layered meaning.

Madness is custom defined. Not all madnesses r equal, just as not all ideas r equal. There’s also a verticality to madness. Conventional level periodically breaks, so vertical is overcompensated with hysteria & pseudo-religious fervor for stability. Think emptyform gyro. #polity

Practicing fine teachings with an adequate teacher is great for many. Autodidacts without formal training learning from a variety of sources are also great, though few. Combining these two modes is precious & rare. An authentic teacher will stimulate autodidactic potentials.

thread: “If what you do and who you are don’t match now, they will, for better or worse.” This was 11 years ago. Karma used to be an issue then:) > Karma is *not* about fairness, has *nothing* to do with justice. It’s about pattern-formation, habituation, emotional and conceptual hangups. When you act in a certain way, with a particular aim, this becomes just a bit easier & gets you closer to a certain way of being. > Its opposite becomes just a bit harder, which gets you further from a certain way of being. This force is effectively irresistible, like any natural law. It’s quite useless and pointless as an article of belief. It only matters how and why you act. And act you must. > There are those who refuse to align themselves with this hidden force, thinking karma is for uneducated simpletons or folks of yore. They thus become a blackbox to themselves, forever lost in the labyrinth of their own free will, foolishly smart and confused. > There are also those who naively believe they can game karma, as if it was bookkeeping of sorts. They indulge in karmic graft through acts deemed good, pious & worthy. Lost in the labyrinth of quid pro quo, they peregrinate aimlessly, foolishly virtuous and confused. /end

I happen to believe genuine practice protects one from ideologies, tribalism, and perspectival chauvinism in general. When it doesn’t, you’re doing it wrong, or you didn’t go deep enough, which is same difference.

Attraction-indifference-aversion are exhibited by atomic particles consistently & predictably. They come to life in living organisms, organelles to plants. They come to emotion in feeling organisms, sentience dawning. They come to mind in conscious organisms, reflection dawning.> They come to awareness in knowing organisms, when the whole spectrum of desire & fear & confusion displays its obstinate opacity. Be kind with yourself & others. Be patient & humorous. Be also firm & humble if you must know more. /end

thread: While self-minded are increasingly becoming spiritual but not religious, the social-minded political shades into overt pseudo-religiosity. Both trends are symptoms of a profound confusion and resulting malaise in postmodern societies, being severed from their bedrock realities. > These two “tribes” significantly overlap, as a dissociative identity disorder. While the two-faced god Janus presides over transitions and journeys, this particular Jekyll-Hyde only seeks to abolish all history, and thus any future as well. > Just to make it clear: this seems to be happening on a vast scale – Americas, Eurasia & further – with local conditions modulating conventional appearances, seemingly contradictory, yet deeply unison. > The sacrificial offering in this frenzy is the very notion of sacred, and thus of mystery itself. Death of God was just a beginning. The stillborn reborn is a mere absence, negation – imago dei cut out & replaced by anything/nothing. A nothing to be obeyed, or else.
Three maxims from Apollo’s temple still make deep sense, and always will. Know thyself. Nothing to excess. Surety brings ruin. 25 hundred years later, progress in these matters remains somewhat unimpressive. These three maxims reflect the structure of threefold refuge in Buddhist practice at their innermost level. In a slightly different reading, they also mirror the three trainings, ie prajna, samadhi and shila, respectively.

As has been held by every mystical tradition in history world over, the great equalizer is our shared humanity. We are all born to die, we all experience loss and pain. Any deviation from this basic insight is born of confusion and results in discord & misery. Have a good day!

Now and then the phrase “It’s quite a world out there” comes up. I know what it’s meant to mean, but being a non-native speaker, never far from literal meanings, it’s a bit like a koan. A world. Out there. Quite.

Some things might be helpful in a crazy world, if the world was crazy. There is craziness, for sure, but there is also sanity, and most partake of both, often without realizing. It’s a bell curve, even on Twitter.

“We do have to have a really clear and really disciplined approach to try and maintain social distancing whilst also enjoying pubs.” Good luck with that.

There’s an elephant absent in the room – new ideas. Genuine vision, across the board. And it’s fine. Not regressing is hard enough. Finding ways of doing better with what is known. Also, remembering what was forgotten. And reclaiming what has been lost. Is that radical?

“Listen as if you were being told a secret” — Federico Fellini

Humans live in stories. Some are shared collectively, some taken as identity. Some are public, some private. Some are concealed from oneself, as assumptions or beliefs. But all these stories are about something. To some, that something matters more than the sum of all stories.

thread: Variety of common fig in is huge, these are just in Istria. Dalmatia has additional sorts. Not to mention the rest of Mediterranean. > Gautama Buddha sat under a different kind of fig, known as pippala or ficus religiosa. > Fig was also sacred in cults of Dionysus, Bacchus and Aphrodite. Plus, important ingredient in serf and slave nutrition across Med. > Boundaries of Mediterranean are defined by fig, olive, pomegranate and grape, chief among “seven species” as acceptable sacred offerings. > As to pomegranate, it’s sacred with Persephone, goddess of the underworld, queen of the dead. Grapes are with Dionysus, of course, olives are with Apollo, Hermes, Metis and her daughter Athena, used as oil in rituals of anointment. > Finally, the fig sign, even today a ubiquitous gesture across the Med. > So, common fig and sycamore fig trees were likely the first deliberately bred for agriculture, starting at least 11k years ago in Middle East, which predates first known cultivation of grain. Also, in ancient Egypt, fig tree wood was used for mummy caskets. > According to Haggadah, the fruit eaten by Adam and Eve was fig, not apple. They clad themselves with leaves of fig tree of knowledge. In every case, the fig was there in the Garden of Eden, aka garden of delight or bliss, which translates to Sanskrit as – sukhavati. / end

thread: “I know only that I know nothing.” became “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” There’s a problem, a little inconvenience. Socrates *never* said anything even close to that. Or, to be precise, Socrates as related by Plato and Xenophon never did.> Plato’s Apology has him say something quite different. “I do not fancy I know what I do not know.” Which is equivalent to the original Buddhist formulation of the precept against speaking falsely. Actually, Socrates was confident in his knowledge & willing to die for it. > The misleading paraphrase originated in Rome by none other than Cicero, perhaps to substantiate his academic skepticism. As opposed to skeptics of Pyrrho, academic skeptics insisted knowledge is impossible, and obsessed with attacking true knowledge of Stoics. Sound familiar? > Be that as it may, a capacity for disbelief, when based in commitment to what one does know & care about, is infinitely superior to dogmatic rigidity arising from lack of clarity and feeble commitment. Pretending to not know what one knows is just as detrimental as the opposite.

thread: Indeed, primary fault lines in a society, between societies, and in history, are not lifestyle, identity, education, wealth, status, religious & political labels etc. It’s ethics, first & foremost. Everything else carries weight inasmuch it demonstrates, signifies or signals it. > Ditto in actual Buddhisms. Much has been written on diffs between yānas in terms of lifestyle, methods & views. While these are non-trivial, basic variance lies with ethical norms, in both attitude & behavior. It’s these “sets of vows” that delineate practicing sanghas. > Some use the analogy of cuisines to argue for hybrids, which is somewhat misguided. Even there, cooking based on frugality, health or enjoyment will go in very different directions. Overlap is possible, but the basic orientation and commitment is critical. And known by results. > Vows and commitments are about establishing a firm basis for a practicing life. Not about purity or perfection or expediency. It’s a line in the sand, an obligation to oneself, and a promise to the world. Something those obsessed with freedom of choice refuse to acknowledge. > In Buddhist context/s, vows & commitments are 2nd only to refuge. It’s less what we hold, more what holds us. It’s less how we are protected, more what is protected in us & around us – from us. It’s how that function is actually accomplished that delineates yānas & sanghas.

Religious services with parties, nightclubs, cinemas etc? Actively reimagine religion for a combo of larger open air, unlimited online, and many smaller events, move two or three rubrics to the left. Do that 6 months ago. Deploy now, huge demand.

thread: Story of Christian saint Josaphat aka Gautama Buddha, courtesy of cultural cross-confusion. > In 21st century the plot thickens. Here’s a curator’s introduction to the manga series Saint Young Men, featuring Jesus and Buddha doing Christmas in Tokyo. > For a full circle, and in real life, debuddhified mindfulness (jap. マインドフルネス maindofurunesu) introduced to Japanese companies, courtesy of Google’s mindfulness program. > A curious mirror image. Japanese western-trained instructors “introducing” mindfulness to Japan, as eastern-trained Westerners “introduce” meditation to the West. The allure of imported goods, perhaps an oblique strategy to rediscover one’s own heritage without admitting to it.

One’s self is no safe space.

“It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing…. A door like this has cracked open 5 or 6 times since we got up on our hind legs. It’s the best possible time of being alive, when almost everything u thought u knew is wrong.” — Tom Stoppard, Arcadia

I grew up in an illiberal society. Self-censorship was just a part of everyday life. On the other hand, long-standing democracies can take some basic freedoms for granted. “…self-cancel culture is not a thought experiment—it’s a reality.” > Without actual freedom of expression, hence freedom of thought, herd mentality and tribalism take over. People police each other overtly and covertly. Reputations are precarious. Avoiding problems by parroting becomes the norm. It’s obvious, yet too easy to neglect.

Looks like I’m not the only one perplexed. As if the elites are *utterly* at a loss. Rudderless and clueless, yet in denial. Perhaps life has been too good for too long.

If my math is right, a centibillionaire could create one hundred thousand millionaires. And some people think numbers in mahāyāna sūtras are exagerated.

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.” — Simone Weil

Mentor (from Greek Μέντωρ) is cognate to Sanskrit mantṛ, a wise & trusted counselor or teacher. Similar to iatrogenic harm through medical error & negligence, there is pedagogic & mystagogic harm through failing to teach the primacy & the art of asking questions.

Humour is an important quality combining wit, fearlessness, empathy, and insight. It relaxes & connects, jolts & heals, liberates & absolves. A reliable gauge of vitality. Find a humourless environment & you’ll find morbidity & decay. Even tragedy won’t work without humour.

Being wrong can’t be avoided. Being wrong often, on many things, incl things one holds most dear can’t be avoided. Give it a chance. Maybe the point isn’t being right, not being wrong, or being seen as this or that. These never last. Look & learn, get better at being wrong.

thread: Many smart, educated people are confounding ideological “cults” with “religiosity” where *pseudo*religion is á propos. Religious impulse can indeed take weird & extreme turns, always self-defeating with severe internal contradictions. There’s nothing innately religious in that. > Secular thinkers take a religious dysfunction, usually in a slanted psychological & historical perspective, and postulate it as normative. Same with cult. It takes more work understanding & detailing how and why collectives go crazy or hysterical, without distorting basic terms. > Religious thinkers often refuse to acknowledge this problem in their own ranks, so ignoring the obvious, or reasoning the indefensible. Meanwhile, there’s very few thinkers unbeholden to the religious vs secular divide who are willing to look deeply enough at roots of madness. > In short, it’s the examination of roots of madness that will most reliably reveal the blindspots of both religious and secular thought systems, their relative strenghts, as well as their valid but limited internal logic. Of course, such examination is inherently perilous.

thread: There are different levels of challenge in any practice, each with its own logic. Styles, methods and ways of working will have a specific emphasis, a distinctive taste. With or without a guide, initially these levels cannot be distinguished. 1/n Choice of practice. Which to take up? If a practice isn’t chosen for you, search far and wide. Read & explore but don’t dabble. Take on a practice that speaks to you in more than one way, deeply engaging yet doable. Find guide(s) you can trust. Establish rapport and commit. 2/n Learning and developing the practice. Internalize basic instructions first, by repetition. Experience provides additional lessons. Learn what to do when x happens, which has it’s own life. May take months or years as you’re finding your feet. Provide feedback, ask questions. 3/n Deepening the practice. This is often about consistent effort, while shedding contrivance. You go where practice takes you. Dry periods, turbulent times, ups and downs, all of it. Something previously invisible takes shape, and then it’s a new beginning. 4/n Beyond formal practice. At the heart of any practice is a gesture eg. establishing attention, going empty, coming into presence, cutting through a habit etc. Take that gesture into everything you meet, do, feel, or know, without exception. In many ways, there is no limit. 5/end PS. Whether through impermanence, compassion, or devotion, the lion’s share of practice is unlearning. Habits of feeling, thinking, doing, and being are challenged & undermined. It often feels like dying. Get used to it. PPS. Motivation, of course. Comes first at every step, may change in time. Before looking at anything or anyone up close, clarify why you’re even looking, what moves you to seek out a practice. Be clear what a practice aims at, and how that fits with your own purpose.

Many have tweeted this before. I find it worth repeating. “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.” — Marcus Aurelius

When problems arise, we ask what’s wrong and try to curb, control, or eliminate the cause. We also look at what’s missing, then address the deficit by introducing, nourishing, and enhancing instead. Both aporoaches have merits in correcting an imbalance, at times both are needed.

“Balkanization of epistemology.” There you have it, Balkan and episteme in the same sentence, no irony.

Irrational, arational, non-rational, pre-rational, pseudo-rational, post-rational, meta-rational, trans-rational… Not birds of a feather, except that these terms make *rationality* central, polestar of sorts. Doesn’t work with magical and mythical, bc no claim to universality.

thread: There are many styles or systems of Buddhist tantric practice. Scholars struggle with defining Buddhist tantra, practitioners do not. Key features are few & obvious, optional ones abound, distinctive to lineages. Largely institutionalized long ago, it’s future remains untold. 1/n A tantric practitioner can be adventurer, celibate, parent, dropout, philantropist, recluse, bon vivant, saint etc. Does that mean it’s for anyone? Actually, some individuals are well suited for it by temperament, ability, inclination & circumstance. Not everyone. 2/n Due to its embrace of life’s dualities and complexities, some of its aspects may look particularly well suited to present situation, but that’s a deceptive resonance. Tantra is also utterly unimpressed by societal & philosophical vagaries. It’s roots are deep & acultural. 3/n Even so, when & where it does take shape, it uses found materials to articulate itself in a manner that’s at once natural, apropos, yet radical & challenging of established dichotomies, especially those re sacredness. Thus it reinvents itself in variety of contexts, selfsame. 4/n As to practice, it’s a symbolic reflection of life. E.g. silent meditation plays a role, but so do other modalities – ritual, art, study, magic, song, dance, energy etc. Depending on lineage, teacher & circumstance, practice modalities will vary. Rich, modular, adaptive. 5/n Tantric practice can be as simple as one mudrā, one mantra, one deity. For life. Or intricate, layered, complex & evolving without end. Tantric teachings can be laid out in volumes of scripture, in a single verse or syllable, or identified with whole reality as experienced. 6/n Mantranaya (mantra method), guhya mantrayāna (secret mantra vehicle), vajrayāna (vajra vehicle), Buddhist tantra, esoteric Buddhism etc. Related terms from different periods or contexts. Earliest systems are less elaborate, much later complexity is dissolved, a natural curve. 7/n Tantric threes: vajra body, vajra speech, vajra mind; teacher, deity, protector; mandala rituals involving mudrā, mantra, samādhi; movements, chants, wonderment; mystery, initiation, empowerment; sorcery, energy, awareness; nadi, prana, bindu etc. Fours & fives are fancy too. 8/n Otherwise, it’s a devotional path of practice like any other in a sense. Namely, it’s practice, practice, practice. And then practice some more. At its beginning is its end, at the end its beginning. And likewise at every step of the way. Love it, hate it, do it. Become it. /end PS. Caveat on usual & unusual risks, perils, blindspots & downsides forthcoming soon.

thread: A thread on un/usual risks, perils, blindspots & downsides in Buddhist tantric practice, cont. from previous thread. Each tweet an aspect, not exhaustive. Problems often arise from pre-existing conditions. Trigger warning: it’s blunt. intro/n On the lookout, observe the scenius before getting involved. Avoid business tantra, feelgood tantra, totem tantra, zombie tantra, larp & cosplay tantra, faux tantra, culture vulture tantra, academic tantra, armchair tantra, activist tantra, charity tantra & sex tantra. 1/n Merit hoarder aiming at perfection? Best path, special empowerments, secret methods, illustrious lineage, have empty bliss & eat it? Keep it simple & real. Look into spiritual materialism & bypassing. Also, check four maras. Explore confusion, delusion & obsession. 2/n Find a guide you can (1) relate to, (2) trust for instruction, (3) listen to even when you’re crazy. First, get to know them & let them know you. Second, get to know some of their senior students, talk to their spouse, observe how they live. Don’t rush it, trust your gut. 3/n Devotion is path. Enter with preliminaries, teacher union, deity union, before it dissolves courtesy of protectors, becoming sheer clarity. Schedule a decade for each. Cut through beliefs, expectations, projections, magical thinking, selfhood, emotionalism & intellectualism. 4/n Sorcery, energy, awareness. Each has its perils & trips. Your deficiencies & hangups will come up, repeatedly. Be uplifted, not hypnotized, by lofty promises. Respect your limitations, get familiar with your fears. Take your time to work through, learning at each step. 5/n For sorcery, 10% talent 40% work 50% chance. Hard bargain. Get solid instruction, mimic. Learn by doing, internalize, get feedback regularly. Results vary greatly, keep an open mind. Danger: lethargy coz no fireworks; if fireworks then self-inflation; also stupefaction. 6/n For energy, 10% talent 30% physiology 60% work. Again, solid instruction crucial. Best done under supervision, starting at young age. Danger: physical, emotional and/or mental imbalances resistant to treatment; also unwise energy manipulation. 7/n For awareness, 10% talent 40% integrity 50% work. Prior contemplative skill. Empowerment, introduction to awareness, time with teacher and/or time in solitude. Danger: stupor; non-restraint; addiction to clarity, bliss, stillness; also mood swings. 8/n Before & after, learn & understand samaya vows, both general & those specific for a practice. Know what it means to break & restore vows. Guard loyalty to deep longing, teachers, vajra kin etc. Danger: spiritual decadence & morbidity. 9/n Buddhist tantra is vintage mahāyāna. Therefore, cultivate great bodhicitta. Do your best, no regrets. Pursue a freedom of having no choice. Humour the inevitable. Secret, silent, sacred. /end PS. Extended praxis is key for a well-rounded approach. Whether in aesthetic, craft, nature exploration, martial arts, poetry, housekeeping, parenthood, dharmic or public service, tantra is never divorced from life, or death. Like warp & weft, weaving without beginning or end.

Study of knots (not knot theory) as an oblique way of understanding people & relationships.

thread: Vajrayāna is not unique among extant Buddhist streams to present a heterogenous spectrum of increasing subtlety, e.g. Nyingma has six yānas under tantrayāna (kriyā, caryā, yoga, mahāyoga, anuyoga, atiyoga). Ch’an/Son/Zen, for example, has five levels, according to Tsung-mi. 1/n Most likely, the notion came from Huayen (Avatamsaka) school, of which Tsung-mi was a lineage master. The five kinds are Common (bonpu), Outer way (gedō), Lesser vehicle (shojō), Great vehicle (daijō), and Supreme perfect vehicle (saijojō). 2/n Far from being mirror systems, they do share a logic of different levels of practice that *can* work as a standalone path with congruent basis-method-aim. And, also be part of a larger methodology. There are other such models, these two being better known. /end PS. Shingon Mikkyō, ie Japanese Vajrayāna, has ten levels: 3 non-Buddhist, 2 hīnayāna, 4 mahāyāna, plus “secret sublime” vajrayāna with its own sub-divisions. Some notes on these from 2011. (My thoughts on subject have evolved since. A follow-up is due.)

thread: Progenitors of Buddhist tantra have, of course, been mystics par excellence, flourishing in a milieu that had ample space for such. Even there & then they wouldn’t always fit. At least some of them were also what today we’d call neurodiverse, and weirdly gifted. Seems obvious. > An institutional framework creates a neurotypical setting, being a replica of many social patterns, as well as cultural structures & strictures. Giftedness & neurodiversity is better served outside of such framework, which explains the fringe kismet of so many tantric adepts. > Call it blessing, curse, giftedness, talent, quirk, genius, wunderkind, prodigy, outlier, whatnot. Nurture & nature, of course. The point of any practice is not to replicate their or anyone’s experience of self & world. Nor could any amount do that. Being who & what is enough.

thread: Unless you’re a cave/hut yogi in longterm seclusion, most of your practice, most of your samādhi, is off the proverbial cushion. Yet most available instruction on that is lame, vapid cliche, because compassion or something. > Usual spiel is about self/ego the patsy, zero reference to selfing being among most interesting aspects to explore in off-cushion practice. In a “sangha” mistreated self/ego thus easily becomes captive to silly virtuous narratives, social “buddhish” personas & cranky moralities. > Also, zero consideration is given in most “sanghas” to attention being syphoned to maintain the right facade. False consciousness is a-ok, when sanctioned by ideology-du-jour keeping church folk on right track. In this respect, WB is now mostly an exoteric secular religion. > Practice vs life is false dichotomy. One lives a practicing life, a life of practice, a life as practice. Card-carrying is no part of that, never was, never will be. Attention is applied thus: drop the practice vs life dichotomy, embrace circumstance & proceed step by step. > Meanwhile, bring close attention to how you do you – body, speech, mind. Trash the card. Trust your way seeking heart, not this tweet. Life is short, make it count.

Pāramitā is best rendered as crossing-over & far-reaching. First, as in crossing over the illusory gap between knowing, doing & being. Second, as in reaching the bonds & boundaries of what is. Rendering as perfection (by E. Conze) points to outcome, not function, of pāramitā.

thread: The classical “seven points” meditation posture, with its variations, has often been presented in ways that don’t do it justice. The emphasis gradually slipped into “being comfortable,” which is to say don’t injure yourself & maintain ability to relax & rest. 1/n But that’s just 1/3 of it. The other two are alertness & immobility, both provided for by the well-balanced posture. Aim at any one & the other two are lost. Actively pursue any two & the third results of itself. It’s a skill. So, what else is there? 2/n Having seen a buddha-image, it’s tempting to make a superficial remark about the posture’s composure, calm, serenity. In fact, a sustained alert immobility is an exact analogue of our always being bound & clueless & helpless. That’s exactly where the journey begins & ends. 3/n Being bound is being bewitched & enchanted. Clueless, as in not knowing whence or where to. Helpless, as in paralyzed, no resource or recourse. Recognizing & accepting the situation must precede any attempt to look for a way beyond it. 4/n Once “seven point” posture is penetrated, we find ourselves pinned to awareness & in good company. Then, with some experience, basic threefold cadence of sustained alert immobility is explored in kneeling, standing, walking & lying down. Hence, “posture” becomes attitude. 5/n This is elementary mudrā training, of course. In step with skill, one learns to balance & harness energy, which naturally leads to deepening levels of attentional balance & psychosomatic pliancy. This then becomes a feedback loop, with composure, calm & serenity as reward. /end

“If not my name, body, feelings and thoughts, what am I?” This kind of inquiry, taken seriously, used to blow minds away & change lives. > Same with meditating on & contemplating one’s own inevitable imminent death. Same with exposing oneself to prolonged period of discomfort & frustration. One would think such basic mindfulness methods could have more clout in contemporary practice, due to their power & benefit. > Even aiming for happiness, these basic subjects inoculate one against infantile emotional obsessions. Aiming for being at peace, the understanding they impart is quite indispensable.

不一不二 not one not two

Looking at the age at which great historical masters made a dent & left a mark, it’s clearly in the 35-45 range. Used to be the same in politics, art, philosophy, science, somewhat earlier for math.

Leaving the familiar behind ie “renunciation” or “leaving home” remains the basic requisite. Whether shaved & robed, or unshaven & disheveled, or sassy & snappy, makes no difference. Whether in a cave, a monastery, or a crowded household, some leave, yet most never do.

People being instances of development contributes very little to people understanding development or why it’s a thing. While nobody escapes it, very few understand some of it. > Granted, different types of development (“dev axes”) are not equal or necessarily comparable. Plus, not everyone develops in the same way, at same rate, or having similar experiences. And it’s not all good to better to great, either, so it remains somewhat unpopular.

The line between instruction & indoctrination is razor-thin. > To undo indoctrination, a different indoctrination won’t do. Learning how to think is inseparable from knowing one’s mind, both its functions and its nature. > Dictionaries give indoctrination as “uncritical acceptance of beliefs”. Intellectual numbing is implied, by either or both parties, as commonly understood. That’s opposed to learning how to think, whatever the standard for thinking.

A way to protect teachings from oblivion is memorizing them, learning by heart, taking to heart. A way to protect methods is practicing them to their end. A way to protect traditions is transmitting what was thus learned, mastered, and discovered. Heart to heart.

As to wine, I’m a terroiriste myself. A place is a place, no way around it, sort of. This logic is at work in all serious matters, even stripped of contextual accruals of time, place & culture. An unmistakable quality to a tradition of practice, it’s not just methods & concepts.

Practice it, and it gets ever trickier. Control it, and you get in trouble. Ignore it, and it comes after you. Live it, and it takes care of itself.

Music – as practiced in this age – can be taken apart, made to destroy itself, seemingly without punishment (I would argue the procedure is its own reward & punishment). But language, whether spoken or written, won’t allow it. And people can feel that – if they pay attention.

If something matters to you… Opinions on things that matter are easy, and misleading. Take a day to formulate a question. Take a week to gestate an inquiry. Take a month to explore its blindspots & limitations.

A short explanation of an early stage in practice, often overwhelming. Restricted focused attention, as practiced by many, impedes this natural occurence, even further repressing the stored pain & disquietude, while hardening the inner split.

How does one share advice with two (or more) people who – in all likelihood – need to hear opposite things? Come from experience, do your best to show, not tell. > Avoid generalized “we” as much as possible, in both thinking & speaking. There are always exceptions, extremes, and irreducible nuances, not to mention unknown unknowns. Universals are attractive, yet create a false certainty of knowledge & belief. > Finally, beware of solipsisms. The basic human condition *is* pervasive & unavoidable. It’s just a wee bit inscrutable.

Last week passed 2000 online mentoring sessions. No comment.

Covid19 is a mid-level threat to people of certain age and pre-existing conditions. Measures taken have been a high-level threat to pretty much everyone and everything. If this is rehearsal for an actual calamity, most countries failed the test.

thread: Much of Western Buddhism is based on yāna-conflation resulting in widespread yāna-confusion, a rather faithful replication of Western culture’s ailments. One could argue Buddhism has been integrated and co-opted. > Yānas are developmental, but also view-method-specific. Both linear & non-linear. With first, think child to adolescent to adult & beyond. With second, think physics to biology to psychology. Fake egalitarian aims are counterproductive, unless everyone is to be punished equally. > Thru 70s & 80s some hoped WB would develop a genuine response to new environment. Instead, it went overboard in 90s to accommodate the whims of culture & market & politics. A new opportunity presents itself for those who don’t buy this kind of domestication to stale consensus.

Word of new decade: epistemology. What was once a niche specialty will increasingly become staple for anyone seeking to retain broad functionality, not to mention an edge. Gourmet epistemologies and their curators are already in high demand. > Fluid epistemology also implies dynamic axioontologies. Simply put, adaptive knowledge is based in transparent core values & first principles. Quality bespoke education and training in these domains is overdue in most settings across societies.

A few kind words. “The world is full of idiots. There are many kinds of idiots. Foolish harmless idiots. Shy emotionally vulnerable idiots. Over-sensitive idiots. Ridiculous pious idiots. Comfort seeking idiots. Mundane conformist idiots. 1/3 > > Tight-minded conservative idiots. Unconventional exhibitionist idiots. Puritanical idiots. Pompous spiritual idiots. Self-righteous hypocritical idiots. Self-satisfied sanctimonious idiots. Academic scholarly idiots. Tedious self-centered idiots. Clever scheming idiots. 2/3 > > Power-seeking idiots. Arrogant bigoted idiots. Cruel avaricious idiots. And dangerous vicious idiots. I have no time for idiots.” — Kyabjé Kunzang Dorje Rinpoche 3/end

Iroha, the exquisite Japanese pangram. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iroha Improvement on somewhat older pangram, Ametsuchi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ametsuchi_no_Uta… Both popularized the phonetic kana syllabary. Shown in pic, Iroha in hiragana executed by Shingon master Jomyo Tanaka in Zagreb, 2002.

Nothing brings humans together like a song.

It’s been a month since the Ask Me Anything thread, and it wasn’t too bad, so I’ll do another AMA here on twitter this Saturday, Nov 21. If you’re up for it, until then… #askmeanything

Recent trends show a shift from lineage-based practice to a method-based one. Historically not unprecedented, so no issue there. Yet problems arise when methods are decoupled from principles, and then *played with.* In short, stuff played with is at best sterile. > A related shift is already taking place from a teacher-based to a student-centered learning. Again, on its own merit a good thing. But put these two trends together & they spell insidious marketization mostly driven by dwindling demand. Method-peddlers gotta make a living. > Further, web-based delivery systems facilitate mass delivery of instruction, irrespective of quality. Sign up, pay up, go. Again, can go either way. Looking *across* these trends, obvious where it goes. Will online services outgrow & replace actual communities? If so, not good. > It’s surely both/and not either/or. Yet there’s a definite future for small resilient practice-first communities, a combination of ongoing online connection & living group dynamics, where everyone is invited & challenged to go deep.

All are rooted in faith, but there’s a discernible difference between hope, aspiration, and intention. What is it?

Nobody expects the buddhist inquisition. Fortunately though, as most often with religious stuff in buddhism, it is self-inflicted.

thread: Superb statues of the Guardians of four directions (四天王 shitennō, lit. four divine kings), original protectors (skt. dharmapāla) of Buddhism, related also to four great elements. > In Sanskrit they are known as mahārāja-deva, and have a heaven of their own. Their names are Virūpākṣa (west), Dhṛtarāṣṭra (east), Vaiśravaṇa (north), and Virūḍhaka (south). > These protectors of Buddhist triple gem also shield Śakra (aka Indra, see pic) & his Trāyastriṃśa heaven at the apex of mount Sumeru. To that end, each commands one of four groups: Kumbhāṇḍas (dwarfs), Gandharvas (fairies), Nāgas (dragons) & Yakṣas (goblins). > Most of their protective function was taken by wrathful vidyārāja, sorcerer-kings (or queens, vidyārājñī ), e.g. Acalanātha, Yamāntaka aka Vajrabhairava, Trilokavijaya, Vajrayakṣa, Amṛtakuṇḍalin, Mahāmāyūrī, Rāgarāja (King of Lust, pic), Ucchuṣma, Hayagrīva etc. > With the advent of vajrayāna, these protective figures grew in prominence & influence, as did those who knew how to invoke or wield such powers. The necessity of protection remains important as ever, just as its absence leaves teachings & practitioners exposed & vulnerable.

thread: More than a few people rashly enter a transformative practice with considerable emotional & mental issues unresolved. From what I’ve seen, it’s a recipe for disaster, as they end up further disrupting their fragile balance & integrity. Sadly but expectedly, this isn’t advertised. > It’s a rather complex issue, but few points are due. First, some aspects of practice are challenging – sometimes brutal – even for a well-integrated psyche in good health & circumstances. There’s also the possibility of unpredictable emergence, ie more than one can metabolize. > > Second, this makes *years* of preparation & groundwork essential. A well-paced progress is one that doesn’t burn inner structures, while it detects the fragilities & blindspots. Don’t start with dry vipassana or instant jhana instructions picked from a book or online course. > > Thirdly, untreated trauma will resurface sooner or later. It will get worse if ignored or forced through. Plus, an odd mushroom or LSD trip isn’t as innocent as touted by enthusiasts – it’s russian roulette. Same with subtle energy techniques pursued on one’s own. > > Last but not least, conventional structures & healthy routines, lasting meaningful relationships, ability to hold a job etc. are solid predictors of smoother transformation. They’re also effective in stabilizing a disruption that can be agonizing & seem desperately incurable. > > As I’ve often argued, be careful & alert, take advantage of accumulated wisdom, be conservative not naive when it comes to gambling your sanity. If you’re already in trouble, rest assured *a lot* can be done with good sense, patience & reliable guidance. Good luck! PS. Phrase “considerable X unresolved” is not to be confused with those who may not do very well in many circumstances but flourish in practice contexts & tolerate intense shifts. Neuro divergence is a separate issue, which need not overlap with X.

thread: A follow up on the “crash & burn” thread, with additional remarks in reply to comments & feedback. Imo there are no simple solutions, no easy answers, but a sensible strategy is possible. Lacking a mature, widespread contemplative culture, it may be sufficient as second best. > Anti-fragility is essential, work on it. Chaos is necessary to survive & flourish, befriend it. Avoiding every danger & challenge is not the best way to live a meaningful life, but that doesn’t mean being reckless. There are occupational hazards in every field of endeavour. > Struggle, impermanence, emptiness – minds are not safe spaces. Challenges are par for the course on every leg of hero’s journey. Key is to proceed step by step. Take time to establish where you are, start from there. It’s a learning-how-to process. Steps cannot be skipped. > Fetishizing special experiences is integral to some circles of practice. Instead, clarify the purpose, method, effects & results (h/t to @kenmcleod) of a given practice. Start with low hanging fruits – develop confidence, balance, ability to orient yourself in unknown terrain. > Practice styles are not just a matter of inclination or preference. Buddhist yānas have specific starting points, specific paths, specific ends. Different language to address what you are, how to proceed, what you aim at becoming. Of course, training methods differ accordingly. > Maps depict places, phases, features, not individual experiences. Also, aspects of maps are non-linear. What is referred to as “preparation” may cover a decade of groundwork done well. Far reaches describe what few can stabilize through a lifetime of practice. > When you encounter difficulties in your practice, consider three questions. Do I want to be present in this experience? Do I know how to be present in this experience? Do I have the capacity to be present in this experience? http://unfetteredmind.org/three-questions/ > There are also issues faced by new generations, coming into their own in the contemporary quicksand culture. These have to do with relationship to past, reverence for reality, appreciation for genuine relationships etc. > If a young seeker, no need to do it alone. Get together, form a group of like-minded, in-person whenever possible, support each other, define the basics, explore possibilities, seek counsel, engage multiple elders, take responsibility for your lot, learn and share. Good luck! > PS. “Many problems in meditation practice come from confusion about what we think should happen, what we want to happen, and what actually happens.” @kenmcleod on purpose, method, effects, results here: https://unfetteredmind.org/up-against-a-wall-sources-of-unnecessary-confusion/

thread: ༈ འདུ་བྱེད་ཐམས་ཅད་མི་རྟག་ཅིང༌། ཟག་བཅས་ཐམས་ཅད་སྡུག་བསྔལ་བ། ཆོས་རྣམས་སྟོང་ཞིང་བདག་མེད་པ། མྱ་ངན་ལས་འདས་པ་ཞི་བའོ། ། > A common theme in Buddhism across yānas, known as three marks or seals: anityatva, duḥkha, nairātmya. It’s about maturity & sanity, a basis for practice, without which ennobling aspirations & efforts easily devolve into puerile fantasies & worse. > > Anityatva is impermanence, at work on many levels. Knowing with certainty that I/everyone will die at an uncertain time, prompts respect wrt anyone’s time & urgency wrt what one holds most precious ie what one cares about deeply. Antidote to inanity, protection from regret. >> Duḥkha is pain. Knowing failure, loss, sorrow, knowing that anyone alive does experience some form of struggle, helps recognize the limits of ordinary contentment & find common ground. Antidote to excess, aggression, cruelty, protection from obsession. >> Nairātmya means no selfness. Knowing deep intimacy with self, others & things – conceptual, emotional, visceral intimacy. A spacious clarity that makes relating possible, engaging viable. Antidote to naivety, fixation, paranoia, protection from extremes. >> Sometimes a fourth line says “nirvāṇa is peace” (skt. śānti). It’s not a place or a feeling, it’s not an experience. It’s freedom from reactivity, release from the grip of habituation & compulsion. Some seek it as be-all & end-all. Some find it as end of seeking. >> Nirvāṇa sūtra says it’s 常樂我淨 – permanence, bliss, self, purity. Some take it literally. Some as poetry or metaphor. Some as an intimation of mystery. Regardless, it can only be found through the previous three. Which is good, because we are sealed to them, sealed by them./

ends on Dec 5, 2020

“When encountering illness or disease, we experience a loss of balance, strength and vitality. Contagion disrupts whole societies. Easy tasks become difficult or impossible. Those who are sick depend heavily on the assistance of others, while they are also at the mercy of chance and conditions. Impermanence is suddenly obvious, while life’s precarious nature asserts itself. Our priorities come into question as the future grows uncertain, and leisure fades into irrelevance. Death is recognized in its immediacy, as we can no longer pretend time is abundant.

Fear, worry, and regret may overwhelm those who are afflicted, as well as those who are helping. Susceptibility and relatedness are thrown into sharp relief. Anger and sadness drain precious energy. Loneliness and helplessness add insult to injury.

Individuals, as well as cultures, respond to illness in different ways – some with denial, some with confusion, some with resolve, some with equanimity. Whatever the case, illness tests our ability to maintain a balance between doing what needs to be done, and accepting what cannot be changed.

The purpose of this practice is to cultivate individual capacity for balance between action and acceptance, deepen one’s understanding of illness and death as part of being alive, and awaken from the dreamlike confusion perpetuated through habitual reactions, thus becoming more able and available to assist others.

Start by creating a sacred space, perhaps a simple shrine. Place an image, if you have one, of the Medicine Buddha, as a symbolic representation of original mind as source of steadiness and resourcefulness. In front of it, set offerings of flowers, light (candle) and incense. Medicine Buddha is known as Bhaiṣajyaguru, or Master of Healing (jap. Yakushi, tib. Menla). He’s often flanked by the Bodhisattvas Sunlight and Moonlight. More complex presentations give seven forms of Medicine Buddha, as well as a mandala featuring Medicine Buddha surrounded by eight Bodhisattvas. Just as Buddha Limitless Light, known as Amitābha, in the western Realm of Joy guides those who encounter death, so the Medicine Buddha in his eastern Realm of Pure lapis lazuli guides those who encounter illness. What follows is a simple ceremony.”

***

*An edited/updated version has been uploaded on April 4, 2020.

Here you may find a download in pdf format.

Medicine Buddha – A Simple Ceremony

Mind nature is only ever known by itself.

Not a thing, not an experience, not an otherness.

Secret, silent, sacred.

Somewhat before that, I was considering the term through the work of sociologist Anthony Giddens. In traditional or pre-modern contexts, “individual actions do not have to be analysed and thought about so much, because choices are already prescribed by the traditions and customs”. In post-traditional or modern contexts, the options are as open as possible. Therefore, “society becomes much more reflexive and aware of its own precariously constructed state”. In short, deference to tradition – doing things just because people did them in the past – is the exact opposite of this modern reflexivity. On the individual level, similarly, we need to work out our roles for ourselves. “What to do? How to act? Who to be? These are focal questions for everyone living in circumstances of late modernity – and ones which, on some level or another, all of us answer, either discursively or through day-to-day social behaviour.” (Giddens, 1991) I had issues with some of his arguments, but general conclusions were sound.

In his 2014 piece How is the Medium Changing the Message? Ken McLeod writes:

Buddhism in the modern world is a multi-faceted mosaic that is being shaped as much by technology as it is by Western ideas. To the rich heritage of classical texts, monastic institutions and traditional rituals that have been practiced for centuries, one must add the exploration of ways to teach and practice in the context of contemporary society, the re-interpretation of traditional texts for modern contexts with modern analytical tools, the questioning of traditional philosophical, institutional or ethical frameworks, social action inspired by Buddhist thought and practice, and pragmatic Buddhism, the application of Buddhist thought and practice to the problems and challenges of life. Other influences have also made themselves felt: a consumer mentality, utilitarianism, and the adaptation of Buddhist thinking and methods to psychological, medical, corporate and military agendas.

Considering modern Buddhism, McLeod applies Marshall McLuhan’s “four effects” that consider how technology affects existing conditions – something is enhanced, something becomes obsolete, something is retrieved, and something is reversed. When applied to traditions in modernity, this allows for a nuanced understanding and a dialectic that combines assertion, rejection, reform and synthesis.

As it happens, I came to use the term post-traditional in a related way – somewhat ironically, as a rich trope – to explain how genuine traditions actually continue to live as modernities, with varying degrees of tension, as long as they can adapt to new social circumstances, and shift with the nature of self-identities. Basically, I use post and traditional as equally strong members of a compound. That is, most modernity is an evolving continuation of projects started by tradition. For example, venerable modern vocations – lawyer, doctor, professor etc. – originate from medieval monasteries. Also, many modern Western political and legal ideas have evolved directly from traditional monotheistic teachings. So, in my understanding, to say post-traditional is to simultaneously assert and refute tradition. This opens the door to a middle way approach, which is only possible if one can hold the two extreme positions simultaneously and accept both their mutual cancellation, as well as their sublimation in a forward movement.

Three intended meanings of post-traditional:

• post-traditional (1) – first reading of post-traditional is genealogical; we live after tradition, which necessarily precedes modernity; contrary to the myth of progress, forward doesn’t mean better, it means forward; to understand modernity, we must understand its origin; to construct a responsive, vibrant modernity, we must digest traditions, and in the case of spiritual traditions, be digested ourselves by them.
• post-traditional (2) – second reading uncovers the strikingly retro-character of tradition in modernity; namely, we now know that tradition as understood today was more often than not formulated or defined during the advent of modernity, either as response to the perceived threat of modernity, or as commodification of a bastardized tradition, and we even have numerous invented traditions; however, early classical traditions – say 1000 years ago or earlier  – were not a monolithic system but an interplay of relevant actors and factors, not a transmission of something solid from one generation to another; suffice to look at the actual history of any major religion, and we see not a system, which is itself a modernist fetish, but an ecology of streams and tributaries; in short, and this is the ironic reading – we are post-traditional inasmuch as we do away with traditionalist and/or modernist fantasies about the positive/negative character of traditions.
• post-traditional (3) – third reading suggests a possible way forward, namely to work in ways that differ from avowedly traditional forms of practice – such as monk, cave yogi, lay person – because we live in a different world, and because as social beings we are different selves; this is the only sense in which post signifies breaking away from something; instead, we need to evolve practice-forms both hybrid and novel, responsive to where we’re at,  and deepen such forms in open environments i.e. wherever social and cultural regimes don’t dominate or dictate human interactions.

The refutation and assertion of existing solutions are both necessary when circumstances change significantly, whether in one’s own life, or in society at large. This perhaps makes the whole thing a bit awkward, but that’s just a reflection of how we come to find a way through the confusing disarray of available conceptions and misconceptions around tradition, history, time, origin, continuation and evolution. Immature modernity is rebellious and contrarian, while a more seasoned and maturated modernity finds peace and clarity in relation to its predecessors. My personal relationship to traditional teachings and practices remains somewhat paradoxical but certainly workable – it’s true, something is enhanced, something becomes obsolete, something is retrieved, something is reversed – and forward just means forward.

∴

Buddhisms are historical and situational. Timebound, juxtaposed to society and culture. More so with Buddhist institutions, lineages, authorities and experts, organizational forms, norms of devotion and morality, yogic and ritual practices, philosophy, religiosity etc. Buddhisms are channels and grooves for Dharma. At best, they give provisional expression to dharmic functions in the context of a culture, a situation, namely time and place. However, they are also depositories or sedimentations of achievements and failures, both individual and collective, in serving not just Dharma, but also perennial human needs, some of which are inimical to the practice of Dharma.

∴

People East and West, including students of Dharma, often struggle with Buddhism, its varied forms, divergent norms, and inherent tensions, mistaking them for the actual practice and path of Dharma. Some are quite happy with their Buddhism, replacing one conformist convention with another. Others argue that their Buddhism needs to change and adapt to time and place, which usually happens anyway. Meanwhile, practitioners follow their particular form or yana, with its distinct internal logic, often unaware of other Buddhist yanas. Whether Buddhism needs reinventing is a matter of opinion – not to mention power, passion, knowledge, and skill. Very few are qualified, equipped, or positioned to do so. In addition, it remains to be seen whether any spiritual tradition can stabilize a non-dysfunctional development in existing conditions.

∴

Consider the complexity of music. First, there’s the innate sensitivity to rhythm and melody, an appreciation both somatic and aesthetic. There’s also musical education with its many levels from beginning to expert, whether do-it-yourself or academic: theory, practice, notes and pitches, scales and patterns, beats and tempo, measure and metre, tones and microtones, tuning and notations, solfeggio, training for voice and instruments, classical and contemporary etc. Then there’s composition, a vast dimension in itself, with arrangement, interpretation, and improvisation. Then there’s the market, the “industry” with agents and managers and publishers and il/legal sharing and streaming services, easy and difficult music with many genres and niches, the performance arena with concerts and tours, stardom and fandom, discophiles and audiophiles in high-end music reproduction, connoisseurs and dilletantes in appreciation etc. And then there are issues of entertainment and art, taste and enjoyment, challenge and solace, playing it and listening to it etc. There’s good and bad music, of course, just as there’s fabulous noises and vapid melodies. But before and after all of that, there’s the magic of sounds and the power of silences.

∴

Ditto Buddhisms and Dharma.

• Benkenmitsu nikyō ron (辯顯密二教論 “On the Differences between the Exoteric and Esoteric Teachings”, available translations by Hakeda and Giebel; Croatian title “Razlikovanje egzoteričnog i ezoteričnog učenja”)
• Bonji Shittan jimo narabi ni shakugi (梵字悉曇字母幷釋義 “Siddham mother letters”, available translation by Takagi & Dreitlein; Croatian title “Slova majke”)
• Dainichikyō kaidai – Hōkai jōshin (大日經開題 – 法界淨心 “Commentary to the title of Mahāvairocanābhisambodhi sūtra”, available translation by Dreitlein; Croatian title “O naslovu Mahāvairocanābhisambodhi sūtre)
• Hannyashingyō hiken (般若心經祕鍵 “Secret key to Heart Sutra”, available translations by Hakeda and Dreitlein; Croatian title “Tajni ključ za Sutru srca”)
• Hizō hōyaku (秘蔵寶鑰 “The Precious Key to the Secret Treasury”, available translations by Hakeda and Giebel; Croatian title “Draguljni ključ tajne riznice”)
• Jissō Hannya kyō tasshaku (實相般若經答釋 “Comments on Questions on the Shixiang bore jing”, available translation by Takagi & Dreitlein; Croatian title “Komentari na pitanja o Shixiang bore jing”)
• Jūyukan (十喩觀 “Ten Singing Images”,  available translation by Gibson & Murakami; Croatian title “Deset slika”)
• Kan’en no sho (勸緣疏 “On Encouraging Those with a Connection to Buddhism”, available translation by Takagi & Dreitlein; Croatian title “Pismo ohrabrenja”)
• Konshōōkyō himitsu kada (金勝王經祕密伽陀 “Secret Gathas on the Suvarnaprabhasa-sutra”, available translation Takagi & Dreitlein; Croatian title “Tajne gathe za Suvarnaprabhasa sutru”)
• Sanmaya kaijō (三昧耶戒序 “Introduction to the Precepts of Samaya”, available translation by White; Croatian title “Uvod u propis samaye”)
• Shōji jissō gi (聲字實相義 “The Meanings of Sound, Letter, and Reality”, available translations by Hakeda, Giebel, and Takagi & Dreitlein; Croatian title “Glas slovo zbilja”)
• Shōrai mokuroku (請來目錄 “A List of Texts and Items Brought from China”, available translations by Hakeda and Takagi & Dreitlein; Croatian title “Popis tekstova i predmeta uvezenih iz Kine”)
• Sokushin jōbutsu gi (卽身成佛義 “Buddhahood Immediately and in This Body”, available translations by Takagi & Dreitlein, Hakeda, Giebel, Inagaki, and partial by Abé; Croatian title “Ostvarenje probuđenja u ovom tijelu”)
• Unji gi (吽字義 “The Meanings of the Letter Hum”, available translations by Hakeda, Giebel, and Takagi & Dreitlein; Croatian title “Slovo hum”)

I have also rendered in Croatian the Putixin Lun (菩提心論 Bodaishin ron, “Bodhicitta shastra”, Croatian title “Rasprava o bodhicitti”), traditionally attributed to Bodhisattva Nāgārjuna, though likely work of Tripitaka master Amoghavajra (705-774). With addition of previously reedited “Awakening of Faith in the Mahāyāna” (大乗起信論 Daijō kishin ron, “Buđenje vjere”) and Kiyota’s “Shingon Buddhism: Theory and Practice” (“Shingon: doktrina i praksa”), this private library provides a comprehensive textual basis for students of Shingon Mikkyō in the Mandala Society of Croatia.

Published English-language volumes with most of these texts in them are:

• “Kūkai: Major Works” by Hakeda (amazon)
• “Shingon Texts” in BDK English Tripitaka Series (amazon)
• “Kūkai on the Philosophy of Language” by Takagi and Dreitlein (amazon)

Available material in English also includes:

• “Tantric Buddhism in East Asia” ed. Payne (amazon)
• “The Awakening of Faith” by Hakeda (amazon)
• “Shingon: Japanese Esoteric Buddhism” by Yamasaki (amazon)
• “The Weaving of Mantra” by Abe (amazon)
• “Two Esoteric Sutras” in BDK English Tripitaka Series (amazon)
• “The Vairocanābhisambodhi Sutra”  in BDK English Tripitaka Series (online) (amazon)
• “The Englightenment of Vairocana” by Wayman and Tajima
• “Art in Japanese Esoteric Buddhism” by Takaaki Sawa
• “A Study of Ritual Mudras in the Shingon Tradition and their Symbolism” by Miyata
• “The Matrix and Diamond World Mandalas in Shingon Buddhism” by Snodgrass
• “The Rishukyo: The Sino-Japanese Tantric Prajnaparamita” by Astley-Kristensen (online)
• “Thinking Through Shingon Ritual” by Sharf (online)
• “Visualization and Mandala in Shingon Buddhism” by Sharf (online)
• “Icons and Iconoclasm in Japanese Buddhism” by Winfield (amazon)
• “Politics and Transcendent Wisdom” by Orzech (amazon)
• “The Culture of Secrecy in Japanese Religion” ed. Scheid & Teeuwen (amazon)
• “Kūkai” at Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Krummel (online)
• “Shingon Mikkyo’s Twofold Mandala: Paradoxes and Integration” by Kiyota (online)
• “True Words, Silence, and the Adamantine Dance” by Rambelli (online)

In the next year or so I hope to improve on existing or partial Croatian translations of the three sutras most important for Shingon Buddhism: the Mahāvairocanābhisambodhi sūtra (available translations by Yamamoto and Giebel), the Vajraśekhara sūtra (available translation by Giebel), and Amoghavajra’s rendering of Adhyardhaśatikā prajñāpāramitā, most commonly known as 理趣經 Rishu-kyō in Japan (available translations by Miyata and Astley).

We live among fragmented images, perhaps even as fragmented selves, thus the art of imagination often stands neglected. I want to look at – 1 – how creative imagination is important, 2 – how tradition provides good examples, and 3 – how we don’t know what to do with what’s available.

1. Imagination is important as a key aspect of practice

1a. Imagination is a resource, it brings together heart and mind while creating new possibilities that move us beyond the confines of our perception. Images are delivered by each sense, not just the visual. Plus, imagination isn’t confined to aesthetic and artistic pursuits. It shows up in every challenge, every inquiry, innovation and discovery. Thus, awakened imagination is closely related to unfettered perception, and is the original psychoactive agent.

1b. Imagination is intrinsic to our being. The first two modules of the eightfold path, namely view or outlook and aspiration or ideation, are very much about imagination. Our experience is awareness, plus imagination, plus perception. To be transformative, and even liberating, imagination has to be approached with care and discernment, or else its immense potential easily falls prey to confusion, and ultimately – banality. Cultivated imagination is based on a willingness to face the unknown and stay with it, trusting where it takes us. It sprouts as faith (shraddha) and comes to fruit as a form of knowing (prajna). Ignoring repressed imagination causes serious problems. Neglected imagination leads to stagnation, imbalance, and insanity.

1c. Function of imagination is to open, uplift, and inspire awe. Great works of art engage our senses, emotions, and awareness. When this happens, we often become aware of our own contraction, reluctance, and holding back. Thus, imagination also puts us in touch with these patterns, while opening the way for other possibilities. To follow the awe is to experience the contraction and distraction while choosing to step into the open space of possibilities.

2. In traditional sources we find many good examples

2a. In classical Buddhism, we don’t find an explicit treatment of creative imagination, or an approach to its cultivation. Opening verses of Dhammapada say everything in experience is mind-wrought. Imagination is concerned with both creation and dissolution of images, again not just visual ones. Awakening can be understood as a threshold between two modes of imagination: a passive imagination twisted by confusion, and a translucent imagination expressive of wakefulness and  responsive to the immediacy of whatever may be the situation.

Sutras and tantras are amazing literary achievements, products of an exuberant creativity. Arts such as painting, sculpture, architecture and ritual practices, developed alongside scriptural canons, the influence between textual and contextual going both ways. One thing standing for another thing is the basis of symbolism and language, and Buddhists have developed a particular symbolic language, based on  interdependence and empty form.

2b. Examples    Buddhist methods that harness imagination, such as contemplation of death and the four immeasurables, have been in use since the earliest times. Remembering buddha is another crucial method, used by virtually all schools. Buddha is imagined in front, above, within, around, or as oneself. These and other methods have been used by countless practitioners in every culture where Buddhist teachings were practiced, and continue to be very beneficial for so many.

Early Buddhism was aniconic for several centuries, which does not imply the earliest teachings are not fond of poetic language. From what we know about Siddhartha Gautama’s teaching methods, he used metaphor with flexibility and humor, mostly in the context of a dialogue. Episodes in Gautama Buddha’s life were soon symbolised: footprints for birth, tree for awakening, seat for authority, wheel for teaching, stupa for passing away. Such images were venerated as signs of buddha-presence and in time became icons. According to Buddhaghoša, a 5th century Theravada master, devotion has four correct objects: „The senior in sangha, the bodhi tree, an image of buddha, and the stupa.“ All four are substitutes for buddha.

In Mahayana, various buddhas and bodhisattvas make up the pantheon, with their particular samadhi, mantra-dharani, vow, and manner of awakening, sometimes their own pureland. It’s impossible to say which come first – the vision of buddha-body captured in an illumined image, or the hearing of buddha-voice captured in a sutra discourse.

In Vajrayana, the vision of countless buddhas, intoning of dharma-syllables, and simultaneous ritual actions, come together to merge the practitioner, the art, the teaching, and raw materials of experience into one dynamic whole without an outside.

2c. Cognitive, affective, and aesthetic in tradition      While treatises and commentaries often focus on philosophical aspects of doctrines and practices, sutras and tantras are replete with poetic descriptions of buddha. These repositories of Buddhist imagery weave cognitive, affective and aestethic languages to inspire and guide the reader. As in every sacred literary tradition, metaphor of magic and myth are effective in this way. For the literally minded, they provide basis for stupefying beliefs, superstition, and idolatry. Be that as it may, one needs to rein in the conventional suspicion of wonder and marvel. The imaginative dimension of Buddhist teachings belongs to the domain of mythos – expressive of basic values, generative of a particular poignancy – in common with sacred art everywhere. We find the same creative play at the heart of so many rituals – wherein all things, actual, possible, potential, even the improbable, are simultaneous and coextensive. Our participation in such drama entails every faculty and every mode of experience. Therein lies the transformative, but also the unitive power of awakened imagination.

Japanese master Kukai was aware that imagination can be seductive: „Full of strange things is the world of yoga in which many images appear. There is a moment when we are drawn into a luminous world of experience. Do not hold on, do not be deceived; such a vision is yet provisional.“ Yet he was also convinced that imaginative aids are indispensable, since ordinary language cannot fully express the Dharma.

3. We don’t know how to use what we have

3a. According to Sangharakshita, Western culture has seen several iconoclasms – one by the early Christianity suppressing pagan gods, one by Protestant Reformation condemning most imagination, and then rationalism turning myth into either pathology or entertainment, and deeply meaningful images into cliches. Western Buddhists have a rich imaginative legacy, but our images are for the most part gutted of power and significance. Now also elsewhere, including traditional Buddhist countries, modernity poses a challenge to existing models of imagination. Indeed, the question is equally valid everywhere – how do we imagine buddha today?

Western art starting with renaissance is saturated with history and meaning, so we tend to shy away from using existing masterpieces to our purpose, but they are strong reminders of what’s possible. Meanwhile, imaginative and figurative modes of expression are comodified as everything else. Symbols as mere glyphs soon become opaque, then unintelligible, and finally trivial. Symbols are manipulated, vacated, recoded and often imbued with arbitrary meaning, perhaps even opposite from the established one (example, swastika). For people in the past, buddhas and bodhisattvas were first and foremost a vibrant presence, only secondly symbols. For most modern people, even those who follow traditional teachings, deities are symbolic representations, and only then, and just for some, living presences. Just as we speak of living, dying and dead languages, same is true of images, icons and symbols.

3b. Art, music, dance     Although we start with received images, one can encounter buddha only through an image that was born in one’s own mind. Today we need to rediscover how buddha appears to us. Where symbolic gaps are concerned, whether due to different cultures or different ages, we must strike on our own, afresh and anew.

Starting from basic openness, we look for sounds and sights, acts and attitudes, situations and settings, that invoke the quality of being present and awake. This is an important role for sangha, to be an incubator of an aesthetic culture, through arts, music, dance – bringing communities together in celebration, while inspiring awe and wonder.

3c. Future     Classical methods of presenting buddha are valuable, and yet new ways of imagining buddha will continue being introduced. In this process, it is vital to discern between images that empower imagination from those that merely conform to orthodoxy, or those that feed into sentimentality. Reclaiming a buddha that is potent here and now is the task of creatively imagining an awakening that takes place in this world. Imago dei is a central notion in Christianity, Judaism and  Sufism, according to which humans are created in God’s image and likeness. Without drawing too strong a parallel with Buddhism, in particular the teachings on buddha-nature, the image of buddha is also a mirror of deep human potentials. If our natural faculty of amazement and wonderment wil be our guide, there’s no reason to doubt our ability to seek out, create, and cultivate vivid images of buddha, that is to say, reflections of wakefulness.

X. Summary     Buddhist imagination is to be found at the juncture of art and meditation. If buddha is to be a vibrant presence once again, and only secondly a symbol, a rediscovery must take place of buddha as vibrant presence, one that – when imagined and received – readily quickens the same vibrance and presence in most if not everyone.

So, the three points for your further reflection: imagination is an important aspect of practice, tradition exemplifies the creative process and gives good examples, materials are there in abundance – we don’t quite know how to use them.

. . .

Presentation given at the 2014 Buddhist Geeks conference (audio here).

For slides shown at the presentation, and mentioned in the audio, see here (google slides).

Tchaikovsky’s “Hymn of the Cherubim” (youtube) part of which was used towards the end of presentation.