Driving

Blindnesss

Businessman or Employee

In the 1970's enlightenment was in the air. India, Tibet, and Japan exported many spiritual teachers to the U.S.A. Demand was high for insights from the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. I attended a workshop with one such a teacher fresh from India. He said: "You are either a businessman or employee!" It was an unforgettable comment. A businessperson does not assume there will be a "next" paycheck. To succeed, businesspersons must generate "confidence" (a word based in Latin, meaning "with faith"). A business' source of supply depends on the ebb and flow of clients, the cycles of the seasons, and the economic climate. Nothing is taken for granted. An employee believes that paychecks will keep coming -- hardly thinking the businessperson, the employer, is mortgaging their house to finance the next month's paychecks. The spiritual teacher from India, was a businessman. He scheduled talks, got the word out, collected money and planned for future workshops. He was not an employee. When I saw him, I did not appreciate that businesslike quality. Now, I see it as spiritual, and close to the Buddhist ideal of living with knowledge of impermanence. Employees pay a price for security -- akin to surrender of the ego. Come to think of it: that's Buddhist, too.

Choruses from The Rock – T.S. Eliot

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.

{First stanza}

THE INTERNET IS MY omnipresent conduit to infinite distraction

THE INTERNET IS MY omnipresent conduit to infinite distraction. It is the first thing I do in the morning and the last thing I do at night. In between, my smartphone ensures that I am never very far from my next Google-Facebook-YouTube-Craigslist-Amazon fix. I have been in rooms full of people, each glued to a hand-held device and completely oblivious to the others.

What began for me as a thing of wonder is now merely my drug of choice. I miss my friends — the very ones whose hourly Facebook posts keep me up to date on their every move. I miss sitting on the front porch of my row house on a warm summer evening and talking to the neighbors who walk by. My nervous system spent the past two hundred thousand years evolving in an environment of human interaction, and now that’s disappeared almost overnight.      -- Rick Silberman   Grass Valley, California

https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/440/the-internet

Merits of Hard Work

Hermann Hesse - quote

We must become alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome and we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for in our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being.

~ Hermann Hesse

Human Life

Vincent Van Gogh - The Cafe at Night

La Soupe, by Picasso in 1902

W.H. Auden, Under Which Lyre (A Reactionary Tract)

In a witty 1946 poem, W.H. Auden contrasted the way of "experts" with the Hermetic path of the trickster.
Harvard Magazine (November-December 2007)

Someday I’ll get caught up

I KEEP IMAGINING THAT SOMEDAY I’ll get caught up: write those letters, read those books. What a great imagination! My plans smile at me from tomorrow, always tomorrow. And here it is, always today.
                                     --  SY SAFRANSKY
                                               The Sun, December 1995

Time and Eternity

Bob Dylan 1963

Current state of affairs: 

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside
And it is ragin'.
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.

Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don't criticize
What you can't understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin'.
Please get out of the new one
If you can't lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin'.

The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin'.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'

Stand up now or forever hold your peace

Tilopa's Mahamudra Teaching to Naropa

Gazing intently into the empty sky, vision ceases; 
Likewise, when mind gazes into mind itself, 
The train of discursive and conceptual thought ends 
And supreme enlightenment is gained. 

Like the morning mist that dissolves into thin air, 
Going nowhere but ceasing to be, 
Waves of conceptualization, all the mind's creation, dissolve, 
When you behold your mind's true nature. 

Pure space has neither colour nor shape 
And it cannot be stained either black or white; 
So also, mind's essence is beyond both colour and shape 
And it cannot be sullied by black or white deeds. 

Link to All twenty eight verses.

Let's Get Together - Kate Wolf (Live in Austin, TX)

The Real You - Alan Watts

Krishna talks to Prince Arjuna

Enactment of the dialogue between
Krishna and Arjuna

The Mahabharata (1989 film) - Wikipedia

Hsin Hsin Ming (Verses on the Faith Mind)

Xinxin Ming, Faith in mind, is a poem attributed to the Third Chinese Chán Patriarch Jianzhi Sengcan 鑑智僧璨 and one of the earliest Chinese Chan expressions of the Buddhist mind training practice. Wikipedia

Grandpa on Judaism

“In our religion we are not confined to many rituals.  That’s the basic part of our belief – that every man should have the freedom to face God in  his own way.”

                                    -Samuel Shavelson

Become comfortable with being lost

Become comfortable with being lost. Knowing that you don't know where you are is honest freedom. Breathe long deep breaths. Feel the life within you. pic.twitter.com/Op6U3b1Zki

— Meditation101 (@meditation101) June 17, 2018

Sunday Song of Love’s Longing Found

A Sunday Song of Love’s Longing Found

I was awakened this morning
By the music of a bird
Singing his heart out
For his love.

Recalling in me
The pinging sound
Of water meeting stone,
As the stream sparkles
Countless twinkling little sunbursts,
Reflecting the one sun.

Recalling then
The sky’s stars
Flickering in the bright night;
Suns for other planets’ days,
Shine,
Form a line
In our sight—
“Orion’s Belt,”
“Little Dipper,”
We say
With delight.

Then,
The joining of my heart
With my love;
Two shining as one,
Bursting with light
Equal to
The sun.
             *   *   *  
The miracles of life
Abound
In the Love that is expressed
All around,
And so are more
Abiding
And profound
Than the entire
Grief
Of all the human-folly driven
Dying
Of this planet we call
“Earth”;
The place of our singing
And our crying,
Our loving
And our shining.

For Love is absolute.
It permeates the Universe,
Saturates all existence's manifestations,
Is what we all are.
                      (Diane 2/10/13)

Global Brain

Everything is related to everything else. We know this by intuition, by listening and feeling deeply. We also intuit this via cyclic revolutions of electronic communications such as the internet, radio, television, etc. The world's "growing" a collective global brain to augment our biological heritage. 

Where is all this going? We don't know. We are "cells" of human life plunging into a great mystery. 

Image from The Social Superorganism and its Global Brain: http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/suporgli.html.

Salutation of the Dawn

Salutation of the Dawn *

Look to this day!

For it is life, the very life of life,

In its brief course

Lie all the verities and realities of your existence:

The bliss of growth,

The glory of action,

The splendor of beauty,

For yesterday is but a dream

And tomorrow only a vision,

But today well lived makes every yesterday

a dream of happiness

And every tomorrow a vision of hope.

Look well, therefore, to this day!

Such is the salutation of the dawn.

Kalidasa (2500 BC Sanskrit)

Nina Simone - Ain't Got No, I Got Life

Nina Simone singing from the soul. Everyone is born with everything they need.

Pete Seeger - "Forever Young"

I love this video - Pete Seeger, the old one, singing "Forever Young" with young people. So beautiful!

Baba Neem Karoli - Ram Dass

Best Meditation Teachings

The best meditation teachings are simple and direct. 

They act as anchors for the mind. 

And, do not give the ego much to chew on.

E.E. Cummings "I Thank You God For This Most Amazing Day"

We don't need to believe in God, to feel moved by the joy of these words.


I'm thankful E.E Cummings lived, wrote, recited & recorded this poem.

Imagine - John Lennon

A classic inter-generational song of peace and unity..

24 Hours

an empty vessel

an empty vessel

boundless space

a blanket of stars

deep self within 

Best guitar solo of all times - Mark knopfler

Time is not real

"Time is not real - only Love is real". 
At first this seems crazy to say, 
but if we look deeply into it
the truth is apparent.

To Become A Real Teacher

Rituals

Rituals allow
life to feel 
safe in an
uncertain 
world

Stand Still Now

Presencing

Sooner or later
meditation gives way
to presencing*

* https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/presencing

Every day, every hour

Every day, every hour,
the unexpected shows up
regardless of how well
planned our day.

How long will we live?

How long will we live?

How well will we be?

Telling stories,

that never happen.

Live with uncertainty.

That's reality. 

Poetry is ...

Poetry is
Mind medicine

Stephen Hawking: Trump stance could damage Earth - BBC News

Desiderata (music) - Child of the Universe

Meditation Q & A at UC Berkeley - April 1, 2015

Question and answer period after 20 minutes of meditation. The students asked remarkable questions. A pure joy to respond to them from the heart. It was more about life than just meditation. The sound quality is poor, but you still can hear the remarkable inspiring questions.

Panentheism

The following in a fascinating article from Wikipedia:

Panentheism (meaning "all-in-God", from the Ancient Greek πᾶν pân, "all", ἐν en, "in" and Θεός Theós, "God")^[1] is the belief that the divine pervades and interpenetrates every part of the universe and also extends beyond time and space. The term was coined by the German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828 to distinguish the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel(1770–1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) about the relation of God and the universe from the supposed pantheism of Baruch Spinoza.^[1] Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are identical,^[2] panentheism maintains an ontological distinction between the divine and the non-divine and the significance of both.

• In panentheism, God is viewed as the soul of the universe, the universal spirit present everywhere, which at the same time "transcends" all things created.
• While pantheism asserts that "all is God", panentheism claims that God is greater than the universe. Some versions of panentheism suggest that the universe is nothing more than the manifestation of God. In addition, some forms indicate that the universe is contained within God,^[2] like in the Kabbalah concept of tzimtzum. Also much Hindu thought – and consequently Buddhist philosophy – is highly characterized by panentheism and pantheism.^[3][4] The basic tradition however, on which Krause's concept was built, seems to have been Neoplatonic philosophy and its successors in Western philosophy and Orthodox theology.

Everyday is Totally Unique

Looking for a Moment of Stillness

Mahamudra Teaching

Gazing intently into the empty sky, vision ceases;
Likewise, when mind gazes into mind itself,
The train of discursive and conceptual thought ends
And supreme enlightenment is gained.

Like the morning mist that dissolves into thin air,
Going nowhere but ceasing to be,
Waves of conceptualization, all the mind's creation, dissolve,
When you behold your mind's true nature.

Pure space has neither colour nor shape
And it cannot be stained either black or white;
So also, mind's essence is beyond both colour and shape
And it cannot be sullied by black or white deeds.

The darkness of a thousand aeons is powerless
To dim the crystal clarity of the sun's heart;
And likewise, aeons of samsara have no power
To veil the clear light of the mind's essence.

Tilopa's Mahamudra Teaching to Naropa

Before the Deluge

Minnesota Winter Full Moon

Photo by Noreen Hautala

12 truths I learned from life and writing | Anne Lamott

Time Touches Eternity

Without Opening Your Door

Without opening your door,
you can open your heart to the world.
Without looking out your window,
you can see the essence of the Tao.

The more you know,
the less you understand.

The Master arrives without leaving,
sees the light without looking,
achieves without doing a thing.

Tao Te Ching #47
Stephen Mitchell, translator

What is Consciousness?

Proceedings of the Consciousness Study Group. Recorded on Oct. 10, 2012, shortly after Meditation class. Seven of us present.

Collection of Audio Teachings

One SoundCloud system user collected many of my audio teachings into a single page on the Internet Archive. Quite amazing format!!! Everything is untitled. I recommend sampling at random. I  speak spontaneously as intuition informs me. Explore randomly, as if flipping the pages of a book at random. Live link: archive.org/details/Americ_Collected_20171027

Gaps Between Thoughts

Guided Meditation
Watching for gaps between thoughts -

a way into meditation. 

Thich Nhat Hanh - Oprah Winfrey

I Wandered Lovely as a Cloud

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

What's the meaning of life? (Michael Nagler, Alexander, & Martin)

Every answer to the question "What is the meaning of life?" is radically different from person to person. This group begins with Michael Nagler who is Professor emeritus of Classics and Comparative Literature at University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1966, and where he founded the Peace and Conflict Studies department. Next is Alexander who is in grade school and is seven and a half years old. Finally, we have Martin who is a Senior at UC Berkeley.

LISTEN to "Meaning of Life - Part 2" (1.18 mb; time 05:11)

Audio production by Lynette Webb. Image from Almeida Cartoons.

Philosopher-At-Large Poster

Gratitude for all the viewers of

Philosopher-at-Large Blog

Image of a paperposter placed on 

local bulletin boards

many years ago

You who where given a life

You who where given a life, 
   what did you make of it?
 Forrest Gander 
 Poetry - December 2017

Rorschach Test

How can you see red and feel blue but be called crazy when you taste green?

Showing up ...

Showing up for our lives is the essence of meditation. No "practice" is needed. Arriving into the here and now. Difficult to face reality; often running away into day dreams and other distractions. Too much work and play to do. What if today is "last day of our life"? Is this the life we wanted? Awe and wonder is in order. Be like little children. Feel the magic of this moment. Now! 

Inner Piece

You cant find it in a box of chocolates. Cant find it in a rose.
Cant find it at a fancy dinner, even in brand new clothes.
You cant find it in a yacht on a trip to rome.
If you find it you cant touch it but you can always bring it home.

You can find it at a funeral. Can find it in a smile.
Can find it in a triathlon runner in his final mile.
You can find it at a wedding and a childs graduation too.
If youve found it then you know it because its always inside of you.

You can find it in those chocolates and in that gorgeous rose!
Its in a shared look at dinner in those spiffy clothes!
Its even in the ocean floating with that yacht to rome!
You can never lose it, for it will always be your home.

Arriving

Cardiogram

It's been so long, I can't remember the sound of your beat. Every time I've caught a glimpse of you and began to feel your welcoming embrace, I've savagely tore away. I wanted to suffer, can't you see? I didn't want to come back and have to look at myself, look at what I had become without you.

I'm tired of running and avoiding my truth, I want to feel your beat again.

Today, I walk into your open arms full of love and forgiveness. I don't want to suffer anymore. I want to be free to live in the light. I will settle into the innocence I've searched for everywhere, everywhere but inside.

There it is.
I know that sound.
I've found our beat again.

If - by Rudyard Kipling

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Turn! Turn! Turn!

Turn! Turn! Turn!

The Byrds

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven

A time to be born, a time to die
A time to plant, a time to reap
A time to kill, a time to heal
A time to laugh, a time to weep

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven

A time to build up, a time to break down
A time to dance, a time to mourn
A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven

A time of love, a time of hate
A time of war, a time of peace
A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven

A time to gain, a time to lose
A time to rend, a time to sew
A time for love, a time for hate
A time for peace, I swear it's not too late

Songwriters: Peter Seeger

Turn! Turn! Turn! lyrics © T.R.O. Inc.

The Living Room Choir

Precious Moments

The current moments of our lives are so precious. I savor every moment of each day as best I can. All too soon - the last moment before Eternity.

                                                     -- Note to a friend on a post card.

Dialogue On Time