Martyr

In your own day
People listened,
When you stood and spoke,
We offered hearts and minds
Questioned you and your ways,
Yet you always prevailed,
Bearing the spirit of support
A burden that became
A flaming torch
As you crossed the line.

I kneel to pray
I hold you in my thoughts
Image of an artist
With the taste of vision.

You burned more candles
Than the night could bear,
Lifted rags up and filled them
With men and women.
You gave us voice for song
When we could only squeek,
Clap hands and chortle
In our delight.

When you left us, we had
Acres of desolate sand,
Dry trees an wilderness,
Waiting for a spark.

Now rains deluge us
Beyond reason.

We drown in your absence.

We are not afraid that we are weak, we are afraid that we are strong...

“There came a time when the risk to remain tight
in the bud was more painful than the risk
it took to blossom.”
~Anaïs Nin

If we open ourself to blossom then we risk the indignities of exposure, and in that naked state, the bees who pollinate and seed us with new ideas.
Then of course we die as flowers must. leaving a scrap of ourselves pressed in some poets book, or a seed on the un-turned ground waiting for fertile weather.
We must as artists, do more to cultivate the future of our craft.
What child, at the the circus, does not wish to walk on stilts, juggle flaming clubs, or ride upon elephants?
If writing is to survive as a craft, then we must inspire a younger generation to balance on the wire, making every line count.

wcw

Considering Pranjaparamita

Twelve Link Chain of Causation or The Cycle of Interdependence (pratityasamutpada):

1. From ignorance (avida) arises volitional action

2. From volitional action (karma) arises consciousness

3. From consciousness (vijnana) arises mental and physical phenomena

4. From mental and physical phenomena (nama-rupa) arises the six senses

5. From the six senses (shadayatana) arises sensorial contact

6. From contact (spasha) arises sensation

7. From sensation (vedana) arises desire

8. From desire (trishna) arises grasping

9. From grasping (upadana) arises the process of becoming

10. From the process of becoming (bhava) arises birth

11. From birth (jeti) arises death, pain, decay . . .

12. From sickness, old age and death (jana-marana), sorrow, lamentation, suffering and distress occur. Thus arises the whole mass of suffering

The cycle starts when an individual becomes aware of itself as a being separete from the universe. It becomes ignorent of its true nature and this leads to metal activity (karma). Karma leads to consciousness which leads to metal and physical phenomena. This is the opposite of the way we usually think of creation. For the Buddhists, the mind itself creates the phenomenal world. Here we see the five skandas come into play as the self becomes aware of the objective world though the senses. When the self becomes aware of the other, desire arises. "I want what is outside myself." It has forgotten through ignorance that the object is just a creation of its own mind. Desire leads to grasping, trying to get something, which leads to becomming and birth, the consciousness has taken physical form. Now physical form is subject to all the ill of the world: pain, decay, sickness, old and and ultimatly death. From death arises ignorance and the process starts over again.

The process of Buddhist meditation and practice is to reverse the cycle. Through the extinction of ignorance, karma ceases, and so on,up to the ceasation of birth, meaning escape from the the cycle of birth and death (samsara), into nirvana, the stopping of the cycle.

Yet, the Heart Sutra says "no ignorance and also no extinction of it" and the same for the other twelve factors. In this process there is no first cause and there is no self-being. Each factor in the process is relative and interdependent with the other twelve factors and therefore empty.

Dorsem Mantra

OM VAJRA SATTVA SAMAYA
MANU PAHLAYA
VAJRA SATTVA TWENOPA TEETHA
DRIDHO ME BHAWA
SUTO KHYO ME BHAWA
SUPO KHYO ME BHAWA
ANU RAKTO ME BHAWA
SARVA SIDDHI MEM PRAYATSA
SARVA KARMA SUTSA ME
TSITOM SHRIYA KURU
HUNG
HA HA HA HA HO
BHAGAWAN
SARVA TATHAGATA
VAJRA MAME MUNYTSA VAJRI BHAWA
MAHA SAMAYA SATTVA A H:

No WMDs

YouTube - Rice and Powell in 2001 saying Iraq had no WMDs

Fredrik deBoer

Sitting in the still morning,

Pale spider on a leaf

Guards the pink impatience flower.

Voices sing of divine visions.

Dewdrops sparkle in a web.