Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category

Definition of “Blessing” found on Wikipedia

February 6, 2011

I was a little sad to find out that fractals might be “cool” in someone’s world. Disappointed? Yes, because the strength of using such a metaphor might then be dissipated through use. In Bhutan cameras are forbidden in sacred places for this very reason. When it is too easy to take a snap of a shrine or sacred object, the blessing of that object begins to dissipate. In the same way I would be disappointed if fractals are considered to be “really cool” like this blog post claims:

http://egregores.wordpress.com/2009/05/12/fractal-buddhism-the-avatamsaka-sutra/

A footnote on this Wiki page on Lineage gives us the background to more thoroughly understand the logic behind the Bhutanese prohibition on cameras: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lineage_%28Buddhism%29

‘Blessing’ (Wylie: byin-rlabs; Sanskrit: adhiṣṭhāna):

“In the Buddhist context, the term blessing should not be understood in terms of grace as in the case of theistic religions. Rather, it relates to the sense of inspiration received…which transforms or awakens the potentials inherent within an individual’s mental continuum. Thus, the Tibetan word byin-rlabs is interpreted to mean: ‘to be transformed through inspiring magnificence’.”

Padmasambhava (composed); Terton Karma Lingpa (revealed); Gyurme Dorje (translated); Graham Coleman (editor); Thupten Jinpa (editor) with H.H.Tenzin Gyatso (introduction) (2005, 2006). The Tibetan Book of the Dead. First Complete Translation. Strand, London, UK: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-140-45529-8, p.448

“Lineage” is the line of Masters from whom we who study Buddhism receive teachings and blessings. It’s helpful to be reminded that this is not necessarily a form of supernatural and magic, but something extraordinary, yet logical. When you turn a sacred word, text, object, whatever into something that is used again and again, you make it every day, ordinary. The meaningful becomes exhausted of its meaning through over-use and over-exposure. When you apply a ceremony, such as only using on special occasions, not allowing it to be photographed, not allowing anyone to touch, and so on, the power of the item to “bless” in the sense of inspiring our minds “to magnificence” (something greater) can remain.  The experience of this is not really magic in the sense of something that happens without cause; it is something mind creates because of how we behave with the phenomenon we wish to define as “blessed,” as inspiring us to be greater.

This is also an idea I wish to hold onto for inclusion in a post I am working on. This will relate to feudalism, process as religion, and other supernatural matters. I actually have seven drafts in the queue:

  • Is Being “Of One Mind” Such a Good Thing? and other pitfalls
  • Leadership, the Supernatural Powers of Kings and the Religion of Process
  • Can we be good without God?
  • Stories? or “No More Stories!”
  • Checklists, Backlog, Specs
  • Dark Side of People and Teams
  • “We Look to Scientists to Settle Them”

Guess which this applies to. I may or may not combine or split apart any of the above. Just where I’ve zoomed in on the fractal for today.

To understand more thoroughly the meaning of the power of the meaningful being exhausted through over-use and over-exposure,

Posted in Buddhism, Mastery, Poetry | 1 Comment »

What Magic Really Is

December 1, 2010

I chose this name Twingle kind of spontaneously because I hadn’t known it had sort of sexual connotations (at least according to Urban Dictionary).  I can be obtuse in that way – I also didn’t know for a good few years since I first heard it that “out like a cub scout” meant more than something that just rhymed. And for sure these sorts of conversations make me squeamish and uncomfortable as my meta-rule-set is a bit prim.

The word “Twingle” seems to me to have a magical feeling – that same magical feeling that comes when a circumstance is formed.  That for me is real magic. Creating an environment in the sense that everyone within that environment feels it.  They’re all on the team.  Their minds are in some way one mind, yet differentiated. The trick is not to become attached to that, but to relish it in the moment it exists.  So quickly will it dissipate, like bubbles rising to the surface dissolving once more into the pool of water.

Twingle for me has these connotations:

– State between something becoming something else (such as the state when once we die there is the possibility we recognize and liberate)

– Something ticklish and delightful, exciting in a way that has no yearning, kind of like when you are about to set free down the slope of a roller-coaster, a rushing, unfettered experience

– The thing that Jeannie or Merlin do with their eyes or Bewitched with her twitch, and “bliiirrriiing” something is created or moved, reality is miraculously affected by mind, only here it is minds

I think people often confuse the rush of learning, of heading down the slope on a roller-coaster, of twingle, with something that must consummate in a personal grasping after pleasure in some way such as in sex.  People wish they could experience that in union with each other, but in fact it is the state prior to that conclusion in which there is any union at all. The end point, like death, we experience alone.

In fact, here it might be useful to observe the Nagpas, the real Nagpas, who, for the sake of freeing all sentient beings from suffering, do not grasp after that personally pleasurable (and temporary) state, but sustain their minds in union with their consort in pure bliss.  It is non-dual, meaning, all those appearances of others and self that we seem to experience become the net, become… the fractal… become the nagpa and consort in union.  But I use words here and it is something I think that can only be experienced.  It is, as Wallace Stevens says, “the bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.”

Of Mere Being

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.

— Wallace Stevens, 1954

http://www.robotwisdom.com/jorn/ofmerebeing.html

Posted in Agile, Poetry, Wallace Stevens | 1 Comment »