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Cate wrote:Jack – you can’t shatter my multiple universe theory, I like the idea that whatever could happen does happen, just not here. For example if I make a mistake – that’s okay a Cate somewhere else didn’t.

I happen to think that it is OK that Cate makes mistakes and I wouldn't want to know any Cate who didn't. we are born with a right foot and a left foot, not a right foot and a wrong foot. we are always a bit off the mark and especially if we want to explore new things we have to make a lot of mistakes to start getting it right.
The big mistake that we made, the grand daddy of all mistakes is the idea that making mistakes makes us bad.

I awoke one morning
I was awakened one morning

are you still awake? I guess a better question, have you stayed awake? Of course you've gone to sleep, but it sounds like you're talking about a different level of wakefulness, for lack of a better vocabulary. Maybe I should ask how often you gotten back there, if you've gotten back there. What do you do to get there? What did you do to get there?

I have such "dust moments" sometimes. - moments when everything is beautiful, even the simplest smallest thing that I never take note of, like dust. Even the terrible, frightening, horrific things can be beautiful in these moments. I can have such a moment whenever I want one, but I can't seem to sustain them for long. They kind of feel like prayers, or what I want prayers to feel like.

This is not Jack. Forgive my answering before Jack.

These moments can be manifested and stretched, in formal meditation practice, for very long times, with practice.

Then we have a new problem, the 'meditation break'!

There is a Buddhist practice called 'subsequent attainment' where we try to drag whatever experience, realization., or understanding into our day, and bit, by bit, into our life until it is a constant. I of course know all about this but have limited success, this far in actually accomplishing it. That's a big part of the work that's left for me.

daka

daka wrote:
Then we have a new problem, the 'meditation break'!

Ah yes . the meditation crack !

I've been saved by a blessed fatigue
Leonard Cohen

Jack - not to beat a dead horse - because that would be pointless and strange - but is the light god?

Jack - not to beat a dead horse - because that would be pointless and strange - but is the light god?

Hi Cate

I too am interested in Jack's answer to your very good question.

Here is my own spontaneous answer about whether the light is God, or more precisely, "What is the 'light'"....

The light is simply the absence of 'stuff'.... it is not any 'thing'..... thingness would detract greatly from my imagined (and very occasionally glimpsed), and very poorly understood experience of the 'light'.

In my understanding, stuff includes physical objects and concepts, all objects of knowledge... 'beyond words, thoughts and conceptions'. In my opinion 'God' is not enough to explain the experience of the 'light'.

Also I suspect that the light is not 'light' as we understand light. It does not illuminate objects per se as ordinary light does. We use the word light because it is the ideal analogy....the experience has the power not to reveal 'stuff', but to un-reveal stuff... to dismantle our layers of reality until we can eventually experience the centre of the onion, so to speak.

The light that I am speaking of is called 'clear light' and is a quite common experience of human beings in general, it is not a Buddhist belief or experience.

It is basically a very blissful wisdom moment (experience)... ....or for some very lucky beings, it is where they live.

All I intended to say was ... 'the absence of stuff'... I got carried away... sorry.

daka

Cate wrote:Jack - not to beat a dead horse - because that would be pointless and strange - but is the light god?

I don't know. I don't even think I want to know. I am just wanting to see if the crack is something that we can see together and maybe together we can decide how we want to approach the light.

Whatever it is that we are doing here I think it is something that is just beginning. I heard something yesterday that I am going to change the words of a bit to see how it gets received.

Maybe after we manage to harnest the power of wind, sun, tides of the oceans, the strength of our planet, we will try to harness the power of kindness and then for the second time in the history of humanity we will have discovered fire.

What about the sound of G~d, as in "hu"... does the crack have to be seen or can it be heard... sound waves that can be seen in another fashion?


~ Lizzy

lizzytysh wrote:What about the sound of G~d, as in "hu"... does the crack have to be seen or can it be heard... sound waves that can be seen in another fashion?

Thanks Lizzy. It was so foolish of me to talk exclusively about seeing the crack in everything. All of our senses can partake, even a blind man. I'm a predominate visual person and I guess that influences my language.

What about the sound of G~d, as in "hu"

I don't have any idea of what is meant by the sound of God, nor do I know any technique, magic spell or anything else that would give me any confidence that I can say any thing meaningful about God. I do have this small confidence that I can be with people and that we are all confident that we know what each other means with the words "there is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in" I'm just not sure yet of the best way to have this happen.

. All of our senses can partake, even a blind man

I am wondering about this, Jack. My avatar, a picture of Milarepa with his right hand cupped at his ear to hear a sound, is actually a teaching about the 'crack' in sound (it's non-findability)... he says that the sound that we hear is a mere momentary appearance to the mind and doesn't exist in any other way.

So, technically, I can see that one can use one's sense of hearing to eventually arrive at the understanding of (experience of) that 'crack' in the sound. Also, one's sense of hearing is actually complicit in the mistaken mind that manifests regarding the nature of the sound (i.e. because we hear it we believe it must be 'out there'). But also one who has lost one's sense of hearing can, through contemplation, arrive at an understanding of that particular crack. I don't think that with one's ear sense power alone one can experience that crack; I think it requires a conceptual leap. I am trying to imagine whether someone deaf from birth can experience that particular crack conceptually, without having ever heard anything.

What think thee?

daka

The Crack

The crack in what we see
Is the space between
The mind-eye and
The thing

The crack in what we hear
Is the space between
The mind-ear and
The thing

The crack in what we taste
Is the space between
The mind-tongue and
The thing

The crack in what we touch
Is the space between
The mind-touch and
The thing

The crack in what we think
Is the space between
The mind
And the thought

daka

Interesting, daka. I like that.


~ Lizzy

I was supposed to be meditating in some structured fashion, in the balmy weather on my porch today, or at least that was the plan. The idea for this little poem popped into my mind, I did get a little meditation done, and later remembered the idea, so here it is: I will also post it in the Forum Members Poetry section, but It could be here too, of course.

The Bedouin Crack

I heard a tale of Muslim men
Nomad Bedouins, I believe
Who, in the early days
When the cinema was silent
And brand spanking new
Went to town, from the desert,
On a sultry summer night.
They met some market men
Who said, with mounds of animation
And extreme enthusiasm
“You must go to the cinema!”
You won't believe your eyes!
Before you brave the desert dust
“You must go to the cinema!”

They were convinced and went
In their Bedouin garb and gear
And sat attentively watching
This virtual reality.
There was a villain dressed in black
And a damsel in distress
Tied down to the track
And the train was almost there!
The bold brave band of Bedouins
Unsheathed their silver swords
They attacked the man in black
(And fell into “the Crack”)

daka

daka wrote:I was supposed to be meditating, The idea that there was a damsel in distress popped into my mind and I fell into “the Crack”

daka

Thanks to the poetic license you gave me to exclude words I did a little snipping for fun.

I was suppose to be meditating and I got to thinking about your knave being not at ease problem.

I was also called a knave one time. The circles I travelled often passed close to the Guru crowd. There was an ashram that I would visit from time to time in Montreal where they started referring to me as the Jack of Hearts. I think it had something to do with some of the women there liking me. Well I certainly liked some of them.

The problem with the deck of cards that we play with is that there is no name for the female counterpart of knaves. We get kind of lost between the nameless and the named.
but No Self- No Problem

Hi Jack

Leonard Cohen said in the Tribute video "I'm Your Man":

"A lot of these songs are just a response to what struck me as beauty. Whether it was a curious emanation from a being or an object or a situation or a landscape, you know, that had a very powerful effect on me as it does on everyone, and I prayed to have some response to the things that were so clearly beautiful to me; and there were a lot!"

a curious emanation from a being

For me, Jack you appear as a 'curious emanation from a being', and I am enjoying your beauty.

daka