shenyenradio nyc, last days march 2006
he says "if you have any sense at all of being a caterpillar about to turn into a butterfly you should protect this feeling and nurture it..."
the teachings go later and later, i'm exhausted but very happy. two a.m. train back to brooklyn, amazing soft-edged 'unstressed' rap music coming from high up in a tower-block, a heavy but gentle locomotive rhythm, everyone in the party chanting or maybe its just the record, i'll never know. in the street a young black woman pirrouettes awkwardly across the road in a wheelchair. spanish rap coming out of dusty beat-up old cars with broken suspension, young black guys asking if i'm a monk, smiling with admiration, and then telling me about life in brooklyn. and right now, in the apple shop again, a charming looking 'bad' guy puts rap on the computer next to mine and starts doing a kind of hands-on healing kind of dance in front of the screen. and its always 'right now' here...
some nights i get back to my room and there are new paintings on the wall - rufus has been in and doing some work. its so sweet to live in such a space, and it feels like a kind of echo from the future telling me that the sleep project will naturally come to realisation one day...
he talks about love. there are three kinds of love we need to develop, each one higher than the last. he starts talking about the lady who runs the little ice-cream counter at the gasoline station in bowie, arizona, the nearest place to diamond mountain university, a tiny place in the middle of nowhere. the first level of love is to think, like, 'i hope she doesnt hurt herself while she's serving me...' and the second is to realise that she is giving three minutes of her valuable, irreplaceable time, three minutes that are taking her closer to her death and can never be replaced, to serve me ice cream. like, she gets maybe four dollars an hour but really you cant put a price on it, you cant put a price on a few minutes of life, its immeasurable... and then the third level, which is to think that my whole world is a projection of my karma, and if i had been kinder in a previous lifetime i wouldnt see her standing here now in this sun-baked metal box in the middle of nowhere, she's here and not in paradise because i havent done the work yet of seeing my whole world and everyone in it as a paradise inhabited by angels.
buddhism is about doing that work. on the one hand its very delicate and mysterious (understanding reality and the emptyness-openness-unfinished nature of all phenomena) and on the other its very simple and clear (karma: be kind to everyone, be generous and open towards every situation)...
i'm in the islamic wing of the metropolitan museum in front of a turkish miniature painting entitled: "after accidentally killing a youth, a king tries to make amends to the bereaved mother by offering her either his own head cut off or a bowl filled with gold" its a fantastic logic. everything is immeasurable and yet we have to act, we have to make amends, we have to offer something... so the way to keep the immeasurability open is to make a double offer and let the other choose. a fantastic logic, with space for generosity and imagination, the extreme and the simple.
also in the met, i suddenly encounter a huge hall with a reconstructed fragment of an egyptian temple installed in it - amazing in itself, but pushed into even more amazing spaces by the presence of an entire wall of windows overlooking a snow covered central park that sings 'quotation' over the whole scene. and finally in the medieval room, walking past suits of armor and suddenly laughing as i realise how secure and protected i feel in my robes.
a psychologist talking about happiness, about how after spending nearly forty years studying happiness he doesnt have a definition of it. the nearest he has is to say that it is a state of mind where one is not wanting to be doing something different from what one is actually doing at that time. this is a beautiful definition - it places mindfulness as the key to happiness, within a world entirely chosen by oneself. within this high-speed disappearing life, this moment by moment disappearing life, what do you want to do? what do you really want to do?
and then turning it around through all 360 degrees of your world, so that it includes what everyone else wants to do too. or as they say everytime i enter a shop here: "how can i help you sir?"
got to dash now, leave this sweet high tech store for the last time. back to canada in a few days time. geshe michael's community just keeps pushing me further down the road towards what i want but wont approach: i've been offered a yurt to live in at diamond mountain for the next semester (it took them a mere three minutes to overcome my vagueness!) so i'm going to go back in on a three month visa waver in a month's time, and from there return to india for some teachings that geshe michael is going to translate for (in kullu, june 24th - july 7th). i keep wondering "when will it end?", but also i'm starting to train myself to stop thinking such thoughts. for the sake of the ice cream woman in bowie, arizona, and all the people around me in my own world, i have to stop thinking any kind of negativity that will delay the transformation. could talk for hours more on this, and i will, one day.
till next time,
with much love
shenyen
the teachings go later and later, i'm exhausted but very happy. two a.m. train back to brooklyn, amazing soft-edged 'unstressed' rap music coming from high up in a tower-block, a heavy but gentle locomotive rhythm, everyone in the party chanting or maybe its just the record, i'll never know. in the street a young black woman pirrouettes awkwardly across the road in a wheelchair. spanish rap coming out of dusty beat-up old cars with broken suspension, young black guys asking if i'm a monk, smiling with admiration, and then telling me about life in brooklyn. and right now, in the apple shop again, a charming looking 'bad' guy puts rap on the computer next to mine and starts doing a kind of hands-on healing kind of dance in front of the screen. and its always 'right now' here...
some nights i get back to my room and there are new paintings on the wall - rufus has been in and doing some work. its so sweet to live in such a space, and it feels like a kind of echo from the future telling me that the sleep project will naturally come to realisation one day...
he talks about love. there are three kinds of love we need to develop, each one higher than the last. he starts talking about the lady who runs the little ice-cream counter at the gasoline station in bowie, arizona, the nearest place to diamond mountain university, a tiny place in the middle of nowhere. the first level of love is to think, like, 'i hope she doesnt hurt herself while she's serving me...' and the second is to realise that she is giving three minutes of her valuable, irreplaceable time, three minutes that are taking her closer to her death and can never be replaced, to serve me ice cream. like, she gets maybe four dollars an hour but really you cant put a price on it, you cant put a price on a few minutes of life, its immeasurable... and then the third level, which is to think that my whole world is a projection of my karma, and if i had been kinder in a previous lifetime i wouldnt see her standing here now in this sun-baked metal box in the middle of nowhere, she's here and not in paradise because i havent done the work yet of seeing my whole world and everyone in it as a paradise inhabited by angels.
buddhism is about doing that work. on the one hand its very delicate and mysterious (understanding reality and the emptyness-openness-unfinished nature of all phenomena) and on the other its very simple and clear (karma: be kind to everyone, be generous and open towards every situation)...
i'm in the islamic wing of the metropolitan museum in front of a turkish miniature painting entitled: "after accidentally killing a youth, a king tries to make amends to the bereaved mother by offering her either his own head cut off or a bowl filled with gold" its a fantastic logic. everything is immeasurable and yet we have to act, we have to make amends, we have to offer something... so the way to keep the immeasurability open is to make a double offer and let the other choose. a fantastic logic, with space for generosity and imagination, the extreme and the simple.
also in the met, i suddenly encounter a huge hall with a reconstructed fragment of an egyptian temple installed in it - amazing in itself, but pushed into even more amazing spaces by the presence of an entire wall of windows overlooking a snow covered central park that sings 'quotation' over the whole scene. and finally in the medieval room, walking past suits of armor and suddenly laughing as i realise how secure and protected i feel in my robes.
a psychologist talking about happiness, about how after spending nearly forty years studying happiness he doesnt have a definition of it. the nearest he has is to say that it is a state of mind where one is not wanting to be doing something different from what one is actually doing at that time. this is a beautiful definition - it places mindfulness as the key to happiness, within a world entirely chosen by oneself. within this high-speed disappearing life, this moment by moment disappearing life, what do you want to do? what do you really want to do?
and then turning it around through all 360 degrees of your world, so that it includes what everyone else wants to do too. or as they say everytime i enter a shop here: "how can i help you sir?"
got to dash now, leave this sweet high tech store for the last time. back to canada in a few days time. geshe michael's community just keeps pushing me further down the road towards what i want but wont approach: i've been offered a yurt to live in at diamond mountain for the next semester (it took them a mere three minutes to overcome my vagueness!) so i'm going to go back in on a three month visa waver in a month's time, and from there return to india for some teachings that geshe michael is going to translate for (in kullu, june 24th - july 7th). i keep wondering "when will it end?", but also i'm starting to train myself to stop thinking such thoughts. for the sake of the ice cream woman in bowie, arizona, and all the people around me in my own world, i have to stop thinking any kind of negativity that will delay the transformation. could talk for hours more on this, and i will, one day.
till next time,
with much love
shenyen
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