braodcast nov/dec 2005--nice family
(from 'All Tomorrow's Parties' by William Gibson)
"You look like a rap singer from a nice family."
('Kafka On The Shore', Haruki Murakami)
two weeks hanging out with john and his family at el balcon: playing monsters with may and the puppies, losing crucial rallies in marathon badminton sessions due to my tendency to get carried away doing the accompanying 'televised commentary', morning meditations and studying nagarjuna at night, and eating big ... trying to think through the next step of my outward spiral from tushita but then realising it cant be 'thought through', it can only be 'stepped'...
bus to bangkok. endless gunfire on the tv screen. a hundred years ago the same journey would've taken ten days but accompanied by birdsong. which is best? both are best.
sitting in the foyer of my guest house watching a guy gently hand-slap his goodbyes to his friends. and then, while putting on an impossibly bulky back-pack, slapping the palms of one more friend. the things we carry, and the goodbyes...
the opposite of india, the guest houses and shops in thailand are nearly all run by women, their children sometimes sit in their laps or walk over to the refrigerator and take out a can of coke which they drink with a delightful seriousness, the way men who are uncomplicated and happy drink from cans of beer.
listening to songs i dont know and will probably never hear again, feeling light and clean. after so long in monasteries its great to be moving through these kind of spaces again. "all the lonely people." and the origins of language.
the city is like television: an amazing invention but used in such a trivial manner. its possible to enjoy the radiance of the details - a man selling helium-filled balloons walks slowly through the neon-alcohol-streetmarket frenzy of kaosan and then stops for a moment to carefully untangle the strings of the floating balloons; a girl comes out of a 7/11 store with such a beautiful look in her eyes - but i know something more is required of us...
Nagarjuna, talking about the benefits of giving ( www.purifymind.com/giving ), compares giving to rescuing valuables from a house on fire. the 'house on fire' is one's body, one's life, and the 'valuables' represent not one's possessions but the opportunity to cultivate blessings through giving whatever one is able to give - a giving which, if done purely, will outlive the inevitable destruction of one's present body and wealth. this is a fantastic image for a dance piece, i think. combining generosity and the emptiness teachings (give it all away and protect it forever; create your future worlds - future, i.e worlds you cannot yet see touch hear etc - simply by letting go within this one), awareness of death and the openness of the gift.
(and while searching for a specific nagarjuna text on the internet i came across a site by a woman who was into S&M and who's reading list included several deep-end buddhist philosophers, including a long passage about nagarjuna. its a strange world...)
the body, burning like a candle, shining, disappearing. perhaps transcending death, perhaps not. if you have the right teachings... by 'teachings' i dont mean somebody else's possessions, somebody else's words, i mean the vibration that unlocks your own mind. i mean nobody's anything.
a book entitled 'How To Disappear Completely And Never Be Found'...
a phrase in 'Mother of the Buddhas': "...disappearing into reality..."
thinking of arranging the music and books in my room (next time i have one) into two categories: written/composed before 1961 and written/composed 1961 onwards. it's best to understand yourself through simple intuitive gestures, without closure. your biography, for instance, could be anything that makes you smile, anything that makes you think. like those quotes at the top of the page do for me. you dont have to own your biography, it's enough just to think it, imagine it, smilingly...
shenyen
posted by . . . at 7:28 PM
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