Tag Archives: mystery

it’s totally beyond me…

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Sitting this morning at summer’s window
wondering
what quirk of destiny’s unfolding
led
to the conviction of separation in
a human mind

How is it possible to so thoroughly
believe
in something (a solid independent ‘me’)
that has never been able to be proven
to exist?

How is it possible to turn this
phantom
into a seeker who desperately
desires
to be free of itself and its stories? (huh?)

How is it possible to
avoid
the in-your-face obvious and
inescapable
truth
that the present presents with
every nano-second of aliveness?

How could anything so
simple
available
uncomplicated
and unavoidable
turn into a mystery, a concept
that would fuel galaxies of
religious and philosophical
thought-worlds?

It’s totally beyond me…

(literally and figuratively)

But it’s bloody marvelous all the same.

.

~ miriam louisa

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so what is the reality, itself?

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Homage to Daido, Roshi

. . .

What is real, what is reality, what is truth, what is life, what is death, who are you?

To imitate the teachers doesn’t impart strength.

To understand the teachings doesn’t do a blessed thing for your life.

But to realize reality transforms your way of perceiving yourself and the universe—and it shows, it’s felt, it functions.

So what is the reality itself?

~ John Daido Loori, Roshi

source – Zen Mountain Monastery website

floatingrocks


There is a deeper dimension to nature and the insentient than what we see on the surface – a realm that goes beyond morphology, chemistry, biology, ecology or physics.  Science most often speaks to what things are.  Zen art points to what else things are.  It speaks not only to the object and its effect on the audience, but moves beyond to present the object’s underlying reality – its intrinsic nature.  And when we personally experience this intrinsic nature, we realize that to know objects only through dissecting, cataloging and understanding them, is to miss their full reality.  It is to fall asleep amidst the mystery and to become numb to the wonder of our lives on this great earth.

~ John Daido Loori, Roshi

~

source – Catalog notes accompanying Daido Roshi’s exhibition Jinzu

photo:  Floating Rocks copyright John Daido Loori

~

For more on Daido Roshi, please visit his pages at *the awakened eye* website:  the zen of creativity and creativity will never make sense

~

wideawake – to the nth

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I seek a shift in common language,
a way to say what is actually meant.
I speak of I, but don’t mean I
as a thing.

I speak of it as that (mystery)
which manifests function and
process.

I speak of I as ‘It’.
But It is no-thing either, yet thought
would instantly turn it into a thing in
time and space.

I as It occupies neither time nor
space, yet – magician that it is –
manifests both in order to
show up for the party.

I as It is never caught napping,
wide-eyed I is the eternal insomniac
wideawake – to the nth

– miriam louisa
echoes from emptiness

God is the ultimate sticky-beak

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This Unlit Light - Cosmic Question Mark

 

If I was going to symbolize the God-idea (why not – isn’t that thought’s job?) it would be as a question mark.

I don’t mean a ? as in mystery – although that fits too – I mean as a dynamic.

It seems to me that the unknowable unspeakable whatever-it-is that lives this lifestream moves on the well-oiled wheels of curiosity. It’s the ultimate sticky-beak and nosey-parker, insatiably wondering about … everything that can be experienced and known in the infinite arena of existence. Ceaselessly wondering, but never, ever, reaching a conclusion.

Questions fuel my life and determine the choices ‘I’ make, the paths ‘I’ tread. One of the lovely things about senior-hood is that you can look back over a life and catch those questions. I marvel at that, and at the questions that laid out my lifepath.

In a back-to-front way it’s like you’re standing at the stern of a boat, watching the wake and suddenly seeing it as an arrow, an arrow frothing and surging with shoals of questions… an arrow propelling the lifeboat with your name on the prow towards an eternal horizon of possibilities.

 

Image source: National Geographic