10 Truths you can count on

1) The true test of whether a pizza is a good pizza is that it tastes even better cold the next day.
2) When you need your sleep it will elude you.
3) On you're most blissful days there will a substantial increase in the amount of people who will want to disturb you.
4) America likes their beer cold and coming fast so finding a perfect pint of Guinness is similar to chasing rainbows.
5) The harder you seek the further away you are from that which you seek.
6) The older you get the quicker the seasons appear to pass you by. Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall....here we go again.
7) The more you pay in taxes the less you receive in services.
8) The more that you make friends with the present moment the more the present moment will be friendly. Surprising things happen when you are more a reed and less a towering oak.
9) There will always be war: there will always be conflict. And there will always be those that seek to beat plowshares into swords.

10) Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength; while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

Caught between Lamas and Samhain

We have gloriously passed through a traditional New England Spring before being led into the depths of an equally spectacular summer season. For more than a decade it has not been our experience that, "April showers bring May flowers" nor has there been for us the "Dogs days of August". The seasons have been unseasonably Willey nilly!
I'm not complaining about 2010, the Chinese year of the Tiger!. However, it does seem that the Autumn is closing in fast and we're all trying to scratch what we can out of the summer season while it is still with us.
It has been a time of fortuitous change for me. The garden was in early and yard chores were quickly completed. I found myself back upon the bicycle and I managed to lose 15Lbs. I am able to stretch in several ways that these old legs have not seen for some time. The Karmann Ghia is in top form and I have been on several long cruises about the New England countryside with the accompaniment of a wise, funny and adventurous new friend. (what the doctor ordered!) I am back to some of the basics of Qi Gong and I am making preparations to complete the sacred space of the meditation room. A thorough cleansing, new paint and a dedication ceremony. This aspect of my practice has withered my spirit as my meditation practice slowly faded away and found it replaced by the spirit of a curmudgeon; a restless, ugly bloke, that no one really liked to be with. 
It had to be.
As the sun begun to set this evening I felt restless and sat on the porch to smoke my pipe and watch the world. It was obvious that even the crows did not want to return home. Restlessness was the energy of the evening. A wind came out of nowhere as in an effort to chase the sun down early. Once the sun was over the horizon, the wind ceased. A friend called and spoke of her restless energy. I feel it in my chest. The night grew silent and I sat alone. Desirous of company, I sat and observed the reaching out of souls, like the northern lights ascending and descending upon Jacob's ladder.

All the lonely people

where do they all come from.

All the lonely people

where do they all belong?

Yes, midway between Lamas and Samhain can present as thin a veil as the transition from the Yang to the Yin: the light side of the year to the dark side of the year: two half's of the whole. No duality here. All is one and one is all.
I read several books over the summer that I have been waiting to read. Vonnegut, Kerouac, and a few others. I've been thinking of visiting the Aikido Dojo but I know that it is not in me. A tuck and roll would kill me.  And I'm also going back to the Lodge of Freemasons. Can you believe it? Not sure why, other than it presents me with a vehicle for community outreach. ( and in-reach?) My friend has a "salt of the earth" perspective on this. She feels that it is, to some degree, our responsibility to remain in places where we have been placed. If we have wisdom, patience, experience and a new perspective that might add "more light" (Masonic words - not mine) it cannot happen if we are not present. Although used the old analogy of the two bulls on the hill (one young, one old) looking down at a herd of cows. (Have you heard that one?)
I have seen a resurgence of old blogger pals via Facebook. This has been cool. There are more than a few people, the world over, that I have cherished....and they're back!

Goodbye, My Brother!!!!

I have been trying to work up the courage to post my tribute to Phillip "Chick" Stowell; my friend, my brother, who died unexpectedly(?) on Saturday August 14th, 2010 at the age of 75.
Chick was always in the periphery of things as he was one of the original wild ones. He rode hard, drank hard, fought hard, womanized, and finally settled down to marry a former Vietnam army nurse 16 years his junior.
There have many stories afloat regarding Chick. There were those that liked him and those that didn't. When questioned about him, I could only speak from what I knew and that was, "He has a big heart".
We have been friends for less than a decade. We got to know each other at the local cruise nights as he drove a 1965 Mustang while I, the 1973 Karmann Ghia. We were quickly absorbed into each other's life and we spoke most every day. My kids and grandkids adopted him as another grandfather. We acknowledged each other as, "Brother" and worked diligently at helping one another when the situation arose.
I feel the void.
I wish that I could call him.
Goodbye, my Brother.

A hurried existence...

 ‎

"Drink your tea slowly and reverently, as if it is the axis on which the world earth revolves - slowly, evenly, without rushing toward the future. Smile, breathe and go slowly. The kingdom of God is available to you in the here and the now. But the question is whether you are available to the kingdom. Our practice is to make ourselves ready for the kingdom so that it can manifest in the here and the now. You don't need to die in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. In fact, you have to be truly alive in order to do so." 

Thich Nhat Hanh

 

 

By day I praised you and never knew it. By night I stayed with you

and never knew it. I always thought that I was me--but no, I was you

and never knew it. -Rumi

A murder of Crows

it is oft said;

foretell of sad stories

and harbingers of death.

One of their own

tonight it did die,

and tonight we

mourn with those that 

now lie.

We laid him in death

in mock of a nest:

Not in gladness

nor mark of a jest.

No. No, we mourn 

his sad pass 

and we lay him to rest.

and thank him

for his warning....

Let my doubts be cleared........

,,

When I was young I used to say philosophy is an inquiry for ultimate answers.

Now I cannot say it. It is an inquiry for endless questions...............

Bertrand Russel at age 80

1. A dear friend of mine recently spoke of her sense of wonder as she prepared to sit in with a group of  UU elders that were going to conduct a "Bible study". She is unfamiliar with the Bible and with going to church. In our discourse she presented this experience with a mixture of awe and angst sensing that there was a whole wide world of Christendom that she was totally unfamiliar with. It was one more reminder for her that her spiritual life was not outlined in books or something that could be easily shared with others. If pressed, she will describe her spiritual practice as something that is little defined. She is meditative, contemplative and honors the universe with gratitude. And I state, "What more is there"? Within the world of spiritual and philosophical seekers there is a drive to study, understand and examine their practice. Scriptures, Sutras, self help books; they are all read and chewed on and discussed and dissected beyond recognition and nothing is gained.

   1. I assure you. 

   1. 
      
      When Te' Shan   experienced his awakening, it is reported that he burned all his Zen books, discourses and commentaries saying, "Even to plumb the full depths of all your knowledge it would be no more than a piece of hair lost in the vastness of the great void; and however important your experience in things worldly it is even less than a single drop of water cast into a vast valley."

      1. Within the pages of this blog I have expressed my own angst and struggle in trying to figure out the "answers to the questions pointing me in a crooked line". My mind and library are filled with volumes of books on multiple subjects: Zen and Tao. Christian and mystic. Buddhist and Vedic. World religions and philosophy. And yet the number of books and words that fill my head cannot make me any "closer to fine". It leads me further away.

         1. "Let my doubts be cleared" - Devi to Shiva

         1. Osho indicates that this is all the result of having a doubting mind. Seekers do just that. They seek: Ask questions. Look for answers. But Osho states that all of our questioning only leads to more questions. There are never any sufficient answers. We just keep on asking questions and our doubting mind is never cleared of the debris of doubt. Where then are we to do?

            1. We are to stop! To follow the way of non-doing. This is not some passive aspect of going with the flow. It is being rather less like a leaf floating down a stream but of one sailing with the flow. There is a difference. And there is a learning, but it is a learning through letting go and meditative contemplation and awareness.. It is cultivated through meditative contemplation and gratitude. 

             

            
            In the history of Chinese civilisation, no significant scientific advances came as a result of Confucian studies. They were scholastics, and a scholastic in those times was one who went by the book, who believed what the ancient text or the ancient scriptures said, and who studied them and became proficient in them like a rabbi or a Christian theologian.
            
            But mystics have never been very interested in theology. Mystics are interested in direct experience, and therefore - although you may laugh at them and say they are not scientific - they are empirical in their approach. And the taoists, being mystics, were the only great group of ancient Chinese people who seriously studied nature. They were interested in its principles from the beginning, and their books are full of analogies between the taoist way of life and the behaviour of natural forces seen in water, wind, or plants and rocks.

            (Alan Watts)