30 December 2011
Roxana Azar
029 December 2011
Sparkly (Young Magic)
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28 December 2011
What Would Buddha Say? (Annette Andrews)
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"For all its ecstatic nature, for all its power, sex is just another human drive. If we avoid it just because it is more difficult to integrate than anger or fear, then we are simply saying that when the chips are down we cannot follow our own practice. This is dishonest and unhealthy." (Robert Aitken Roshi)It appears like a swarm of butterflies in your guts. Not fantasy induced, not triggered by any of the five senses. It's female desire. It's psychic. This desire is not to be found in the physical body, though it can be squished there out of desperation, fear, or anxiety to find an expression, and the limited perspective that it needs to be released in this way, or that it might be greatly pleasurable to do so, makes it too seductive to try to do something else with it. But the desire itself is not demanding to be released through the physical, nor has it seemed to have been produced through a biological function like the unstoppable compulsion to void or urinate. Nor does it leave the physical body in a state of depletion afterward, nor is it inspired by visual fantasy or sound, internal or external.
As a meditator I have puzzled over how to work with this ethereal form of desire, a desire that does not require or belong to the physical body, because it has called to me directly and persistently more than mere observation can handle. I searched for the antidote of this course form of desire in all of my available Buddhist teachings. But I came up unsure of my findings and how to apply them. So, I asked a Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher, a Rinpoche and former monk who disrobed to have a family at the request of his father. As open as he is, which is why I respect and need his form of student-teacher relationship, he was shocked, 'You mean women know when a man is thinking about them sexually?', he asked around the room to other women, he received a few nods. Then, a bit embarrassed he replied, 'that is why the female is the dakini!'
The desire to which I sought an antidote, or a consensus as to whether or not an antidote is necessary, is one that many people might call 'love' when glimpsed in powerful or less powerful measure depending on the experiencers past memories with it, if any. It might also be considered a 'meeting of minds' rather than familiar desire. Except that the meeting for me is defined by a powerful element of conspiring to know, to experience, to go into it. Like any desire it is an attraction, but what is the pull into?
Call to mind when someone you are connected to dies. In some variable period of time after they have passed away their consciousness becomes completely known to you, they seem to have been liberated, and the trappings of their physical body, of their limited or great grasp of their maternal language, of their timidity, anger, guilt, or nervousness, drops away, and where any handicap or addiction they have struggled with, has dissolved. It feels they have been released as though from bondage and they appear to ones own mind as greatly vast, greatly liberated, incredibly unfettered, and joyous and carefree. It is as though their very best liberated qualities have risen to the occasion to expand as a reclamation into wisdom consciousness itself. That moment of exchange is powerful, instantaneous and cannot be stopped because it has flooded ones own mind. It just happens dude.
The desire that I am talking about is closer to this kind of passionate meeting of minds, but, while both people are still alive. It is a knowing of a persons desire, their longing, their incredible joy and effervescence, and even where they might be comfortable themselves manifesting their own desire on the physical plane. It often lives powerfully over time without any physical sexual release but, inevitably so, I believe, because it involves men and calls into play their own understanding and relationship to their own mind-body sexuality, it can potentially manifest as sexual energy, though it isn't actually what we know base physical desire to be.
While it is not entirely unfettered by the body, because it can arouse the body, just as a dream arouses or panics or soothes the body, it doesn't originate in the body. And it is all pervasive and not contained by geography or time. It's an instantaneous exchange. It can be two way if both people are aware, and more powerful depending on the power of concentration both people have over their own minds. I liken it to the thrill one experiences when falling in love, that exhilarating feeling one succumbs to, that tingling chill that occurs when two formidable minds recognize each other. Pow!
I call it psychic love, psychic longing for lack of a better more vast, concise term. But it is like being flooded with desire and sensual experience in the mindstream, not as images or fantasies, but as the flooding feeling of a first kiss, innocently as though sweetened by a taste of that colossal feeling of knowing someone's consciousness nakedly, beautifully, and freely after death. It can come at any time after two minds meet and a connection is forged.
So, what of it? This manifestation of desire -a desire beyond the ken of the fettered mind and body as it understands in limited ways the range of knowing and joy available to it as wisdom - interrupts my meditation practice. But, it also serves as fertilizer enriching my practice so that I am expanded in a benevolent way that reaches past the judgment mind, and dips into pure perception.
As a Buddhist I wanted to clarify my motivation, consider the origin and location of this sensation of this desire, and determine if in succumbing to its pull, I am breaking one of the five basic Buddhist precepts, the vaguest of all for a lay female practitioner, of not committing sexual misconduct.
Eventually, I arrived at a Vajrayana, pure perception, inspired solution: to transmute the desire by imagining it as white, or rainbow, light or nectar flowing from the Tibetan tantric deity, Vajrasattva, into me. (Excellent details and descriptions of Tibetan deity yoga can be found in the teachings of Lama Yeshe.) Utilizing deity yoga in this way frees the mind from clinging to the desire in a sexually pleasurable way for the mind or body, and though it still feels pleasurable as clarity the mind is liberated from grasping, and the energy is free to fuel enhanced clarity in the (completion stage) meditation that follows as the dissolution of the deity and oneself.
"The same desirous energy that ordinarily propels us from one unsatisfactory situation is transmuted, through the alchemy of tantra, into a transcendental experience of bliss and wisdom. The practitioner focuses the penetrating brilliance of this blissful wisdom so that it cuts like a laser beam through all false projections of this and that and pierces the very heart of reality." (Lama Yeshe)
Transmuting this form of desire in this way informs the mind with a unprecedented measure of clarity and lucidity, if and when I manage to resist the incredibly seductive invitation to entertain it in the comfortable, familiar physical mind-body way.
The result? A deepened, more disarmed understanding that all is pure in the pure perception mandala, including oneself, there is nothing to be rejected or accepted on the Vajrayana path, all desire is self-arising from the mind, our own and others, but that desire, just like anger or compassion, can be used to deepen ones practice. Through decreased judgment, less black and white delineations, no fear, no hope, no attachment, no avoidance there is a state which is neither this nor that, and that on the path, in the Vajrayana vehicle, there is much to draw support and energy from on the sea of human emotion.
Tibetan meditation deity, Vajrasattva, www.buddhistmages.co.uk
In The Mind of Clover: Essays in Zen Buddhist Ethics [1984], pp. 41-42, Robert Aitken Roshi.
Introduction to Tantra: A Vision of Totality [1987], p. 37, Lama Yeshe.
- BlogPressd via iPad
Location:Kalifa University, Abu Dhabi, UAE
24 November 2011
Nepal Road Transmission No. 3 Cloudy Days (Annette Andrews)
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(Monkey Temple, Swayambu, Nepal)
"All things, external and internal,
Are imputed by the mind.
Apart from the mind nothing else exists."
(from the Samputa Tantra)
Temporary bad weather obscures the sun. (It obscures Everest and Annapurna too.) When clouds arrive we can't be 100% sure the sun is there anymore - we can look to the sky and guess 'oh now because it is lunch time the sun must be high in the sky, somewhere around there' we think. But we aren't sure. We can't be sure until we catch a glimpse of it among the clouds.
In Vancouver, where I grew up, it gets so that no one has much faith about the suns whereabouts in the winter. I begin to think the sun has gone away completely. When I get on a plane it's a different story, as we climb through the thick cloud cover, and out the other side, I am in disbelief that the sun has actually been there the whole miserable winter. And I feel betrayed that we cannot know it from down below. But there it has always been, shining, while we continue losing faith that cloud cover will eventually part, and that we may glimpse it and feel its wordless warmth.
What if I had been born on a very cloudy day, and I grew up never seeing the sun, if by some strangeness the clouds never parted? How would I know the sun was there? I would listen to those with experience tell me about it, about where it might be found in the vast sky, and about having faith that even though I had never known, it was there, and that there was the possibility I might know it too one day, if the right conditions presented themselves, while I was still alive of course.
(Pokhara, Nepal)
I might by chance catch a glimpse of it, something bright and strange among the clouds, something I was told was the 'sun', but the brightness so big, and the word so small! But maybe it was only for a flash, a streak reflecting off a building, or a glint on the ocean like a strobe light, and then darkness, cloudiness, uncertainty about what I had glimpsed would settle over me.
If I talked to others who had never glimpsed the real, naturally arising sun, they wouldn't be sure either. But there would be some would know what I witnessed. I would choose then to believe it was the sun or not, and I might take to staring in the sky waiting for the clouds to part, or dissolve completely. Or, I might never bother to look up again, waiting instead for others to tell me stories about its nature.
(finally, a glimpse of Annapurna from Pokhara on a clearer day)
Comprehending the secret of the minds natural luminosity is said to be like this. So simple it is shocking. Easy to understand yet hard to believe it is there until experienced.
Why is recognizing the stainless unobscured mind so difficult? It is there when obscuration is not as recounted and guided by the historical Buddha, and the great Mahamudra and Dzogchen masters like Saraha, Nagarjuna, Shavari, Maitrepa, and Marpa.
(Saraha)
In relation to the mind, the obscurations are thoughts. All thoughts, emotional and cognitive are temporary, rising and falling like a pride of lions, sometimes wrathful, sometimes indifferent, sometimes affectionate. We can pacify them, feed them, ignore them, agitate them, or just look without stirring them up at all.
When we meditate by looking at thought - arising and dissolving - there is a strong possibility we will glimpse something amidst the obscurations. Not by looking for the sun in only one gap between the clouds, only one place in the vast sky; not by staring at the gaps between the thoughts. But when we look, and when in this looking obscurations dissolve like clouds beneath the sun, we might know something that cannot be grasped, without reference point, indescribable.
(Pokhara, Nepal)
The veil covering what is obvious - the intrinsic nature of mind - might fall away then. And like a person discovering for the first time that a dirty mirror when cleaned reflects their very own face - something incredibly intimate and simple, something that was there all along, might reveal itself.
Annette Andrews
Boudha, Nepal
Via iPad
07 November 2011
Nepal Road Transmission No. 2 (Annette Andrews)
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(Lumbini, Nepal) Leaping into the next pool of expansion is easier said than done. Each time I have planned a big adventure I still hesitate in the last moments. Just before walking out the door and closing it behind me, I must take a big, fortifying breath of trust. Trust that even if my wildest fears were to be realized, I would be able to receive them with spaciousness.
And it's usually easier than imagined because the wildest fear come to fruition is less terrifying when encountered out on the street, than when met traipsing about the indoors of an imaginative mind at 4 in the morning.
Even so, more often than not, we resist engaging with deep longing and pretend the goading whispers that call us to wreak havoc on the foundation of our unchanging patterns are unintelligible.
Closing doors behind us and stepping out into our Unknown requires courage. But once the leap is taken all details do fall into place, and fears do transform from unmanageable, shadowy gremlins into surmountable, challenging peaks calling to be navigated with a grin.
Teachers, understandings, and insights belong to the journey, that magical realm outside of a comfortable mind and body, and are the jewels contained within the rich mandala we all share, and which is accessible to all of us - if we step through doors.
Taking a leap into our Unknown is entering a mandala of knowing and learning unique to our longing. Leaping into Unknowns can unify us with a self of spaciousness that zooms out beyond constricted notions, judgments, and misconceptions, if we can receive the strangeness with an open mind.
We must open doors to grow - doors of the mind, doors of perception, doors of longing, doors of fear. Our habit itself of allowing irrational fears shroud our innate, clear wisdom mind can be seen when we choose not to recoil from what is unknown, but rather open to it.
Maybe that's why the Jungian imagery that pops out at us when we are traveling strikes us as a cinematic dream directed for our eyes only, and cuts with precision to the bone of our unique subconscious. Fearless actions burrow deep, identifying us with our symbolic, metaphorical selves; weaving a seamless tapestry of archetypal knowing from each obstacle and sensation met eye to eye, gut to gut, smell to smell.
When this happens, when the guts of the ego mind, the grasping, the attachment, the fear, appear on the tapestry of knowing, we are better able to see our unique ludicrous faults, limitations, and bad habits like fleas on a Persian cat. The less we grasp, the more fearlessness we display with life, the more obvious the fleas that remain become. And the more the innate clear mind can know itself.
We are the activity of our mind. Knowing happens from within; peace is arrived to from within. Unlike the physical self, the mind neither goes nor arrives, but is there waiting patiently to be recognized, spacious and vast. No matter which gate of the mandala you enter, you always arrive to the centre.
When the 'magic' mandala is fearlessly entered this way, through the gate of the unknown, we become known to a greater self, and a greater self becomes in the knowing.
- BlogPressd via iPad
Location:Boudha, Nepal
19 October 2011
Nepal Road Transmission No. 1 (Annette Andrews)
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As I rinse out the grey grime from my dull whites and fading blacks, my mind sparkles with the colours of the passing day.
I have always been fascinated with communication in all its permutations from animal behaviour to art, literature to oral histories, languages and culture, society and religion, graffiti to haute couture, and common expressions of creativity born of necessity and struggle.
Traveling is piercing the membrane of the familiar and popping into the richness of other ways that communication happens, it's a new signal for receiving and sharing insights.
Wandering through Nepal from Kathmandu to the Pokhara valley and back to the Vatican of Nepal - Boudhanath - I have sparked conversation and friendship with lamas and locals, engaged in broken missives with street children and those employing all measures to extract the sweetness nestled in the wallets of foreigners. I am dusty with the contradiction and richness of The Strange New Place. Oh, the exfoliating charm of it all, sloughing away preconceptions, scratching at the egos armor, and buff buff buffing away, grime on grime.
Here, Asia also reminds me that others pay dearly for my luxuries of time, money, health, water, and food. And, generally, the people doing the hardcore dirty work in Asia are shiny, resilient and openhearted gems of the sparkling tapestry of our humanity. Just as creative, but more often than at home, manifesting creatively out of necessity, as well as producing art for arts sake.
And what is doing the manifesting? We are not our bodies - this we know but continually lose touch with in a process of second by second amnesia that dogs our every turn - we are our minds.
When the mind is bright even in the midst of severe pollutions of sound and toxins and corruption, the luminosity of the human mind does not fade in its essence. When the mind is bright, the path is never dull. When the mind is consumed with negativity a cloud follows at each turn.
The process of knowing beauty through nature and contrast is a function of the soul, the pure mind seeking to know itself, to know the infinite intelligence of a universe that birthed us.
The plethora of trekkers in Nepal reminds me that we turn to the beauty around us because we are blind to the beauty of our own mind. We seek external forms of beauty to become familiar with beauty, we seek the act of perceiving and creating beauty externally so that we may recognize it within ourselves, so that we might self-realize a bright truth of existence.
One day we are radiant, another day cranky and defensive, our face changes to reflect our state of mind, lit or darkened from within we attract or repel, inspire joy or incite fear, and so on.
There is a sparkle of humanity that radiates in everyone's eyes, regardless of nationality, profession, middle class or middle caste, this light is an innate state of perfection, the mind of awareness, the polishing cloth. Sometimes it is a diamond in the dust, other times a light so radiant that we want to look away because it is too truthful, too honest, too pure.
Communication in all its forms is a process of knowing this beauty, this light of the universal mind, that turns us outside in.
- BlogPressd by Annette via iPad
Location:Mandala St,Kathmandu,Nepal
28 September 2011
Friends with Benefits (Alison Dowsett)
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| image via Life Changg |
Friends We Benefit From err, Friends With Benefits, a guest post by Vancouver writer Alison Dowsett ...
As I watched the film Friends With Benefits a new sexual identity arose against the tired old cliches on the screen. Not at first though, I quite liked the movie. The actors are super cute, and the first sex scene is fresh, with the pair making out and getting naked while exchanging banter about how they like to be touched, what positions work best and just generally being authentic.
However, eventually the story falls into the familiar rut of romance, and the lovers fall for each other-- which isn’t at all surprising for a romantic comedy. I’m not a movie critic, nor do I expect a Hollywood movie to blaze a trail into bona fide sexual freedom but as I was saying, I walked into the movie theatre plain old me, but by the time the curtain closed, a sexual freedom fighter sat in my chair.
As the film played certain assumptions were laid out:
1. Friends with benefits is accomplished by remaining emotionally distant;
2. It is also considered immature, something done in college and then moved on from - the notion that we advance to marriage-style committed relationships in order to be fulfilled;
3. The soul mate, or as it is called in this movie, the ‘prince charming,’ the idea that there is one person out there for every one of us.
I sat in my chair. The assumptions were laid out for me and none of them have any bearing on my life. I have had at least four soul mates. I am single. I expect to meet many more soul mates that I will make love with. I view my closest friendships as soul mates too. My entire life is made up of long-term relationships, only the ones where sex has been involved have fizzled away. I want sex and intimacy and lots of it but my life is not devoid of love because I don't have a lover.
I suppose the biggest thing is that I no longer feel the need to rank my relationships. It used to be that I would meet a lover, determine whether or not they were available for a partnership and then put all my energy there. That relationship took precedence over every other one and in some way this caused an acceleration to the end. Now that I’ve done that four times I can’t see the point of continuing as such.
Friends with benefits. I say it slowly. Oh it gets people’s backs up, this phrase. It’s rife with sleaziness, lying and emotional hedging. But slowly, I say it. Friends. What is friendship? If I’m going to do this, I have to go slower than I ever have. I can’t be in a hurry to have sex anymore. Friends can kiss. And find out about big stuff like who wants children and what happened at the last break-up. And ask questions about sex and what it might mean, how it will change the friendship. And it will be so different than just jumping in to bed and then trying to piece together some boundaries. There will be all that space created by the waiting and the friendship. I’m free. I’m gonna do it.
Alison Dowsett's work has appeared in The Science Creative Quarterly, Terminal City and Xtra. Twitter :: @alisondowsett
23 September 2011
22 September 2011
20 September 2011
Ojo Señor
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I admit, this is my first eye on light-emitting diode (LED) street art. The Spanish collective Ojo Señor collective (via Vandalog) has some compelling images. Like film noir in colour isn't it? And yes, lets illuminate the external, after all, it occupies most of our realities, why shouldn't it be electric?
19 September 2011
The Dakini is Flying
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Flying Dakini is going to India and Nepal. Check back for dispatches from South Asia. But be patient, they may not arrive on western time.
Varanasi, India street art via Creative Roots
17 September 2011
