· Beauty is Eternity gazing at itself in the Mirror ·

But you are eternity & you are the mirror.-


The Prophet
by Khalil Gibran


photo · beijing-based japanese architect yohimasa tsutsumi/anzas dance studio

Knowledge, Ephemerally Infinite

HOW THE WORLD WORKS HAS ALWAYS BEEN THE SAME, THE ONLY THING THAT CHANGES IS OUR UNDERSTANDING OF IT.

EXPLORATION & DISCOVERY IS INHERENT IN HUMAN NATURE. WE WALK AS EXPLORERS, AS CONCILIATORS. WE MOVE TO UNCOVER THE INFINITE, FOR INFINITE ARE THE SECRETS OF OUR UNIVERSE, AND THEREFORE OUR NATURE CONTAINED IN THE UNIVERSE IS ALSO.

EVERY HUMAN LONGING, AT A "LARGE", "MEDIUM", "SMALL" SCALE IS SYNCHRONIC WITH THE OTHER, WE LONG FOR EVERYTHING. TO KNOW WHAT WE DO NOT AND CANNOT UNDERSTAND, TO GET THERE FASTER, ERASING OURSELVES INTO THIS ILLUSORY OBLIVION, TRYING TO FIND MEANING IN SOMETHING SO HUGE IT LOOSES ALL MEANING, STAYING THERE AND BASKING IN THE DARKNESS OF WHAT WE CANNOT UNDERSTAND OR THE LIGHT OF WHAT WE FOUGHT TO UNDERSTAND. NEITHER IS BETTER NOR WORSE, THEY ARE, THEY ARE THE STEPPING STONES TOWARDS THE LITTLE OR LOT OF TRUTH WE DECIDE TO LET OUR BODIES BE FLOODED BY.

PATIENCE, FOR WHO COULD DEFINE WHY A PEACH TASTES LIKE A PEACH AND A PEAR A PEAR? AND HOW YOUR MOUTH AND MINE EVOKE STORIES ONLY YOUR MIND COULD TELL.

SO IF YOU PRAY FOR SOMETHING ASK FOR DISCERNMENT AND UNDERSTANDING. LISTEN LIKE A ROCK UNAFFECTED BY FALSE JUDGEMENTS. TOMORROW YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE SAME THING COULD BE TOTALLY DIFFERENT. YOUR ONCE HELPFUL KNOWLEDGE MIGHT LEAVE YOU IGNORANT.

THE ONLY UNCHANGEABLE, UN-SHIFTABLE NOTION IS LOVE...

AND LOVE, FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW, IS EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING THAT UNITES IN THE FACE OF SEPARATION.

AND THOSE WHO CLAIM THAT IT IS A MYTH, THEY HAVE LOST FAITH, THEY LET GO TOO FAST, THEY WERE BLINDED BY MOMENTARY PAIN, THE LOVE THEY THOUGHT WASN´T LOVE AT ALL, IT CAME FROM THE BODY AND THE BODY ALONE WITHERS AWAY, FOR TRUE LOVE IS TIMELESS.

WAKE UP!

An excerpt of Jack Kerouac´s Wake Up! A Life of the Buddha //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// By nightfall he (the Buddha) resposed (under the Bodhi tree) peaceful and quiet. He entered into deep and subtle contemplation. Every kind of holy ecstasy in order passed before his eyes. During the first watch of the night he entered on "right perception" and in recollection all former births passed before his eyes... Knowing full well that the essence of existence is of onesuchness, what birth could not his Bright, Mysterious, Intuitive Essence of Mind recall? As though he had been all things, and only because there had never been a true "he" but all things, and so all things were the same thing, and it was within the purview of the Universal Mind, which was the Only Mind past, present, and future... It had been a long time already finished, the ancient dream of life, the tears of the many-mothered sadness, the myriads of fathers in the dust, eternities of lost afternoons of sisters and brothers, the sleepy cock crow, the insect cave, the pitiful instinct all wasted on emptiness, the great huge drowsy Golden Age sensation that opened in his brain that this knowledge was older than the world... In the ears of the Buddha as he thus sat in brilliant and sparkling craft of intuition, so that light like Transcendental Milk dazzled in the invisible dimness of his closed eyelids, was heard the unvarying pure hush of the sighing sea of hearing, seething, receding, as he more or less recalled the consciousness of the sound, though in itself it was always the same steady sound, only his consciousness of it varied and receded, like low tide flats and the salty water sizzling and sinking in the sand, the sound neither outside nor within the ear but everywhere, the pure sea of hearing, the sound of Nirvana heard by children in cribs and on the moon and in the heart of howling storms, and in which the young Buddha now heard a teaching going on, a ceaseless instruction wise and clear from all the Buddhas of Old that had come before him and all the Buddhas a-coming. Beneath the distant cricket howl occasional noises like the involuntary peep of sleeping dream birds, or scutters of little fieldmice, or a vast breeze in the trees disturbed the peace of this Hearing but the noises were merely accidental, the Hearing received all noises and accidents in its sea but remained as ever undisturbed, truly unpenetrated, and neither replenished nor diminished, as self-pure as empty space. Then in the middle of the night, he reached to knowledge of the pure Angels, and beheld before him every creature, as one sees images upon a mirror; all creatures born and born again to die, noble and mean, the poor and rich, reaping the fruit of right or evil doing, and sharing happiness or misery in consequence... The groundmist of 3 A.M. rose with all the dolors of the world. Birth of bodies is the direct cause of death of bodies. Just as, implantation of its seed was the cause of the cast off rose. Then looking further, Where does death come from? he saw it came from life-deeds done elsewhere; then scannning those deeds, he saw they were not framed by a creator, nor self caused, nor personal existences nor were they either uncaused; he saw they themselves obtained along a further chain of causes, cause upon cause, concatenative links joining the fetters binding all that is form- poor form, mere dust and pain. Then, as one who breaks the first bamboo joint finds all the rest easy to separate, having discerned the cause of death as birth, and the cause of birth as deeds, he gradually came to see the truth; death comes from birth, birth comes from deeds, deeds come from attachment, attachment comes from desire, desire from perception, perception comes from sensation, sensation comes from the six sense organs, the six sense organs come from individuality, individuality comes from consciousness.... In him, thus freed, arose freedom and he knew that rebirth was at an end, and that the goal had been reached...

"Christianity in Crisis"

I don´t actually agree with what Jefferson did to the Bible, but Andrew Sullivan gives an insightful perspective on the current "crisis" of the church and on Jesus´ true nature. I scrolled down to view some of the comments to find people who didn´t find the title too objective, which left me with the sensation of wanting to answer (this person reminded me of someone I know really well)... This crisis is a physical one not a spiritual one, if anything, there is a current spiritual revival. If your faith has deep roots in God/Jesus, the crisis is nonexistent, if this faith is in doubt most likely it is rooted in something other than God, i.e Man. People who feel outraged with such a piece cannot really see what´s unveiling right in front of our eyes, and it´s something I wrote on a couple of posts back... This conscious or unconscious weakness inherent in humanity, those who uphold false truths and those who out of ignorance subscribe to them. The church, a clear example. Even if I intuit an eventual downfall, there is nothing to be afraid of people, didn´t you ever read somewhere you were your own temple (not to be confused with you are your own god, which is sadly how many people might interpret it)..., that you didn´t have to go far to find God, for He being the Creator and breathing life into creation lives in intrinsic communion with everything that is LIVING. So before any hardcore believers panic, I hope you find peace in knowing God cannot be eradicated, the Church is simply a human-made place to find shelter, a building that´ll eventually crumble, everything physical eventually passes, and that´s fine- it´s part of a natural order, the only thing Eternal is the Spirit. I invite you to find shelter in yourself, in the good nature of your heart, in the elevation of your thoughts, in the lightness of the Spirit, to find this Something that created Everything. Photograph by Kwon O. Chul, TWAN

A Postmodern Prayer

Colección Jumex

Jim

Merci Kevin

I only have eyes for you

After having a really bitter taste throughout yesterday night and this afternoon, the palliative.

Jose C.

Eres de mis personas favoritas y todo mundo lo sabe.

One's nature is like a mirror which reflects with complete openness but is not affected by the reflections

Title: Dzogchen Buddhism

ƒIN

@JMEA_

Pictor´s Metamorphoses

Report from Normalia

...We are quite simply inmates of an enormous asylum full of madmen. And the question of whether it is we or the others who are the madmen constitutes the principal subject matter of the philosophies and speculations of our men of genius. We others, we who are older and more detached, are of the opinion that it would be pointless to distress ourselves with questions that cannot be answered, and it matters little to determine whether one is crazy or normal, whether one is the monkey in the cage or the gawking member of the Zoological Gardens who stares through the bars from the outside; rather, it is more proper and fitting to see Existence as a game, one far from problem-free, but genuinely meaningful and charming, and to be glad of the many good and beautiful things we can experience while playing it.

_____________________


In a decaying civilization, one that is diseased with a lack of sense and slowly dying, for individuals as well as for the community as a whole, there is no other medicament and nourishment, no other source of strength that enables one to go on, than the encounter with that which, in spite of everything, gives meaning to our lives and our actions and justifies us. And in the recollection of a whole lifetime of holidays and gatherings, in listening to the sounds and stirrings of the soul-even as far back as the colorful wilderness of childhood, in gazing into beloved eyes long since extinguished, there is demonstrated the existence of an intelligence, a unity, a secret center we have circled around - now consciously, now unconsciously - all our lives. From the pious Christmases of childhood, redolent of wax and honey in a world seemingly sane, safe from destruction, incapable of believing in the possibility of its own destruction, through all the changes, crises, shocks, and reevaluations of our private lives and of our age, there still remains a core, a sense, a grace residing in no dogma of the church or of science, but in the existence of a center around which even an imperiled and troubled life can always find itself anew, from just this innermost core of our being, a belief in the accessibility of God, in the coincidence of this center with the presence of God. For where He is present, yes, even the ugly and apparently meaningless may be borne, because, for Him, seeming and being are one and inseparable, for Him everything is meaning.




Hermann Hesse