The Cobbler's efforts

[sky]

Originally Posted by The Cobbler's Apprentice

My own visualisation centred around getting out of the pew ASAP!

I'm nosy I wanted to see how much went into the Church Coffers

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

Well, I was thinking of posting a story or two up above in the Buddhist section but for obvious reasons have decided against it. Settled again with my extra hot cappuccino, the stories can go here.

A horse goes into a bar. The barman says:- "Why such a long face?"

Another, a white horse walks into a bar and the barman says:- "Did you know that there is a whiskey named after you?" and the horse says: - "What? Fred?"

Obviously, up in the Buddhist section where some are keen to display evidence of insight and discernment, the question would perhaps be:- Are these true or not? Maybe it would be pointed out that horses can't speak. All I can say is, "OK. You neigh, I say" and leave it at that. (Just thinking about it, Mister Ed might just come into the equation somewhere.)

Again I've been reading a few of my old poems and one caught my attention. It brought back to mind an intense moment when, thinking back, "something" might have been shifting about within the self (or not-self..... ) I was watching the news and familiar images of young children were on the screen, skeletal, arms at their sides, victims of famine. Obviously, as they waited passively for whatever our world could offer them, they stared into the camera, the images then beamed around the world. My poem just mentions a "plastic picture, unreal, until one child blinked and I felt myself".

There is a story of the Buddha descending into one of the many Buddhist hells, holding a lamp. By its light the people see for the first time and exclaim:- "Aaah! There are others here besides myself". As I see it, the beginning of the moral sense, of empathy, compassion, which eventually causes us to act.

Another story from the Christian tradition, much the same. Of a saint descending into hell where he finds line upon line of people all cemented into a position where they look only upon the backs of those in front. The saint allows them to turn, to face each other.

Sartre said once that "hell is other people" but I really can't see where he was coming from.

Sometimes, seeing the suffering of others, I can feel helpless. My own mother descended into dementia. She often spoke as a six year old child, and seemed to think that I was her sister.At one time she was knocked down by a car. She had an operation on her leg, which had been broken, and was recovering in a local hospital. One evening I got a call telling me that she may have suffered a stroke and might not see out the night. I got to the hospital and found her sitting up, wearing this silly little woollen hat that she seemed to favour. I took her hand and she just said to me:-" Why is this happening to me, I've been a good girl".

What can you say? True self, no-self, real self, in duality or non-duality?

I simply held her hand. The "appropriate statement" or not. She had certainly been a "good girl" to my brother and myself.

That's it. Time to go. Thoughts of the "contact of two liberties" were floating about, but I never got around to it.

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

Still good to sit here waffling. Not sure if its a distraction or the "thing itself".

The latest disturbing image was of bodies falling from the transport planes taking off from Kabul airport. Little specks hardly discernable. Obviously, as they fell, it was not a question of who was falling - false self or real self. A confusion of catagories. And when they hit the ground?

This introduces my next poem, bodies falling once again. Back in the 1970's, seeing in the paper a picture of a group of Kurds being executed by firing squad, the photo capturing their bodies as they began to fall.

Bodies fall and images
Leavibg raw the common pain
Dots upon the printed page
Now free to be a world again
And give to us at breakfast time
A canvas for our minds grim strokes
Our smears of justice, truth and right
On frozen brains and frozen hopes

Who are they now, this ink on paper
A chaos of a million minds
Now as the breath goes from their bodies
As the tears go from their eyes?


I posted a video of "Anthem" the other day, the lyrics include the lines:-

"You can add up the parts
But you won't have the sum"

William Blake said much the same:- "We murder to dissect". But the point is, as I see it, we are in a very real sense, simply a "part". This seems to be where many eager to display "discernment" jump in, offering insight into the human predicament.

So why not me? The Cobbler, even if an apprentice only?

I see great insight in the words of T.S.Eliot, of how at the end of all our exploring we come back to where we started, and know it for the first time This resonates with me, the implication being that this world, the only one we have ever known, is not betrayed for any imagined "other". Rightly or wrongly, I see betrayal in much "religion", even in many "spiritual" lives.

A story I read recently is quite a poser. I hesitate to tell it as it ends with a bow - anyone dipping into the Buddhist section recently will soon see why I would hesitate. But nothing ventured, nothing gained........

When the Zen teacher Pao-chê of Ma-ku was fanning himself, a monk asked him, “The nature of wind is constant, and there is no place it does not reach. Why then do you fan yourself?” Pao-chê said, “You only know that the nature of wind is constant. You don’t yet know the meaning of its reaching every place.” The monk asked, “What is the meaning of its reaching every place?” Pao-chê only fanned himself. The monk bowed deeply.

Well, that's it. There is much in the story (if not everything) but we all have to fan ourselves.

I tend to follow the advice of St John of the Cross, that if we wish to be sure of the road we tread on we should close our eyes and walk in the dark.

Others, of course, are free to plot their course.

More time today, and another story has popped into my mind, which has relevance, even if some might miss the connection. Of the Buddha standing beside a wide river and this guy comes walking across upon the waves. He seemed quite pleased with himself and spoke of his years of concentrated effort to attain such an ability. The Buddha simply said:- "The ferry only costs a 1p"

I suppose it sounds trite, but everything truly valuable is free, gift. It just seems that sometimes the "exploration" goes on and on and on......

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

I'm on a run at the moment. I found my little "worry doll" which had gone missing, causing quite a deal of worry. Then my dear wife's wedding ring was found (unable to wear at the moment). To cap it all, I cracked Level 2869 of Candy Crush Soda Saga.

Well, another old poem here.....

A poem never written
Bleak and cold as ice
Every rhyme was smitten
By dictate of Paradise

I suffered, crossed out constantly
Session after session
(Yet still I fear the dark in me
That reached then for expression)

I think we need the darkness to know the light, yet still they are opposites. Perhaps why many mystics refer to the "Godhead beyond God". Why Eckhart asked God to free him from God. Like the Middle Way of the Dharma, the opposites are in a sense "transcended", or need to be. Beyond "good" and "evil" - which is obviously a dangerous thought if not understood.

The actual Middle Way is "empty". Like the Godhead, "Incomprehensible", beyond thought. Yet, in being empty, can therefore be all things, being "nothing" itself. It is radical freedom, which issues in the "appropriate statement", appropriate for each unique moment, and for that moment only. There ia always something new under the sun.

I mentioned something about the "Contact of Two Liberties", a phrase used by Thomas Merton in a letter to Aldous Huxley. Huxley was advocating the use of drugs to induce mystical experience and Merton sought to speak of such as needing to be the contact of two liberties and suggested that therefore something would be missing from any experience induced by drugs. At the time this phrase was important to me and I raised it on various forums. Also at that time one poster spoke of "relationship" being at the heart of Reality, and said that as he saw it, "relationship" was threatened by "non-duality". I think at the time I waffled about non-duality being "not-two" rather than "all is one" and then ran for cover...

Now, years later, I simply ask:- why simply two liberties? (For Merton, God and self) Why not infinite liberties? Each "in" the Godhead, in which we live and move and have our being.

My coffee is getting cold

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

I think that I'm reaching the end of the road with this........some might think I reached it long ago. But maybe not. "No-calculation" always has its surprises.

The "road" bit is an intro to a ridiculous poem from the past where I strained analogy to its limits. "Life is like a road" some say...

My world seemed to die
When you told me "goodbye"
When you told me
You wouldn't be back
As you step upon the Highway of Life
I enter a cul-de-sac

Your road is so smooth
A well worn groove
The time will not come
When you're bored
As you glide through life in a Cadillac
I'll bump in a second-hand Ford

Your road is so straight
Mine a figure-eight
Loneliness to me
You bequeath
So as you rev and roar over the modern flyover
Think of me on the dirt-track beneath

Anyway, I was glad to find such a poem, reminding me that I was not always full of pretentious nonsense about being "a son of emptiness" and other such "thoughts".

Speaking of life being a road, it reminds me of a TV show from bygone days. It featured this old guy who strolled out onto a veranda and gave a homely message of words that his old grandpappy used to say, ruminating upon their wisdom. At the final laugh-line an umbrella handle would appear from stage right and hook him round the neck and whip him off.

He appeared once and said:- "My old grandpappy used to say, life is like a road". At this the old guy nodded and ruminated with profound agreement. Then said:- "I mean, when you see those cats-eyes down the centre of the road they sort of suggest.........well, the tarmac on the road kind of reminds you of.........the paving stones each side of the road seems to........" Then the old guy exclaims, " Come to think of it, life ain't nothing like a road! " Then out comes the umbrella, hooking him off.

Obviously, a "serious" side to all this, Basho's "Narrow Road to the Deep North", where the road goes on forever, and the journey itself is home.

This morning more images from Kabul. Little kiddies the same age as my own grandchildren, loved to bits. The Afghan children bewildered. Children are resilient yet what do they make of our world? Here I have the freedom so many there can only dream of.

Totally randomly I began to think of "Holy" books, of how we, the human family, can't even agree which book is the one, if there is indeed one at all, written by God. Then, among those who choose a particular book, again dispute its "meaning". All needing commentaries, study guides, and what-not. One of the books claims that eventually "a little child shall lead them".....which seems pretty far fetched. Possibly if the book said "Go to Bank and Collect £200" no commentary or involved hermeneutics would be needed. But often the book will simply say "love one another" or "be merciful" so we all reach for the commentaries, or hope that some guru or theologian will explain the technicalities. "Is that dual.....or non-dual".......or "what's in it for me?"

Almost time to go. Somewhere I waffled about "authenticity" and of a comment by Dogen that no matter how "low" anyone's symbols were, if the person gave their all they were "entitled to enlightenment". I was reminded of this when I found the following in my old books.....

Love is where you give the most
No inner warmth or starry host
Eternal, waiting to be caught
Waiting for the words 'I ought'

All our lives spent searching for
A roaring wind , a Holy Law
When our love, all the while
Was in a word or in a smile

(A young sales girl's smile once meant the world to me)

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

Here again, certain little ones off to the seaside, while tomorrow the traumatic experience ( ) of buying them new school shoes. An oasis of peace in the coffee shop.

I happened to hit an old poem that I remember at the time as fraught with a deal of anguish. It came from a news story, of a young boy, just five or so, who fell down a man-hole. His mother rushed to the opening but he was too far down. Soon a rescue squad arrived, a microphone was set up. His mother could hear the little boys cries. Calling for his mother. Eventually one guy went down on a rope. At one point his hands and the hand of the little boy clasped each other, but then slid apart because of the slime. The little lad slid away.

Basically, that is the end of it. I found it all shocking at the time and I think anyone will still find it so if they still have......what can you call it....... "imagination". I see from my old book the use of much tippex as I tried different words. But really, what words could ever be adequate.

The boy was called Alfredo, my poem "Alfredo is it dark?"

Curled within your shocking tomb
As once within your mother's womb
(Alfredo, is it dark?)

On microphone, soul destroying
Hear the muffled fearful crying
(Alfredo is it dark?)

When you lie so far below
Can any stand and worship now.
(Alfredo is it dark?)

The horror of your mother's grief
Rips the heart of all belief

Far beyond the empty skies
The still and silent figure lies
Drawn the final muddied breath
Died, the tiny lonely death


At the time I was into Theodicy, the attempt to justify God in the face of our world's evil and suffering. Sometimes I thought that I had "the answer" but I now think any "answers" are virtually blasphemy. The "answer" does not rest in any "belief" but is found at another level of being (or non-being).

Meanwhile, we can only act in the face of suffering

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

The great thing about the way of no-calculation is that you never know when you're going to be back. There is a lot about the "false self" around here and I spotted a little poem of my own, written about 45 years ago that perhaps shows that I was onto the "problem" way back.....

How shallow is that smile
How hollow is that look
Were those words, was that style
Copied from a book

How dead a life can be
Empty, automatic
As rings within a tree
Dumb, congealed, static.

As I see it the problem is that when such falsity is seen we then seek to replace it with a more "spiritual" self, a more authentic self. I've found that little is gained by this. I've found that it is more about stripping the self, surrender.

The more our sense of self, our identification with what at core are just culturally, time conditioned accoutrements, the more others are simply that, OTHERS. Met inevitable with judgement no matter how dressed up with attempts at "acceptance" and "empathy".

This is simply what the zen master Dogen spoke of when speaking of the "10,000 things", that when our self approaches them it is delusion, yet when they come to us it is enlightenment.

Maybe all this can be seen as mumbo jumbo, of no consequence. For me it is the heart of Reality-as-is. It opens the mind/heart to the beauty of difference. When first helping out at a sports club for the physically handicapped there were three Downs children. You saw the "handicap", each the "same". On acquaintance they became individuals. That is how Reality blesses and heals. We just need to get out of the way (but we get "ourselves" back, empty)

There is a poem I think of, the Two Headed Calf by Laura Gilpin. It is quite short, look it up. It is about difference, acceptance of how our world often crushes the "other" by ignorance. The two headed calf, newly born, will soon be disposed of, a freak of nature. Yet at this moment, the calf stands beside his mother: -

"And as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual."

The "freak" sees what we cannot see.

There is lots we will never see if we identify with a particular "self".

[Nowayout]

The neural typicals run the world. The freaks need to adapt.

But a new day unfolds, A,I, on the horizon, blows us all away.


I am fully aware that I see the world in my own particular light, but this could be interesting.

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

Originally Posted by Nowayout

The freaks need to adapt.

Really? Interesting viewpoint.

[The Cobbler's Apprentice]

Originally Posted by Nowayout

The neural typicals run the world. The freaks need to adapt.

Definitions:-

Neurotypical people are those individuals who do not have a diagnosis of autism or any other intellectual or developmental difference.
A neurotypical person is an individual who thinks, perceives, and behaves in ways that are considered to be "normal" by the general population.


So, "the freaks need to adapt"?

What a weird, strange, and dare I say it, ignorant opinion.