Apech

????? forget it

I tried to post my notes again but it didn't appear. I shall start to become paranoid! .... no, instead I post it for discussion on the discussion threads.

scattered from that dream you awoke with sleepy eyes found lost in night's daze.

In the end I sent a copy to Sean to see if he can post it without probs. I wonder if there is a FU for successful posting - maybe I should buy one. Meanwhile keep taking the tablets!

Soap... to wash the mouth shower gel for all the rest clean inside and out.

Funny that - every time I phone my friends in Portugal they tell me its raining.

embryo dreaming in the flicker of an eye a whole life passes.

Just listening to news. Prayers for those affected.

natures so confused and so intertwined, that love becomes obstruction.

tulips never tell us any flower secrets - root, stem, petal, leaf.

spring is on the job so I close the bedroom door modesty prevails.

In Buddhist thought 'suffering' can be 'suffering of suffering' i.e. pain, misery and so on, BUT also suffering arising from the ephemeral nature of things and/or conditionality. The idea is that samsara the cyclic world of sense objects is governed by ignorance, desire and fear/anger. Samsara is illusory in that it is not an adequate understanding of the nature of reality but it is the way the world is seen by most people. This is ignorance. In other words we see the world as space filled with objects which have separate independent existence (i.e. selfhood). By mistakenly seeing things in this way we fall into the idea that if we had more of certain attractive things we would be happy. Thus desire for those things arises. We pursue the things and either a) we get hold of them or b ) we can't get hold of them. Either way we begin to suffer. If we get hold of them, we might get what we desire, but because everything is subject to change + decay, the pleasure we get last only for a certain length of time. As the pleasure fades we begin to get angry, or if we fail to ever to get hold of them we chase angrily after one thing or another. Eventually we end up chasing round and round seeking happiness. If after experiencing this state we set our minds or 'higher' ideals or even gods, which appear to be beyond time, even then if we gain them, we find that they are conditioned, that is not the complete view of reality but some kind of form or structure. Eventually suffering is generated from this conditonality. So there is suffering of suffering. Suffering of impermanence and suffering of conditionality. As was said above the English word suffering is not quite right for this because during this cycling you might experience pleasure and even joy, but these feelings will be time limited and conditioned and eventually we will realize that they are not satisfactory - they do not satisfy our need for understanding or realization or liberation. This is because the basic view of the world as samsara is mistaken and illusory.

renewal could be. a fresh start for all of us. green shoots of new hope.

Thanks for your reply. Just to clarify - when I referred to understanding I did not mean intellectual knowledge but rather an awareness of the nature of mind, being or reality - whichever you like. I still have a problem with 'habit' but I won't split hairs . Best wishes and good luck in all your work. Apepch7.

Well no not really. I feel you may be arguing from a dualist point of view. You will only be disappointed if you go into meditation with an expectation. I don't - so without the kind of goal you suggest I don't get disappointed. I was trying to explain that intent and expectation are not the same thing. No one, no matter what they say, starts meditating without some intent. Understanding is the first intent but this is not conditional on result. If I come out of meditation more confused or scattered then this is part of the process and will lead to better understanding, since it displays the nature of the mind. Meditation is not 'habitual' or 'without thought'; as habitual refers to routines and inertic patterns which is not what meditation is about and there is nothing wrong with thought. Trying to meditate without thought is a form of dualism - it is better to look at 'mind-as-is' and understand its nature. There is a good story in 100,000 songs of Milarepa called "Women's role in Dharma' which deals with this.

Composite animals like Chimera are interesting. Here's a front end view of your Etruscan one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chimera_di_Arezzo.jpg

Yep I will give it a try.

Om Yoda, You have started a cult on the discussion page! Taurus - North Scorp. - South Aquarius - West Leo - East in my understanding. This is from the understanding of the Zodiac as four elements in three phases. The three phases being cardinal, fixed and mutable. The fixed versions being the four compass points. Also the four beasts (bull, eagle, man and lion). For reasons I can't recall Scorpio is transposed into Aquila the Eagle for the purposes. Also the four apostles, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Would have to look up which is which cos I don't do Christian stuff much (!). When I was in Greece the eastern Orthodox iconography used the beasts for the four apostles.

gotten in greed- grab garbage heaps of grub gorged grot garden growing green.

I think that intending is not the same as expecting. If I expect to have some kind of experience when I meditate then when it doesn't work out then I may become dissatisfied or disappointed. But this is because I have built up some picture of the goal in my mind which doesn't match the result. However this is not the same as building the intent to meditate. If you practice and you begin to feel the momentum of your practice which has built up over time - a kind of momentum which carries you through rough patches - then this is what I call intent. Silent will, or what ever. The goal of this can be very broad and actually may change over time as your meditation grows deeper and deeper. But to a simple soul like me I begin with understanding (later there is becoming, doing and complete absorption - or however you might want to put it.). Meditation with no intent is quite an achievement, IMO, and is much more than just not saying to yourself what you are doing. It is more like just pure sitting - if you can do that then bloody good I say! Far from gaining nothing from this - you will gain everything (in a way).

Well said! I think that you inevitably set up intent when you sit to meditate but its best to let that intent to be to understand, to discover and so on. After all why are you meditating anyway?

I think correspondences are tricky at the best of times and get harder and harder from culture to culture. Even the Sons of Horus to the elements is difficult. Closest fit is to the four fixed signs of the Zodiac - Scorpio, Taurus, Leo and Aquarius.

Cat, serpent and tree. This is from Ch. 17 Book of the Dead. Ra in the form of a cat (with rabbit ears!) slays the serpent Apophis before the sacred Ished tree (Sycamore sacred to Nut) so that the sun can rise. BTW symbolically the sun rise can be taken as the energy rising into the higher centres and becoming visible. The Ished tree is said to be 'split on its side' or split in two and could be taken to stand for the energy body 'split' by energy rising up the central channel.

So ... $1000 or remain in ignorance ... not a hard decision to make, ignorance can be fun with $1000 in your pocket.

I need to see the official certificate of registration of this koan with TAKS before I start to contemplate anything. I don't puzzle over any old rubbish you know! I do have standards.