Mark Foote

"no place for death to enter in", " father why hast thou foresaken me"-- "As brothers our troubles are Locked in each other's arms And you better pray That they never find you 'Cause your back ain't strong enough To bear a burden double-fold It'll cut you down Down into nothing." "Nothing", by Townes Van Zandt (here)

Quite the one man show Standing at the lake breathing making the ducks quack

Of fruitful harvest, the best is yet to come; still, we have all we need.

Until the fall comes hard with the breath of winter I'll gather the crop

Delayed response. I can't help feeling this is a lot like what I do in the mornings--put my legs into the lotus (better I know if they could just find their way into the lotus), look to extend chi right through (like somebody breaking a board), and then let the chi return to occasion a witness of cessation (of habitual activity) and relinquishment (of any vain conceit that mine is the doer, I am the doer). The "vain conceit" is the powerful man. The extension of chi right through is not really like breaking a board for me (confession, I never have broken any boards)--more like drawing water on the inhale (or lifting a stone), chopping wood on the exhale (or cleaving a round).

Unruly minds jive The hum is all over town Until the fall comes

"(98) Jesus said: The Kingdom of the Father is like a man who wishes to kill a powerful man. He drew the sword in his house, he stuck it into the wall, in order to know whether his hand would carry through; then he slew the powerful (man)." (The Gospel According to Thomas, coptic text established and translated by A. Guillaumont, H.-CH. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till and Yassah ‘Abd Al Masih, pg 51 log. 98, ©1959 E. J. Brill) I think the translation "to know whether his hand would carry through" makes more sense. I'm thinking about the meaning of 98. In the meantime!--- In a recent post, koun Franz (a Zen teacher) said this: Okay... So, have your hands in the cosmic mudra, palms up, thumbs touching, and there's this common instruction: place your mind here. Different people interpret this differently. Some people will say this means to place your attention here, meaning to keep your attention on your hands. It's a way of turning the lens to where you are in space so that you're not looking out here and out here and out here. It's the positive version, perhaps, of "navel gazing." The other way to understand this is to literally place your mind where your hands are--to relocate mind (let's not say your mind) to your centre of gravity, so that mind is operating from a place other than your brain. Some traditions take this very seriously, this idea of moving your consciousness around the body. I wouldn't recommend dedicating your life to it, but as an experiment, I recommend trying it, sitting in this posture and trying to feel what it's like to let your mind, to let the base of your consciousness, move away from your head. One thing you'll find, or that I have found, at least, is that you can't will it to happen, because you're willing it from your head. To the extent that you can do it, it's an act of letting go--and a fascinating one. ("No Struggle (Zazen Yojinki, Part 6)", by Koun Franz, from Koun's "Nyoho Zen" site: https://nyoho.com/2018/09/15/no-struggle-zazen-yojinki-part-6/) Notice that he said, "let's not say your mind". Just trying to add a cautionary note about attitude toward the thinking mind. I'm a big fan of Gautama's "way of living", that includes: One trains oneself , thinking: 'I will breathe in... breathe out experiencing thought... rejoicing in thought... concentrating thought... freeing thought.' (MN III 82-83, Pali Text Society III pg 124) Or, in an alternative translation: Aware of mind I shall breathe in. Aware of mind I shall breathe out. One makes up one's mind (repeating): "Gladdening my mind I shall breathe in. Gladdening my mind I shall breathe out. Composing my mind I shall breathe in. Composing my mind I shall breathe out. Detaching my mind I shall breathe in. Detaching my mind I shall breathe out. (SN V 312, Pali Text Society Vol V pg 276) "Rejoicing" or "gladdening", nice work if you can get it. "Detaching my mind I shall breathe in (breathe out)"--here is where I look to feel the location of awareness.

Open minds unwind like blown leaves, they spiral down they dance in mid-air

Eat, drink be merry, winds at sixty, no worries! the fire's been and gone (I'm living in Lucerne, California, a town that survived the Mendocino Complex fire this summer--tonight, the power company may shut down power lines across Northern California, in pre-emptive move to avoid possible power line sparked fires)

Seems like the story of our lives, alright. Born with the divine stuff of life, and we go through our days mostly without bringing it to the forefront, until we reach our end of days and discover it's gone. Sort of a sad one there, JC...

Oops, i posted twice rice time in the old cafe care to try for three...

Looks like I spoke too soon; the translator we've been using added the "two". Here's a "linear" translation: That's from http://gospel-thomas.net/splith.htm They have three other, regular translations that give it as "whoever has ears". Page above is from a pretty comprehensive-looking site: http://gnosis.org/naghamm/nhl_thomas.htm

Who wins, who loses waiting for the rain, bus stop overgrown with grass

That's really lovely, isn't it? If you've got the starter, you can make a nourishment for a lot of people. But why two ears. You could hear it with one.

quickly learn to fly with a mind just like a bird's otherwise, no dice

For the Taoist Sage, the edge of the cliff at hand, there's no jumping off

The Wikipedia article had some interesting bits, I agree. Looking at the Zen tradition, some teachers had many "transmission" holders, and some had none. The teaching of Jesus is spoken as the teaching of what Gautama the Buddha referred to as the Tathagata (the "thus-gone one"). Gautama rarely spoke as "the Tathagata", or rarely acknowledged he was speaking as such, and that rarity remained the pattern in Zen as far as I can tell. In that sense, the teachings are different, yet my feeling is that the way the teaching is imparted in Zen is the way Jesus intended to impart the teaching to his disciples, and in this he together with his disciples largely failed. With the possible exception of Thomas, based on "The Gospel of Thomas".

One of the most interesting thing about the Gospel of Thomas is the picture it paints of the majority of the disciples. Early in the Gospel, Jesus takes Thomas aside for a few words, and when the rest of the crew asks Thomas what Jesus told him, Thomas says: If I tell you one of the words which He said to me, you will take up stones and throw at me; and fire will come from the stones and burn you up. (The Gospel According to Thomas, coptic text established and translated by A. Guillaumont, H.-CH. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till and Yassah ‘Abd Al Masih, pg 11 log. 13, ©1959 E. J. Brill) Log. 92 similarly suggests that the majority of the disciples took a wrong turn somewhere, and possibly that the crew is entirely off track, as log. 91 seems to indicate. Here are both loggia, in the alternate translation I keep referencing: (91) They said to Him: Tell us who Thou art so that we may believe in Thee. He said to them: You test the face of the sky and of the earth, and him who is before your face you have not known, and you do not know to test this moment. (92) Jesus said: Seek and you will find, but those things which you asked me in those days, I did not tell you then; now I desire to tell them, but you do not inquire after them. (The Gospel According to Thomas, coptic text established and translated by A. Guillaumont, H.-CH. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till and Yassah ‘Abd Al Masih, pg 47-49 ©1959 E. J. Brill) In 91, Jesus tells his disciples that they are barking up the wrong palm tree, that they need to test this moment to know him. My guess is that at this point the disciples are overwhelmed with the extraordinary presence of Jesus, and they no longer feel they have any hope of receiving something of that presence but instead pursue relieving themselves of any pressure to receive, by casting Jesus as something "other" that can only be believed in and not personally experienced. Did I mention that one of my teachers at university was a Thomas Christian, from the south of India? He said where he was from, the people believed that Thomas came to the south of India, and was stoned to death there.

My feet firm planted. As sagebrush wrote, " ' "--clear enough! But then... who's to say

Oh which way to turn if I could just see to step off the beaten path

(90) Jesus said: Come to Me, for easy is My yoke and My lordship is gentle, and you shall find repose for yourselves. (The Gospel According to Thomas, coptic text established and translated by A. Guillaumont, H.-CH. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till and Yassah ‘Abd Al Masih, pg 47 log. 90, ©1959 E. J. Brill) I've just finished a piece about Koichi Tohei's Four Points of Aikido, wherein I arrive at this statement: As I sit with Tohei's emphasis on centrifugal force, I realize that for me the exercise becomes in part the distinction of the direction of turn that I'm feeling at the location of awareness, and that distinction allows the appropriate counter from everything that surrounds the place of awareness. As a baseball pitcher extends his target through the catcher's mitt, or a karate practitioner extends his target through the board or brick that he or she is about to break, the balance of centrifugal force and counterforce can depend on the inclusion of what lies beyond the senses in the stretch. As I also remark in the piece: If the mind of friendliness, of compassion, of sympathetic joy, or of equanimity is extended throughout the four quarters of the world, above and below, then the centrifugal force at the location of awareness and the counterforce can involve things that lie beyond the boundaries of the senses, and change in the balance of force and counterforce can initiate change in the carriage of the body without conscious volition. To act with awareness yet without conscious volition, then, requires a love that extends beyond the boundaries of the senses--that would be the yoke that is light yet present, the actor acting under His lordship (as it were), and repose in the selflessness of what is done.

Seemingly related to: "... when you make the inner as the outer and the outer as the inner and the above as the below..." (The Gospel According to Thomas, coptic text established and translated by A. Guillaumont, H.-CH. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till and Yassah ‘Abd Al Masih, pg 18-19 log. 22, ©1959 E. J. Brill) I still like what I wrote about that years ago: "where the location of consciousness in three dimensions seems clear with respect to the external objects of sense, the same clarity can be brought to the location of consciousness with respect to the internal objects of sense (including the sense-organs). Where the location of consciousness seems clear with respect to the internal objects of sense, the same clarity can be brought to the location of consciousness with regard to the external sense objects. In making the inner as the outer and then the outer as the inner, the generation of reciprocal activity through the place of occurrence of consciousness is brought forward. As the activity is relaxed, the reciprocal in lower body activity reaches the top of the head through the extensors." Maybe I have a bit more to say about that, I'm working on a post to my own "Zazen Notes" now.

"Wretched is the body which depends upon a body, and wretched is the soul which depends upon these two." (The Gospel According to Thomas, coptic text established and translated by A. Guillaumont, H.-CH. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till and Yassah ‘Abd Al Masih, pg 47) "The body which depends upon a body", confusing to refer to this as "these two", but I can kind of see "the body" as one and that body which "the body" depends upon as a second. Apparently the point is that the soul need not depend on the body which depends on a body. Here's one I like, from "The Gospels of Mary" by Marvin Meyer (© 2004, pg 20): "I said to him, 'Master, how does a person see a vision, with the soul or with the spirit?' The saviour answered and said, 'A person sees neither with the soul nor with the spirit. The mind, which is between the two, sees the vision...'" But I digress (if you'd like more digression, try The Gospel of Mary and the Mesoamerican Sacrum Bone).

“It were better… if the untaught manyfolk approached this body, child of the four great elements, as the self rather than the mind. Why so? Seen is it… how this body, child of the four great elements, persists for a year, persists for two years, persists for three, four, five, ten, twenty, thirty years, persists for forty, for fifty years, persists for a hundred years and even longer. But this… that we call thought, that we call mind, that we call consciousness, that arises as one thing, ceases as another, whether by night or by day.” (SN II 93-94, Pali Text Society II pg 66) Gautama the Shakyan, there, with another perspective, but hey--we're all "the untaught manyfolk".

(86) Jesus said: [The foxes] [have] the[ir holes] and the birds have [their] nest, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head and to rest. The Gospel According to Thomas, coptic text established and translated by A. Guillaumont, H.-CH. Puech, G. Quispel, W. Till and Yassah ‘Abd Al Masih, pg 47, ©1959 E. J. Brill) As "to lay his head and to rest", I find a resonance with the instruction from the Diamond Sutra that the woodcutter Huineng heard, that resulted in his awakening (and later becoming the 6th patriarch in the lineage of Zen in China): "Let the mind be present without an abode." (Translation Venerable Master Hsing Yun, from "The Rabbit's Horn: A Commentary on the Platform Sutra", Buddha's Light Publishing pg 60) As though to say, the Son of Man is tasked with letting the mind be present without an abode, unike the birds and beasts for whom such presence is a given.