Mark Foote

fine in its own sense the compost heap with its dust me, I'm made of sand

I know it will pass here is where I am, freely one breath in, one out

equanimity concerns all the senses, yes distinctly happy

birds alight, deer bolt mixed messages, woodsy friends; think I'll go on home

from over on the "favorite quotes" thread today: ‘Those who know don’t talk. Those who talk don’t know.‘ - [Lao Tzu] ‘To talk without knowing is unwise. To know but to keep silent is cowardly.‘ [Han Fe Tse] Not exactly in agreement, are they? If you feel you need to think it out on paper, I would start writing. Myself, I've been trying to describe what I experience on and off the cushion for years. I have actually written things that I find come back to me at moments in my practice, but it's more about finding words to describe the experience objectively. I've got a few good ones now (words, that is): equalibrioception, proprioception, sense of gravity, hypnogogic state. I'd like to think that I have a vocabulary now that others can understand, you can tell me if that's true or not if you look at the link in my signature. By God I'd like to change the world; wouldn't we all!

brimming with joy, yes the pieces forgotten here dragon coils unseen

hear the dragon roar like a stream over rocks, quiet free in form, form free

coefficient passed suppositories helped much no more equations

plug 'em anyway then maybe a year, or two uncork some kickass

bring you a surprise take it away again, too nature's little joke

skipping on the beach wet sand on the bare feet cold roar of the waves shuuuushhhh

Maybe it's a parallel and reciprocal relationship, the physical of the spiritual, the spiritual of the physical. Like the wave/particle thing, everywhere and in just one place simultaneously. Tag, you're it!

who is to say which (apart from taomeow)- I seldom know which, why

Left knee, by chance? Been wondering why the left knee was trying to walk away from the rest of me lately. Can't blame it, of course...

the ghost cat, indeed on the side of the barn, late whiskers in the moon

you lucky bastard three laugh-out-loud Apech 'ku's the ghost cat, indeed

by bits and degrees the titanic rights itself ghost ship through the fog

I only see me up in the sky, butt-headed like a flying goat

except for yourself you're all here; arms, head, legs, hands now where is that self!

Oftentimes when I reread something I've written in a forum or on a blog, I wonder that anybody else could make sense of it at all. You're very charitable, Manitou. The beauty of Tao Bums is that we all bring our current and real process to mind in writing, and people's hearts are evident, regardless of what gets said. Oftentimes that helps me in ways that I only realize after the fact. I have my daily life, and everything about it is imperfect; I have behaviours that could stand redirection; I have my failed relationships, failed potentials, failed friendships. Maybe I have an inkling of what Nasargadatta was talking about, or maybe it's just the universe of parallel understandings and I'm as close to understanding Nasargadatta as the Seventh Day Adventists are to understanding Taoism (they are, sometimes, in a sort of parallel way!). But lately a freedom of mind is a part of my practice, to the extent that I observe that where I am shifts and moves as I am open to everything there is to feel. It's a freedom of my heart-mind to move and shift without continuity, with suddenness. When I identify this practice with the inclusion of three senses that are not historically identified as senses, I can accept that I am developmentally challenged, and I am more objective about things as they is (to use Suzuki's phrase). The sense of gravity is with the ostoliths, near the vestibular organs that provide the sense of place; that's the third sense. The other two are: The Vestibular Sense The Forgotten Sense- Proprioception David Brown is an educator with San Francisco State, I believe, and a specialist in deaf-blind education.

Thanks for pointing that out. Like that. My practice lately revolves a lot around re-discovering my sense of location,through equalibrium and the physical presence provided by the vestibular organ, and freeing my sense of location to move and engage with the proprioceptive sense of movement and place (provided by the muscles and ligaments). Particularly in freeing the sense of location, the discontinuity of experience comes forward, until it's swallowed again in the continuity of sleep or thought or hypnogogic state (meditative state?). I think that's why the focus on discontinuity, on the body and the senses including the mind, and the emphasis on suddenness. The image that comes forward for me is connected with fractals, with the patterns that seem so related to the things and beings all around us, and how an invisible recursive relationship is suddenly embodied in a material universe.

crack me up, pythagoreanfulllotus. It's a good thing we spend time sleeping and thinking, or we might not know what to do with ourselves. It's not that hard to sleep when the relaxation has rhythm, and not that hard to think when the senses are all present. Think I'll sit for awhile.

Gautama said that extension of the mind of friendliness, of compassion, of sympathetic joy, and of equanimity in ten directions is associated with the excellences of the further meditative states. Here's a lovely one: “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) With regard to the initial meditative states, Gautama spoke of certain “controlling faculties” that are observed to cease or stop with the induction of each of the meditative states. Thus, in the first meditative state: “… the controlling faculty of discomfort, which has arisen, ceases without remainder.” (SN V 214, Pali Text Society V pg 188) Similarly, in the second meditative state: “… the controlling faculty of unhappiness, which has arisen, comes to cease without remainder.” (Ibid) In the third meditative state, Gautama said, “… the controlling faculty of ease, which has arisen, comes to cease without remainder”; he described the experience as follows: “… (an individual), by the fading out of rapture, dwells with equanimity, attentive and clearly conscious and experiences in (their) person that joy of which the (noble) ones say: ‘Joyful lives (the one) who has equanimity and is mindful.’” (MN III 93, Pali Text Society III pg 133) The fourth meditative state sees an end to the controlling faculty of happiness (and is perhaps associated with the extension of the mind of friendliness in ten directions). Now I've gone to great lengths to thread it together in what I wrote in the link below, but to sum it up for myself before I sit tonight: relax, calm down, stretch, observe.

unmistakable the feeling of ribs and toes breathing up the street

smile and eat flowers and with the cat have no words yet move as ever