Thunder beneath the Mountain

Just hours left in this year. The title is about the hexagram of the I Ching that is connected with late winter.

It may well be a mis-quote. Goodness knows I used to be more familiar with the I Ching.

Its the time between the winter solstice and the February new moon. The rulers of ancient China would close the borders, and there was a kind of rest for Nature and people.

The image used by the I Ching is a seed that waits under the soil until spring. A sense of preparation for growth.

And here I was ruminating on the two goals of Buddhist meditation, tranquility and insight. Or samatha and vipassana according to my Pali dictionary.

My understanding is that one practices tranquility meditation first, in order to prepare for insight. And the seed preparing for spring growth is an apt metaphor.

Destiny, Kamma, Syncretism

Or Metamorphosis 3.

In between my first work as a steelworks labourer and my enlistment in the Australian army, I lived in Sydney and attended meditation classes taught by a Thai Buddhist monk - Phra Samai.

That was 1979. At the end of my 3-year enlistment I was hitchiking between youth hostels in Northern New South Wales for my annual leave.

In the notorious centre of counter-culture in Australia, Nimbin, I found a flyer on a bulletin board about a monastery that ran meditation courses.

I finished my leave and completed my discharge from the army in late 1983. There was a ten-day retreat at the monastery, which I attended. Turns out that the Abbot, Phra Khantipalo, was a colleague of Phra Samai.

Four years and a couple hundred kilometres of travel and I had come back to the same Thai Theravadin Forest tradition.

Was this my destiny? Or was it my past actions (kamma) that allowed me to find the Buddha's teachings again? Or did a bohdisattva or deva guide me?

Since 1983 I have been back to Wat Buddha-Dhamma in 1987, '95, '98, '03, and 06. In between, life has been up and down in the way that lives are.

Not that I'm complaining. The Dhamma has been very good for me. Not that I need to know why, really.

Metamorphosis part 2

Metamorphosis part 2
Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes

...going somewhere with part 1? This is why real writers draft and revise.

Point I forgot to make before I left to bicycle 30km and make dhou'ha was that there are many ways to get to the same place.

The place - you know - peace of mind? A sense of balance and coherence? Spiritual grounding? Life, the Universe, and Everything?

And I'm hedging my bets by having a go at a few.

Metamorphosis

Doing the dishes and a thought occurs. That happen much for you? I've been on anti-depressants for a while and I have been reading up and trying to understand them.

I mean the whole box and dice. Not the "I'm a doctor. These are pills. Take them." statement. Hey. Human being here, if you want me to take these you'll have to convince me its going to work.

People are more than organic complexes. Gestalt theory has it that a group or an organism can be more than the sum of its parts. Descartes divided humans into body and mind. Ryle critcised mind-body dualism, and called it 'the ghost in the machine'. (Hey sugar, look it up. I had to just now to spell 'Descartes'.)

Of course it bugs me that health care in general treats people by giving them chemicals. Not all the time, but pills are a big industry. $$$$

And our culture has come to expect a pill for every ill. The quick fix. Drive-thru health care.

I'll have to come back to this next time.

Penelope weaves

Being an explanation of the title of this blog.

Penelope was the wife of Odysseus. While the Odyssey was on and the King was away, possibly dead, Penelope held the Kingdom together. She was ( apparently) patient and faithful, maintaining that the King Odysseus would return eventually.

Her virtues of patience and faithfulness to her husband have been celebrated as an example to other wives. She started to weave a burial shroud for her stepfather when others insisted she should take another husband.

But she undid the weave each night, and refused to choose another suitor until the the shroud was finished. Penelope was clever and devious. She might not have even been strictly faithful, and perhaps her devotion to her absent husband was a way to use the authority of the King to keep her place as Queen and ruler.

So Penelope weaves, not just cloth but power and influence. Penelope makes policy, manipulates opinions, uses dirty tactics. When Odysseus returned she eased him back onto his throne with a contest designed to choose a new King. The contest favoured Odysseus, and he won and was revealed.

Windmills of my mind

Circles of my mind - Tarot tales
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural

More exploratory journeys. Used to be the heavens were explained as spheres of crystal. The World was inside the smallest, and everything in the sky was fixed to series of larger spheres that moved at different speeds. The Sun would take a day to circle the World, the Moon a month, the Stars a year.

If one was inclined, and very patient, the music of the spheres could be heard. The songs of angels and the breath of higher beings.

The human who thinks - homo sapiens - wants to understand the music of the spheres. We have speech, and try to put the inexpressible into words. Stories to make sense of this cosmos and our place in it.

The Tarot is a map, a guide, the story of the Fool's journey. In 1713 the first orrery was made, a model of the planets revolving around the Sun. Metal spheres, mounted on clockwork gears. Like the crystal spheres.

So I have my decks of Tarot cards; they model the motion of large and small. What influence can I feel? Why did that happen, and where will it lead?

Walk softly, for here be dragons.

Here be Dragons

Here Be Dragons, or how to navigate the country of the mind.
Category: Dreams and the Supernatural

Ever stubbed your toe and thought
'Why didn't I see that?' Couple years back, with some serious shit hitting the fan, I started reading Tarot.

To find a bit of shelter from the storm.

I've been Buddhist for over 20 years, and its been pretty useful. But. Some of the answers I was getting were not helping. Relationship problems? Try celibacy!

Don't get me wrong, but reflecting that all of existence is painful only works some of the time for me.

(Not exactly an accurate interpretation of the doctrine of dukkha, btw.)

Carl Jung, bless his heart (and I'm about to misinterpret again) had a theory of a common subconscious. Common to all humanity, if not all beings. But our contact with this other consciousness can become weaker.

Our various cultures keep the exchange alive between ourselves and this otherness. Art, religion, ritual, folklore. Myths and Legends.

The origin of the Tarot is reliably traced to about Renaissance times. It has been suggested that the suppression of the older religions in favor of the Christian church led to the encoding of the Tarot.

'Encoding' is the right word here. The Tarot became a kind of reference manual for all the older wisdom that the Church was trying to eradicate.

I mean the Church in the sense of the very human people who were upholding the teachings of the Christ. People can get really nasty, even Christians and Buddhists.

So there you go; a kind of guerilla spirituality was born in the 15th century.

The obvious question is; in the 21st century is this spiritual resource still relevant? I need a guide, a kind of map/compass/mirror of the soul.

This is one of the ways I use to navigate the country of the mind. The Tarot tells the secrets hidden in my heart, the dark fears and luminous hopes. I am joined to Humanity, angels, and demons.

Tarotreading for the insane, Part 2

Tarot reading for the insane; a users's guide. Part 2.

Or, the past is prologue. Good line from Biden the other day, wasted on Palin like pearls before swine. Even if the swine wears lipstick.

Ever read Jonathon Livingston Seagull? Very popular with zen buddhists in San Francisco in the '70s. Journey to the East by Herman Hesse. Teachings of Don Juan by Carlos Castanedas.

Here is the point where the personal aspiration becomes shared by others. These books express a journey of discovery, a common story.

Finally we come to the Tarot, gentle reader. The 22 Major cards are the common story of spiritual progress. The Fool is the traveller, Everyman, the narrative voice.

Cards repeatedly turn up in tarot readings until they are understood. The first of these for me was the 9 of swords. The Card of Nightmares. The suit is swords; speech, thoughts, ideas. The tarot was pointing to my state of mind, but not just to say I was having trouble.

I was being offered help. Thats how I put it to anyone I read the cards for. Its an impartial view and an offer of advice.

Tarot reading for the Insane

Tarot reading for the insane; a users's guide. Part 1.

Hey, work with me here can'tcha? Yes rly - I've been taking the daily Little White Pill for a fortnight now. I am so sane that I only hear a few voices. Dozen, max.

What do I look for when depressed? One of those 'Ah ha!' moments (two of them in fact) came when I'm trying to read drug company research/ highly-trained egghead speculations about the inner space of humanity's thought.

Big in there. Don't take my word for it. But onto the rats. Yes, eggheads study rats when they want to do stuff that is really inhuman. Like hold a rat underwater until it stops struggling, then do it again to see if the rat gives up sooner. Yes. Its called "learned helplessness". Result of the study (apart from many drowned rats) is the theory that if a person experiences a trauma where they are helpless, (and it doesn't kill them), they learn helplessness.

The second "Ah-ha" is what the Transactional Analysis people call stinkin' thinkin'. All or nothing. If it doesn't work it never will. Don't pick yourself up and try again. I'm worthless and will fail.

Sound familiar? Story of your life? Penny has been reading my mail and tapping my phone?

Turns out the search for meaning and security is a universal human need. Bloke called Abraham Maslow puts it much better. And the search has casualties along its way. Which brings me back to my personal experience, and about seven years ago with 9/11. More personal disasters that year as well, but they all felt like one big disaster.

And because of my past, with learned helplessness and stinkin' thinkin', my coping skills were unable to handle all that.