More of my rosarys or malas

Continuing on from "my favourite mala", here are three more. There are different words for a string of beads that are used for chanting/reciting/praying.

But its much the same - I feel at peace and in tune from reciting a mantra and counting off the beads. Or counting breaths while meditating.

Breaths or mantras per minute, after a set number I know I've sat in meditation for however long I want. And the mind learns to be patient, then it can be still. The stillness can gather and the monkey-mind can allow samatha - calm - to grow.

The inner mala in the picture is on elastic, and can be worn on the wrist. Any time one needs to return to stillness, its there.

The larger mala is for sitting meditation. Its held in both hands.

The outer mala has 108 beads on the circuit. 108 is significant in some schools of Buddhism. Its divisible by both 4 and 3 and is kind of neat. I can wear it around my neck or on a wrist.

Two tarot spreads

The first is from a deck called Gypsy Tarot, which turned out to be a deck of playing cards. I use it for 1- and 3-card readings.

In Tarot nomenclature, the 3 cards are (left to right) 3 of pentacles, 10 of wands, and 8 of swords. This spread reads Past, Present, and Future in the same order.

The next layout uses one of my favourite decks. The artist, Fergus Hall, was commissioned to paint a Tarot deck for a James Bond movie. Roger Moore, the 70s, Paul McCartney singing 'Live and Let Die'. Shudder. Lets move on rather quickly, shall we?

But Mr Hall made a really good Tarot deck. Not heavily didactic like Rider-Waite-Smith, not overly clever or icky-cute. Not self-consciously Deep and Mysterious.

The layout is called the Celtic Cross. The card thats at an angle is usually laid over the card to the left of it.

On Whom I Attend

Cherie is the grey lady on the washing machine. She is the elder, and is waiting for me to turn the tap so she can drink. There is a water dish behind her, but Cherie likes running water so she can drink, bat at the drips, lick the water from her paws. She often drinks from vases or any vessel that has water, regardless of stability...

I called her Sharee at first, because we lived in a somewhat bogan area. Every society has its Bogans. Westies, Dubbos, -the west of the eastern areas of Australia is more rural and less urban. Bogan and Dubbo are the names of small inland towns.

Rednecks, chavs, hicks, hillbillys. So I gave Cherie a name that the bogan cats wouldn't tease her about. I changed the spelling from phonetic to the way the French spell it.

Her kitten name was 'Feral Rat Kitten', but with maturity I think 'Sheena, Jungle Queen' fits her better.

The boy on the fence is Rowan, as named by the animal shelter. The name seemed to fit him and he was used to it. He is about his early teens and likes to get out and play. I say to him, "where have you been, my blue-eyed son?", if I have to call for him and he shows up later. Its a line from Bob Dylan's song 'Hard Rain'.

So his alternate name is The Blue-eyed Son, even though his eyes are light green. And they shine orange in the dark, unlike Cherie whose eyes shine blue-green. I also call him My Beamish Boy, after Lewis Carrol's poem in 'Alice in Wonderland'. The hero of the poem slays the monster Jabberwock and gallumphs back home. He is greeted as "...my beamish boy!"

Return of the Queen, ...careful with that...

My perennial card in readings.  She is Penelope in the Mythic Tarot, associated with the Air sign of Aquarius.

The card in the position of 'finding' me.  Crossed by the Page of Swords, a messenger.

Used to be, one would try to 'find' oneself.  The Dhamma says one should create oneself.  Selves, rather,  bearing in mind anicca -impermanence- following creation.  Arising, persisting, ending of aspects of the self.

So the message of the tarot is for me to become the Queen of Swords.  To embrace her qualities and learn her ways.  Its the old story of looking everywhere for something that is already found.

I just have to realise it.  My goodness, I appear to be carrying a sword.  Furthermore I have a certain regal bearing now that I think of it.  Just as well.  I really must be... careful with that...

Tarot reading practical

The deck is Robin Wood, in the tradition of Rider-Waite-Smith.

The layout used is the Celtic cross, with an extra card as significator at top left.

The suit of Swords is predominant, with four cards.  The entire vertical axis of the cross, in fact.  Since this axis shows the present time, then the person (the querant) is busy with intellect and communication.

Of note is the heart transfixed by three swords - quite a graphic image.  Often interpreted as a loss, the card is more about resolution.  

There are two cards from the Major Arcana:  the pregnant Empress and the High Priestess; the female spirit guide.  In Greek myth they are the mother and daughter - Demeter and Persephone.

My favourite mala

My first malas used glass beads, which have a satisfying weight and texture.

This has turquoise, metal, and garnets. There are three groups of twenty beads, not counting the garnets.

The wire has extra length to allow me to slide the beads along it.

Part the Second of the Immaculate Espresso

My little joke.  To explain, there is a coffee called 'machiatto'.  Being Italian, the derivation is the same as the immaculate conception of Christ.  His Mum Mary was immaculate -unstained- and the machiatto is a shot of espresso with a little stain of froth or milk.

Here is the milk after steaming.  You can make froth by holding the steam nozzle just under the surface of the milk.  You can spray yourself and the kitchen too, and make a lot of noise, and get a painful scalding.

Mostly I have tea first thing of a morning.  It does help to be fully awake before making espresso.

Now we have our shot in the coffee-glass and the 'textured' milk ready to be added.

This is the result of our labours.  Those more skilled can make three layers of black, brown, and white.  But this is good enough for me.  I can have just the right amount of sugar and milk, between a cappucino and a short black.

Its worth the trouble to drink a really good espresso.

Making damn fine espresso

Start up your machine, filled with water. You'll need a jug to 'texture' the milk, and these ingredients: The best coffee beans, from my local roaster. Demerara sugar. Cardamon pods.



Grind the beans and cardamon. Here is enough for one cup. The ground coffee is pressed into the filter with the tamper, and then the filter fits into the handle ...thingy.




The steam wand heats and 'textures' the milk (makes it all frothy). Then you start the hot water pumping through the coffee grounds. This make a lot of noise and steam.


I put sugar into the glass before the 'shot'. The handle thingy is clamped into the machine very tightly, as the hot water is under 15 atmospheres of pressure. Honestly its like driving a steam train. Butch up, bitch, we got a shot a' fine brew to bring home.

Can you believe I do this every morning? Actually its easier than getting the pictures and words to line up.

Oh, and the cardamon and sugar and milk are all optional. This is just my favourite. The machine is in the lower price range. It does the job for me, so why pay more? The coffee beans are where I spend the most, and its because I can taste a difference. I grind only enough for each use so the coffee is fresh.

Guan Shi Yin Pusa

In contrast to the Thai statue, this Chinese Bodhisattva is more ornate and dynamic.

Guan Shi Yin, "She who hears the voice of the World", is the ideal of Mahayana Buddhism. She has almost reached Nirvana, but she delays what would remove her from the cycle of rebirth so that she can help other beings.

She is seated on the lotus throne which denotes her divinity, but one leg is raised for her to step off the throne. Her left hand holds a flask of elixir that will relieve suffering; a metaphor for the Buddha's teaching. Her right hand holds a rosary or mala. Repetition of a mantra and keeping count by using a mala are a sign of later Buddhism.

Gotama Siddartha, Sakyamuni, Tathagata, Samma Sambuddhasa

The centrepiece of my shrine, a Thai rupa seated in half-lotus. The hands are in the mudra of meditation. The wooden plate behind the rupa is seperate, but is intended to suggest the aura of bodhi and lesser attainments of the Buddha. I like the simplicity of the rupa, and because I don't have a seperate room for the shrine I've tried to lend a feeling of emphasis.

Gotama Siddartha is the name of the Buddha.  Sakyamuni means 'sage of the sakya clan'.  Tathagata means 'thus gone' and refers to the attainment of enlightenment or bodhi.  Samma-sambuddho describes enlightenment gained by one's own efforts, which is singular to the Buddhas.  After a Buddha is born and attains enlightenment, he or she can teach the Dhamma to others.  Those who become enlightened from the Buddha's teaching are arahants.

The Submersible Dali

...In reference to the photo of Salvador Dali wearing a diving suit while sitting amongst a group of people in street clothes. Dali said this was because he explored the depths of human consciousness, but I think he was trying to get attention. And I forgive him, the crazy brilliant master painter.

This is actually about the Tarot, which also plumbs the psychic depths.

I was writing about the face cards before. The king, queen, knight, and page of each suit. The three adults fit into the three sets of star signs. Kings are the cardinal signs, Queens the fixed, and Knights are the mutable. The four elements of water, fire, air, and earth that are common to both Astrology and Tarot mean that there is a knight, queen, and king for each element.

The king of fire (suit of wands) is Aries, the ram. The queen of water (cups) is Scorpio. And my own sun sign, Gemini, is the knight of swords.

At first sight the gender roles are apparent. Queens are female and Kings are male. But the elements are also female (water and earth) and male (fire and air). So our queen of fire and our king of water are a combination of gender characteristics.

Are the knights any less confused? I don't believe so. And the pages are asexual children, with the function of heralds and messengers.

Here it is, then: One lesson I have taken from the Tarot is that gender roles are worth questioning. Characteristics like leadership or nuturing are not innate for either sex. People are more often than not a bundle of characteristics attributable to both sexes.

What is the purpose of this subversion of gender roles? The Tarot is not a dark and evil force bent on tearing society apart. No, really. Sorry to disappoint. The intent of Tarot is to advise and empower people, and here it is suggesting that one can use or discard the powers of earth, fire, water, and air without regard to gender.

Consider yourself corrupted and subverted, gentle reader.

78 Degrees of Wisdom

Category: Goals, Plans, Hopes

The title of the book on Tarot by Rachel Pollack.

What does one do with the Tarot? The start is exploring and learning. Decks of Tarot often come with the little white book or LWB. I've been to university, so I can research passably. The LWB can be a 'how to read Tarot' introduction. But I like to get a number of sources, like a diligent student, and choose which ones I want to use.

The better guides are written as seperate books from the decks, not card-sized and resembling the manual for a home appliance. The best LWBs are practical and informative, with a reference to the expanded version of itself, available seperately.

Young Rachel pops up repeatedly in reference lists. I've found her influence without acknowledgment as well.

I get the impression that the Tarot is an extensive garden. Diverse, even contradictory, but unflaggingly fertile. One theme is numbers. In the four suits are 14 cards, 4 'faces' and 10 'pips'. The faces are the page, knight, queen, and king. The pips show from 1 to 10 of the suit.

The 10 pip cards make 3 sets of 3 plus the 10th card. Each set of three can be seen as a cycle, with the larger cycle of 9. The 10th card is outside the cycles, which can mean the start of a new cycle or the ending of the present one.

For example, the 10 of swords has a figure lying face down with 10 swords through the body. In the parlance of my country, the bloke is Cactus. Cactus Fucktus. Can't see a bandaid and cuppa tea putting this right. In the background is a sunset. The sense of finality is relieved by the implication that there will be a sunrise.

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.