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.