( Caricature sketch by the brilliant Ernie Taylor)
*
*
IT’S nice when you try to remember something and you draw a complete blank…There’s only white noise in your head. But maybe it’s not so bad: people train for
years to get an empty head.
*
** mmmmmm oh, yeah! Can be quite disturbing if you worry about such things. People forget… … as they approach death, they lose everything
all your proud cars; all your muscles: you shrink and so does your dick.
*
So how to make peace with this?
That’s a good question…
*
Well, believe it or not – being in jail helps.
—If you don’t want to stoop so low – try a strict Trappist monastery or cave in a mountainside in Tibet.
After that you might want to
find the nearest county jail & check yourself in.
(If you don’t know how to get admitted, I have several suggestions…
that sure worked for me, and fast, too.)
*
Yeah, pride is the problem, and we all got
lots of it. It’s all gotta go, disintegrate into
the universe. … Before the
angels take you and you begin to feel at peace.
*
“I hasten to inform you that it’s as lucky to die
as it is to be born. And I know it.”
Walt Whitman “LEAVES OF GRASS”
*
Meanwhile, here we are in this weirdly miraculous world.
*
IN
THIS WEIRDLY MIRACULOUS WORLD
(C) 2016 by W.G. Milne
*
Q:What to do?
A: Anything you want.
Yep, and that’s good advice until it isn’t.
*
There is no such thing as eternal damnation.
*
(Hey, this article was supposed to be funny!)
t
THE GREEK GODS hated hubris. And you can bet
The Trickster hates arrogance, too. He’ll have
a lot of fun with you. But it’s his kind of fun,
not your kind of fun.
*
So how do we lose the pride. Oh, there are many ways – none of them pleasant.I can list some of the ways for you – HOW TO LOSE YOUR PRIDE:
*********************************
*
Get whipped in a fight in public
*
Watch your wife get royally humped by a well-endowed
lover, when you are impotent and you’ve lost house privileges… ie: You’re in the back yard…
*
Getting beaten badly at high-stakes poker on prime time TV & you lose your house.
*
Being butt-fucked at noon on National T.V.
*
Being told by your wife that you must wear a chastity belt
when she’s out on a date…. and you imagine what she’s doing….
And you have to clean the kitchen, too!
*
Being fired from your job for incompetence or drunkenness…
And every morning your dress up and pretend to go to work….
*
Being ordered by the Court to undergo a series of depo-prevera
shots… and your nurse wife administers the needle into your bare ass
every Saturday, while all the other nurses watch and snigger.
ALL THESE ARE WAYS TO LOSE THAT
PRIDE, BUT NONE OF THESE SCENARIOS
ARE PLEASANT…THE POINT IS –
BE READY…
You do not want to go through these nasty dramas
when you’re sick…As I saw my father do.
* * *
We didn’t have masters in the West, until I came
along. After all, they killed Bhagwan Rajneesh. No
one was very encouraged by that small-minded spiteful event. But things roll on.
*
I have no need or desire for any kind of fame…I had
a taste of fame and I hate being stared at in restaurants…
Still…Someone has to say a few words.
And, hard as it is for me to believe it,
that person’s gotta be me.
*
They have the TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD….
THE EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD. And we have
great books, too.
*
We have Walt Whitman, though it’s difficult to discern his intricate purpose.Sometimes even Walt
didn’t know what it was.
*
Father Belyea’s here, and I honour him.
He taught me things he didn’t mention to others.
What a guy! He even appeared at my trial to defend me.
*
Are we not worthy? Of course, we’re worthy!
So we need this book,*
*
“THE GREAT AWAKENING OF THE WEST”
*
which I’m writing, very slowly… Like
lichen growing on a rock.
*
*
Who’s going to stop us? They already call us.
“The Great Satan”, but we are not that, nor
do we have any desire to be that.
*
To be the Great Satan it takes a lot
of hard, concentrated work in the black arts.
*
Who makes the rules?
… … … We do.
*
I honour the Sufis. And why should I not?
This war between the east and the west is a transient thing.
*
The “PATH TO DAWN ON THE PEAK OF THE SILVER
MOUNTAIN”***(WGM), it knows no denominations —– Only love for all our fellow creatures… this is the way…
And determination, focus,and the will to awake many hour before the dawn.
*
I honour the great Master Philip Kapleau of the Zen Center in Rochester, New York. We had a long and
fruitful relationship, although we never talked. We certainly spoke without words. And he appeared to me recently, years after his death.
*
It was said he would bring Zen to the west,
and he did.
*
I am not a Zen Buddhist. I have not spent years staring at walls. I do not have that kind of discipline.
*
The bush has been my teacher.
The Great Silence, the Trickster God, and the vast distances between the globes. Also, a medicine
man who who could laugh. Man,
he had the sight! And the ability to project his intentions across distances!
The first time he saw me, he stared deeply
into my eyes and I stared into his. When recognition
came, we both laughed for quite a while.
*
Ah, the north!
* * *
LOSING HUBRIS:
You’re a rich man. You start to lose possessions. Ist a house…. then your Porsche,
then your airplane (your stomach fills up with blood) you’re banned from
flying, your pilot license is revoked.
You drive your brand new gleaming Cadillac right thru a stop sign
into the side of a city bus…. your driver’s license is revoked.
You sell your other 2 houses to juice up the bank account, but
7 folks on the bus have ‘back pains” and civil lawsuits have followed.
So now all you have left is your inboard-outboard boat.
You drive that into a shoal of rocks, too. You do not want to discuss it. You damn well won’t allow anyone to broach the subject.
******************************************
*
Here’s a quick shot about the Gospel of
Thomas… which I didn’t write.
“Had I known the Gospel Of Thomas,” a Buddhist monk once told author Elaine Pagels, “I wouldn’t have had to become a Buddhist.” Presumably he was at least half joking, but the fact that he could say the words suggests the degree to which the subject of Beyond Belief veers away from what would become the Christian tradition. Pagels’ 1979 book The Gnostic Gospels was one of the first works of popular scholarship to cover the early Christian writings rejected as the religion began to establish institutions and traditions, many of which would have been lost to history were it not for their chance 1945 discovery at the site of the Egyptian Nag Hammadi Library. It’s no wonder that Pagels’ monk would find an affinity with the gospel attributed to Thomas, which deals, at least in part, with the concept of earthly illusion; her book might have done well to explore such connections at greater length. ((((Instead, the slim volume takes a hodgepodge approach to its subject, freely leaping from Thomas, which Pagels never fully explains)))), to other early Christian writings in an attempt to portray an alternate version of Christianity that never quite comes into focus. Pagels gives the impression of an expert who knows so much about her subject that too much of it gets crushed in the attempt to put it all in layman’s terms. At her clearest, however, Pagels makes her subject fascinating, particularly in chapters suggesting the possibility that Thomas lost out in the spiritual horse race between its followers and those of the Gospel Of John–a theory that explains both John‘s portrayal of a doubting Thomas and the reason Christianity began to explore the paradox of a human divinity, instead of attempting to parse cryptic sayings like
*
“But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty.”
*
History could have taken a different turn, and the speculation Pagels encourages by simply raising that possibility frequently compensates for her book’s shortcomings.
*
O.K. Lots of people are brain-dead drooling idiots.
It’s wrong of us not to embrace them.
*
I know a little more than Elaine about the mystical core of this subject. But this is not a competition. The time I spent on top of cliffs, mountains and rooftops emptying my thoughts and emotions out of my psyche until I had the ability to see… they don’t give diplomas for this stuff… and there’s no need to. These experiences are their own reward… If you
survive them.
*
Competition is the law of the weak.
*
This is the beginning of the story.
*
*
(C) 2016 by W.G. Milne
*
*
*
We’re building a bell on a cliff.
It must be done.
zappadat@gmail.com
If you’re interested.
photo-art by Krista Gedem
zappadat- THE MOVEABLE FEAST 