[Image: “:: Equanimity in the City ::,” by user “Jazer” on DeviantArt. (The colons seem significant to the image title, for whatever reason.) The photographer doesn’t identify the setting or subject, exactly, stating in a comment only that it was”somewhere in the Central Business District of Singapore. We went late in the night about 11p.” The photo was shot in April, 2004 — long before RAMH was a gleam in my eye; who knows if this place still exists? or if Jazer himself does? (His last post to that site, at least under that name, was in late 2008/early 2009.]
From whiskey river (minus the first three stanzas):
Dying
Nothing to be said about it, and everything—
The change of changes, closer or further away:
The Golden Retriever next door, Gussie, is dead,Like Sandy, the Cocker Spaniel from three doors down
Who died when I was small; and every day
Things that were in my memory fade and die.Phrases die out: first, everyone forgets
What doornails are; then after certain decades
As a dead metaphor, “dead as a doornail” flickersAnd fades away. But someone I know is dying—
And though one might say glibly, “everyone is,”
The different pace make the difference absolute.The tiny invisible spores in the air we breathe,
That settle harmlessly on our drinking water
And on our skin, happen to come togetherWith certain conditions on the forest floor,
Or even a shady corner of the lawn—
And overnight the fleshy, pale stalks gather,The colorless growth without a leaf or flower;
And around the stalks, the summer grass keeps growing
With steady pressure, like the insistent whiskersThat grow between shaves on a face, the nails
Growing and dying from the toes and fingers
At their own humble pace, obliviousAs the nerveless moths, that live their night or two—
Though like a moth a bright soul keeps on beating,
Bored and impatient in the monster’s mouth.
(Robert Pinsky [source])
I’ve had the next selection (which, of course, is not from whiskey river) sitting around waiting for an opportunity to post it. I think today is that opportunity:
Even if your house is flooded or burnt to the ground, whatever the danger that threatens it, let it concern only the house. If there’s a flood, don’t let it flood your mind. If there’s a fire, don’t let it burn your heart. Let it be merely the house, that which is external to you, that is flooded and burnt. Allow the mind to let go of its attachments. The time is ripe.
You’ve been alive a long time. Your eyes have seen any number of forms and colors, your ears have heard so many sounds, you’ve had any number of experiences. And that’s all they were — just experiences. You’ve eaten delicious foods, and all the good tastes were just good tastes, nothing more. The unpleasant tastes were just unpleasant tastes, that’s all. If the eye sees a beautiful form, that’s all it is, just a beautiful form. An ugly form is just an ugly form. The ear hears an entrancing, melodious sound and it’s nothing more than that. A grating, disharmonious sound is simply so.
The Buddha said that rich or poor, young or old, human or animal, no being in this world can maintain itself in any one state for long, everything experiences change and estrangement. This is a fact of life that we can do nothing to remedy. But the Buddha said that what we can do is to contemplate the body and mind so as to see their impersonality, see that neither of them is “me” or “mine.” They have a merely provisional reality. It’s like this house: it’s only nominally yours, you couldn’t take it with you anywhere. It’s the same with your wealth, your possessions and your family — they’re all yours only in name, they don’t really belong to you, they belong to nature. Now this truth doesn’t apply to you alone; everyone is in the same position, even the Lord Buddha and his enlightened disciples. They differed from us in only one respect and that was in their acceptance of the way things are; they saw that it could be no other way.
(Ajahn Chah [source])
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