{"id":15100,"date":"2014-01-10T15:14:00","date_gmt":"2014-01-10T20:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=15100"},"modified":"2014-01-10T15:14:00","modified_gmt":"2014-01-10T20:14:00","slug":"counter-existence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2014\/01\/counter-existence\/","title":{"rendered":"Counter-Existence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\"[original]\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"[updated]\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

[Images: Original (as far as I can determine) on the left; as often circulated\/reposted on social-media sites, on the right. (Click either for a larger version.) While both carry meanings I appreciate, it’s interesting — if unsurprising — that the original seems to have made much less of an impression on people.]<\/em><\/p>\n

From\u00a0whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Wake up in the morning and say to yourself, “I do not exist now, I have never existed previously, and I will never exist in the future.” When your mind is calm in the morning hours when you awaken, you say something like this, you will get a beautiful warm good feeling. You will feel wonderful, for it relieves you of the responsibility of taking care of yourself to an extent. You will still take care of yourself, but it’ll be completely different. You will brush your teeth, you will take a shower, you will go to work, you will eat breakfast. Yet when you feel that you do not exist, you are totally free from the reactions to the things that are going on. There is no one to react any longer. Therefore, everything that appears to be done by you, will be done in a wonderful way, all the time knowing that you are not the doer.<\/p>\n

I know the teaching sounds absurd to most people. Yet this is the teaching that has been propagated by rishis, sages, since the beginning of time. This is it. This is your opportunity to awaken. Why not use it? Do not let another moment go by where you’re sitting there and believing and thinking something is wrong somewhere.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Robert Adams [quoted at various sites around the Web — no specific source as far as I can tell<\/em>])<\/p>\n

…<\/span>and<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

To the Hand<\/strong><\/p>\n

What the eye sees is a dream of sight
\nwhat it wakes to
\nis a dream of sight<\/p>\n

and in the dream
\nfor every real lock
\nthere is only one real key
\nand it’s in some other dream
\nnow invisible<\/p>\n

it’s the key to the one real door
\nit opens the river and the sky both at once
\nit’s already in the downward river
\nwith my hand on it
\nmy real hand<\/p>\n

and I am saying to the hand
\nturn<\/p>\n

open the river<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(W. S. Merwin [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Staying very still in the darkness,\u00a0I became less and less convinced of the fact that I actually existed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Haruki Murakami [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from\u00a0whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

In eastern philosophy, Anicca (Sanskrit anitya<\/em>) or “impermanence” describes existence. It refers to the fact that all conditioned things (sankhara) are in a constant state of flux. In reality there is no thing that ultimately ceases to exist; only the appearance of a thing ceases as it changes from one form to another. Imagine a leaf that falls to the ground and decomposes. While the appearance and relative existence of the leaf ceases, the components that formed the leaf become particulate material that goes on to form new plants. Buddhism teaches a middle way, avoiding the extreme views of eternalism and nihilism. The middle way recognizes there are vast differences between the way things are perceived to exist and the way things really exist. The differences are reconciled in the concept of Shunyata by addressing the existing object’s served purpose for the subject’s identity in being. What exists is in non-existence, because the subject changes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Wikipedia [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

Monastery Nights<\/strong><\/p>\n

I like to think about the monastery
\nas I’m falling asleep, so that it comes
\nand goes in my mind like a screen saver.
\nI conjure the lake of the zendo,
\nrows of dark boats still unless
\nsomeone coughs or otherwise
\nripples the calm.
\nI can hear the four AM slipperiness
\nof sleeping bags as people turn over
\nin their bunks. The ancient bells.<\/p>\n

When I was first falling in love with Zen,
\nI burned incense called Kyonishiki<\/em>,
\n“Kyoto Autumn Leaves,”
\nmade by the Shoyeido Incense Company,
\nKyoto, Japan. To me it smelled like
\nearnestness and ether, and I tried to imagine
\na consciousness ignorant of me.
\nI just now lit a stick of it. I had to run downstairs
\nfor some rice to hold it upright in its bowl,
\nwhich had been empty for a while,
\na raku bowl with two fingerprints
\nin the clay. It calls up the monastery gate,
\nthe massive door demanding I recommit myself
\nin the moments of both its opening
\nand its closing, its weight now mine,
\nI wanted to know what I was,
\nand thought I could find the truth
\nwhere the floor hurts the knee.<\/p>\n

I understand no one I consider to be religious.
\nI have no idea what’s meant when someone says
\nthey’ve been intimate with a higher power.
\nI seem to have been born without a god receptor.
\nI have fervor but seem to lack
\neven the basic instincts of the many seekers,
\nmostly men, I knew in the monastery,
\nsitting zazen all night,
\nwearing their robes to near-rags
\nboy-stitched back together with unmatched thread,
\nsmoothed over their laps and tucked under,
\nunmoving in the long silence,
\nthe field of grain ripening, heavy tasseled,
\nfield of sentient beings turned toward candles,
\nflowers, the Buddha gleaming
\nlike a vivid little sports car from his niche.<\/p>\n

What is the mind that precedes
\nany sense we could possibly have
\nof ourselves, the mind of self-ignorance?
\nI thought that the divestiture of self
\ncould be likened to the divestiture
\nof words, but I was wrong.
\nIt’s not the same work.
\nOne’s a transparency
\nand one’s an emptiness.<\/p>\n

Kyonishiki<\/em>…. Today I’m painting what Mom
\ncalls no-colors, grays and browns,
\nevergreens: what’s left of the woods
\nwhen autumn’s come and gone.
\nAnd though he died, Dad’s here,
\nstill forgetting he’s no longer
\nmarried to Annie,
\nthat his own mother is dead,
\nthat he no longer owns a car.
\nI told them not to make any trouble
\nor I’d send them both home.
\nSurprise half inch of snow.
\nWhat good are words?<\/p>\n

And what about birches in moonlight,
\nRussell handing me the year’s
\nfirst chanterelle—
\nShouldn’t God feel like that?<\/p>\n

I aspire to “a self-forgetful,
\nperfectly useless concentration,”
\nas Elizabeth Bishop put it.
\nSo who shall I say I am?
\nI’m a prism, an expressive temporary
\nsentience, a pinecone falling.
\nI can hear my teacher saying, No.<\/em>
\n That misses it.<\/em>
\nBuddha goes on sitting through the century,
\nleaving me alone in the front hall,
\nwhich has just been cleaned and smells of pine.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Chase Twichell [source<\/em><\/a>])<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[Images: Original (as far as I can determine) on the left; as often circulated\/reposted on social-media sites, on the right. (Click either for a larger version.) While both carry meanings I appreciate, it’s interesting — if unsurprising — that the original seems to have made much less of an impression on people.] From\u00a0whiskey river: Wake […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,250,37,5,251],"tags":[351,1988,3556,3707,3708,3709],"class_list":{"0":"post-15100","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-art","9":"category-onlineworld","10":"category-06_writing","11":"category-poetry-writing_cat","12":"tag-ws-merwin","13":"tag-haruki-murakami","14":"tag-buddhism","15":"tag-robert-adams","16":"tag-wikipedia","17":"tag-chase-twichell","18":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-3Vy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15100"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15100\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15129,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15100\/revisions\/15129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}