19/6
‘Scorpio,’ however the sign features in one’s horoscope—or in one’s love life—requires from others a test of faith. It says, “believe in me or not have me.” But this is all at one’s own risk. This is the significance of the often unforeseen, curled up, stinger-tipped tail that comes swiftly from behind. The stakes are always very high. To love a Scorpio or one with attributes I’d call ‘Scorpion,’ is to put everything on the line. To love them is to chase them and suffer a repetition of painful stings. The irony is that Scorpios always appear to think of themselves as only sweetness and light, influencing others as well to see them as such, even after getting repeatedly stung. Is it just Stockholm syndrome’s perverse attraction to abuse? Or the height of love’s romantic ideal? One can find out only by taking its passion filled ride at least once in this lifetime.
21/6
I have only to wait for dawn as it arises, like these words, a supreme blessing. A blissful result and fulfillment. At times, if I happen to touch myself, I’m reminded of you. I sense you would have it no less. Though I’m not sure when you touch yourself you’re reminded of me. We are not afraid of being owned when all we give is given back, more or less, as long as it’s given—at all. This could be with everyone if we were so inclined. Encountering others and being generous as possible, whatever their response, has its own reward—the nectar of compassion. While this generosity happens between you and me, elsewhere it happens less. In this way, our compassion is not great, or even authentic, meaning ultimately it’s not boundless. And certainly not objectless, nor even limbless, as we are often passionately entangled in each other’s limbs. The tentacles of attraction however can become levers of aversion. This is because together we become ‘a part’ from the whole which is made of others. Siloed in a ghetto of our joint concerns, where we once were something more together, now we are less. So integration must be allowed. Neither a part nor a whole can have it all, as all is truly an emptiness full of everything; process and not an enclosure. In reality, our actual being is an anonymous vacuity. So how could self and others be separate? But through our ignorance and willfulness, our actions have consequences and collect as cankers. Soar if bad, blissful if good, waiting to erupt at our death and subsequent rebirth. That is, if we have no skillful means to escape samsaric repetition. So let the insignificance of our being ‘anonymous vacuity’ guide us as we attempt to live and abide by two four letter words—free and love—neither of which turn out as first expected.
6/5
One That Is Nothing
I’m really going but
Won’t be gone
Because in this place
I’m the only one
Neither here
Neither there
A life lived out
Up in the air
Planes take off
Planes set down
There’s no life
In this emoji town
One must travel
One must suffer
The expat’s dictum
The acetic’s buffer
Better still
To be only still
Going beyond
Where all have gone
A last one’s one
Who has no place
A permanent visa
In the element space
23/6
Number two on the [Native Tibetan Translator’s] program, readings within the English library of academic texts, accentuating previously translated Dharma works. Uniquely, there’s the first wave of Tibetan Buddhist books by authors such as Evans Wentz, Edward Conze, Stcherbatsky (‘Buddhist Logic’), B. Bhattacharya (‘The World Of Tantra’), Alex Wayman, Robert Thurmond, Jeffery Hopkins, and others. Especially formative to myself and people I knew were, Lama Anagarika Govinda's ‘Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s ‘Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism’, ‘The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation,’ ‘Glimpses of Abhidharma’, and others. Students should read English language books on ‘Eastern Religions,’ numerously by Alan Wats, like ‘The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are,’ Herman Hesse’s ‘Siddhartha,’ ‘The Bhagavad Gita,’ ‘The Upanishads,’ ‘Zen Mind Beginners Mind,’ ‘The Art of Happiness’ by HH Dalai Lama, and other popularizations. Also important are the New Age spiritual classics: ‘Autobiography of a Yogi’ by Paramahansa Yogananda, ‘Be Here Now’ by Baba Rama Das, ‘The Untethered Soul’ by Michael A. Singer, ‘Tao Te Ching’ by Lao Tzu, ‘Way of the Peaceful Warrior’ by Dan Millman, ‘The Power of Now’ and ‘The New Earth’ by Eckhart Tolle, and other such, at one time, widely read books. If you’re to ask why read tirthikas’ literature—worldly philosophy and philosophical traditions other than Buddhist—it’s because these writings from the English library establish concepts and terms both useful and antithetical to the teaching of Dharma to Westerners, many of whom have been influenced by such spiritual content. A content that’s generated preconceptions and terminology necessary for translators to know.
“Qualm: How, without apprehending form, etc., do [Bodhisattvas] investigate perfect wisdom? Having anticipated this with, And why? he says, Because at the time a Bodhisattva investigates these dharmas in perfect wisdom, at that time he does not approach form, etc., nor go to it, etc. Because when they investigate these dharmas form, etc., in perfect wisdom with that as their sign, [causing them to appear] in their essenceless aspect, at that time they do not approach do not step up to form, etc., hence nor go to it appropriate it, hence nor do they review production or stopping. There is nothing else, free from production and passing away, that exists is the idea. Qualm: Form is just nonproduction and nonstopping, because when you apprehend the one you apprehend the other. So why should “they not approach form?" Having anticipated this with, And why? he says, For the nonproduction of form, etc., is not form, etc. The non-passing-away of form, etc., is not form,etc. Nonproduction and form are therefore not two, nor divided. Not-passing-away and form are therefore not two, nor divided. Nonproduction and non-passing-away are not form because on the covering level only form appears. There just the existing thing that is the destruction of dharmas that last for an instant is passing away. Non-passing-away is from the negation of that. Hence they are different on the covering level. Therefore nonproduction and non-passing-away, and form, [as conventions without their own absolute, essential nature,] are ultimately not two—have nonproduction, etc., as their single [shared] nature, because they have a standing only as things unproduced and that do not pass away. Hence nor are they divided (advaidhikara). [Understand the compound advaidhikara, literally “something without what would make it two"]: without (apagata) the authoritative means of knowledge that would make it two things {dvidhd-bhdva-kciraka). [115]” (Abhisamayalamkara, vol. 1 of 4, Sparham, Garet (tr); 307, 8.)
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