In Heaven EveryThing Is Fine

C L I C K

The Battle of the Old Oak Tree

"The foul vermin horde swarmed out of the north, intent on striking a psychological blow on the good folk of the forest by cutting down the Old Oak Tree. Rallying from all corners of the domain to protect the tree were the Mouse Guard, the otters of Finnegan the Blade’s tribe, and Captain Burdock Rabscuttle’s Wide Patrol of hares. The vermin horde of the evil rat Rufer, supported by the villain Durge the Wolverine and the nefarious warlock rat Skurr, had to make it to the Oak Tree and put four cuts into it before the valiant woodland folk could stop them. . .

The Old Oak Tree is under attack! Covered with blood, much of it now his own, and decorated with dozens of arrow shafts from Dand-O’s bow, the weary champion begins to chop down the iconic tree. Dand-O "Flatfoot is the only woodland creature surviving, and all he can do is loose shaft after shaft as the relentless wolverine hacks away. Durge swings with tired limbs, stumbling as arrows thud home through his armor and into his thick hide. Dand-O believes Durge is dead several times, but the wolverine still struggles to rise, sometimes making it to his feet to take yet another strike at the Old Oak Tree. Three fourths of the way through the mighty tree’s trunk, blade raised to deliver the final strike, Durge stops. He has been struck too many times. A final arrow slams into his hide, his armor torn and full of holes. It’s too much, and the relentless Vermin champion finally falls dead.

Corporal Dand-O Flatfoot is all that remains. The Vermin Horde lay dead across the downs or is running back north, leaderless and panicked. The heroic woodland creatures are scattered across the battle field, dead and dying, covered with death and glory. It has been a horrific and tragic day, but the Old Oak Tree still stands…"

But not today.  The valiant oak at our northeast lot line has been under attack by the city, protecting its powerlines.  Every couple of years men come out and hack away branches to clear the wires, and every time the oak revives and valiantly shapes itself well again.  But today, today they took it entirely away.

Johnny Cash & Joni Mitchell - The Long Black Veil [click]

Edith Piaf, La Foule [click]

clickable contemplation

 

Haystacks. Late Summer. Morning.

Having stumbled into a post-modernist mindset and insatiably reading art criticism, confused about what is "true," etc (etc, etc), I somehow got the idea that, if you've seen Claude Monet's haystacks, they're passé consumerism, not to be trusted, and certainly not to be enjoyed.  Wonder why?  Anyway, how can I hope to surpass this vision of late summer in even many words?

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Feast of the Transfiguration of Christ

I've always felt that I saw this event out of the corner of my eye, or as if something were missing.  Methodists don't linger on it, but Wikipedia does make one think.

The Transfiguration is a pivotal moment, and the setting on the mountain is presented as the point where human nature meets God: the meeting place for the temporal and the eternal, with Christ himself as the connecting point, acting as the bridge between heaven and earth

Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1872-1906

In Summer

Oh, summer has clothed the earth

In a cloak from the loom of the sun!

And a mantle, too, of the skies’ soft blue,

And a belt where the rivers run.

And now for the kiss of the wind,

And the touch of the air’s soft hands,

With the rest from strife and the heat of life,

With the freedom of lakes lands.

I envy the farmer’s boy

Who sings as he follows the plow;

While the shining green of the young blades lean

To the breezes that cool his brow.

He sings to the dewy morn,

No thought of another’s ear;

But the song he sings is a chant for kings

And the whole wide world to hear.

He sings of the joys of life,

Of the pleasures of work and rest,

From o’erfull heart, without aim or art;

‘T is a song of the merriest.

O ye who toil in the town,

And ye who moil in the mart,

Hear the artless song, and your faith made strong

Shall renew your joy of heart.

Oh, poor were the worth of the world

If never a song were heard, --

If the sting of grief had no relief,

And never a heart were stirred.

So, long as the streams run down,

And as long as the robins trill,

Let us taunt old Care with a merry air,

And sing in the face of ill.

Stephen J. Walker, August 11, 1953 - October 29, 1991

Gone such a long time now, Stephen would have been 58 this year, 20 years since his death.  He still figures in my dreams occasionally.  Right after he died, I dreamed that he and I were talking on the telephone when the connection began to fade, and his voice ebbed away into silence.  Since then I have dreamed of meeting him somewhere, perhaps a party, where he appears as he looked after a shower on a late summer afternoon: wet hair slicked back, tanned from tennis and swimming, and smiling his crooked smile.  Often we would embrace in the dream, and I cannot begin to describe how sweet it felt, how all encompassing. And I find him "in the morning sun and when the night is new."

[The Da Vinci drawing is the logo he used for his weekly gay publication, The Alternate News, in Kansas City.]

...don't cut yourself...

If you realize that all things change,

          there is nothing you will try to hold on to.

          If you aren't afraid of dying,

          there is nothing you can't achieve.

          Trying to control the future

          is like trying to take the master carpenter's place.

          When you handle the master carpenter's tools,

          chances are that you'll cut your hand.

Dying is a wild night and a new road.

This was not written by somebody born after 1980!

~How to Transform Negative Emotions~

Sogyal Rinpoche writes in Glimpse of the Day:

"Two people have been living in you all your life. One is the ego, garrulous, demanding, hysterical, calculating; the other is the hidden spiritual being, whose still voice of wisdom you have only rarely heard or attended to. As you listen more and more to the teachings, contemplate them, and integrate them into your life, your inner voice, your innate wisdom of discernment, what we call in Buddhism “discriminating awareness,” is awakened and strengthened, and you begin to distinguish between its guidance and the various clamorous and enthralling voices of ego. The memory of your real nature, with all its splendor and confidence, begins to return to you.

You will find, in fact, that you have uncovered in yourself your own wise guide, and as the voice of your wise guide, or discriminating awareness, grows stronger and clearer, you will start to distinguish between its truth and the various deceptions of the ego, and you will be able to listen to it with discernment and confidence."

In the Tibetan tradition, the most basic method to reduce our negative emotions is via analytical meditation. The reasoning is that the negative emotions are delusions - misunderstandings of reality. If one analyses the process of how they come about, we can discover where real problem lies. Analytical meditation appears a very good method, as one avoids emotional excitement in meditation, and very calm observation of the workings of our own mind usually presents answers quite easily.

So, simply by being calm and quiet, analyze what is behind these destructive emotions and learn where the fault really lies. In Buddhism, the fault never lies ultimately with the outside world! As all our positive and negative experiences are results of our own karma, only our failure to behave more positive causes us problems.

One of the biggest obstacles to rid ourselves of these delusions is habituation. Although it is possible to analyze afterwards why it may have been unjust to become angry at someone, it is not simple to stop oneself before anger comes up. More pages on specific negative emotions and how to deal with them are given under the heading of Delusional Emotions in the top left corner of this page. The 'Summary' page describes the general approach in detail.

It should be noted that the ultimate antidote to negative emotions is the wisdom of emptiness. As all distinctions of 'self' and 'other' vanish with this realization, when all duality vanishes, things like good and bad, or pleasant and unpleasant become meaningless. Due to the way our mind works, it is quite difficult to make this wisdom 'breakthrough', and analytical meditation is a good starter to work on our day-to-day negative emotions and actions.

"This is the radical discovery of Buddhist psychology. You don't have to resign yourself to ordinary suffering, to being always unconscious of what is really going on, helpless before not only society and space and time and others, but more importantly before your own inner drives, impulses and demands. You need not give up and allow yourself to be buffeted here and there by passions and angers. You can become conscious of what you were formerly unconscious. You can understand your drives, see where they come from, block the source, and divert the energy for your own use. You can resist all imperatives and learn to wield the underlying energies. You can reclaim those energies for your life, for your happiness and the happiness of your loved ones."

The Traveler

Lou Beach, artist