Nowhere

Not sure where I am.

It’s is not where I thought I was.

Cannot sleep.

I want to be awake.

As I make my coffee,

She calls from bed.

I reply that I want to write.

In the light of a single light,

I walk to the bathroom.

A beautiful spider climbs her thread

To the top of the doorway.

I smile in delight.

I want to go with her.

Author: Zhong Fen li Bao you Di

Liz and Mary Mantra

May I find the peace, the calm, the strength to let go of my craving…

wanting to know, wanting to have, wanting to be.

May I surrender and rest right here.

Do not wander. Do not wander.

Liz is my teacher. Mary is my friend and retired teacher who travels to be with family and friends, working on whatever needs to be done. I see her for the month of June when she arrives at the farm. She retreats during the winter to live in her tent in the desert.

Photo and text: Zhong Fen li Bao yu Di

Untitled Prayer

Tormented souls surround me.
I am one myself.
Some I choose to like.
Others I do not.
Some I choose to love.
Some I can forgive.
Others I choose to condemn with my fear or hate.
This is a madness.
All are suffering.
Some crack slightly.
Some shatter.
Some explode.
Many love in the midst of their suffering.
As always, they parade before me,
One after another.
May I bear witness
Offering only my love.

Zhong Fen li Bao yu Di

 UNDERTOW

Submerged in the rippling water,
My toes gently sink in the sand.
I step into the next wave,
And feel a strong pull as it recedes.
A riptide can be dangerous,
But it is I who make it so.
My fear of disappearing,
Of leaving all behind,
Keep me from the joy of the deep water.
I cling to the shoreline,
And imagine what it will offer.
Let me possess the calm and faith
To go instead with what my heart knows.
To go out willingly with the riptide,
To swim in the swells of deep waters.

Zhong Fen li Bao yu Di

    Photo: Zhong Fen li Bao yu Di

The Pretzel
By
Elliot W. Lesser

Our relationship, Emmy’s and mine, is like a 12-inch long, one inch in diameter pretzel. That’s how relationships can be . . . one long salted pretzel that looks like a cigar.

Of course there are many kinds of relationships just as there are many kinds and shapes of pretzels but these are other people’s affairs, not mine.

This situation – our connection – has been too long. . . seven years. The winds of change blow, the flowing stream slows and muddies.

“We have excitement but never enthusiasm.” Emmy said that, early on.

We are talked out and have (at this point) little in common. I became lazy and seethed with boredom. I guess the label couch potato fits.

Usually, after work on my way back to the apartment, I have to stop in at Bernie’s Bar for a glass — four fingers — of scotch . . .sometimes two glasses . . . just to endure.

We live on the Upper Easts Side of Manhattan. I guess you might say I feel that perhaps I need to atone for something that is nagging at me. There is an intrinsic uneasiness. I am seeing a therapist.

Yes, it’s true, I had used the word engaged a number of times but no ring was given, so you might say, I didn’t seal the deal with that sort of commitment. If a ring was not presented in seven years, I think my intentions were obvious.

This linkage with Emmy is not about love, marriage and a baby carriage. I was dumbfounded when one night during what she called “Pillow Talk” she asked if I thought that we were soul mates.

I wanted to say, we are roommates and sex mates but instead I groaned and pretended to sleep. What the hell is a soul mate?

Human beings never stay at a plateau for long . . .we either move up . . . or down. In this case, the movement is clearly down. And, when a relationship brings me down it is time to move on.

Out of kindness, I wanted to wait until after the holidays. As always she had signed our Christmas cards: Hank and Emmy which made me wince but I knew that breaking up, would not be easy.

She would be hurt and annoyed and I hoped that she wouldn’t cry or whine – that she would be adult about it.

It was delicious when it was fresh and new but everything is transitory. . . relationships are changing things. They go stale.

As a chemist I had long ago learned that the visual could make things clear whereas when using words only – the message can be ambiguous. I wanted to do this once…make a clean, sharp cut with nothing holding us. No guilt, no blame.

I had called her from Kennedy when my plane landed and suggested that we go to what used to be our favorite restaurant– Mario’s — and have a few glasses of wine together with fine aged cheese or maybe warm Brie.

I wanted to do this correctly, end with kindness and class. At this point, she knew nothing of my decision. She was not perceptive which, was part of our problem.

I had been in Atlanta lecturing at Emory for more than a week. That’s another thing, I am a research chemist and I found communication about my work difficult. I had to talk to her as I would talk to a three year old. She had come to the table with a beautiful face and perfect body but it wasn’t enough. Well, it was at first but fires burn out.

She was excited about going to Mario’s and said she wanted to sit in our favorite booth tucked away in a private corner. That was perfect for what I had to do.

We split a bottle of Ménage a’ Trois and were both feeling mellow. That’s when I pulled the pretzel out of my pocket. I had it wrapped in plastic wrap.

After I took the plastic off, I held the pretzel in my hand. It looked like a long finger in the candlelight.

She started to laugh and asked me what I was doing. I held it up over my head. Up…then down almost touching the tabletop. She laughed. I moved it up and down two more times. She laughed again. I moved it slowly to the right and then slowly to the left, like a priest holding up a cross, or a Buddhist holding up smoking incense.

I kept moving it…up and down and back and forth, this time as a Rabbi holds the Torah. And, then, I kissed it.
With pressure from both my hands I broke it in half. Snap! Crack! Done. It was neat and clean.

I gave Emmy half of the pretzel and put my half back in my pocket. I told her that this was the way to end a relationship. Snap! Crack!
Only, it did not work that way. Crying and screaming and accusations came with catastrophic hurricane suddenness and, she forced me to reveal, that yes, there was another woman.

I reminded her I did not vow to love her till death do we part nor to forsake all others or to be there for better or worse. I did not promise to cherish.

I wanted out.

Later, I walked down by the Hudson and threw my half of the pretzel bit by bit into the water. It was like the Jewish practice of throwing bread into the water during the High Holy Days.

It was getting rid of the things in my life I no longer wanted. This was going to be a new beginning for me, a new year, a new town, a new woman.

Image Everyone on Brown by MF and YXS

Mutiny on the Bounty: A Spiritual Remix
by Rev. Yao Xiang Shakya

Ignorance gives birth to Mara.
Mara gives rise to armies.

Buddha speaks to Mara.
“Your first squadron is Sense Desires,
Your second is called Boredom, then
Hunger and Thirst compose the third,
And Craving is the fourth in rank,
The fifth is Sloth and Torpor
While Cowardice lines up as sixth,
Uncertainty is seventh, the eighth
Is Malice paired with Obstinacy;
Gain, Honor and Renown, besides,
And ill-won Notoriety,
Self-praise and Denigrating Others:
These are your squadrons Namuci.”

Access to Insight

If we are not in union with our Buddha nature, we are up against the squadrons of Mara. If we are unable to withstand these attacks, we are the pitiable in spirit and open to mutiny.

Most assuredly, the “me” struts about with words, acts of all sorts and mental mulling. We mull over our lot with stories that sink us more and more into a bog, whether it be a heavenly bog or hellish one. We go over and over the accumulations of mental composting, thinking we can turn the scraps of thought into gold. This propensity of the swaggering, blustery me is the way of suffering. It’s guaranteed. Every realm, from the hungry ghost to the deva realm is marked by this guarantee.

Suffering…

Any one of the armies mentioned above can lay us low and sink us into the swamp of selfishness, self-cherishing, self-ambitions, self-pride, self-hate and all the taints and traps of the self. We are poor in spiritual wealth and are very much like the mutineers on the notorious ship, the Bounty. We, like the mutineers, are spiritually pitiable.

Our inability to remain disciplined, which requires that we are trained enough to remain focused on our Buddha nature, leads to endless suffering for ourselves and others. We weaken with the attacks of boredom, craving, uncertainty, and self-praise. We fail to remain loyal to our spiritual authority within.

In the historical story of Lieutenant William Bligh, the commander of the legendary British ship, the Bounty, and his iniquitous Master’s Mate, Fletcher Christian, we may recognize our own ill-fated and dismal ruin in the sea battles of Mara’s troops. The sensual desirous mind is the lead battalion which can rock us to such a point we lose faith. We may find ourselves falling into rebellion when our sensual nature overwhelms our trained and skilled navigator; it is where we give way to the lusts of the world despite the presence of a seasoned commander. It requires an onslaught of the squadrons to dislodge our superior nature. We buckle much like Fletcher Christian. We mutiny. We refuse to obey the wisdom of discipline and mistake discipline and correction for the enemy.

The Bounty, the mutiny on the Bounty, misread as a romantic drama of swaggering love against a cruel commander, is a strong reminder of the heartaches that follow when we do not heed the way of disciplined wisdom. Bligh, a brilliant seaman, able and expert in sailing the unchartered waters of the late 1700’s, is portrayed and remembered as an evil and malevolent commander. No one wants to be compared to Bligh. Surely this portrayal is the fabrication of a romantic public. Bligh was a virtuoso of the sea. It is Fletcher Christian who, in the midst of unbridled lust, swamps not only him, but many of the crew and the ship itself. It is Fletcher Christian who is guilty of attempted murder by the very fact he forces 19 men into a small boat without provisions and navigational instruments some 3000 miles from land. Who is the bad guy here?

It’s those times when we rebel against the blockades of what we want. We may experience a correction, by life’s circumstances or another person who reproaches us, as an adversary rather than a caution or warning that we are getting close to an inner uprising by the strikes of Mara.

Spiritual insurgence may not happen to every spiritual aspirant but it does occur. If we are fortunate, we wash up on the shores of another chance to set sail for the true destination of a spiritual life. Whether we rebel or remain a disciple, whether we imagine the spiritual voyage as a cruise ship or the Bounty, the armies of Mara board with us. We can be sure of it. We must take notice and protect our spiritual treasures against the onslaught of sensual desire, boredom, craving, laziness, insolence, indolence, cowardice, malice, self-importance, and self-promotion.

The Bounty, was commissioned in 1787 by Britain’s Royal Navy to travel to Tahiti to acquire and transport breadfruit plants for commercial profit to the West Indies. Lt. William Bligh, the commanding officer, offered his former friend, Fletcher Christian, the position of Master’s mate, a post Christian eagerly accepted. With a crew of officers and able seamen, totaling 46, his Majesty’s ship, the Bounty set sail on 23 December, 1787 from Spithead, England to Tahiti.

Bligh, a young commander at age 32, was nevertheless a skilled and competent seaman. His prior experience included an impressive position with the then celebrated Captain Cook, the English explorer noted as discovering the Hawaiian Islands. Bligh was, as some accounts suggest, an ambitious man, who wanted to sail the Bounty around the most dangerous waters around Cape Horn. Historical records indicate Bligh on the outward bound trip did attempt the Horn and kept the ship in stormy, rampant seas in a 31 day attempt to clear it. Many historians propose Bligh’s insistent attempts to clear the Horn and his rumored vulgar language were the catalyst for the eventual mutiny. But the mutiny took place not on the outward bound trip to Tahiti, but on the return voyage back to England. It is also rumored that the men mutinied out of fear of a return trip around the Horn. This rumor is also quite unlikely. A capable and loyal Naval Officer such as Bligh would be unlikely to risk losing his cargo “the breadfruit plants,” on the return trip through the cold and stormy waters of the Horn where both crew and cargo were in grave danger of not surviving. Before leaving England, Bligh promised the very influential Joseph Banks that he could be assured of safe passage of hundreds of breadfruit plants.

Bligh, it seems, felt the long stay on Tahiti where men, long at sea, found a sailor’s paradise. Bligh’s crew “…learned that the stories that had filled their ears throughout the long, hard outward voyage—about the island’s beauty, its sexually uninhibited women, its welcoming people—were not tall tales, or sailor’s fantasy.” C. Alexander

It is on Tahiti, this island haven, where discipline, although upheld by Bligh, was undone during the crew’s 23 week stay. It is next to impossible to reconstruct with certainty the specific reasons why 19 men took control of the ship under the leadership of Fletcher Christian. No one can say for certain, but what we can say is that mutiny lends itself to those who suffer from the onslaught of Mara. The story lends itself to many spiritual explorations and reflects the powerful tug of desire that leads to mutiny, needless affliction and impulsive acts of the ego. This historical event reflects the truth of the Dharma. We must be single-minded and one-pointed in order to be buoyed up by whatever occurs in life as Dharma, otherwise rather than sustained by it, we will take it personally and sink into our own fabrications. The spiritual aspirant relies on single-minded training and discipline, because the material world is far too potent, as the mutineer, Fletcher Christian, finds out.

Historical records are not definitive, but what is definitive is, that the Bounty left on a mercantile voyage from England for Tahiti and did not return. The crew mutinied on the return trip to England. The mutiny took place after a long stay on Tahiti where the seamen lived among the Tahitians. On the journey home, Fletcher Christian led the mutiny.

In the Pacific far from land, Fletcher Christian forced some of the loyalists to remain on board while the mutineers compelled the remaining 18 of the loyal crew into a 23′ open launch with Bligh. Without charts of any kind, a quadrant, a pocket watch and meager provisions, Bligh navigated 3,618 nautical miles to the safe harbor of Timor. William Bligh landed in the Dutch colony of Timor 47 days later. He lost all but one crew member who was murdered by natives on an island where they attempted to obtain needed supplies. Bligh was trained, he knew the sea, navigation and how to plot a course and get this loyal band of sailors to dry land.

We, too, need certain basic skills to plot a course out of the clutches of internal squadrons of suffering. We need to know how to deal with mistakes, authority and the myriad encounters which challenge us. And we need to know how to distinguish what leads to more ignorance and suffering and what leads to liberation. But some of us get carried away and we mutiny. We begin to get too interested in the swamp, in lust and defiance. We resist authority. We promote our self-interest. We even gather others to join us. But like Fletcher Christian, who by all accounts was swept up in self-indulgence and dissipating discipline, we squander our life effort on pitiable, worldly fruits.

When we embark, and we do embark, on board a spiritual ship we drag along all kinds of things which we believe will help us make it to our destination. We pack our intellect, our physical strengths, wit, and toys of every sort and of course, let us not forget our sense of who we think we are. Often we pack our dreams. Foremost, but often carelessly, we jam somewhere in the bottom of the knapsack or stuffed and crammed in at the last minute what we are going to need in order to reach our destination.

We need our will, a will to train, to stay the course, to continue, to trust and to get up when we fall. It is this one thing, our will to find the truth that sustains, when every temptation under the blazing sun will challenge our decision to stay the course. We will want to give up if we have not unpacked our will and surrendered it to a greater source. Dreams, wishes, fantasies and desires collapse and surrender to the obstacles of such a journey when the will remains separated.

We may not be too savvy in recognizing what’s in the baggage until we run into storms. The storm itself may be our first encounter with the journey not going as we had planned. We may have walked the gangway thinking the journey will be nothing but blue sky and warm breezes sitting on deck chairs being served by solicitous wait staff. It’s reported that those who joined the crew of the Bounty enlisted in order to experience the sensual ecstasy of Tahiti. They did not consider the arduous voyage, the skills and will that would contain the fiery legions of Mara. We do not realize we have enlisted in a disciplined, demanding and a high venture. Many Zen temples use iconic warnings at the front gate alerting the newcomers of the “life and death” matter of Zen. Shadow guardians are stationed to ward off and show strength against any malevolent spirits. It is very important to pay attention to what type of venture we have signed on to and protect the mind from self-serving glories.

Those of us who have ridden the ocean waves for a time can spot the remarkable, earnestness of those joining the voyage on any one of the numerous ports-of-call who mistakenly believe this Zen ocean vessel is a cruise ship.

Even some of us who have been through many a storm can begin to hope for a cruise ship experience where luxury and comfort are the hallmarks. If we are able to stay aboard, we soon discover this ocean liner is more like an aircraft carrier where one is a crew member and not a touring passenger. When we are fortunate enough to recognize our rank as a crew member all sorts of possibilities open. But it may take some strong sea gales before we realize our place on this exquisite and working vessel. We may for a long time be a reluctant, recalcitrant and indolent passenger who hides out amid our mercenary ideas. In other words, we remain motivated by personal gain. But it is not to worry the ocean voyage itself finds those who are hiding selfishly in desires of personal profit. These passengers often make the same mistakes and secretly plot schemes of mutiny against the hardworking often exhausted and seasoned crewmates, jump ship at the next port or are thrown off by a commander with savoir-faire. Their schemes are endless from dalliances to seditions; they rarely go unnoticed.

It is, of course, true that the commander of such a large seagoing vessel can also be incompetent or be viewed by the crew as harsh, intolerant and merciless. Bligh may have seemed a harsh taskmaster leaving Tahiti, but he had just leniently corrected 3 deserters with the lash and he knew how loose the discipline had become. He needed his crew taut, skilled and ready for the 12,000 mile return voyage. He attempted to help the crew regain discipline and skill for the long journey ahead hoping to end the indolence and disorderly conduct. We must hope and pray that the discipline meted out is enough to strengthen the moral fibers of the crew to reach the hoped for destination.

We might know the taste of the rigors of such a voyage and the exquisite contentment that comes from the commitment of a commander such as Bligh. And we are reassured by our love, our disciplined love for such a commander, for ourselves and for others. Disciplined love which comes from a trained and selfless master of the way is beyond explanation and words. The commander helps the crew stay the course, but only if the crew unpacks their will. Disciplined love results when the will is surrendered to the greater Source on a spiritual voyage. It’s an adventure beyond the adventures of time and space.

The most we can say with any certainty is that the mutineers of the Bounty were captives of selfish dreams of the kind from the likes of Mara’s squadrons. It does not mean they are hopeless. It may mean a confession, followed by an ability to bring to an end their foolish belief that freedom is found in an insurgence against disciplined love. If they are unable to stop, they remain shackled by their own self-centeredness.

Reference and Recommended Reading:

The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the Bounty

The harm that we cause travels out from its impact.
It moves deeply through us, between us.
Neither space nor time halts its flow.

It can bring on a darkness.
As we seek to protect ourselves
From inner demons and the living.
This blackness may conceal even our essence.

If we are lucky, others may arrive,
Who, like angels or shepherds,
Seek to care for, comfort, and guide us.

From their expressions of love and compassion,

And our own efforts to let go.
We may regain the strength and faith
To again stand next to one another,
To open and reach for the Light.

In 1982, one of the bloodiest years of Guatemala’s 36 year civil war, military officers killed and raped Mayan peasants in the tiny hamlet of Sepur Zarco. Subsequently, eleven women from the village were forced into domestic and sexual slavery. This bondage lasted as long as six years for some of the women. A case was brought against the officers after a long and painful process. This year the Guatemalan courts tried two of the officers in charge, found them guilty, and sentenced them to 340 years in prison. The accompanying photos are of the women who brought the charges prior to their testimony and during the reading of the verdict.

Written by Zhong Fen li Bao yu Di, ©2016

The Heart of the Matter

St. A. studied deeply the Wisdom teachings and discovered the body is impermanent. She learned there is no male, no female. She saw all forms, feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness as impermanent and was saved from all suffering and distress.

(The Heart Thread, an ancient teaching)