John Veen is a poet and working stiff from Central California by way of Michigan. He facilitates an irregular non-duality dialog in Fresno, C.A., and edits the website: www.nopathnoself.net.
A Tether Tied to Space
Epigrams
and Subversion
by John Venn
published by Non-Duality Press
Excerpt of the first few pages:
“Just simply say when doubt
arises,
Not two.”
— Seng Ts’an
“We… in mad trance strike
with our spirit’s
knife / Invulnerable nothings.”
— P. B. Shelley
“Since everything is without
substance,
sustain the joke of the absurd.”
— Longchenpa
“Luminous mind is the actual
condition of everything.”
— Longchenpa
Foreword
Reality is timeless so the
question “When?” can
never be answered.
If you can’t say when
something arises you can’t
claim to know that it arises. You might speculate
that birth and death happen now, simultaneously—but
timelessness erases even that.
Now thoughts, whether “of”
time or timelessness
or anything else, have no actual extension in space
or time, and therefore no content. We might reflect
or meta-reflect on thoughts as objects or containers
of objects but that near-process is an extinct,
dimensionless memory.
Memories, thoughts and other
“karmic burdens”
are like flames and water streams: formless
forms apparent only to the timeless non-form in
question.
Reality is…?
The epigrams and subversions
that follow are a
sequence of primitive objections to form, most of which
also object to their own forms vainly, solipsistically.
They step foolishly into the
dream. And while they are
not light, they are bathed in it. They thank you for it.
~ ~
Look straight at the seeking
itself.
There’s your devil. Your teacher.
~ ~
It requires nothing
no belief
no conversion
no breakthrough
no need to bore down
no need to dig deep…
~ ~
See the resistance to what
is —
to what is right in front of your face.
See the inversion, the contraction,
the avoidance,
the rejection of the real
in favor of some phantom ideal.
~ ~
You become aware of your own
tendencies
and resistances.
Seeking (seeking answers, seeking comfort…)
is seen or felt as uncomfortable,
even painful, contraction.
Compulsive, instinctive, automatic desires
and fears are exposed.
And the peace of not clinging, not grasping,
not cowering is somehow exposed.
~ ~
Chronic self-knotting,
caught in the act,
is itself the key.
(The key to what? Who the fuck knows?)
See the contraction in action
without trying to fix it…
Now it’s as if there’s a microscopic (infinite)
distance between ‘you’ and ‘suffering’.
~ ~
That distance is healthy
detachment.
Simple, accidental renunciation.
Breathable space.
(It’s all breathable space!)
~ ~
A ghost outside.
Tension inside.
When you look and see nothing’s there
tension subsides on its own.
~ ~
The ‘yes’ hidden in the
‘no’…
release masquerading as obstruction.
~ ~
Bodymind contracts, both
predator and prey.
Salvation? Love?
The breath that comes and goes…
II
Ponder the inconceivable.
Stop!!
~ ~
The presumption of
separation
the fear of separation
the desire for non-separation
are all non-separate forms of natural perfection.
~ ~
Separation into discrete
problem-units
is barred by reality.
~ ~
Bodymind sense is
life-cling-death-fear.
It is immune to facts like emptiness and its own
absence.
~ ~
When the apparent dilemma
(object, dream-tangent…) presents itself
it is spontaneously recognized as ‘light’.
~ ~
When light rediscovers
omnipresent light
it drops the post-threat post-lust tendency
to linger in fear-desire-fight-flighthate-
love-anger-greed
or any other sticky form of light.
~ ~
If that thing that sits on
your chest were real
there would be no in-breath.
~ ~
Moment to moment resistance
is ‘divine’ pressure,
a tactile hint,
a gift.
~ ~
The release button was
pushed forever ago.
Nothing to do!
III
The simplicity of no-path-no-self
precedes trying—
trying to understand,
trying to do.
~ ~
Try to get to the point
where
the trying stops
when you see the trying.
~ ~
Stop digging
your hands are insane.
~ ~
Why struggle with the
struggle?
Look up. Face the world.
~ ~
Free seeing brings free
breathing?
What is it that sees? What is it that breathes?
~ ~
Instantaneous: your passage
to the next moment
(the next life).
Without you.
~ ~
If you’ve got time to waste
get into process.
If you’ve got no time
don’t.
~ ~
Timelessness is the briefest therapy.
~ ~
Click here to find out more about A Tether Tied to Space, from Non-Duality Press