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I am now only wonder.
Of thee.

To make no distinction
between so many
eyes of god.

I err in saying
and you have shown now,
how equal your love
is to mine.

So many different
Beings here!
Little sound.

Enormous
Meeting.

<paste> Love.

(Eric)
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Dolls and Puppets


Every doll operates a puppet
Experimental placement
In a set constructed
To cultural standards;

Whether standard by
Conformance or
By rebellion;
Set standards prevail.

Every doll
Has ambitions
Of success on-set;
Each puppet is the actor

Every doll plays
Within standard boundaries
Of set standards;
Even rebels speak.

Speaking is agreement
Even in disagreement
Set speech standards prevail
As the basic agreement;

Thus even rebel dolls
Operate their puppets
Within certain boundaries
In the standard social puppet arena.

Some dolls do not know
Or have forgotten
They are not the puppet
They are the doll

Dolls create puppets
Puppets represent dolls;
A complex way of life
In the dollhouse puppetshow

The puppet show continues;
Dolls placing bets
On their own and other puppets,
Is the primary sport of dolls

Irony abounds
Child dolls play
Using doll-puppets
Learning to identify;

Puppets die daily
Hourly by the moment;
Reborn as a new version,
Continuing the show

Reincarnation
Of reborn puppets based
On plans to win bets
Searching for the winning formula:

Winning dolls make their puppets say:
"I am am not this puppet,
I am This Doll"

Other winning dolls make their puppets say:
"I am not this puppet;
I am the supreme non-puppet,
Thus I am the Supreme Doll"

Puppet shows,
Ventriliquist dolls,
Bets placed,
Market watched;

Dollhouse traditions
Demand sacrifice;
Loser-puppets flung down
Steep pyrimid steps.


==Gene Poole==

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String sutra

Brahman stretches forth, before, behind,
to right and left, stretches forth above and below.

We say I am string
We say at one end doll at one end puppet
We name the dance of doll and puppet
We say I am and we are

We dance doll and puppet
puppet and doll
Tight string stretches forth before, behind
to right and left, above and below.

--andrew

_______________________________________________________________________


Skye: I've just started reading "No Boundaries" by Ken
Wilbur.
He writes; "Something very simple happens when you ask the
question "Who am I?" When you are describing or explaining,
what you are actually doing, (whether you know it or not) is
drawing a mental line or boundary across the the whole field
of your experience".

"Your identity in other words depend entirely on where you
draw that boundary line. [...] and so you come to recognise
your identity with 'this' and not 'that'. All answers to
that question "Who am I" stem precisely from drawing that
boundary line.

The most interesting thing about this boundary line is that
it can and frequently does shift. [...] As we have seen the
most radical remapping or shifting of the boundary line
occurs for the person who expands their self identity
boundary to include the entire universe. We might even say
they lose the boundary line altogether. [...]

Skye: He goes on to describe how we create those fundamental
boundaries eg; all the things inside my skin are 'me'. I am
not my job, my car, my house, etc...and some even make a
more significant splits within the body, such as; I am not
my body, I am my psyche, ego, personality even though
biologically there is not the least foundation for this
dissociation!!! Even within the ego we use mental self
images to make further splits narrowing down our persona.
It's quite flexible this self/notself boundary line.
Suffice to say, I am enjoying this refreshing author
immensely.

______________________________________________________________________

I tried getting rid of it all once, all the material stuff,
I still miss some of the stuff I gave away, especially the
music (records).

andrew

When you realize you are nothing, it comes pleasantly
accompanied by the lack of fear of attachment to everything.

Love always,

Mira
_____________________________________________________________________

Sometimes the language here at NDS of being, oneness, all
that is, ego, etc., confuses me. I never defined anything
like that. I just saw that all this "stuff" is conditioned
energy passing through my body and I just move around and it
either comes along or not. It didn't really matter. The
icing on the cake is compassion.

Becky

_______________________________________________________________________


Jim: I'm Jim, I've never posted before but I've been
following on and off for several months. My argument is
something like, I believe we can convince ourselves of
anything.

Dan: Are you totally convinced of that?

J: And anybody can say that words don't suffice to express
an experience. Yada Yada Yada. What am I supposed to do
with that!

D: Try to find an experience that can be fully expressed in
words.

J: I want to know what it is in YOU that makes you feel this
mystyerious thing, what makes it real to you, because if
it's real to you, right there in front of you, it must
manifest itself in some way, some...dare I say, duality.

D: In front of me, there is only what is in front of me.
Whatever it is, it is. The question is, "how mysterious is
this very moment, this exactly as it is?"

J: I suppose I'm asking "what is enlightenment supposed to
be?"

D: Supposing it to be something, you have your
suppositions.

J: Nothing is not an acceptable answer, testimony however
will be considered.

D: But then testimony will be words, right? Yada yada
yada.

J: I suspect there are those who consider themselves to be
enlightened around here somewhere and I'm trying to sniff em
out. I'm fascinated with the concept of believing in
ANYTHING as an ultimate, or perfection or whatever. I can't
seem to see anything beyond experience, hmmmm........looks
pretty dark to me.

D: Belief in an ultimate is having a belief. Having one
belief is similar to having another belief. It is simply
holding an idea in one's mind creating an expectation or a
fixed concept that reality is a certain way.
Here you are. Here's "your" experience. Where is the line
between "you" and "your experience"?

J: little fish in a big pond.
with open ears (and gills)

D: with gills open, the water comes in..., then the fish is
in the pond just swimming, no longer concerned about "big"
or "little" :-

____________________________________________________________________

"There's no thinking involved in my choreography . . . I
don't work
through images or ideas I work through the body . . . If
the dancer
dances ... which is not the same as having theories about
dancing or
wishing to dance or trying to dance .. everything is
there. When I
dance, it means: this is what I am doing."

-Merce Cunningham (quoted by Becky)

thank you for the above quote!
merce cunningham and john cage evidently worked separately,
the fusion (unity ) of dance and music occuring
spontaneously on the stage. i remember that you are a
dancer-- there are, i understand, "set forms" that dancers
work within in these pieces, motifs of some kind. do you
know more about how this works? -- here's a quote from
cunningham which i really think, from having witnessed
performances of his work, truly evince c's vision:

"...and then I read Einstein by pure coincidence, where he
said there are no fixed points in space and I thought, well,
that's perfect, that, as far as I was concerned, about stage
space. There aren't any fixed points. Wherever you are
... could be a center. Well that's a Buddhist thought, of
course -- wherever you are is the center, as well as where
everybody else is. But that seemed to me quite marvelous,
and enlarging."

love and blessings, aleks


Aleks, Yes, Cage & Cunningham worked separately and
together. The only binding factor was time. In simple
terms, they agree that the dance last for say, 13 minutes so
then that is how long the music 'lasted'. Otherwise, they
worked on the 'same' piece, independent of each other's
input. Cunningham also works in this fashion with artists
for set or decor. Often time, I've heard, the dancer's will
never have heard the music prior to the dress rehearsal.

It's great because they are not deciding on what 'goes
together' or what things should mean.

There are different 'forms' or structures used based on
indeterminacy. For instance, in one dance, years ago, the
dancers movement was determined by the color of paint put on
their costume by Robert Rausenberg when they exited into the
wings. Maybe one learned phrase of movement was called
"red" and another "green", so through the application of
color and the subsequent ever changing costume, the dance
evolves differently, yet the same, with each performance.

That is another reason why this work is great: everything
happens by chance but the dances retain a certain unity.
The chaos makes perfect sense.

I love that quote you sent by merce too. I have always felt
that this is one of the most important changes in modern
dance -- decentralization of the stage space. Yet another
reason why it's so great! (in the largest of senses!)

Do you know the piece 4 minutes 33 seconds by John Cage? It
is for piano. The musician comes to the stage, bows, takes
her/his seat, puts fingers to keys, and watches a stop watch
for 4min. 33 sec., never sounding the instrument, stands
up, bows, walks off stage. True Music!

I could talk about this forever. Glad you like it too.

Becky
______________________________________________________________________

Once the mind, body, senses, world are not seen as anything
other than images, then all images take on a weightless,
shining luminescence. As though nothing other than light is
being seen.

(Greg)

_____________________________________________________________________

Dan:
Enjoying your observations, I notice:
Even the thought that images arise in myself and to myself
is an image.
The comparisons can only be made when there is assumed to be
a mind to make the comparisons, a mind outside of images.
If it is found that mind itself is an image, then comparison
cannot be made in a relevant manner.

~Mira~:
Here you've touched the very heart of what I am unable to
speak, unable to describe, unable to explain. It is the
point of the absolute. From where 'I' begin, and
consequently 'the rest' begins. It is like the void that is
before anything happens. Before the 'big bang'. And I do
not mean the big bang in the sense of 'how the universe was
created a few billion years ago', but I mean the big bang
that happens every instant, every milisecond, manifesting,
from the point of the absolute, that, which appears to be a
'continuity of manifestation'. This is the point where I
always am, but I cannot know that I am there, for 'knowing'
manifests afterward. From here the mind manifests as the
world, which it then observes and compares. This is so hard
for me to describe, because in describing it, it seems like
some kind of a weird 'chain process' while in fact
everything is happening simultaneously.

______________________________________________________________________


It is just as impossible to find the mirror as it is
impossible to find the veils.
But it is very easy to imagine them.

(Mira)

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