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Friday December 1, 2000





The Core's Musical Selection of the Month has been updated for December,
2000.

Anyway, hope you like this uplifting musical piece.

Access it either by going to The Core (http://coresite.cjb.net), scrolling
down the left-side menu and clicking on "Monthly Musical Selection," or
directly here:

http://www.zipcon.net/~core/nd/music.html

____________________________________________________________

MARY on Mystic Love

"All that is not One must ever
Suffer with the wound of Absence,
And whoever in Love's city
Enters, finds but room for One
and but in One-ness, Union."

-"Through Scylla and Charybdis"

Love, Mary

___________________________________________________

DAN

Dear Andrew,

Description isn't necessarily description of
something else "out there". That's just
one type of description.
Description is giving form and texture by depicting
something.
So, yes, art describes.
Not only that, but sense perception describes.
Every thought is description.

All I can tell you is this:
for me, it's been a wonder to
open to this. To "see" description
as it forms, and therefore to "see"
what isn't describable, what is
prior to any description, any
formulated reality, any kind of
experiential truth.

Description involves time -
time to formulate, time to perceive.
The describer is the described because
each is implied in the other, and
each requires the other.

What is "opening" is this:
the describer appears with the described.
the described appears with the describer.
the seer appears with the seen.
the seen appears with the seer.

I am this rose I am viewing.
Without me, it is not.
Without it, I am not.

It is there, I am there,
yet neither is there.

In the instant of nondescription,
nonperception, there is timelessness.

It is not describable.
It is not a work of art.
It is not the artist or seer.

This is why the Tao has been called "dark".
And it has been called the "Living One" as
you suggest. Yet, with "unknowingness's
opening" even the description "living"
slips away, because with no dichotomy
of life/death, matter/space - what meaning
has "living"?

There is no one alive here and no one dead here.
There is neither livingness nor nonlivingness.

Where description ends is pure "nowness",
pure "infinite potential" and
of course, these words are empty.

There is no picture formulated here, nothing
to be seen and no seer. Yet it's not
just an empty nothing - it's just
that description such as totality,
infinite consciousness misses what "it is".

Love,
Dan

______________________________________________________________

ANDREW

Dear Dan,

Oh, OK then.
but...
If what is being described is formed and shaped by the description,
out of no prior thing, that's an unusual way of using the word
'description'.

love,
andrew

__________________________________________________________

DAN

Dear Andrew,

Glad it's okay!

The only reason it seems unusual, I think,
is that the "general consensus" is that
there is an independently existing world
of things in space out there which we
describe through language, art, etc.
And I'm not making that assumption.

The implications are gorgeous.

This "world of things" arises as "my experience",
just as I arise with it. What a marvelous
paradox - essentially the paradox of
describer and described.

By the way, I remember reading stuff from Don Juan
where he used the idea of description similarly
to the way we're talking here - description of the
world "creates" the world that "I become". It's
a little vague here, as I read this stuff long ago,
but I remember something about "stopping the world"
and it seemed equivalent to "being 'beyond' the description".

Fascinating, the way description works!

The billion things "out there" are my construction,
and the "me" that constructs this only seems
to appear because those "billion things" are "wanting
a way to self-contruct, hence, to appear.
Their appearance is description of a world, which
is how "I", the apparent observer, get structured
"into the picture".

And all this from a "void" that is a "plenum" of
potential, the potential for infinite descriptions
and experiences of "self/world" ... all enfolded
as "just this" ...

Whatever "self/world" seems to be unfolding here,
why it's just always, only this very "original no-thingness".

We're all this "interdependent reality" of flux, perception,
awareness and "things" of interpenetrating mutual origination.
And yet it's all, only "nowness", always "no-thingness".

Quite the intrigue, it is.

And yes, by describing it, I'm giving it "living form",
and "myself", too.

Love,
Describer and Diver Dan


_____________________________________________________________

ANDREW

Perhaps 'description' is an accurate word for the process of creation that is
always
happening, from seeming not to be yet not being nonexistent to seeming to be
yet not
being, the roiling whirling turning back on itself of no thing swirling into
thingness
and out again. Creation or making is what is happening (seems to be
happening),
description is how it happens (seems to happen.)
A jar is a description of the space within it, and outside it.
I remember Don Juan from long ago too, telling Carlo to hear the space
between the
sounds of the wind in the trees.

love,
andrew

____________________________________________________________________

MARK OTTER

Dear non-Selves,

This is another teaching from Achaan Chah:

Not-Self

When one does not understand death, life can be very confusing. If our
body really belonged to us, it would obey our commands. If we say
"Don't get old," or "I forbid you to get sick," does it obey us? No, it
takes no notice. We only rent this house, not own it. If we thing it
belongs to us, we will suffer when we have to leave it. But in reality,
there is no such thing as a permanent self, nothing solid or unchanging
that we can hold on to.

Buddha made a distinction between ultimate truth and conventional
truth. The idea of a self is merely a concept - a convention -
American, Thai, teacher, student, all are conventions. Ultimately no
one exists, only earth, fire, water, and air - elements that have
combined temporarily. We call the body a person, my self, but
ultimately there is no me, there is only anatta, not-self. To
understand not-self, you have to meditate. If you only intellectualize,
your head will explode. Once you understand not-self in your heart, the
burden of life will be lifted. Your family life, your work, everything
will be much easier. When you see beyond self, you no longer cling to
happiness, you can begin to be truly happy.


Love, Mark
ps I'm beginning to think Achaan Chah is a HOODLUM!!!

___________________________________________________________

matthew files wrote:
>
> -------------------------------------
> well i agree with the exploding head part but this shit about life
> being easier is pure nonsense. More carrot on the stick hooha. If you
> do such and such then the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow will
> be yours, and you will live happily ever after. Sorry Achaan baby
> that is total fairy tale. You don't become "free" when you "wake up"
> you become a slave, because there is no choice anymore.

Anymore?

> And the life
> of a slave with no choices is very difficult

Compared to what?
For there to be a slave with no choices there must be a master with choices,
and they
must be two separate entities.
Both are illusion.
Everything is a surprise, nothing true is known.
Boo!

and if you think
> otherwise, well, have a nice sleep.
> ............matthew

ole!

andrew

________________________________________________


MARK & HARSHA

From: Mark Otter
ppps I've been taking trouble-making lessons privately from Harsha. I'm
getting good at it, huh? (please think before responding. a "no" answer
will be an insult to Harsha, and no one would want to insult Harsha.
He's much too nice a guy for that...)
________________________________________________________________________

Thanks Mark. You are a worthy student. Here is the introductory but advanced
teaching of trouble making for you O' grasshopper.

Look at my hand? Do you see a boat? We are all in this same boat. The boat
belongs to no one but each considers the boat his or her own to eventually
purchase and possess. When you can grab this boat from my hand, without my
palms closing first with lightening speed, it will be time for you to go to
Taiwan and open up a Chinese restaurant specializing in Italian foods.

There you will sit during lunch times eating Pizzas with ten layers of
cheese and the special 7 vegetables as toppings (as you have been instructed
during our super special interactive mystical koan and insight sessions).
You will sit there and eat to your heart's content without ever the benefit
of napkins without the least feeling of shame. You will attempt to beat the
summo wrestlers who frequent there in arm wrestling contests. You will
impress them with your powers and they will become your disciples and you
will then transmit the boat teachings to them. In such a way, it is
envisioned that the teachings of the West will go to the East. You have been
chosen as the messenger worthy one. May the force be with you.

See you at the next training session Marksan.

Love
Harsha
__________________________________________________________________

Mark sends a koan discourse:
http://www.zen-mtn.org/zmm/talks/teisho6.htm

___________________________________________________________________

NDS

Display Tech


Display is the intimate
Placenta
Interface
Between space
And self

Feeding only
What is needed
To the hunger
Known
As you

Space is
Ultimate density
Punctuated
By pockets
Of living foam

Foam lives
By Grace
Of space
Space is life
Foam is child

Of
Undifferentiated
Hardness adamantine
Sexless solid void
Differentiates

As gender
Of child
Child reproduces
Making more
Pockets of foam

Space
Invisible space
Known by form of foam
Nothing
Invisible parent

Nourishes child
Favors life gender
Sets circumstance
In motion
Invisibly

Unseen yet
Space universal
Womb contains
All life
Hidden in nothing

Human perspective
Attached to form
Denies space
Clings to foam
Foam vanishes

Into nothing
As humans see
It is invisible
Yet it is
Absolute density

Space
Inescapable
Nourishes
Its children
Well



==Gene Poole==

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