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01/27/02 Sunday

*********************

DAVID HODGES
Croissants, not donuts, same idea though

Here's a poem I read recently and liked. It follows
on the baked goods
theme we've had here on NDS lately:

Early in the morning
Of a lovely summer day,
As they lowered the bright awning
At the outdoor cafe,
I was breakfasting on croissants,
and cafe au lait
Under greenery like scenery,
Rue Francois Premier.

They were hosing the hot pavement
With a dash of flashing spray
And a smell of summer flowers
When the dust is drenched away.
Under greenery like scenery,
Rue Fancois Premier,
I was twenty and a lover
And in Paradise to stay.
Very early in the morning
Of a lovely summer day.

-- Robert Hillyer


JERRY KATZ
Croissants, not donuts, same idea though

Great, man! What a scene that's painted. It shows, you can say the most
ordinary stuff -- "Early in the morning/Of a lovely summer day" -- and do a
few little things to it with rhyme and images, and blow peoples minds away.
It's so effortless.

I was in Chapters book store last night. In case anyone doesn't know, it's
one of those huge bookstores with comfortable chairs you can sit in and read.
There's a Starbucks inside the store. You get the picture. I really don't
care for it because you can only get one of kerouac's titles (On The Road)
and shelf after shelf of Stephen King. You get the picture. It's just popular
stuff mostly.

So they have a huge magazine rack. And I'm waiting for my friend to use the
restroom. So in the last rack in back they have three or four token Canadian
literary magazines. I pick one up and read someone's poem. Then I look up and
look at the thousands of splashy popular magazines. My feeling was that in
one word of this obscure person's poetry there's more feeling and soul than
in all the splashy magazines put together, because I had the opportunity to
be connected with a human being instead of a corporate/lifestyle image.

Having said that, starbucks does have damn good coffee and sweets, but you
know what i'm saying.

thanks,
jerry


DAVID

Jerry - That's it. Exactly.

Like, I was sitting at my little writing table by the window, looking out
at the street, yesterday morning. I wrote a lot of words but these are the
words that had the most presence:

I like her
That girl walking by
With the big white dog

David

JERRY

i'm gonna fight you for her, David. i really dig that chick, okay?

I'm always thinking of that Great Nonduality Book, and that's the kind
of stuff that needs to be brought together. somehow melded with the
nondual rap given in standard and non-standard ways. Maybe I should just
print out all the stuff i just plain like a lot and then see how it all
fits together. Make it a bundle of joy rather than bundle of text that
'ought' to be included. I know it's not realistic from a business point
of view, but that's too bad, I guess.

And then there's this situation given by Aziz, quoted here, where he
says only certain people should come forth to teach. I don't buy that. I
re-wrote one of my earlier pieces and put it on my live journal:
<http://www.livejournal.com/users/awesboss>. It speaks of the multitudes
coming forth to teach.

as far as that book... one of these days, one of these days...

jerry


JAMES & JERRY

>
> NonDuality means 'not two' AND 'All is One'.
>
> The very word NonDuality obviously refers to two and it says
> that that which appears as two, which means separate, is not separate.
> It avoids making a concluding statement and through negation it
> reveals that 'not two' AND 'All is One' are ***different forms of the
> same thing*** that *appear* to be separate.
>
> OneDuality also states the obvious - it says that which appears
> as two, separate, is One - they are different forms of the same thing.
>
> Thus, NonDuality and OneDuality are different ways to express
> the same thing. By themselves each is incomplete, unreal. United in
> their quiddity, they represent Reality-Unreality, the Whole, which is
> greater than the sum of the individual parts.
>
> Love,
> James

This makes sense to me. I know we share common ground, so I want to see what
I'm really saying when I speak of nonduality and oneness being different.
When I speak about oneness differing from nonduality, I'm referring to
oneness as a verb, a coming together of energies that appeared to be
separate, a oneness experience. In that sense, nonduality, as I see it, isn't
about the mystical experience of unity with God. Because there never was any
separation. Oneness is not brought about in any way, there isn't oneness
'with' anything; oneness is what is. Is this close to what you're saying?

Love,
Jerry

ERIC BLACKSTEAD

Valerie & Friends,

Dear Valerie. When I started out as a teenager reading Beat/Buddhism,
I was deeply moved by the lack of dogma (and celestial topography) in
what Suzuki gave me to understand was Zen Buddhism. Since then, I've
read pretty extensively in all the major religions (assuming that you
will accept the old testament as basic Judaism). Interestingly
enough, one of the things that they all have in common is the belief
in alternate lokas or realms, that is to say, heavens, pergatories
and hells. Buddhism, contrary to my 1st uninformed understanding, is
right up their with all the rest.

Where is your friend, Richard? You have portrayed for us a secular
kind of holy man, as Glo and others have pointed out. Does it seem
logical to you that a man who gave so much of himself to reenforce
the 2nd overarching commandment of all religions, "treat others as
would have them treat you", isn't being well cared for in turn?

yours in the bonds,
eric


SARLO


Buddhism may be up here with the rest, but that doesn't mean Buddha propagated such stuff. It's the
people who came after who did that, or the ones where Buddhism migrated and adapted to the existing
local religion. The reason Zen managed to stay so clear of these accretions was that it represents
Buddhism merged with Taoism, itself a relatively bullshit-free zone.

We may speculate that other religions have meandered far from the vision of their "founders," and adopted
all kinds of silly superstitions. That these superstitions occur in all the major religions may say less about
their truth than about the ability of the conditioned and socially reinforced mind to corrupt anything.

Interesting variations do occur though. The esoteric streams of most religions understand a bit more how
irrelevant some of these stories are but can also get into their own stratospheres of mumbo-jumbo.
Hinduism may be the most interesting, as it also sports an overt advaita stream which can accept the whole
panoply of practices yet keep to a pure, sophisticated non-dual understanding.

Cheers, Sarlo

JERRY

> Is Jerry's original vision for NDS what is happening here?
> If not, is the deviation desirable, or is it fatal to the
> purpose of this list?
>
> Because a list 'is communication', the issue of
> communication is IMO, always topical, as a constant
> issue, at a level below the stated topic of the list.
> And I think this what Jerry was addressing in his post.
>
> ==Gene Poole==

Hi Gene and Ed,

Questions of 'peerdom and putative protocols' (say that 6 times fast)
have been addressed as needed. Well, peerdom has never been directly
addressed. It's defined by those who come along and stick out like the
sore thumb. In fact Tom Thumb himself tried to join. Not that we're
better than those who stick out. We're just ... better.

At this point in the history of this list, we see where the original
vision has been achieved. We sought to hear out all who wished to speak
the nondual rap in their unique way. We let them speak and we did so
ourselves. We foresaw the establishment of so many 'nonduality' lists
that no one would be able to keep up with them (truly unimaginable 3 or
4 years ago), and that happened.

Right now I don't see the community of lists trending anywhere. There's
no demand for the free-for-all we had here. This is a time of settling
down, people exploring the various offerings, and seeing what happens.
NDS is part of that settling and it's fine.

I still see an increase in the number of in-person retreats and get
togethers. I see NDS doing a strange thing. It's like NDS has no
teaching and no leader/teacher who people look to for 'the teaching'. I
might be a leader in an administrative way. People don't look to me for
'the teaching'. There's no Andrew Cohen type leader of this group. It's
just us chickens. There are many leaders, followers, teachers, students.
Everyone can fill all those roles. With no leadership and no teaching,
we are still something. There's still something wordless that's
identifiable.

Being 'almost nothing' makes all the sense in the world. Afterall. The
less we are, the more we are what we are. I once had a white calendar
with a white circle on it. We're the white circle, barely noticeable,
but there.

I predict that this is the future great world religion. I really mean
it. Imagine a being from another world visiting our world with this new
religion. These beings would know there was something going on
spiritually, but they would never find it in a book, a temple, a ritual.

The purity sounds so good.

Just imagine, me, a guy who starts a new world religion. I better
replace all references to eating donuts with mention of sweet milk,
honey, fine oils, golden grains. Wait a minute. Those are the
ingredients of donuts!

jerry

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