easter thanksgiving

look at this albino peacock! my mom sent me this picture. amazing, ne?

I put a link to my friend Jackie's blog (to the right). please check it out.



So, for Easter, I met Jesse and Claudia at the park for a picnic. Jesse brought plastic Easter eggs and hid them around the sad rusty zoo section of the park. It was a beautiful, sunny, windy day, and I had a really great time. It’s amazing how much fun I had looking for those eggs. Nostalgia. The caged peacocks opened their incredibly large and beautiful feathers, leaving them little room to move, their cages were so small.

I have had a sad week, but also a very joyful one, remembering my professor. Eli pointed me to one of my favorite books, Glimpse after Glimpse, to today’s passage…April 18:
"To contemplate impermanence on its own is not enough: you have to work with it in your life. Let’s try an experiment. Pick up a coin. Imagine that it represents the object at which you are grasping. Hold it tightly clutched in your fist and extend your arm, with the palm of your hand facing the ground. Now if you let go or relax your grip, you will lose what you are clinging on to. That’s why you hold on.
But there's another possibility: you can let go and yet keep hold of it. With your arm still outstretched, turn your hand over so that it faces the sky. Release your hand and the coin still rests on your open palm. You let go. And the coin is still yours, even with all this space around it.
So there is a way in which we can accept impermanence and still relish life, at one and the same time, without grasping."



Saturday I went to an art festival at a rock/garden/sculpture store with my friend Mai, who teachers pottery there. I threw two teacups. Then we went to Tokushima because Mai had to perform there and, sure enough, it was at the same vegan café I went to a month ago. The music rocked and the food rocked and i got to rock out on the drums with other drummers and beautiful people in sandles were dancing and all the food was vegan and people were dancing...with their hands, mostly, but still dancing.

I am now down to one cup of green tea a day.
I have been sleeping really well, remembering many dreams, and meditating daily, watching my thoughts form in the open space of my mind. They really do form like bubbles when they emerge or arise in/as mind, only to pass just as quickly as they came. I love watching my mind think, watching the words and images emerge out of the depths of my presence. At first it was quite odd watching the thoughts emerge, form out of conciousness, but then it began to shine with this truth: all things are made of different forms of light. and, all the light is the shining radiance of awarness. But when i sit and watch the thoughts form, the thinker is taking a break from his job, and the thoughts have no subsance, or are totally transparent, or rather, they self-liberate within themselve, dissolving effortlessly into the next one, or into the space in which they arose, leaving no trace anywhere, like how a bird flying leaves no trace in the sky. And when i think a mantra or sacred sound (like om, or ah, or hoom,) then that suble thought resonates soft, trasparent waves, subtle energy, everywhere, and i can imagine the subtle streams flowing thought my body like a river of sunlight.

I am now reading the third book in the Ender’s Game saga, “Xenocide.” Can’t put it down.









Sunday after zazen at the temple I came up with this analogy about the nature of mind.
Imagine an empty room. Now, imagine all sorts of people coming into
the room, people having conversations, some getting angry,
screaming, the room gets hot, and it becomes a hell in there. Now,
Imagine televisions in the room showing past events, and dreams about
the future. Some birds fly into the room and sing. Everyone falls
asleep except for a dear friend. You hold each other and listen to
the birds, enjoying a quiet rest, maybe kiss, make love. there is some sunlight, a slight
breeze. In the room you both listen to the music of the breath, and
dissolve your attention into the space around you, clear light, heaven, the sound of some birds.
All these things can take place in the room because the room is, from the beginning, empty space.

(The primordial condition of every individual is beyond time, birth and death; the indestructible diamond mind, the limitless spaciouse sky mind, the unstainable mirror mind, the luminous clear light mind, the primordial condition of every individual.)

I pour green tea into my small, rough cup. Steam spins upward from
the lake surface, and an island of bubbles turns round and round in
the middle, slowly gravitating toward the cup's edge, until, suddenly,
it rushes there, clings to the side of the cup, and then bursts out of
form.


I painted all day yesterday.
Here is some of my new work. Even though the show is two months away, ive started building and buying frames. and I still have to finish the paintings!, but dont worry, ill get it done.