As long as people desire Enlightenment and grasp after it, it means that delusion is still with them; therefore, those who are following the way to Enlightenment must not grasp at it, and if they reach Enlightenment, must not linger in it. When people attain Enlightenment in this sense, it means that everything is Enlightenment itself as it is; therefore, people should follow the path to Enlightenment until in their thoughts, worldly passions and Enlightenment become identical as they are.
– Lankavatara Sutra
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On The Menu
The Links
Koan and Story:
Just Go To Sleep
The Last Rap
Mud and Water
Have a good one!
Gwyllm
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The Links:
Eagle Mountain: Ancient rock art found at building site
Three-year-old is God’s incarnation in Bihar!
Marine life mysteriously straying far from home
Armadillos crawling into southern Illinois
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Just Go To Sleep
Gasan was sitting at the bedside of Tekisui three days before his teacher’s passing. Tekisui had already chosen him as his successor.
A temple recently had burned and Gasan was busy rebuilding the structure. Tekisui asked him: “What are you going to do when you get the temple rebuilt?”
“When your sickness is over we want you to speak there,” said Gasan.
“Suppose I do not live until then?”
“Then we will get someone else,” replied Gasan.
“Suppose you cannot find anyone?” continued Tekisui.
Gasan answered loudly: “Don’t ask such foolish questions. Just go to sleep.”
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Does one really have to fret
About enlightenment?
No matter what road I travel,
Im going home.
– Shinsho
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The Last Rap
Tangen had studied with Sengai since childhood. When he was twenty he wanted to leave his teacher and visit others for comparitive study, but Sengai would not permit this. Every time Tangen suggested it, Sengai would give him a rap on the head.
Finally Tangen asked an elder brother to coax permission from Sengai. This the brother did and then reported to Tangen: “It is arranged. I have fixed it for you to start on your pilgrimage at once.”
Tangen went to Sengai to thank him for his permission. The master answered by giving him another rap.
When Tangen related this to his elder brother the other said: “What is the matter? Sengai has no business giving premission and then changing his mind. I will tell him so.” And off he went to see the teacher.
“I did not cancel my permission,” said Sengai. “I just wished to give him one last smack over the head, for when he returns he will be enlightened and I will not be able to reprimand him again.”
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I was born with a divine jewel,
Long since filmed with dust.
This morning, wiped clean, it mirrors
Streams and mountains, without end.
– Ikuzanchu
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Mud and Water
Bassui (1327-1387)
Q: “What does it mean when it is said in a sutra, ‘If we perform the five practices- receiving and obeying; reading; reciting; expounding; and transcribing the sutra-we will obtain immeasurable merit’?”
Bassui: “It implies seeing into your own nature and obtaining Buddhahood right now. Receiving and obeying refers to the nature of one’s mind. This nature is part of the experience of saints and sinners alike. Each and every one of us is in possession of it in its perfection. Believing and understanding the significance of this nature of one’s mind is what is meant by reading and reciting the sutra. Having cut off definitions and explanations and exhausted all thoughts, seeing into one’s own nature and becoming enlightened is what is meant by expounding the sutra. Receiving the transmission when one is ripe for realization is what is meant by transcribing the sutra.”
Q: “If, as you say, these five practices are only the one mind and hence not dependent on words, what is the reason for the numerous sutras that resulted form the Buddha’s discourses?”
Bassui: “If they didn’t exist, how would those attached to form ever learn that there is no dharma outside of the one mind?
Q: “If the five practices are the same no matter which sutra we choose, why do most people adopt the Lotus Sutra?”
Bassui: “The five ideograms which make up the Lotus Flower Sutra of the Wonderful Law contain within them the five practices:
Receiving the teaching is expressed in the character Wonderful
Obeying it is expressed in the character Law.
Reading and reciting it denote the Lotus.
Expounding it is the Flower.
Transcribing it is the Sutra.”
Q: “How does ‘receive’ come to mean Wonderful?”
Bassui: “Wonderful is the inherent nature of all people. It is the master of the six senses. This inherent nature receives sensations of all dharmas, while there is no such thing as a receiver or something which is received. This is the fundamental principle of the character Wonderful. Hence ‘receive’ comes to mean Wonderful.”
Q: “How do you equate the meanings of Law and ‘obey’?”
Bassui waited a moment and then said: “Have you understood what I just said?”
Q: “No, I haven’t.”
Bassui: “The law as it is always manifests itself; nothing is hidden. All form is interconnected. When a person aspires to liberation and looks penetratingly into his own nature, the cloud of emotions will disappear, waves of discrimination will cease, and knowledge will become strikingly clear. At this point you should realize this Wonderful Law is the inherent nature of all Buddhas and ordinary beings. It is pure in itself.
“Though it exists in ignorance and delusion, it is not stained by them. Similarly the lotus living in the mud remains pure in its essence. Hence it is called ‘reading and reciting.’ The flower is liberation. This wondrous nature, the heart of original awakening, is said to be beyond ranking and classification. But for a period after a student’s first awakening there will be a shallow as well as a deep understanding.
“When knowledge becomes strikingly clear and the essence of this reasoning is understood, you have still not entered the realm of true enlightenment. It is only the shadow of reflected light, a guest outside the entrance gate. When knowledge is exhausted, when discriminating views are forgotten, when the lotus of awakening has for the first time been opened, the ten stages of bodhisattvahood can be completed and the two awakenings penetrated. Views through Buddha wisdom will become clear.
“The buds of the lotus flower will open up and fall away like objects which disappear and appear in the course of being. When students of the Way come this far, they will, for the first time, be fit to discourse on the Buddha dharma and liberate others. For this reason expounding dharma is equated to the lotus flower. When this truth is understood, the seal of the ancient Buddhas is transmitted to your mind, just as transcribing an old sutra onto a new piece of paper will produce, when completed, the same thing. Hence, ‘transcribing’ can be equated with Sutra. Sutra is another name for mind, carrying with it innumerable uncommon meanings.
From this we can see that these five practices are nothing more than metaphors used as a teaching method. The Buddha used this method to clarify this uniquely precious mind in order to point out to ordinary people that seeing into their own nature is Buddhahood.
Ordinary people, who mistakenly seek the dharma outside their own minds, not knowing that their own selves are the true Buddha, are like deluded children who have forgotten their mother. That’s why, in seeking to realize the five practices, you will perceive the one mind. Don’t covet the leftovers of others while losing the precious jewel which hangs around your own neck.
Q: “What is this precious jewel which hangs around one’s neck?”
Bassui: “When the dragon calls, clouds appear. When the tiger roars, the wind begins to blow.”
Bassui (1327-1387)
– Taken from “Mud And Water-A Collection of Talks by the Zen Master Bassui trans by Arthur Braverman (1989) North Point Press
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Evening mountains veiled in somber mist,
One path entering the wooded hill:
The monk has gone off, locking his pine door.
From a bamboo pipe a lonely trickle of water flows.
– Ishikawa Jozan
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Joseph said to his father: “Father, I dreamt that eleven stars and the sun and the moon were prostrating themselves before us.”
Classical Sufi teachers have classified dreams according to their origins: they may come from the ego, worldly influences, angels, dark forces, and so on. Other classifications proceed according to the developmental levels of the self (the seven stages between the compulsive self and the enlightened self), or according to symbols, dominating colors, and brightness. But such classifications refer to the stage of the seeker after meeting the teacher. It is generally accepted that until one reaches a true teacher, a person’s dreams are mostly related to the same dimension of the psyche that conventional psychology deals with. But after meeting the teacher and receiving the first exercises, the characteristics of one’s dreams start changing. This is due to the energy radiated by the teacher and the exercise he has given. Besides these exercises, certain precautions are also necessary for remembering the dreams after one wake up, or even for being aware of dreams during sleep.
Henry Vaughan was born in 1622 in Breconshire, Wales to Thomas Vaughan and Denise Morgan. Entering Oxford University in 1638 where he studied with his twin brother Thomas followed his Welsh childhood. In 1640 he left Oxford to study law in London for two years. It was also in London that he started his poetic apprenticeship at the Inns of Court. In 1642 he returned back to Breconshire at the onset of a Civil War. It is here that he served as secretary to the Circuit Chief Justice of the Great Sessions until 1645. At that time he joined the company of soldiers who fought for King Charles’s cause with Sir Herbert Price at Chester. By 1646 it is assumed he married Catherine Wise with whom he was to have a son and three daughters. 
Pre-Raphaelite Born in England, Leighton became the pivot of the English art establishment and the President of the Royal Academy. As a child he became absorbed in classical mythology and this inspired his idealised human figures. Considered the Olympian of Victorian classicism, he was particularly interested in Ancient Greece and had plaster copies of the Parthenon frieze set into his studio walls. His best works, including Flaming June, were created in the last 10 years of his life. Most of these major works were modelled by his muse, the actress Dorothy Dere.
been Doctor to the Russian Royal Family. Leightons father was also a Doctor, but retired in middle-life due to the onset of deafness. Leighton enrolled in the Berlin School of art in his early teens, having lied about his age. The following year he enrolled in an Art Academy in Florence. The Nazarenes & Italian Renaissance painters were considerable early influences. His cosmopolitan early life exposed him to a wider range of influences than any other English painter of his day. Many people now believe that his decorative pictures of the 1870s represent his best work, though his large classical pictures remain extremely impressive.
THE Shee an Gannon [in Gaelic “Sighe an Gannon,” the fairy of the Gannon.] was born in the morning, named at noon, and went in the evening to ask his daughter of the king of Erin.
The cowboy and the Gruagach stood by the fire. A stork was boiling in the pot, as when the Gruagach came the first time. The master of the house went into the next room and brought out an iron and a wooden pike, and asked the cowboy which would he choose.
Fred Johnston was born in Belfast in 1951. He was educated in Belfast and in Toronto, Canada. His early prose was published in The Irish Press literary pages, edited by David Marcus. In 1972 he received a Hennessy Literary Award for prose. For some years he worked as a full-time journalist, and has spent time in Public Relations. In the mid-seventies, together with Neil Jordan and Peter Sheridan, he founded the Irish Writers’ Co-operative. In the late Seventies he moved to Galway where, in 1986, he founded the annual Cúirt Festival of Literature. Most recently, he has established the Western Writers’ Centre, Galway city’s first centre for those interested in creative writing. A reviewer of new poetry for a number of journals, he has gained a reputation as a thorough and principled reviewer. From an early age he has been interested in folk music, and in the nineties he formed the group Parson’s Hat which produced two albums, Cutty Wren and The Better Match. Earlier this year his solo album, Get You, was produced. He has travelled widely, especially in France, where he has read his work and lectured. For a time he lived in Algeria, North Africa. Some of his prose and poetry are influenced by contemporary French writing. He teaches Creative Writing at Galway University as part of the Adult and Continued Learning programme. 
Edward Robert Hughes was born in the Clerkenwell district of London on November the 5th 1849, the only child of Edward Hughes, and Harriet, nee Foord. The Hughes family was Welsh, and seems to have been in the habit of marrying into the Foord family, as Arthur Hughes the painter, Edwards uncle married one Trypheena Foord. Young Ted seems to have been drawn to his artistic uncle, who had a family of five, forming a social family circle for their solitary cousin. He shared Arthur Hughes artistic leanings, and his rather gentle retiring nature.
In that country of crosses, ruined chapels and rocking stones, caers and tumuli, cromlechs and camps, which is sometimes known as Dewisland, there once lived a boy named Elidyr whose father and mother wished him to become a priest. They accordingly sent him every day to the monks of St. David’s to learn his letters, but the little rascal much preferred hoop and ball to book-learning; all that went in at one ear came out at the other, and as a scholar he therefore left much to be desired. His teachers, remembering that Solomon had said, “He that spareth his rod hateth his son, but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes,” showed their affection towards their pupil in the manner he advised. At first they corrected him lightly and infrequently, but Elidyr did not amend his ways, and before long not a lesson passed without chastisement. Not only were the stripes more frequent, but they also became more severe, till Elidyr could stand them no longer. So one day when he was twelve years old he ran away: he went on and on, and the further he got the happier he felt. Knowing that a search would be made for him, he looked diligently for a hiding place, but for a long time he could find no place where he could feel safe. At last he came to a river: under the hollow bank of this, there was a beautiful hiding place, where no pursuer would ever expect to find a runaway. Into this he crept and slept that night as soundly as the best little boy who ever tired himself out with lessons. The next day he realised that, glorious as his hiding place was as an escape from books and thwackings, it had its disadvantages: the chief was that there was nothing to eat and drink, and that is a very serious thing for a growing boy with a healthy appetite. It was not safe to go out even to look for hips and haws, because when he lifted his head above the river bank he saw men and women searching all over the countryside for him. He became hungrier and hungrier, and oh, how slowly the time passed! It was the longest day Elidyr had ever known: the sun simply crawled across the heavens, and it seemed to be an age before it dipped its red rim in the waters of St. Bride’s Bay. He was no better off even when the sun did set, because night is worse than day when you cannot sleep, and it is very difficult to get even forty winks when you have an aching void inside you. Every time he woke up he felt hungrier, and he made up his mind to return home as soon as it was light enough for him to find his way.
The conversation went down hill from there. 
Farid ud-Din Attar was born in Nishapur, Persia (Iran). There is disagreement over the exact dates of his birth and death but several sources confirm that he lived about 100 years. He is traditionally said to have been killed by Mongol invaders. His tomb can be seen today in Nishapur.
Rowan came home with his friends Isabel and Ian shortly afterwards, Rowan sprouting a pair of Angel Wings that Isabel & Ian had crafted over the last couple of weeks. Isabel does some wonderful cartooning as well as being an accomplished musician. Lots of talent for 16 years!
There was wanst upon a time, long ago, a beautiful lady that lived in a castle upon the lake beyant, and they say she was promised to a king’s son, and they war to be married, when all of a sudden he was murthered, the crathur (Lord help us), and threwn into the lake above, and so, of course, he couldn’t keep his promise to the fair lady–and more’s the pity.
from Plants of the Gods – Their Sacred, Healing and Hallucinogenic Powers
In relatively recent years, the use of Cannabis as an intoxicant has spread widely in Western society especially in the United States and Europe and has caused apprehension in law-making and law- enforcing circles and has created social and health problems. There is still little, if any, agreement on the magnitude of these problems or on their solution. Opinion appears to be pulled in two directions: that the use of Cannabis is an extreme social, moral, and health danger that must be stamped out, or that it is an innocuous, pleasant pastime that should be legalised. It may be some time before all of the truths concerning the use in our times and society of this ancient drug are fully known. Since an understanding of the history and attitudes of peoples who have long used the plant may play a part in furthering our handling of the situation in modern society, it behooves us to consider the role of Cannabis in mans past and to learn what lessons it can teach us: whether to maintain wise restraint in our urbanised, industrialised life or to free it for general use. For it appears that Cannabis may be with us for a long time. 
Beyond (or aside from) economic considerations, the ban on (some) psychotropics can also be considered from a shamanic perspective. Global Capital and universal Image seem able to absorb almost any outside and transform it into an area of commodification and control. But somehow, for some strange reason, Capital appears unable or unwilling to absorb the entheogenic dimension. It persists in making war on mind-altering or transformative substance, rather than attempting to co-opt and hegemonize their power.
Again: I have no idea what our strategy shall be. I believe however that the time has come to admit that a tactics of mere contingency can no longer sustain us. Permitted dissent has become an empty category, and reform merely a mask for recuperation. The more we struggle on their terms the more we lose. The drug legalization movement has never won a single battle. Not in America anywayand America is the sole superpower of Global Capital. We boast of our outlaw status as outsiders or marginals, as guerilla ontologists; why then, do we continually beg for authenticity and validation (either as reward or as punishment) from authority? What good would it do us if we were to be granted this status, this legality?
Clark Ashton Smith -the Bard of Auburn (1893-1961)
High up in a hollow of the Black Mountains of South Wales is a lonely sheet of water called Llyn y Fan Fach.
The shades of night began to fall, and Gwyn was about to depart in sore disappointment, when, casting a last farewell look over the lake, he beheld some cows walking on its surface. The sight of these beasts made him hope that they would be followed by the Lady of the Lake, and, sure enough, before long the maiden emerged from the water. She seemed lovelier than ever, and Gwyn was almost beside himself with joy at her appearance. His rapture increased when he saw that she was gradually approaching the land, and he rushed into the water to meet her, holding out the half-baked bread in his hand. She, smiling, took his gift, and allowed him to lead her to dry land. Her beauty dazzled him, and for some time he could do nothing but gaze upon her. And as he gazed upon her he saw that the sandal on her right foot was tied in a peculiar manner. She smiled so graciously upon him that he at last recovered his speech and said, “Lady, I love you more than all the world besides and want you to be my wife.”
Taliesin or Taliessin (c. 534c.599) is the earliest poet of the Welsh language whose work has survived. His name is associated with the Book of Taliesin, a book of poems written down in the 10th century but which most scholars believed to date in large part from the 6th century. He is believed to have been the chief bard in the courts of at least three British kings of that era. In legend he attained the status “Chief Bard of Britain” and as such would have been responsible for judging poetry competitions among all the royal bards of Britain. A few of the marks awarded for poems are extant in the margins of manuscripts. Taliesin’s life was later the subject of 16th century mythological work by Elis Gruffydd, who may have relied on existing oral tradition about him.