The Inner Garden

[Loredoctor]

*Loremaster meditates

[danlo]

soft
constant
pit-a-pat
empathic gray-hues seep overhead
local world silent
respecting the rain

as if
God were sorry
for the winds, burning sun
allergies
drought
congestion
and dust

nature
now composed;
laughs at second-hands
droplets
settle
on
blooming red roses

in slow motion
silver auras
seem to shiver

[Sorus]

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.

-Robert Louis Stevenson

[danlo]

Damm, this used to be the most peaceful place on the Watch...I guess there's just so many times one can bump before you bury it...(I wrote that poem above god dammit!

[Worm of Despite]

I know meditation's kosher but what about touching myself?

[danlo]

Ah response! And from a vet. no less! As long as we don't see it we can't tease you now can we?

I'd forgoten that the key aspect of the Garden was to not be afraid to embarass oneself and to blurt out whatever idiocies came to mind. These were funny and insightful times....ahhhhhhhh....

Around page 6 I quoted this quote that may explain wither this thread extinsquishes:

excerpt from the Bhagavata Purana-

I will tell you a parable of ancient understanding. Imagine a deer in a garden of flowers, his attention caught by a female in the garden. Therefore, his senses are swooning in the fragrant maze of grazing grass, humming aloud with honey bees, where she moves. Thus distracted, he does not taste the scent of wolves, that wait ahead of him, hungry for blood. Nor does he hear the arrow at his back, that kills him at the heart.

Need I say it? The deer is Man in the ordinary way. He is the soul, involved with mind and senses. Flimsy passion wanders in the company of thighs. But lovers are like flowers. Their blossom is sudden, and suddenly it is gone. Attention wanders in the garden of the senses. Therefore, Life Itself is spent, in payment for exaggerations of taste and touch. But all our superficial pleasures and all our moving desires are themselves nothing more than the mechanical achievements of vagrant attention. A lifetime is nothing more than self-illusion, a temporary and troubled distraction from the Bliss of Eternal Transcendence.

While the soul sleeps in an unmindful state, attention wanders into realms of possibility. Now we are absorbed in sexual love, clinging to the household sounds of lovers and children. Like the deer in the garden, our ears are occupied with creaturely conversation, and our senses are fixed upon the taste and odor of the petty object we are born to Idolize.

Thus exiled in our dreamy houses, the years of days and nights pass unnoticed in their suddenness. But we are always fed upon by search and satisfaction, as by wolves in secret, unconscious, unobserved in our deadly meditation. Suddenly, the garden is undressed. Suddenly, the eloquent weapon of our devourer, who always followed us, is felt within the heart, heard within the mind, and all this Life is stolen in a moment.

Consider this well in the lesson of your own desiring. Bring the motive of the senses to rest in the mind itself. Convert the Current of Life from its worldly course, and surrender bodily, toe to crown. When the mind is thus made Full of Life, surrender it also, in the Heart.

Abandon the "married" disposition. Awaken to the Disposition of a devotee. Exceed the company of ordinary desirers, who only talk of food and sex and casual amusement. Yield attention to the Life and Self of all. Be Absorbed in the Living God, and thus transcend every kind of experience.

[balon!]

There is no right or wrong in the world...only suffering and joy

I think I've found a turning point in my thinking as profound as the time I first hear "Question Authority."

Damn. =]

[Worm of Despite]

Abandon the "married" disposition. Awaken to the Disposition of a devotee. Exceed the company of ordinary desirers, who only talk of food and sex and casual amusement. Yield attention to the Life and Self of all. Be Absorbed in the Living God, and thus transcend every kind of experience.

I agree that the life of material is a superficial one, though I don't include marriage and owning a home in the equation. Marriage, to me, seems to be one of the truly valuable things that can bring us closer to eternity on earth. Our homes falls in the same category: it can be a place of quiet in a loud world.

Our inner truths are flimsy, I'll admit. So little holds them up, when we examine them, that we turn to deeper, otherworldly concepts. Still, I'm not so hard on man. I don't know if we're Godless creatures trying to stay huddled in a sea of chaos or if there's truly a divine hand. So I don't blame people for clinging onto things that brings them hope or happiness, even if it's a website or money.

[aliantha]

Ah, I loved this garden. Thanks for resurrecting it, danlo. And thanks for the quote from the Bhagavata Purana.

I don't know if we're Godless creatures trying to stay huddled in a sea of chaos or if there's truly a divine hand.

Like Covenant, I've come to decide that, in many important ways, it doesn't matter. The answer to the fundamental question of ethics, after all, is to act according to your internal moral compass. Doing what we think is right is the most important thing -- and really, that's all we can ask of anybody.

That said, I read the bit about abandoning a "married" disposition a bit less literally. I think he's saying: Don't get caught up in the delights of the body or the delights of the senses -- because if you do, the Universe is liable to blindside you.

[Auleliel]

*Auleliel discovers the Inner Garden, sits down by the pond, and attempts to meditate.*

[danlo]

today's dailyzen:

In the awakened eye
Mountains and rivers
Completely disappear.
The eye of delusion
Looks out upon
Deep fog and clouds
Alone on my zazen mat
I forget the days
As they pass
The wisteria has grown
Thick over the eaves
Of my hut.

- Muso (1275-1351)

[Auleliel]

The warbler’s song began
in the middle of a star
whose fierce heat forged
complex chemical elements
from simpler elements
forged in
yet an earlier star.
-Marya Grathwhohl

[danlo]

One song that fits in the vibrant, yet neglected Garden...

[aliantha]

Boy, do I ever need this place this week...

<ali walks a slightly overgrown garden path, discovers a small waterfall, sinks into the grass beside it and gratefully closes her eyes>

[Cagliostro]

Oops. I just urinated on my inner garden. But it was a good pee.

[danlo]

whatever sustains your personal growth, my friend!

[Cambo]

Peeing in bushes is a spiritual act of attunement with nature and natural processes. Like passing wind as you settle to meditate.

*Wisdom thus dispensed, Cambo wanders off into the garden, humming tunelessly to himself. He trips over a fallen branch and surreptitiously turns it into a little jig.*

[lurch]

Well I agree..there really isn't such a thing as a " bad pee"...maybe except for the one interrupted by the loud shout of " SNAKE!!..which is what got us kicked out of the Garden in the first place. So, there you have it; a full gestalt.

[danlo]

Two weeks later and I'm still groaning/laughing over that lurch...

I just found this in the "What Philosophy Books are You Reading" thread in The Close--ur-monkey (who hasn't been around in a long time) quoted verse 2 of the Tao:

When all the world knows beauty as beauty,
There is ugliness.
When they know good as good,
Then there is evil.

In this way -
Existence and nonexistence produce each other
Difficult and easy complete each other
Long and short contrast each other
High and low attract each other
Pitch and tone harmonize each other
Future and past follow each other.

Therefore, Evolved Individuals
Hold their position without effort,
Practice their philosophy without words,
Are a part of All Things and overlook nothing.
They produce but do not possess,
Act without expectation,
Succeed without taking credit.

Since, indeed, they take no credit
It remains with them.

[Cagliostro]

Well I agree..there really isn't such a thing as a " bad pee"...maybe except for the one interrupted by the loud shout of " SNAKE!!..which is what got us kicked out of the Garden in the first place. So, there you have it; a full gestalt.

I think needing to urinate with a toothpick lodged sideways in your urethra would constitute a "bad pee." And probably fairly messy.