​biting frost awakes us
springtime lulls us to sleep
wisdom is emotion
not quenched or quelled 
but reversed...

we were speeding along the highway 
to the ceremony
to nowhere
wrapped in hurried robes
in a beautiful, moist spring morning
in the mountains

a dead fox lay on the road 
caught like a mirage
and meeting the sky
on the wet, grey tarmac

my heart flashed with release
'oh, my friend,' I said inside
for it was my friend
my saviour
from the worldly beauty 
of that morning

oh my beloved fox
glorious wreckage of my life
spoiling everything
and shining with a heart released

oh my own beloved corpse
glorious wreckage of my life
spoiling everything
and shining with a heart released
there is no greater joy
than you

and he knew he may not think of the blood
that he may not think at all
only remember
in the silence of his death 
and in the death of the fox

taking a short break on the journey
he stepped into the trees by the roadside

in the fresh forest of truth
the spring flowers 
growing so delicately from the earth 
were already on the shrine
the scent of the pine rose like incense
and the morning light was truly lit 
in the heart

right here 
long before the ceremony in nowhere
there was a deeper ceremony
in somewhere 

perhaps we truly live in a sacred place

'thou art not there in the sky
my saviour,'
he thought

In the dream of leisure, time and the timeless forever meet at the horizon. At the horizon which has always been. Yet we need only see that there is no end to the journey to the horizon for our hearts to turn us back. Even so for the search of the spirit, the search for truth and love. As soon as we set off in search of the truth then it will flee from us, just as the horizon will recede at every step. 

Instead we must plant ourselves in the ground and wait. We must be like the tree at the crossroads not like the wanderer walking by.

Even remaining here if we travel with our ideas they will only blind us. Our books must wait at our destination. They must wait hidden under our bed.

Then. 

When we travel not into the world or into the world of our minds. When the world comes instead to us. We will arrive at knowing through inner silence and the Buddha sitting as still as a mountain will be our highest symbol. All this we gain from our willingness to stay at home and to continuously listen to life. Then there is only knowing, all knowing is the same and there is a peace and satisfaction in that knowing which has no equal.

There too we will find the body. Not the body used by purpose, the tool that we feel and that we want to feel the world, not the grasping, wrestling body but the body opening to the world and into the world. The world will pass us by as if looking out from the windows of the great bus of the body and the windows of our eyes will not be forgotten. We will know sights as sights and our sense of self will vanish as we see the receptive mind as knowing and not as being.

If we can remain only here our journey will come to us with every step.

We will see too that all our travels are travels also in sensuality. We will come to see sensuality as a journey already and another journey to be abandoned. For this too will be the journey which never ends. The timeless love and the things of  time will never really touch on the horizon. For the timeless is nothing in this world, truly nothing. It is not merely the space of the sky but the nothing beyond everything and yet the nothing that is not elsewhere but penetrating all things and found through the release of the mind in truth.

So we must abandon all our journeys and our searching and wait. Wait at home for the world to unfold before us. Necessity will drive us far enough. And to be driven so by necessity is to be driven by reality, not by the dreams of space and of leisure. It is in the workplace where we will find the truth but this must be the work of listening too of hearing and meeting the call of necessity. Then our knowing consent will be our freedom. The knowing of our place. The embracing of our toil and our suffering which is also the end of that suffering.

This will be our joining of the greater order and pattern we one time sought in the philosophy of the armchair but joining only with our body and mind while the soul remains at rest. This is staying at home. 

And through the window will be the world. Generations will pass in this remote place. And still the view will be the same through the kitchen window. The sun will always rise and bless the bedroom with its first dawn light in this house of awakening. This awakened house. 

Then, only then, will we open the sermons and the scriptures of the Holy Ones. They will place their words on our ready lips and we will have found faith too in a place, a temple, long awakened. A lineage will reach down beneath us and root us to this place. This here, this now. Not this sometime when thought or feeling reaches out from theory to fleeting confirmation but the bed-rock of the pure and open attention of stillness. An intelligent stillness that sees the order of the world through not interfering with that order with its own fabrication. Seeing time in the present not through the passing or the journey. Seeing the cracked window and the flaky paint. Seeing the bones and the rusty metal. Seeing the wrinkles in the twinkle of an eye. 

The seer a stillness, an observer and a recorder, a witness looking not for stillness or permanence in itself either but in the truth and from this truth a stillness ever more stable, cool and sublime. A memory more perfect by the absence of the watcher. A knowing true and truly sublime. 

And the order of the world will appear to us in all its glory and our joy will be in that order, in the symmetry and grace of order and in being part of that order. And in joining that order we will be nothing. A nothing that can never die.

So paint not the picture of a spiritual truth of leisure but one of work. Recount not the journey but the staying at home. The suffering will only be wrong if we think it is wrong. And thinking it is wrong we will grasp at it just as we did the happiness. Nothing is wrong. The truth is calling us home. 

When there is no dream the truth will not contradict that dream. Only the romance that never began will never end. And the truth will be our greatest love, our true love. The truth of suffering and the truth that the mind that sees the suffering will not have the suffering but the joy of release everlasting.

Beauty is the trap that holds the mind into this suffering. A beauty that we cannot simply deny. To instead see beauty as order and to find a greater order in a greater truth is to find a greater beauty. Then we will see a beauty in all things or a beauty in nothing, just as we please to find our ease. For beauty will lie beyond things. The world does not charm us with beauty, only then to sting us with truth as if drawn onto the sword by a song. The world only demands of us that we see the order and the whole. To see the order we must see the whole. As the butterfly bounces on the wind its disordered flight can look like so much suffering. But that flight is seen anew if the breeze is also seen. The disordered flight is then seen as necessary and the flight is skill and the suffering of the earth is hence reconciled in the stars.

But there is a greater reconciliation yet in truth as near as our nose.

When we see the butterfly as the lasting truth it contains and expresses rather than as its fragile wings then we do not mourn the loss of the insect to the beak of the bird; we see the sacrifice of the insect, the lesser consciousness to the greater. We see the evolution of the mind in nature's hierarchy. We see the importance of such mind, such truth over the forms by which it is carried.

This is seeing Dhamma and seeing ourselves as Dhamma.

Everything will have its answer.

And this life of Dhamma will be a life real and raw and peeling. Not the abstract life of an idea or of the dream-light darkened. But a life blazing with the light of love and truth. Or love in the answer to truth. For it is not that truth is an end, a conclusion. It has its answer too and its climax in love. A perfect love that responds completely to the perfect sight of suffering. 

The world will come to us as the obligations and duties of love and yet the love will always be the greater...

The body tingles at me gently from its edges. There is rest here in its weight won by a day's labour. The warmth of the room and the food in the belly are well earned. And this day is the same as every other. Just as every day the salary we earn is spent on the fare that takes us to our work. Such is our life of necessity and obligation. We are servants only and as servants we learn. This is the real prize of our labour. 

Until, fallen amongst the fallen trees, the body, having been properly composed will die and decompose. Then the music of our lives will wait, as we have learned already to wait in nowhere, for the rhythms and notes of the world to come around again and call us back to life. For the truth will call us again to its service.

The late summer brings the dragonfly hovering triumphantly over the waters of its birth and flashing as blue as the heavens.  There is glory and celebration in its freedom to fly in the warmth of the sun, here in the climax of summer. Then as its darts to and fro the scene seems to change. The dragonfly can seem unsettled as if, so full of life, there was simply nowhere to go.  

Such is the story in the language and eyes of becoming, of the journey. 

But in the world of meaning, where everything has already been said, we see another chorus of a truth which never arrived because it was never absent. A chorus echoing back to the beginning of time and to the beginning of meaning. For meaning is there with time, meaning as the carrier of the present into the future. 

Take this soil beneath our feet. The death of so many carried into the future. Waiting for the seed. How can we deny the value of death and yet we do so. How can we deny the significance of our very foundation yet we do so. Imagine the gratitude of a heart that realises how many have died so he may live. Of one who sees the meaning of substance to the future and how this substance can be reclaimed to play again the melodies of life.

This substance our memory between the fleeting sparks of consciousness. Important not in and of itself but serving a higher purpose. 

If we but detach our minds from its earthly form and see and feel only memory, within and without then we know all there is that has ever been truly known in this present truth. There is no loss or change to the meaning, only to the substance. If we attach to the substance we will die with the substance but if we know the truth of that substance it may serve to call us to play its tunes, to sing its song for the sake of truth and love, and for that only.

And it will be our task only to await for that joy and honour.


Coming from nature

Coming from nature will be as if coming out from behind the long grass, its wild wide blades streaming  behind him like a head-dress. Turning back to nature will be as if a child were peaking humbly through the grass playing hide-and-seek. And there will be a moment only between the coming and the return. The return first a composure, then a caution, then playing in a safe place firmly on the ground.

And there on the ground there will be the turn around, the beginning of our own creation within the character of our surroundings.

Our curiosity asks us to dwell in detail, to notice the subtle change of the winter light or the breeze, while it is the whole that holds the truth. This truth is in every part for sure but seen in the perspective of a whole which remains and remains whole we see not ending but transformation. We see the deeper process. And the whole is right there in the truth as the mind and space of realisation expands indefinitely. And the key to this opening is to see the suffering and let go. Not to let go and go elsewhere but to let go and stay. Then to see suffering will be full of freedom and joy.

​

The traveller stood at the gates
Of the great city of knowledge
And called out with all his heart
“Purple blue mystic
White black witch
What is the face
Of the cosmos?
I have travelled a long way to ask
There is a long way to return
Pray tell while strength remains
I would know the mood of the whole
Beyond the single colour.”

No answer came
All colours were the same
In the skies above the city
Before the prism of focus

And so the journey of doubt continued…

Meanwhile the mood under the ground
Stirred in its sleep

Caverns yawned within the greater body

And between the earth and the meaning
Moved a great alchemical mood
Tossing and turning with learning
Beneath the metaphorical feet
Of the journey

The traveller was returning
And just in the return
There was a knowing
In the familiar path alone
In the memory

The ground beneath the feet so sound
Had in its presence already remembered

The village approached
And in it’s history
Stood for everything

The mood rose out of the ground
Beckoned by a sense of belonging
And held in the goodness
Which posed the truest question

The answer lay in the deeds which followed
And happiness borrowed from the earth not taken

His rhythm was present in the given heart beat
In the taken respiration
Fading from his thankfulness in empty repetition
His rhythm noticed in the wonky gait
Of the winter morning

His theme was present in the echo of the autumn woodcutting
In the scent of the ripening fruit returning

His melody was as present in garlands of hope
As in wreaths of sorrow

And as the music of life is played
And as we are played by the music
How can we look to know the whole?

For looking from the inside
He was present in the music of the world
Looking from the outside
The music was present in him

And the meeting of inside and outside
Was forever out of sight
Until conscious movement
Gathered intuition

Marking a time
Not our time
There from the very beginning

Only then was feeling superseded as the centre of being
​

Following a lot of tests and monitoring I found out more yesterday more about the heart condition that I have been suffering from the last few years and realised that it carries a high risk of stroke. This was quite a big thing for me to discover. In my professional life before I ordained as a monk I was a psychologist and physiotherapist specialising most of all in the rehabilitation of stroke patients.  Although, as a practitioner of the Dhamma, I was continually reflecting that I could end up in the same situation as my patients, it was not until yesterday that I felt I had crossed the subtle divide between us. I find myself looking back at my patients with renewed compassion and respect for the way they coped with their situation and I feel so very human today. 

I had the same feeling twenty years ago after a severe back injury when I realised how much pain my many back patients must have experienced. This time, however, the bond feels deeper still. We are truly brothers and sisters in the face of death.

Deeper still, to so ground the mind in the body is ground too for the process of liberation. The way out is in. To enter the body fully with a heart wrapped in the loving space of the breath and to see its reality is the way to a true and complete freedom from suffering. The stress of the world, or of the sickness, may remain then on the surface but it does not fully penetrate the heart. We remain safe inside.

New poetry collection by Ajahn Kalyano, in 15 volumes...

I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV

I am born inside
To the sight of the moon
Mother moon
In this misty night
Of bats and trousers
And baptised
By settling dew

It is the night of grief

Eyes my father
Sentenced to be joined forever
In depth of sight
Twin spheres in their own right
Are only their own
And dying

My children
Are mere sparks in the night

To the sky there is return
We know
The dead will tell
New light opens further

Grief is yet the beginning…

There
Where swallows swoop for souls
Beneath pewter cloud
Where grey stone fills
Death is woven
As softly as slippers
And white mist
Is spirit lost
Lifting into the last warmth of dusk

As colour fades
I see nothing remaining
Over or under the tombstone
Of the mind

There had been anyway only little
Until tomorrow’s
Vast blue was remembered
And after yesterday’s
Crystal blue had been forgotten

And until in the greater sense
Of the migrant swallow
Unweaving through direction only
Through love alone and lonely
There was heavenly home
For souls above

Home
Here where grey stone empties
And is in turn emptied

Where words of remembrance
Fade to the wind and rain
Of centuries

For higher
Was the heart
And higher the home
For those remembering above
And forgetting below
Between grey rocks…

The past is here
And not before
And welcomed
In fabric densely woven
Is the richness
To my soil
Of a heart well traveled
And as easy as old shoe
The body as such
The most intimate clothing
In this garden of history

There is a richness
Too to my air
Where I may be found
Even in the times most lost
By the scent
Of mother
And father
In the covering
Of blankets

Such is the memory
Just of presence

There is here also many a name
And many a story which stays
Through the ancestral line
To call the meaning
Without a word being spoken

The ships
Built for the voyage
Tell the story of the journey

So there shall be fruit
In the fullness of time
Even in the silence
And here is the past secured
In the greater ground
Of greater truths
Before the dawn of new life…

His rhythm was present in the given heart beat
In the taken respiration
Fading from his thankfulness in empty repetition
His rhythm noticed in the wonky gait
Of the winter morning

His theme was present in the echo of the autumn woodcutting
In the scent of the ripening fruit returning

His melody was as present in garlands of hope
As in wreaths of sorrow

And as the music of life is played
And as we are played by the music
How can we look to know the whole?

Looking from the inside
He was present in the music of the world
Looking from the outside
The music was present in him

And the meeting of inside and outside
Was forever out of sight
Until conscious movement
Gathered intuition

Marking a time
Not our time
There from the very beginning…

In the little town
Their eyes followed the spire upward
In love and hope
Through times of toil
And this gaze was duly honoured
In the heavens

Yet as clouds of love blossomed in the blue
Their cherry tree hearts
Were still tippy-toeing in the garden

Their hearts were rather small
But had at least been made so
And seen so by heaven
And having been humbled
They better they knew their duties
Of watering and weeding

And so delicate were their feet
Of soft pink petals
As the sky distilled a mirror
To reflect

The Buddha teaches us that there is no permanent consciousness. All consciousness is impermanent, a conditioned phenomena; it arises due to conditions and ceases when these conditions cease. Furthermore if there is no permanent consciousness then there is no consciousness beyond conditionality and no consciousness can therefore be the master of conditions.

There are, however, permanent truths. A mind which realizes these permanent truths or Dhammas will have a permanent cause from which to arise.  If a consciousness arises based on such permanent truth then this will be forever arising afresh based on these truths and not effected by different conditions.  This is knowing – not being – in the sense that it has no essence or continuity. This knowing will be both a result of truth and a cause or creator of truth. This knowing may be physiologically (or we might say objectively speaking) dependent on the body but psychologically speaking (or subjectively) it will be independent of the body. More broadly we might say this consciousness is both imminent and transcendent. This is the ultimate, the enlightened mind.

There is a lot written these days about post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).There has been some success in the therapy offered by professionals. I would say, however, that the field is overburdened with theory and that the Buddha's teachings can explain the whole thing more simply.  This makes it possible for people with sufficient mindfulness to take themselves to a resolution of trauma and help others to do the same. Although the cases of severe trauma can provide the most graphic examples, we can also see how more minor suffering effects us essentially in the same way.

When we experience a trauma we can react very strongly, completely and automatically. This will then be a conditioned reaction wired into our system, firing off in full or in part at times of stress depending on the extent to which the current situation resembles the past. We then have a fixed reaction to life or to certain triggers in life. 

We can overcome these reactions if we allow them to happen, reliving the trauma through memory and in the midst of this experience find a conscious response. This is the reconditioning process.

In order to do this we can need to bring together the different aspects of the memory in body, feeling, perception and thought without losing our anchor in the present moment.

The best responses are those that go in the opposite direction to the way we reacted to the trauma. So if at the time of the trauma we froze, then we could break this by movement and speech. The fullest response is that which includes bodily action, perception and thought. 

Slow, relaxed, controlled movement can be a very effective de-conditioner of reactions that tend to be tense, fast and uncontrolled – for example, an exercise like T'ai Chi (slow gentle shadow boxing) can be very good, especially if any violence or violent thought were part of a trauma.

People who just keep going after trauma work through many of their reactions like this. It is only when the big triggers come that they react again.

This same pattern would be true of desire that leads us to act automatically. The way out of addiction is to go directly against temptation, to seek happiness somewhere else. 

A therapist or spiritual friend can help another person to keep and extend their mindfulness by pointing out aspects of their experience in the present, by drawing their attention to bodily reactions, for example.

We should also note that if a person has strong values in a particular area that for someone else to violate these may induce a trauma much greater than for someone who does not hold such values. We can bring our values to mind and investigate our feelings around them to get in touch with these kind of traumas.
​

​
​I offer this for your reflection.

Ajahn Kalyāno
http://www.openthesky.co.uk

We do not control movement in the way that we think we do, by initiation. The thought of doing something, like walking somewhere, already initiates the movements which take place automatically. The automatic nature of simple movements is seen in the headless chicken running around the yard or in the spastic movement patterns of the stroke victim.

We can join in with automatic movements or not. 
This is more like the control of the downward movement of the arm than the upward movement. We allow the limb to fall with gravity, but controlling the fall so that it does not simply drop.

The breath
We find control through letting go rather than imposing control. If we join in, it is by placing a marker on the cycle. This is like wood-turning. The wood spins automatically and then we simply place the chisel in order to carve the wood. Similarly, the breath takes it’s natural cycle, and we place a limit on the excursions. In terms of the out-breath, we are not controlling the breath by suppression, but by relaxation. The long breath is joining in with this relaxation, following it. The in breath we allow to happen automatically, like the lungs ‘bouncing back open’, following this, if we wish, into a full in-breath..