Yoni School for Wayward Poets #3 (Program Notes)

Characters are accumulating at the school: Suzy Homemaker, of course. Larry. LaLaLeo who thinks he's a dog and sleeps most of the day. Cosmicat who thinks she's a cat and sleeps most of the day. And Mr. Perfect Always-Right, possibly a British hyphen who thinks he knows what everyone else is thinking.

White Trash & Niggers

white trash & niggers
better learn how to swim
when paperthin freedom meets
Mississippi mud

and moonshine over Pontchartrain
is pie in the sky
and pie in yer face
shoo-fly pie

shoo shoo

sho'nuff get outta town
unless you fixin to drown

white trash & arabs
niggers too
can't eat bullets or drink blood

for survival

can't read the constitution
from homemade gondolas
can't swing from the tree of
intelligent design

noway nohow nomo'

cuz when the levee breaks
they got no place to go

white trash & niggers

can pray

hallelujah

for the national guard
death to suicide bombers
the dawn of the rainbow
new homes on higher ground

Yoni School for Wayward Poets #2

Oh look! There's Suzy Homemaker with her fabulous EasyBake oven.

"Whatcha doin' Suzy?'

"I'm baking bread. See...flour yeast water hotter close the lid go round and round rise the dough you know tiptoe through tulips timer watch don't watch the watched pot never boils but bread bakes automat ickly prickly heat in the summer chillblains in winter gotta go the dough is rising the roe is dying."

"Umm, OK."

"Yes, I'm baking bread breaking beds pillow feathers in the air sneezy dopey wheezy grumpy lumpy knead the dough need dough though I can't remember why oy vy oh yes knead the dough and lumpy mattresses better get a water bed hotter bed for baking bread."

"What kind of bread you baking?"

"Don't know can't say won't go, I'm experimenting with flowers wry and spelt I miss spelt butterfly plants flutter by and hostas held hostage by crickets down in the hallway halfway to the rising sun the rising dough do you think I should put in some sunflower seeds?"

"Whatever you kneed, Suzy..."

Emailing Posts

As of a couple minutes ago, you can now email my eternal posts to anybody whose email address you know. Click on the envelope next to comments.

Not to be used for "excessive self-promotion" the disclaimer says. Which leads to the question, "How much is too much?"

Spam Comments

Believe it or not, the Mental Blog has been victimized twice by spam in the comments section! How the hell does that work? Hardly anybody reads it, but some idiot in LaLaLand manages to send spam to it.

Yoni School for Wayward Poets #1

People ask me, "What's it like at the Yoni School for Wayward Poets?"

"Fruit flys," I say.

"Fruit flies?" they ask.

"Yes."

Text Message

I've posted a lot of photo type things lately, so here's some text to chew on.

A week ago I shaved my head. Since then the back of my neck has been cold. My sinuses are stuffy. Any connection? No idea. Well, not true exactly. I'm sure the back of my neck is cold because there's no fur there anymore. The sinuses are another question.

I look at myself in the mirror and think, "Why did I not do this a long time ago?" On the other hand, keeping the pate pristine is a pain. But at least I don't have to do it every day. My friend Windsor says the Zen monks in Japan have a system (there's a Japanese word for it which translates into something like "4 & 9") by which they shave on days that have a 4 and a 9 in them. So this morning, it being the 4th, I got out the razor.

Too bad I don't have a digital camera. I'd post a photo.

But then, that would defeat the purpose of concentrating on text...

Sunday Morning Coming Down

A Second Possible Epitaph

New Orleans is Sinking 2

Here are some images I borrowed from the Net. We've all seen them or ones like them. I hope the owners of the pictures don't mind...at least I give credit...




Over the last couple of days the chatterboxes on talk radio have been spouting off about how the military and the police should shoot to kill looters...(I didn't have an opportunity to listen to Rush Limbaugh this week, but I suspect he would have been one of the loudest...)

I can't make much of a comment about looting...most of these people were simply looking for food and water.

What I'm wondering is: given that everybody knew a major hurricane was going to hit; given that people were warned to leave New Orleans; why did the National Guard (or whoever) not arrive before the storm and evacuate all those people they must have known would be stranded in the city because they were too poor to own cars or buy a plane ticket or even a bus ticket? Why did the authorities just leave them there? Before the storm would have been the time to show up with guns and herd everybody out of town.

2 Quotes on Interdependence

Everything is interdependent. This friendly statement just begins to skim the surface. What Buddhist contemplatives are saying is that in the whole universe right down to the subatomic level, nothing exists purely objectively or purely subjectively. We can say, "Oh, it's mere appearance. I get it." We can focus in and observe that nothing exists in the mind purely subjectively or objectively, that there is profound interdependence. But when we really experience this, our perception of the world as a whole is profoundly altered.

-- from Buddhism with an Attitude: The Tibetan Seven-Point Mind-Training by B. Alan Wallace, edited by Lynn Quirolo, published by Snow Lion Publications

All events and incidents in life are so intimately linked with the fate of others that a single person on his or her own cannot even begin to act. Many ordinary human activities, both positive and negative, cannot even be conceived of apart from the existence of other people. Even the committing of harmful actions depends on the existence of others. Because of others, we have the opportunity to earn money if that is what we desire in life. Similarly, in reliance upon the existence of others it becomes possible for the media to create fame or disrepute for someone. On your own you cannot create any fame or disrepute no matter how loud you might shout. The closest you can get is to create an echo of your own voice.

Thus interdependence is a fundamental law of nature. Not only higher forms of life but also many of the smallest insects are social beings who, without any religion, law, or education, survive by mutual cooperation based on an innate recognition of their interconnectedness. The most subtle level of material phenomena is also governed by interdependence. All phenomena, from the planet we inhabit to the oceans, clouds, forests, and flowers that surround us, arise in dependence upon subtle patterns of energy. Without their proper interaction, they dissolve and decay.

-- by Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, from The Compassionate Life

Yes, and I've had it said to me that the moment you "realize" emptiness, or interdependence, which amounts to the same thing, nothing ever appears the way you thought it did.

Here's what the thought of interdependence does to me: it is a goad to action. When I see the images of New Orleans, just as an example, I am aware that there is a connection between myself and the people there. Even my previous posting proves this...gas prices. It moves me to think, there must be something I can do...

At the deepest level, this impulse to action is the bodhisattva vow...to do whatever one can to alleviate suffering...This points unmistakably to the central Buddhist teaching that wisdom (realization of emptiness, profound interdependence) is identical with compassion. Tsong Khapa says at some point these two come together. When you stop wavering back and forth between the two, you've got it...

Problem is, for me at least, the sense of interdependence, the impulse to action, is not yet strong enough. Overwhelmed perhaps by the anguish of it all, not able to see the benefits of all-embracing compassion...

Oh, blah blah blah...maybe I'm just too self-centred and lazy.

Gas Prices

There are rumblings of price gouging by the oil companies in the wake of Katrina. The price of gas rose in Lunchbucket by 25 cents per litre overnight. The news tells me that in the US, gas rose by approximately 17 and a half cents per gallon! I'm pretty sure 25 cents per litre works out to a dollar a gallon. Seems like a bit of a discrepancy to me.

New Orleans is Sinking

I have two whole thoughts about Hurricane Katrina and the mess in New Orleans.

1. It's a powerful demonstration of how vulnerable we are in the west, dependent as we are on oil, electricity, all the modern conveniences. It doesn't take long to reduce the most technologically advanced society in the world to a state of chaos.

2. I certainly hope the world responds to this disaster with the same concern and compassion it showed during the tsunami disaster. Just because the US is rich and powerful doesn't mean they don't need and wouldn't appreciate help.

Belated birthdays

Oh dear, Larry forgot to celebrate his birthday, Aug. 7. And Happy-o to Mr. Back Bacon, July 29.

Check New Links

A couple new links. More to come...soon.

Larry's Moody

Larry's moods, so dependent on things
When things are working right
Larry's mood is light
When things are working wrong
Larry's face is long

Official Document #1

Below, a copy of Larry's official driver's abstract:

64 parts to a moment

(64 parts to a moment +
64 parts to a moment +
64 parts to a moment +
64 parts to a moment) =
a moment

A Serendipity

I had a delivery to York University today. To the Physical Resources building. Now, it's been nearly 30 years since I lived at the main campus. Another life. Another Larry. Seems like a dream now.

Anyway, I had no idea where this building might be. But I knew the main entrance on Keele St. So I drove south on Keele looking for the sign. I saw a sign come up quickly and turned fast so's not to miss it. Turned out not to be the main entrance. Shit, just a side road. Now where'm I gonna go?

I drove down the road a space to find a place to turn around. And there, on the right, was a sign reading "Physical Resources". Bingo! Wrong turn. Right road.

Now this is a huge sprawling building...the physical plant way back there, out-buildings all around. How to find the right place to go? I walked in the first door. No sign. No indication that this was the main entrance to the building. And inside, nothing but two long hallways with doors on either side. It'll take forever to find the right one, #1045. You know universities. The arrangement of rooms is not guaranteed to be logical or intuitive.

But then I look to the left, and there it is! The room I'm looking for. Right there.

I delivered that package from Guelph to North York in just over an hour. Sometimes all the threads come together to make a pin-stripe suit.

Two Stories from Geshe Kalsang

These stuck with me, although he really only mentioned them in passing:

1. In the course of teaching Point 1 of the Seven Point Mind Training, which says, "First, train in the preliminaries," he told us this story. One of the preliminaries is basically to learn the proper sitting position for meditation. The vajra posture, or full lotus...This is the posture you see the Buddha sitting in. But, Geshe Kalsang said, we should notice that all the representations of the future Buddha, Maitreya, show him sitting in a chair with both feet on the ground. (I think this is called the Royal posture.) But anyway, he laughed and said, "Maybe he knows something about the West..."

This is significant, really. It may be that the next wave of Buddhist practitioners will be Westerners. The Chinese forced the Tibetans out of their isolation, and now the Tibetans are spreading the Dharma to a West starved for spiritual knowledge. Everybody has trouble with that meditation posture though...

2. While teaching part of Point 2, which says "Meditate on the great kindness of all" he recounted a story of his childhood. Geshe Kalsang is a refugee, as are all of the Tibetans in India and around the world. When he arrived in India with his family, they were in a camp. In this camp were bunk beds, he said. Not only double bunks, but some triple. And he said he remembers clearly that stamped on the side of the beds was the word CARE. To him, this was a symbol of immense generosity, that people from the other side of the world "cared" enough to send beds and other supplies, to come and work, just to help poor refugees from a snowbound land. Part of his teaching that everything we have comes through the generosity of others.