You will never see this, because i am not close enough for you to see me. And the very fact that i want to see you and want you to see me and that i get incredibly emotional when i think of the fantasy of just one " See me, Feel me, Touch me, Heal me" moment....well it is a vanity and a fantasy.
I am not worthy of it, and even though this sounds like false humility....i shall never be, and if i ever am seen, then here i was when i wasn't; longing for ....*insert magnanimous and undefined blob of need that only vanity would demand be filled*
I hope this letter is long. I hope this letter is stupid. I hope this letter is never seen. Because i think it would destroy me. Not because anyone could come along and poke and belittle and challenge and negate. But because they could also come along and affirm and broaden and sympathize and fascinate.
These things would take away from the teachings i admire of Lama I Like.
So perhaps i shouldn't write the letter showing off what i am, when i wasn't, if ever i am , there i was.
Ok jeessssssss uuuuuusssss
What a sanctimonious opening. I am trying to express something that flashed thru my mind in full and wonderful verbal detail. I knew it needed blogged. But now i am chasing it around. The emotions it invoked are strong. And hurt.
I want to write about that hurt. And i want to do it in a less internal way....more in a let me tell you what i did story kind of way. Basically i have given myself the assignment of writing a Life and times of the snail story and extract the lessons i may or may not have gained from such events.
And if you are a reader of mine, you know that isn't my style. Because my appearance is not the persona which writes blogs. I am in appearance a hot mess. Not quite united with the inside me and the outside me. I think this is called..um.... the human condition
Perhaps this is also a bit to show, what exactly is my insane zen style. And i am inspired to do so from a random saying i read within the last few days. Something like." If one is not willing to appear as the biggest fool, how can one become the greatest master."
Do i wish to be a great master? Well frankly , yes. But there is only one being to be master of, for whom i am responsible, and yes i wish to do the best job of it. I do have a natural vanity to want to use any good advice or helpful tips along the way for others in their struggles, according to their circumstance. Just because i have mastered myself (um not yet, this is hypothetical) does not make me master for anyone else. But then; What is master....there is infinite much to even this one spot of grey matter that there is no mastery at all anyway. But this question is better......
Do i wish to continue to decrease error? ABSO-fucking-LUTELY.
I got so close to Lama I Like, I called, and spoke to her screener, the head lady of the place. I wrote an email attempting to give my background, spiritually , psychology, and to ask about what i was experiencing in my mental meditative states.
I will give random snippets of lines that bug me...there is no sense to re-post the entire embarrassment.I am not here to be roasted....just to be an honest living being that was once.
I said to her that i am not a person that feels the need to go running to a buddhsit master when i have a cool mystical state. But the one that i had just had (was still in the throws of) was very different. ( and i was running, panting)
Why did i say it, What was i looking for? Someone to help me understand the states of meditation, to guide me with examining them while i am in them, instructions about how to test the various lessons that i get...all these things that happen.
Well apparently, what ever i do when i go into what ever states wherein i pretend that i am unified and all beings are in-facto my own light shining and every single thing is synchronicity and revelatory whether personal or in interaction with outside beings..... is a meaningless state unworthy of the Lama I Like's attention, clarity, instruction, or denial, therefore it is illusion.
i guess.
well that hurts.
But.....ok...so - ZEN IT.
(heart literately is beating thru my rib cage emotionlessly but still the cry is just under my throat chakra...also false and vain imagining according to the Larkanvarkin sutra)
I have a friend that arrogantly jested me to call them up and leave the message, that if this phone call was not fore seen to not bother to call back. They said this, after jaunting that i had no faith in what was called a Rinpoche. I said that, i don't even know what that is. To me it means 'pope'. I have no reverence for titles. Only reverence for truth. I have never seen truth embodied.
But when i made my message to the place i had never heard their teachings, never even knew the Lama was a Lady. And because she has not yet betrayed what my guts knows is truth, she is my Lama and i call her Lama I Like.
My first Lama was a man in a yahoo buddhist chatroom, Who is a real Lama guy in Tibet, Lama Shem. This was back in the day when chat rooms where a thing and not corrupted. He was a teacher of sorts for me, and asked me questions and i greeted him lovingly when he entered the room LAMA MY LAMA.
He was the person around me when i had my first experiences of deep meditative states. Of spontaneous teaching etc. And in the years since i left the chatroom, i have "seen" his presence at other shining times of realization. Not all the times but maybe three or four times over a decade and change. His is a distinct presence, he is never in my thoughts or imaginations any time except when he "shows up" to witness blah blah.
Which obviously doesn't mean anything...and is likely my brain playing out my hero fantasy because i am unworthy of a teacher to explain or train these things. (crap sorry my ego is bitter. What!? i told you that i would never hide myself from a Buddha. If ever i am , here i was when i am not; longing for )
Why would a friend tell a person obviously in the throws of psychosis to do such a reject-able and spiritually damaging thing?
Oh how i must have made a fool over myself trying to explain i had an altering experience. Well as far as i can tell i was respectable and humble.....except the next email....i let some bitterness and confusion show.
Sure my bad.....How i wish to glory in the mirth of my foolishness with Lama I Like, if i ever i do, here i was, when i was not, longing.
I was close to the hem of her robe, but i am too foolish. I am not impressive....what!?...look how no body reads my blog. Look how nobody can understand my meaning lest i use a joke.
Look how alone i am. Why i should just conform........er to what exactly?
Well obviously to not try to be anything.....just live the live moment, becoming as close to what i think is correct as i can. As Lama I Like teaches, if you are something then keep going, someday wonderful things happen in their time, dharma does dharma time.
Well i paraphrased of course to encourage you to go seek her out ...but i will not vainly hoist her name about...you may ask and i will tell. But since the letter is TO HER she already knows who i am talking to, if ever i am, here i was, was, i was not, longing.
*pauses for some Jethro tull; Locomotive breath.*
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqqSOOMpIlA
In one of the emails I said, that i was not a very followy follower, and that even if there is no teacher i cant stop. I don't know where i am going, what i am doing but it does not stop. If there is a teacher for me, that mother fucker is going to regret not getting to me sooner.
I'd be pretty mad too....like dude meet me half way not just at the end of the fucking driveway.
But one could speculate for years about why my conditions are as they seem to be. One can invent miracles and detriments....one has a way of doing that to give meaning to their lives. I imagine my own personal set of dharmic metaphors.....but have no one to share with.
And i guess there isn't a need to and no human ever gets it anyway.....we all are stuck with just ourselves to make to accept and instruct ourselves. haha..One might say...but the mind cannot seek the mind.
That is not what is happening. Because the mind is always seeing....what it is. Is mind removing what mind sees. Mind seeing mind is just mind, what is it trying to find?
I say what mind finds, that it is toying with is ...truth/error. Clouds...what not poetry. Some clouds shaped like this, some with this much water. Some framing the moon nicely and makes you wanna go boff.
anyway.
Nothing else really sets itself up to type about currently...
So the second part was...that i had a vision that helped me find mental peace shortly after i wrote these emails. A very long conversation with a shiny white cloaked lady at a fork in the road. One road was dark unknown and alone, the other was just a path that lead back to this lamppost where she stands.
We had a conversation about " If every road leads you to yourself, then why don't you go down the unknown road with yourself as a guide? All the other paths have taught you all the things...but they only got you to the road, not to the destination."
I asked the vision how could I trust it...even it is a thing my brain is producing. She asked, If she felt like any of my other voices. I said, no she was clearly new. I asked, would i have imagined a man if i had not known she was female? Why can't i have a real life teacher with a vocie outside of me too?
And to further try to detail the intricacies of the meaning passed between us in those moments would be like trying to paint with spider webs, during a windstorm.
And as a result, the heat behind my eyes, pain that i don't have a teacher that knows me, yet have a connection to Lama I Like, that will never be seen, felt, heard or healed......for it is foolish vanity. See.
In the really real world.....i am a basket case. Emotional, with defense mechanisms...with slow wit, little education and socially; well strange. Weird/ unique if you will; but liked, enjoyed, or tolerated..but unknown and without love.
So it is painful that my spiritual desires are tainted with my mental illness too. (all illusion and it is so so painful right now.....gonna play the song that the radio is distracting me with ....because it was being influential as fuck.)
*guns and roses....Patience*
Yes Ma'am, i do have patience, it is the by product of constant disappointment. No expectations. I am just writing a letter here....if ever i am, here i was when i was not, longing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84IR0TP_dEE
If i could ask Lama I Like a few dharma questions...even if the questions make me sound heartless, or like a skeptic challenger.....they would be questions still that i would like answer for.
And the answers i generate in my own mental sphere of reference, even if it is truly psychic, cannot be taken as proper interpretations for me unless confirmed by say..buddha...but even his words is not enough as one can twist their interpretations to suit. Or as far as i know no one asked the buddha my particular question and i ain't got many years left in this life to make head or tails of important questions, And my Pali is non existent.
So i know there is a need for an outer teacher, but i am arrogant to believe that i don't need years of formalities and stroking it to show my dedication to the cause or what not before i can just ask about a thing. And i also wager that no matter what i determine for a working answer in the meantime....will be either wrong or correct and also some combination.....and if i am alert i will flow toward correctness over time.
Should i ask here? Naw...ima let it pass, my questions are probably the very source of childish ignorance in matters that a few more weeks around the stupa might cure. So i guess forget it.
*sigh*
I am starting to feel this thought stream slip away, my letter may soon be finished. ( pauses to see if i have said all that was contained for this address....there is another sub topic that i am trying to keep separated....nope, won't even hide my multilayered psychobabble from buddha either.)
Humans adore the idea of specialness. We each wish to have verification. And these are dark dark times, and frustrating to sweep and clear the path daily and put little tea lights along....and to hope for a seeing, hearing, touching and healing moment to give. And i admire the depth and the purity that i have heard and intuited that she gives.
She speaks of turning the mind toward the practice of dharma. To turn the mind toward..but she peppers the path with the hard work of dealing with the practice of dharma.. she really is as she called herself Mama Lama.
But the more that one does the little things, the more one does long for more understanding. For more clarity, for more progress. And i am sure there are many avenues for growth there at the place.
And if there is, as reality often delivers, some disappointment of such a dream i have. Well then that is the only deam i hope for. Dharma gets awakened.
Now she calls all these things merit. And some people get little spiritual hard ons when they think of adding it up. Should i spent moments of pure compassion and connection with the sufferings around me.....or ones i can imaging that are the ultimate reality for sentient humans. ( sorry lady i am super focused on the humans this life....the bugs and coyotes are doing fine)
Then it may be merit and to be done more of...but by no means do i wish my whole mental realm be consumed with such compassionate meditations. I have them truly when they are there and then the mind has other things to do. I would not call having a emotional connection that touches necessarily progress in the way.
I guess the more oft you flow there it indicates the presence of merit or how well your connection can benefit the being you feel for. But i get confused with the use of the word merit.....and i wrote a finishing thought about what i think it is. And to me gathering prayers and murdras are lessor than the work of practicing correction...dharma. If my vocabulary is very off from my intended meaning, please forebear, i am ignorant.
I told my friend that my ignorance is good for me and i am blind and have amnesia, so that i won't put on false aires, or be intimidated, if i was going to be a student for the sake of actually correcting my very own mind..then why bother to impress or miss lead or manipulate the impression of it that would be my teacher?
OK so i didn't say it in all those words to my friend but i meant it arrogantly.
So i close with this thought.
Merit.
To me actual merit is the progress one makes in self improvement, mastery of their mind. One can only work with the aspects and meaning in their own mind-field.
Zen says the mind is teacher. Lama I Like has spoken of The mind is Guru
If there is merit in saying praises for the lama, walking stupas, wishing aspirations for all sentient beings, these are so and they are good. But the merit is like throwing flowers on the path of your next birth.
But the thing i mean by merit is to overcome tendencies to personal error. To tend the garden of one's own life it is as if to bring a better person to walk over the flowered road. Here and in the next birth.
.....
my unspeakable gratitude for your existence Lama I Like.
