bernard hemensley's STINGY ARTIST BLOG: May 2015

Sunday 31 May 2015

WATERWORX : PEONY : (1) - THE FIRST DAY

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GOLDEN GOJI HERMITAGE

1st. JUNE 2015

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Saturday 30 May 2015

a silent question

"Enlightenment, True Nature, True Self, Wholeness, the Unconditioned Absolute - whatever words have been given to what is without words, unthinkable, unknowable, ungraspable - is not the effect of a cause. It is luminously present and timeless, overlooked by the roving intellect that is trying to grasp it and obscured by the bodymind's constantly shifting moods, desires, and fears. Moment-to-moment meditation is clearly coming upon this roving and shifting, resisting and fearing mind and the urge to do something about it! Pausing for an instant - is there any doer?"

TONI PACKER - The Silent Question, Shambhala Publications, 2007.

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thus was i reading on the bus

30 / may / 2015

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Friday 29 May 2015

NINE WATERWORX

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golden goji hermitage

29 / may / 2015

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is it enuf to just sit quietly? should one obey the intelligence of what arises from our sitting or contemplations? after supper in sunlight, i was "just sitting".......very relaxed, very peaceful after Debussey preludes for piano on the stereo......and i remembered the nepalese paper my friends had given me......now was the time to use it. i used the papers, glue, oil pastels and ink and intuitively came-up with artwork #1. i then returned to "sitting" after packing everything away............ very soon the thought for #2 arose.......go with the flow, go with the flow..........."SITTING"?........"ZAZEN"?........"NOTHING HOLY"/"NO MERIT" SAID BODHIDHARMA......

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golden goji hermitage

well past bedtime

29 / may / 2015

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BLOGPOST #666 : QUELQUE OBJETS DE PREMIERE NECESSITE : FOND OBJECTS, ON MY WAY HOME, AUJOURD'HUI...

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GOLDEN GOJI HERMITAGE

29 / may / 2015

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Thursday 28 May 2015

it is enuf to just sit quietly (2)

"To practice zazen is Buddhism... Buddhism is to practice zazen."
"If we see practice as a means of attaining enlightenment, enlightenment will become a kind of ideal and our practice will become a kind of idealistic practice. Buddhism is not idealism. Buddhism rejects the notion that enlightenment or happiness can be realised through intellectual effort or understanding. Buddhism states that the Truth is here, and the Truth is now. Happiness exists in sincere effort at the moment of the present. Enlightenment and practice are, therefore, one and the same. If we want to study true Buddhism, we must retain this understanding. If we want to find true happiness, we must find it in work, in action, in practice - here and now. We must find it in zazen. Zazen is enlightenment itself. Zazen is Buddhism itself. Buddhism is zazen."
(To Meet the Real Dragon. GUDO WAFU NISHIJIMA. Windbell Publications, 2nd edition, 1992.)

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[a personal note on the above]

i encountered this book many years ago, and was so "taken" with it, that i wrote to Nishijima Roshi. My three or four letters were each politely answered by him. However my practice these days, accords with everything except that i feel that the zazen posture is not as vital, as some zen practitioners would have it. It is enuf to just sit quietly... In this, i have been influenced a lot by the books of Toni Packer and Joan Tollifson... by Buddhists and non-Buddhists.

i still "enjoy" returning to this book to read the chapter on Zazen. It remains a sort of inspiration... a lamp unto me, still.

JUST SIT-DOWN, SHUT-UP AND BE PRESENT.

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bernard hemensley

golden goji hermitage

28 / may / 2015

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