Cause and Effect

Juan Rodrigo came to the illumination in the midst of his deepest depression in years. The lucid light did little to alleviate his suffering as it came at a moment when he was rendered impotent by means of his own labyrinthine mind. The self-inflicted wounds of modern psychosis were simply too much of an obstacle to mount. Nor was Juan Rodrigo in any condition to attempt such a reckless undertaking. Sitting at the bar and drowning in tequila is a sure means of wallowing and watching the world swim past and his only solace. In all fairness Juan Rodrigo was never before so inclined. His drunkenness was merely the side-effect of the cruelty of the inefficient bureaucracy that ran the General’s office. While the proof of his brother’s innocence was substantial and aptly demonstrated he had arrived too late. His brother had been shot two days before in response to a clerical error. The young woman who caused the error was unaware of the consequences and if she had been would have collapsed beneath the stress. Already she was showing signs of coming apart at the seams. The nasty cat-calls of the soldiers that patrolled the front of the office, the spreading sickness of her mother, and the fear of her little sister’s involvement with a notorious drug dealer were mountains of weight. Her mother had undiagnosed cancer and wallowed in the hammock from day to day, filling the house with a dread that was tangible to touch. All the known medicines had been shown to be useless and every day was a vigil till the end. Juan Rodrigo was slated by the heavens to meet this young woman, a meeting that would have ended in an alleviation (to various degrees) of everyone’s suffering. However, as it were, the meeting was postponed by two days because of a storm that was meant to pass through the northern countries but was reverted by a whim of the unknown. The storm knocked down a number of power lines and forced Juan Rodrigo into extra hours at the grid sector controls, postponing his trip to the General’s City by two days. He believed he had extra time since the execution was to be done in three weeks time. Needing the job for money, after all he did have a niece to support, he could not leave just then. This led to the untimely and innocent demise of his younger brother who had been mistaken for a rebel leader in hiding. The resemblance was uncanny to the Rebel leader, but the charges unwarranted.
In the same time, the same set of actions, another scene creates itself. This one sees the whimpering brother being released to tears and embraces. The clerk and Juan Rodrigo do meet and begin a friendship that proves deep and lasting, though never carnal.
Again, only now the storm does not change direction and Juan makes it on time. The normal clerk is off, her mother had begun to convulse and she needed to stay behind to care for her.
And so on… Numerous and minute changes that flesh together a story so varied and vivid, and all just possible. Hope and despair teetering on a tight rope held together by maybes. Wrapped within these stories are the choices made, limited or grand, marked by the ripples they produce.

The eyes never lie...

Round and Round the mulberry bush and when we stop I am going to be sick…

The three kids sat beside each other huddled from the cruel winds. The structure was nothing more than a fiery mass now. The havoc was gorgeous. No one would be coming, no mad-cap rally to save the old place. It was going up in flames. With a sense of departure they watched. How many hours had they spent wiling away the years inside the abandoned halls. Little flakes of charcoal fell from the sky in a delicate way. The ones that landed on the three did so little. Each one of them had their respective accomplishments up to this date – small moments, large in perspective. The kids awed at the open heavens and presence of stars. Everybody moves on and now they would too. The eeriest sensation was the eyes. Three pairs staring right back at them; scrutinizing, calculating, contemplating. From inside the house no less they stared out. Only the three huddled masses had no fear for the owners of those eyes. It was too distant. Like a dream. Just like a dream and the only thing they wondered was when they would wake up.

The Moutain

Our deeper mind is a mountain. The petty and trivial concerns that consume us are nothing more than the passing clouds or a beating storm. So teaches the Rigpa, a type of Tibetan Buddhism.

I agree.

We know this mind during our more introspective and challenging moments in life. We use different words to describe it. Sports use the idiom “he’s in the zone” ,or, “she is in the heat of the moment.” For the religious it is the sense of being in “God”-“Jesus”-“Yaweh”-“Allah”. For the more secular of us it is “deep relaxation”, “wonder”, “awe”. Albert Einstein would call this state of mind his “Thought Experiments.” Those are names, I call it a mountain. I call it a mountain since it makes it easy to visualize.

Visualize:

I am the mountain and I can explore this mountain. There are caves in my mountain. Imagine a person exploring/spelunking the caves. In the center of this mountain is a well. The explorer discovers the well. He looks inside. The well is deep. The water is glimmering obsidian. The fear of the water is great. You don’t know where it goes, nor what lies within. Can you even breathe? The explorer has fear.

He overcomes it. He dives into the cool obsidian. Swimming he feels at home. Breath is no problem. The well opens wide and runs to the center of the world. There, at the worlds center, he sees the twirling heated metals and stones of the core. The core pulses and reverberates. The molten material moves upward and out of the core, like arteries, exploding into the seas and the lands to detstroy and create. The heat that does not escape moves with convection currents, keeping the earth humid, warm and able to sustain life.

The explorer is there, in that center. From here he sees the connections of life.
The connections that Ecology show us, global markets demonstrate, and family & lovers teach us. It is inter-connection; life working as dependent relationships. And the explorer remembers that his path to this place came from the center of his mountain.
The mind is a mountain.
The mountain is connected.
The mind is connected.

Alone at Sea...

There is a gentle rise and fall. It makes you feel lonely. The storms come and go. Sometimes we meet someone on the way. They stick around for a bit, then the current drives them off. Just you again, now; And all that blue. You may get tired of it. Yet; Sometimes wondrous things occur. A frenzied fight for food or a pack of playful dolphins alleviate the tedium. Those moments make you smile. But most of it is blue, vast and lonesome. The oars can take you somewhere, but the current really pulls you. Ships come and go in the night, shore-lines pass, the rhythm and weather change on whims you don’t understand. A few people get out, but we don’t know where they go. Nights are cold, days are raining, the sun can burn and other times it is pleasant. The ocean is so vast, you are so small. Even when you find others and join their ship, on the occasion when you stare outside of the group you remember how small you felt, how small you are. And everybody is fishing for answers, line out, waiting with patience. When one bites it is best to remember you only caught a truth. Nobody ever catches the Truth.

Love and Compassion

Poetry, religion, novels, movies, etc... often purvey the idea that love conquers all; That love is the balm for all wounds. I take offense to this. Only because it is inaccurate. What is often characterized as love is more akin to compassion. The two are intertwined, certainly -- like DNA helix's constructing something gorgeous and genuine. There are differences though, subtle as they are. Compassion is religious or poetic love, the ability to empathize and appreciate and accept. Love, as I have come to know with friends, family, and lovers, is more tumultuous. It will shake you, change you, and keep your ego and vanities on a teetering see-saw. Compassion can be extended to all creatures, to every man, woman, and child. Love, though, requires a more immediate and passionate participation. Buddhism cites that love and compassion are the same (not all sects). How though? Compassion can be complacent. Active compassion may very well have elements of love, but this does not mean they are interchangeable. So often when we say "love will conquer all" we truly mean compassion. Compassion is precise, it is a word that means I understand and I want to help. Love does not always do this. At its best it will. But love, its failing at least, is that it tries too much as a word. While we as collective people can construct infinite rumors of celebrities and fad diets we have trouble coming to terms with the word love. It is important. Look up love in a dictionary and at least 20 different definitions arise. We need to re-think and renovate the word. No easy task. For my own part I propose we make love more personal: a strong upwelling of emotions directed to a person in whom we believe in. Compassion can suffice for the more impersonal and broad uses of the word love. By recapturing this word in our imaginations perhaps we will be more careful in dolling it out. Still, one must not be too careful, eh? But then again, what do I know?

An Explosion of Fate

I was passing my eyes through my old room today and my attention ended on my bookshelves. There, in front of Marquez’s biblical Hundred Years of Solitude and a stack of collected articles, five tranquil bullet casings loafed. They taunted me, mocked me with their serenity.
I blinked for a second. I knew their trick. I had it down: those bastards were playin’ possum, just a waitin’ for the right second.
Only they were done. Those five lonely bullets spent their one brilliant blast charging a flimsy paper target. The scene was horrible, horrific. The unsuspecting paper was riddled with 47 bullets. Three just inches from the heart.
And to think such violence is sanctioned. I committed this crime with the blessing of the Israeli Government in Bat Yam Mall. The place was a cave scratched out of an undeground parking structure.
I was with my uncle, an old Army officer, a good man and better shot. He turned to me as we stepped out the car, “Do you want to shoot?”
Twenty minutes later my hands were wet, gripping the warm steel of a Colt 9mm. I held my hand steady. And then . . .
Pure power surged from me with the flick of a finger. Now we were getting somewhere. The second, third, fourth; boom, boom, boom, clink, clink, clink. . . Then reload . . . Here was the power of gods. Here was thunder, fire, and lightning. Speed and viciousness erupted from the metal beast within my hands.
Pure ego fed me, pumping my blood, the deafening sound just a whisper. All attention focused on the target, thinking just how powerful I am. It is the ultimate gavel.

“If we give you a rifle will you fight for the lord? But You Can’t kill the devil with a gun or a sword.”
George Fox

But you can kill men, millions upon millions. Let them fire away at each other, cry out for an idea. Hear the moans of freedom, the wails of the wounded. The gun is mighty.
And it gives little, takes much. For the gun is a pure sensual greed and when treated right a fine machine of destruction.

Now, watching those sly devils, I see their purpose. Bullets jump at a command, go where they are told.

How comforting...

As comforting as fate; Fate pulls the trigger and you tend to fly wherever she takes you with no regard for anything else.