Before came the '51-'52 winter

本矛

Indian with Spear, 1905, Charles M. Russell

“Before our white brothers came to civilize us we had no jails. Therefore we had no criminals. You can’t have criminals without a jail. We had no locks or keys, and so we had no thieves. If a man was so poor that he had no horse, tipi or blanket, someone gave him these things. We were too uncivilized to set much value on personal belongings. We wanted to have things only to give them away. We had no money, and therefore a man’s worth couldn’t be measured by it. We had no written law, no attorneys or politicians, therefore we couldn’t cheat. We really were in a bad way before the white men came, and I don’t know how we managed to get along without these basic things which, we are told, are absolutely necessary to make a civilized society.”

― Red Hawk ― Seeker of Visions

No Mud No Lotus, Thich Nhat Hanh

No Mud, No Lotus

Before a fierce winter came, Nature had its course

At midsummer, a first harvest

Followed by a Many-Splendoured Fall

But as the frost iced all of the Mother's 

The white father stirred the mud up

Age of débâcle

That sent a Wanderer Dervish Tintin

Spinning around the world and round and round

From Seven till Seventy-Seven, a reporter

That, at present, does not dwell well in the Past,

Anymore, anyhow, anywhere

The tide, the time, have changed

Gray Gravity and Gray Matter to a Gay Lux reversed

As Joy and Love returned in an open heart

And that blossoms a Lotus

戈

The three most common types of Chinese polearms are:

1. the Ge (戈), the dagger-axe,
2. the Qiang (槍), the spear,
3. the Ji (戟) the halberd

Dagger-axes were originally a short slashing weapon with a 0.9 to 1.8 m long shaft, but around the 4th century BC a spearhead was added to the blade, and it became a halberd. The spear is also sometimes called a mao (矛), which is sometimes used to designate polearms with a wavy snake-like spearhead.

Μέδουσᾰ • (Médousa)

From the feminine participle of μέδω (médō, “rule, protect”), i.e. "she who rules/protects".

Medusa was the most ravishing of three sisters ― an enchanting maiden with golden ringlets. And while many suitors aspired to win her favour, Poseidon took her for his own, raping her in Athena’s temple. Filled with a vengeance for the desecration of her temple, Athena put a curse on Medusa, turning her beautiful hair into serpents and making her so ugly that gazing upon her would turn onlookers to stone.

Let us focus on two aspects of this myth:

• how Athena persecuted Medusa for desecrating her temple and
• how Medusa’s terrifying form as a gorgon resulted from her own violation.

Athena was born from her father Zeus’ head, in full armour, ready for battle. We could say she was the ultimate father's daughter, deeply identified with patriarchal values like reason, strength, and victory. Though we think of Medusa as the embodiment of feminine rage, she too was once known best for her sensual beauty and loving relationship with her sisters. Taken symbolically ― we could say these two women represent the cultural split of the feminine, between civic and primal, logos and eros, obedient and wild. It is the same story we see mirrored in other places, such as the biblical story of Mary and Mary Magdalene. As a virgin goddess, perhaps Athena was threatened by Medusa’s life-giving, primal energy, so she cursed her to become a monster. But let us not forget that it was an act of unspeakable violence that was really at this split.

That Medusa was raped by Poseidon ― and later murdered by Perseus, is symbolic of the wild and unruly feminine cultural subjugation that she represents.

The name Medusa (मेधा, Medha, from Sanskrit मेधा medhā "wisdom", Μήτις from Mítis in Greek, μῆτῐς • mêtis "wisdom" and Egyptian mꜣꜥt, Maat an Ancient Egyptian goddess, the personification of truth, order, and righteousness, symbolized by a feather  ) means ‘sovereign female wisdom,’ so her violation can also be seen as the vanquishing of Goddess religions by the male-dominated culture led by Zeus. To survive these conditions, women have had to become the way Athena was, aligned with her father in other to thrive. But the consequence of being a ‘good daughter’ or a ‘good mother’ is that this darkness, represented by Medusa’s banished fury, will rise in unpredictable ways.

― Toko-pa Turner/ Belonging

Μέδουσα "guardian, protectress"

The legend of Perseus beheading Medusa means, specifically, that "the Hellenes overran the goddess's chief shrines" and "stripped her priestesses of their Gorgon masks", the latter being apotropaic faces worn to frighten away the profane. That is to say, there occurred in the early thirteenth century B.C. an actual historic rupture, a sort of sociological trauma, which has been registered in this myth, much as what Freud terms the latent content of neurosis is registered in the manifest content of a dream: registered yet hidden, registered in the unconscious yet unknown or misconstrued by the conscious mind.

― Campbell, Joseph (1968). The Masks of God, Vol. 3: Occidental Mythology. London: Penguin Books. pp. 152–153.

I cannot help remembering a remark of De Casseres. It was over the wine in Mouquin's. Said he: "The profoundest instinct in man is to war against the truth; that is, against the Real. He shuns facts from his infancy. His life is a perpetual evasion. Miracle, chimaera and to-morrow keep him alive. He lives on fiction and myth. It is the Lie that makes him free. Animals alone are given the privilege of lifting the veil of Isis; men dare not. The animal, awake, has no fictional escape from the Real because he has no imagination. Man, awake, is compelled to seek a perpetual escape into Hope, Belief, Fable, Art, God, Socialism, Immortality, Alcohol, Love. From Medusa-Truth he makes an appeal to Maya-Lie."

― Jack London, The Mutiny of the Elsinore, 1914

#Me(dusa)too

The apocryphal story of Medusa, through a feminist lens, is classic rape-victim-blaming at its most horrific and deadly.

Long before the Perseus beheading story, Medusa was a beautiful young woman. 

Medusa was raped by the God Poseidon in Athena’s Temple.

Athena* angered that her temple had been desecrated, took vengeance on the victim Medusa…not the rapist, Poseidon.  Blaming Medusa’s beauty, Athena made it so no man could ever look at her again. She cursed innocent and lovely Medusa to become a snake-headed gorgon whose glance turns those who look at her into stone.

This rape-victim-blaming story has repeated itself throughout time, and continues through news stories and political events happening right this minute…thus the reason for my rushing this post to publication.

For my painting, I have re-imagined the hideous gorgon and restored Medusa’s youthful beauty and innocence. I have also given her a hashtag stigmata; a merging of Greek, Christian and Contemporary iconography.

― Judy Takács, Ohio, Sunday, September 30, 2018#me(dusa)too

G•ame Jeu de l'âme / Âme du Je Ame de Γῆ Gē Small seal script form of 𠄔 (the ancient form of 幻), as depicted in the Shuowen Jiezi. Inversion of 予 ≍ I, me 予よ • (yo) 予 first-person personal pronoun; I, me Saturday, July 31 XVI La Maison Dieu The Tower 塔 Clearly, the Tower card refers to the Tower of Babel, which was a tower built by humans to reach Heaven but was knocked down by God so that men learnt that ambition has its limits.  Number 16  is repeated many times in the Bible: there are  16 prophets in the Old Testament and the same number in the New Testament. The Tower is linked to the red colour, the musical note “C”, the Hebrew letter “Pe” (which means “mouth”), the planet Mars and the iron ore. XVI ― LOTR ― The Tower by Frank Barbara

"Keep your mental attitude constructive, one that will look more and more for the bright or constructive forces in your life. This is a helpful influence, 🢂 the source of real help comes from within."   (ECRL 816-1)

『幻住 Illusory Abiding』

sensagent

sens8gent

Zen Master Buddha descending from the mountain where he wasted years in religious practice.

"He who emerges from the mountains and has entered the mountains:

That is originally You.

If one calls him 'You' It still is not he.

The venerable master Sakyamuni comes.

Ha, ha, ha...! He glances over ten million miles of billows.

幻住明本 Huan zhu Mingben salutes with respectfully folded hands."

― 中峰明本 Zhongfeng 'Huanzhu' Mingben (1263-1323)

幻住家訓 Huan zhu Jiaxun, "The family instructions of "Illusory Abiding" by the Chan monk Zhongfeng Mingben 中峰明本 (1263-1323)

天目明本

幻 『ㄏㄨㄢˋ』

mystical; mysterious

illusion; fantasy; mirage

幻まぼろし • (maboroshi) 

an illusion, a phantom, a dream, a vision

Small seal script form of 𠄔 (the ancient form of 幻), as depicted in the Shuowen Jiezi.

Inversion of 予 ≍ I, me

玄同 Mysterium Coniunctionis

道德經第五十六章節

知者不言，言者不知。

塞其兑，閉其門，挫其銳，解其分，和其光，同其塵，是謂玄同。

故不可得而親，不可得而踈；

不可得而利，不可得而害；

不可得而貴，不可得而賤。

故為天下貴。

Dao De Jing Chapter 56 ― A. Charles Muller 56. One who knows does not speak...

One who knows does not speak.

One who speaks does not know.

Close our holes, shut our doors,

Soften our sharpness, loosen our knots.

Soften our glare and merge with the everyday.

This is called mysteriously attaining oneness.

Though we cannot possess it, we are intimate with it and at the same time, distant.

Though we cannot possess it, we are benefited from it and are harmed by it.

We cannot possess it but are esteemed through it

And humbled by it.

Therefore the world values us.

Dao De Jing Chapter 56 ― James Legge (The mysterious excellence)

He who knows (the Dao) does not (care to) speak (about it);

he who is (ever ready to) speak about it does not know it.

He (who knows it) will keep his mouth shut and close the portals (of his nostrils).

He will blunt his sharp points and unravel the complications of things;

he will attemper his brightness, and bring himself into an agreement with the obscurity (of others).

This is called 'the Mysterious Agreement.'

(Such a one) cannot be treated familiarly or distantly; he is beyond all consideration of profit or injury; beyond all consideration of nobility or meanness: ― he is the noblest man under heaven.

Dao De Jing Chapter 56 ― Arthur Waley

Those who know do not speak;

Those who speak do not know.

Black the passages,

Shut the doors,

Let all sharpness be blunted,

All tangles untied,

All glare tempered.

All dust smoothed.

This is called the mysterious levelling.

He who has achieved it cannot either be drawn into friendship or repelled,

Cannot be benefited, cannot be harmed,

Cannot either be raised or humbled,

And for that very reason is highest of all creatures under heaven.

魏建功為錢玄同治印魏建功為錢玄同治印玄同 （漢語詞彙）

玄同，拼音為 xuán tóng，漢語詞彙。有“玄字深奧微妙，同字相同參與聚集之意”。

出自《道德經》第五十六章： 挫其銳,解其紛, 和其光,同其塵, 是謂玄同。

三層含義：

1.名詞，混同一起，本質不同。 

2.動詞，學習變成對方類似的存在，混同而又不同。 

3.前兩者綜合，譬如純水溶於湖海河，水質同而原來本質不同。

含義

一、玄字深奧微妙，同字相同參與聚集之意，謂冥默中與道混同為一。

例：

《老子》第五十六章：“塞其兌，閉其門，挫其銳，解其紛，和其光，同其塵，是謂玄同。”

蘇轍解：“默然不言，而與道同矣。”

削曾子之行，鉗楊墨之口，攘棄仁義，天下之德玄同矣。 ——《莊子·胠篋》

與玄道混同也。 ——成玄英

萬物玄同，相忘於道。 ——晉葛洪《抱朴子·詰鮑》

靈居雖窅密，睿覽忽玄同。 ——唐張九齡《奉和聖制途經華山》

二、相一致；混同。 

例：

臣聞至公之道，上下玄同，用才不負其長，量力不受其短。 ——《晉書·陸玩傳》

帶氏曰：“今日為亞洲計，獨立其先也；均平生分其稍次也；玄同彼是，泯滅政法，其最後也。”——章炳麟《印度人之論國粹》

魏建功為錢玄同治印

玄：《說文》：「幽遠也。黑而有赤色者爲玄。象幽而入覆之也。凡玄之屬皆从玄。」河上公：「玄天也。」王弼：「玄者冥也。」老子五十一章：「玄德深矣，遠矣，與物反矣，然後乃至大順。」玄為幽遠而無法看到盡頭的樣子，此形容道的元始本體。

甲骨文玄與ㄠ同字，同作
。ㄠ即幼小之義，《説文》：「ㄠ，小也，象子初生之形。凡ㄠ之屬皆从ㄠ。」老子用「玄」字實雙關語，一方面指其深遠而不可測，另一方面指其為道之元始所生之子。又《老子》第十章「專氣致柔，能嬰兒乎」，第二十章「我獨泊兮，其未兆，如嬰兒之未孩」，二十八章「為天下谿，常德不離，復歸於嬰兒」，五十五章「含德之厚，比於赤子」，老子以嬰兒喻道，亦可從玄字窺得。

《莊子‧大宗師》：南伯子葵看到女偊年紀很大了但顏色卻像小孩一樣，覺得很是驚奇，於是問女偊怎麼一回事，女偊回答說他聞道了，並告訴南伯子葵說：「聞諸副墨之子，副墨之子聞諸洛誦之孫，洛誦之孫聞之瞻明，瞻明聞之聶許，聶許聞之需役，需役聞之於謳，於謳聞之玄冥，玄冥聞之參寥，參寥聞之疑始。」

河上公注：兩者，謂有欲無欲也。同出者，同出人心也。而異名者，所名各異也。名無欲者長存，名有欲者亡身也。玄，天也。言有欲之人與無欲之人，同受氣於天。天中復有天也。稟氣有厚薄，得中和滋液，則生聖賢；得錯亂污辱，則生貪淫也。能知天中復有天，稟氣有厚薄，除情去欲守中和，是謂知道要之門戶也。

王弼注：兩者，始與母也。同出者，同出於玄也。異名，所施不可同也。在首則謂之始，在終則謂之母。玄者，冥也，默然無有也。始母之所出也，不可得而名，故不可言，同名曰玄，而言謂之玄者，取於不可得而謂之然也。謂之然則不可以定乎一玄而已，則是名則失之遠矣。故曰，玄之又玄也。眾妙皆從同而出，故曰眾妙之門也。

Sense8

Sensate — Sedate/Sedated — Limitation & Impotentia

• impotentia f (genitive impotentiae); first declension

1. poverty
2. inability
3. violence (lack of restraint)

• impotēns (genitive impotentis, superlative impotentissimus, adverb impotenter); third-declension one-termination adjective

1. Powerless, weak, feeble, impotent, helpless, puny.
2. Unable to control, having no power over; incapable of.
3. Unbridled, unrestrained, headstrong, wild, violent, excessive.

• Intuition, the 7th and last sense to develop in humans, senses which are (in order of appearance):

1. Hearing: R7
2. Touch: R1
3. View: R3
4. Taste: R6
5. Smell: R4
6. The Mind: R5
7. Intuition: R2
8. Sense: S8 (beyond Intuition 🡺 8º, O, 8vo, octavo)

• Intuition can be defined as the direct and infallible knowledge (or identification) of what is. It emanates from the Buddhist plane (higher correspondence of the emotional/astral plane) and therefore only highly evolved beings are true intuitives. It is the fruit of direct contact with the Divine Mind.

• octave (plural octaves)

1. (music) An interval of twelve semitones spanning eight degrees of the diatonic scale, representing a doubling or halving in pitch frequency.
2. (music) The pitch an octave higher than a given pitch.
3. (music) A coupler on an organ allows the organist to sound the note an octave above the note of the key pressed (cf sub-octave)
4. (poetry) A poetic stanza consisting of eight lines; usually used as one part of a sonnet. 
5. (fencing) The eighth defensive position, with the sword handheld at waist height, and the tip of the sword out straight at knee level. 
6. (Christianity) The day that is one week after a feast day in the Latin rite of the Catholic Church. 
7. (Christianity) An eight-day period beginning on a feast day in the Latin rite of the Catholic Church. 
8. (mathematics, obsolete) An octonion, an 8-dimensional nonassociative extension of a quaternion with 1 real part and 7 imaginary parts that are each a square root of -1. They can be thought of as octets (or 8-tuples) of real numbers.
9. (signal processing) Any of a number of coherent-noise functions of differing frequency that are added together to form Perlin noise.
10. (astrology) The subjective vibration of a planet. 🡺 Γαῖᾰ • (Gaîa) ⮀ Γῆ Gē, "land" or "earth"  🡺 Sol, so, or G, the fifth note of the fixed-do solfège starting on C. As such it is the dominant, a perfect fifth above C or perfect fourth below C. When calculated in equal temperament with a reference of A above middle C as 440 Hz, the frequency of middle G (G4) note is approximately 391.995 Hz. 

Twenty-five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination
And I realized quickly when I knew, I should
That the world was made up of this brotherhood of man
For whatever that means

And so I cry sometimes
When I'm lying in bed
Just to get it all out
What's in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar

And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What's going on?

And I say, hey hey, hey hey
I said hey, what's going on?
Ooh, ooh-ooh

And I try, oh my God, do I try
I try all the time in this institution
And I pray, oh my God, do I pray
I pray every single day for a revolution

And so I cry sometimes
When I'm lying in bed
Just to get it all out
What's in my head
And I am feeling a little peculiar

And so I wake in the morning
And I step outside
And I take a deep breath and I get real high
And I scream at the top of my lungs
What's going on?

And I say, hey hey hey hey
I said hey, what's going on?

Twenty-five years and my life is still
Trying to get up that great big hill of hope
For a destination

— 4 Non-Blondes — "What's Up?" Written by Linda Perry, 1992 Bigger, Better, Faster, More! album

 10

舉。布袋和尚。常將布袋并破蓆。於通衢往來。布袋內盛鉢盂木履魚飯菜肉瓦石土木諸般總有。或於稠人處。打開布袋內物。撒下云。看看。又一一將起問人云。者箇喚作甚麼。眾無對。

代云。醜婦顰眉。

Hoffman:

布袋 always strolled around the streets, carrying a cloth sack and a torn carpet. The cloth sack was filled with pots, bowls, wooden clogs, fish, rice, vegetables, meat, tiles, rocks, clay, wood, and all kinds of things. Sometimes, in a crowded place, he would open the sack, empty it, and say, "Have a look." Then he would pick the things up one by one and ask, "What is this called?" The crowd was dumbfounded.

MASTER Xutang: The ugly woman frowns.

Master 布袋 Budai always had a cloth bag together with a broken woven mat, arriving on the open road and returning thereby.

Inside his bag, he always had his alms bowl, wooden shoes, rice, fish, and meat for meals, and roof tiles of rock and wood for repairs.

When in a crowded place, he would reach inside, humbly casting the items before people, saying, "Examine each item one by one as they arise in your awareness."

He would then ask, "What item can you know? Many are not correct."

On others' behalf, Xutang said, "A homely woman frowns in imitation of a pouting Xishi (西施)9."

Notes:

Budai appears in very few cases. He appears in Transmission of the Lamp although it is not a Zen text. Also in his Case is someone named Bailu.

Here is a fragment from a poem attributed to him:

Ten thousand dharmas, what is special; heart, why different? Why spend labour searching for meaning in sutras? The heart is originally self-ruled, separate from knowledge Wise ones only realize there is no end to study Neither mundane nor sacred – what then?

Footnote

9) From Book of Serenity, by Wansong: "When 西施 Xishi had a pain in her chest, she held her chest and grimaced. It made her even more beautiful. Homely girls imitating her only increased their ugliness. This is a criticism of study by mouth and ear, those who do not work for ineffable enlightenment."

The miraculous in the common 常道

Ralph Waldo Emerson (Vol. XXXIII, No. 7)
"The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common."
― Ralph Waldo Emerson in Nature, Chapter VIII, 1836

In his general theory of relativity, Albert Einstein equated gravity with the curvature of space around a massive body. The effect is quite negligible for light masses but becomes important for massive stars and even more so for very compact massive objects such as neutron stars, whose gravity is 100,000 times stronger than at the sun's surface. Distortions of space caused by a larger mass (stars) will cause small moving masses (planets) to deviate from what Newtonian gravity predicts. Another remarkable consequence of Einstein's theory of gravity is the slowing down of clocks in strong gravitational fields: strong gravity bends space and slows down time.

inānis

空

Vanitas Vanitatis, Etc. / Vanitas Vanitatum, Omnia Vanitas

[Page 33]

VANITAS VANITATUM, OMNIA VANITAS.

IN all we do, and hear, and see,

Is restless Toil, and Vanity.

While yet the rolling earth abides,

Men come and go like ocean tides;

And ere one generation dies,

Another in its place shall rise;

That, sinking soon into the grave,

Others succeed, like wave on wave;

And as they rise, they pass away.

The sun arises every day,

And hastening onward to the West,

He nightly sinks, but not to rest:

Returning to the eastern skies,

Again to light us, he must rise.

And still the restless wind comes forth,

Now blowing keenly from the North;

Now from the South, the East, the West,

For ever changing, ne'er at rest.

The fountains, gushing from the hills,

Supply the ever-running rills;

The thirsty rivers drink their store,

And bear it rolling to the shore,

[Page 34]

But still the ocean craves for more.

'Tis endless labour everywhere!

Sound cannot satisfy the ear,

Light cannot fill the craving eye,

Nor riches half our wants supply;

Pleasure but doubles future pain,

And joy brings sorrow in her train;

Laughter is mad, and reckless mirth–

What does she in this weary earth?

Should Wealth, or Fame, our Life employ,

Death comes, our labour to destroy;

To snatch the untasted cup away,

For which we toiled so many a day.

What, then, remains for wretched man?

To use life's comforts while he can,

Enjoy the blessings Heaven bestows,

Assist his friends, forgive his foes;

Trust God, and keep his statutes still,

Upright and firm, through good and ill;

Thankful for all that God has given,

Fixing his firmest hopes on heaven;

Knowing that earthly joys decay,

But hoping through the darkest day.

ACTON.

"Vanitas Vanitatum, Omnia Vanitas." by Anne Brontë (1820-1849)

First Publication: Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell London: Aylott and Jones, 8, Paternoster Row, 1846. pp. 33-34.

vanitas vanitatis

vānitās f (genitive vānitātis); third declension

1. emptiness, nothingness

   vanitas vanitatum ― vanity of vanities

2. falsity, falsehood, deception, untruth, untrustworthiness, fickleness
3. vanity, vainglory

from vānus (feminine vāna, neuter vānum, superlative vānissimus); first/second-declension adjective

from Proto-Indo-European *h₁weh₂- (“empty”). Cognate with Proto-Germanic *wanaz, Sanskrit ऊन (ūná).

1. vain, empty, vacant, void
2. unsubstantial
3. (figuratively) groundless, baseless, meaningless, pointless
4. ostentatious, boastful
5. deceptive, untrustworthy

から • (kara) 

1. 空: emptiness
2. 殻: shell
3. 唐: the old name for China
4. 漢: China

inānis (neuter ināne, comparative inānior, superlative inānissimus, adverb ināniter); 3rd-declension 2-termination adjective

1. empty, void, hollow 
2. vain
3. worthless
4. foolish, inane

唐

1. ^† to exaggerate; to boast
2. ^† exaggerative; boastful
3. ^† vast; wide; extensive
4. ^† road inside temple quotations ▲

   • 中唐有甓，邛有旨鷊。 

     From: The Classic of Poetry, circa 11^th – 7^th centuries BCE, translated based on James Legge's version

     Zhōng táng yǒu pì, qióng yǒu zhǐ yì. [Pinyin]

     The middle path of the temple is covered with its tiles; on the height is the beautiful medallion plant.

5. ^† in vain; to no avail
6. 50th tetragram of the Taixuanjing; "vastness, emptiness, pointlessness" (𝌷)
7. (～朝) Tang Dynasty

   唐詩 / 唐诗  ―  tángshī  ―  Tang poetry

8. (figuratively) China

   唐人  ―  tángrén  ―  Chinese person