spirituality

early morning readings

…he also is as though covered by a mist, a cloud, a darkness that hides everything he does and hides everything that takes place within him.

Trans: Ira Progoff. The Cloud of Unknowing
Nikon D750 f/7.1 1/8002 85mm 160 ISO

And ‘when I speak of darkness’ the author of The Cloud of Unknowing says, it is ‘not the kind of darkness that is in your house at night when the candle is out.’ It is a darkness of a quite different kind. ‘I am referring he says, ‘to a lack of knowing. It is a lack of knowing that includes everything you do not know or else that you have forgotten, whatever is altogether dark for you because you do not see it with your spiritual eye. And for this reason It is not called a cloud of the air, but rather a cloud of unknowing that is between you and your God.'” (IV:18)

early morning readings

Nikon D750 f/4.5 1/1600s 85mm 320 ISO

“…Visual transmission through images speaks directly to intuition and feelings, circumventing the verbal mind. Drawings offer spaces for imagination to wander, evoking meanings too complex or subtle to know intellectually. This state of mind, in which one can receive information through images, points to one of the closest parallels between the contemplative and creative paths. Aesthetic appreciation and receptivity to spiritual teachings are both practiced with an open-ended state of mind, a state of comfortable not-knowing. We draw and meditate in heightened awareness of what is happening in the moment, opening the space for new ideas, and allowing change to happen.”

John F Simon, Drawing your own Path. pg.150

emptiness

Emptiness of Entityness… Nikon D750 f/7.1 1/80s 85mm 100 ISO

The emptiness of entityness (one of five types of emptiness discussed within Buddhist philosophy) is illustrated … with the example of a cairn and a human being. Both exist and are mutually exclusive…a cairn when viewed from a distance can easily be mistaken for a human, whereas upon closer inspection, there is nothing whatsoever that is human about a pile of stones. A human is utterly absent there. A rope mistaken for a snake would seem to be another example of the emptiness of entityness.~D. Lopez, Jr. (The Heart Sutra Explained, p54.)

silent sunday

Sony NEX-5N f/6.3 1/2500s 210mm 100 ISO

As the winter winds travel across Wyoming’s landscape

the swirling snow releases its memories of you, lost …

somewhere… on Casper Mountain.

Its frigid touch awakens me to your

aloneness – in that wilderness of blinding snow

cries – deafened by the river of winds,

calling – out in hope for

a human form – to emerge out of the whiteness

the warmth – of a human hand

the sound – of a voice, comforting you

accompanying – you home.

As I become hostage to this winter’s swirling thoughts

the river winds tear into my soul

releasing tears arising from

the darkness of grief’s aloneness, seeking

a knowing to emerge out of ignorance’s darkness

you found – peace

within – a loving presence

embracing – you

accompanying – you home.

Lawrence John Anderson, January 11, 1957 – January 20, 1980

2018 photography review, december

Olden memories

so brisk

in their fading,

this moment soon to follow —

shadows on the snow ~bckofford

within the present is the past and the future

Thank you for joining me as I wandered through the photographs posted on this blog throughout 2018 and shared the contemplations that accompanied them.

May each of your steps throughout the new year be accompanied with love-filled companions and joyous moments.

2018 photography review, november

November is about Thanksgiving, a celebration within the United States in which people gather around a table of abundance and give thanks (or not) before engaging in one of the seven sins…gluttony.

“The Tibetan Wheel of Suffering illustrates how our psychological patterns — our unconscious drives and needs, impulsive and reactive responses, learned and conditioned habits, and obsessions and compulsions – serve to keep us locked in self-defeating or misguided mental formations.

“Within the lower section of the wheel is the realm of the hungry ghost…beings with long, extremely slender necks, needle mouths, and bloated stomachs.  They are characterized by their infinite emptiness and eternal starvation that drives addictive and compulsive behaviors. When they do obtain what they crave, their achieved desires turn into swords and knives in their bellies. Their unfulfilled longings and cravings torture them through unending grief, rejection, bargaining, and anger. They remain insatiably obsessed with the fantasy of achieving complete release from their past.  Their efforts to undo the past remain unproductive as they layer past memories onto the present and thus respond to present occurrences as if they were suddenly transported into their past.  While they are aware of the suffering within their misery, they are unaware of how their confusion and delusion comes from their transpositions and subsequent mistaken attributions. 

“Introduced in this realm is a bodhisattva holding a bowl filled with spiritual nourishment.  These spiritual morsels: grace, faith, mindfulness, centeredness, compassion, loving-kindness, and equanimity, all contain the nutrients of wisdom to ease their torments.” ~B Koeford

contemplative photography – seeing space

feelings

Gratitude is a spiritual morsel that awakens us from being overwhelmed in the darkness of resentment to the spontaneous and wondrous moments gifted us through nature’s grace.


the threshold of stillness

May I find the Equanimity that will lift a veil of shamed despair and acquaint me to the perceived and perceiver absent of greed, anger, and ignorance.

 

wyominglandscape-8web

This journey with saldage has brought me to a place and time in which to unweave and sort through the pseudo-beliefs I have simply, without question, absorbed through the lens of childhood fantasy and comprehension.  To begin this process is to reformulate beliefs through a process of mindfulness and analysis and then to know for myself, “These things are bad, blamable, censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill… These things are good, blameless, praised by the wise… These things lead to benefit and happiness.”

It is not an easy undertaking to not simply believe what has been learned within family, school and church as well as conclusions reached through readings. The invitation to not simply follow tradition brings to the surface conflicts with compliance and opposition that come from an avalanche of values and guiding principles that outlines how I understand the roles and expectations of women.

To not adhere to that which was surmised within family stories about an ancestor, who upon seeing a swarm of locust “knelt in his patch of grain and pleaded with his Maker to spare his wheat” and then saw them divide and not damage his remaining crops. Or within the story about the ancestor, who during a trip from New York to England, calmed the seas with a prayer, and while in England, after much fasting and prayer administered to a deaf and dumb boy who was subsequently healed. To not simply believe opens a door of pondering about generations of family members who intimately knew powerlessness and insecurity, who eased their feelings of incompetence through prayer, and whose conceptions blinded them to their neighbors’ plight.

wyominglandscape-6a-web

 

To not simply believe that I must endure suffering is to reject the axiom that there is an absence of fundamental faith and goodness. To not adhere to the assumed abilities of ancestors frees me from the belief that a sincere act of making amends for my sins will open the doors to Shangri-La.  To not simply draw upon scripture unbinds me to the shame that I don’t have the faith – even of the size of a mustard seed – to be deeded as “good and without sin” so what I wish for, even that which goes counter to nature’s laws, will be granted.  To ease the suffering within discontent is to not simply hold to be true that I am to acquiesce to pain until the final judgment of death, and only then will I be forever at peace, or forever condemned to an existence of even greater suffering.

To not simply believe opens my ears to the incongruence within a belief in an all-knowing presence who, if not validated, punishes, absent of the grace within loving-kindness.  To not simply believe brings a compassionate acknowledgment to the painful efforts to sway God into granting me my desires through bargaining, sacrifice, negation, and suffering, and to finally surrender with acceptance to “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  To not simply believe sheds light upon the greed, aversion, and delusions that are intertwined into my conception of and relationship with life.

I do hold that my beliefs and the subsequent desire for their illusive promises of validation, forgiveness, or reunification have set me upon an unending path of suffering.  These beliefs lead to harm and ill as they are like thorns that tear into my heart.  This searing pain releases resentment intertwined with envy, awakens alienation, and denies me the essence of Christ’s wisdom and loving compassion.

wyominglandscape-7web

Christ stood before self-righteous anger and commanded that only the one without sin was to cast the first stone of punishment and, at another time and in the midst of his own suffering, sought forgiveness for those who “know not what they do.”   Within these written words, I hear compassion speaking for the suffering intertwined within anger ungoverned by moral shame and moral dread.  Compassion is telling us how suffering, entangled into knots of mental, emotional, and social turmoil, deafens us to our guiding principles and blinds us to the horrors our moral shame will witness as it awakens from darkened ignorance.

 

The practice of the presence of God as being comparable to that of consciousness finally makes possible “full awareness” applied to every thought, world, and deed.   ~ Unknown

Excerpts from B Koeford, A Meditative Journey with Saldage

hungry ghosts

May I find the Loving Compassion that will soften the shield embracing my heart so that I may love absent of greed, anger, and ignorance.

contemplative photography 11

 

I find myself standing on a dry dirt road with two deep parallel ruts cutting winding dark ribbons into the road until they unite and disappear in the horizon.  The sun greets me with the same dry warmth that soothingly penetrates my skin as I wrap around me a towel just pulled from a tumbling clothes dryer. The air messages that it is a time of transition and I see the slight touch of autumn’s mustard yellows and crimson reds upon the tips of trees lining a distant hill.  Before me stands a child of about twelve years of age.  Her head is bent down with absorbed attention upon the small puffs of dust clouds her bare feet stirs up before her.

She looks up at me with expectant eyes that suddenly overfill with tears. “I don’t remember who or what I’m looking for,” she says, as miniature rivulets begin to flow down her cheek.

Then I notice a three-year-old boy with wispy blonde hair and mesmerizing oxen-eyes as he emerges from his hiding place behind the girl. As he takes hold of her right index finger, he reaches up with his left hand and touches a teardrop that is forming along the girl’s chin, asking “Find mummy?”

landscape-3web

Nikon D750 f/7.1 1/500 50

Suddenly, as if a whirlwind came down from the heavens in response to the boy’s voice, I come to myself standing in the center of a frozen lake. I am shivering and see nothing more than a dark and shadowy forest surrounding me.  I hear in the distance the sound of children’s voices repeating a refrain with a haunting tone, “Broken hearts, frozen hearts, shattered hearts.” And then I see them: four–no, five.  Five hungry, child-like, ghosts with needle mouths, long twisted thin necks, and bloated stomachs.

They come out of the forest and stand along the lake’s shoreline, repeating their refrain, “Broken hearts, frozen hearts, shattered hearts.” Their words travel across the surface of the frozen lake and encircle me with the sounds of unfilled longings and infinite emptiness.

Then I awaken to my own craving for those who have been lost to me, those who have died.  Within the darkness of this forest memories of past days rise and intermingle to become a swirling chaos within the image of emptiness where there once was a home, a family.  Confusion, anger, and loneliness flash within as these memories incite feelings and memories that pummel upon me, one frozen memory after another.

 

I hear questions from a child.  Confused, they come as fragments: “His heart was broken? Why did I have to go? They moved?” The sound of adolescent angst intertwined with arrogance swirls around me, as the questions become assertions: “I won’t be here if he comes back! I’ll do as I please.” The mist in the air surrounds me with the chilling voice of others, accusing: “If you had faith, she could hear. You were her companion. It is you that must leave. It does not matter, it is over. I cannot help you.”  Then, “There was an accident.”  I feel myself falling upon the ice as I have fallen before with broken promises, beliefs, and dreams shattered all around me. I feel the layers of iced grief, anger, sadness, confusion shielding my heart. Again, the refrain, “Broken hearts, frozen hearts, shattered hearts.”

wyominglandscapeweb

The night cloud’s fingertips drift away from the moon. In the silvery light I see visions of a small child, alone in the gray-toned shadows, planting seeds in the moist soil of despair.    Her sob-filled voice fills the night’s emptiness, “You are too stupid to understand. I don’t need you.  I’m special.  I’ll hide my tears.  I won’t tell you anything. I won’t need you.  I’ll show you that I don’t need you.”

A veil lifts and my observing mind sees a raging powerless ego annihilating self-in-relationship, suppressing feelings; and all the while, unknowingly creating her shadowy forest of worthlessness, hopelessness, alienation, and pseudo-independence.

Anger tells me that I am nothing;
love tells me I am everything.
Between the two, my life flows.

I feel a golden-toned voice, vibrating the soft and gentle touch of loving-kindness.  “These hungry ghosts are visions that arise from years of tears closeted within your soul. Is it now time to cut this intertwining craving and clinging to your yesterdays?”  She encourages a thought that to be freed from this frozen place and time begins with a true comprehension of the refrain, “Broken hearts, frozen hearts, shattered hearts.”

This voice says, “Call forth these five hungry ghosts, one by one, by their true given names and see each true ‘I’-in-self hidden behind veils of greed, anger, and ignorance.  Ask what it is that will cease their yearning and release them from this frozen forest so that they may finally rest in peace. As you hear their request touch your heart, open yourself to share with each that which will release you from this bondage.  Melt this chain with loving-kindness and forge the golden key that gives admission to a room of healing serenity.”

contemplative photography 7

In a clearing I find myself slowly warmed by the autumn sun as I return to the two children I met earlier on a dry, dusty road. Behind me is the forest I have just emerged from; before me is a field of yellowed wheat.   Just beyond the field is a house weathered gray by the seasons and weakened by the stresses of time.  In the golden rays of the morning light, the young girl is kicking up clouds, searching through the barren soil for seeds of her past, and desiring to be freed from yesterday’s delusions.  She walks over to the side of the road and bends over; as she stands, I see three keys, dangling from her left hand. One key is silver, another is gold, and the third is made of diamonds. I feel the pain of fear awaken as the warmth of this early autumn day touches the frozen shield that embraces her heart.

The air is filled with sounds of a new refrain, “May I be happy.  May I be free from pain.   May I feel emotionally connected with others. May I be at peace.

 “May these children be happy.  May they be freed from pain.  May they feel emotionally connected with others.  May they be at peace.

“May those hungry ghosts be happy.  May they be freed from pain.  May they feel emotionally connected with others.  May they be at peace.”

Excerpts from B Koeford, A Meditative Journey with Saldage