Lean Against the Mountain - Me & Blue Cliff - A Zennish Sesshin

Blue Cliff Record - click here to read:

https://dmzencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Blue-Ciff-Record.pdf

[All photos by Warren Falcon.  All rights reserved]

Today I am the Buddha who quits. - Jack Kerouac

Every revelation partook more of significant darkness than of explanatory light. - Herman Melville, Moby Dick

Blue Cliff Record — my equivalent: 

Gray Chasm Stammers

once pretending toward zen
Blue Ridge Mountain records years, late now in hand - 

who was this person?

D'just arrived from Lookout Mountain shadow, 

Calvin's grim stain aka my first middle and last name - 

I only knew then that I would no longer write it or any 

name until I had gained a sense of who, what, how, why:

"At yet another Lookout,

escaped the first one to

Mountain Retreat, more
fog rolls in, not seeing

my hand, can only feel 

a face, know at last how 

blind I really am."

"Blue Cliff master asks,

What is this I?

Not that again? I complain.
How dull. How boring.
How unanswerable.

BC - Turn then to shapely thought
turned by shapely mind.

A mandrill's ass, I answer.

An easy point, says he, be free of self hatred.
It is all too easy to negate. Ease is the gate of hell
thus the problem of American pragmatism and 

positive thinking.

Wha'? Tell me more, BC.

Easy to negate - easy to affirm. One squirms between the two,
either/or - reifying one or the other is idolatry.

OK? (me leaning in to hear more).

Pragmatism crept into American spiritual movements early on...

easier to think "as if" but soon's a whiff of sulphur and brimstone at the end. 

The ends do not necessarily lead to the intended means aka redemption.

Me -Then I lean against the mountain.


BC - Too much effort yet not enough stride, 

ride clouds over mountain, 

settle over a glen. 

Stillness is there. 

Or can be.

Come hot sun it all ends.
Was it ever there?
Rest your thoughts...

Angelus Silesius observes

"the rose lives without why"

Sigh

I lean against the mountain,
I have come from a far away place, BC.

As have we a.. Rest awhile. 

Your feet know what to do even if you don't. 

I lean against the mountain.

I have wasted so much time and still young.

So am I, says BC, quality of mind is everything.
Don't believe me because I say it. One attains it in the 

strangest of ways. Cannot tell you what that might be 

but if 3 times 3 equals 9 all is lost, but who is counting

or getting lost, for that matter.

I lean against the mountain.

Do not lean, BC advises - Attain.

I give up, I say.

BC - Now you are on the way - 

trials and travails.

Happy trails.

Hail and well met, Traveler.

Loose tongues, their slips - allowed.

Loose lips on the other hand...

why many a zen master counsels

"Go drink tea" - give your lips 

something to do besides flap.

KATZ! - Japanese word for

BITCH SLAP

from Scripts for the Pageant by James Merrill

March 28, 2925 Post Scripts Lips Still Flappin'

"Still at zen-hish-ness-nest - as I've said elsewhere (go here)

my zen I call "cheating zen" since it, zen, depends on cheating

in the word game, fair trade, fingers crossed behind of the back.

But now, too, my zen is summed accordingly:

FAT CHANCE!

For best results in zen of zen and other spiritual solutions 

the grit hits the road when one arrives at a mystical yet very

real X on the map in the transformation game, town called

ROPE'S END.

When arriving there, the welcome sign reads:

ABANDON ALL HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.

Old Possum, T. S. Ersatz writes it clearly:

"For hope would be hope for the wrong thing."

I once shared T. S. Four Quartets with BC late 1970's and explained, from Christian mystics perspective, the meaning of the word "kenosis" aka emptying.  When I repeated the word he looked at me, shouted -

GESUNDHEIT!! 

But There IS a Thread (Rhymes W/Dread Not All The Time) - Of Giacometti, Empty Space, Chattanooga Smog-Draped Post-Calvin Despair, Bad Coffee, Greasy Hash Browns, Last Booth in the Diner of the World Unfurling

Soundtrack for what follows or veers below: Arvo Pãrt's "Spiegel im Spiegel (Version for Cello & Piano)"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3NcZxuvr6g&list=OLAK5uy_mkVJAbkQluwC0FY8I85J0BaiT2KSWzuIQ&index=3

          

"Giacometti sees empty space everywhere. Surely not everywhere, you will say, for some objects touch others. But this is exactly the point. Giacometti is certain of nothing. Not even that."

[But, I argue with Giacco - we are good friends and argue and ague often and offal - there is surprise which, as surprise, as happen, word of which means NOW, HERE, INSTANCY - which insists, indeed touches. What memory is for. Resonance of such aka

"on extended wings..."

"Much there is...."

"So much depends..."


"Beneath each eye there's some familiar look we refuse
We map our way to sleep in the palms of shy or frightened hands"


Jean Paul Sartre's essays on Giacometti impacted me positively and greatly as I was departing Christian barnacled piers of theology and culture which were/became poison to me. Sitting in a Steak and Eggs in downtown Chattanooga 1975 or so, having purchased a paperback of Sartre essays, Situations [link below, free to read at archive dot org], I opened to the Giacometti one, and an hour later, cup after cup of very bad coffee and whatever greasy plate I ordered, I nearly floated out of the joint psychologically, the beginnings thereof, rejoined and re-jointed the way a Giac. sculpture is, compressed, thinned so thin yet heavy, grounded, and placed or re-placed/presence-ed in now, so I "floated" more reality based in just where I was since Sartre was about that, the "what is" and in his articulation about the artist's dwelling within and without in the what presents and is apparently the "real" or "realer" I felt freer to sit closer to the tormented mal- and un- formed parts of me known and not but intuited, rather, felt....moods often mugging me or dragging out of bed (pallet on the floor) heavy with it all, Sartre located me in what presents as me and as life and inspired me even more to write, to art, to learn more, and to meet and greet the greasy plates of the real and

surreal, the bad coffee, the cheap Cherry Eric Cigars (ICH!) trying to be so grown up lol but they did smell great but I could barely taste food, beverage which was probably why I could eat Steak and Eggs hash browns, saturated with pork fat and the cigarette ashes the cretinous chef t the griddle dangled as if glued there to his bottom lip, ashes dropping on what was slabbed and spatula-ed around on the griddle, perhaps the secret to Steak and Eggs success, that special ingredient along with gods know what, but marvelously, deep South, "Christhaunted" undaunted insistence of violent deity proffering salvation from Its own violent nature [see Book of Job, see text on Jonah, et. al.] on road signs, highway signs ,reminding one and all pilgrims presti-peregrinators driving by that THE END IS NEAR sign (and I asked then and now - has IT even begun, the Beginning and to what ends "because I hope to not re: "Because I do not hope to turn again" - or return for that matter), JOHN 3:16, steeples tall or dilapidated, actually veritably

Giacometti-esgue, demarking "po' folks' w/Bibles and prolly authentic faith and "evidences thereof" since need was/is for grace to disrupt human displacement, varietals plenty dependent upon place, culture, et al....so, as an old Chinese poet proclaimed long ago having discovered grace long hard and slow, that what was sung in younger years finally arrived as grace near the end, that

"the ancient hymns have overtones."

And so does Giacometti. Really.

NOTE on "faith" - Sartre "redeems" the word extracted from traditional religious uses and abuses hibbity glibbity - I hear poet Theodore Roethke's first line to his poem "The Sequel" -

"Was I too glib about eternal things...."

I could and have preached many an impromptu sermon to hapless converters who would "hope to turn me again" to Barnacled Piers, Inc., reductions of Irreducible Mystery which, Virginia, has a history, even pre-history (see John C. Caputo, that there was a beginning before "the Beginning" - a Pre-ginning and, alas, but can't be helped the iterative beginning and beginning on some metaphysical foundations specter of "meaning". But I'll end here to say that Sartre uses the word/concept "faith" in terms of living in good or bad faith with/to/for self, other, existenz, hash browns,

corner of Crackhurst and Waffle House and back again, all amor fati. 

The eye observes, swerves to miss the Mexican kid chasing the ball into Same Ol' Street ('same as it ever was' - David Byrne) , notes it with caffeine amphetamine laced and traces "the visionary company" of love's'stubbed cigarettes, sputum maps coughed and spat, no need for genius, which used to mean something but not any more so 

on with the boring center line endlessly 

dividing though broken on purpose suggesting 

a way to veer. 

No guide needed here. 

Fear is the drive shaft, 

and longing turns the wheel. 

**

The Paintings of Giacometti by Jean Paul Sartre opens at this link:

https://archive.org/details/situations00sart/page/175/mode/1up

**

Dear Incomprehension

That distant gazebo of a small
town wears white lights garlanded
round, and snow.

A boy without gloves reads alone.

He is no fool who takes his time and
place to know.

*

In Your Mercy - Malcolm Holcombe

Impromptus Re: Quarantine Remembered First Day Declared - Jung, Winquist, Duncan Views Re: Shadow & Such

A late in life letter of Carl Jung's written to a close friend:

One doesn’t shoot at sparrows with cannons, i.e., the God-image is a representation collective which everyone knows something about.

As for the nigredo, it is certain that no one is redeemed from a sin he has not committed, and that a man who stands on a peak
cannot climb it.

The humiliation allotted to each of us is implicit in his character.

If he seeks his wholeness seriously, he will step unawares into the hole destined for him, and out of this darkness the light will rise.

But the light cannot be enlightened.

If anyone feels he is in the light, I would never talk him into the darkness, for with his light he would seek and find something black which is not him at all.

The light cannot see its own peculiar blackness.

But if it dims, and he follows his twilight as he followed his light, then he will get into the night that is his.

If the light does not dim he would be a fool not to abide in it.

https://carljungdepthpsychologysite.blog/2020/07/19/carl-jung-this/#.XxRk_esg0uE.blogger

[NOTE: Click on images to enlarge & read/see better]

 

C. G. Jung

We do not mourn that we see through a glass darkly, 

we now rejoice in the dark loveliness of the glass. - John Dominic Crossan 

Charles E. Winquist

[SEE REPRISE NOTE (SO MARKED AS SUCH) BELOW WHAT IS HERE BELOW]

Some Jung, some clarity, about human shadow, the individual's need to address it within and its mitigating effect upon the mindless herd of humans mostly driven by the unconscious which they mistake as their own egoic direction and will. Jung (and Auden echoes too) says that all us we are lived by the archetypes and not how we perceive (and want) it to be, masters of our own fate, captains of our own soul. Auden declares that "we are lived by forces greater than ourselves."

HALP!

Moi in tweed upon Keene mountain driveway

March 18, 2020, just 6 days into March 13th

declaration of warrentine, I man, quarantine.

Both screen grabs, bad as they are, but appropriately dark and brown paged, and blurr-ish are fitting for thoughts just below, just spun out, not thought out and "essay-ish", but impromptus as steroids kick in (hyper-ng me up much but hopefully not too hyper'-bole). Read the quotes above and then then jump in of this paragraph as a picking up where they leave off or ongoingly ON ON ON AHEAD - 

so, the

"Also dot dot dot" :

Also . . . "the melting pot" image (springs to mind) used to describe the USA and democracy is image of, evocation of, the archemical vessal or "retort" in which utterly disparate elements are cooked as in a pressure cooker to alchemize such contrarieties of either/or (two year old child thinkin) but, rather, hard thing, into side-by-side complementaries. The goal is not to turn the many into homogenized monocular-visioned mass mind people. (such attempts now via MAGA insisting "all hail (hell) the Cyclopian State, born of One-Eyed Epimetheus, brother to Prometheus, the fore seer, he who seeis ahead. Epimetheus literally means "looks backward/behind - thus one eyed, concrete, no capacity for nuance, subtleties or even glare-ities but only let's go backward, let's regress and call it (call it "mind-fucking") backwards and pretend it is progress.

The goal of alchemy is to turn the rough, devalued, lowest elements, shite, iron, primal stuff, shadow into gold. The entire project depends utterly on the strength of the vessel to contain the "storm" ongoing in the "pot"/the "vessel"/the "container". It is NEVER a finished project....it is an ongoing process individually and collectively (each our work contributes to the process).

Thus there always was and ever shall be "shadow" work. individually and collectively. Thus Jung's ample writings about the shadow urging one and all toward the highly volatile AND creative task of the "confrontation with the unconscious, the apparent and not apparent opposites, an innate confliction (is that a word?) that perpetually stirs the alchemical pot - thus Jungian and other approaches toward shadow work, to CONSCIOUSLY work in in ourselves (all the while seeing it outside of ourselves in those "others" who carry our shadow) while understanding that shadow will not disappear or turn into all Light and Transcendence away from just what is - nature and reality - that fantasy of transcendence, understandable, and also part of consciousness, is best (in my lived experience and engagement) understood as the basis of all Creativity (cousin of which is de- and re- creation/creativity). Scoff if ye must (hopefully in an educated way aka having read Freud!) but read Sigmund Freud's book, Civilization and It's Discontents. Then read Jung's amplification from Freud in his writings about civilization and its mys- (as in mystery, mystic) and myth- (as in symbolic images, stories, et. al) regarding the depth dimensions of the psyche that are below the surface of ego awareness but do emerge and mug, and guide, and steer and veer in endless ways into (O Prometheus) creative/destructive/reborn enumerate variations for as is said, "Nature abhors a vacuum". As does, O Epimetheus, a melting pot.

First screen-grab is from Jung. Second one is from Charles E. Winquist's essay, The Epistemology of Darkness, re: the postmodern quest deriving from "we see through a glass darkly (Saint Paul's poetic observation)" to what Winquist creatively lends to us all via John Dominic Crossan's that "we now rejoice in the dark loveliness of the glass".

Joan. Sculpted decades ago. Now bedecks the deck 

in all weather. New snow upon earlier layers.

Mytho- and theo- poetics more than capable at such "seeing" in order to cypher the dark vales of human and creation's passages.

Some, two, Robert Duncan poems circling "dark seeing" which of course cannot evade or ignore light:

Just Seeing Sept. 27, 1980

takes over everywhere before names

this taking over of sand hillock and slope

as naming takes over as seeing takes over

this green spreading upreaching thick

fingers from their green light branching

into deep rose, into ruddy profusions

takes over from the grey ash dead colonies

lovely the debris the profusion the waste

here — over there too — the flowering begins

the sea pink-before-scarlet openings

when the sun comes thru cloud cover

there will be bees, the mass will be busy

coming to fruit — but lovely this grey

light — the deeper grey of the old colonies

burnd by the sun — the living thick

members taking over thriving

where a secret water runs

they spread out to ripen

 

[10.]

Let my verse be high and dry until

your mind flows in its own waters.

Let my rimes flow then into a rivering

until the feeling fires I mean

the whole to shine! It is a song of praise

in which the wound into its river runs

and winding shines from time to time,

dark and daylight glimmering

with hints of an ever happening rime.

It is a painting of the ephemeral

where what we took to be water glares

and in the heart of a solar mirror flares.

(1980)

Totem birch on the Keene, NY property.

Took this photo 2 days ago (3/11.

REPRISE from last year. NOTE of IMPORT (at least to me) is that on this day, March 13, 2020, New York State was officially declared "closed" "shut down" as covid19 had by then and was to rapidly alter life as was lived and known around the world. AND it was on that day that as such an announcement was made on the car radio we were pulling into the long mountainous driveway to a friend's mountain home for 10 days spring break which turned out to be, for me, 9 months of "warrentine", for my friends, they never left the mountain but for moving out of Long Island to the home here.

So 5 years ago, around 3 pm EST in Keene, NY, my life changed.  

And here I am again, 2025, March 13, back on or beneath the mountain, long shadow over the vale where the house sits, strong espresso at (my) hand, some Jung, poets, priests, monks and such, to read/ponder/debate with, my odd assortment of books stacked as company, too (the better company most often) - and, once again, as during my 9 months 2020 listening to at least one Bach sacred cantata a day until I had heard the entire recorded LOT of them on the Musical Heritage Society record label "Archiv".

My favorite one of the lot, the title, too, speaks to my pulling into greater arrival in my almost 73 years that Ich Hade Gunug - It Is Enough. Yes.

Ian Bostridge's masterful version of the aria:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3vflLnozos

**

A poem from a few years back, pre-covid - November 2018:

Distant Cousins, They're Dead Now Too - Views From Ropsend

"My hosanna is born of a furnace of doubt." - Doestoevsky 

Distant cousin, 

We're made more close by 
sorrow. Time's a borrowed 
longing, reaches us each to 
each - or yours to mine, for 
nowhere now we are but 
within, perhaps, merely a 
conceit but, I in you and 
you in vague, yes, me, a 
guess, a venality, vanity 
being a human trait common, 
quite. It is still a trace to 
be, to convene congenially. 

I now confess: 

I preach too much, 

from high horse be- 
sotted try to sing 
a'stammer with all of 
England's Pilgrim-more 
behind beneath me us 
who would be poets. 

It is tone that can home 
or disperse us, skin or 
spooks thinner than thin, 
reflections on walls or con- 
fused for traffic or meteors 
periferal. Didactic, pro- 
lific, heiractic much. Ig- 
noring transparency's bend, 


Let excursus end. 

Pretend or pray such 
extends us into more 
than infirm materiality 
but let it rest, or give, 
if rest can be given, 
riven from wrested 
Pleiades retread Maidens. 

For now, let's, craven. 

Encompassed much verily, 

God damn the West, its deity. 

Come cauterize come 
correct, impress of self, 
homo erect us bears 
on what's for other fools 
now to court, stalk, woo. 
To palmer instead Word- 
ward, on tinted oars 
bend, or pleining sails 
snail-pace skies turn 
away day from sun 
toward Polaris or 

Ursas Major/Minor 
two, close each 
to each, (they) 
almost would 
reach but for each 
a leg in stellar traps 
so endless beeward 
they wheel they 
limp simple enough 
bearing in mind 
to suffer redundant 
motion, helps to 
know as all natural 
things do no matter 
where placed in 
curved Space that 
night skies every- 
where indeed are 

a sad 

sad zoo. 


They're dead now too, 
the Bears, 

& most seen stars, 
a chorus of ill sorts, 

to keep time out of 
habit and rhyme as 

a kind of home to dwell, 

(in no where do I) 

but liminal bring 
them with, bearing 

in mind, to say with 
or without impunity, 

Goddamn the West, its deity.

And yet, and yet:

"The centripetal force on our planet is still

fearfully strong . . . I know I shall fall on the

ground and kiss those stones." - Dostoevsky