Enormous Brilliant Being:

Enormous Brilliant Being:

The remarkable, to me at least, experience of totally letting go into whatever I am.

I mean letting go.

Just as Trungpa Rinpoche’s response to, “What do you do when you get depressed?” was, “I get more depressed.”

What is this one thing? This one thing that is always right here.

It is like there is no difference but there is some difference and that difference means very little if anything at all.

It could mean what we call life or death.

But gentleness seems really at the heart of it all: gentleness that is itself itself, and only this or that, which is authenticity.

Bateson might call this unitary mind.

That he began to articulate this manas vijnana (overarching, unitary relationship of being) in the vernacular, cutting the ties that bind into the patterns that connect, releasing life into life: Nansen’s cat.

Enormous Brilliant Being:

I do not look out at you.

You are me looking,

If even that;

Entire.

Kotatsu Roko

Wednesday, 19 May 2010

Prospect Hill, Somerville MA

While waiting for a friend at the medical arts building…

While waiting for a friend at the medical arts building…

These days I find myself wandering wherever

I am letting go into viscous ethers

buoying my body my being. Standing there

is feeling hearing smelling seeing reading

movement allowing letting be whatever is not

going away or riding away with whom

or whatever it might be thought to be but

is most likely not.

Allowing the entirety of the holding

to be as it is… Contrivance or not need

or not to change or move away… This is not

even absorbing or absorption. There is

nothing to absorb, to be absorbed, or

pass through. 

Standing in the vestibule bodies and minds

walking apart separately or arguing

with a posture which clearly is ourselves walking

away from ourselves; two or three beings in

one place getting away from that core seat of

pain. 

Disparate beings of this being let go. 

There are so many more, just more, divided

and dividing… As though there were someplace else. 

There isn’t.

John Bailes, Kotatsu Roko

Medical Arts Building, Route 9, Brookline

09:VI:2010

A Response to Delphine’s: Speaking in Tongues.

A Response to Delphine’s: Speaking in Tongues.

Tongues in speaking spring leaks

sautéed in olive oil with garlic

and cheese...

which taste almost like

that Moroccan relative

of artichokes

the name of which

no one can remember

now.

Cardoon!

Also known as

Cynara cardunculus

further north.

John Bailes, Kotatsu Roko

Prospect Hill

Thursday, 2 July 2009

The entire bone of the thigh

 

  

The entire bone of the thigh
Hollowed out, marrow gone.
Only the wind plays through.
This skin a sort of reed     vibrating.

 

John Bailes, Kotatsu Roko

Prospect Hill

Thursday, 26 August 2010

More middle of the night rambling,

More middle of the night rambling, this time with Eihei, Tiantong (Dogen's teacher in China, Rujing) and our other friends hovering and guiding.  I even bumped into Vasubandhu and Asanga, brothers literally and dharmically. 

Painting in

The eyes

Of the Buddha

I see.

Raising a whisk

Or tossing it down

This last breath

Lets go.

Rising In spirals

Warm air gyres

Over the peak

This wild bird.

Standing here, now…or lying down

There is nothing

That is somewhere

Else.

John Bailes, Kotatsu Roko

Prospect Hill

Middle of the Night, Wednesday, 6 October 2010

The Sense of Smell

The Sense of Smell


each of us is going to die

        the scent of blueberries
                      warm oatmeal
                                coffee

       that girl or boy in my dream

       a crisp autumn morning

what is this one thing?


having never really accomplished anything
i’ve followed the scent
of this one pulsing heart
the Sweet taste of Saliva
in this mouth
OpenS.


Kotatsu Roko
Prospect Hill
Early morning, Wednesday, 27:X:2010

Roses Everywhere with Robyn

                              Robyn Ellenbogen: Looking Up at Roses Everywhere

                      Roses everywhere: 
                      Who says reflections are not true love?
                      I fall for countless petals wherever they may occur.
                      Red, gold, and blue apparitions;
                      Thighs, hips and eyes
                      All in a dew drop.

John Bailes, Kotatsu Roko

A response to David Schneider

08 October, 2010

Robyn Ellenbogen Art a response to this poem.