Riotous Weaving

A weaving of glossy vines, fat leaves shaped like hearts, and the flowers of the morning glory, delicate yellow and orange bursts, cascade over the entranceway, snake around tree trunks, grow thick over the fences. Dandelions sprout everywhere, crowds of buttercups cup open to the light. Pink wild roses draw bees in to their ecstasy. It is a thriving mess. Reminders of a memory grown thick with overgrowth and in need of pruning. What is this way of clarifying the mind? Of sweeping the garden clean? I would rather the tangled underbrush and profusion of weeds and plants than a manicured mind no matter how appealing it seems. Perhaps it's the African jungle of my childhood, and memories of the cadences of growth, riotous all around, and free to be invasive, holy, repulsive, beautiful, rooted in rich soil, symphonic under the sun. Let it run rampant, my memory, my heirloom.

Reading Is Writing

Reading is a form of writing. As I creatively interpret what I am reading, I have a special gold-tipped technical pencil that has accompanied me through many books over many years, underlining what I love or what strikes me, writing notes in the margins, and on re-reading, writing more notes. Writing along with what I’m reading is an outering of the inner process of re-creating and re-interpreting an author's writing. Reading is as creative an act as writing is. At their best, both are happy hard work. And I don't just mean critically reading, I mean deeply reading, with the mind and the heart. If I have a book on my shelf without a mark in it, it’s like it wasn’t inspiring or thought-provoking, didn’t require the writing that the best reading is.

Reading on the NET takes away the ability to write what you're reading because you can't write on the screen; it is not like a page. Hence it's more like endlessly scanning articles, news reports, discussion group emails, e-books that you can print or copy over to files, but who does that regularly enough?

What we need is a way to automatically save writing that we love, or are intrigued by, or captivated by, or angered by, or inspired by, easily, with the press of a key, and the ability to underline, make notes in the margins, to write what we are reading.

I love the memories that my books are -- not only what they are about, but of my own journey through them, traced out in those penciled lines, scribbled comments, stars, and exclamations...

The Earth Is Teeming With Becoming

The spinning globe where we live, move, have our being is a highly creative planet. Consider the diversity of plant life, of animal life, the complex balances of our atmosphere. Let images of it drift through your mind: green leaves, flowers, trees, roots, soil, earth, rocks, sand, water, creatures small and large on desert, mountain, plain, valley, in the ocean, on land, in the air, and people, filling, covering the globe, of every race and type, in all environments, a flowing, interweaving complexity of forms, of intelligences, of evolution.

The earth is teeming with becoming.

Earth isn't striving to become invisible, to become spirit. Earth is a great artist, forever creating new forms out of old. How about thinking like this: spirit is life-force, purely, simply, which exists in abundance and is not a product of a separate divine substance; rather we are an 'emergent consciousness,' growing out of the unending dancing and singing of the fundamental units of matter of which we, and everything, is composed.

Nestled as we are here, in the starry sky, under our sun's blessing.

The Threshold That Travels With You

On the threshold, between, juxtaposed, straddled, the one and the other, the place of seeing, from whence to where, a doorway stood at, always open, the border, the crossing never crossed, waiting, moving with the threshold as it hovers over horizon after horizon, new vistas, old habits, new experiences, memories, all framing the doorway I forever travel through.

Today, with soft laughter, the doorway has grown thick with vines and jewels, birds nest in the leaves, feathers float over the step, spread like a carpet welcoming you.

I place jewels in your hair, ruby, diamond, sapphire, amethyst, and power feathers, and dance the dance of the threshold with you, the one and the other, stamping our feet, waving our arms, enjoying the moment between, our merry madness echoing across the streets, the fields, the mountains, and over the ocean.

We fly with our thresholds, carrying the next moment with us, when it will all tumble into place, at last, understanding, fully realized, the salt air crisp against our nostrils, our cheeks lit, our hair streaming, the panorama of colours at dusk fiery on the edge of the evening as it rushes on.

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*"You" is always you, my reader, who is creating this writing by reading it...

Our relationship with ourself, softly, softly...

Today, it's go ... softly, without resistance, softly, without worry, softly, without thought for anything but the sensitivity around me, the delicate balances, the nuance, everywhere, everyone I see, the dozens and dozens of people I brush past, softly ... I see how hard you are trying, I see how much effort you put into living, loving, stiving, looking after yourself, your family, your work, your friends, your life ... softly, I witness you, perhaps I am in the line behind you at the grocer's, watching your back, your graceful movement as you lift items from the cart to the counter, your energy of survival delicate but strong, and we smile at each other, before moving on ... all day, the soft smiles with my children, aquaintances, strangers ... a treat of almost pure chocolate on the way home in the train, and even the mountains a haze of indigo velvety in the distance jagged against a gently darkening sky ... in the softest way, I say this to you.

This Is What My Blog Is About

Krishnamurti says, "You cannot depend on anybody. There is no guide, no teacher, no authority. There is only you -- your relationship with others and the world -- there is nothing else." (Not even Krishnamurti.)

This is what my blog is about. Only our relationship with ourselves, each other, the world. There is nothing else. If it doesn't happen here, in these relationships, it happens nowhere.

Only the power of the connection, I must remember to remember to tell you that. And that you are your own teacher. The first and final affirmation: "I am that I am."

I can't travel into what is disappearing any further than this.

The Great Bliss Queen's Mansion of Flaming Bliss

This is a love poem. Listen to 'The Great Bliss Queen's Mansion of Flaming Bliss'.

Great Bliss Queen, acrylic on canvas, 29.5"x35.25", & India Ink drawing on parchment paper, Brenda Clews 2003  

Place of surrender, of the softness of the lotus and the heat of its flames, the way everything dissolves, the way I am aroused and caressed, barely remembering who I am, this way of falling into what is receiving us. That first time, I see you on the other side, across the dance floor, dancing... The sensual dance of the liquid fire of flaming bliss. A tantrayana. In the Tibetan texts, she, the place of the coming to be, the arising of all existents, of the coming and going, the Great Bliss Queen a matrix,¹ the essence of the great expanse.² She rises from the water, a vision, Jigmay Lingpa, an 18th c Tibetan visionary, "From the mouth of the lotus was born The swift goddess, heroic liberator Who went forth in human form Amid the snowy mountains of Tibet."³ Aren't we all born from lotuses? Aren't all lotuses bliss? The secret history of the life of the Queen of Tibet, her Lute Song of the Gandharvas,⁴ an epic map to enlightenment, her namthar,⁵ way of liberation, balancing love and compassion, a limitless ability to help others... The Great Bliss Queen Dakini's mandala of flowing awareness, flaming mansion of bliss, an entryway into the expanse of reality. Imagining into, that space, its mindfulness, this tantra, becoming one with the generative force, this secret path That evening with you... disappearing into the empty vastness of love. Is Buddhism an extended meditation on the self? And mindfulness consciousness of the self in its unfolding? This complex construction of self, nexus of who I am, you are, watching the process of ourselves unfold... ...if I had a stable and solid 'self' that is, instead of this mutable, floating, ever-changing and constantly renewed consciousness... Yeshe Tsogyal, Great Bliss Divine Queen, in her Lute Song, embedded as icon, transparent and luminous as the water, heroine, a founder of Tibetan Buddhism, enlightened girl, woman, Queen, a Buddha, back there, in the 8th century, when she comes out of the caves with her consort/lover, where she has disappeared for months, blissing out, from her swollen, love-bitten lips, red as flames, says, and after the ordeals in the mountains of Tibet meditating alone through the Winters, without food or clothing or warmth, where she has learnt to generate heat from within, to draw nectar from the air, where she has learnt not to dissolve into passion but to allow passion to dissolve her, Yeshe Tsogyal says, "If there is no mingling of bliss with voidness All is useless... Taste rather bliss and voidness, as they rise, united!"⁶ The bliss and the void... this primal purity. Yeshe Tsogyal does not represent awareness, but the gift of awareness. Do we sometimes have visions which define our lives? Which define how we understand the way our consciousness exists in the continuum we float in? I am dancing with my eyes closed, can I witness your light? ...a vision, years ago, between dream and waking, in the black, black night, of the nothingness on which all matter rests... the void, the great emptiness, non-being... the way all form, all energy collected into form, are waves flowing on nothing, a nothingness so deep as to be without depth, pervasive, everywhere, what each molecule rests on, each vibrating cell of life, the nothingness all consuming... That night with you, your large body enveloping mine, your intensity, hunger, in the passion for each other, its fire, we undress peeling layers until we, tongue, touch, wet, skin sliding on skin, hot, electric then my body disappearing into emptiness... cheek, lip, tongue, breast, dissolving like the dark side of the moon, where there is no light, no air, only the vast and open cosmos, and can I call it terrifying, this loss, of me, me spinning into, crumbling into moondust under your hot breath... Consumed into emptiness... blissful waves of orgasms... our bodies performing a music of light our essence, shining, shining through each other making each other appear, your touch, the serenity of you, your breath, your body, your energy flowing, you an anchor of light I come back to in the ocean flowing, and then dipping back into the extinguishing... My being is fragile, arbitrary. I disappear into you, past you I am floating on the other side of the cosmos my body of bliss, waves of bliss until only the waves of bliss remain... a wake of bliss spreading, the clear light, like lightning The Queen and the King cause the thunder to roll over the mountains of Tibet. The Queen and her consort practice the secret tantra. The Bliss Queen is a passionately happy deity. In her rainbow body, the heavens bright with thousands of spirits, she departs, wise and profound Mother, leaving a trail of miracles like lotus petals... ...and when I meditate... that energy, vital energy, percolating, ever-renewing, subtle energies, delicate winds, from the unmanifest to the manifest, creating, maintaining, dissolving, everything, what we see, think, feel, whispering the intention of non-being to be, and in being dissolving again into nothingness... vast, complex, intricate, this febrile field of life with all its appearings and disappearings, its passion and its cessation, its constant, eternal flow recreating itself every moment, anew... © 2003 Brenda Clews Notes ---- ¹ "Matrix" refers to the womb of Yeshe Tsogyal (777-837), the Great Bliss Queen, ""a womb that is reality." To know this reality, which Buddhists also call emptiness, is to give birth to enlightenment.” Anne Carolyn Klein, Meeting the Great Bliss Queen (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995), p. 156. Similarly, in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, Prajnaparamittra means ‘emptiness,’ which is synonymous with ‘great mother wisdom.’ ² Line taken from the title of the liturgy of Yeshe Tsogyal by Jigmay Lingpa (1729-98), “famous scholar-practitioner,”Long chen sNying thig rza pod (The Very Essence of the Great Expanse), quoted in Great Bliss Queen, ftn.3, p.263. ³ Jigmay Lingpa, quoted in Great Bliss Queen, p.15. ⁴ Lady of the Lotus-Born, The Life and Enlightenment of Yeshe Tsogyal, A Translation of The Lute Song of the Gandharvas, A Revelation in Eight Chapters of the Secret History of the Life and Enlightenment of Yeshe Tsogyal, Queen of Tibet, trans. The Padmakara Translation Group (Boston: Shambhala, 1999). ⁵ A namthar is a “tale of liberation,” Lady of the Lotus-Born, p.xiii. ⁶ Lady of the Lotus-Born, p. 173. Works Cited Klein, Anne Carolyn. Meeting the Great Bliss Queen. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. The Padmakara Translation Group. Lady of the Lotus-Born, The Life and Enlightenment of Yeshe Tsogyal, A Translation of The Lute Song of the Gandharvas, A Revelation in Eight Chapters of the Secret History of the Life and Enlightenment of Yeshe Tsogyal, Queen of Tibet. Boston: Shambhala, 1999. Extended Bibliography Anand, Margo. The Art of Sexual Magic. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1995. Arguelles, Jose and Miriam. Mandala. Boulder, Colorado: Shambhala, 1972. Chopel, Gedun. Trans. Jeffrey Hopkins. Tibetan Arts of Love: Sex, Orgasm & Spiritual Healing. Ithica, New York: Snow Lion Publications, 1992. Danielou, Alain, Trans. The Complete Kama Sutra. Rochester, Vermont: Park Street Press, 1994. Feuerstein, Georg. Tantra: The Path of Ecstasy. Boston: Shambhala, 1998. Khanna, Madhu. Yantra: The Tantric Symbol of Cosmic Unity. London: Thames & Hudson, 1979. King, Francis. Tantra: The Way of Action. Rochester, Vermont: Destiny Books, 1990. Lacroix, Nitya. The Art of Tantric Sex. London: Dorling Kindersley, 1977. Mann, A.T., and Lyle, Jane. Sacred Sexuality. Rockport, Massachusetts: Element Books, 1995. Rawson, Philip. The Art of Tantra. Greenwich, Connecticut: New York Graphic Society, 1973. Rawson, Philip. The Art of Tantra. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978. Shaw, Miranda. Passionate Enlightenment: Women in Tantric Buddhism. Princeton: New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994. This poem was originally presented at, Mothering, Religion and Spirituality, October 24-26, 2003, York University, Toronto. It's been read at a number of venues, York University, the University of Toronto, and the Victory Cafe in Toronto, since then.