makhzan i shirq

The Way That Can

2011-04-02T14:30:00.002-05:00

The way that can be weighed is not the actual way.

The way that can be relayed is not the real way.

The way that can be mapped is not the way you will find.

The way in the instructions is not exactly how it plays out.

Can the way be taught? Can the way be learned?

"The Tao will teach you," my teacher said.

Sofia

2011-01-02T12:49:00.002-06:00

Sofia is hidden away where her only visitor is God. Diligent seekers can find her. She is imprisoned in the world. Her tears are our waters.

Wetlands foxes hawks coyotes the suburbs have never been more beautiful.

Corn

2010-06-29T19:19:00.003-05:00

Composed on a hayrack ride at the Illinois Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (aka Quakers).

Corn

Corn corn corn corn
Corn corn corn corn
I'm from Illinois.
Corn corn corn corn
Corn corn corn corn

Ever read the ingredients on food?
There's corn in bread, corn in jelly,
corn in peanut butter, and corn-fed meat.
Corn--the miracle food--it's in every food group!

Corn corn corn corn
Corn corn corn corn
AND YET

The corn in the fields
Still sends down roots,
Still reaches for the sky

Corn still drinks up water,
Soaks in sunlight,
Ripples in the breeze.

Yes, even the corn is infused with spirit,
Alchemically transmuting the elements
Into life, to give us life.

Corn corn corn corn
Corn corn corn corn
Let us give thanks.
Corn corn corn corn
corn corn corn con

Amen.

May Day

2010-05-14T17:14:00.002-05:00

And all the talk is about
politics, economy, and jobs,
the false idols of our era

How can anyone "create good jobs"?!
Your only job is to do what you are inspired to do,
the only good job is NO JOB AT ALL

Let us realize--we are entering
the POST-OCCUPATION era.
A little less politics, economy, and jobs,
a little more PAGAN REVELRY!

Wabi Sabi

2010-01-30T16:35:00.004-06:00

The way is so plain, we don’t even see it

“Wabi-sabi is a Japanese term that refers to a captivating work of art with a distinctive flaw that embodies the idiosyncratic humanity of its creator. An aqua groove in an otherwise perfectly green ceramic pot may give it wabi-sabi. A skilled blues singer who intentionally wails out of pitch for a moment may be expressing wabi-sabi. Wabi-sabi is rooted in the idea that perfection is a kind of death.”

“The essence of Wabi-sabi is that true beauty, whether it comes from an object, architecture, or visual art, doesn’t reveal itself until the winds of time have had their say. Beauty is in the cracks, the worn spots, and the imperfect lines.” --Todd Dominey, quoted in Pronoia

“‘Wabi-sabi is a kind of beauty that’s imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete,’ says Leonard Koren in his book Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets and Philosophers. It differs from Western notions that beauty resides in the ‘monumental, spectacular, and enduring.’ It’s about ‘the minor and the hidden, the tentative and the ephemeral: things so subtle and evanescent they are almost invisible at first glance.’”

Isn’t postmodernism great? Wabi-sabi allows me to embrace that which I would ordinarily judge, condemn, and reject. My heart can open itself a teensy bit more to the blessings that are continually raining upon us.

Thoughts at the YMCA, downtown Springfield, Illinois

These are good people. They’re just folks.

They’re practically normal, and normally practical.

It’s difficult for me to relate to them—

When suddenly I see they are

Wabi-sabi

Perfectly ordinary

Ordinary and perfect:

Who can improve upon God’s work?

Appreciate it.

Thanks and praises!

O7 (*

Downtown in the desert of pavement,

Patches of melting snow reveal

Moss, vivid green,

Soaking up gloomy January daylight—

Right behind the Governor’s mansion

By Vachel’s house.

Indicator of a daoist grotto

Perfectly natural, naturally perfect

Parking lot or not,

No one can stop Creation

Thanks and praises!

delete and defer

2009-12-24T20:28:00.002-06:00

From the Wake Up Call email I subscribed to at Dr. Laurie Helgoe's site.

Wake Up Call for your holidays:

Delete and Defer.

Here’s my wish for you: Write down everything you think you “have to” do right now. Ask why. Delete what doesn’t give you joy. Defer what can wait. And have a lighter, more peaceful holiday.

Blessings,

Laurie

Daydream Power!

2009-05-13T21:07:00.005-05:00

I'm an unreformed daydreamer ...

Surprise! Daydreaming Really Works The Brain.

"Contrary to the notion that daydreaming is a sign of laziness, letting the mind wander can actually let the parts of the brain associated with problem-solving become active, a new study finds."

I wish I could send this to one teacher in particular, from 6th grade, I remember her saying "where are you now, India?!" Well, for a minute, I wasn't stuck in a room with her under fluorescent lights having to attend to something that didn't interest me and might have been developmentally inappropriate. And I MIGHT have been letting my mind work on real problems! Sure glad I unschool my kid (and myself) nowadays!

Here's to the imagination.

P.S.: this is just a quibble, perhaps, but looking over this post again I see the term "problem-solving" and I recall once seeing the phrase "to problem solve" and wondering what happened to the ability to just solve problems. I google "to problem solve" and there are a ton of hits (literally!). Language evolves despite the efforts of hypercorrect grammarians--perhaps that's an example of institutional counterproductivity. I remind myself that I'm a descriptivist, not a prescriptivist, though my stint as a proofreader in a legal office with The State impressed grammar deeply into my brain. Here's to universal relocaldiversification. Mutually intelligible dialects for all!

thinner than the paper on which it is printed

2009-04-03T09:13:00.002-05:00

I smirk and shrug at the paradoxes of a) reading Thoreau's journal online, and b) usually not even reading it--not enough time. But sometimes something catches my eye:

The last two Tribunes I have not looked at. I have no time to read newspapers. If you chance to live and move and have your being in that thin stratum in which the events which make the news transpire,—thinner than the paper on which it is printed,—then these things will fill the world for you; but if you soar above or dive below that plane, you cannot remember nor be reminded of them.

From the Blog of Henry David Thoreau, 3 April 1853

Green Hermeticism

2009-03-22T11:09:00.004-05:00

I read the book Green Hermeticism last year, and enjoyed it. Recently a pal pointed me to this conversation on the topic, between David Levi Strauss, Peter Lamborn Wilson, and Christopher Bamford. Highlights:

Wilson: .... As a writer, and we’re all writers, the temptation is to look upon the Green Hermeticism book as the real product here, but I continually struggle against that, or the conference as the product, or even the academic course as the product. That’s not enough. If there isn’t a garden, if there isn’t a laboratory, if there isn’t a bioremediation project, if there isn’t something that can move into the real world as well as the intellectual world, it isn’t enough.

One reason that Chris and I are so interested in Hermeticism is that it’s the western way, without not being the oriental way. I mean, since Hermeticism exists in Islam, and Hinduism, and even Taoism, it’s also the oriental way. It seems like the way which doesn’t get in the way of anybody else’s way. Which seems like a real advantage, possibly. That it’s not only Buddhism, or only Christianity, or only secular science. But it could be all those things together with an overarching, unifying imagery.

Bamford: What’s fascinating about the whole alchemical, Hermetic picture is that it is absolutely universal and goes right back to the beginning—to the primordial revelations, to the first prophet or shaman. How could it be otherwise? Humanity has its being in nature, on earth, under the stars. Therefore nature, the earth, and the stars are common to all spiritual traditions and cultures. Every spiritual tradition and religious epoch has its sacred science, that is taught by nature. All traditions have an alchemical or Hermetic cosmological aspect.
....
Bamford: One of the pathologies we suffer from is an extreme confusion of means and ends. And Hermeticism and alchemy are always means to a single end, which is, depending on who would say it, divine service or healing—so that the divine may become all in all, the hidden treasure known, and the gods rejoice, and put forth their being with us on earth. Those are always the ends. Hermeticism is a means. But when you say “green capitalism,” the end is capitalism. It just happens to be green. Green has more of a true end, which would be service, healing.

(hmm, sounds a little bit like permaculture to me)

HAPPY SPRING, FOLKS!!

The Do-Nothing Movement

2009-02-18T14:04:00.003-06:00

Shaykha Sharqi recently read Masanobu Fukuoka's The Natural Way of Farming, a sequel to his One-Straw Revolution. She kept reading me sections from it that we both loved. Fukuoka-sensei is a Yoda of gardening, deeply rooted in the Source.

"Man created with his own hands the need for labor and toil."

"To achieve a humanity and a society where nothing needs to be done, man must look over everything he has done and rid himself one by one of th efalse visions and concepts that permeate him and his society. This is what the "do nothing" movement is all about."

Free and Lawless

2009-01-02T09:05:00.003-06:00

From The Blog of Henry David Thoreau:

Essentially your truest poetic sentence is as free and lawless as a lamb’s bleat. The grammarian is often one who can neither cry nor laugh, yet thinks that he can express human emotions. So the posture-masters tell you how you shall walk,—turning your toes out, perhaps, excessively,—but so the beautiful walkers are not made.

A Thought for Election Day

2008-11-04T20:40:00.006-06:00

Coincidentally. A nice antidote to media-hyped election hoopla. From The Blog of Henry David Thoreau. It reminds me of going out to stack firewood and plant garlic today, not to mention walk around the neighborhood with colorful leaves dancing down in the breeze, highs in the seventies, the sky clear and sunny. How many times did I say "OH, it's SUCH a beautiful day!"? I may have done work, but I'm sure glad I wasn't employed, stuck inside under fluorescent lights, or outside sweating toiling, and either way counting minutes til break.

I got three "I voted" stickers today--on my permaculture shirt that I wore for the occasion. I want an "I planted" sticker to go with them. But I'll be enjoying the garlic, and the heat from the firewood. November weather is on the way in a few days. I'm pre-paying my utility bills by refusing to work full time and instead taking advantage of the "waste" that litters our yard from disasters that interrupted the Disaster. (link to pdf, sorry I can't find the text in html)

Oh yeah, the quote:

Thoreau's Journal: 04-Nov-1852
Must be out-of-doors enough to get experience of wholesome reality, as a ballast to thought and sentiment. Health requires this relaxation, this aimless life. This life in the present. Let a man have thought what he will of Nature in the house, she will still be novel outdoors. I keep out of doors for the sake of the mineral, vegetable, and animal in me.

Selling vs. Saving

2008-10-26T21:26:00.002-05:00

In order to save your soul, stop selling your soul. In order to save others' souls, facilitate their stopping selling their souls.

paradise communities

2008-10-22T22:31:00.002-05:00

I posted an excerpt here, and then looked at the next part I had noted to note, and decided to post it here. It's topical. :) From Richard Heinberg, Memories and Visions of Paradise (1989), p. 157:

The effort of creating and maintaining an intentional community, even for a few years, brings with it a kind of experience that is unattainable in the ordinary urban environment. In the best instance, communal life offers the chance to associate closely with a few friends who share a commitment to living consistently according to their highest vision.

What makes some communities thrive and others dissolve? There are a few essential issues that inevitably arise in every communal group-questions of leadership and decision making, of the division of labor, and of the distribution of material goods-whose resolution requires an ongoing compromise on the part of the egos of all concerned. The communities that survive the longest are those in which members are somehow motivated to transcend their own wants and fears for the good of the whole. In the great majority of cases, that motivation arises from a shared paradisal vision and a shared sense of the sacred. Every sociological study of cooperative communities has come to essentially the same conclusion: when the vision dies, the community dies.

the idols fall

2008-10-09T21:29:00.003-05:00

I get the distinct feeling this is how people act when their idols' falseness is revealed. How sad that people commit suicide over stuff like this. It's just a little reminder, Hu is really in charge. Same with the hurricanes that sweep away our poorly designed coastal developments.

Remember the overarching underlying reality. It's by grace that we're here to play these little games to begin with. Just remember where it all really comes from and is going to.

Nature loss 'dwarfs bank crisis'

We do not pwn the land, the land pwnz us.

And it's all within the uncontainable container.

Paradoxically, the most transcendently high is the same as the deepest within.

Now listening: Beck, "Rowboat" ("Pick me up, and give me some alcohol.")

Iblis, the Devil, the Double

2008-09-30T11:53:00.003-05:00

The story goes that, when God commanded the angels to bow to Adam, Iblis refused. Did he know we could go astray?

Iblis proved it by leading us astray. But now that we're there, he leads us astray again--back to the Garden.

Iblis is that part of Allah that best knows our hearts. When we ate the fruit (or grain of wheat), we gained not the knowledge of good & evil, but the pretense of that knowledge, appointing ourselves emperors of the world. We decide which species should live, and which should die. If the Truth is actually otherwise, then the one who flouts authority & encourages us to undermine and abandon it is, paradoxically, our saviour. Leading us away from living in the hands of the pharaohs, toward living in the hands of the god(s). The Empire itself, of course, exists only within the hands of the god(s), if only it would realize that!

The dervish, continually stepping out of the comfortable garments of ritual, routine, rut, continually turns the eye of hir heart toward hir Lord, allowing hirself to be led toward ex-stasis. We, then, are trying to grow the Garden within the walls of Empire. We live in both worlds at once, liminally--again, the poor sap in the doorway straddling the threshold.

Jesus Hussein Christ

2008-09-12T21:28:00.002-05:00

Jesus was a taqwacore
dready, pierced, and drinking
kicking it with the crusties
and chasing the bankers from his father's house

"You are my center as I'm spinning away"
--Radiohead ("Videotape")

Jesus H. Christ

2008-09-12T21:26:00.002-05:00

Jesus was a wino
waitin' in the breadline
FUCK THIS!
Seize the bakery!
We make bread for all!
And wine!
And healing!
You are free!

DON'T LOOK!

2008-09-12T21:25:00.002-05:00

DON'T LOOK!
the world is already ending
DON'T LOOK!
new hardy wild adaptations
are thriving in the cracks

In this way, all things may be at peace.

2008-08-08T16:37:00.002-05:00

Lao Tzu's Tao: Plain English Adaptation

as clear as the light of day, it's beautifully unpretentious.

(another great find of Ran Prieur's.)

Only Criminals Have the Right

2008-07-30T09:35:00.003-05:00

to speak of right and wrong

from a poster by CrimethInc.

Only Criminals Have the Right To Speak of Right and Wrong

It's convenient for those whose obedience is rewarded with financial stability and social status to moralize about submission to the law. When they insist that the established channels are always the most appropriate and effective, we have to ask: are they capable of honestly considering the alternative?

There have always been people who consider the law of the land more important than the dictates of conscience. They hanged John Brown for treason; they looked the other way as Jews were carted off to Dachau; for them, statutes and property rights are more precious than rainforests, polar icecaps, or native peoples. In abdicating the responsibility to determine right and wrong for themselves, they elevate the Nuremberg defense to a moral principle--a principle they don't shrink from forcing on others.

Only those who are willing to break the law can be trusted to do what they truly believe is right. In stepping out of line, they prove that they are not acting solely out of cowardice, obedience, or conformity. They may make mistakes, they may have questionable motives of their own, but they never make the excuse of duty.

declare independence!

2008-07-22T22:21:00.001-05:00

More from Shaykha Sharqi!

od bless you all.

hakim

Infinite Evil from Finite Games?

2008-06-23T16:59:00.005-05:00

I've blogged about this elsewhere, and since then I've read the book, and just the other day I grabbed it off the shelf to see exactly what it said about the origin of evil. From section 31:

Evil is never intended as evil. Indeed, the contradiction inherent in all evil is that it originates in the desire to eliminate evil. "The only good Indian is a dead Indian."
....
Infinite players understand the inescapable likelihood of evil. They therefore do not attempt to eliminate evil in others, for to do so is the very impulse of evil itself, and therefore a contradiction. They only attempt paradoxically to recognize in themselves the evil that takes the form of attempting to eliminate evil elsewhere.

Evil is not the inclusion of finite games in an infinite game, but the restriction of all play to one or another finite game.

The refusal to join a crusade to eliminate evil is shirq.

Shaykha Sharqi on Shirq

2008-05-18T22:36:00.001-05:00

I like having my life at such a slow pace, with my consumption at a minimum. I have time to tap into my own waste stream and reclaim it because my waste stream is more like molasses than lightning. And these are brief glimpses of what brings about this intense feeling of community. It's coming from the inside, and even though I'm telling you perfectly boring things, they are the most satisfying in the world. And you can't buy it, no matter how many credit cards you have.

from a comment over here

WANTED

2008-04-27T21:33:00.003-05:00

WANTED:
A new twist. To prevent our past from becoming our future.

Hocus Pocus & Mumbo Jumbo.

Can we only hope that by keeping our heads down & nurturing local grassroots community, we will be too well established for the authorities to eradicate once they catch wind of us?

Qahvistan.

4 1/3 = 13/3

prayer

2008-04-27T21:26:00.001-05:00

"I tripped on the threshold &
spilled my qahve
oops."
--Dervishy Daoud, folktalez

Thanks & praises to
the Source
from which all comes
to which all returns
unknowable mystery
within us
without which, nothing
thanks & praises
amen

Doing More With Less

2008-04-21T21:31:00.001-05:00

Doing More With Less in defense of creative loafing!

from the Bhang-Nama

2008-04-20T07:35:00.000-05:00

by Hakim Bey

The Indo-Iranian version of this international dervish style clearly also owes something to the much more ancient Shaivite tradition, which at one time spread as far north as the Kushan and Saka Empires beyond the Pamirs. The Indian dervishes are Islamized saddhus--but in fact the way of life and the veneration of Cannabis may be far older than any religion: we may be looking at the survival of world-wide Neolithic shamanism. In some syncretistic sects of North India and Bengal sufism and tantra merge seamlessly. Ganesh Baba claimed sufi affiliations.

If this kind of "Orientalism" now seems too romantic, nevertheless it reflects a kind of romanticism with its own adherents in the Orient. A popular universalism of roses, hashish, the tombs of saints, yogis who quote Hafez, dervishes who venerate lingams, etc., etc., can be picked up direct on the ground, not just from books by Oxbridge dons. The poet laureate of this tradition was Kabir of Benares. The political program is radical tolerance and mutual respect, a rapprochement often eased by a shared tasted for Cannabis--and where else better than Benares, Shiva's sacred city?

shirq is

2008-04-18T13:09:00.000-05:00

shirq is like a pun so obvious it only makes fools laugh.

shirq is edible weeds that are more nutritious than vegetables.

shirq is what makes the TAZ work

shirq is the permaculture principle of leverage

I won't say it but shirq is wu wei

shirq is when a reliable cog pops free

shirq is heresy.

shirq is experiencing the divine where others insist on its impossibility.

shirq is refusing to pledge allegiance to the Empire in all its guises.

shirq is widening the cracks from the Cave of Treasures--also known as the Black Iron Prison--to nurture the Palm Tree Garden.

shirq says the people were not made for the law, the law was made for the people.

shirq is being prepared for surprise, rather than being prepared against surprise.

shirq is gleaning, scavenging, foraging, sharing, and

shirq is the wealth of knowing enough is enough.

shirq is food, water, shelter, and recreation.

shirq lifts the spirit, shakes off the unnecessary burdens, and lends a hand.