Building the Bigger

The ideal and the real. Burj Dubai tower is to be the highest building on the planet at about 3000 feet. (true height is yet to be determined as it is still under construction)
Designed by Skidmore, Merrill and Owings of Chicago and being built by Samsung of South Korea and a whole lot of sweat labor from the rest of the world.
I wondered where all of that oil money was going.
Click for Progress link






It is said that one will be able to see Babylon from the top!

Spider Flower

A cleome spinosa expressing itself. Turns out that if you snip a flower for indoor viewing, two more develop in its place. Snip those and four more appear. 1 2 4 8 16 32 64 . . . A geometric progression. Looks like this may be an import from South America and an annual although the seeds readily come up each year making it a perennial to me since I don't have to keep planting it!





Seng-Ts'an died A.D. 606. He was a Chinese Zen Master, and the Third Founding Teacher of Zen. The following is about half of the original poem. It is found in Stephen Mitchell's The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry. Harper Perennial, 1989.

THE MIND OF ABSOLUTE TRUST

The Great Way isn't difficult
for those who are unattached to their preferences.
Let go of longing and aversion,
and everything will be perfectly clear.
When you cling to a hairbreadth of distinction,
heaven and earth are set apart.

If you want to realize the truth,
don't be for or against.
The struggle between good and evil
is the primal disease of the mind.
Not grasping the deeper meaning,
you just trouble your mind's serenity.

As vast as infinite space,
it is perfect and lacks nothing.
But because you select and reject,
you can't perceive its true nature.
Don't get entangled in the world;
don't lose yourself in emptiness.
Be at peace in the oneness of things,
and all errors will disappear by themselves.

If you don't live the Tao,
you fall into assertion or denial.
Asserting that the world is real,
you are blind to its deeper reality;
denying that the world is real,
you are blind to the selflessness of all things.
The more you think about these matters,
the farther you are from the truth.

Step aside from all thinking,
and there is nowhere you can't go.
Returning to the root, you find the meaning;
chasing appearances, you lose their source.
At the moment of profound insight,
you transcend both appearance and emptiness.
Don't keep searching for the truth;
just let go of your opinions.

For the mind in harmony with the Tao,
all selfishness disappears.
With not even a trace of self-doubt,
you can trust the universe completely.
All at once you are free,
with nothing left to hold on to.
All is empty, brilliant,
perfect in its own being.

In the world of things as they are,
there is no self, no non-self.
If you want to describe its essence,
the best you can say is "Not-two."
In this "Not-two" nothing is separate,
and nothing in the world is excluded.

The enlightened of all times and places
have entered into this truth.
In it there is no gain or loss;
one instant is ten thousand years.
There is no here, no there;
infinity is right before your eyes.

The tiny is as large as the vast
when objective boundaries have vanished;
the vast is as small as the tiny
when you don't have external limits.
Being is an aspect of non-being;
non-being is no different from being.
Until you understand this truth,
you won't see anything clearly.

One is all; all are one.
When you realize this,
what reason for holiness or wisdom?
The mind of absolute trust
is beyond all thought, all striving,
is perfectly at peace, for in it
there is no yesterday, no today, no tomorrow.

I didn't get the entire poem on my original post; apparently still haven't gotten it.
The man was prolific

---

Into the Abyss

Marked Words


if only my father were here.

if my own heart weren't ready
to burn up burn down,
we could discuss the creativity
of protest,

but i stall
correcting my own ignitions:
over-over-over.
then i can't get
over it
because i can't
count
in units of
death.

i don't even know
how many. i don't
know
how to start. back
at thirteen colonies?
at forty-one shots?
at three thousand folks
in offices? at
twenty-year-olds
without college degrees, without
good salaries, joining
the military?
at the thousands whom the kids kill
dropping some bombs?
at my mom's mom?

she had tumors
on her brain,
made her think she saw
buildings
moving.
she'd say, 'mark my words,
the building moved.'
maybe she was
prophetic. no, she was just
dying, but we are all
just dying.

mark my words (i try
to hear words from before
i was born). i imagine her
last-minute-prophecies were prayers
now striking my eardrum
(boom boom boom,
the buildings are moving)
close my eyes -- close yours
(boom boom boom - mark my words).

which is your building
(you are a building)?
where are you moving
(boom boom boom)?

whose words are we marking with
these tears
from before we are born,
with gravity and inertia on their side?
they start from hot springs of betrayal, fall
out of the eyes of prophetic grandmothers
who call out for gods or validation,
down their cheeks into the eyes of their children,
and theirs and theirs, down
and down until they leave
just dry tracks on the chins of us.
us. whose tears
are these tonight
that will not dry?


This by Kathryn Baxter writing for "Poets Against War".

New Buddies

The newest bunch with sprig on the top-left squalking about something. She is testy these days maybe because the muskrat ate all of the eggs she was sitting on! Spotts to her left; seems that the white ring which is supposed to be around his neck spilled down onto his breast in vitreo. There are some, primarily in England and Australia, who raise these male ruen ducks to be shown and rated as to color of plumage and consistency to a prescribed standard. So por spots would be an outsider as would his brother adjacent with no white at all. The two males battled for primacy with bullyboy being finally put in his place by spotts. A wondrous spectacle. Another female is off to the right-- standoffish as usual. But she looks just like the female in front, just not as friendly.