n e u f n e u f: confusion will be my epitaph

18 April 2007

confusion will be my epitaph

I've been dreaming my mother is trying to kill me since I was very young. It started out that I would be someplace with my family, but suddenly they'd be gone and something terrifying was trying to get me... and my legs wouldn't work and my screams would make no sound. I think I might have made it to seven by the time these morphed into my mother trying to kill me. Then, somewhere in my thirties my sister joined her. Then it would be my sister, and my mother was in on it. I'm relieved to note that my dad has never been in on this conspiracy to kill me... except insofar as he's never swooped in to save me.

Since beginning the Zen thing for real, any relative showing up in my dreams is the alarm bell for working out problems in the relative vs. absolute, but is that accounting for my mounting terror upon meeting them there?

Last night my sister showed up. But she wasn't my sister. She was an executive of a corporation, with a new face and voice, and impeccably groomed... that plutocratic polish that transcends clean and neat... and my fright was quite nearly abject terror. I kept starting to swim up from the dream, singing and hearing confusion will be my epitaph in the Jakko Jakszyk version, and falling back into the pit with this sister in it, maybe even as though the King Crimson lyric was my cross against the vampire of relative truth. Now I have to figure out how to stop being so frightened, how to meet this sister with strength and clarity, not just sit back proud of myself for hating what she represents so much and succeeding in fending it off.

This isn't strictly it either. I'm terrified of my Zen practice, of the fullness of fundamental reality being so intimidating to my worthless and filthy ego that I end up having lived only to consume air and food and time. So I wobble around worried that the truth keeps giving me a chance and I keep blowing it and that maybe it will stop giving me chances.

With my true eyes I see Sudhana walking the razor ridge of the mountains of fire with every terror below him on either side, and it is me prostrating to the buddhas, dedicating my life to the heroes, of all ten directions.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

I've never in my life lowered myself to competing in circumlocution with a woman.
—Viktor Yanukovych

Women really are the other half of the sky.
—John Lennon

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
—John F. Kennedy

The trouble with our liberal friends is not that they are ignorant, it's just that they know so much that isn't so.
—Ronald Reagan

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak. We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak.
—Martin Luther King

We're all fucked. I'm fucked. You're fucked. The whole department is fucked. It's the biggest cock-up ever. We're all completely fucked.
—not uttered by anyone in charge lately

Anyone calling Obama a leftist, liberal, or progressive needs to have the stupid beat out of them.
—Old Uncle Dave

As for the Taliban ... their stated grievance is the same as Gen. Washington’s in our war with the British: If you want this war to end, get out of our country.
—Pat Buchanan

Obama-era drone warfare ... in general looks like Bush-era drone warfare on steroids.
—Scott Horton

There has to be altruism in the universe.
—Frank Drake

The morons in Washington are pushing the envelope of nuclear war. The insane drive for American hegemony threatens life on earth. The American people, by accepting the lies and deceptions of “their” government, are facilitating this outcome.
—Paul Craig Roberts

I am a child of the South. Janet Napolitano tells me I need to be afraid of people who are labeled white supremacists but I was raised around white supremacists. I am not afraid of white supremacists. I am concerned about my own government. The Patriot Act did not come from the white supremacists, it came from the White House and Congress. Citizens United did not come from white supremacists, it came from the Supreme Court.
—Cynthia McKinney

No one has to "marry" anyone else politically; no one has to embrace every tenet or belief that an anti-imperialist ally might hold. You simply have to say: "All of us, regardless of our other views, believe this truth to be self-evident: dismantling the empire will bring immediate and enormous benefits to our nation and to the world."
—Chris Floyd

The power of the people on top depends on the obedience of the people below.
—Howard Zinn

...the government only starts listening to its voters once the more corrupt option turns out to be untenable.
—Matt Taibbi

· One out of seven American homeowners will probably lose their homes by the end of 2010.

· Only 4.7 percent of distressed homeowners who enrolled in the modification plan have gotten any help.

· Out of Obama's $75 billion program, only $2.3 million has been spent—or 0.03 percent.

Obama's performance on the foreclosure crisis—along with unemployment, the biggest problem America faces—makes Bush's laissez faire approach to Hurricane Katrina look caring and loving in comparison. If ever there were a cause for impeachment, look no further.
—Ted Rall

As self-appointed champions of civilisation against barbarism, they fail to see that a certain barbarism is the flipside of civilisation itself, inseparable from its smooth operation. For every cathedral, a pit of bones; for every artistic masterpiece, human wretchedness and back-breaking toil.
—Terry Eagleton

commenting kaos, sidebar krap, quotes

Here at home and throughout the world people are fighting back against the forces of wealth, privilege, and militarism — some because they have no choice, others because they would choose no other course but the one that leads to peace and justice.
—Michael Parenti