Thus spoke Tochihuitzin,
Thus spoke Coyolchiuhqui:In ic conitotehuac in Tochihuitzin,
In ic conitotehuac in Coyolchiuhqui:We only rise from sleep,
we come only to dream,
it is not true, it is not true,
that we come on earth to live.
As an herb in springtime,
so is our nature.
Our hearts give birth, make sprout
the flowers of our flesh.
Some open their corollas,
then they become dry.Zan tocochitlehuaco,
zan tontemiquico,
ah nelli, ah nelli
tinemico in tlalticpac.
Xoxopan xihuitl ipan
tochihuacan.
Hualcecelia, hualitzmolini in toyollo,
xochitl in tonacayo.
Cequi cueponi,
on cuetlahuia.
Thus spoke Tochihuitzin
thus spoke Coyolchiuhqui.In conitotehuac in Tochihuitzin,
In ic conitotehuac Coyolchiuhqui.
--- Nahuatl poem
Perhaps if the future existed, concretely and individually, as something that could be discerned by a better brain, the past would not be so seductive: its demands would be balanced by those of the future. Persons might then straddle the middle stretch of the seesaw when considering this or that object. It might be fun.
But the future has no such reality (as the pictured past and the perceived present possess); the future is but a figure of speech, a specter of thought.from Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov
The teachers, seventy-year-old Kalu Rinpoche of Tibet, a veteran of years of solitary retreat, and the Zen master Seung Sahn, the first Korean Zen master to teach in the United States, were to test each other's understanding of the Buddha's teachings for the benefit of the onlooking Western students. This was to be a high form of what was being called dharma combat (the clashing of great minds sharpened by years of study and meditation), and we were waiting with all the anticipation that such a historic encounter deserved. The two monks entered with swirling robes--maroon and yellow for the Tibetan, austere gray and black for the Korean--and were followed by retinues of younger monks and translators with shaven heads. They settled onto cushions in the familiar cross-legged positions, and the host made it clear that the younger Zen master was to begin. The Tibetan lama sat very still, fingering a wooden rosary (mala) with one hand while murmuring, "Om mani padme hum," continuously under his breath. The Zen master, who was already gaining renown for his method of hurling questions at his students until they were forced to admit their ignorance and then bellowing, "Keep that don't-know mind!" at them, reached deep inside his robes and drew out an orange. "What is this?" he demanded of the lama. "What is this?" This was a typical opening question, and we could feel him ready to pounce on whatever response he was given.
The Tibetan sat quietly fingering his mala and made no move to respond.
"What is this?" the Zen master insisted, holding the orange up to the Tibetan's nose.
Kalu Rinpoche bent very slowly to the Tibetan monk next to him who was serving as the translator, and they whispered back and forth for several minutes. Finally the translator addressed the room: "Rinpoche says, 'What is the matter with him? Don't they have oranges where he comes from?'"
The dialogue progressed no further.
from Thoughts Without A Thinker: Psychotherapy From a Buddhist Perspective by Mark Epstein
Rings of blurred colors circled around him, reminding him briefly of a childhood picture in a frightening book about triumphant vegetables whirling faster and faster around a nightshirted boy trying desperately to awake from the iridescent dizziness of dream life. Its ultimate vision was the incandescence of a book or a box grown completely transparent and hollow. This is, I believe, it: not the crude anguish of physical death but the incomparable pangs of the mysterious mental maneuver needed to pass from one state of being to another.
Easy, you know, does it, son.
from Transparent Things by Vladimir Nabokov
All the earth is a grave and nothing escapes it, nothing is so perfect that it does not descend to its tomb. Rivers, rivulets, fountains and waters flow, but never return to their joyful beginnings; anxiously they hasten on the vast realms of the rain god. As they widen their banks, they also fashion the sad urn of their burial.
Filled are the bowels of the earth with pestilential dust once flesh and bone, once animate bodies of man who sat upon thrones, decided cases, presided in council, commanded armies, conquered provinces, possessed treasure, destroyed temples, exulted in their pride, majesty, fortune, praise and power. Vanished are these glories, just as the fearful smoke vanishes that belches forth from the infernal fires of Popocatepetl. Nothing recalls them but the written page.
HUNGRY-COYOTE (NEZAHUALCOYOTL) King of Texcoco (1431-72)
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate stone
On the forefinger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep:
Her wagon spokes made of long spinners' legs,
The cover, of the wings of grasshoppers;
Her traces, of the smallest spider's web;
Her collars, of the moonshine's watery beams;
Her whip, of cricket's bone; the lash, of film;
Her wagoner, a small gray-coated gnat,
Not half so big as a round little worm
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazelnut,
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night
Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love. . . .
From Romeo and Juliet (I, iv) by William Shakespeare
Angiras said to Shaunaka: "Two kinds of knowledge must be known...They are the higher knowledge and the lower knowledge...By means of the higher knowledge the wise behold every where the Imperishable, which otherwise cannot be seen or seized, which has no root or attributes, no eyes or ears, no hands or feet; which is eternal and omnipresent, all-pervading and extremely subtle; which is imperishable and the source of all beings"
From Mundaka Upanishad, I:1:4,6
Nachiketa said: "There is doubt about a man when he is dead: some say that he exists; others, that he does not. This I should like to know..."
Death said: "On this point even the gods have doubted formerly; it is not easy to understand. That subject is subtle. Choose another boon, Nachiketa, do not press me...."From Katha Upanishad, I:20-21
Aaruni Udaalaka said to his son Shvetaketu "Bring me a fruit from that nyaagrodha tree."
Shvetaketu said: "Here it is father."
Aaruni Udaalaka: "Break it."
Shvetaketu: "It is broken."
Aaruni Udaalaka: "What do you see there?"
Shvetaketu: "These seeds, almost infinitesimal."
Aaruni Udaalaka: "Break one of these seeds."
Shvetaketu: "It is broken."
Aaruni Udaalaka: "What do you see there?"
Shvetaketu: "Nothing at all."
Aaruni Udaalaka: "That subtle essence which you do not perceive there of that very essence this great nyaagrodha tree arises. That which is the subtle essence, in it all that exists has its self...You are That, Shvetaketu.From Chandogya Upanishad, VI:12
This Self is That which has been described as "Not this, Not this". It is imperceptible, for It is not perceived; undecaying, for It never decays; unattached, for It is never attached; unfettered, for It never feels pain and never suffers injury.
From Brhadaaranyaka Upanishad, IV:iv:22
Yaajnyavalkya said: "Whosoever in this world, Gaargi, without knowing this Imperishable, offers oblations, performs sacrifices, and practices austerities, even for many thousands of years, finds all such acts limited indeed. Whosoever, Gaargi, departs from this world without knowing this Imperishable is miserable....That Imperishable, Gaargi, is never seen but is the Seer; It is never heard, but is the Hearer; It is never thought of, but is the Thinker; It is never known, but is the Knower. There is no other seer but This, there is no other hearer but This , there is no other thinker but This, there is no other knower but This. By this imperishable, Gaargi, is the unmanifest pervaded."
From Brhadaaranyaka Upanishad, III:8:10,11
WALLS--
Over and over again, my mind has made colossal efforts to distinguish the faintest of personal glimmers in the impersonal darkness on both sides of my life. That this darkness is caused merely by the walls of time separating me and my bruised fists from the free world of timelessness is a belief I gladly share with the most gaudily painted savage.
Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory: An Autobiography Revisited (New York: Putnam, 1966), p. 14.
THE GARDEN OF LOVE--
I went to the garden of love,
And saw what I never had seen:
A chapel was built in the midst,
Where I used to play on the green.And the gates of this chapel were shut,
And "thou shalt not" writ over the door;
So I turned to the garden of love
That so many sweet flowers bore;And I saw it was filled with graves,
And tomb-stones where flowers should be;
And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,
And binding with briars my joys and desires.Garden of Love by William Blake, (1757-1827)
SMILE--
The comic sensibility is vastly, almost tragically, underrated by Western intellectuals. Humor can be a doorway into the deepest reality, and wit and playfulness are a desperately serious transcendence of evil...There happens to be a fairly thin line between the silly and the profound, between the clear light and the joke, and it seems to me that on that frontier is the single most risky and momentous place an artist or philosopher can station him or herself. I'm led to suspect that my psychedelic background may have prepared me to straddle that boundary more comfortably than those writers for whom the genie has never lifted the veil....
from an interview with Tom Robbins in HT, June 2000, p. 68
LAW OF THE LAND IN CANADA TOO--
The general misconception is that any statute passed by legislators bearing the appearance of law constitutes the law of the land. The U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and any statute, to be valid, must be in agreement. It is impossible for both the Constitution and a law violating it to be valid; one must prevail. This is succinctly stated as follows:
The general rule is that an unconstitutional statute, although having the form and name of law, is in reality no law, but is wholly void, and ineffective for any purpose; since unconstitutionality dates from the time of its enactment, and not merely from the date of the decision so branding it. An unconstitutional law, in legal contemplation, is as inoperative as if it had never been passed. Such a statute leaves the question that it purports to settle just as it would be had the statute not been enacted.
Since an unconstitutional law is void, the general principles follow that it imposes no duties, confers no rights, creates no office, bestows no power or authority on anyone, affords no protection, and justifies no acts performed under it...
A void act cannot be legally consistent with a valid one. An unconstitutional law cannot operate to supersede any existing valid law. Indeed, insofar as a statute runs counter to the fundamental law of the land, it is superseded thereby.
No one is bound to obey an unconstitutional law and no courts are bound to enforce it.from Sixteenth American Jurisprudence Second Edition, Section 177
THE FLORIST WEARS KNEE BREECHES--
My flowers are reflected
In your mind
As you are reflected in your glass.
When you look at them,
There is nothing in your mind
Except the reflections
Of my flowers.
But when I look at them
I see only the reflections
In your mind,
And not my flowers.
It is my desire
To bring roses,
And place them before you
In a white dish.by Wallace Stevens
TESTED IN THE ALEMBIC--
This definition of enlightenment was coined by His Highness Art Kleps (????-1999) Chief BooHoo of the Neo-American Church. It remains in mint condition and may be tested to a brilliant proof by considering it in the alembic of the peak of a full blown high dose psychedelic experience. For various historical reasons it is preserved in the Fane's constitution in recognition of the experiential utility of its truth and our indebtedness to His Highness for having the Wisdom Eye to retrieve it from the bonfire of infinities.
GRACE--
The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.
John 3:8
ACID--
When you're first born, everything's okay. You accept it all. As you grow, you erect walls and you start to filter out the mass of information that comes into you in order to make sense of it. The baby is processing everything. Everything, right? When you take acid, you see incredible patterns. The incredible patterns that you see is just the noise from your own nervous system which is normally filtered out so that you don't hear it. You selectively censor the data from your senses, including those we don't recognize like the telepathic ones. You see colors like the purple that comes out of mercury vapor lamps in the streets, which is a color you don't normally see. But all this information is always there.
When you take acid, all of a sudden you get all these inputs and you're processing the whole thing. People seem to be in trances when they get really high because there's just so much going on that they can't possibly make a decision. They see all of the wavelike propagation of probability going off into the future and it's almost impossible to make a choice. If you're absolutely cosmic and one with the creating entity, you cannot get up. You trip over your own two feet. That is just the way it is, you know?
Owsley "the Bear" Stanley as quoted in Bill Graham Presents-My Life Inside Rock and Out by Bill Graham and Robert Greenfield