Is This Not Poetry?

Quantum theory proposes
as opposed to classical mechanics --
that movement can exist
without a trajectory, without a journey, without an orbit.

At least without a known path,
and -- what is more important --
without a path that can be known.

Is this not poetry?


from Quantum Theory, by Alberto Blanco

Dear Friends,

I want to extend my warmest thanks to all of you who have taken the time to visit my blog - whether to glance, to inquire or to read my articles. Gassho. I am now suspending publication for an indefinite period. If you wish to contact me, you will find further information on my website. 

My very best wishes, 

bill

When the Iron Bird Flies

  
In honor of next Wednesday's celebration of losar, Tibetan new year (or Shambhala Day as many of us know it), I am providing a link to a film-in-production, WHEN THE IRON BIRD FLIES: Tibetan Buddhism arrives in the West.

My friend Victress Hitchcock is co-producing this film, which I heartily recommend and urge you to support! You will find the Iron Bird trailer compelling, a deck of images that narrates the Tibetan diaspora through its spiritual tradition, an indelible east-meets-west transfer of wisdom, culture and consciousness that has touched the entire world - and so many of us individually. May compassion also touch us all.

NECESSARY ANGEL

THE PLANET ON THE TABLE

Ariel was glad he had written his poems.
They were of a remembered time
Or of something seen that he liked.

Other makings of the sun
Were waste and welter
And the ripe shrub writhed.

His self and the sun were one
And his poems, although makings of his self,
Were no less makings of the sun.

It was not important that they survive.
What mattered was that they should bear
Some lineament or character,

Some affluence, if only half-perceived,
In the poverty of their words,
Of the planet of which they were part.

        - Wallace Stevens

.  .  .  .  .

 

A Video Interview with Henry Schaeffer

Henry Schaeffer - January 2012, San Francisco.

Henry Schaeffer studied with Suzuki-roshi before meeting Chögyam Trungpa and becoming the latter teacher's student in 1970. In this video, Henry describes the first and second time he encountered Chögyam Trungpa. 

Trungpa Rinpoche did not limit his teachings to Tibetan Buddhism or any spiritual idiom - even to "spirituality" itself. In a given talk, Trungpa Rinpoche might speak of farming, T.S. Eliot or the understanding of Christian monastics he conversed with in Great Britain. In this video, Henry describes how one of his own passions, the poetry of Wallace Stevens, coincidentally became a link to Chögyam Trungpa.