There is no place left.
The Yoga of Patanjali is not introspective, because introspection finds a self as object and finds only Buddhi, Ahamkara. These are illusory self, reflection of true self perhaps, distorted reflection. The subject is unknowable. (For Buddhism—there is no subject. Better?)
Prepare new dreams. Be liberated from the old ones. Then at last—NO dreams!
When asked what you see from the top of Pedernal, Georgia O’Keeffe said, “You see the whole world.”
Looking out at the red cliffs, and the hillsides covered with ponderosa pine and cedar, framed in the cell window. A sense of convalescence, of inner health returning. Glad to be here at Christ of the Desert!
“Insight and detachment are synonymous as far as objects of sense are concerned.”
(Brattacharyya)
Yoga: to develop the power of the mind so as to see that their use is futile and that they cannot grasp or experience the Known.
To free the knower from his “knowing”—not just from his error.
For the “Known”—to know is not to know but to be.
Plato: vision ofEr: a soul comes forward to choose its destiny. The choice is American: “He who had first choice came forward and in a moment chose the greatest tyranny; his mind having been darkened by folly and sensuality, he had not thought out the whole matter before he chose and did not at first perceive that he was fated, among other evils, to devour his own children…. Now he was one of those who came from heaven and in a former life had dwelt in a well-ordered state, but his virtue was a matter of habit only and he had no philosophy….”
Two Hell’s Angels on the highway out of Santa Fe, their motorcycles by the road, and they heading off together into the bushes, looking fairly jovial, with vast blond beards and naked chests.
Tom Carlyle halted the rattling Volkswagen with a stove inside and a plaster-mixer in tow, to speak to a friend in a pickup coming down from the other direction. They decided together that the mixer would make good adobe.
Today I am in a quiet, cool spot, in the shade of cottonwoods, short green grass, the red mesa to the right, forest in front, big vast mesa (Mesa del Viejo) behind. A profusion of yellow: flowering shrubs; sweet smell of sagebrush; the gentle contemplative song of crickets. A beautiful autumn!
It is the yearning after sangsaric [samsaric] existence that is the cause of both gods and demons “appearing”—gives them existence.
Enlightenment = realizing unreality, facticity, of sangsaric [samsaric] existence.
Yoga—necessary for enlightenment.
“There is, disciples, a realm devoid of earth and water, fire and air. It is not endless space, nor infinite thought, nor nothingness, neither ideas nor non-ideas. Not this world nor that is it. I call it neither a coming nor a departing, nor a standing still, nor death nor birth; it is without a basis, progress or stay; it is the ending of sorrow.”
“For that which clingeth to another there is a fall; but unto that which clingeth not no fall can come.”
(Buddha)
Enlightenment at death = recognition of one’s own formless intellect as “The Clear Light” and reality itself. The naked consciousness = the liberated self: but attachment to existence makes us refuse it.
Except for a sonic boom monstrous enough to bring down half a cliff—though what I heard roaring up the canyon was not falling rocks but only the echo (at least I suppose so).
The soft, guttural exclamations of a crow emphasize the silence—and the peace of knowing that, but for the four or five at the monastery a mile or two away, there’s nobody else for miles around.
I crossed the swinging plank—and cable bridge over the Chama and looked at the ruined farm house on the other side. Came back here where the shade is better. The crickets sing. The breeze is sweet in the cottonwood.
September 16, 1968
Plane over Colorado, Kansas or somewhere.
This morning I stood on the roof of Don Devereux’s small adobe house, among all the other small houses, in Acequia Madre at S[anta]F[e]. The lucid green mountains, the clear dawn behind them…
Below, the small but comfortable bed—the four sleeping persons—Virginia, the Armenian girl, interested in Jung and astrology—Don, Eileen, their little blond child Erik.
Two days on the Jicarilla Apache reservation, for their September fiesta—a Feast of Tabernacles—leafy booths to eat under, tents to sleep in, scattered all over the wide valley by Stone Lake—campfires and their smoke mixing with the dust of hundreds of cars and pickups, blowing across the empty danceground.
The “shade” of the family where Nelson Martinez (a Catholic Apache, slightly drunk) took us: Pearl Montoya and others cooking chili on the wood stove. Brisk wind blowing all the fires—and cool in the dusk. Lovely little Indian children everywhere.
September 16, 1968
Very bumpy flying. Passengers with blue tubes in their ears listen to Muzak—or some recorded music.
“The Great Deliverance by hearing while on the after-death plane….”
If the dying man should attend consciously to the symptoms of death in himself, the living man should attend to the symptoms both of life and death in himself. For instance—hyperactivity of my gut, which is trying to be too alive is ultimately destructive.
Good fortune. Two Entero-Vioforms [tablets]—administered by Eileen—and advice on diet. She thought I got dysentery eating chili, stew and hamburgers with the Jicarilla.
Better to eat less from now on, more carefully, less obsessively. And be more indifferent about food.
Over Kansas (?) (the factories)—clouds tinted with nickels—precious chemistry—magenta from some industry.
Over Missouri (?) the clouds are packed like snow.
To the Jicarilla Reservation:
First a stop at Park View at the house of G. Abeyta, the accountant for the Indians. A lavish breakfast. Small churches, deserted houses, ghost villages, in a wide valley.
The pink dilapidated courthouse of Tierra Amarilla—the scene of Tijerina’s raid-(the district attorney escaped, hiding in the attic rafters).
Distant noble cliffs of Brazos Peak. Someone in the back seat tells something of the waterfall where the snows melt in May.
Distant peaks in Colorado.
Narrow gauge railway almost abandoned.
An abandoned coal mine.
A brown, dilapidated wooden morada where the penitents meet to scourge themselves.
Abeyta’s blind grandmother, speaking cheerful, clear, carefully pronounced Spanish.
Dulce—reservation town—neat houses. The Indians prosper (they have oil and gas wells). Abeyta lives across from the Dutch Refonned Church. (Catholic Church—spanking new—up the road, nearer the rock of which pieces fell in “the earthquake” of two years ago.) (Fr. Gregory [Christ of the Desert monk] and I concelebrate there early Sunday.)
Kozlowski, the Superintendent of the Indian Agency, has been in Alaska. Talks not so much of Alaskan Indians as of Fr. Llorente of Cordova Ala (Spanish Jesuit) who knows the Indians pretty well. K. has adopted two eskimo children and they are utterly lovely, especially the little girl, Veronica.
Out to Stone Lake—interesting wooded cuesta [hill] south of Dulce—peaks of shelved and eroded and inclined sandstone standing in line over the valley. Broad sweep of pasture and forest. Cars on dusty road.
September 17, 1968. [En route to Alaska]
Chicago was rainy. Celebrated the F[east] of the Stigmatization of St. Francis at the new Poor Clare convent—after talking to them the evening before. Wind. View of woods on one side. Distant city on the other.
First—went down to see the old empty convent on S. Loftus Street. High brick walls, empty corridors, brick courtyard. Church with no more adoration.
We took off an hour late, big plane full of children, heading for Anchorage, Tokyo and Seoul. Flew up slowly out of the dark into the brilliant light, this Bardo of pure sky. (Clouds full of planes seeking Chicago in the dark.)
Bardo Th
odol—your own true nature confronts you as Pure Truth, “subtle, sparkling, bright, dazzling, glorious, and radiantly awesome like a mirage moving across a landscape in springtime…. Be not terrified…. From the midst of that radiance the natural sound of Reality, reverberating like a thousand thunders simultaneously sounding, will come. That is the natural sound of thine own real self. Be not daunted thereby nor terrified.”2
Hot towels. Man (Peace Corps) talking about Bangkok, Singapore, learning awareness, State Department, to one of the mothers—his wife Japanese? A beautiful little baby which she keeps lifting up over her head (and now feeding from bottle).
“Hermit cells” in Poor Clare monastery. The Red Bam nearby. The man in the grey shirt crouching in the wood (Cleveland—a bar owner, bartender, whore and another, kidnapped, shot in the park, found by joggers). The old Poor Clare convent. Sister with the ulcered leg feared that if the convent were left unguarded teen-agers would break in the graveyard and dig up the dead.
Bardo Thodol “The experiencing of reality”
After missing the clear light: 4 days, 4 Buddhas, 4 nights.
water—white light of Akshobhya
anger—makes one fly to “dull smoke colored light of hell”
earth—yellow light of Ratna-Sambhava
egotism—“preference for dull bluish light from human world”
fire—red light of Amitabha
attachment—dull red light of Preta-loka
air—green light of Amogha-Siddhi
jealousy—dull green—Asura-loka (quarreling and warfare)
But—“The forty-two perfectly endowed deities issuing from within thy heart, being the product of thine own pure love, will come to shine. Know them!”
“If thou art frightened by the pure radiance of Wisdom and attracted by the impure lights of the six Lokas…thou wilt be whirled round and round (in Sangsara [Samsara]) and made to taste the suffering thereof.”
Meanwhile, however, there was something impressive about the old empty rooms and corridors, with here and there an ancient statue lamenting the emptiness, the dark. One felt that it was a place where prayer had “been valid.” Even the old brick walls of the outside were impressive.
And this morning old Sr. Margaret was starting out in the rain to go begging (for food, in stores).
A while ago we were over miles of Canadian lakes, blue, blue-green, and brown, with woods between, an occasional road. Still three hours from Anchorage. Two—probably from Alaska. Clouds again, packed thick, quilted, beneath us.
I borrowed the letters of Miller and Durrell3 from Ron S[eitz] and don’t feel like reading them. The first one, with Durrell putting down Ulysses (saying Tropic of Cancer was better) turned me off.
(More lakes down below, between clouds. Olive green, wild stretches of watery land.)
The young Apaches were racing to give back energy to the sun. The clan that was fastest was the best painted and their first [runner] was like an African antelope with long yellow streamers flying from his head and a mirror in the center of his forehead.
From Knowledge-Holders each “holding a crescent knife and skull filled with blood, dancing and making the mudra of fascination.”
Glad to be not in Kentucky. But here over this blanket of cold cloud hiding lakes.
The bands of the Mothers, the Dakinis, sliding upon solid cloud.
Ecce dabit voci suae vocem virtutis, date gloriam Deo super Israel, magnificentia ejus, et virtus ejus in nubibus. [Listen, he sends out his voice, his mighty voice; ascribe power to God, whose majesty is over Israel, and whose power is in the skies.]
—Psalm 67[68]33–34
(The wrathful deities are peaceful deities returning in menacing form, blood drinkers, emerging from the excitements of the dead brain. “Recognition—of one’s own self in such forms!—becometh more difficult!”)
The high plane over the north is a dinning orchestra of conch shells, thigh-bone trumpets, drums, cymbals—a lama orchestra such as one hears when pressing shut the ears. Also a cosmic hissing—not to mention the crying of babies and the gabble of human conversation (and afternoon perfumes).
Shades close out the Canada sun, the afternoon and the brute big shining masses of the jet engines stand out fiercely blue-black above the cloud.
“At the same time a dull blue light from the brute world will come to shine along with the Radiance of Wisdom…”
Flight yoga. Training in cosmic colors.
Dull, concise bronze of ginger ale.
Last night, choosing the scotch Fr. Xavier [Carroll] offered was as silly as a choice of smoke, and I had smoke in my head when I awoke.
Ginger ale has in it perfume of stewardess.
In the war-plane’s music, the natural sound of truth thunders—but very differently. Equivocally.
Cries of “Slay, slay and awe-inspiring mantras…[but] flee not.” I close my eyes and see the colors of Indian blankets.
The little Japanese baby cries with a fine clear shining cry, prolonged, un-choking, a curving repeated descant, well punctuated with good breaths.
The black falsely jeweled souvenir aprons of the Indian runners.
Fine snow-covered mountains lift their snowledges into a gap of clouds and I am exhilarated with them. Salute the spirit dwellings. Spirit-liftings come up out of the invisible land. The little boy also is playing his telephone.
First sight of mountains of Alaska, strongly ribbed, through cloud. Superb blue of the gulf, indescribable ice patterns. Bird wings, vast, mottled, long black streamers, curves, scimitars, lyre bird tails.
I am here in answer to someone’s prayer.
September 18, 1968. Engle River
ALASKA—the Convent of the Precious Blood—surrounded by woods, with a highway (too) near. The woods of Alaska—marvelous—deep in wet grass, fern, rotten fallen trees, big-leaved thorn scrub, yellowing birch, stunted fir, aspens. Thick. Humid. Lush. Smelling of life and of rot. Rich undergrowth, full of mosses, berries—and probably (in other seasons) flowers. The air is now here cool and sharp as late November in the “outside” (i.e. “the States,” “lower 48”).
The convent chapel looks out through big windows at birch, a purple and green mountainside. Quiet.
Sense of belonging here. The spirit of the community is good. They will move to a better site. This is a nice house but has “a water problem.”
I turn a page. The eagle feather dropped by one of the Apache runners, slides, volatile, across the slick desk.
Priests of Alaska, friendly, generous. After the workshop will look for places.
Cordova and Fr. Llorente4
Valdez.
Islands.
A place looking at “The Big One” (McKinley).
A place called what—Hutchinson? Cunningham?
No. Dillingham. Now in the
same time zone as Anchorage.
MOSAIC: ALASKA PAPER AND FUNNIES
Burning bon fires review by Assembly
A borough ordinance will face junkheap or major overhaul
Split assembly into snarling rural and urban
Camps writes Stephen Brent of our News
Staff. And in Dallas
Wallace5 had a big day Tuesday
Dramatic increase “He’s moving up
Fast” said a strategist and
“Garbage burned further away
Would be prohibited if
It created a nuisance”—
“When I was Governor of Alabama I met
Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney and some
Of those others and they didn’t impress me.”
Then four died in
Alaska planes
(Skwentna River
Kenai Penin.
Sula)
“He passed over the smoke in an attempt
To see where it was coming from.”
And it was from Curtis LeMay
Speaking in the Anchorage Westward Hotel.
Also in Kenai
Many
are now
Wearing Wallace buttons.
Gavora 37 owns the Market Basket Supermarket in Fairbanks.
And ferry service between Alaska and Seattle
Will be doubled.
A post is filled.
A Time Zone is changed.
Next Sunday
A Fall Dance is held
With music furnished by
The Other Side of the Mountain Page 22