[MD] the Underground

[Heather Perella]

> > SA previously:  I think the first muck is bothersome samsara.  I
> think no muck is the 
> > void effort.  It is the effort to live nirvana.  The
> third muck is the 
> > void has been here along and muck or no muck is
> handled in a void way. 
> > Thus, the third muck is:  nirvana is samsara or
> samsara has been nirvana 
> > all along.  The third muck is experienced differently
> than the first two 
> > mucks.

Marsha:
> Sorry for all the mucking around...

SA:  I love it!  muck, muck, muck,


Marsha:
> I wonder if you understand what I am trying to say.  If you
> think I am 
> wrong, please say so and I can try to get it right or
> explain it more 
> coherently.  That would be a most helpful challenge.

SA:  Yes.  Let's do this.


Marsha:
> ...but sometimes when I talk
> about the emptiness of things, you seem to challenge me with the
> conventional view.

SA:  Ah...  We are talking about three statements.  This will be most helpful.  You bring up two above.  So, where does the third statement fit in where two views are given.  The three:

      Mountains are mountains...
      Mountains are not mountains...
      Mountains are mountains again.

     The two views:

      emptiness
      conventional

     You see.  So this is where the misunderstandings probably arise.  Let's talk about the mountains first.  I'll compare it to the Ten Oxherding Pictures (I think these pictures would make a fine childrens book.  They are playful, fun, and mature.).  This one looks good:

   http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/ox.html


      I would say the mountains are mountains are near the beginning of the story.  Yet, one is looking for something in the beginning, right, something is always looked for in the beginning.  In this case, it is an ox.  Then one finds the ox and realizes oneness and all that jazz.  This is the circle picture, number eight.  A No-Thing.  All is one.  All is transcended.  Ah, but the story is not over.  In the what I find comforting and liveable where the oridinary world is spiritual.  Life is wonderful and lived.  We mingle with each other (as noted in picture ten).  This is when the mountains are again mountains.  Something was realized along the way.  I find more and more the travel to realize what was here all along - the mountains, the be fools journey.  I was a fool on a journey, looking for what has been here all along.  Yet, we do ever realize and mature spiritually, but the ordinary is wonderful.  Now we are getting into Basho. 


Marsha: 
> And when I'm chattering conventionally, you challenge
> my previous discussion 
> on emptiness.  It's a bit frustrating.

SA:  Emptiness is conventionality and vice versa.  It is this understood in the context of the tenth picture.  The mountains are again mountains again.  Ordinary life.  The Amerindian down to earth way of life where everything is sacred.  A bee buzzes by and we are kept supported in a world that is awesome.  It is how I interpret dq as sq and vice versa.  It is your real time participance, mine, the bee's.  The rhythm of life, the timing we each have that static patterns not of thine own rhythm are so off beat.  What Lame Deer mentioned life is a circle and this U.S. culture was trying to have them live as a square.  The patterns don't match up.  We are forced to be cyborgs where schedules run most of walks and not the weather or movements of our spontaneous inclinations.  It is the status quo where art needs sun and rain and it is getting drier and yet still cloudy.  Bust through.  Descend and come back.  I know, you know this.  It may be how we're
 framing our intentions and where our focus is at the time.  Think of this literally, I may be canoeing across a lake in the north and your canoeing in the southern part of the lake.  Yet, tomorrow I'll be in the south and you in the north.  Next day, you feel like canoeing in the south and I feel like canoeing in the south, too.  We see each other that day.  When your painting with orange, I'll wait until your done brushing the orange and then I'll use it. 


Marsha: 
> >From the book, Meditation on Emptiness, "These
> phenomena cannot be found 
> under analysis and thus do not inherently exist; they are
> still accepted as 
> validly established conventionally when there is no
> analysis."   This is how 
> I (and I certainly could be incorrect) interpret mountains,
> no mountains, 
> mountains again.  So the second muck would be realizing its
> emptiness, and 
> the third muck is experienced differently than the first
> two mucks.

SA:  I didn't readily receive, thus, not well understand the quote; but if it follows along with what you said at the end here, then yes, the second muck is important, for it is realizing something about the first muck that has been here all along - and thus, the third muck, which is the same old muck of one and two, is realized and thus, experienced differently. 


muck, muck, muck
I love this muck,
SA