The Natural, Coemergent Gods and Demons

"People become obscured by their personal superficial defilement of ignorance and accumulate negative karma, creating unlimited causes for cyclic existence. They are constantly trapped in their karma and afflictive emotion. Therefore, the root of all problems is ego-fixation. Not knowing how to apply the antidote-the completely illuminating firelight of intelligent timeless wisdom-is remaining in the dark about the general meaning of karma and about all actions." - Machik Labdron


Machik Labdron, is one of the greatest female saints and an accomplished yogini. She lived in the 11th century in Tibet. Machik developed a system, the Mahamudra Chöd, that takes the Buddha's teachings as a basis and applies them to the immediate experiences of negative mind states and malignant forces. Machik's unique feminine approach was to invoke and nurture the very "demons" that we fear and hate, transforming those reactive emotions into love. It is the tantric version of developing compassion and fearlessness, a radical method of cutting through ego-fixation.

Song for the day

You say there's always gonna be this thing
Between us days are filled with dreams
Scorpions crawl across my screen
Make their home beneath my skin
Underneath my dress stick their tongues
Bite through flesh down to the bone
And I have been so fuckin' alone
Since those three days

Rock on, Lucinda!

Quotes for the day

From Khenpo Tenzin Norgay...Bhutanese teacher and lama:

"A person who is not able to help himself and thinks of helping others is just a joke. In the thirty seven practices of Bodhisattvas it says that very clearly. But the point is we must have the ability but not focus on the self interest."

From the 37 Practices of the Bodhisattvas:

"All of our sufferings, without an exception, derive from the wish to please but ourselves..."

Tricky business this Buddhism.

So this is how I hide the hurt

...as the road leads cursed and charmed. I tell Amelia it was just a false alarm...

Must have been 34 years ago that I met Jacquie, the most beautiful woman I know. Long thick black hair braided, her face so full of grace. It is was in an aisle in the Safeway in Ukiah, California, where I lived for 20 years of my life before leaving for colder and more remote parts of the world.

Somehow, I ended up being with Jacquie for the births of all three of her children, and today is the birthday of her second baby, Lucas. Since I am listening to my playlist of oldies and goldies (it takes a lot to laugh...that's where mother spiritual lives...tamp 'em solid, till they won't come down...heroin, it's my life and it's my wife...) and even though it is getting close to midnight, it seems good to recall the day that Lucas, who now is a chef in Reykjavik, one of my favorite European cities, came into this world. (It is somewhat unfair, however, to call Reykjavik a city...It is more like a small urban coagulation of houses, people, geothermal pools, restaurants, bars and cafés and sulphur odors)

At the time Lucas was born, Jacquie and Ed lived up on 160 acres of land called Greyhaven. Greyhaven was about 5 or so miles (maybe more) up Pine Creek Rd, if my memory serves me right, on one side of Mid Mountain outside of Potter Valley, a once small dairy farm community. I think by that time, the last dairy had probably already closed, so that we could no longer get those gallons of milk topped with at least five inches of cream.

Greyhaven was at the end of the road. I remember driving by those old white farmhouses and homesteads, dreaming always of my life in one of them as a farmer's wife (or a farmer, more likely), and then climbing up out of the valley into the evergreen forests that started just right around where Ed and Jacquie's land began.

I think at that time, the house that Ed built was still somewhat small, although I could be wrong about that. Lucas was born in the back room which was just off of the kitchen. The kitchen was open to the living room, which is where one entered the house. The house was full of people, and those that I remember were: Kiki - Jacquie's most amazing mom who was probably in her 70's at that time. Kiki was a tiny, fit woman with bunched up gastrocs and styled blond hair and make-up, who could walk faster and do more in pair of high heels than any person I have ever known. She kept us fed that day and for many more days. Kiki is still alive and doing well, or so I hear.

Actually, there were a lot of other people there, but besides Ed, Jacquie, me, Lynn Meadows, and possibly Tobin, I can't say for sure who else was there. I could pretend that Shearn, Kathy Fisette, Leon and Bonnie and a few others were there, but I am not certain. Hopefully Jacquie can fill in those missing pieces.

This is how Jacquie gives birth...she just smiles and out pops the baby...my word at the time for her method of childbirth was and still is ANGELIC. Grace in action. Jacquie was barely leaning back on their bed, and Lucas more or less just came flying out; he was all wrapped and tanlged up in his long umbilical cord (or umbiblical cord as some might say here in Montana), which made it quite difficult to catch him, unwind him and hand him to his mama. In fact, except for some wicked luck, he almost ended up on the floor. He was born with a huge black mole or birthmark on I believe his right thigh, so he was called Spot for a bit. Jacquie always said some tribes consider those birthmarks very auspiscious, so she never let any medical person touch that thing.

Those days were magical. Like Jacquie's face, in Safeway, in childbirth, learning to drive, caring for Ed undergoing chemotherapy, sitting next to Tobin in his hospital room at Stanford as he got wicked chemo for his lymphoma, out on my back deck, making beauty out of seaweed and twigs. Dancing her beautiful dance...

For every heart ache she has experienced, I wish for her double the love...

Where's the love, you all?

To My Beautiful Daughter

To Chiki Piki Doodle Baba...
the most awesome of swammi-mommies and greatest of daughties:

Happy Birthday! 30 years old!!!
(whew, I was so much YOUNGER then...)