Category: Vision

The Bodhisattva’s Renunciation

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IT was night. The prince found no rest on his soft pillow; he arose and went out into the garden. “Alas!” he cried “all the world is full of darkness and ignorance; there is no one who knows how to cure the ills of existence.” And he groaned with pain.

Siddhattha sat down beneath the great jambu-tree and gave himself to thought, pondering on life and death and the evils of decay. Concentrating his mind he became free from confusion. All low desires vanished from his heart and perfect tranquility came over him.

In this state of ecstasy he saw with his mental eye all the misery and sorrow of the world; he saw the pains of pleasure and the inevitable certainty of death that hovers over every being; yet men are not awakened to the truth. And a deep compassion seized his heart.

While the prince was pondering on the problem of evil, he beheld with his mind’s eye under the jambu tree a lofty figure endowed with majesty, calm and dignified. “Whence comest thou, and who mayst thou be asked the prince.

In reply the vision said: “I am a samana. Troubled at the thought of old age, disease, and death I have left my home to seek the path of salvation. All things hasten to decay; only the truth abideth forever. Everything changes, and there is no permanency; yet the words of the Buddhas are immutable. I long for the happiness that does not decay; the treasure that will never perish; the life that knows of no beginning and no end. Therefore, I have destroyed all worldly thought. I have retired into an unfrequented dell to live in solitude; and, begging for food, I devote myself to the one thing needful.

Siddhattha asked: “Can peace be gained in this world of unrest? I am struck with the emptiness of pleasure and have become disgusted with lust. All oppresses me, and existence itself seems intolerable.”

The samana replied: “Where heat is, there is also a possibility of cold; creatures subject to pain possess the faculty of pleasure; the origin of evil indicates that good can be developed. For these things are correlatives. Thus where there is much suffering, there will be much bliss, if thou but open thine eyes to behold it. Just as a man who has fallen into a heap of filth ought to seek the great pond of water covered with lotuses, which is near by: even so seek thou for the great deathless lake of Nirvana to wash off the defilement of wrong. If the lake is not sought, it is not the fault of the lake. Even so when there is a blessed road leading the man held fast by wrong to the salvation of Nirvana, if the road is not walked upon, it is not the fault of the road, but of the person. And when a man who is oppressed with sickness, there being a physician who can heal him, does not avail himself of the physician’s help, that is not the fault of the physician. Even so when a man oppressed by the malady of wrong-doing does not seek the spiritual guide of enlightenment, that is no fault of the evil-destroying guide.”

The prince listened to the noble words of his visitor and said: “Thou bringest good tidings, for now I know that my purpose will be accomplished. My father advises me to enjoy life and to undertake worldly duties, such as will bring honor to me and to our house. He tells me that I am too young still, that my pulse beats too full to lead a religious life.”

The venerable figure shook his head and replied: “Thou shouldst know that for seeking a religious life no time can be inopportune.”

A thrill of joy passed through Siddhattha’s heart. “Now is the time to seek religion,” he said; “now is the time to sever all ties that would prevent me from attaining perfect enlightenment; now is the time to wander into homelessness and, leading a mendicant’s life, to find the path of deliverance.”

The celestial messenger heard the resolution of Siddhattha with approval. “Now, indeed he added, is the time to seek religion. Go, Siddhattha, and accomplish thy purpose. For thou art Bodhisatta, the Buddha-elect; thou art destined to enlighten the world. Thou art the Tathagata, the great master, for thou wilt fulfill all righteousness and be Dharmaraja, the king of truth. Thou art Bhagavat, the Blessed One, for thou art called upon to become the savior and redeemer of the world. Fulfill thou the perfection of truth. Though the thunderbolt descend upon thy head, yield thou never to the allurements that beguile men from the path of truth. As the sun at all seasons pursues his own course, nor ever goes on another, even so if thou forsake not the straight path of righteousness, thou shalt become a Buddha. Persevere in thy quest and thou shalt find what thou seekest. Pursue thy aim unswervingly and thou shalt gain the prize. Struggle earnestly and thou shalt conquer. The benediction of all deities, of all saints of all that seek light is upon thee, and heavenly wisdom guides thy steps. Thou shalt be the Buddha, our Master, and our Lord; thou shalt enlighten the world and save mankind from perdition.

Having thus spoken, the vision vanished, and Siddhattha’s heart was filled with peace. He said to himself: “I have awakened to the truth and I am resolved to accomplish my purpose. I will sever all the ties that bind me to the world, and I will go out from my home to seek the way of salvation. The Buddhas are beings whose words cannot fail: there is no departure from truth in their speech. For as the fall of a stone thrown into the air, as the death of a mortal, as the sunrise at dawn, as the lion’s roar when he leaves his lair, as the delivery of a woman with child, as all these things are sure and certain-even so the word of the Buddhas is sure and cannot fail. Verily I shall become a Buddha.”

The prince returned to the bedroom of his wife to take a last farewell glance at those whom he dearly loved above all the treasures of the earth. He longed to take the infant once more into his arms and kiss him with a parting kiss. But the child lay in the arms of his mother, and the prince could not lift him without awakening both. There Siddhattha stood gazing at his beautiful wife and his beloved son, and his heart grieved. The pain of parting overcame him powerfully. Although his mind was determined, so that nothing, be it good or evil, could shake his resolution, the tears flowed freely from his eyes, and it was beyond his power to check their stream. But the prince tore himself away with a manly heart, suppressing his feelings but not extinguishing his memory.

The Bodhisattva mounted his noble steed Kanthaka, and when he left the palace, Mara stood in the gate and stopped him: “Depart not, O my Lord,” exclaimed Mara. “In seven days from now the wheel of empire will appear, and will make thee sovereign over the four continents and the two thousand adjacent islands. Therefore, stay, my Lord.”

The Bodhisattva replied: “Well do I know that the wheel of empire will appear to me; but it is not sovereignty that I desire. I will become a Buddha and make all the world shout for joy.”

Thus Siddhattha, the prince, renounced power and worldly pleasures, gave up his kingdom, severed all ties, and went into homelessness. He rode out into the silent night, accompanied only by his faithful charioteer Channa. Darkness lay upon the earth, but the stars shone brightly in the heavens.

Excerpted from:

BUDDHA, THE GOSPEL

By Paul Carus

Chicago, The Open Court Publishing Company,

[1894]

At Sacred Texts

Click here

Dreaming Colour – Shaman – nagal Woman – Light – Dream 13-09-2025

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Here is this morning’s sequence.

Around 6:15 AM back from the bathroom I lay in bed. I was unsure if I should get up or if I would go back to sleep. So I began a raja yoga thought form meditation building a form and a triangulation. I was having difficulty holding the form which is unusual. I started to notice breakthrough of dreaming colour of a passive kind. I decided to follow the cue and absorbed myself into the dreaming colour.

I am to explore. The visual field fills with a light blue and indigo blue light nascent and forming like clouds in time lapse. The colour assumes shapes similar to a Mandelbrot set though much more poorly defined. It is fractal. The visual field is breathing and transforming. The light is struggling against an inflowing darkness a kind of black ink diffusing into clear water effect. I allow the blue to swell excluding the ink. There is and ebb and flow of dark “ink” and vibrant light-indigo-blue. The dreaming is struggling against the incoming darkness. I know this to be caused by the darkness and evil currently expanding into the world. Unpleasant evil is on the rise. The dreaming of mankind is impinged by this darkness and it struggles to dream in, dream true. I observe and will the dreaming colour, the light-indigo-blue, to fill the visual field like a tide washing up a beach. It marginalises the darkness but does not exclude it completely. It holds the darkness temporarily at bay. The session lasts for between a quarter and a half earth hours, though it seems more eternal. I feel energised by the power of the dreaming.

I allow myself to leave the dreaming colour and build the raja yoga thought form and triangulation with ease.

The dream starts upstairs at Monty’s with Robin he is trying to find us a new house to live in. We are exploring the upstairs of a house. He says that it is bigger than the one at Monty’s, which it is. He has other places to show me. But first he wants us to meet someone.

The scene now change to the cafeteria of an ethnic shop come garden centre somewhere in the UK, query Wales or Borders. I am sat at a large round table with the wife to my right and Robin and a Mexican looking woman opposite. She is opposite me; Robin is opposite the wife. On the table is an earthenware bread basket and rectangular beaded place mats set with tiny turquoise stones. The feeling is very South America. On the walls are chianti-like wine bottle with a straw protective covering. Robin says that we should all join hands in a circle. I say that this is not a good idea, specifically for her, you. I look directly at her and she returns the gaze.

She has dark black hair with a few streaks of grey-white tied tightly back into a bun. She is of a similar though older age as me. She is slight and wearing a thick coloured line-patterned “poncho”. She has a single large “silver” earing in her left ear. Here eyes are obsidian black. She does not think it a bad idea to hold hands. She reaches out her right hand, which is small, tanned and leathery. As she does this the sleeve of her turquoise shirt rises up to reveal a silver ethnic bracelet. She offers me her hand. I can feel the palm-chakra in my right hand begin to burn and radiate heat. I say that I know she is a shaman to which she makes no reply but has a reciprocal knowing.

I bring my hand close to hers and we grip. She initially winces at the impact of heat from my hand. There is an instantaneous rush and a kind of melding. The room around us disappears. I know that she is a nagal woman. For what seems a long time we are sat there without chair or table for support suspended in space holding hands.

She then shows me by mental projection a truly brilliant white four pointed star of immense radiance.

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The basic outline is as above. But the visual image was truly dazzling filling the entire visual-dream-field.

She asks me what it is that I do.

I say that I work quietly persistently against darkness and that I have always done this.

She says that I am a light and that I have always been a light a part of the light a greater light.

She says that I am not alone we are all connected.

We sit there joined isolated in space-time for a considerable time.

On letting go of hands we are back at the table in the restaurant. The others do not seem to have noticed. We have some food and browse the ethnic shop. I pick some items up and go to the till to pay. The cash register is not modern. The woman puts the items in a hessian bag and tells me to take care of them because the last time I was here I broke a few things. I discuss with the nagal woman how I once had a male student who I knew was a proto-shaman and more. I knew that he was like me and that he was not yet ready to learn this. He needed to have a shaman’s breakdown first in order to be ready. Just like I did thirty years ago. The feeling is that he is now ready.

The woman at the till is a confederate of the nagal woman. Something drops on the floor off the till and I kneel down to pick it up. She has pushed it. As I do this the nagal woman places a fine wooden tube into my left ear and blows with some force some plant material and a tiny diamond-like gemstone. I see them moving down inside the opaque tube and feel them enter my beingness via the ear.

I am kneeling in a position like martial arts seiza with my back straight and my eyes front. I have no shirt on and am in white linen trousers. I am looking East directly into the dawn. The light flows past my head like a wind blowing my hair which starts off longish black. I initially have no body hair on my torso. I am kneeling in a wind, a gale, of light. The kneeling form changes shape and I can see the face take on different forms which I know are different lives. She tells me to remember and have more faith because I am a light. By mind I tell her that I am made to endure and to wait. I may seem not to be doing but I am, I am waiting. She smiles and removes the wooden tube. We are back in the ethnic shop at the garden centre.

The scene changes and I am at a cottage with a wooden five bar gate. I am on the drive. The wife is in the house and Robin has asked me to look after a young dog. He is going on holiday and the dog needs a good home. I take the lead of a black and white springer spaniel type dog who is very exuberant. I close the gate and let it off the lead. It jumps the gate and Robin thinks it will run away. I call it and it jumps back over the gate and straight up into my arms. The dog has decided that I am OK.

The dream ends.

My Rosary – Dream Vision – 26-08-2025

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Here is a dream / vision from the early hours last night.

“I am in a room, white wash loose sealed but only partial illuminated by small brass (?) oil lamps. I look down at my arms and they are brown and less hairy than I am used to. I am holding a beaded “rosary” and passing the beads between my fingers.  These are roughly the size of the top of my middle finger. There are not spherical, a sort of rounded cylinder pea shaped. They are made of a stone like “wooden” brown material which is at first cool to the touch. As I run the beads through my fingers I come to an amber bead which is much smoother. I note it. I continue. On the opposite side of the rosary chain / circle is another amber bead. This one is slightly larger.  I hold it up to the light. I can see an entire mosquito-like insect preserved in the amber. It is a thing of marvel. The rosary has two amber beads amongst all the dark brown ones. I am hearing “om mane padme hum”  as I run the beads sequentially through  my fingers.”

Ye Olde Git Clothing Company Ltd

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A market opportunity exists for a clothing company serving the vertically challenged non-svelte section of the middle mature male population. It should approach this market in a no frills, no fuss, no bullshit fashion. The trousers should offer short legs and elasticated waists. No internet fuckwittery in terms of paid for advertising is needed, nor are any vouchers or special bonus code “deals”. There in no need for a corporate heroin-loyalty-card simply a WYSWYG service that is reliable and timely. No need for any geezer whom you do not know the name of nor recognise in the adverts. There is no need to shell out vast sums of money for advertisements featuring a black-ginger-freckled-disabled-gay-anthropomorphic famous person with a large Tok-Tik following with ultra-woke or for that matter MAGA credentials.

There has got to be a vast horde of people like me, forgotten, grey, invisible middle aged men in need of some strides, some trousers. Strides that are simple, unfussy and you don’t need an extra £20 for a banal logo thereupon. The sort of people who get cancelled left right and centre for not being entirely PC. This market has money which it does not spend on manicures, tattoos nor crack, back and sack waxing. A market that is not unfamiliar with prostate exams and endless ticking offs by GPs about diet and alcohol consumption.

I shall apply forthwith to the Trademark office to try to trademark “Ye Olde Git Clothing Company Ltd”. I will purchase the domain name “ye-olde-git-clothing-company.com”.

Next, I will go on Dragon’s Den and pitch to Türker Süleyman for start-up funds….

Waking Dream – Mystical Vision

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If one was to imagine someone having a waking dream or a mystical vision it is unlikely that you would picture an unshaven white man in his sixties dressed in a white t-shirt and army surplus combat trousers who had been around the block a few time. That person would not be technically obese nor skilled in the art of high resolution laser spectroscopy. He would not be a grey. There may be a tint of eroticism to your imagination of a visionary. The person having the vision would either be young and “attractive” like Joan of Arc or Joseph with his groovy coat. There would be some kind of glow or aura perhaps. There could be some CGI graphics and perhaps some pointy elven ears. They could be a Russian mystic blinded at birth. They could be misshapen. They would have some cool sounding foreign name. They would not be called John Smith.

Either that or they could be in a secure psychiatric ward having avoided taking their medication by hoodwinking the staff.

People are likely to have prejudice about how they might imagine a visionary / whacko.

Last night whilst watching a fly on the wall crime drama about crystal meth in Norfolk I had a tremendously strong vision of the Dalai Lama and one other senior figure in Tibetan / Bhutanese Buddhism. That subjective observation has persisted on and off since then. It interfered with one of my normal nocturnal, pre-sleep meditations. This morning I have that subjective experience conflated with people at Stanford university. {They may be inquiring about Phowa practice – my guess.}

There is no logical reason why out of the blue I get a strong visual image of the Dalai Lama to mind and in mind. There is no effort for/by me to have it there. In fact it would be more convenient for it to fade. I can type, do the shopping and in a few moments, I will make a sandwich with these “visions” at the periphery of consciousness.

In the context of my normal CV and life experience it does not make sense. It is illogical and irrational. I have not exactly hung around with Tibetan Buddhists on a regular basis. Nor have I been brooding on either Tibetan or Buddhist themes of late.

After lunch I will start to sugar soap wash the wall by the log burner, then begin the chore of sizing the wood in the garage so that it is ready for use post operation in autumn-winter. We have about ¼ of the mass needed in the garage.  Once tided up, we will order a couple more cubic metres this month before the price goes up.

It is a bit odd but for me not unusual as Mr Jones might sing.

Easterly Stalkers – Tarot 12 – Dream – 01-08-2025

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Here is last night’s short dream.

The dream brings to mind the images of two tall women whom I have never met in real life yet who are public figures of different degrees. Their images are known. They hold positions of power, of different type. They are both based in London for their professional activities.

I see them in turn and know that they are both Easterly Stalkers. I have a knowing in the dream that I may meet them one day. One is more likely than the other.

I know this dream to be about time and the stalker’s in and of time.

The image of Tarot 12 comes to the fore. I know that this is again about forbearance. When things cannot be changed and are outside one’s ability or sphere of influence one must forebear. This is the jewel of the Easterly Stalker.

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The dream suggests that things sophisticated and outside my “ken” or experience are afoot. They are socio-political. I know that I would be out of my depth in that happenstance and shenanigan but that I have zero need to fear it because I am not directly convolved or convoluted in to it.

In the dream I remember that I have felt one of these women at the edge of consciousness for a while and she has been getting closer over time.

The dream ends.

I hold Tarot 12 to consciousness on waking and bring it through to mind. It is here in the mind’s eye now.

An Unfortunate Lunatic

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William Blake, né le 28 novembre 1757 à Londres où il est mort le 12 août 1827, est un peintre, graveur et poète britannique.

Bien que d’abord considéré comme peintre — il a peint quelques tableaux à l’huile, préférant l’aquarelle et le dessin, voire la gravure et la lithographie —, il s’est surtout consacré à la poésie. Il est l’auteur d’un œuvre inspiré de visions bibliques à caractère prophétique. Artiste pré-romantique, son style halluciné est moderne et le distingue de ses pairs, bien que ses thèmes soient classiques.

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Isaac Newton est représenté assis nu et accroupi sur un affleurement rocheux couvert d’algues, apparemment au fond de la mer. Son attention est focalisée sur des schémas qu’il dessine au compas sur un rouleau. Le compas est une version réduite de celle détenue par Urizen dans Le Grand Architecte (The Ancient of Days) de Blake

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Visions

Malgré sa piété et son inspiration évangélique, William Blake fut longtemps cru fou par ses contemporains et y compris des études tardives. Ce n’est que récemment que ses visions sont devenues les sources légitimes de son inspiration et de sa gloire.

Il aurait eu depuis son plus jeune âge des visions. La première intervint dès l’âge de quatre ans quand il vit Dieu et qu’il hurla de frayeur. Aux environs de neuf ans, il aurait vu à Londres un arbre empli d’anges aux ailes resplendissantes comme des étoiles. En d’autres occasions, il vit également des figures angéliques parmi des fermiers. L’une de ses peintures est l’évocation de la vision du fantôme d’une puce (The Ghost of a Flea, 1819–1820, Londres, Tate Britain)

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To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

William Blake

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Robert Hunt wrote the only printed notice (in the radical family weekly The Examiner) of the exhibition and its Descriptive Catalogue, and through his vilification they became much more widely known than Blake had been able to make them. Hunt described the pictures as “wretched,” the Descriptive Catalogue as “a farrago of nonsense, unintelligibleness, and egregious vanity,” and Blake himself as “an unfortunate lunatic, whose personal inoffensiveness secures him from confinement.”

Britannica on line