Alchemy - a poem

Vertical rainbow 
pouring down
Sound of silence
squeals so loud
Life-sucking forces
cracking bones
All one can do
is love

Depth of Interest & Quality of Transformation

     “The Son tradition originated in seventh-century Tang China as a reaction against the overly metaphysical concerns of the established Buddhist schools. It sought to recover the simplicity of early Buddhism by following Gotama’s example of sitting still beneath a tree in an uncompromising engagement with the primordial questions of what it means to be born, get sick, grow old, and die. The Son masters realized that the very way in which you posed these questions would determine the kind of ‘enlightenment’ you might gain. A famous aphorism encapsulates this realization:

Great doubt – great awakening;

Little doubt – little awakening;

No doubt – no awakening.

     The quality of your ‘doubt’ – of the questions you ask – is directly correlated to the quality of your insight. To ask such questions viscerally will engender a correspondingly visceral awakening. To pose them intellectually, with ‘little doubt,’ will lead only to intellectual understanding. For those who are not stirred by existential questions at all, awakening is not even conceivable.”

     Stephen Batchelor. “After Buddhism. Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age." Yale University Press, New Haven, 2015.

Tree with superficial roots blown down by wind.

Patiently Observe the Bare Experience - Gather Data

     “I would like to beg you … as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to cherish the questions themselves as if they were closed rooms or books written in a very strange tongue. Do not search now for the answers, which could not be given to you because you would not be able to live them. It is a matter of living everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, one distant day live right into the answer.”            Rilke
 
       Palmer PJ, Zajonc A. The heart of higher education: A call to renewal. Transforming the academy through collegial conversation. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2010.

Udayan Sankar Pal   www.facebook.com/UdayanSankarPal