Buddha Dada

It's just another day

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Cold rainy day here. I see on the news that humanity is bumbling right along, hoping for the best. But just think of the context! Here we are, hurling through deepest darkest coldest infinite space on this microscopic spinning dirt clod we call Earth. The round lump boils red hot rock, cools down just enough for water and life to somehow briefly appear, and for a split second animals can be seen romping about the place. We human animals, beings of light and sound, sit right at the top of our planet’s awareness chain. Not only aware of ourselves and each other, but aware of the vastness, and even more, aware of awareness itself. It’s a stupendous thing that’s happening here, right near the tail end of this 15-billion-year outbreath of the cosmic dreamer, fast asleep well beyond even the idea of the furthest star.` ` ` ` ` ` ` ` (Dec 22, 2008)
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Picabia porch view fantasy
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Generic Buddha meditation

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In essence:
Just sit (or stand, walk, lie, sleep, whatever) fully, completely, inclusively. Be awareness itself, be consciousness itself.

Meditation in short (while sitting):
crossed legs
straight back
open eyes
(no) thought

To someone else, it may look like this:
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To you, it may feel like this:
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Meditation: there’s nothing to it

In meditation let there be a continuous non-verbalizing awareness of posture, breath, environment (context).

Nothing, such as breath, needs to be singled out for special attention.

Maintain an effortless awareness of everything simultaneously. There is no need to zero in on any particular subject/object of awareness, nor to flit from one to another.

Verbalizing (thinking), when noticed, may be dropped mid-sentence, with feeling/awareness returning naturally to posture, breath and over-all context.

breathing in -

nothing is left out.

breathing out -

in disappears.

Dream

I had a long, strange dream this morning as I was sleeping in late. I was back in Bangkok, walking barefoot down Sukhumvit Road. Feeling really good to be back after six years. Could hardly believe I was there. Thought that maybe I was dreaming and determined that nope, I'm not dreaming, I'm really here. Cool! People back home will be surprised I'm here. Stuck my head into a couple of go-go bars along Sukhumvit. Decided I'd come back later. Then things started getting really weird. It was Bangkok, but everything was different. It was like the 1960s architecturally, but on a massive scale. Sukhumvit petered out into a walking mall street, there was no Skytrain. An Indian family had set up an outdoor sidewalk bunk-bed dormitory business, 200 baht per night. I thought I can get a cheap hotel for that much. The cops on Sathorn Road were beating up a guy who had crashed his Corvette in the ditch. Gary and Joy took me to a pizza place called The Bomber. But we didn't quite get there. A girl standing on the walkover bridge near the Ambassador Hotel was shocked to see a clear hole in the polluted sky, but I could see that it was just an optical illusion, and I pointed this out to her. Huge white Concord-like US Air Force jets swooped acrobatically over the city. My bicycle got harder and harder to pedal and I stopped and examined the tires. They were both ripped to shreds.`````(Aug. 6, 2004)

Bangkok’s Rama IX Bridge: closing the gap - 1987

Construction started on Thailand’s first cable-stayed bridge, the Rama IX Bridge, late in 1984. As it was located a few kilometers downstream from the heart of Bangkok I didn’t take notice until midway through 1987 as the two sides were approaching their meeting point, and I found that image fascinating. The site office of the international consortium of companies building the structure loaned me a hardhat one day and allowed me out unto it to take pictures. I climbed the access scaffolding to the deck, entered the base of the east tower and climbed up inside to the top. Later that day I was invited back to take pictures early the following Saturday morning (June 6, 1987) when the final segment of the span was to be lifted into place from a barge. The job had to be finished before heat from the rising sun would have expanded the two sides and made the gap impossibly narrow. At the time, the Rama IX Bridge was the second longest of its type in the world.