New Spiritualibus Blog Posts – Excerpts

Less is more
conditionally
a small state
arms around
to embrace
no weapons
avoiding thus
back and forth
listen and see
can be enough
for three or ten
a teacher asked
only one for three
all the others ten
they wished for
more not less
but turns out
three horses
ten guinea pigs
as this happened
so very long ago
still a small child
now all grown
rather old
at long last
less is more.

(Inspired by Lao Zi, Daodejing, #80, and a 2nd grade school memory)

“Future memory past now” — neither minor nor major

Looking to dismiss ego delusion?

“What is inside is me,
What is outside is mine —
When these thoughts end . . .
Freedom dawns.”

— Nāgārjuna, Mūlamadhyamakakārikā, 18.4 / Stephen Batchelor, Verses from the Center, p. 114

“Destroy ‘the ego’, hound it, beat it, snub it, tell it where to get off?
Great fun, no doubt, but where is it? Must you not find it first?
Isn’t there a word about catching your goose before you can cook it?
The great difficulty here is that there isn’t one.”

— Wei Wu Wei, Posthumous Pieces, p. 48

“The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
Until only the mountain remains.”

— Li Po, translated by Sam Hill, Crossing the Yellow River: Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese

When and where is less becoming more?

万事如意 / wànshì rúyì — May all your wishes come true!

Who owns what,
or what owns who?

Do we own our bodies,
or do our bodies own us?

Do we own our feelings,
our memories and thoughts,
or do they own us?

Can we just observe
proprietary notions
as two-way relations?

What I own, owns me.

To dwell in any body,
it needs proper care,
feeding, cleaning, and more.

Also feelings and thoughts
are nurtured and tended
by attention for or against.

Can observing be neutral,
and who or what observes
all the ownership illusions
in our given present lives?

What balances and frees
from owning back and forth
into awakened awareness?

Now, beware of your answers,
lest they may own you!

“Happy gnomes and elves” — a fairy tail dance

Owning “I, me, mine” plus past and future

“As we look, we find that all the beguiling narratives are basically about ‘me’: what I like, what I don’t like, what I want, what I fear, what I hate, what I believe, what I’m like. These I-thoughts are frequent and compelling — just try giving them up for two minutes. We sense that they are being thrown up by some strong motive force like a turbocharged engine. What is behind all this power? It is the belief in a self, in the story of ‘I, me, mine’ that we tell ourselves over and over. We do this to convince ourselves that we are real in the way we imagine ourselves to be. But this self is a fiction. There isn’t actually an entity that corresponds to this fabrication.

To convince ourselves that the imagined self is real, we tell the I-story continuously, using past and future, likes and dislikes, hates and loves, views and beliefs, engaging our deepest emotions to keep us turning on this hamster wheel. It’s not a pleasurable or satisfying habit.”

Memory, past, future, and the present

“We have this peculiar faculty called memory. Memory retains and stores up fragments of what consciousness experiences; then we build all kinds of concepts around these fragments. We call that the ‘past’ and believe that it’s real. Extrapolating from some selective elements of memory, we imagine that certain things will happen at some other time. We call that the ‘future’, and we believe that it’s real. But past and future are only concepts. They don’t truly exist. The past is gone and the future hasn’t arrived. What is real is the present moment. Body and consciousness are real, and so are thoughts and feelings. [They] are real and present. But there is nowhere behind us called the ‘past’ and nowhere in front called the ‘future’. When we remember something from the past or imagine something in the future, in either case it is a thought in the present moment.”

— Guy Armstrong, Emptiness: a practical guide for meditators, pp. 61 and 78-79

Nature, beauty, life, and love will not be owned nor own!

May we all rest in peace! Why wait till we’re dead?

(inspired by Joseph Goldstein — public talk in Bern, Switzerland — August 2025)

Before and after
the circle closes
becomes round
like it always is
here and now
so long before
and also after
the foundation
a consciousness
and awareness
in one’s heart
independent
of all creations
impermanence
like every religion
that comes and goes
such as days, weeks
months, and years
or even lifetimes
all that is just is
a reality of life
and also death
comes or goes
before and after
the sound of silence
awakes in every heart.

“Octahedron moment” — even before and also after

Awareness, the sound of silence, and emptiness

“You can trust awareness. As you begin to recognize it and know it, you can rest more in being aware and listening to the sound of silence. As you sustain awareness in this way, consciousness can expand and become infinite. When this occurs you are just present in a conscious moment and you lose the sense of being a self — being a person, this body. It just drops away and can no longer sustain itself.
“It is not possible for emotional habits to sustain themselves, because, being impermanent, their nature is to arise and cease. You then begin to recognize the value of this expansiveness, which some people call emptiness. Whatever you choose to name it doesn’t really matter, so long as you can recognize it. It’s a natural state, it’s not created — I don’t create this emptiness.”

“I encourage you to rest and relax into this awareness that comes when you recognize the sound of silence. Just rest in this state of openness and receptivity. Don’t attach to the idea of it.”

“Behind it all is the sound of silence. It’s like this enormous, vast, infinite space that allows things to be what they are, because everything belongs.”

“Letting go is not resisting or getting rid of but letting it be what it is.”

— Ajahn Sumedho, The Sound of Silence, pp. 300, 304, 307, 314

Arch of light above and below, before or after

namo tassa bhagavato arahato sammā-sambuddhassa —
Homage to the blessed, noble, and awakened ones!