So you want to talk about God.
But what god do you want to talk to me about?
All these words sketch a god that I do not know.
God can no longer reside in the lines of words that you draw,
Nor can He be found in the hedges of thoughts that you stretch out before your eyes.
Still, He can reach out to you.
I want to hear you talk about God,
But then we have to be quiet,
Long enough for the creepers to fray,
For us to see through
I don’t want to stay in your talking place any longer,
I was so sad there,
Far from the silence of God.
©Franck – Jan 2023
–Recueils – Participations -Pratique
Notes & Silence 
No, I do not.
I used to. Then I learned that I knew nothing, and the words written in old books were placed there by those who knew just as little. To seek to expound is to compound ignorance.
Nor do I wish to listen to those who want to talk to me about deity. Their ignorance is bound in leather, and is crumbling to the dust of degrading paper.
I, too, have found greater insight, greater meaning, in silence.
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I can see from your poems you compose them, however effortlessly they you may do that. There is always deeper inspiration. It seems you’ve reached a place of profound insight, and now you’re given it to us, but what might that cost you? It’s the voice that I’m responding to, the one that talks to me, the reader, as though I am ignorant, and you have knowledge, and how hard to avoid that voice when you have deep insight. Of course I’m ignorant, but you are not? I’ve seen your response to a comment where you don’t just let your hair down and admit you’re not there either, unless you think you’re realized, in the state of enlightenment. Are you sure it’s time for you to give your wisdom, or are you spending it on us when it’s to help you get ‘there’?
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Hello Donny,
Thanks for commenting here.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean.
One thing I can tell you is those texts are mostly written to myself…
Doing my best to make sure the future ‘me’ will not forget what is glimpsed at now.
These are seeds for future reminders.
I’m quite surprised (saddenend) by the pretentious tone you seem to hear in those texts.
But again, I may have misunderstood what you meant…
As to getting anywhere, I think this is impossible as long as one believes in a ‘there’ they can get to.
Layers of consciousness are so manifold.
And our skimming through them so uncertain.
Who is not ignorant?
Please consider these texts for what they are.
Personal notes, shared in case they could help someone,
Splinters of clearing attempts.
There is no one further from realization than the one who claims he’s realized.
I hope we get a chance to talk about this
Have a very nice day.
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It’s not pretentiousness I’m talking about but something quite subtle and hard to get across. As I see it, you are not preaching your views but writing poetry, creating art, and sharing it with the public, and you are in, or have seen often, a deep place in doing that. I should just ‘like’ the poem and move on, but something there is here I’m trying to get across about your personal sadhana and the place you are currently speaking from.
I can only try and tell you that there is a there to get to, more than one actually, and it does help in realizing there is a change of consciousness for it to happen, and that it’s not just thinking or viewing yourself and the world from some new perspective.
You are on the way to the Silence, where there is no I, no thought being generated, no contents of consciousness at all, no center of self even, a very inapt description of what is well beyond words. It’s almost a complete reversal of ego consciousness. There are no steps to get there, no real path to take, as it’s just a temporary place for going further in consciousness and identity, but there are things that help get there, and people that have gone there or speak from there have tried to give us directions.
One of the greatest dangers, or obstacles to getting there, which often happens when we start getting deep insight, is spilling ourselves on telling the public about it. You’re doing that in poetry, with art, and that’s a protection from that spilling, but maybe not as much of one as we would hope.
I’ve taken my own advice to heart recently, and so it’s fresh with me. That idiom that we ‘teach what we most need to learn’ is often true.
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Hello Donny,
Thank your for precising your initial message.
I do agree with you on the spilling risk.
I see it as a free expression of what I ‘found/am in the process of finding’
All this asks to get out, get on notepads.
Initially, this blog was a mere way of organizing messy and unsorted paper drafts.
As things unfurled, it accompanied, initiated and echoed my practice of Zazen.
This latter is, as you’ve certainly got it if you read through these pages, the core of it all.
—-
As to the ‘there to get to’ :
I try to walk the thin line between following the inner call to ‘get there’ (bodhicitta, spirit of awakening)
and the pitfalls of attachment to a certain destination.
There is not a there and not a then.
Still there is a there.
—-
Words spring from, resonate, and vanish in the space offered by the practice of silent sitting.
I’m not into ‘telling the public’ about it.
I’m into sharing things, bits of things, which might help spread the scents of freedom I’d have liked to breathe in earlier on the Way.
As I said, I spread (spill ?) them for myself : painting memories of space and liberty I’ve crossed for times when I may need them most.
I’ve long struggled with the question of what people may say, think, about it all.
But this, to my surprise, really, has emerged as being part of my personal sadhana, as you name it.
This corpus of text and other content speaks to people who are kind enough to join me in the practice of Zazen.
They reveal the spirit of my practice along the years, its evolution, queries, searches, dead-ends, breakthroughs.
Evolution over the years.
I totally subscribe to your conclusion. It really encapsulates how I feel about all this.
I repeat along those pages things that have unveiled through practice or grace… as I’ve been faced with life material.
In other words, I « teach what I need to learn. »/
what I might one day need to re-learn / What others may find liberating to hear as well.
Nothing more,
nothing less…
—
Thanks for offering me the opportunity to talk about all this.
It has become so intertwined in the process that I hardly ever have an opportunity to consider it.
I perfectly know there is another dimension to the issue you are hinting at.
Words can only fail to solve it.
This issue resolves itself beyond these pages, beyond the framework of this discussion.
Somewhere in silence space
Somewhere on a cushion.
Have a very nice Sunday.
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And thank you for taking the time to share this.
J’aimeJ’aime
All in all, you are right.
Eventually, silence need to be extracted from the notes.
Notes need to be sifted so that Silence only should remain.
On a certain level is is already the case.
On an intermediary level, as well, as those posts are, for most of them, two years old.
There is a 2-year buffer between the moment I wrote them and the moment I edit and post them.
Like stars and the light.
I’d be interested in reading more on your understanding of ‘spill’.
Are you referring to a lack of reserve?
To an energy being wasted?
I considered the former, many times, but the latter is new to me.
Here or on ndraw@protonmail.com
J’aimeJ’aime
If there is a two-year gap, then you are not spilling anything you’ve recently acquired, energy-wise, and that spilling has to do with the build up of subtle life force needed for spiritual experience, as well as inner experiences such as lucid dream, etc. The other kind of spilling, more detrimental to the process of the path, is giving your wisdom before it’s time or in a manner not befitting your soul or the divine helping you. And you are at a place of wisdom, not only knowledge, deep wisdom. It happens when we are close to the Silence.
Your notes can come completely from the Silence, where your mind is quiet or silent, and the divine muse of poetry gives you lines whole and complete, that you record, and when it’s that way, it’s your soul and your divine doing it, and it’s in keeping with your journey. There is still a spill energy-wise, but not with giving your wisdom before it’s time.
I am not saying you are doing that, giving your wisdom before it’s time, especially since there’s a two-year gap between the time you write something and post it, but there is something here I can’t put my finger on in regards to that. Maybe it has to do with opening more to the divine, to God, and that’s a big question mark as to what does that mean. It can get closer than most would feel comfortable with, the relationship.
I’m leaving a link that might describe it some. As for the soul, it’s possible to make an inner journey and actually find it inside, as opposed to just adopting beliefs whether it exists or not, but that’s another topic.
J’aimeJ’aime
Fascinating.
Thank you very much for detailing.
I had not seen this comment when I answered your e-mail this morning.
I might read this several times before responding.
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