Chariots of copper and silver
Prows of silver and steel –
Thresh the foam, –
Plough up the roots of the thornback.
Currents of the heath
And boundless ruts of ebb tide,
Swirl in circles toward the east,
Toward the pillars of the forest, –
Toward the trunks of the pier,
Its edge struck by whirlwinds of light.
(Translated by Holly Tannen)
Image courtesy of www.pixabay.com
Elizabeth English (Locana) is the founder Life at Work, a professional and personal development organisation. She has a Masters and Doctorate from Oxford University in Buddhology. She’s a certified Nonviolent Communication trainer and, a teacher in Focusing with the British Focusing Teachers’ Association and the Focusing Institute. She’s going to talk to us today about Focusing, what it is, how you practice it, what are its benefits and how it might relate to the Middle Way.
MWS Podcast 49: Elizabeth English as audio only:
Download audio: MWS_Podcast_49_Elizabeth English
Imagine that any mind ever thought a red geranium!
As if the redness of a red geranium could be anything but a sensual experience
and as if sensual experience could take place before there were any senses.
We know that even God could not imagine the redness of a red geranium
nor the smell of mignonette
when geraniums were not, and mignonette neither.
And even when they were, even God would have to have a nose to smell at the mignonette.
You can’t imagine the Holy Ghost sniffing at cherry-pie heliotrope.
Or the Most High, during the coal age, cudgelling his mighty brains
even if he had any brains: straining his mighty mind
to think, among the moss and mud of lizards and mastodons
to think out, in the abstract, when all was twilit green and muddy:
“Now there shall be tum-tiddly-um, and tum-tiddly um,
hey-presto! scarlet geranium!”
We know it couldn’t be done.
But imagine, among the mud and the mastodons
God sighing and yearning with tremendous creative yearning, in that dark green mess
oh, for some other beauty, some other beauty
that blossomed at last, red geranium, and mignonette.
Image courtesy of www.pixabay.com
Dr. Rubin Naiman is the sleep specialist and clinical assistant professor of medicine at the University of Arizona’s centre for integrative medicine. Dr Naiman is the author of several books on sleep and dreams including Healing Night, Healthy Sleep, the Yoga of Sleep and Hush. He regular blogs on sleep and dreams for the Huffington Post and Psychology Today. He talks about why so many of us are deprived of good quality sleep, in what way we might take some steps to address the balance and how this might relate to the Middle Way.
MWS Podcast 48: Rubin Naiman as audio only:
Download audio: MWS_Podcast_48_Rubin_Naiman
This little silent movie, by Danish philosopher Kasper Johansen, rather nicely captures the spirit of Pyrrhonian scepticism – living in the Middle Way of confident uncertainty.