COMMUNION, COMMUNITY, AND AUTONOMY

30 Sep 2019 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , ,

We touch, talk, give and take to different degrees

Sacred, social, solitary, self-interested

Communion, camaraderie, cut-off, conceited

Bars, sports clubs, cocktails with co-workers

Church, sacred space, congregation, Communion with God

Caring, caritas, charity, spiritual love

All-giving, other-oriented, mutuality

Couples, partners, children, family

The afternoon card-party with a couple serene and sober

Nighttime in the club, the regulars, high and drunk

Broken dialogue, semblance of camaraderie

Familiarity, unhallowed ground, stabbings at connection

A handshake, a wave, watching out for one another

We meet, touch, talk, connect, care

Contingent on our commitment to community

Contingent on the levels of self: hallowed, hollow, sincere, serene, solipsistic

Ascending and descending the soul’s ladder within the social spectrum

SEMBLANCE OF COMMUNITY

28 Sep 2019 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , ,

We regulars are at the Blues Club again, late

We have nothing at home to keep us there

Sometimes alone with just the TV doesn’t cut it

Get away from my head, worries, anxieties

Here we have the semblance of community

We know each other, see each other,

Night upon night, care about each other

We do not see one another outside the Blues Club

With its semblance of community

Some dance by themselves, groove on the tunes, talk between sets

Dodging the desperate drunks

Accosting you down into their abyss

To but be with faces I know

The semblance of community

TO RECAST A NARRATIVE

27 Sep 2019 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Outrage, grief, and pain pour forth from passion

From broken experiences of deep love

The other side of joy, ecstasy, and connection

Experiences of love fulfilled

Plato’s fear of passion nearly ended in renunciation of it all

He, Buddhists, the Hindu Sanyasis

Plato kept friendship, Buddhists kindness, Sanyasis peace

Into this Jesus was born with love

And recast the narrative

Giving place for grief, pain, and ecstasy

For sin, forgiveness, and new life

The great soul perfected in virtue recast

For a God who is near His children

Indifferent, diffident, vindictive Olympians recast

“That your joy may be complete.”

FROM THE WORLD OF MULTIPLICITY

25 Sep 2019 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , ,

Here in the world of duality, multiplicity, desire

I likely won’t grasp Unitary Self, Consciousness

I may see it in fragmentary glimpses

I may reason my way to it in Platonic fashion

But to merge, experience Self, Consciousness, unlikely

I likely won’t renounce, in fact, question

If renunciation be possible, or will out in ways

I read Vedanta and think, as I gaze at multiplicity

Language beyond name, form, and action

For Buddhist, Sanyasi, Taoist Sage

But likely not for me

The little toil of love is large enough for me

MEDITATION ON THE TWO TRUTHS

24 Sep 2019 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I felt my brain change

When I grasped a passage in the Upanishads

 

I see things differently, now

I understand aspects of myself better

Understand aspects of the selves other have

I see faces, now

Faces, which we all share

Aspects of The Self

I understand Christian mysticism better now

Swedenborg better, The Cloud of Unknowing better

 

The Unity of our Source

All Self; all Consciousness

All of Brahman

Unity

 

Then there is apparent multiplicity

The particularities we experience

The differences making faces unique

Different selves, faces, genders

The different notes in a melody

Different melodies in a symphony

The different notes that make a single chord

 

The Unity of our Source

All Self; all Consciousness

All of Brahman

Multiplicity

 

The reality of Unity and Multiplicity

The unity of two truths

FOR EVERYTHING YOU ARE

19 Sep 2019 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I have been alone, but haven’t felt lonely

You have been single, but with a family

Now we are together, now my life is full

For everything you are, I am ever grateful

 

I am grateful, too, for all of your support

When I go through trials, you give me comfort

Your voice is always, “Yes;” you won’t allow me doubt

You assure me everything will all work out

 

I give thanks to God for everything that is you

In an uncertain world, you and your love is true

I just wanted you to know the way I feel

My love for you and faithfulness to you are real

You make my world complete through all you are and all you do

EXPECTATIONS OF THE GREAT SOUL

17 Sep 2019 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Aristotle’s “great soul,” high-minded,” “magnanimous” person expects, deserves

Great things—Which are . . . ?

The world’s greatest benefit is the attribution of honor

People find wealth, fame, and power attractive

But such things, and such people, are fatuous

The attribution of honor above all rests on the good person

Sadly, is this the way of the world?

Good people love the good, and honor attaches to love

Craving for honor can detach from love

Fatuous honor so acquired

Judgments, judgmental, praise and antipathy

The necessary tasks in self-perfection

Secular sins for psycho-babble, hence popular parlance

 

The great soul bears intervals of fortune with equanimity

And so expects not position, occupation, income

I expect, expected, position, occupation

I spat out my bitterness and contempt

“Take away the thought, ‘I have been harmed,’

“And you take away the harm.”

Taking Epictetus to heart, I rethought my expectations, my bitterness

The great soul, if he or she exist

In all things remains equanimous

I struggle; good men can

Perhaps in another world, or at another time

I’ll be at peace

Some glad morning

TIME

15 Sep 2019 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , ,

Stuck in traffic, you can’t bear how slow time passes

Looking back over a long life, the passage of time seems short

Counting years passed, the numbers stagger credulity

We don’t count time except in retrospect

We fritter time away unaware

Alarmed by decades passed,

We pay more attention to the moment

Attending to time and how we spent it

Loving the present, we choose to fill it with what we love

We especially lose time in eternity

Looking to eternal life, we pay little attention to what is at hand

Loss, lost

We see too late that eternity is present, is in the present, is the present

Which never ends

THE TREASURE OF MY HEART

13 Sep 2019 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

I bought a t-shirt when I visited Stonehenge

A carved Mayan god of volcanic rock at Chichen Itza

On the Parthenon mount, a ceramic replica of a Grecian urn

A cross in Notre Dame Cathedral

At the Parliament of the World’s Religions, a golden Amitabha

And at a second Parliament, Buddhist prayer beads

 

I was blessed, as are many, with an inheritance gift

For some, it would mean a new car

Others, a big house

Still others, a resort on the Riviera

For me, it was Stonehenge, Notre Dame, and the Parthenon

(Chichen Itza and the Parliaments were largely on my own dime)

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be”

My treasure was, indeed, spent at the promptings of my heart

 

I wanted to listen for ancient mystic Celts

Touch the stars the Mayans recorded

Walk where Socrates, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Themistocles, Pericles, and the peripatetics perambulated

Breathe in the Spirit of Christian beauty

Hear Indigenous teachings, Vedanta, ritual dance, eat at a Sikh Langar, commune with fellow pilgrims

And did, the expense paying its dividends where neither rust nor moth can corrupt

OUR OWN MIND

09 Sep 2019 Leave a comment

by davidfekete123 in Blog Tags: , , , , , , ,

They say water seeks its own level

Some make it a matter of Karma

Put in strongest terms, its Fate

I prefer destiny

I’m certainly following my own path

In spite of the world’s exigencies

Sometimes partnering with the world’s exigencies

Funny how little I am affected by outside forces

I’m a man of my own mind

Doing my own thing and loving it

I now walk with another, together

We are of one mind in our individuality

We are doing our own thing and loving each other

Funny how little we are affected by outside forces

Seems like the currents of our streams sought each other

Though, in fact, improbable we ever would have met

And me antipathetical to the concept of Fate

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