Light Waves Reflected
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
2017
This companion piece to Light Waves: Fine Tuning the Mind (University of Hawaii Press, 2001) continues the Constructive Living themes I project on my reading of the Denkoroku (Transmission of Light) in translation. My first book covered sections 1-42. This addition appends further related reflections.
Flowers bloom silently, the sun rises and sets many times each day, gasses bubble to the surface, pop corn pops, moths flutter around the light. Eyes open or closed, here they come! Awake or asleep, they come! Marching, skipping, dawdling, racing--they come!
Too often I push them through the grinder course, splashing them against other shell shores, creating flowers and sunrises and popcorn in foreign lands. Too often out of boredom or vanity I spray these droplets randomly. Do I hope to use them all up some day? Or do I dread that possibility so much that I must keep checking to see if they are still there?
The source. The Source. Yes. Don't try to tell me it is digital pulses in brain bio loops. Software offers analogy, not equivalence. This lotus is not software. Awareness of the data stream is more data streaming, as is the awareness of the awareness. Meanwhile, the data source, the input device, remains a mysterious gift. You can't get outside yourself to discover it. Not by drugs, not by meditation, not by peak experiences, not by body movement. For all the marvelous feelings and insights those processes offer they remain in-sights. We remain locked up inside; there is no stepping out for an external view.
We raise fine habits like we raise fine children, with attention and thoughtful
discipline. Started off in the right direction, nurtured properly, both go off on
appropriate paths. While gestating a habit have regular checkups.
A finger pointing at the way things are will rarely gain much public recognition. A scarecrow's voice promising to create heroes in a heaven-on-earth novel will usually attract a following. But those followers, the bird-people, flit from field to field sampling the promises. They don't seek a nesting home.
Ignore the scarecrow voices preaching psychological heaven and hell and listen to Reality's guidance. It comes from the garden. It is the garden. It comes from the kitchen. It is the kitchen. You can add the rest.
You can't have all your birthdays at once. You must live through them. You don't see the panorama of these teachings at once either. You start with glimpses and fog. Keep looking. Birthdays are worth the wait.
These teachings are nothing if not ordinary. Searching for depth doesn't get your shoes shined or your mother thanked. You are both director and actor in the play starring you. You define your role and actualize it each moment. Don't look to me for critical acclaim or objection. On the other hand, you perform in a show produced by others before a countless audience. You made neither your shoes nor your shoe polish. And without your mother there is no stage, no audience, nothing. On what dais could you stand to forgive her? We are all flattened by the weight of our debts. Nevertheless, we wriggle and squirm as best we can. "The play's the thing."
Something lives me.
Something lives.
Lives.
Something within you yearns to encounter truth, recognizes truth, and seeks more of it. Whether the truth is delightful or painful an affinity links us to it.
What is the shape of your fear? Do you have curly thoughts? Such combinations of words are meaningless, particularly when "looked at" "head-on." Fears and other mental phenomena cannot be located and approached and fixed, either in the psyche or in the brain. So then, how can you "hold" to your purpose?
What do the words "accept reality as it is" signify? How could we do anything else? What choice is there? Yet we struggle with the honest recognition and inevitability of reality. Words erupt and fly in the wind, ashes from an unknown flame.
What was your mind like before you learned to worry? before you learned to regret? You can find that mind again, but not if you search for it. You might discover it while walking a mountain path or swimming in a pool or knitting a muffler or kneading bread or typing a letter. Your mind isn't hidden anywhere. It isn't lost. It's right here all the time. Here. Got it?
To think of neuroses or obsessions as mental "things" that attach themselves to a psyche "object" is to objectify rippling. If you think you pay too much attention to life's details, then you are not paying enough attention to even finer details. If you consider yourself too introspective then you need to look even more deeply into yourself. Probe yourself until you discover the other side of your coin. You are both heads and tails. You are one coin, coining.
Transcending your self-imposed limitations won't give you carefree spontaneity. It will reduce your tendency to talk in your sleep. You will find the word "tolerance" somewhat laughable, but the word "acceptance" will take on new meaning. You will find that your life both is and is not what you thought it to be. And the difference between what you thought and what is both matters and doesn't matter.
In any case, making lists of things to do doesn't get them done. Elaborate calendars don't get you to appointments on time. What does? Pop the thought bubble with action. Knowing is not as big a deal as you might think.
Diagnoses are static labels. You are not static. Your hopes for the future are static icons. Your future is dynamic. You are not your name. Have you dusted lately? "Dust" is a label, of course. Even dust keeps changing. Beware the word "dusting." It may look like action, but remains a label. Only dusting is really dusting.
You can't escape from Reality. Books, films, television, study, training, meditation--nothing will get you away from it. Words offer no escape route. The inescapability must be because either Reality is all around you and always around you or because you are Reality somehow. (Do you remember "I am that I am," "I and the Father are One," "In all the world there is only me,"?) How could Reality hide from itself?
No one ever had a dirty mind. No one ever had a neurotic mind. Minds just are. Clouds may look dishwater dirty and menacing, but they are just water in cloud form at the moment. Look for the beautiful source or look for the disturbed source or look for the dysfunctional source or look for the devil and you can find any or all. You are looking with imagination at cloud formations. Meanwhile Reality keeps shifting, events keep happening, tasks keep emerging, minds keep appearing.
Moments seem to accumulate in clusters, defining scenes and lifetimes and eras. Sounds make sense in terms of what you hear before and after them. When you find something worth you life then spend your life on it. At least endure and strive until you leave undefeated. Running away leads to more places to run away from.
Who really understands this path? You know one answer to that question. Some may think they can use this resource to gain money or fame. We don't use Reality. Reality uses us. Reality works with what there is--old, young, academic, illiterate, male, female. Reality's embrace empowers us all. Study your benefactor well.
Fashions come and go; wisdom applies to more moments than fashions. Is your desktop orderly? Does your kitchen sink need scrubbing? There is no holier task than emptying a wastebasket. All wastebaskets certainly agree with the above statement. They, too, communicate in your native language, though neither you nor they can speak it. Thanks, wristwatch.
The vast, unseeable aspect; the deep, unfathomed aspect; the encountered, misunderstood aspect--all these aspects are constructed for you and of you. Thanks, comb.
Understanding requires that the understanding be understood. Exercising requires that exercise be exercised. Practice requires that practice be practiced. The moments are digital, not analog. There is no partial credit for a partial answer to each moment's questions. In this moment there are no foreigners or colleagues or relatives or enemies. There is just this Reality, including some tranquilizing and stimulating fictions. How many ways are there to point out the truth?
A man, told he would die of cancer within a year, actually lived two years. Imagine how precious the extra year of life was to him. Each added day was an unpredicted prize. Is your today a prized extension of life?
Whether or not you exchange questions and answers with a teacher of life, you find many opportunities to duel with yourself. How many of your resolves disintegrate within three days? How quickly do words emerge when you are frustrated or angry? What do you accomplish while terrified or sorrowful or lonely or excited? Back and forth Reality tugs itself. We all live in obscurity.
Preferences will swirl around your mind. Notice them, but keep moving toward your important goals. Preferences have histories. Like emotions, preferences carry information. Also like emotions they need not determine what you do. Reality beckons to lose yourself in meaningful action.
Embrace your thoughts, then let them pass along. You cannot suppress them; you need not do so. This casual friendship steps aside during dedicated action declining to get in the way. Just fit your doing to Reality.
What lies beyond the body-mind? Any talk about that mystery is like talk about death, cure, or enlightenment--word stacks. You can't blacken pitch black or make clear water clearer by adding more water.
It may take some time to discover depth in a teacher. It helps to know what to look for and then to look. When you find your teacher you find yourself.
Why is there continuity of self across fresh moments? First find how moments are constructed, then you'll see how the self is constructed. Then you'll see how the question itself was constructed. All are undoubtedly constructions, like suffering and salvation.
While feelings bob up and down hold to your purpose. Misery comes from failing to achieve your goal, not from failing to control your emotions. Become known as one who is purposeful. You need no special meditative insight. Just keep your dishes washed and your silverware put away and your talk dedicated to clear purpose and the like.
Pointing at a Constructive Living book, the book is there, but the thought of the book is nowhere. Can you see the point? Anyway, it’s just a thought.
Everyone has thoughts and feelings. Furthermore, everyone has neurotic moments displayed in thoughts and feelings. I can’t paint a thought with words or brush. So I can’t work on neurosis directly. The richness of Reality allows for alternative moments when the focus is properly aligned.
As I report a memory or a dream I am no longer remembering or dreaming. I am a step away into reporting. So when you describe past neurotic moments you are into description. Words always fail to objectify experience. Any psychotherapy that only involves talking is distanced from the experience of thoughts and feelings.
My mind doesn’t really have a name. No one could see it to name it when I was born. This body “stands for” “David K. Reynolds” even though this body keeps changing.
“Do what needs doing” we say in Constructive Living. I can “do” nothing on my own. I was taught how to “do.” I am given resources to “do.” I was/am given a body to “do.” I was even taught the words “to do.” Nevertheless, I write these borrowed words. Somehow, they need to be written. Whatever you may think of me or these words, respect Reality’s truth.
David K. Reynolds, Ph.D.
2017
This companion piece to Light Waves: Fine Tuning the Mind (University of Hawaii Press, 2001) continues the Constructive Living themes I project on my reading of the Denkoroku (Transmission of Light) in translation. My first book covered sections 1-42. This addition appends further related reflections.
Flowers bloom silently, the sun rises and sets many times each day, gasses bubble to the surface, pop corn pops, moths flutter around the light. Eyes open or closed, here they come! Awake or asleep, they come! Marching, skipping, dawdling, racing--they come!
Too often I push them through the grinder course, splashing them against other shell shores, creating flowers and sunrises and popcorn in foreign lands. Too often out of boredom or vanity I spray these droplets randomly. Do I hope to use them all up some day? Or do I dread that possibility so much that I must keep checking to see if they are still there?
The source. The Source. Yes. Don't try to tell me it is digital pulses in brain bio loops. Software offers analogy, not equivalence. This lotus is not software. Awareness of the data stream is more data streaming, as is the awareness of the awareness. Meanwhile, the data source, the input device, remains a mysterious gift. You can't get outside yourself to discover it. Not by drugs, not by meditation, not by peak experiences, not by body movement. For all the marvelous feelings and insights those processes offer they remain in-sights. We remain locked up inside; there is no stepping out for an external view.
We raise fine habits like we raise fine children, with attention and thoughtful
discipline. Started off in the right direction, nurtured properly, both go off on
appropriate paths. While gestating a habit have regular checkups.
A finger pointing at the way things are will rarely gain much public recognition. A scarecrow's voice promising to create heroes in a heaven-on-earth novel will usually attract a following. But those followers, the bird-people, flit from field to field sampling the promises. They don't seek a nesting home.
Ignore the scarecrow voices preaching psychological heaven and hell and listen to Reality's guidance. It comes from the garden. It is the garden. It comes from the kitchen. It is the kitchen. You can add the rest.
You can't have all your birthdays at once. You must live through them. You don't see the panorama of these teachings at once either. You start with glimpses and fog. Keep looking. Birthdays are worth the wait.
These teachings are nothing if not ordinary. Searching for depth doesn't get your shoes shined or your mother thanked. You are both director and actor in the play starring you. You define your role and actualize it each moment. Don't look to me for critical acclaim or objection. On the other hand, you perform in a show produced by others before a countless audience. You made neither your shoes nor your shoe polish. And without your mother there is no stage, no audience, nothing. On what dais could you stand to forgive her? We are all flattened by the weight of our debts. Nevertheless, we wriggle and squirm as best we can. "The play's the thing."
Something lives me.
Something lives.
Lives.
Something within you yearns to encounter truth, recognizes truth, and seeks more of it. Whether the truth is delightful or painful an affinity links us to it.
What is the shape of your fear? Do you have curly thoughts? Such combinations of words are meaningless, particularly when "looked at" "head-on." Fears and other mental phenomena cannot be located and approached and fixed, either in the psyche or in the brain. So then, how can you "hold" to your purpose?
What do the words "accept reality as it is" signify? How could we do anything else? What choice is there? Yet we struggle with the honest recognition and inevitability of reality. Words erupt and fly in the wind, ashes from an unknown flame.
What was your mind like before you learned to worry? before you learned to regret? You can find that mind again, but not if you search for it. You might discover it while walking a mountain path or swimming in a pool or knitting a muffler or kneading bread or typing a letter. Your mind isn't hidden anywhere. It isn't lost. It's right here all the time. Here. Got it?
To think of neuroses or obsessions as mental "things" that attach themselves to a psyche "object" is to objectify rippling. If you think you pay too much attention to life's details, then you are not paying enough attention to even finer details. If you consider yourself too introspective then you need to look even more deeply into yourself. Probe yourself until you discover the other side of your coin. You are both heads and tails. You are one coin, coining.
Transcending your self-imposed limitations won't give you carefree spontaneity. It will reduce your tendency to talk in your sleep. You will find the word "tolerance" somewhat laughable, but the word "acceptance" will take on new meaning. You will find that your life both is and is not what you thought it to be. And the difference between what you thought and what is both matters and doesn't matter.
In any case, making lists of things to do doesn't get them done. Elaborate calendars don't get you to appointments on time. What does? Pop the thought bubble with action. Knowing is not as big a deal as you might think.
Diagnoses are static labels. You are not static. Your hopes for the future are static icons. Your future is dynamic. You are not your name. Have you dusted lately? "Dust" is a label, of course. Even dust keeps changing. Beware the word "dusting." It may look like action, but remains a label. Only dusting is really dusting.
You can't escape from Reality. Books, films, television, study, training, meditation--nothing will get you away from it. Words offer no escape route. The inescapability must be because either Reality is all around you and always around you or because you are Reality somehow. (Do you remember "I am that I am," "I and the Father are One," "In all the world there is only me,"?) How could Reality hide from itself?
No one ever had a dirty mind. No one ever had a neurotic mind. Minds just are. Clouds may look dishwater dirty and menacing, but they are just water in cloud form at the moment. Look for the beautiful source or look for the disturbed source or look for the dysfunctional source or look for the devil and you can find any or all. You are looking with imagination at cloud formations. Meanwhile Reality keeps shifting, events keep happening, tasks keep emerging, minds keep appearing.
Moments seem to accumulate in clusters, defining scenes and lifetimes and eras. Sounds make sense in terms of what you hear before and after them. When you find something worth you life then spend your life on it. At least endure and strive until you leave undefeated. Running away leads to more places to run away from.
Who really understands this path? You know one answer to that question. Some may think they can use this resource to gain money or fame. We don't use Reality. Reality uses us. Reality works with what there is--old, young, academic, illiterate, male, female. Reality's embrace empowers us all. Study your benefactor well.
Fashions come and go; wisdom applies to more moments than fashions. Is your desktop orderly? Does your kitchen sink need scrubbing? There is no holier task than emptying a wastebasket. All wastebaskets certainly agree with the above statement. They, too, communicate in your native language, though neither you nor they can speak it. Thanks, wristwatch.
The vast, unseeable aspect; the deep, unfathomed aspect; the encountered, misunderstood aspect--all these aspects are constructed for you and of you. Thanks, comb.
Understanding requires that the understanding be understood. Exercising requires that exercise be exercised. Practice requires that practice be practiced. The moments are digital, not analog. There is no partial credit for a partial answer to each moment's questions. In this moment there are no foreigners or colleagues or relatives or enemies. There is just this Reality, including some tranquilizing and stimulating fictions. How many ways are there to point out the truth?
A man, told he would die of cancer within a year, actually lived two years. Imagine how precious the extra year of life was to him. Each added day was an unpredicted prize. Is your today a prized extension of life?
Whether or not you exchange questions and answers with a teacher of life, you find many opportunities to duel with yourself. How many of your resolves disintegrate within three days? How quickly do words emerge when you are frustrated or angry? What do you accomplish while terrified or sorrowful or lonely or excited? Back and forth Reality tugs itself. We all live in obscurity.
Preferences will swirl around your mind. Notice them, but keep moving toward your important goals. Preferences have histories. Like emotions, preferences carry information. Also like emotions they need not determine what you do. Reality beckons to lose yourself in meaningful action.
Embrace your thoughts, then let them pass along. You cannot suppress them; you need not do so. This casual friendship steps aside during dedicated action declining to get in the way. Just fit your doing to Reality.
What lies beyond the body-mind? Any talk about that mystery is like talk about death, cure, or enlightenment--word stacks. You can't blacken pitch black or make clear water clearer by adding more water.
It may take some time to discover depth in a teacher. It helps to know what to look for and then to look. When you find your teacher you find yourself.
Why is there continuity of self across fresh moments? First find how moments are constructed, then you'll see how the self is constructed. Then you'll see how the question itself was constructed. All are undoubtedly constructions, like suffering and salvation.
While feelings bob up and down hold to your purpose. Misery comes from failing to achieve your goal, not from failing to control your emotions. Become known as one who is purposeful. You need no special meditative insight. Just keep your dishes washed and your silverware put away and your talk dedicated to clear purpose and the like.
Pointing at a Constructive Living book, the book is there, but the thought of the book is nowhere. Can you see the point? Anyway, it’s just a thought.
Everyone has thoughts and feelings. Furthermore, everyone has neurotic moments displayed in thoughts and feelings. I can’t paint a thought with words or brush. So I can’t work on neurosis directly. The richness of Reality allows for alternative moments when the focus is properly aligned.
As I report a memory or a dream I am no longer remembering or dreaming. I am a step away into reporting. So when you describe past neurotic moments you are into description. Words always fail to objectify experience. Any psychotherapy that only involves talking is distanced from the experience of thoughts and feelings.
My mind doesn’t really have a name. No one could see it to name it when I was born. This body “stands for” “David K. Reynolds” even though this body keeps changing.
“Do what needs doing” we say in Constructive Living. I can “do” nothing on my own. I was taught how to “do.” I am given resources to “do.” I was/am given a body to “do.” I was even taught the words “to do.” Nevertheless, I write these borrowed words. Somehow, they need to be written. Whatever you may think of me or these words, respect Reality’s truth.