spiritual practices offering salvation, miracles, liberation

bind us in "golden chains of spirituality".

beautiful to wear, with its inlaid jewels and intricate carvings, but it imprisons us.

People think they can wear the golden chain for decoration without being imprisoned by it,

but they are deceiving themselves.

As long as one's approach to spirituality is based upon enriching ego, then

it is spiritual materialism, a suicidal process rather than a creative one."

Chögyam Trungpa

Mindful birding

intentional use of birding for cultivating mindfulness.

Anyone who has been entranced by seeing a murmuration (a phenomenon in which a flock of birds, sometimes thousands of individuals strong, flies in perfect harmony as one shifting, undulating mass)

has had a taste of the wonder and grace available in such moments.

These kinds of experiences can connect us with the present moment, and the gentleness and appreciation.

https://shambhala.org/community/blog/the-art-of-mindful-birding/

the aliens are here
in Black Leather Jackets
to poison our species.

Twilight Zone.

perhaps this pleases the planet, or the entire universe.

i routinely escort intruder felines from my garden, keeping a watchful eye from windows above.

the birds and squirrels give warning.

i caught one lurking in the bushes beside the feeders.

surprised by the long poking stick supplied by last year's Catalpa growth.

this year's prnings are even longer‼️😈🤨

here they are sans feline presence.

homage
to
the nameless
beyond concepts or images

to which
surrender
in ultimate trust
and love

fills
being with love
joy peace eternal light.

overhead pale blue mixed with washes of white

homage
to the buddha-nature
being tree

our ancestors
still caregivers
airgivers
foodgivers

the green lions
here long before us.

without them
no us.

“doing tonglen for what we are feeling and for millions of other people just like us who at this very moment are feeling exactly the same misery.

Maybe we are able to name our pain

nwe breathe in for all the people who are caught with that same emotion

we send out relief for ourselves and all those countless others.

contact what we are feeling and breathe in, take it in,

for all of us—and

send out relief to all of us.”

Excerpt From
When Things Fall Apart
Pema Chodron

here's a cooper's getting stalked by a couple black squirrels

here's one of the engineers who i may finally have convinced it's not worth the effort.

what you see there is only the tip of the contraption below i've had to improvise. i had to gorilla tape the seams because he was popping the rivets.

unreal.

here's how one grey squirrel shakes seeds out of a squirrel buster🙈.

another, larger one, used to actually lift it off the hook and drop it to the ground, until i put something over the hook and attached the loop to a caribiner🫨

i'm telling you, the squirrel challenge is intersubjactive🤔

the feeders were busy this morning, since birds were scarce while the cooper's was around.

thinking otherwise.👌🏽😛😄

“the Organism is none other than a combination of all the Universe's activities within a single individual body.

This doctrine has led me to the conviction that World and Organism are one in kind, and do not stand merely in harmony with each other.

From hence was developed my Mineral, Vegetable and Animal system, as also my philosophical Anatomy and Physiology.”

Excerpt From
Elements of Physiophilosophy
Lorenz Oken

free on internet archive

i left some kibble fBold last night. this morning she came by for more kibble and some peanuts ❤️

At the moment, we humans are lucky to coinhabit the earth with mollusks,

even if we are a recent presence in their much longer history.

I hope the terrestrial snails, secreted away in their burrows by day across the earth's vast landscapes, will continue their mysterious lives,

gliding slowly and gracefully through the night, millions of years into the future.

even snails organize to gain freedom.

Farmed snails unhappy with their lot in life have found ways to break free.

In the mid-nineteenth century, Sir George Head described the single-minded survival instinct of snails for sale at a street market in Rome: "The proprietor," Sir George commented,

"is obliged to exert his utmost vigilance and dexterity in order to restrain their incessant efforts to crawl over the edge of the basket and escape."

A U.S. Department🔽

opossums and their place in the budget.

Tong Len
Breathe in for all of us and breathe out for all of us. Use what seems like poison as medicine.

breathing in the suffering of others,

making a connection to
Avalokitesvara,

breathing out
relief from suffering,
transmitting,

in waves spreading
healing
all sentient beings.

the worms that were
our ancestors.

"the deuterostomes, which develop the same characteristics, though somewhat embarrassingly in

reverse order, anus first and then a mouth, branched off into mammals, including
Homo sapiens."

who knew
rhat
a snail
would binge
and spend the night
exuding
the overdose of starch
from its entire body?

more of the Cooper's visit.