The town in the country: summer

All along the watchtower

"There must be some way out of here," said the joker to the thief
"There's too much confusion, I can't get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, ploughmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth"

"No reason to get excited," the thief, he kindly spoke
"There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we've been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late"

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

From Bob Dylan, John Wesley Harding, 1967

... whether we know it here or not ...

The expulsion from Paradise is in its main significance eternal: Consequently the expulsion from Paradise is final, and life in this world irrevocable, but the eternal nature of the occurrence (or, temporally expressed, the eternal recapitulation of the occurrence) makes it nevertheless possible that not only could we live continuously in Paradise, but that we are continuously there in actual fact, no matter whether we know it here or not.

From Franz Kafka, Parables and Paradoxes. In German and English (New York, 1946).

The town in the country: spring

... what is the mind?

"You ask, that's your mind. I answer, that's my mind. If I had no mind, how could I answer? If you had no mind, how could you ask? That which asks is your mind."

Damo (Bodhidharma)

It is the same everywhere ...

1. 

Take me back
before the Picts
to the Pre-Celtic Dreamtime
before "mine" and "yours"
or the forging of swords
when there was no boundary
between life and death.

2.

Then came the Celtic warriors
thirty thousand tribesmen down from the hills
bloodied but unbowed
standing up to the might
of the whole Roman Empire.

In Swordwielder's words:
"the most distant dwellers upon the earth
the last of the free".

3.

And bear in mind
that Columba
was not trying
to get to the
edge of somewhere.

But crossing from
Donegal to Dalriada
he stopped halfway
at dead centre
making Iona
the very heart
of the Celtic Church.

4.

At the Hill of the Angels

Yes indeed, Colum Cille
stood here too, arms outstretched
and bathed in golden light.

Now I sit here
fingers downstretched
feeling the warm support
of Mother Earth
embracing the bright space
of Father Sky
and know it is the same
everywhere.

... no theories ...

... the Tathagata had no theories, beause he had seen the nature of things ...

From Walpola Sri Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, (Bedford, 1959).

(Tathagata is the main title the Buddha used to describe himself in the Pali canon: from the Sankrit for one who has transcended all coming and going.)