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American Buddha: Past Becomes Present
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Cinema
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The past is gone The future lies before us, The present yawns like a gigantic gulf. Into this gulf we are leaping, Into this gulf we are leaping, In space we will be dancing, No ground required, Happy, weightless, holding nothing, Like stars adrift in void of space, Like moon that vanishes without a trace, And appears again, a thin sliver of silver Delicately laid on sky of velvet blue, Through which delicate stars like diamonds Peep with infinite shyness. Awake at three a.m., Awake again and again, Awake at stroke of midnight Awake in pale moonlight Awake in broad daylight Awake Awake Awake Facing the challenge of survival, Hour by hour and day by day, Only men and women Fighting to find the way From dawn to dusk, From dusk to dawn, The human track goes on and on, Out of the forests, onto the plains Through villages of mud and dung, Through festivals of battles won Against the drought, the bears, the bugs, the other tribes, A wonder anyone made it out out alive, Yet here we are, We've learned to drive. Thanks to our brain and body, The standard issue model For humans of this day and age Which after all is a passing phase, We concretize this universe Around us, wildly spinning. Using fractals and hyperspace We'll accelerate to ever greater speeds, The human race, so aptly named, Someday will be galactically famed For feats of daredeviltry. Yes, ordinary folks like you and me Will scale our own genetic tree, Understand their neurons, Develop their own brains, Acquire beliefs that they think fit, And of course ignore the petulant snits Of ecclesiastical thinkers, Those misanthropic stinkers, Enjoy the fantastic, But buy realistic, Upgrade the concrete, Easy on the mystic. A million or a zillion years In future, you agree, People could be that damn smart And know what they can see. But not today, And no way me -- Don't try to take me there, I need belief, A life of grief. Theres not much I can say. You clutch your idols, Worn with care, You urge me to be kind, You can't depart your fixed ideas, Your mind, my God, Your mind. You look away again, then Look again this way. For freedom you've been yearning. Of freedom you've a fear. Freedom is the fruit You never dare to pluck. And why bother anyway? The milk of ancient teachings Is always there to suck. For certainly the truth lies buried Deep in ancient caves, And truth is not found in the sun, But down in musty graves. And men in robes Know more than those Who dress in ordinary clothes. So some have said, But for every outdated notion That once was holy writ, There's a now-forgotten nation Whose citizens worshipped it. From human sacrifice To the Mormon paradise From Nirvana to Valhalla The gulf to cross is just the space Inside a monkey's skull. So dream up your own paradise Or dwell in someone's hell, Buy the keys to your prison With money you print yourself, Seduce the lovely daughters, Drink all the wine in France, And join your friends on the eve of victory For a final, spellbinding dance. As every leaf lifts up to heaven, Seeking the sun's brilliant light, So you too have an impulse To seek what is perfectly right. In the seed of your birth, In the bend of your spine, In the light of your eye, In the heart of your mind, Of course there is wisdom. Man is divine. American Buddha is an Oregon non-profit religious organization dedicated to spreading the word that the American tradition, and our Western cultural roots, provide abundant resources for spiritual inspiration, ethical guidance, and the expansion of human understanding. The materials used in building this website have been drawn from hundreds of sources, and credit has been given wherever possible. All of these literary, scientific and artistic works are offered here to give visitors as much access to these exciting resources as possible. Any concerns about intellectual property issues, fair use policies, or appropriate attribution of artistic or authorial credit should be addressed to the webmaster at ambu@american-buddha.com Facade (Ode to Search Engines) The exploration of the mind of the perceiver is one of the most important activities a person can undertake, and one of the most neglected. This attitude of neglect has not extended to all humanity. There exists at all times in the dull mass of humanity a spark of intelligence that recoils at being surrounded by ignorance. Persons who recognize that they have more potential than the world will grant them the right to express necessarily become rebels. This website is dedicated to the rebellion of superior minds against the tyranny of idiots. These rebels we have chosen to call "Children of Fortune," and they are the stars of our constellation, the guiding lights by which we lesser mortals may steer the frail vessels of our mortality. Returning to the topic we began with, each of these Children of Fortune have looked deep into themselves to discover what we all can be -- free. This is no online psychology journal, though some online psychology journals would turn green with envy to see what kind of online psychology we provide. There are dreams and there are dreamers, lucid dreamers and the other kind, torpid dreamers, I suppose, those who dream dreams dreamed perhaps many times before, so many times that they appear in online psychology journals as examples of previously-dreamed dreams. Then there is the poetry of dreams, and dreams of poetry. Poetry rhymes with pottery, and pottery rhymes with lottery, but that is not our subject here. Rather, it is poetry, the poetry of poetry, which is to say a poetry not placid but puissant. And poetry begins with "p" as does perniciousness, which is ever present, as in the death of Martin Luther King, a man who was a King and was also named Martin Luther King, whose name the angels sing, and on Google's search list mightily does ring, yes sir, Martin Luther King. Nor can we omit Iggy Pop, our Pop, who gave us birth in cradle's nook and hid us sweet under the hits that we hope to get from repeating endlessly Iggy Pop, Iggy Pop, Iggy Pop. The Universe Popped into being, and the midwife there was Carl Sagan, yes the very Carl Sagan we all know and love so well, Carl Sagan who brushed off the lint of hell from the fine velvet lapel of the universe, Carl Sagan who thought he could see people fighting in a war on a distant shore, Carl Sagan who held a lamp against the darkness as his own lamp blew away, Carl Sagan, hey, hey, hey. Every fresh universe needs a mommy, and ours would be Frida, Frida Kahlo, Diego's sweetheart, Frida Kahlo, Mexico's national pride, Frida Kahlo, purely portrayed in cinematic glory by Salma Hayek at long last, a Mex-eecan! To explain a new universe to itself requires an Uncle, and for an Uncle we would choose Loren Eiseley, yes the Loren Eiseley who floated down the Snake River on his back and felt his fingers grow as long as the lines of longitude reaching all the way to Tierra Del Fuego, and back up around the globe again to the Arctic, in a grand liquid circulation, Loren Eiseley, who put a frozen fish in a bucket and found it swimming next morning, Loren Eiseley, who explains how flowers saved the world, and you can read about Loren Eiseley here. And once you have a universe, then you are going to have lovers, and you will need to send a Hurdy Gurdy Man to play the songs of love. Which means you will need Donovan P. Leitch, yes the Donovan of hippy-dippy days, with voice so grand, and his tattooed hand, Donovan who chased the fears away, revealed the brighter day, Donovan of the voice so gay. For every Englishman, you need another, and Charles Darwin could be Donovan's brother, for Charles Darwin loved the wild lands, the wild seas, and Charles Darwin got down on his knees to examine the turtles, and Charles Darwin wrote the Voyage of the Beagle, and although he perhaps wasn't strong as an Eagle, he taught us something. Lewis Carroll, too was English, and his Alice taught us a thing or two as well, though some think Lewis Carroll should go to hell, and Samuel Dodgson with him, but round here we think very highly of him, and keep Alice on a High Shelf along with Lewis Carroll himself. Saints, we've got 'em by the dozen, Joey Ramone and Francis of Assisi, yes I mean Joey Ramone and Francis of Assisi, spoken in the same voice, you have no choice, I lump them together, in fair and foul weather. For Joey Ramone was the sweetest human being to ever hold a microphone. And Francis of Assisi didn't want any more war. On this they would have agreed, and I'm sure Francis' voice was beautiful like Joey's. Now Buckminster Fuller and Aldous Huxley probably enjoyed each other muchly, if they ever were acquainted, and if they were not, what a universal oversight! For Bucky Fuller could imagine stuff that really worked, and Aldous Huxley really worked at understanding stuff. Yes Bucky balls and tilted walls we got from Bucky Fuller, and Brave New World and Doors of Perception from Aldous Huxley fully showed us halls and balls and many tilted walls.
Other Children of Fortune: William
Blake, Dr. Ray Brown, Dr. Helen Caldicott, Carlos Castaneda, Lucretius,
Madonna, Ramana Maharshi, Don Juan Matus, John Stuart Mill, Ralph Nader,
George Orwell, Philip K. Dick, Nicholas Roerich, Norman Spinrad,
Shakespeare, Harriet Tubman, Mark Twain, Voltaire, Alan Watts, Antonio
Gaudi, Charles Lyell, Abby Lazerow, Mady Sklar, aka Madeleine Sklar,
Joshua Carreon, George Platt Lynnes, Robert Mapplethorpe, Barbara Aho,
Takuan Soho, Helmut Newton, Petter Hegre, Soroyama Hajime, Gary Webb,
Antony C. Sutton, Carol Marshall, Joel Andreas, Harry V. Martin, Russell
Mokhiber, John Horgan, R. Joseph, Webster Griffin Tarpley, Sharon
Begley, Michael Moore, Anton Chaitkin, Alex Constantine, Carol
Valentine, Major General Smedley Butler, Dennis J. Kucinich, Alex Jones,
Eustace Mullins, Robert Greenwald, Daniel Hopsicker, Dylan Avery, Howard
Zinn, Jane Fonda, Paul Mazursky, Federico, Fellini, Ralph Nader, Michel
Chossudovsky, Virginia Woolf, Moncure Daniel Conway, Julia Sweeney,
Hedda Garza, George Clooney, William Greider, Upton Sinclair, Joan Baez,
Lester Coleman, A. Ernest Fitzgerald, Ambu, Tara Carreon, Baksheesh,
Charles Carreon, Maria Carreon, Ana Carreon, American Buddha, American
Buddhism, Tricycle, Bulletin board, Buddhists Boards, buddhist boards 2,
Zen Forum, Onlinemedialaw.com, Childoffortune.com, Jane Stillwater.
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