The Buddha's Eyes

I found this essay by my friend, Felicia Miller, who became a Buddhist, in my files the other day, something she wrote and shared with me  toward the end of her life (she passed in 2009 ).  And then I found a poem she gave me long before that time, when we were both young students during  halcyon years at Berkeley.  I just felt like sharing and pairing the two here as I remember my friend as well.  

I think Felicia would see the connection.  There are gaps in a life, but again, the same song, no gaps, just an open window.

THE BUDDHA'S EYES

This longing to see the gaze of the Buddha, what is it? What would it be to look into this ancient, ancient man’s eyes? 

Like entering the tractor beam of a powerful darshan? Perhaps, but not only, also something else. “The taste of freedom is everywhere in my teachings,” the Buddha said. Maybe like looking through a window to see a limitless sky.

My friend Claude told me about a ritual that Korean priests perform to bind the community to the temple and to each other. They go to the temple hall and attach strings from the lanterns that hang near the ceiling and run these strings from each one around the temple, going from each to each. All the strings converge at the eyes of the  Buddha above the alter. Like the tiny buddhas in a certain Tibetan practice that we picture streaming through the practitioners’ eyes,  back and forth moving along rays of light that connect us all. After the Korean temple ritual is completed,  priests cut the strings into  threads of protection  for others to wear. People tie them around their necks or wrists and wear them until they disintegrate. Protected by the community, the sangha, protected by the dharma, protected by the Buddha.

So what would I be looking for, if I could look into the Buddha’s eyes? 

Surfing Amazon, I came across a book titled “To See the Buddha.” An image of curious eyes accompany the caption, “Look inside this book.” I look, and find: “the Buddha is an absent presence.” Present and absent, yes. The Buddha is an act of the imagination, really, an absence we fill with our desire to be ruled no more by desire.

In Sri Lanka, an artist has finished an image of the Buddha. The last thing he must do is to paint the Buddha’s eyes. He does not do this painting the  vacant lids up close. Instead, he  holds up a mirror, using  the reflection in the mirror to guide him. The statue’s eyes are thus  not part of the representation of  form.  They are a  gap  introduced through the device of the mirror’s reflection. A point of reflection for the artist,  a gesture that says “This is a statue of the Buddha, but not the Buddha. This isn’t it.” 

A gap. Bardos at every level of being - at the end of life, and at the ends and beginnings of every breath, if we can but look for them. 

The Buddha is a presence that denotes absence.  We  stand and stare, but to see the gaze of the Buddha, one would have to look with the eyes of the Buddha. A shift somehow.  A trick with incense and mirrors.  What does one see through the Buddha’s eyes? 

What is seeing when no one is looking? Nagarjuna says “the horizon of enlightenment is the same as the horizon of samsara.” The same, only different, but not.

Felicia Miller  (2009)

Someone was the Sun

            calling from across

                        the little island fields

we turned,  and took the last

          glimpse of the closing lid

"Let's go, shall we?"

I could not answer

         but only followed after

         just someone's glance

                    along the rock path.

Felicia Miller (1972)

Felicia Miller 1952 -2010

For three weeks

the cool moon
bound by occult cords
moves through the houses
of memory and sleep
distills night in a bowl

But on the night of the full moon
what is mirrored
in a still pool?


Felicia Miller (1972)

A friend I reconnected with several years ago, Felicia, a friend I knew more than 30 years before in the Halcyon days of Berkeley, when we were both very fortunate to be young in that creative ferment of place and time, a friend whose poetry travelled with me, like the paintings I did of her so long ago, down and up the road, companions..........passed away a few days ago after a long struggle with cancer.

When I saw Felicia in D.C. this past fall, she was very thin, very tired, but still generous with her time and thought. I remember pulling out one of her poems, and reading it to her and her friend. She said she hated it. I felt sad to think that all these years I've cherished work she abandoned, disavowed, long ago. Still, I think it was important that I read the poem, remind her perhaps of that work, that self............I don't know.

Brilliant, mystical Felicia was entirely a creature of water. Our meetings always seemed to occur by oceans, whether at a 1975 Rhododendron Festival near Mendocino, or in 2008 at a cafe near the famous surfers beach in Rincon, Puerto Rico . I remember her best on the streets of Berkeley, with her ubiquitous necklace of sea shells, telling us stories from her treasured, antique book about the Undines , the people who lived beneath the waters of the Danube. I've always secretly felt that Felicia was really a mermaid herself, one who left her element to walk on the land for a while, perhaps, never entirely comfortable away from her true home.

I painted Felicia several times, once as "The High Priestess" in 1975. By a strange and lovely synchronicity, I heard, just a few weeks before her death, from a long ago friend, Richard Meyer, who I also painted as a Tarot archetype at that time - Richard became "The Magician". When I told him about Felicia, he called her also, after 35 years.

El Rio Abajo,

The River Beneath the River of the World.

The River we all hear, some more than others. Felicia, I'll miss you. Swim free and wild, now.
We love you.

The green plants

magically

from water air

the soil

from water earth

air

earth water

air light

earth and sunlight

sunlight

vibrating waves

shimmering

grasses in the sun


Felicia Miller (1970)

Someone was the Sun
calling from across
the little island fields

we turned and took the last
glimpse of the closing lid

"Let's go, shall we?"

I could not answer,
but only followed after
just some one's glance

along the rock path.



Felicia Miller (1971)

Did I see you?
feel your smile
as you
fell?

People cross bridges
cars pass under them
or water
you waited
then jumped

(it must have happened quickly)

but what was it that rose in you

like a slow Phoenix
new wings

outstretched?

Felicia Miller (1971)

"Then in the half-light of the canyon, all existence fades to a being with my soul and memories and the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of those rocks are timeless raindrops.

Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs.
I am haunted by waters. "

Norman McClean
"A River Runs Through It"

A House of Doors ~ open poems~

The deep parts of my life
pour onward,
as if the river shores
were opening out.

It seems as if things
are more like me now

that I can see farther into paintings

I feel closer
to what language can't reach.

Rainer Maria Rilke

















I feel enormously grateful to have finished  my 5th book, A HOUSE OF DOORS - my little collection of poems that span 40 years.   (update -  I have just made an EBook edition:  cost: $1.00)  (http://store.blurb.com/ebooks/360737-a-house-of-doors-open-poems)

Most of these poems are mine, but also included are "found poems", the collection of poetry by Joanna Brouk and Felicia Miller, with the illustrations I did for them back in the early '70's when we were young artists in Berkeley.

I have never been a prolific poet by any means...........I am a visual person first and foremost in my communicating and thinking processes. All of the poetry  worth sharing I put into this little book, and I'm well pleased, as I was to finally complete the MASKS OF THE GODDESS book. Honoring the Past, the Muse, the Friends, the Communities, Myself, and the Divine is what this 6 month writing project has been about, and with this book, I feel free to move on and give my attention to new projects.

 FOR THREE WEEKS

the cool moon
bound by occult cords
moves

through the houses
of memory and sleep

distills night in a bowl

But on the night 
of the full moon
what is mirrored

in a still pool?


Felicia Miller (1972)

AMAZONS IV.

At the river's edge

I laid my armor down

laid down my sword and bow

untied my hair

this I did for you

I approached you

lying in the grass

at the river's edge

your body brown

graceful as a tree

unshod

you waited for me

I approached you

with desire

O my enemy

Lauren Raine (1975)

                                                            light
                                                            light
                                                            light of morning

                                                            the fairest light,
                                                            the fairest light
                                                            has come
                                                            softly
                                                            gently
                                                            I feel its coming

                                                            night has given
                                                            night has given
                                                            a place to morning

                                                            breath returns
                                                            and moistens the grass
                                                            the bird's feather

                                                            no longer do I hide
                                                            no longer do I hide
                                                            gone into darkness

                                                            light has come

                                                          Joanna Brouk (1972)


  (5/2009)  As a footnote, because I published those poems on my website in 2006, Felicia found me on the Web, which resulted in us corresponding, and my finally going to Puerto Rico this August to meet her in person again. She's still a mermaid spinning stories about Undine, still the soul I remember well, still beautiful.)

(5/15/2015)  As a footnote to this footnote, I did indeed meet my friend Felicia again, near water as always (in Puerto Rico).  Felicia passed away  in 2010. I've written about her, and our meetings, in this Blog.   And I found Joanna again, in San Diego, in 2011, still beautiful, still making music and poetry, still a friend.  In fact here I sit at her kitchen table, visiting for the weekend.  Below is a pastel I did of her back in 1976.)

Puerto Rico, Storms, and Doors............

All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

David Whyte

Returning, after barely a week, from Puerto Rico, where I went to visit a friend I haven’t seen in over 30 years, who is recovering from cancer, after a long healing process, and no small amount of miracle.

I thought I could stay here to housesit for them, write, and see about getting involved with the Ann Wigmore Institute here, in order to do some healing on myself. But after a very short time in their house I went into severe asthma, and had to go to a hotel…….it is clear my own health “challenges” make life under these circumstances untenable here, and return I must from the amazing intensities of this tropic………

Intensities…….that’s what the tropics are, life at its most vibrant, virulent, creative, predatory, colorful………it is impossible to be in the midst of this potency of life and not become intoxicated with it. Intoxicated or terrified, take your choice.

Lately I've been thinking of my experiences as, well, kind of like meals. How do they TASTE?
The more present I become, the more each experience, each day, seems to fill me, nourishing and energizing, or toxic, making me slow, dull, digestive. "The world is not with us enough - oh taste and see!" the poet said, and it's true.

I had a room with a balcony at the top of a hotel called the Lazy Parrot, in Rincon. I’m sure it’s a hopping place in its season, with the two bars below and tiers of balconies looking out over the green hills that wind down to the ocean, famous here for surfing and snorkeling. However, I seem to have arrived at off season, and I felt a bit like a character from Stephen King’s “The Shining”, with a whole hotel to myself at night, not even an attendant in sight, empty bars ringing with the ghosts of bands and booze and laughter and sex, below me, two levels, empty blue pool, palm frond chairs, wind, wind, wind, the wet, heavy tropical air, wind blowing over wicker tables. As the storm progressed, the lights went out, and there were no candles, or even attendant to ask about candles.

So, I sat in the state of Storm, with nothing to do but witness and participate.

I do not think I shall ever forget standing on the balcony, the sounds of the koki frogs, a woman calling for her dog in Spanish “Limon, Limon!”, and watching the sudden illumination of lightning as it revealed an advancing mass of vast clouds, rolling in from the distant ocean. I could not but be awed by the truth of that moment, our lives, our plans, our hopes and petty plans existing in the brief moments between those storms.




Of course, it was all too irrisistable and I had to open the door. Behind it was another door.)

HOUSE OF DOORS (1986)

The house I live in
is made of doors

pretending to enclose rooms
constructed of memories

Some rooms are tombs for the heart,

full of damp bones, old letters
and useless ornaments.
I remember a pink room that pressed me
until I couldn't breath,
and a yellow room, big enough to hold the sky
or a troupe of elephants dancing on a thimble.

Some rooms diminish, some rooms compress.
Rooms can be tricky.
What I chiefly remember are doors.
I live in a house of doors.

Behind one door, I saw her sitting there
The sign on the door said 1969, and it was
February in Berkeley.
The plum trees were red in the rain,
steam rose from an espresso machine
and some kind of smoke
rises from the girl who listens to the boyfriend
whose name I don’t remember:
I close the door and the girl slips away behind me,
riding a train I can see in perspective,
riding to a vanishing point.

An onion, that's it.
All those layers.
Just when you think you can name yourself,
you discover new layers,
you’re forming a new skin,
a new ring.
But there's a core.
And where does that core start?
This room I live in.
These walls.
Today, they seem to be getting thin.
I can almost see through them today
Today I feel
like a Chinese box,
one inside another.
I think I may be the gate
that opens into another room
made of clouds,
or sky,
or something
I can't name.

Sometimes,
you open a door, any door
and you have to walk outside
into something tender:
into a quiet yard
because of a voice you hear
or a bell
or a train
pulling away
somewhere.