Play as Being 30

• 9 seconds, and a different notion of Play as Being occurs to me... How about if, instead of play being a game, the play were a drama, a performance? The curtain rises and I come on stage. Why am I clothed this way? Who am I playing alongside? Is the play scripted or unscripted? If scripted, who wrote the script? If unscripted, what freedom do I have to create the scenery I will find in the next act? Who directs this play? Who is the audience? Where is it taking place? HOW WILL I KNOW WHEN THE FINAL ACT IS OVER?
• Free will or predestination: which is true? What a silly question!!
• No one should use the word "should" in a sentence.
• Swimming in solid objects, in Real Life not Second Life, can be a revelation!
  

Want IQ?

My teacher told me tonight of a 4 month retreat she went on some time ago. During that time she participated in 4 meditation sessions every day, totalling 8 hours a day. Understandably, her powers of concentration improved no end.

Concentration is a mental factor whose function is to bring peace. It also brings suppleness - a comfort and flexibility - to the mind. But something else as well. During the retreat, her teacher told her that the effect of this level of sustained improved concentration was the equivalent to increasing your IQ by 40 points!

My teacher is a genius. Or was! :)

Play as Being 29

• If I am playing, what am I worried about!?
• If I am playing, why am I waiting!?
  

Play as Being 28

• Do I wander round at work with Velcro all over me? People must think so judging by the amount of stuff that is thrown my way! Sometimes 9 seconds is just not enough to let go of all that baggage. My own fault though. What a small minded view I must sometimes have of myself to believe that mistaken identity. Awake!!!
• "Form is empty. Emptiness is form."
  If that doesn't send a chill through you, what will!?
• When I cannot quite touch emptiness, I am cast upon faith instead of knowing and being. And faith wavers for a moment, like an unfamiliar friend, until, with a thought, it comes flooding back and over me. And then - poof - faith is gone! No longer needed where there is certainty.
• If I am playing, what am I playing at!?
  

An empty garden

• Not for me. The inhabitants of the Arhat garden (十八羅漢) in the Hsi Lai Temple have no life for me. They are supposed to be some of the earliest disciples of Buddha Shakyamuni. They are liberated. They have gone beyond. But to me they are empty shells. Not even like shadows of those caught in a nuclear blast, nor as bugs splattered against a windscreen. THEY GIVE NOTHING BACK. They are not an inspiration to me. They are not my role models. That is not my path.

Play as Being 27

• Aloft or on water, what surpasses a swan's beauty?
  Now its feet are entangled in weeds.
  Before it can be, it must break free.
  Thus speaks the Kuan Yin Oracle in one of her hundred poems. In Indian mythology, the swan (Sanskrit: hansa) is the symbol of the individual spirit or soul. Despite its beauty, the swan seems trapped. What are these weeds? And what does it mean for a swan to "be"? Is it just to reach its potential as a swan? To fly, to swim, to inspire other beings, or to bear or to sire young? Or is there a greater potential? Are the weeds of its own making? Is the separate and individual hansa not separate at all but just entangled in its own ignorance? Hmmm...
  

Learning playing by being!

Once upon a long time ago, I learnt to play the guitar. Though I played in rock and blues bands as lead guitar for a few years, there was one lead break that I couldn't quite master. In fact I was a long way from it. (It was 2 minutes through the first track of Led Zepplin's first album!) Some time after, for various reasons, I had to give up playing guitar for about five years or more.

When I eventually bought a new electric guitar in the mid 80s, I tried playing the dreaded riff - and succeeded perfectly first time! It was as though I had continued to learn and practise without even touching an instrument. I had not only learnt the physical technique required to play the notes using some kind of background processing, I had also mastered it.

Play as Being 26

• Not all thoughts are equal

Play as Being 25

• Now emptiness
• The hungry beast looks to grasp every fleeting thought or memory and says, "This is me!" And sometimes I believe it. Well most of the time. Pah! Let me turn this beast into a BE-ast. And perhaps remember, "There's no I in beast." Argh! I've become infected with Zen humour!
• I and all sentient beings, until we achieve enlightenment,
  Go for refuge to Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.
• 
  
• How easy it is to find excuses! If we stay just few steps behind our teacher, we'll always be playing 'catch up'. We'll always be preparing. We'll never actually have to do anything. We can always see ourselves as not quite ready. Perhaps even not quite worthy. We will, in truth, never get anywhere. Why not just stay home instead? Might as well for all the good we're doing. And round we go again. So we can fool ourselves.
  

"If you can be happy now..."

For the past 23 years I have been a fan of Peter Honey and Alan Mumford's LSQ, an instrument that purports to identify preferences of learning style. It has a chequered history of independent appraisals and evaluations, both those focussed on it alone and also as part of wider studies such as the masterly work by Coffield et al. (2004). Yet despite mixed reviews, it has had personal and professional value to me. If nothing else it has helped me demonstrate to trainee managers that there is no one approach to learning that will work for all their staff. Instead they actually have to get to know people [shudder!] and understand individual abilities, motivations, values and needs.

I've taken the LSQ probably once a year during that time. Reinterpreting my scores as population percentiles I score approximately (from memory) 95% Activist, 7% Reflector, 15% Theorist and 50% Pragmatist. Conscious and sustained efforts to adjust that skew have only ever ended with the feeling of inauthenticity. It doesn't mean I am relatively bad at non-activist learning. I've found that as a polymath I seem to be least as good as many other people at these. It's simply that I have a strong preference for Activist styles of learning.

Why is this? I only identified the answer in recent years. It stems from something someone said to me 35 years ago: "If you can be happy now, you can always be happy." That simple sentence has shaped the rest of my life. I feel as though most of the time (except when writing reflective things such as this blog entry) I live in the Now. And guess what? I love it!

And guess how that has affected my learning style scores. Activists learn by doing something new. When does the new occur? Right now. What happens if I attempt to reflect on past events? I lose consciousness, to some extent, of now. And although Now is always, that now will never come again.

Do I still learn under those circumstances? Or am I drowned in a flood of sensory perception? Yes I learn. But it is by a process that is not obvious to some, nor is it linear or even necessarily rational. It is a process I have simply come to trust that happens - because I know it happens - and that as it happens, it happens well. The prow of the boat, that is my conscious perception, forges ahead and experiences. The whole of the rest of the boat sifts and absorbs and structures and learns.

So if you see someone wandering around Real Life or Second Life in a state of childlike wonder, feeling every instant and enjoying every fleeting impression of what some call reality, that might be me. Say "Hi," but don't ask me to recount something from the past! :))

Play as Being 24

During an online video conversation with my fiancée, we were musing about talking only in aphorisms and I speculated about the possibility of creating them 'on the fly'. This was certainly playing, if not the Play as Being I've been doing on Piet Hut's project. In a quick intuitive light trance - otherwise known as 'Looking out of the window' - I came up with "The green tree..." and stopped, and the rest of the sentence just filled itself in, in a way that has become familiar to a seer. No matter how I erased the second half of the sentence, it kept popping back. Only then did I stop to analyse whether or not it made any sense. And it does. So I offer it to you now.

• The green tree catches the wind.

Normal service is now resumed. -ish!

Hold still and do not breathe upon the water's surface.
Let the seer see dreams on the pool.
Now drink and walk refreshed!

Play as Being 23

• Am I the owner of an untamed beast? This beast is powerful and useful. It works for me. It plays with me. But it is very demanding. It takes all my attention. It constantly makes me see things from its point of view. Now I have a word that will bring it to heel. And another that will keep it quiet. And yet more that will send it to fetch for me. For who buys a dog and then barks himself?
• Suppose I offer you $7,000,000 would you accept it? Sure you would. Suppose I said that inflation is running high and that tomorrow it will be worth $6,000,000 and the day after only $5,000,000. In a week's time it will be worth nothing at all. Would you still accept it? Sure you would. Suppose I said that a thief could steal it one night before the week is out, leaving you with nothing. Again, would you accept it? Sure. Now... what are you going to do with it?
  

Play as Being 22

Inspired (again) by Linda's/Dakini's artistic talent (this time on her blog page) I have decided to tinker with the settings here. Just a little... I was going to adjust the background to a mesh of Tibetan knots, but it already looks like a double dorje so it can stay!

• The ash tree outside my window. For an instant I become it. It becomes all. Its branches are every sentient being.
• What would it be like? What's stopping me?
• "Life is water. Not all water lies on the surface. You may have to dig."
• It could all end - just now.
  

Play as Being 21

• Now here's a thing. At work someone wants me to follow "best practice in presentation design." Leave aside for one moment the fact that I don't believe there is necessarily such a thing as a "best practice", but rather there are effective practices, depending on context, and ones that are less so. Still it suddenly reminded me of the following Zen story. When Banzan was walking through a market he overheard a conversation between a butcher and his customer. "Give me the best piece of meat you have," said the customer. "Everything in my shop is the best," replied the butcher. "You cannot find here any piece of meat that is not the best." At these words Banzan became enlightened.

Play as Being 20

• Without thought, without action, I AM
• A journal, a notebook to carry with me. What would that be for? And there I was with my hands in soap suds, washing the dishes, and looking out and seeing the wind bending the bright green grass, and thinking... well it was something meaningful and good - you'll just have to take my word for it. Ha ha! Now it's gone. Flushed out by all pervasive present experience. Like in Silent Watcher meditation, watching things arise and letting them go. Living in the Now. Being Now. Being the Now.
• Don't stop: keep going! So... walking through a house while playing with the 9 second meditation I notice an awareness of the thinness of the walls and the house as a whole, and its place in the landscape... and in seconds I feel a sense of poise as though I had done Tai Chi for an hour.
  

Play as Being 19

• May this play make you happy
• Sunlight reflecting on the sea. Be the Light.
• How difficult is it to focus on, even to play as, Being when the body is thoroughly tired and exhausted. Is this a measure of how far I have still to go?
  

We interrupt the programme to bring you this urgent message...

WHAT ABOUT ME?


This man - Mipham - is not my guru.
He does not teach in my lineage.
Yet how can his creation not be shared?

Play as Being 17

• I talk too much! Sometimes giving by listening is best :)
• I read what others say/write in Pema's tea house sessions and I am in humble awe. Yet I look at the picture of Je Tsongkhapa that stands between my computer terminals here and it seems he says to me, "Go your own way." There is so much diversity in reaching unity!
• I sank into another 9 second session of Being, and I sank deep, deep into it... All tension went... vision opened... I saw a great golden light... a hall of light... so bright that I could barely make out anything except... Shakyamuni Buddha standing sideways to the left with folded hands, himself golden and facing right and inward to the centre and to the source of the golden light... And I asked him what was the source of the light... and he replied, "It's You."
  

Play as Being 16

• I notice that self-grasping brings physical tension and stress. A 9 second break and a re-tune to Being, and the subsequent depth of relaxation is greater than a hot bath or a massage could ever give!
  

Play as Being 15

• Here is the value of the 9 second time tax: to interrupt the cyclone of self-grasping and self-cherishing.

Play as Being 13

• Spring cleaning a house today. How symbolic!
• The transformation of moving dust. Not the wind, not the flag; mind is moving!
• I am reminded of when I first learnt to fly. My instructor said, "You have control!" and I was meant to say, "I have control!" And at first I always used to jiggle the controls immediately, in order to get some feedback that I did indeed have control. Yet this caused my instructor to exclaim, "Why can't you just leave it be?!" Indeed. Why not? When one already is, why would one need to jiggle the controls like this, stopping to record this very thought? :) Fly on in peace!
  

Play as Being 12

Continuing with the "Play as Being" experiment of Piet Hut

• Turn the Wheel of Dharma and you turn Being to look at Itself
• Emotion can seem sometimes like a wave. A hostile emotion you can let pass over you. Yet try to grasp the friendly wave and it slips through your fingers! Why is that? No fingers! No water! No quality of wave! Who are you anyway!? "Kaa!"
  

Play as Being 11

• Back into the maelstrom where the centre is still still!
  
• Can you lick honey off a razor's edge if you are also the honey and the razor?
  

It bears continually repeating. Remember...

Holy men can be wrong!

Play as Being 7

What happened to days 5 and 6? The precious time therein was dedicated to my Spiritual Guide with whom I reforged a link last made many centuries ago.

• Time does not separate us
• Always the essential paradox: there is so much suffering
• A word of Dharma can change a life
• A whole life can be lived for one small moment
• "Here's a test to find out if your mission in life is finished: If you're alive, it isn't." - Richard Bach (Illusions)
• Step back... become... and you find you already are
  

Play as Being 4

• All suffering really does stem from ignorance
• To appreciate beauty, and to be able to let it go
• The wonder of a child and the wisdom of ages
• All the oracle sticks fall at once! Nothing less will do
• Beyond all fantasy
  

Play as Being 3

• (The first thought of the day was a vision)

• "If a tree falls in a forest and no one's around, does it make a sound?" Hmm... that is only the superficial question!
• There is no difference between Real Life and Second Life
• Stepping into flowing water - delicious! No beginning and no end
  

Play as Being 2

• Lila!
• Realization can bring, rather than bliss or ecstasy, the pain of deepest compassion
• Mirrors to Infinity
• Playing as Being or being played!?
• Chopping wood and carrying water
• Mask
• As above, so below - I change my world by my thought
  

Play as Being 1

• No-separation is awesome
• I AM - i am not
  
• Pieces of Mind communicating with each other
• It seems more accurate to say that the rest of the time is Playing as Non-Being
  

Play as Being

May I recommend the "Play as Being" experiment of Piet Hut?
I may randomly post here some of the 'time tax" thoughts from my participation.

Remember...

Holy men can be wrong!

What is a seer?

Good question. Some possible answers:

1. A prophet
2. A clairvoyant
3. Someone who sees something occur - a viewer or a witness
4. Someone who sees reality as it really is

Am I any of these? If so, which and when? Or are these just empty words and labels? Indeed what use are they unless they tell of some change that has been inspired in others?

Letting the words of a seer speak for themselves is not enough. If those words affect your life, even in a tiny way, then by all means take note and apply what part of them you find useful. If not, please leave them be.