May 3

Through My Eyes

Saturday May 3

( We continue on the Chang Tang plateau.)

" The Dalai Lama once suggested that the world should spend less time trying to understand outer space; rather we should look to inner space. In Tibet, inner space is not only the meditative Buddhist mind; it is also the sacred,candlelit interiors of the temples.

Tibetan light has its extremes. High in the Himalayas there is clear distinction between inner and outer, or sacred and natural, light. The outer light of this country, the highest on Earth, is so harsh that nomads who fall asleep while tending their herds, with their heads in the sun and their feet in the shade, have been known to awaken with burned noses and frostbitten toes. As extreme as this may sound, the one day I forgot to protect the backs of my hands from the Tibetan sun, the next morning they were charred with blackened flakes of solar-fried skin, shedding snakelike from my fingers. Even the distant snowcapped peaks are knife-edged sharp, as if an arm's length away. Tibet's light cuts through the thin mountain air in the most acidic way and bites hard into your eyes.

Late in the day and early in the morning, when the sun is low and rakes across the barren landscape, sight is reduced to a tight-eyed squint. The nomads of the Chang Tang Plateau face this light every day. When I traveled to many of their tent encampments, I saw damage that a life in the Tibetan sun could bring. Many men and women in their forties and fifties had their eyes ruined by the unsheltering high-altitude atmosphere that does nothing to stop the ultraviolet rays. Eyes literally dry up in people's skulls from the relentless 3,400 hours of sunlight per year.."

(please click here to read of the day with me.)

* This is once again from Art Perry's book the Tibetans

(The sun on the hill is pretty intense. Not as intense as the Chang Tang plateau of course. I managed to find spaces for the trees for the waterlogged holes although it was a bit difficult. Many years ago the previous owner tried to put a road on the hillside and got fooled pretty much the same way I did. The ground appeared dry just as it did when I dug the holes. After some good spring rains he probably saw the water rushing out the side of the hill chewing away at the base of the roadbed. Then he tried to dig a ditch to drain the road. Since the water is coming from a height with all the energy from its weight, it just tore into the side of the hill leaving a huge torn gully. I thought about putting a bit of drain tile ( a pipe with holes in it, you may know this already.) in the base of the hole but then realized that when the water finally left the pipe it would erode the side of the hill in much the same way. So I put the trees in other spots.

I'm reminded of other things we have read together at this moment. You remember in Riding Windhorses how the Buryat's ascribe water to the feminine element. Yet in the poem "Please forgive" I describe us both as having been made in fire. We have both masculine and feminine in our nature to varying degrees depending on the person. So, you have fire in your nature too! When our boundaries

are violated by others imposing their will over us it gets expressed quite a bit. Yesterday evening I was working on the hill and found my thoughts going to all the little subtle petty meannesses and impositions I'd been exposed to lately ( You know what I'm talking about quite well I think! ) And then with the sudden halt to the progress with waterfilled holes and exposed tree and you guessed it . Anger,frustration. In fact teeth gritting, eyes blazing, neck stiffening rage the kind that makes you throw the shovel into the ground as hard as you can and say the meanest most hateful things you can think of . This is a rather awful light to see yourself in! How to reconcile ideals with such feelings? In our sacred place I found myself asking for forgiveness for having treated the Mother Earth so disrespectfully and saying that I was a human doing as best I could. This morning down by the stream, I saw a golden yellow little bird sitting on the rock which sat for just a moment, looked at me and then flew away. I had never seen this before. Only later did I realize that I had been answered. The world of spirit had forgiven and understood. I think it is better to be angry and work with this than to placidly go along with what everyone else is doing and subjugating one's own being for acceptance while yielding to the numerous subtle hints, threats, and impositions that "self appointed elders" create don't you? In many cases they do this to make a safe world for themselves in which they do not have to meet their own inner creative force or deal with the feelings that happen when they do. It's been my experience that individuals who are true to their being are often either suppressed with bullying or slander (girls put up with this nonsense a lot!), or when this proves not to be possible, marginalized by being given some weird and/or exalted status that puts them off to the side to exclude them from having a normal life. Then they are subjected to constant efforts to point out how they are falling short or in contradiction to the ideals which they are working for and scrutinized minutely and constantly ( and frequently illegally) for any slip ups so that they will always be on the defensive. Great artists, spiritual people and innovators, are often treated like this in the west because it makes people comfortably irresponsible for their own growth and allows them to suppress feelings which they aren't yet ready to deal with. As I see it growth, spirituality, and beauty are for everyone. But they must work for it! And we shouldn't waste energy conforming to societal expectations of any kind that were created not to make things better but to keep people comfortably numb. Lots of horrible abusive things have happened that had full societal approval in their time. Lots of beautiful,good and wondrous things and relationships have been suppressed and destroyed to then be seen as the good that they were generations after their originators had left the world in sad despair.

It's sore and tired time right now. To be honest, I'd gotten a bit out of shape with the long winter spent in front of the computer and put on a bit of flab. It comes back quickly though ( not the flab I hope)! The grass has grown quite high already so it will soon be time to cut the lawn with the scythe again. It's a lot of fun actually and I think you will like it! One doesn't need brute strength for this and it has a comfortable soothing rhythm that allows you to avoid cutting things you don't want to hurt. Mom and I checked on the evergreens she's been growing. There are fences here and there that need to be put up and new trees to be planted. But things are going pretty well.

The cabbage butterflies ( the smaller white ones) were floating through the Grove today and I saw a black swallowtail too! It's a good day for a Windhorse project and I'm going to work on the banner this evening and add to the pages tomorrow so you can check on progress. I hope you are having a great weekend and progress as you work to bring help to other beings around you as I know you do.

I promise to add more tomorrow...

And, so

to my one dream bright

I bid goodnight! *

*(As we continue on to our 198th day of seeing together. And the warm bright morning of our shared commitment swiftly began far earlier than this!)


	Through My Eyes Saturday May 3 ( We continue on the Chang Tang plateau.) " The Dalai Lama once suggested that the world should spend less time trying to understand outer space; rather we should look to inner space. In Tibet, inner space is not only the meditative Buddhist mind; it is also the sacred,candlelit interiors of the temples. Tibetan light has its extremes. High in the Himalayas there is clear distinction between inner and outer, or sacred and natural, light. The outer light of this country, the highest on Earth, is so harsh that nomads who fall asleep while tending their herds, with their heads in the sun and their feet in the shade, have been known to awaken with burned noses and frostbitten toes. As extreme as this may sound, the one day I forgot to protect the backs of my hands from the Tibetan sun, the next morning they were charred with blackened flakes of solar-fried skin, shedding snakelike from my fingers. Even the distant snowcapped peaks are knife-edged sharp, as if an arm's length away. Tibet's light cuts through the thin mountain air in the most acidic way and bites hard into your eyes. Late in the day and early in the morning, when the sun is low and rakes across the barren landscape, sight is reduced to a tight-eyed squint. The nomads of the Chang Tang Plateau face this light every day. When I traveled to many of their tent encampments, I saw damage that a life in the Tibetan sun could bring. Many men and women in their forties and fifties had their eyes ruined by the unsheltering high-altitude atmosphere that does nothing to stop the ultraviolet rays. Eyes literally dry up in people's skulls from the relentless 3,400 hours of sunlight per year.." (please click here to read of the day with me.) * This is once again from Art Perry's book the Tibetans (The sun on the hill is pretty intense. Not as intense as the Chang Tang plateau of course. I managed to find spaces for the trees for the waterlogged holes although it was a bit difficult. Many years ago the previous owner tried to put a road on the hillside and got fooled pretty much the same way I did. The ground appeared dry just as it did when I dug the holes. After some good spring rains he probably saw the water rushing out the side of the hill chewing away at the base of the roadbed. Then he tried to dig a ditch to drain the road. Since the water is coming from a height with all the energy from its weight, it just tore into the side of the hill leaving a huge torn gully. I thought about putting a bit of drain tile ( a pipe with holes in it, you may know this already.) in the base of the hole but then realized that when the water finally left the pipe it would erode the side of the hill in much the same way. So I put the trees in other spots. I'm reminded of other things we have read together at this moment. You remember in Riding Windhorses how the Buryat's ascribe water to the feminine element. Yet in the poem "Please forgive" I describe us both as having been made in fire. We have both masculine and feminine in our nature to varying degrees depending on the person. So, you have fire in your nature too! When our boundaries are violated by others imposing their will over us it gets expressed quite a bit. Yesterday evening I was working on the hill and found my thoughts going to all the little subtle petty meannesses and impositions I'd been exposed to lately ( You know what I'm talking about quite well I think! ) And then with the sudden halt to the progress with waterfilled holes and exposed tree and you guessed it . Anger,frustration. In fact teeth gritting, eyes blazing, neck stiffening rage the kind that makes you throw the shovel into the ground as hard as you can and say the meanest most hateful things you can think of . This is a rather awful light to see yourself in! How to reconcile ideals with such feelings? In our sacred place I found myself asking for forgiveness for having treated the Mother Earth so disrespectfully and saying that I was a human doing as best I could. This morning down by the stream, I saw a golden yellow little bird sitting on the rock which sat for just a moment, looked at me and then flew away. I had never seen this before. Only later did I realize that I had been answered. The world of spirit had forgiven and understood. I think it is better to be angry and work with this than to placidly go along with what everyone else is doing and subjugating one's own being for acceptance while yielding to the numerous subtle hints, threats, and impositions that "self appointed elders" create don't you? In many cases they do this to make a safe world for themselves in which they do not have to meet their own inner creative force or deal with the feelings that happen when they do. It's been my experience that individuals who are true to their being are often either suppressed with bullying or slander (girls put up with this nonsense a lot!), or when this proves not to be possible, marginalized by being given some weird and/or exalted status that puts them off to the side to exclude them from having a normal life. Then they are subjected to constant efforts to point out how they are falling short or in contradiction to the ideals which they are working for and scrutinized minutely and constantly ( and frequently illegally) for any slip ups so that they will always be on the defensive. Great artists, spiritual people and innovators, are often treated like this in the west because it makes people comfortably irresponsible for their own growth and allows them to suppress feelings which they aren't yet ready to deal with. As I see it growth, spirituality, and beauty are for everyone. But they must work for it! And we shouldn't waste energy conforming to societal expectations of any kind that were created not to make things better but to keep people comfortably numb. Lots of horrible abusive things have happened that had full societal approval in their time. Lots of beautiful,good and wondrous things and relationships have been suppressed and destroyed to then be seen as the good that they were generations after their originators had left the world in sad despair. It's sore and tired time right now. To be honest, I'd gotten a bit out of shape with the long winter spent in front of the computer and put on a bit of flab. It comes back quickly though ( not the flab I hope)! The grass has grown quite high already so it will soon be time to cut the lawn with the scythe again. It's a lot of fun actually and I think you will like it! One doesn't need brute strength for this and it has a comfortable soothing rhythm that allows you to avoid cutting things you don't want to hurt. Mom and I checked on the evergreens she's been growing. There are fences here and there that need to be put up and new trees to be planted. But things are going pretty well. The cabbage butterflies ( the smaller white ones) were floating through the Grove today and I saw a black swallowtail too! It's a good day for a Windhorse project and I'm going to work on the banner this evening and add to the pages tomorrow so you can check on progress. I hope you are having a great weekend and progress as you work to bring help to other beings around you as I know you do. I promise to add more tomorrow... And, so to my one dream bright I bid goodnight! * *(As we continue on to our 198th day of seeing together. And the warm bright morning of our shared commitment swiftly began far earlier than this!)