Liberation

Decay is inherent in all compound things. Work out your own enlightenment with diligence.

-- final words of the Buddha Gautama

These prisons of the senses, sorrow fraught;
Sore was my ceaseless strife!
But now,
Thou builder of this tabernacle--Thou!
I know Thee.
Never shalt Thou build again
These walls of pain,
Nor raise the roof-tree of deceits, nor lay
Fresh rafters on the clay;
Broken Thy house is, and the ridge-pole split!
Delusion fashioned it!
Safe pass I thence--deliverance to obtain.

-- Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia (poetic biography of the Buddha)

Interior of my house in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi -- November 20, 2005

Random photos of debris piles in front of my house in Bay St. Louis, MS -- October-November, 2005

Comments

[Camy]

Terrifying.

'Broken Thy house is, and the ridge-pole split!
Delusion fashioned it!'

This says it all, yet still we strive to understand, each searching for something indefinable. One day, perhaps we'll find 'it'.

I like the Gaia theory, though if it's true we're royally stuffed.

[Lewis King]

This latest installment of your blog clearly illustrates what I was sharing with a friend today. I told him the thing that had attracted me the most to the Buddhist way of being is the concept of detachment, further reinforced by the teaching about the impermenace of all things. Thank you, oh Wise Woman of the Northwest.

[Kitty]

Keep in mind what I've titled this blog entry.

[Camy]

Liberated? for sure you are. As the last line says 'Safe pass I thence--deliverance to obtain' and from the mayhem that was Katrina you have obtained deliverance ... I am honestly in awe of your achievement.

but globally we're taking baby steps at best and I fear for the future. Personal enlightenment, though wonderful, is not enough.

[Kitty]

Maybe the question is whether we can reach a critical mass of personal enlightenment in time, then.