dharma gold

                                                              Andy Olendzki lecture notes

I am just back from Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and a series on Wisdom teachings, part of the Integrated Study and Practice Program. Some students in the course named this black board image dharma gold when the rainbow appeared under Andy's notes. I have been capturing some of his lecture notes on camera. This one is not as 'active' as my favorites, but the image is central to understanding buddhist psychology and skillful practice - a still representation of dynamic reality.

This is the beginning of our Wisdom sessions.

invisible harmony

...invisible harmony [is] more powerful than the visible.

Heraclitus, 5th century B.C.
translation, Panikkar,
p.7 Rhythm of Being


If we live at the tip if the unfolding moment, we are in touch with everything, with the whole world, with what is real, what is true. In this moment, in the midst of our immediate experience, whatever that experience is, we can ride free of the limitations of personal and communal constructions and of the sorrow of having never come into contact with life at all.

living as gem-like flame

The service of philosophy, of speculative culture towards the human spirit, is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation.

Every moment some form grows perfect in land or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood or passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us--for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself...

How should we pass most swiftly from point to point and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy?

To burn always with [this] hard, gem-like flame, to maintain this ecstasy is success in life.

Walter Pater (1919)
Thanks to Joseph Prabhu in The Rhythm of Being