I’ve been in Sydney teaching, and I have just arrived back home in the mountains. I probably won’t get time to write a blog entry today – especially, because what I intend to write next will take some concentration. Also, I have the ‘A Process Model’ study group, tonight.
I want to make a contemplative space, in the next day or two, to consider Māra as one way that the Nikāya Buddha has of articulating our relationship to death. I need to set aside time to give it special attention. And, the issue of authenticity will be woven into this subject, of Māra and death. Neither have I finished with the Hawk Killer sutta, in which mindfulness, ego’s compensatory pleasures, and harm and death are all linked to Māra. So, there are several threads which I intend to weave together, as soon as possible. I’ll be back tomorrow.
The best I can do, today, is give you a little haiku, which I wrote a couple of days ago.
Note: Prosimians are sweet little fellas who are among the very first in our family tree to have grasping fingers (and grasping toes; and binocular vision). The particular quirk of anatomy which allowed them to grasp things was what in primates is called the ‘opposable thumb and forefinger.’
How cool is that! The prosimians, tens of millions of years ago. never imagined their skills would be utilised by you or I, to pick up a button from the lounge-room floor, for instance, or to brush our teeth daily; or, to paint Mona Lisa.
I thought it was cool to prove (with genetic testing) that my ancestors – Haplogroup R1b – came out of Africa about 50,000 years ago. But to think that I owe my ability to fix my reading glasses to my prosimian ancestors – to pick up the tiny screw, place it in the barely visible hole, and manipulate the tiny screwdriver – frankly, that humbles me.
Typing my password deftly,
Butcher-bird climbing a branch.
I think of the prosimian grasp.
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