Episodes
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In a world on fire, something wants to sing. I am not quite sure what wants to be born. For me. For you. For the world. But for this samsaric soul this post is a seed. Many of you have asked for a podcast or an audio book. You have poked and nudged my stubborn fearful self. Humbly and cautiously I offer yet another digital bit to this world wide web. As a result, ZenRants (blog) is dead and Bardo Blues is born. This lyrical art and poetry project can be read, but for the fuller experience I encourage you to listen to the audio. May this benefit you and all beings.
The 1st and Last Note
Can you hear her?
She lurks and creeps with us all. In all our routines and perpetual busyness — she is always there. Mysterious she is, neither here nor there.
She is with us when we’re lost in maze of Costco aisles. She sings to us in spring, when not even spring knows when it begins. And she was the background music to the Great Pause, that ephemeral nightmare known as the Covid Pandemic.
Yes, you know her. She’s that subtle shadow — that persistent unease that something feels off.
Now, maybe that’s just samsara buzzing along. Or my wounded child still tracking a room. And there is always that consumerist marketing engine priming us to never feel whole. But this tender heart glimpses a different world.
It sees and it feels how the collective dream is fading.
How one world is burning. Crumbling. And melting away. Institutions fail to meet the complexity and chaos of the day. The stories and ideologies that cohered us for generations are evaporating.
Yet another world — is waiting to be born. Here — but not. The latent potential longing to emerge is erotically present. When we slow down, and open our inner thighs, she blows in our ear and tickles our aspirations.
This is how the silent void of the Bardo sings. She is pregnant with twins of uncertainty and beauty.
For this moment— our moment — is a time between worlds. A time between new stories and new games. A time between new hearts-minds and paradigms. This Bardo, is not simply an intermediate stage between death and rebirth. Ohh no. She lives now. She f***s and fights. She sweats onions and plants gardens. She grieves and dreams of a better world. For we all are in the Bardo of Being.
Yes — a Bar-do of Be-ing.
This dance — in between worlds — is our generations’ rite of passage. Not just a culture war, but a battlefield where dreams and nightmares clash.
For how does one dream — in a world fire? Do you get the marshmallows? Or round up the babies? So much trash, So much ash, Yet a lotus longs to open, While black rain falls, and cactus thorns sting, How does one dream — in a world on fire?
Consciously and subconsciously, we all snuggle with these demons of demise at night. Whether we want it or not, whether we embrace it or not, immense transformations brew. From climate change and politics to agriculture and economics. Even what it means to be a human, is both under threat and up for redesign.
Whether you dance with the AI Doomers and their terminator robots — or the AI Accelerationists wanting to let it all ride on unrestricted silicone and algorithms —will you let your kids be outcompeted by Chinese teens with AI brain-computer implants?
Wherever you stand, whatever your views — the magic spell of this collective story is melting like the cliche polar bears we pretend to care about. What will be built in the Neoliberal rubble and meritocracy promissory notes?
In the end, no one really knows what this new world will bring.
* Boomers in denial cling to fragile systems and stale dreams.
* Self-righteous warriors long to tear it all down, angry at oppressive and unjust systems.
* In the lab, in good faith and drunk on optimism, the techno feudalist lords and disembodied autistic wizards are designing techno utopia for us all (I hope?).
* And some spiritual hippies like myself, disenchanted with this modern samsaric world and all its’ status games, retreat to their off-grid eco havens.
Each perspective seems to cuddle with truth and shadow. Yet wherever you stand, if you melt the armor of your heart, if you drop the chains of your narrative, and you pause in stillness— can you hear her?
And so the world burns in Bardo of Being.
But maybe — just maybe — she needs to.
Yes, I said it.
* What if the flames need to feed?
* What if our insatiable appetite for comfort and control — is starving the forest of the ash she needs to dream a better world?
* What if we are in such a hurry to tear it all down, or scale it all up, that we may miss what truly longs to be born?
It’s easy to ask questions while I drink fairtrade coffee and get my Amazon prime deliveries. And I imagine some may think I am a psychopath when intuit civilization may need to be composted (in back loop dynamics) in order to reorganize and regenerate.
I do pray that I am wrong. I hope that this is just the elegant dance of chaos and order in complex dynamic systems working itself out. But this heart tightens and aches when I hastily write What’s ifs that likely mean billions of beings would die. This Bardo of Being has started a tug of war in my own heart, a clash between discernment and compassion. Exponential growth seems insane. But maybe, just maybe, this world doesn’t need saving?
I just don’t know anymore.
What I do know — in the ashes of my heart, in all the pain that is the hungry ghost of modernity, is a grace that swims in and through this being. Swirling in all this grief and uncertainty — something wants to sing and dance around the fire.
And so fittingly ZenRants has died — and Bardo Blues is born.
In the spirit of the blues — we transmutate the pain, suffering, and crushing anxiety. We don’t turn away from it by swimming in the mundane world of distraction and comfort, nor do we drown in the grief and sorrow. In its place, with a “strong back and soft heart”, we channel an alchemy of heart and soul. We channel the Bardo Blues. We purify our hearts and our perception with the nectar of the divine. We lay down our rhythm with a brass and drums of devotion and mystery, of Bodhicitta and Beauty. We sing to sing. We sing because something greater than us — longs to be born.
I don’t know how this puzzle piece fits into all of this. I don’t know how a tone deaf dharma poet will change anything. I don’t know how to align AI or product mangers to Wisdom and Compassion. And I for sure as hell don’t how my prayers and poems will help fearful Israeli parents or the children of Gaza.
But in a twilight of flow, this entire being fills with a simplicity of truth and purity. Whatever that is — I trust. I trust it even though I don’t “know it”. And so I relinquish any illusion of a grand theory of change. I humbly let go of that false sense of knowing what needs to be done. That I or the YouTube galaxy brains have the answer.
I aspire to simply empty this mind, not fill it.
I desire to fill my heart vajra song by vajra song.
And so I trust in the still knowing of not knowing — more than all of my prior knowing.
I trust In the heart of degenerate times, we can open our hearts to a playground of beauty. Of love and wonder.
I trust we can build a mandala of grace — not a safe space — but a sacred one. That even if all the cynical arrows of our era drown out the sun — we dare to shine bright anyway. Because in all the noise and all the screams, a divine silence whispers. In a world on fire, dandelions dance and spring saplings sing.
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Come to the sacred silence and lets sing together.
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