Category Archives: Fred Leeds

Blessings from Home

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a vignette by Fred Leeds

Talking to oneself is not always plain crazy; it can sometimes prepare one to greet others as selves. It is simply a matter of greeting the whole human from within. It takes no candle or prayer book, just an ear that’s in tune. Greeting calls out to greeting in the core of the human; the one who will hear is, in essence, the one who speaks. Some may refer to the one who speaks here and hears there, the being represented at once in you and in me, as God. I would rather refer to him as home. So greetings alike to you and to me; blessings, dear reader, all blessings from home.

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Studied Blindness and Art

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a vignette by Fred Leeds

To retrieve one’s more natural intention, one must contrive to study blindness. Take the pianist, for example, who creates whole worlds by training his hands to overtake him. Or consider the singer, whose long practice carries her off to nnw expression beyond the fixed sense of speech. Or consider the poet, who dives unaided into the evolving word, confronting meanings beyond the printed certainty of the everyday. Each is taken by a sort of willing surprise; each abandons old eyes to see past mere finish and welcome the new.

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Writing: Quite a Trip

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a vignette by Fred Leeds

Pen and hand and head, get ready. Work together now, but don’t get too serious … You can’t fall out of the universe, but writing’s quite a trip. You never know what will happen when you write. First intentions won’t do, and you might, all at once, find the writing writing you. Writing can be a proud thing, a heavy symbolic act, but it can also be a simple snapshot of the human planet, its own naked yearnings and their constant disguise. Like the rising and setting of the sun, it can be a free and easy ritual, a joy and a surprise. You can find yourself by losing yourself in writing, and find that the writing is and has been writing you. I know because it happened to me.

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The Cycle of Equality

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a vignette by Fred Leeds

Let’s revisit the proverbial chicken and egg. Each is the once and future source of the other, yet each remains itself. This I call the cycle of equality, a trick of nature which extends to you and me. While we share at once in the original Adam, we represent him separately. Rather than be shackled in conformity to each other, we may reflect the first light of our humanity each in his own true light. And so, dear reader, let’s you and I shine on!

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Tom’s Next Trip

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a short short story by Fred Leeds

When we last saw Tom, he had summed up the ancient wisdom of the mutual I in the tender phrase “a heart that moves.” While Tom has turned Buddhist priest in the decade since, he has kept to the simple-hearted ways of that earlier time. In his heart’s timeless core, there still beats the wonder of his trips through time and space, mind and worlds. We catch up with Tom now by a temple in Japan, where he sorts out his visions in more ordinary style. The temple stands tall in the near distance, in elegant white stone.

Tom sits on the bank of a stream beneath a bridge. The bridge is crafted in that stunning yet simple way the Japanese have. Beside Tom lies a scrolled painting of Huineng, the historical Zen master whose teachings were transmitted to Tom mentally by Ju Gun. Ju Gun was a medieval Zen hermit with whom Tom had established telepathic contact, across the centuries and beyond Ju Guns death. The painting was Tom’s own rendering. It revealed the figure of a wise and gentle looking Chinese sage. In the margin of the painting Tom had written these words with the same paintbrush: “Mind essence is the source of all at once. This very mind takes flight in any and all things.”

That was Tom’s summary of the lessons of Huineng. As the stream seems to flow ever more swiftly by, Tom begins to dream. The stream glimmers like something unearthly seeming to lead to a city far away, and he is not sure if it is happening inside or outside his mind. He glimpses in the stream, as in a living mirror, all the persons and faces he has known: faces old and young, male and female, dark and light. They are all somehow his own face, and the face of God.

The horses of the Red Chinese tramp still closer, awakening Tom from his dream. Again there flashes across his minds eye the picture of his own death as he defends the sacred temple. There is a shout and the glint of many weapons. Tom breathes and gets ready to plunge into that other stream, the stream of death and new birth.

“Here I come, Huineng,” says Tom.

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Also Something Radical

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a vignette by Fred Leeds

This plain old human being is also something radical. Let me tell you why.

To be radical means to involve the root. To involve the root is to reveal the source. As the sun and the rain cull the plants and animals from the heart of the earth, the sun and the rain, the plants and the animals move still within my human frame. While I remain myself, I am also something radical: a living moment of the whole earth. As all other things come back to me in my time, I bless myself by blessing others and the earth.

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The Weaver

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A Tribute to Ray Bradbury by Fred Leeds

There was once a weaver who, like Rumpelstiltskin, spun straw into gold. The straw was all the untapped wonder of his living days, and the gold was many a magic tale, and every tale was a journey through the mind’s hidden spaces.

Among Ray Bradbury’s gems is a story about a man who steps on a leaf and changes the course of history. There is one in which a man is tattooed all over with living pictures. In another, earthlings become Martians just by going there. In one funny tale, a man and woman are actually the last people on earth and still can’t get together. In Bradbury’s still living pages we find a quest to the sun to catch a cup of gold, and a man turned bird who is executed for his boldness. In one tale there are two children whose room eats their parents. In another, a guilt-ridden killer keeps hunting for fingerprints until the police arrive. Bradbury’s other characters include a pedestrian charged with thinking for himself, a lady who was never young and girls who would never grow old, a man, forever a boy, who seeks out new parents when the old wear out…

Bradbury saw with fresh eyes all of life’s hidden wonder. He was a true guardian of the imagination. Here’s to Ray Bradbury, wherever he has gone in the galaxy’s vast spaces.

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Ray Douglas Bradbury (August 22, 1920 – June 5, 2012): American fantasy, science fiction, horror and mystery fiction writer. Best known for his novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction and horror stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951). (from Wikipedia)

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Here’s a Beginning

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A Buddhist parable by Fred Leeds

“Come here, Chester, Here, puppy.” He was an animal this time, one of those pug dogs that look like a human boxer, and this time his mind was completely clear. He was Buddha in dog form. “He’s quite a mug,” said Father, proudly. “Ugly and tough as a real fighter.” “But he’s just a cutie,” said Mother.

What purpose was he to serve in this embarrassed form, he wondered, curling his tail into a question mark. It was all about karma somehow, but what a predicament. How did he get to be a dog anyway?

He remembered now. “Give it to him, Gil. He’s got a knife.” He beat the stranger with a lead pipe until the stranger stabbed him in the heart, and both died. Gil was a homeless person, the hated criminal he had been.

Father threw a ball, and Chester’s chasing it now.

“Golly, what fun,” thought Chester. An image of the regal Buddha in blue – his original self – crossed his mind again, but all he could do was wag his tail and fetch the stupid ball.

“Good boy,” Chester,” said Father, pulling the ball from Chester. “See, he’s not so stupid .”

Mother just laughed. Chester found himself wagging his tail again. The Buddha in Chester was mortified, but it kept happening. Oh yeah, thought Chester. Fun game. Apparently I was put in dog form to learn how to give back to the world, thought old Gil in a clear, new thought, as Chester barked to the Buddha within.

After a lifetime of health and simple happiness, Chester gets reborn as a man again. Gil’s karma now restored through him, he assumes the form of one of our great future Presidents, President Asher. Silly? Of course. Improbable? No doubt. As the Tao Te Ching puts it, if it were not laughed at, it would not be sufficient to be Tao.

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Universality of Uniqueness

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a vignette by Fred Leeds

“I am unique, but you are odd.” Thus said, a common lopsidedness in our mutual approach? Gracious? Hardly. Lamentable? Sure. My remedy? That we treat uniqueness as typical, a thing we all share. Isn’t that sort of illogical? someone may ask. No: All human beings have the same original nature, which drapes itself in the form of distinct persons. In Buddhism they call it the Buddha nature. They take it as the starting point for an equality of persons; they offer it as a solution to the ego rivalry that tears apart our world.

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The Mind Is Our Wellspring

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The Mind Is Our Wellspring: More Evidence

A vignette by Fred Leeds

A person I know is able to tell the day of the week of a future date without using a calendar. That person has what is known as autism, a disability so called, which rather seems to swing open the gates of the subliminal mind. Now there are only 365 days in a year; that’s 52 weeks with a day left over. So every new Tuesday for example is only 7 days away from the old. If a year starts on a Tuesday, the next year always starts on a Wednesday. The math is simple and the whole trick could be referred to the mind’s inner mathematician. The thing is, the day of the week gets predicted instantaneously. The inner math wiz must be tapping into the whole history of math as an invention from before it arose. The ESP and the math leap into being both at once, or seem to. Something deeper than either one and not contradictory, something inexpressible about the whole mind, is the real culprit. It is a self-sufficient little creature which we call intuition.

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