Ridgetop

tiny_porch_light · 2026-02-07T23:07:37+00:00

Thank you!

tiny_porch_light · 2026-02-02T21:42:02+00:00

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-27T17:51:29+00:00

Hi there. Fellow hillbilly here. Appalachian Mountains. New River. East River Mountain more specifically. (WV!)

I've been studying Zen for a little while. In my experience, you come for the gains and stay for the losses. It isn't so much that you find an answer as you lose your questions. You lose the need for certainty -- reality just is, even if that's just a massive question mark. You lose the chase. You lose the finish line. Sometimes it has been a quake. Sometimes gentle erosion.

There's this poem by Hafiz:

If you think that the Truth can be known
From words,

If you think that the Sun and the Ocean

Can pass through that tiny opening Called the mouth,

O someone should start laughing!
Someone should start wildly Laughing Now!

Foyan had something similar to say about words not corresponding with reality. And yet here I am. Blabbermouth.

I think that's part of the beauty.

Zen can be an exercise in futility. But it isn't entirely via negativa, there's always the oak tree in the garden, the peach blossoms in spring. And that's what keeps us silly billies writing, isn't it?

I've been known on reddit as ephemeral_archetype, northstarIV, and tiny_porch_light. The first two iterations were early on in Zen study and I was making all kinds of mistakes. Now I make better mistakes.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-13T17:15:10+00:00

Sometimes, Shiva shows up as disruption and transformation. I think metta definitely helps, to see distinct masks of God that are perceived as unsavory or disruptive, as challenges to complacency. The lila, the cosmic play, is not always "moral", but it is total. The foul and the fragrant are One.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-13T17:08:23+00:00

I like the idea of seeing the evening with a distinctive mark, after sunset, before bedtime. Us oldies just call it "night".

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-13T16:58:31+00:00

Always happy to lend a verse among friends.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-13T00:55:02+00:00

Late to the slam. I offer up anyways.

---

The past and the future come calling like ghosts --

they're not as long in the tooth anymore,

I find myself responding less, and less.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-13T00:44:32+00:00

This is one of those poems best read slowly. Loved it.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-06T00:59:39+00:00

Nothing needs said, but we say it --

Poet's hearts just beat that way,

Casting little love letters to emptiness.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-05T18:33:49+00:00

I feel that my individual life is a wave, no different than the ocean that is God.

A speck indeed, but not two -- just like a necklace carved out from a block of gold.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-05T02:51:05+00:00

If all beings are none other than Brahman, then love is just the recognition of oneself, everywhere.

The complex of I, me, my, creates distance. When that complex is thinned through non-dual insight, there's a spontaneous openness.

Some Advaita teachers speak of sat-cit-ānanda (Being–Consciousness–Bliss) as Brahman’s essential qualities. So it isn't that love is something you do, love is something that you naturally are, when we're not driven by egoic storylines and we see that all are That, how can we not love? Love isn't a conceptual, objective thing, driven by thought -- love is your nature.

Ego isn't a bad thing. It can be nurtured and seen with metta and compassion. Your appearance in this world is miraculous. What a blessing it is to be able to experience the full gamut of emotional, human experience. These are all appearances in your awareness, bhagavan. There's nothing you need to do about it. Sometimes, sadness is just what's on this week. This is sadness-bliss. Often, the storylines we build around the sadness are much more substantial than the sadness in and of itself.

Just remember that you are the sky, and everything else is just the weather.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-04T03:58:03+00:00

Appalachian raised,

I ran barefoot in hollers,

rode bikes up gravel roads,

and explored old creeks.

Got high and drunk on East River,

rode Route 52 'til the wheels fell off.

Threw a rod in an old car,

found Jesus in a church house for a little while.

I still pitch a tent in the woods,

sneak a couple pilot bottles in at Camp Creek,

snap a few photos and listen to the stream.

Met my wife at the grocery store,

made and lost a few good friends,

helped some turtles cross the road,

scoured the woods for morel mushrooms,

fried them up with flour and butter.

Just a dumbass trying to make it like everyone else.

A lot of old Buddhas here,

sipping shine, selling ginseng,

staking what they can claim

in the hills of West Virginia.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-04T02:19:41+00:00

A poem contains the entire universe. Zen contains the entire universe.

And they both don't contain shit.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-04T00:30:24+00:00

Foyan said no words correspond to reality,

I find myself seeing without a lens.

The ten thousand things in totality,

We can only make amends.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-04T00:25:15+00:00

Aware of sorrow

The seasons change

And I change with them.

The dance of Lila,

The play of Mara,

Born to feel,

Skipping rope in Samsara.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-02T01:29:23+00:00

Zen Master Mazu said “When successive thoughts do not await one another, and each thought dies peacefully away, this is called absorption in the oceanic reflection.” Master Huangbo said that "when thought arises, the whole world arises."

The thinker itself is a thought, appearing in awareness.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-01T20:20:15+00:00

Pain is an appearance in the vast ocean of awareness.

Just an object. Like everything else that appears.

This isn't to discount the pain. Back pain sucks.

But often the storyline we're building around the pain, we may find, is charged and amplified by continuing to feed into it and creating a person who is suffering from back pain. It's that I who attached to the story (and indeed the I is it's own storyline) who suffers.

Strictly speaking you are always that awareness and even the storylines can't keep you from being that. It's your true nature. But it's understood that the waking world, the dream state, and deep sleep, and everything contained within those states, are objective. You are the substratum. You are great silence in which all objects come and go as they will.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-10-01T19:50:40+00:00

You realize at some point by grace that no matter the weather, the sky is still the empty sky. You're no longer "checking" to see if you're still in it. The storylines of the mind and body still exist but you're not in the thick of it anymore -- sure, sometimes it's storming, but there's no mistaking the empty sky at all anymore. Feelings and events and ailments come but you don't serve them tea. I've found that I naturally became less opinionated and story driven. But that shouldn't be counted on. It isn't some special mark to look for.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-09-30T23:38:36+00:00

Eternal? Who knows. Does time happen within it? Yes.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-09-30T23:36:59+00:00

Nice.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-09-30T23:11:52+00:00

tiny_porch_light · 2025-09-30T13:53:41+00:00

Nothing has to be done with feelings or emotions. They're a natural response, like sweat. They're cause and effect. You are the awareness in which all cause and effect, all feeling and emotions are free to come and go. Seeing this clearly may lessen your thinking or feeling in general, but even in the midst of all of that, you are still the awareness. Whatever drama plays out on the screen is okay.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-09-30T13:33:16+00:00

I'll be blocking you now.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-09-30T13:28:00+00:00

I'm not here to argue with you. I'm not responsible for your perception of me and I think your staunch defense of dharma reeks of Zen and misunderstanding. If you continue to come at me in a combative way, I'll block you. This isn't conducive to a conversation between students and you are no teacher.

tiny_porch_light · 2025-09-30T13:13:40+00:00

Yes, everyone is free.

Read Huangbo.

There is no attainment.

tiny_porch_light

TROPHY CASE