Productivity

Productivity - or Maya?

How does the word "productivity" stand up to scrutiny in a cosmos where love has no why? Or where the journey itself is home? I was dipping into a book of extracts from the writings of Alan Watts and one quote finally remained with me when all others had slipped into oblivion.

 "Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence."

Presence

Absorbing and reflecting upon these words I find they have great significance. For me, a call for change. 

Perhaps it is the truth that presence is the catalyst of true "productivity"? Not a productivity of explicit calculation, of the mind/self seeking to accumulate more knowledge and experience, this in order to achieve a particular state of being. Rather a presence as a surrender of all such grasping, resting instead in compassion, the wisdom, the potential of Reality-as-is. 

Productivity......or creativity......or transformation

I often find myself returning to the life of the poet John Keats and his insight into what he termed "negative capability" which he himself associated pre-eminently with Shakespeare. 

In one of his letters he wrote:- 

I mean negative capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries,  doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason. 

As one biographer of Keats said:- 

"Creative genius, according to Keats, requires people to experience the world as an uncertain place that naturally gives rise to a wide array of perspectives."

In his breast.......(see below)

I'm not so sure about creative genius but hopefully there is also a chance for what Pure Landers know as a "bombu", a foolish being.

In the context of this particular blog it seems significant that a bombu,  as well as being defined as a "spiritual idiot", is also known as one who relies solely upon opening their minds to the Dharma, of listening deeply (to the call of Amida) 

A Bombu

This takes precedence over all else. All flows from this.

To finish, a poem I have always loved, "Keats at Teignmouth" by Charles Causley:-

         By the wild sea-wall I wandered

            Blinded by the salting sun,
        While the sulky Channel thundered
           Like an old Trafalgar gun.

        And I watched the gaudy river
           Under trees of lemon-green,
        Coiling like a scarlet bugle
           Through the valley of the Teign.

        When spring fired her fusilladoes
            Salt-spray, sea-spray on the sill,
        When the budding scarf of April
            Ravelled on the Devon hill.

        Then I saw the crystal poet
            Leaning on the old sea-rail;
        In his breast lay death, the lover,

            In his head, the nightingale

Related Quote:-

Foolish being (Bombu)

A person possessed of blind passions and ignorance. One of the Sanskrit equivalents of foolish being is bala, which has various connotations: immature, silly, stupid, foolish, ignorant. This term, however, is not to be understood in the conventional sense of these words, for it points to a profound religious awakening in which even the so-called intelligent person, when illumined by the Unhindered Light and brought to awareness by the wisdom of shinjin (true trusting/faith), comes to realize himself as a foolish being who is forever motivated by blindly self-centered desires, attached to the fascinations of this evanescent world, and unable to resolve the contradictions of human existence thoroughly. In fact, Shinran says that true wisdom is brought forth only from the heart and mind of the person who has awakened to Amida’s great compassion, and in the light of that compassion realizes himself to be a foolish being.

 (From a Glossary of Pure Land Terms, appendix to "The Collected Works of Shinran")