Rain

The Sword of Wisdom

Ever since sages handed on
the secret of the sword,
The true imperative has been upheld
Completely, truly adamant.

If someone asks me about it
Looking for its origin,
I say it is not ordinary iron.
This lump of iron
Comes from receptive stillness;
When you obtain it, it rises up.

The subtle function of spiritual work
Is truly hard to measure;
I now give an explanation for you.
In telling you about it,
I divulge the celestial mechanism.

Setting to work when one yang comes back,
First have the six yangs pump the furnace bellows;
Then the six yins work the tongs and hammer.
When the work of firing is complete,
it produces the sword;
When it is first done,
It flashes like lightening.

This precious sword fundamentally has no form;
The name is set up because it has spiritual effect.
Learning the Tao and practicing reality
Depend on this sword;
Without this sword,
the Tao cannot be achieved.
- Li Dao Chun, 13th century Taoist master, from The Sword of Wisdom from The Book of Balance and Harmony

Bardo Thodol

Bardo Thodol Online

Bardo Thodol PDF

contemplation of adversity

The Religion of the Samurai

Online version.

Movement

For my part, I shall just fast as such, meditate, listen to ragas perhaps play a bit, trace the sutras, read, burn some incense - maybe tidy up a bit. I have never been at a spot like this in my life so according to the way, one should embrace it.

The Gysin Dream Machine

The dream machine is a stroboscopic flicker device that produces visual stimuli. Artist Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs's "systems adviser" Ian Sommerville created the dreamachine after reading William Grey Walter's book, The Living Brain.
In its original form, a dreamachine is made from a cylinder with slits cut in the sides. The cylinder is placed on a record turntable and rotated at 78 or 45 revolutions per minute. A light bulb is suspended in the center of the cylinder and the rotation speed allows the light to come out from the holes at a constant frequency of between 8 and 13 pulses per second. This frequency range corresponds to alpha waves, electrical oscillations normally present in the human brain while relaxing.

A dreamachine is "viewed" with the eyes closed: the pulsating light stimulates the optical nerve and alters the brain's electrical oscillations. Users experience increasingly bright, complex patterns of color behind their closed eyelids. The patterns become shapes and symbols, swirling around, until the user feels surrounded by colors. It is claimed that using a dreamachine allows one to enter a hypnagogic state.

The hypnagogic state is a peculiar sensory experience that marks the onset of sleep. Also known as hypnagogia, it can include a mesmerizing array of visions, sounds, bodily sensations and insights as you sail through the borderland state.
Most people will be familiar with the geometric imagery of hypnagogia as they fall asleep at night, or simply remain quietly aware during meditation. This can evolve into the sight of familiar faces, landscapes, voices and even music.
As the increasingly complex patterns flow across your field of vision, you feel drawn into the hypnotic hypnagogic state which, with focus, can be manipulated at will. What many people don't realize (because they fall asleep) is that imagery can lead directly to the dream state and, for our purposes, lucid dreams.

This experience may sometimes be quite intense, but to escape from it, one needs only to open one's eyes. A dreamachine may be dangerous for people with photosensitive epilepsy or other nervous disorders. It is thought that one out of 10,000 adults will experience a seizure while viewing the device; about twice as many children will have a similar ill effect.

There were some online Gysin generators, but most have disappeared.
This is as close as one can get to the effect with a gif animation.
Careful if you are sensitive to such things.

Temple

Great Sun Wave

water

Raga Guitar

I love playing my guitar, and I play a Jackson electric guitar currently. I like to play blues, some rock music, lots of different things. I am of course an amateur at it, and have no formal training as such. I really like playing exotic scales, and really like play raga-style or Indian-style music on my guitar. I have always loved Indian music, with a particular affinity for the late, great Ravi Shankar. Of course love to own a sitar, but they are quite expensive. I may get a banjira mini-sitar at some point. I like collecting musical instruments, and own a decent shakuhachi flute. At some point I have some plans to mix some Japanese komoi scales to some taiko drum, koto loops or backing tracks, but that is another post, altogether.


For now, though I choose to use my guitar, and I do keep it in standard EADGBE tuning and I play and experiment around with different amp emulator settings to try to create a sitar-like sound or at least an Indian-atmospheric sound, which I have done to my own relative satisfaction.

I currently use Guitar Rig 5, routed through my computer stereo system, but I do own a beloved old Crate amp, which I have had for many years. I don't the amp much, because Guitar Rig is so versatile with so many features, but I would not be without it.

At some point, I may invest in a Ravish Sitar pedal for the guitar, but they are expensive as well running into the 200 dollar region. The pedal is quite unique however, as it simulates the metallic buzz of melodic sitar leads and the characteristic sounds of sympathetic string drones that react to your playing.
I personally believe it is one of the best guitar synth pedals ever made.
In the interim, though I am satisfied with what I have on hand.

I suppose it might be worth, linking all of this to some sort of esoteric or spiritual theme.
For me, playing the guitar is enjoyable and very meditative in nature no matter what style or genre of music I am playing. One can get into a good jam and forget or transcend, every day worries and struggles.


As Pandit Ravi Shankar noted - ragas are like jazz or blues improvisations basically. They of course, follow different forms, but what I find most intriguing is to improvise.

For me, it is a relaxing meditative exercise, and the practice itself with the different scales is good overall practice for the guitar.





Of course, this is not intended to be an inclusive in-depth monograph upon the subject, as it is of course a vast, immense topic, that can be somewhat intimidating, and can prove thorougly confusing for the amateur or casual musician. I have sifted through dozens of websites, some helpful, some less helpful, and others offering to be helpful if you are willing to pay for classes.

I don't really want to pay for classes as it is a rather casual thing for me, so it is a matter of sifting out what is most important and just starting to work with that. The best way I have found, is to find tabla and tanpura backing tracks, and to practice scales along to them. This is good meditative and scale practice in any case teaching you to work the fretboard. There are, in fairness some decent videos on YouTube to help out, with techniques and some finer points.

One discovery I came across, practicing ragas, carnatic, and hindu scales on the guitar, was I had assumed that time was set by the tabla drum meter and it is - but the strings on a sitar or a guitar, are plucked or struck according to the tonal form of the song. It is based on the "seven swaras". The easiest way to understand these is they are equivalent to the "do re mi" of Western music. I hadn't realized this before, and was strumming using the standard Western guitar patterns, and alternate picking, etc.



When you look at the tab which shows the swaras or musical syllables - along with the standard bar notation, what you do is to hit the string where it notes the consonants 'Ma', 'ha', 'de', 'va' 'su', and 'tham' but not on not on vowels or any extensions. It gets more complicated from there however, and can be confusing. What it is technically speaking is a double harmonic scale. That is complicated to explain or grasp, but the basis is it contains two harmonic tetrads featuring augmented seconds - meaning the "gaps" so to speak in the scale are what give it that exotic sound. As an example the Pink Panther Theme, originally played in the key of E minor, is noted for its quirky, unusual use of a double harmonic minor scale.



All the remaining swaras should be played using hammer-on, pull-off and slides. It may seem arcane, but it had mightily puzzled me how the strumming or strings were and are played as it does not of course conform to the Western model of guitar strumming patterns or alternate, and sweep picking patterns. The thing I couldn't figure was how you know when to pluck a string, and when to do hammer-ons, pull offs and slides as it is not noted. It sort of made a bit of it click into place as to why the long sustains are used, and of course the sympathetic strings of the sitar, which provide tonal value between strikes of the string, hammer-ons, slides, etc.

This is a very good video. It shows very clearly and slowly the basic tonic of a marwa.
A marwa is a hexatonic Indian raga. Pa, the fifth tone is omitted. Marwa is also the name of the thaat. The thaat is a mode in northern Indian or Hindustani music. Thaats always have seven different pitches called swara and are a basis for the organization and classification of ragas in North Indian classical music. Curiously, all ragas have specific times of days or night to be performed. A marwa is considered a sunset or evening raga.

I already practice various pentatonic scales for blues and jazz, and this is an extension of that perhaps.
It is improvisation, and I am not personally that overly concerned if it sounds perfect or strict to a particular raga form. If the tampura drone backing track is in C, then one would use a corresponding C scale.
As far as modes for me, brighter major note sounds and scales would be day ragas or thaat, and more minor notes and minor scales, more suggestive of evening and contemplation.

On that note, here is an excellent resource for this that allows you to pick out scales in different ragas, and graphically shows the notes on a fretboard. I do not know how long this will be offered for free, but it is still available free of cost if you click on the picture, the site will come up in a new window.



I have found this immensely useful. From here I have been actively looking for a tampura drone simulator software, where I can generate tampura drone sound files in different keys to import into Guitar Rig as backing tracks. It would be great to find a tabla simulator software to do the same thing to make drum backing tracks, in particular meters. There are a few, but I have tended to rely on backing tracks and loops for this primarily.

Here is one of the few tanpura drone simulators I have found online that are still free and will generate sound files.

Tanpura Drone Generator

Here is a D sa-pa Tanpura sound file, and a very good one.
D sa-pa Sound

A particular key mentioned in many of the beginner practices is the key of C.
One other raga guitarist, recommends use of the Lydian b9 scale as a good practice form as it is close to many of the raga scales as far as the fretboard.




Of course there is the standard Hindu scale, which is also nice and exotic sounding.
This Indian music scale is called the Asavari scale or raga Asavari. A raga is something between a scale and a composition, it is richer then a scale, but not as fixed as a composition. It is more like a tonal framework for improvisation and composition, just as chord changes and standards are for a jazz musician. The difference is, this is play differently ascending up or down. Its a very good place to start.

Of course the more esoterically minded, might venture that there is some link between the seven swaras, and what is known as the seven chakras. And of course there is.

Zatoichi

Fugue and Toccata

Shinto Ghost-house

"Why certain architectural forms produce in the beholder a feeling of weirdness about which I should like to theorize some day: at present I shall venture only to say that Shinto shrines evoke such a feeling. It grows with familiarity instead of weakening; and a knowledge of popular beliefs is apt to intensify it. We have no English words by which these queer shapes can be sufficiently described – much less any language able to communicate the impression which they make. Those Shinto shrines which we loosely render by the words ‘temple’ and ‘shrine’ are really untranslatable; – I mean that the Japanese ideas attaching to them cannot be conveyed by translation.  The so-called ‘august house of the Kami’ is not so much a temple, in the classic meaning of the term, as it a haunted room, a spirit-chamber, a ghost-house – ghosts of great warriors and heroes and rulers and teachers, who lived and loved and died hundreds of thousands of years ago.  I fancy that to the Western mind the word ‘ghost-house’ will convey, better than such terms as ‘shrine’ and ‘temple’, some vague notion of the strange character of the Shinto miya or yashiro – containing in its perpetual dusk nothing more substantial than symbols of tokens, the latter probably of paper. Now the emptiness behind the visored form is more suggestive than anything material could possibly be."
– Writings of Lafcadio Hearn, Vol VIII, p 4-5

Green Shinto

This is a website I enjoy very much, and find much inspiration in.
Green Shinto

Happy Birthday

I only update Black Lotus as I feel the call to. Today, is my birthdate. I am 53 years old today. So, Happy Birthday to me.

Space Time