The Poetry Project

three doors or wisdom of space queen

Eric Patel

in our workshop, t’ai freedom ford generously shared with us excerpts from robin coste lewis’s the voyage of the sable venus and other poems. i was inspired to try something similar to coste lewis’s approach, but with different books i’ve been reading on gender, visualization, and dream yoga in buddhism. for my contribution to footnotes, i’d like to offer both my process and a fragment of an ekphrastic experiment that came from it

steps

  1. pick one section of a book such as the bibliography, index, or notes
  2. while reading section backwards in your language (right to left for english), select or skip words as they appear
  3. rest whenever you get tired or arrive at the end of the section. you can read the assembled piece backwards or forwards in part or in whole. treat it as a warm up exercise, play, or ingredients for something else

i picked the bibliography of tibetan and western language sources from machik’s complete explanation clarifying the meaning of chöd translated by sarah harding

three doors or wisdom of space queen

zhije
shes rin rab karma
abridged center of words
mahamudra of moonbeams
house handwritten
mother supplication song
dakinis laughter healing
drop of mandala food as glorious wisdom
painted across himalayan

generation of eleven vajrayogini’s
paradise kechara path sublime
dharamsala tara of origin
shamans blue gift of meditation grove pleasures
ego clinging cutting practice
ancient deu drung dances
protective demons and oracles
unpublished form gathering feast
exorcising by ritual
root cuts the sword
garden between mystic and bliss
primordial spindle and arrow
of luminous moon and sun of tantric creation
autumn padma city under wrathful cycle
demoness in soundings

history a patriarchy
guide in tantra yoga
ecstasy astrology
lady of song and
secret sky footprint
rise mystery being
its prajnaparamita diamond
mandarava of liberation love magic
sutra lalitavistara and
the buddhism of mother
snow moving folklore revealed as
wisdom of women
spell

Work from fantastic ekphrastic experiments with t’ai freedom ford

Elsewhere