RINZAI.

RINZAI.

No one knows when Linji Yixuan was borne. What is known is that he founded the Linji School of Buddhism. A fierce pioneer of Ch’an, Linji helped to marry Indian Buddhism to Chinese Taoism, producing an early predecessor of the discipline that in Japan came to be known as Zen. His methods would barely sit with contemporary practitioners who are loth to use the rod. Rinzai Gigen’s method involved three Gates (not removed from the Archetypal Tradition of the Three Trials) that one had to pass in order to attain Buddhahood: The Mystery of Essence, the Mystery of the Word, and the Mystery in the Mystery. Along this path the ego had from time to time to be BEATEN out of the student, quite literally. Rinzai also famously said: If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha. It’s hard to say how far he intended for this metaphor to go. But it always was of help to me, becoming one of my favourites even before I took a class in Religion in 2010 A.D.

Linji himself died in 866 A.D. It’s not unlikely that he chose to reincarnate as a Bodhisattva.

That year produced Leo VI, the Wise. The Byzantine Emperor was all so known as “The Philosopher”. If ever a Platonic Philosopher King ruled, such was Leo VI. He died in 912 A.D. He had ruled from 886 to his dying day. The date of his ascent to the Byzantine Throne was August 29^th of the year 886, just three weeks prior to his twentieth birthday on September 19^th. He was nineteen years of age, therefore, when he took charge.

Alanna graduated from San Diego State University as an Honours student at the age of nineteen, only a short while before her own twentieth birthday. Either that or she had completed most of her requirements, if not all, by that time. She began to teach shortly thereafter. She would be remembered as one of the most intelligent members of her generation.

Nikephoros II Phokas was borne circa 912 A.D. He reigned as Byzantine Emperor from August 16^th, 963 A.D. to his death on December the Eleventh, 969 A.D. A controversial ruler, he was known for his militant ruthlessness, depicted ultimately in paintings as bearing a long curved sword, pointed upwards, in his right hand and its holster, pointing downwards, at his left. He died in Constantinople.

William the Great was borne that year. A member of the House of Poitiers, he ruled as Duke of Aquatine from 990 to 1030 A.D, mostly thanks to a panegyric written by the monk and forger Adémar de Chabannes, who was all so a musical prodigy. In 1010 William founded Maillezais Abbey. In 1020 he won back a lot of his power via a treaty signed by Bishop Fulbert of Chartres. His Court became a Center for Artistic Endeavour, with him as its pivotal patron. He died in peace on January 31^st of that year. (01/31/1030.) It was a good day to split his Soul in two for the first time.

Vsevolod (whose name means “To Rule Over All”) I of Kiev was the Prince of Kiev from 1078 A.D. to his death on April 13^th, 1093. He had been borne to Yaroslav the Wise. He was not an unlucky man. Following an armistice with the Byzantine Empire, he had the privilege of marrying a Byzantine princess borne under the name of Anastasia or Maria.

That same year of 1030 A.D. saw the birth of an other great leader, but of the Clerical Class rather than the Ruling Class. So it was that on July 26^th, under the Sign of Leo, Stanislaus was borne. The Polish Bishop of Krakow, a town referenced quite incidentally by Alfred Jarry in King Ubu, came to be known as Saint Stanislaus the Martyr, for he was killed by King Boleslaw II. King Boleslaw, whose names included the Bold, the Generous, and the Cruel, is exactly the sort of Polish King that Alfred Jarry would have drawn his obvious inspiration from. Stanislaus died therefore, less peacefully than he had become accustomed to, on April 11^th, 1079 A.D.

Baldwin VII of Flanders was borne in the year that Vsevolod of Kiev died. He ruled as Count of Flanders from October 5^th, 1111 A.D. to his death on July 17^th, 1119 A.D. His cousin was Charles the Good, who was nine years his senior.

Meanwhile: Emperor Horikawa was borne on August 8^th, 1079 A.D. He was borne under the same sign as his previous incarnation, Stanislaus, and so it would follow that William de Longespée (though he himself would never quite become that particular incarnation) would go down in history with a long sword and a shield emblazoned with six lions forming a downward-pointing triangle.

Emperor Horikawa ruled as the seventy-third Emperor of Japan  up until his death on August 9^th, 1107 A.D. A day after his 28^th birthday, he was aged twenty-eight years when he passed on.

So began the recurrence of the number “28”. It even occurs as I hit the word count at the prior paragraph: 828.

The Seventy-fifth Emperor of Japan was Emperor Sutoku. He was borne a Cancer on July 7^th, 1119 A.D, ten days before Baldwin VII of Flanders died. He ruled until September 14, 1164 A.D, the date of his death. During his role, he was immortalized in Japanese folklore as a Yōkai, a sort of daemon whose name in Kanji means “bewitching, attractive calamity” and “spectre, apparition, suspicious, and mystery”. Sutoku Tennō is regarded by traditional Japanese daemonologists as one of only Three Terrible Yōkai, and his spirit is said to HAUNT THE COURT OF KYOTO to this day.

If only they knew.

Emperor Gaozong of China was borne under the sign of Gemini (the Twins, Castor and Pollux) on June 12^th, 1107 A.D. A member of the Song Dynasty, no pun intended, he ruled as the tenth Chinese Emperor of this Dynasty and the first emperor of the Southern Song dynasty. He was the 9^th son of Huizong and the younger brother of Emperor Qinzong, who was borne on May 23^rd of the year 1100 A.D, and who reminds me personally of Charles the Good, who for twelve years after Gaozong’s birth would have been the mentor figure for Gaozong’s twin flame in Europe: Baldwin VII of Flanders, and who would go on to rule in his kid cousin’s place for the remaining eight of twenty years before his death.

His mother was a concubine named “Wei”, which reminds me of the expression “Wu Wei” in Taoism: Don’t clutch the bird. She was remembered later as Empress Xianren, meaning “Incumbent”.

Gaozong was also known as “Deji”, meaning pure. Under his rule, the Great Chu was abolished, dissolving a puppet state created by the rival clan of Jin. His rule was riddled with mutiny and unrest. The Emperor had to withstand constant attacks from both within and without. He was survivor, though, having established himself as the first Southern Song Emperor after the Jingkang Incident of 1127 took both his father and brother away from him, however temporarily.

Gaozong finally settled on a pacifist state, but his experience had taught him to be cunning. Unlike Sultan Cem, Gaozong was not borne to manipulate; he was THROWN into it. He plotted with Qin Hui to frame Yue Fei, the Han Chinese military general who had served him during a long campaign against the invading Jurchens of the Jin dynasty. Yue Fei was killed under false pretenses in an elaborate scheme aimed at preventing the Jurchens from releasing older brother Qinzong, who was threatening to overtake the throne held by Gaozong.

Unlike Sultan Cem, who had spent many lifetimes refusing to compromise at all costs, remembered for this reason as a pretender and a thorn in the sides of his helpers and family, Gaozong had no choice but to hurt those most loyal to him. The ends had to be made to justify the means, for only then could one live with the betrayal of an Older Brother. And the ends were the polar antithesis of Cem: Diplomacy and Politics.

Emperor Qinzong died on June 14^th, 1161 A.D, at the age of 61, a “sick and broken man”. He and his father had spent the latter part of their lives under the humiliation of being forced to observe Jin customs, estranged from both family and throne.

Gaozong died on November 9^th, 1187 A.D. Even after having ceded the throne to his adopted son Zhao Shen (who came thus to be known as Emperor Xiaozong), he maintained all of the real, de facto power up until his death at eighty years of age. He was remembered as Taishang Huang, the Retired Emperor, as well as a Poet of great Influence who wrote a “Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain”.

To this day, Yue Fei is remembered as a sort of folk hero to the Chinese people. Theories abound about his last days. Poison was not ruled out as the means of execution.

In the same year that Gaozong past from this Earth, Ela of Salisbury was borne. She too wore red, the formal colour of Chinese Royalty.

Emperor Rokujo was the 79^th Emperor of Japan. He was borne on December 28^th of the year 1164 A.D, the same year that Emperor Sotuko, his predecessor by four, past away. Rokujo ruled until his death on August 23^rd, 1176 A.D. That same year, it is reported that William de Longespée was borne, an illegitimate son of King Henry II.

Chester Bennington was borne directly upon the Cusp of Rebirth. His birthday is March 20^th, 1976. This would make him the ideal advocate for both Pisces and Aries. As the lead singer of Linkin Park, he had moved a lot of people with his lyrics, but childlike as they were his audience was often too young to fully grasp the turmoil within.

Chester offed himself on July 20^th, 2017. This was considered a copycat suicide, for it was on what would have been the fifty-third birthday of Chris Cornell, a fellow rock musician. Chris had died by strangling himself. Chester died by hanging.

The looming threat of further suicides in imitatio haunted the Millenial World like a ghastly spectre.

On September 26^th, 2017, at Midnight, Dmytri Andreev met with two new friends. Mere minutes to midnight, Dmytri had cast his I Ching Hexagrams, receiving Fourteen and Fifty-six, to his perplexion. He checked to see what news there was of Chester’s Aftermath. Seventeen hours prior to that moment, Sagittarian rapper and amateur occultist Jay-Z, who had worked with Chester and friends Linkin Park, released a statement about his personal meaning in relation to Chester’s death: that it was a call to action for greater “Mental Health Awareness”. Dmytri cringed. He wore a pinstriped black shirt, gray pants, and black semi-athletic shoes. He sat before a stack of pancakes that Justen, a Scorpio server, had provided unto him for free, without either prompting nor context. Two minutes after midnight, Dmytri’s friends arrived. Abigail sat at Dmytri’s left, the pocket wherein Dmytri kept his moonstone, representing his South Node, his Midheaven, and Mother. At Dmytri’s right sat Scotty Rodriguez. They were seated at the same booth as Dmytri had first met them, on a whim, one night only a few weeks earlier. It faced the back entrance to the kitchen. Across the center of the restaurant Dmytri would have seen and overheard Gustavo and his girlfriend mumbling to one an other. Gustavo was a friend of Kresten Taylor, if “friend” is the word. Apparently Gustavo hated Dmytri. Dmytri did not care. He knew why. One night Jay Dey had played a prank upon the girl that Gustavo had started dating. The girl had had a crush on Dmytri. But that did not stop Dmytri from greeting them with pomp and circumstance upon their arrival to the building. Before Scotty arrived Dmytri had gone up to the Front Counter to call for Justen. He welcomed Gustavo and the girl, whose name he now forgets, as though Dmytri himself worked there. With the same candour he spoke with a pair of stoners smelling of cannabis, one of whom wore a sweater adorned with Egyptian and Greek symbolism. They spoke of reincarnation. It made Dmytri smile; the stoner was at once skeptical and open-minded. His own take on the idea was more poetic than Dmytri could have asked for. Those closest to Brahman truly are those who stand furthest away.

When Scotty Rodriguez arrived, and after Dmytri explained the invitation, Scotty pointed this much out: that Scott had not planned to wear black that night. It’s possible that he was wearing black when Dmytri first called, for he’d been hanging out with Abigail. Scotty explained that such was the Universe.

That night, Dmytri was ecstatic. He had found out that he had TWO Twin Flames, both women. One was Stella Champagne. But she was a younger branch of the same Tree of Life. The trauma that produced her flaming visage like a Phoenix was a betrayal that surpassed that of the Wife unto her Husband. It was a betrayal on the Fifth Dimension, for Ela of Salisbury was all ready the other half of William’s soul. They were both of them, in fact, karmic descendants of Duke William V of Aquatine, William the Great. And at the Root of them both beat the Heart of a founding Zen Master. When the Twin Flames reunited, however, the passion was too intense. Kindly, formal William was eradicated by the seasoned warrior priestess that was Ela, borne to be a murderer owing to her previous incarnations. So William split in two, his Heart Broken, his Sword Shattered and in need of a New Mate to take the place of Ela. Stephanie became his new Guardian Angel; whereas Ela, or Alanna, continued to act as their rival, lifetime upon lifetime. And it was not until the new Millennium that the three paths crossed again, and only William, reincarnated as Dmytri Andreev, knew both women, and they never knew one an other, unless there is more to this Mystery even now that I’ve yet to uncover or to let go. So it would happen that in the wake of a tragic break with Alanna Leigh McLeod, whose name means “A Beautiful Field of the Clouds”, Dmytri found temporary solace in the pursuit of Stephanie Champagne, whose name means “The Ruler of the Flatland”, or the RULER OF THE FIELD. And this pursuit brought him to the end of Four Years of (quite literally) Soul Searching, which began with the end of his occupation at Joann Fabrics in Poway, wherein in his last week of employment he met, by incredible coincidence, the mother of musician and  amateur alienologist Tom Delonge, whose name is probably descended from the line De Longespée in some fashion. And four years later Dmytri returned to Denny’s, where Jay Dey took him on the night that Anthony Riccio’s mother died. And it was Jay, whose mother too had died, that first took Dmytri to a rave in 2015, so as to heal the wounds inflicted by Alanna Leigh McLeod.  And in the winter following that summer Dmytri learned about Astrology and came to ascertain Jay’s sign off of his Intuition alone. And so a veil of ignorance (that Anthony Riccio could not lift, for too close had he too been to Kresten Taylor, even when the three spent time as friends) was lifted. And now it was that Dmytri learned that he, Stephanie, and Alanna were all secretly the reincarnation of an ancient and austere Zen Master named Rinzai Gigen, or Linji Yixuan. And for hundreds of years they had fought for the Chrysanthemum Throne not knowing (or knowing?) that they belonged to a class transcending Royalty, Clergy, and even Death.

Dmytri needed that. Because when he looked up “Alanna Leigh McLeod” via Google he found knowledge that would have been a curse had it come to him at any other time.

Alanna Leigh McLeod died on August the Third of the year Two-Thousand and Seventeen After the Death of Christ. She took her own life only two weeks after Chester had taken his. It was on a Thursday that she passed away, to her own enormous relief. The prior day, her jilted lover had been possessed inexplicably to post a Blog Entry detailing the illusory nature of depression. But he never sent this to her, to his memory, for fear of invoking the Stalking Case that she had been building up against him. In context, the Case seems laughable, for only failure to save a Soul can reinforce the imperative nature of the Cause to do so. Death makes fools of all other laws, though Dmytri knows better than to blame himself for his trepidation; Satan had all ready overtaken her mind.

On the GoFundMe page by her mother Teri Niebell, whose name could be translated “A Harvester of Fog” or “A Collector of Clouds”, she is described as having been “in pain, and no one knew”. And you will know this now, reader, to be false. She was remembered as a great artist whose artwork would be donated to those closest to her. (Apparently I am not among them.) “She was beautiful, talented, and the smartest person most anybody knew.” All true. But: “The world is now a worse place without her in it.”

Is it?

What would she say?

Perhaps I cannot speak on behalf of a Spirit that has lived independently of my own Will for 987 years. (For it was after all in 1030 A.D. that we first parted.) But then: perhaps I can think of Alanna at her best moments. Perhaps that is best. She would want that. And she would be as terse as I am now. She taught me how to do that.

She claimed, when the Devil was behind her, that she had a strong will to live. She would be a force of Revolution. She regarded Satan as “that fuck”.

How ironical therefore that I met her one night by chanting “Satan” in a Parking Garage, looking for my ride home, who had been a Satanist!

We laughed about it then. But now I see the Devil in her ravaged eyes: one of the few photographs that I have in my possession of this most recent incarnation of her.

 

"Do what thou Wilt": the favourite saying of a Wilting Rose.
Dm.A.A.

But I worry not.

Because she would not have me worry.

Will the World be a worse place now?

It feels not that way.

If she returns, my first Twin Flame will come back kicking, a force to be reckoned with Stronger than any Other. And if she is again seduced towards Evil, as she has done Lifetime upon Lifetime, Stephanie and I shall be sure to keep her in check.

If she ascends unto the Fifth Dimension, as she craved and as she confided unto me one terrible Wednesday night outside my address at 15241 A.R, so her Spirit shall be At Peace, having received its most dire wish, and I shall join in this ecstasy when I too ascend. She is All Ready WITH me in that Timeless Realm, visiting me as I lie in the leaves under the Amber Glow of a schoolyard lantern. But I had to be released from her earth-bound existence, as well as my earth-bound shame and guilt and forlorn longing, in order that I might feel her kiss on that Realm, from that Beautiful Field in the Clouds. Time applies in our world; she had to die for me to truly live, it seems, and it was not until I learned of her death that I could meet her again in Harmony, and I could not have learned it and survived it, sanity intact, had I not first found our True Identity. She did not hold with guilt or shame; she thought of it as mischief. I shall shed it in her honour. Our revolution will come to fruition. We were borne to play this part. Once our song has played. Thank you for the beautiful song.

Dm.A.A.