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LOST FACE

Lost Face is the personification of the principle of how reincarnation works. When people die and change and pass into another life and personality, Lost Face is the archetype of that change.

He represents the mechanism and the form that occasions that transformation. By giving your atention to any one of the different masks or personalities that line the inside of his coat, you are transformed.

 

This transformation occurs by the fundamental principle of the Vedic culture: The principle that you become what you meditate on, that whatever you give your attention to you become.

This is the ancient principle that guides all of life. In the bardos between the worlds, in the time after we die and in the time in which we live, our attention to personality and karmas

is responsible for what we experience in life. To understand this, it is said we must take into account as many factors as there are grains of sand in the universe.

 

I have personified that undefinable quality and force as Lost Face.

This is a prayer of celebration to this awesome, terrible and wonderful reality . . .

Lost Face - Peter Malakoff
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– Music: Hit or Miss by Odetta

Lost Face is tall and thin and wears a hat down over his face-his face is always in shadow and you cannot see it. He wears an ankle length coat which is lined on the inside with faces or masks.

Each mask is a different personality, a different life. He has a dark-but not evil-manner.

He has lost his own face-which is a story within this story and is a seller or purveyor of personalities.

 

Ise da man wid faces to sell, lining my coat I flashes them to all


Need a special face? Need The special face?

Lost face today? Never had a face? Faceless at last? Take your feelings at face value?

 

Ya wanna be another
Ya wanna take a ride
Ya wanna talk like Churchill
or ya wanna talk in jive?

Ya wanna be a littl girl, wid curls up in her hair,
jumpin skip rope on da sidewalk, or playin double dare?

Wanna be a ganstga, wid guns a blazin wild,
lyin an a cheatin, an a full of angry guile

Or haps youse is a lover, a croonin out his heart
holdin her so closely like youse never for to part

Whisperin sweet nothins and kissin her sweet lips
feelin her sweet tenderness neath all your fingertips

Haps you wanna be all evil with the devil for your friend
or maybe stead a blessin man with happiness to lend

I ain talkin Dew dads and Knicky knacks I ain talkin thingamagigs or whirls
Ise talkin youse becomin any person in dis whole blame crazy world

 

So dats dere proximately wats Ise sellin, really, offerin for free
takes any one you wants at all, an sets your livin free

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TIBETAN WHEEL OF LIFE:  

 

 I visited Ladakh in 2016. It is the Indian part of the Tibetan Plateau, containing many of the oldest Buddhist monasteries on the Tibetan Plateau. At the entrance of every monastery, on the right-hand wall, is painted an image called the ‘Wheel of Life,’ a comprehensive summary of Buddha’s teaching in picture form made for a predominantly illiterate culture. 

 

The Wheel of Life illustrates the co-dependently (one thing always depending on another) arising, inevitable, always and only temporary, ever alternating, ‘good,’ ‘bad,’ pleasurable and painful karmas of birth and death, youth and old age, disease and health, heaven and hell. 

The Wheel of Life illustrates the karmas (actions and destinies) of men, gods, demi-gods, demons, and animals, portraying the path of every sentient being that is bound upon this wheel. The Wheel is held in the hands of the ‘demon’ ‘Kala’ or time, a demon crowned with five skulls, representing the five elements (ether, air, fire, water, and earth) of which all and everything exists.

 

After Buddha was enlightened underneath the Bodhi tree, he thought he would not teach because what he had to say was not understood or interesting to others. In the Pali Canon, it is recorded that Buddha said:

 

“This Dharma I have realized is profound, hard to see and difficult to understand, full of peace and sublime, unattainable by mere reasoning, subtle and capable of being experienced only by the wise . . . But this generation delights in worldliness (attachment), takes delight in worldliness, and rejoices in worldliness. It is hard for such people to see this truth, namely, inevitable conditionality (everything includes its opposite) and co-dependent origination (nothing has a self-nature; it is all caused by a combination of other things; there is no 'self), and it is hard to see the truth, namely; that the stilling of all desires, the relinquishing of all attachments, the destruction of craving, dispassion, and cessation is Nirvana. If I were to teach the Dharma, others would not understand me, and that would be wearying and troublesome.

Seeing his hesitation, the gods implored him to teach, if only for the sake of the few who might be prepared and to help others know the truth of Reality. It was only at their urging that Buddha acquiesced and began his teaching mission to ‘Turn the Wheel of the Dharma.’ 

 

His very first Teaching was 'The Four Noble Truths’ and the very first ‘Truth’: ’Life is Dukkha (suffering).’ Suffering was inevitable and inherent in this world, and without awakening to this Truth, no one would ever be interested in the Teaching of freedom from suffering. (This is why Buddha was hesitant to teach.) 

 

If one were not clear that every life was limited and all beings and things were bound to the wheel of cause and effect, a wheel held by time, that they were going to die and lose everything and everyone, then they would be primarily motivated to seek pleasure and/or fulfill their various desires. Buddha did not teach ‘Buddhism,’ for the sake of any kind of fulfillment of the 'self'; rather, he taught the transcendence of 'self.' Buddha taught that a person must first discover that the ‘Truth’ of life is inevitable suffering because only then, impressed with the suffering nature of all of existence, would they ever be moved to practice the Way. (See: The Cure of the Mustard Seed)

An Example from the Wheel of Life: 

The image above displays only the center of the Wheel of Life, which shows people rising up to the pure realms by doing good deeds, helping each other, giving to others, and practicing as monks. However, because the fruits of every action are limited, the fruits of their actions are eventually exhausted. Then, they fall from their exalted state. This is why it is called the 'Wheel of Life,’ it is always turning like a wheel where what was up turns into what is down, and what is down becomes up; on and on it goes. This is why there are Buddhas shown to the upper right and upper left of the image, indicating that the Buddha’s teaching is not merely a benign mortal teaching of how to succeed in life (on the wheel); instead, it is a Transcendental Teaching, and its Truth exists outside and beyond the Wheel of Life.

Everything I have written is done in recognition of this Wheel. . .

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