Gods inside
One day, in a future life, I will keep company with many physicists, geologists, and mathematicians. Until that time comes, I will read Quanta Magazine.
One of my teachers once mentioned she placed sanskrit syllables inside her body during meditation practices. And many years later she found a text that asked the practitioner to do exactly that. This confirmed her intuitions; my beloved teacher is always ahead of the current-time curve.
A student generally shares the karma of the teacher. Recently I found a text that said all gods actually live inside the body. This may be metaphoric, depending on your bent.
My bent happens to be greased by hatha yoga and a handful of highly trained teachers that set the stage at least 10 years before I took on Tibetan Buddhist practices. One of these hatha yoga teachers, early on in my studies, made the point that all manner of storms are not only on the planet, but also reside in the body. Yogis work in the realm of elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, Ether. So imbalances in the elements can become storm-like. That teacher explained hurricane energy, tsunami energy, lightning storm energy, drought, flooding, heat waves, volcanic eruptions, all can be exhibited within the body. So bloating, diarrhea, constipation, boils, acne, heat flashes on through the more subtle material of anger, jealousy, greed, laziness, can all go into either your metaphoric bucket or your substance bucket. I don’t have a preference how you code your things.
In August 2025, Quanta Magazine published an article called, “Earth’s Core Appears to be Leaking Up and Out of Earth’s Surface”. The article talks about how the study of seismic waves led Danish seismologist, Inge Lehmann, to pave the way toward the realization that the Earth’s core is made up of solid metal.
If I may address you, respectfully, Robin George Andrews, author of the article, I imagine I’m not the first to call you a poet. Case in point: “Billions of years ago, when Earth was a giant ball of magma, dense droplets of liquid iron rained down into the planet’s depths, and this iron rain took the highly siderophile elements along for the ride, sequestering them in the core.” Siderophile means “iron-loving.” So something that is highly siderophile will want to stick to a metallic fluid as opposed to a rocky one. I’m paraphrasing Mr. Andrews there, who has become a kin of Rimbaud in my headspace.
Picture it- Earth is spinning away in a gravitational field billions of years ago sloshing away as a giant ball of hot, molten substance, like a slurpie in a centrifugal-force slurpie machine, until a rain shower of liquid iron pummels the slurpie and starts to adhere to other metallic elements and becomes a solid, fairly spherical mass in the center of the slurpie. Earth’s core happens.
Talk to any Tibetan Buddhist, they’ll say a really scientific thing: “There are causes and conditions.” On top of that basic thought, all manner of gods and goddesses arise. Some peaceful, some wrathful. Their fabric, their matter, is simply awareness. Diving, rising, diving, like a great winged thing dissipating liquid iron rain into an open mouth.
Phenomenal chances, causes, conditions.
We tread the top layer. Tamp it down. Tramp it.
Add track, trash, and worry.
Phenomenal chances, causes, conditions.
For good measure, add ash, fragrance, offerings.
We’ve lived here a short time. We’ll leave soon.
Leave ash, fragrance, offerings.