Potato and Sheep's Cheese Casserole

This, sent by a friend:

Potato and Sheep's Cheese Casserole
Musaka od Krumpira (Krompira)

Region: Balkans
Category: Vegetables
Season: Winter
Difficulty: Easy

After its arrival in Spain, the potato made its move east, where, along the Dalmatian coast, the culinary influence of the Austro-Hungarian Empire met the influence of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and cooking was tempered by a long association with Venice. We can see the meshing of these culinary influences in local preparations such as this potato casserole which uses smoked bacon, an Austro-Hungarian influence, with sheep's cheese, a Turkic influence, for flavoring the basic potato. This Bosnian-style musaka is influenced by the Greek preparation of the same name; it's a substantial dish and quite appropriate in the winter. For fresh sheep's cheese you can use a young pecorino; it doesn't have to be actually fresh like mozzarella, or you can use soft goat cheese too. This recipe is adapted from Inge Kramarz's The Balkan Cookbook.

Yield: Makes 6 servingsPreparation Time: 1 hour

2 pounds potatoes
Salt
1/4 pound smoked slab bacon, cut into small dice
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter
1/4 cup dry bread crumbs
1/2 pound fresh sheep?s cheese (preferably), crumbled, or kashkaval cheese, grated
1 tablespoon chopped fresh dill
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

1. Place the unpeeled potatoes in a large saucepan, cover with cold water by a few inches, and lightly salt. Bring to a gentle boil over medium heat (this will take about 20 minutes) and cook until the potatoes are easily pierced by a skewer, about another 20 minutes. Drain and, when the potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel them. Cut into 1/4-inch thick slices and set aside.

2. In a small skillet cook the bacon, stirring, until crispy brown. Remove with a slotted ladle to paper towels to drain and set aside.

3. Butter a medium-size baking pan with 1 to 2 tablespoons of the butter. Sprinkle 2 tablespoons bread crumbs over the bottom of the buttered dish, shaking them all around to coat evenly. Arrange the sliced potatoes around the dish.

4. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

5. In a medium-size skillet melt the remaining butter and stir together with the sheep's cheese until smooth and bubbling over low heat. Stir the crispy bacon, the remaining 2 tablespoons bread crumbs, and dill into the skillet and season with salt and pepper. Continue to stir until creamy. Pour the contents of the skillet evenly over the potatoes. Bake the potatoes for 20 minutes and serve.

Source unknown

The Noble Breed

Want to ride horses in Turkey? Here's a reliable horse ranch, The Akhal-Teke Horse Center, owned by my friend, Erchian's family. I love the virtual tour on this website.

These Turkish horses are also famous in America. They come in many stunning colors.

The Akhal-Teke Association of American site describes their temperament:

The Akhal-Teke horses are vigorous, excitable, and restless. Thousands of years of selective breeding have left their mark not only on their physical appearance and efficiency, but also on their behavior. These horses are not only sensible but also very sensitive; they are even able to respond to mental suggestions of humans. Their intelligence is not comparable to any other breed. They not only need a sensitive rider, but a human being who can share their feelings when they gallop over vast areas just for the joy of movement. Due to the way in which they were raised and bred they are essentially one-master horses and bonding with a human owner is in their blood. Some Tekes may be difficult when ridden by strangers. With them you cannot achieve obedience by shouting or punishment; a glance, a small gesture, or a soft-spoken word are sufficient. A punishment not understood by the horse can cause them to be in a defensive mood for weeks. They are horses with character, outspoken individuals. Says Sue Waldock, President of the Akhal-Teke Association of GB: “They respond best to daily love and attention, a bit like a dog. If you ignore a dog it will misbehave too.” They are not suited to nervous or irritable humans. They are not suited to the limitations of modern stables, which kill their spirit. They are horses belonging to wide open spaces.

Back in the Land of Rain

Back in the land of precipitation. I slept like a rock last night, listening to the rain falling on the sky light, and delighting in the familiarity of the soft, flannel sheets and the worn, brown quilt on my bed.

This attic room, which is like the tree houses I had as a child, comforts me. It's not like I didn't enjoy my 12th floor hotel suite this week, with the balcony looking out over the bay. I did take a hot tub in my room every night, enjoying the pattern of lights from the adjacent buildings playing against the walls in the black marble bathroom. But it's this modest attic room of my home that I like most-- the fir floors, the sense that this room was the logical response to wanting to be more near the sky, or aloft in the tops of the nearby bamboo trees.

I like the cherry wood cabinets and the mismatched, handmade wool rugs and the ample sitting space. Glad to be home. Always am. Always.

Joy and All

This poem, from over at Whiskey River, my all-time favorite blog. Hat off to Whiskey, who makes me glad to read, on even the grayest of days.

Next Day

Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
Food-gathering flocks
Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,

Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise
If that is wisdom.
Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves
And the boy takes it to my station wagon,
What I've become
Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.

When I was young and miserable and pretty
And poor, I'd wish
What all girls wish: to have a husband,
A house and children. Now that I'm old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car

See me. It bewilders me he doesn't see me.
For so many years
I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me
And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me,
The eyes of strangers!
And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile

Imaginings within my imagining,
I too have taken
The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog
And we start home. Now I am good.
The last mistaken,
Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind

Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm
Some soap and water -
It was so long ago, back in some Gay
Twenties, Nineties, I don't know . . . Today I miss
My lovely daughter
Away at school, my sons away at school,

My husband away at work - I wish for them.
The dog, the maid,
And I go through the sure unvarying days
At home in them. As I look at my life,
I am afraid
Only that it will change, as I am changing:

I am afraid, this morning, of my face.
It looks at me
From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,
The smile I hate. Its plain, lined look
Of gray discovery
Repeats to me: "You're old." That's all, I'm old.

And yet I'm afraid, as I was at the funeral
I went to yesterday.
My friend's cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,
Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body
Were my face and body.
As I think of her I hear her telling me

How young I seem; I am exceptional;
I think of all I have.
But really no one is exceptional,
No one has anything, I'm anybody,
I stand beside my grave
Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.


- Randall Jarrell

I don't relate to this person's experience as my own. But it does seems an excellent description of the human condition as it seems so many people come to know it.

The names of all those laundry soaps caught me by surprise.

A Special Tense

I am reading Istanbul: Memories and the City, by Nobel Prize winning author, Orhan Pamuk.

On page 8 he writes,

In Turkish we have a special tense that allows us to distinguish hearsay from what we've seen with our own eyes; when we are relating dreams, fairy tales, or past events we could not have witnessed, we use this tense. It is a useful distinction to make as we "remember" our earliest life experiences, parents, our cradles, our baby carriages, our first steps, all as reported by our parents, stories to which we listen with the same rapt attention we might pay some brilliant tale of some other person. It's a sensation as sweet as seeing ourselves in our dreams, but we pay a heavy price for it.

Amazing. Are you amazed by this? I couldn't sleep after reading it, I was so amazed.

One Hundred Per Cent

Anxious. I am off this week to San Francisco to our conference, which has over 1000 participants. It will be a week of long days, and interesting work. I look forward to seeing old clients and meeting new ones. It’s also a chance to catch up with colleagues, since we are a virtual organization.

But what’s on my mind most is this trip to Turkey. I suppose it’s the lure of an adventure; a little free time, a little bit of the exhilaration of uncertainty and spontaneity.

Of course, given this economy, it’s an adventure whose budget could get spent on house payments or groceries. These are the times that I yearn to be unencumbered by houses and jobs and commitments to even the best of causes. I crave the wide open days of my time in Nepal.

But of course, that’s not what I’ll choose. Because on a more careful analysis, I’d choose the encumbrances I have, and I have chosen them, over and over, and my word is good on all that, one hundred per cent.

Always has been.

But this does not preclude a trip to Turkey, either. The economy does not. People have said, "You could lose your house if you do that." They might be right. When was the last time I was tethered to a house? When was the last time I didn't have a place to live that's better than most of the shelter that most people have?

I like the idea of a break, even not quite knowing what the break might look like.

The Relevant Questions

When I was considering my first expedition to the Everest region in Nepal in 1979, I made a list of questions to answer before deciding to go. It went something like this:

• Can I get in good enough physical shape to enjoy it?
• Can I save enough money to make it responsible?
• Can I get time away from other commitments?
• Is it a reasonable risk?
• Is this the right time?
• Are these the right people?
  
• Is there anything else I'd rather be doing with my time, energy and money?

Basically, I am considering the same questions for this trip. My life is full. I don't in any way feel lacking for entertainment. I enjoy my work and my involvement in Buddhism and the community of practitioners.

But I have loved a good adventure for as long as I can remember. When I was a child, people used to drop off their used National Geographic magazines at the local library. I'd carry an armload to my home, where I cut out the photos and pinned them to the walls in my room.

I always felt I would see those places and those people. It seemed they were mostly like me, bound by fate to live in out-of-the-way localities, yet full of life and an interest in the world. I wanted to meet them. I wanted to hear their stories. I still do. When I lived in Nepal and people came to visit, they'd ask, "What have you been doing this year?" and I'd reply, "Walking around." Sometimes I'd walk for weeks, from village to village, without a map or a destination in mind. It was never a disappointment. Never once.

And now, for some reason I can't quite fathom, Turkey is calling. Until now, it's a word I associated only with towels, coffee and Turkish Delight. Who knows how these seeds get planted? I can trace it back to some logical events, but it seems incomplete, as most explanations do.

I think if I go, I won't know why I went till I get there.

Lingo

What is the most valuable phrase when learning to speak a new language? In learning to speak Nepalese, it seemed to me to be "How do you say (insert the word) in Nepalese?" "What is that?" was a close second. And right behind that was, "Could you repeat that, more slowly?"

In Turkish, "Could you please repeat that," is "Luften, tekrarlar misiniz." OK. And "I don't understand" is, "Anlamiyorum." That'll come in handy.

Oh yes, and "Pardon," is "Anlamadim." I wonder if that's the "pardon" of "excuse me," or the "pardon" of "I didn't understand"--or didn't hear. Or maybe I have it all wrong and it's the "pardon" of "I have committed an offense and hope you will not throw me in jail." Yikes!

I'll make some flash cards tonight and read them on the plane and while waiting in line and working this week. And if I am lucky, I'll find someone who wants to practice a few phrases.

And last, but not least... the word for Turkish coffee, "Turk kahvesi" unless it has cardamon, in which case it appears to be 'old fashioned coffee,' and is called mirra (muhr-ra). Yum.

You Are Everything You Love

you are everything you love--
the earth,
the children playing in the fields,
the rain,
the sun,
the river moving
below the thousand shades of green called spring.

you are the snow
sleeping against the soft shoulder
of the mountain,
the thousand flowers
beneath the vast ocean of sky.

without hope
give yourself completely
to every stranger,
without exception
in life,
in death,
in waking from the dream.

the first cry of birth,
the last breath,
the long nights in between
--you are everything you love.

Turning

Jelabies, Çelebis - Sweet

When I lived in Nepal, I studied thangka painting for some time. After class, I'd walk to the bazaar with some of the other thangka painters and we'd have tea and a snack. I usually had plain, black tea and Jelabis (pronounced "che-lay-bees").

Jelabies are small, saffron coloured pastries drizzled from a pastry tube, cooked in ghee and soaked in sugar syrup. Sound sweet? They are!

I rarely ate desserts the years I lived in Nepal, but I will never forget visits to the tea stalls, sharing a plate of Jelabies with my painter friends. Honey bees swarmed the dessert cases and landed in droves. They walked drunkenly on giant mounds of Jelabies, warmed by the late morning sun shining through the glass on the dessert case.

Out in the street in front of the sweet shop, young boys stood and stirred huge vats of milk tea. From time to time they'd fill a glass with tea and pour it in a magical arc from that glass to another, aerating the tea, making it thick and frothy.

Jelabies were my favorite sweet, all those years. Now I am thinking to follow a route created by a man named Çelebis.

...Seems delicious, seems sweet.

Who in the World is Evliya Çelebi?

Til now, I'd never heard of Evliya Çelebi, the son of the imperial goldsmith, Dervis Mehmed Zilli, in Turkey.

According to Wikipedia, Evilya was born in 1611, in Istanbul, as the son of a jeweler of the Ottoman court.

He seems to have been a Sufi. Evilya loved to travel and he loved to write. In 1640, he traveled from Istanbul and logged notes about the architecture, culture and people he encountered in 10 robust volumes called the Seyahatname (Book of Travels).

Separated by almost 400 years, Evilya and I still manage to have a few things in common. He was most likely a Sufi and I am a student of the Vajrayana, a mystical sect of Buddhism. He liked to write--or at least he wrote--and I do, too. He liked to go places, and I can't think of a better way to spend the day than wandering around some remote and dusty corner of the earth.

Of course we are also probably quite different. I am a woman, an American. I was born into the working class, not nobility, and my father was a logger, not a jeweler. I've been on a horse more than once, but I'd hardly call myself a rider.

I've never been to Turkey, but I lived in Nepal for a few years. I wonder if Evliya loved tea as much as I do--if he loved to sleep under the stars and build a fire by a river and listen to the wind as it crosses the hills.

I wonder who he was, really, just like I wonder who I am. Maybe in Turkey, I could meet us both.

The Document

Today I received a document about The Great Anatolian Ride, a long-distance riding project with a cultural mission to identify something the document said would be called The Evliya Çelebi Way. Its purpose, the document said, is to be "an international project of historical re-enactment and cultural re-connection that will establish a Cultural Route through Western Anatolia."

The writer continued:

The Evliya Çelebi Way is primarily an equestrian route designed to generate interest in Turkey’s vanishing horse culture, thereby reconnecting Turkish people today with their heritage. Combining the romance of horseback travel in remote but stunning landscapes with rediscovery of Turkey’s historical past, it must appeal to all who are concerned to preserve Turkey’s heritage through sustainable tourism.

The Evliya Çelebi Way (EÇW) will be realised in 2 phases:
·Phase I: the Evliya Çelebi Ride (EÇR) a long-distance horseback ride along the route for the purpose of navigating it and gaining familiarity with local conditions
·Phase II: the establishment of the EÇW on the basis of the experience gained on the EÇR


The Evliya Çelebi Way: the Concept
The EÇW will be a marked route winding its way through open countryside amidst the burgeoning population centres of western Turkey. It will be an invitation both to local people to escape the town and gain a wider appreciation of the region in which they live, and also to visitors from further afield. It passes through countryside that seems familiar, yet is visited only by the few who choose to venture away from the main thoroughfares. The EÇW offers access to magnificent landscapes of towering mountains, rich agricultural valleys and hillsides, forests, marshes and little-known villages. These are ideal conditions for short or long treks, on horseback or on foot.

The establishment of the EÇW will:
·encourage preservation of the region’s natural and historical landscapes and unique cultural environment
·promote economic prosperity through sustainable tourism
·act as a catalyst for local development projects in the impoverished countryside
·provide an educational and recreational resource for local young people
·promote knowledge about vanishing indigenous horse breeds and equestrian traditions, and raise awareness about the value of their preservation
·foster a sense of history by means of projects to record the stories of the villagers and townsfolk whose lives have depended on horses, and who continue to keep them

Somebody's Big Idea

The idea came over a cup of coffee with a friend.

I had browsed through books in the Turkish coffee shop and seen photos. I liked everything about them. As usual, the pictures of the countryside felt more inviting than the cities, and the mountains were more magnetizing than the sea. The shop owner's charming wife had suggested I plan a trip to Turkey, and I liked the idea. I wasn't sure how I'd come up with the money--but good ideas have a way of funding themselves.

Then on another morning, I talked with the shop owner about his home country and I began to get a feel for it. I'd like to walk, I said. I'd like to be away from the cities. I'd like to spend time with ordinary people, doing ordinary things. I needed a break and I knew it. I felt the tug of a good idea.

The Turkish Coffee Reading

I wandered into Ottoman Klasik for my mid-morning cup of coffee one day in October, 2008, and met Genevieve, a woman slightly older than I, who had come to read someone's fortune in their Turkish coffee grounds.

Luckily for me, her appointment was actually later in the day, so she offered to read mine, instead.

I drank my coffee, turned the cup upside down on the plate and listened while Genevieve explained how she'd learned to divine the future in a demitasse.

I am not someone who really puts much stock in that sort of thing, usually, but it was a pleasant way to pass some time before getting down to more serious work in the day--and any excuse to sit among ceramics, kilims, and Turkish music works for me!

Turning the cup round a few times, Genevieve told me that in 6-8 months I'd have an opportunity to take a trip abroad. She said if I was not ready, to feel free to postpone it a bit. She recommended that I get some Middle Eastern music CDs to prepare myself.

She said I would receive a letter from someone in 6-7 months asking me about horses, and that I should by all means reply. She said they would be seeking my advice and that I could help them in some way.

She also said I'd have a chance to have turtle soup, served by a young woman with dark hair. And that I should try it. I winced. I love turtles--but in soup?

She said it was possible that I would also travel to India in September or so, or at least that I should plan to do that, if possible, and that it was alright to ask for a favor while I was there. I do go to India every few years in the fall, so this did not seem like such a long shot.

And among a few other odds and ends, she told me that someone would offer me a puppy, but that I should be crystal clear that I would take it only for a short duration. I made a notes and we parted. I have a dog. One is enough.

How Much Do I Love Tea?

I have traveled Asia, loving tea. I would go a thousand miles to find the next good cup and the next good friends to share it with.

Currently, India is one of my favorite cups--Darjeeling tea, especially. One of my favorite places to have tea is the Windamere Hotel, in West Bengal.

This, from my journal last time I was there:

It was a long morning rummaging for books in the bazaar and I have had it with Indian tailors. Dragging myself up the paved drive to the Windamere, I mumble impatiently to the chowkidhar and drop into a painted chair on the patio. It's not hot, but I'm sweating.

Then, silently, swiftly and with a kind of elegance that I will never achieve, a tall, white-coated Indian man brings a tray with silver tea service. Without a sound, he lowers a porcelain cup and saucer to the table. The cup is painted with violets and trimmed in gold.

He does not ask, "Would you like tea, Memsahib?" He just knows. Like God, he reads my mind or maybe I look even worse than I feel.

He knows, and he's right--tea is the Great Repairer All Things Broken. He pours exactly one cup (not too little, not too full) of FTGFOP First Flush Pussimbing. The tea falls in a musical arc and is pale against the white of the china. He spills not a drop on the saucer.

He adds scalded cream. It makes a tiny vortex into which every bad thing that ever happened, or ever could, is drowned. He looks me in the eye, but only briefly, and asks from beneath a magnificent black mustache, "Sugar, Madame?" I say, "Yes." But he knows. By the time I have replied, he has deftly lifted a single glittering cube from the bowl and it falls, making the smallest display on the surface of the tea. He stirs with a delicate, monogrammed spoon, which coincidentally, I suppose, bears my initial.

He places a napkin nearby and disappears, gliding--not walking--away. I am in love.

I am in love with India, and with tea and with all the dark, somber men who hover and please. I am in love with the crumbled empire of the raj, tattered now, and with the breeze that wafts up from the valley below. I am in love with the courtyard of paved stones and the columns that hold up the breezeway that protects us from late monsoon storms.

I am in love with leisure and with taking time. I am in love with the arrogant young men who type bad manuscripts here--but I prefer the dusty old cranks whom I recognize by the brands of their fountain pens and the brims of their hats. I am in love with unheated rooms with bad English beds and oriental rugs worn thin before I was born. I am in love with the pale Hemidactylus Garnoti, tiny geckos that cling to the walls.

I am in love with lunch, which is two full meals. The first is Indian--well polished silver dishes with polite mounds of steamed Basmati rice and small followings of curried whatever is fresh. Then there is English food, which I do not love, for those whose stomachs cannot fathom one more chili.

I am in love with the spry Tibetan woman who owns this place. She is 94 and was the sprightly and politically unpopular bride of a British tradesman who knew the love of his life when he saw her.

She comes to each meal, properly attired in dresses and hats and gloves and heels, modestly bejewelled and always surrounded by friends. She uses a cane. She is graceful, but firm.

The wind up phonograph plays the same music it played in 1920, I feel sure. The records are handled with gloves. We should dance. Maybe later we will.

After lunch, I think I will never be able to eat again-- I am so full--and everyone at the table agrees: We are done for this life. We leave for walks and our various adventures. Some people nap.

But mid-afternoon, high tea calls and we come. We gather in the drawing rooms and a small, dark man brings a coal bucket and lights a fire. Two smiling women (they are Nepalese, not Indian) in maids' uniforms bring trays of sandwiches and sweets. The tea is self-serve, laid out on the mahogany buffet. The furniture is worn and rickety and the room is slightly cold till the conversation gets going.
We talk, each trying to outdo the other with our stories. A couple is biking from one day north, winding down through teak forests to the awful destination of Silliguri. The gentleman had a flat today and was delayed.

A pale young beauty in a lavender silk skirt and peach coloured stockings is leaving on the toy train tomorrow. Two young men inquire where they might get tickets. The elder here slump back on faded settees with the comfortable demeanor of age. They talk of books, and plays and pensions. They argue over marmalade brands. They have been here before.

Conversation dies out as the coal fire dies down and we all amble off to our rooms. The girl in the lavender skirt has offered to show a photographer something in her suitcase. He's accepted.

I gather my satchel and shawl and the book passed along by an Italian fellow who says he's from Denmark. We stop at the hat rack to get his pack and agree to meet for tea in the morning.

I love India. I say prayers for the small, dark hands that gather the tea at Pussimbing. I get my flashlight and saunter down the valley behind Observatory Hill, where I will sit till the sun sets. Small fires will line the paths back up, and connecting the dots, I'll return.

Established in the 19th century as a cozy boarding house for bachelor English and Scottish tea planters, the Windamere on Observatory Hill in Darjeeling was converted into a hotel just before the Second World War.

Rumi and Madhamudra

From the Rumi entry on Wikipedia:

What can I do, Submitters to God?
I do not know myself.
I am neither Christian nor Jew,
neither Zoroastrian nor Muslim,
I am not from east or west,
not from land or sea,
not from the shafts of nature
nor from the spheres of the firmament,
not of the earth, not of water,
not of air, not of fire.

I am not from the highest heaven,
not from this world,
not from existence,
not from being.

I am not from India,
not from China,
not from Bulgar,
not from Saqsin,
not from the realm of the two Iraqs,
not from the land of Khurasan

I am not from the world,
not from beyond,
not from heaven and not from hell.

I am not from Adam, not from Eve,
not from paradise
and not from Ridwan.

My place is placeless,
my trace is traceless,
no body, no soul,
I am from the soul of souls.

I have chased out duality,
lived the two worlds as one.
One I seek, one I know,
one I see, one I call.

He is the first,
he is the last,
he is the outer,
he is the inner.
Beyond "He" and "He is"
I know no other.

I am drunk from the cup of love,
the two worlds have escaped me.
I have no concern but carouse and rapture.
If one day in my life I spend a moment without you
from that hour and that time I would repent my life.

If one day I am given a moment in solitude with you
I will trample the two worlds underfoot and dance forever.
O Sun of Tabriz I am so tipsy
here in this world,
I have no tale to tell but tipsiness and rapture.


From "Aspirations for Mahamudra," translated by Ken McLeod, on his website, Unfettered Mind:

All experience is the manifestation of mind.
As for mind, there is no mind;
mind's nature is empty.
Empty and unceasing, mind arises as experience.
By looking into mind deeply,
may I be clear about how it is.

Perceptions, which never existed in themselves,
are mistaken for objects;
Awareness itself, because of ignorance, is mistaken for a self; Through the power of dualistic fixation
I wander in the realm of existence.
May ignorance and confusion be completely resolved.

It doesn't exist: even buddhas do not see it.
It doesn't not exist: it is the basis of samsara and nirvana.
No contradiction: the middle way is union.
May I know the pure being of mind, free of extremes.

If one says "it is this," nothing has been posited.
If one says "it is not this," nothing has been denied. Unconditioned pure being transcends intellect.
May I gain conviction in the ultimate outlook.

Not knowing it, I circle in the ocean of existence,
Knowing it, buddha isn't anywhere else.
"It is everything", "It isn't anything": none of this.
Pure being, the basis of everything, may I see any misunderstanding here.

Since perception is mind and emptiness is mind,
Since knowing is mind and delusion is mind,
Since arising is mind and cessation is mind,
May all assumptions about mind be eliminated.

Unpolluted by meditation with intellectual effort
Undisturbed by the winds of everyday affairs,
Not manipulating, knowing how to let what is true be itself,
May I become skilled in the practice of mind and maintain it.

The waves of subtle and coarse thoughts return to their source. Undisturbed, the river of mind flows naturally.
Free from the contaminations of dullness and torpor,
May I establish the still ocean of shamatha.

When one looks again and again at the mind which cannot be looked at,
And sees vividly for what it is the meaning of not seeing,
Doubts about the meaning of "is" and "isn't" are resolved.
Without confusion, may my own face know itself.

Look at objects and there is no object: one sees mind;
Look at mind and there is no mind: it is empty of nature;
Look at both of these and dualistic clinging subsides on its own. May I know sheer clarity, the way mind is.

Free from mental constructions, it is called mahamudra.
Free from extremes, it is called madhyamika.
Because everything is complete here, it is also called maha ati. May I gain the confidence that, in understanding one,
I know them all.