passing without haste or regret toward what will be

Wendell Berry, I was informed by elder Doris, died yesterday. (1934-1926) 

So much to like about him.

 The Wish to Be Generous

All that I serve will die, all my delights,

the flesh kindled from my flesh, garden and field,

the silent lilies standing in the woods,

the woods, the hill, the whole earth, all

will burn in man's evil, or dwindle

in its own age. Let the world bring on me

the sleep of darkness without stars, so I may know

my little light taken from me into the seed

of the beginning and the end, so I may bow

to mystery, and take my stand on the earth

like a tree in a field, passing without haste

or regret toward what will be, my life

a patient willing descent into the grass.

Poem: "The Wish to Be Generous," by Wendell Berry, from Collected Poems (North Point Press). 

wenn jeder neue tag anbricht

 My daily confusion of mind has me sitting with Ensō dog looking over at Bald Mountain this new year's day the first of September. It all changes today. 

The syncretic mystery we call variably Nature, or God, or Being, or Existence pauses as August gives way to September. Monks chant Tierce in France. Cool breeze comes up driveway. Not only is there nowhere to go there's no one to imagine going anywhere.

In the realm of True Purity, there is no such thing as “I” or “He” or “She,” nor can “friend” or “foe” be found there. 

 

But the slightest confusion of mind brings innumerable differences and complications. Peace and disorder in the world, the distinction between friend and foe in human relationships, follow upon one another as illusion begets delusion. 

 

A person of spiritual insight will immediately recognize what is wrong and before long rid themselves of such an illusion.

--Muso Kokushi (1275-1351) (dailyzen) 

 

Portrait of Muso Kokushi (1275-1351)

He taught Zen to a great number of disciples (the estimated number is over 10 thousand^[1]), also leaving an enormous body of poetry and other writings.^[12] One of his best known anthologies of zen teachings is Dream Conversations (夢中問答集, Muchū Mondō-shū). Among his students are Gidō Shūshin and Zekkai Chūshin, literary figures who had a central role in the development of the Japanese Literature of the Five Mountains.^[1]

Even though none survives in its original form, Soseki's Zen gardens have proven to be one of his most lasting contributions to the country's culture and image. To Soseki, designing new gardens and altering existing ones was an integral part of the practice of Zen.^[13]

Soseki died in 1351 at the age of 77. Because he was given, both before and after death, seven different honorific names (like Musō Kokushi (夢窓国師), Shōkaku Kokushi (正覚国師), and Shinshū Kokushi (心宗国師) calling him a national teacher by as many Emperors, he is known as "the Teacher to Seven Emperors" (七朝帝師,  Nanachō Teishi).^{[1] wikipedia}

 Dogen zenji was right, life is one continuous mistake. So it is my life has been. Here, as it diminishes, mistake after mistake continues undeterred.

Ideologues with their ideologies, cruelty with its cruelties, obsession with its malignant obsessiveness -- the news of absurd human activities in never-ending trickle goes on and on.

Here in this unimportant dooryard this cloudy morning the sound of cars and trucks along barnestown road, each containing someone important doing something important, pass by out of sight up and down hill.

Birthday love for my son. A rose for his mother. The season changes.

Crow calls out from upper branches.

Sun breaks through. We live with our histories, our mistakes, our changes.

Then this song:

 I Don't Want To Talk About It (from One Night Only! Rod Stewart Live at Royal Albert Hall) 

 

I can tell by your eyes

That you've probably been crying forever

And the stars in the sky don't mean nothing

To you, they're a mirror

I don't wanna talk about it

How you broke my heart

If I stay here just a little bit longer

If I stay here, won't you listen to my heart?

Oh, my heart

If I stand all alone

Will the shadows hide the colors of my heart?

Blue for the tears, black for the night's fears

The stars in the sky don't mean nothing to you

They're just a mirror

I don't wanna talk about it

How you broke my heart

If I stay here just a little bit longer

If I stay here, won't you listen to my heart?

Oh, my heart

...   ...   ...

So gebt das Leben

So kommt jeden neuen Tag. 

So entfaltet sich das Leben

wenn jeder neue Tag anbricht.

with appreciation and gratitude

 

once born

the giving birth

sustains

the last star broken by storm

Where we’ve come from is nowhere near anything else.

Now here near nothing else.

Something has existed

Before heaven and earth;

Shapeless and silent

In its origin,

Yet the master of

Every image and form,

Can never wither

With the passing of time.

--Bankei (1622-1693)  

 

Bankei is perhaps most famous for his teaching of the Unborn (Japanese: fushō 不生). The Unborn (also fushō fumetsu 不生不滅, "unborn and undying," or "no creation and no annihilation"^[9]) derives from the Sanskrit term, anutpāda (no-birth, no-arising, not-born, non-produced, no-origin).^{[web 1][web 2]} The Indian tradition sees the term anutpāda as an aspect of the ultimate truth, emptiness; since emptiness does not arise or cease, it is not born and never dies.^[10][11] The term is also used in the Lankavatara Sutra, where it is equated with emptiness.^[12] According to D.T. Suzuki, anutpāda is not the opposite of utpāda (arising) but transcends opposites. It is the seeing into the true nature of existence,^[13] the seeing that "all objects are without self-substance."^[14] The phrase fushō fumetsu不生不滅 (unborn undying) also appears in the Heart Sūtra.^{[note 1]}

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankei_Y%C5%8Dtaku

Why all the feelings of loneliness experienced in the world? 

Is it we think we are someplace else, away from some imagined place we are convinced we ought to be?

What if there is only love?

What if every place was our true home? Every person our true family? Every experience our true reality?

Richard Hugo’s poem “Villager” is one of my favorites. When you get to the final stanza, take note:

Villager

 

 

What's wrong will always be wrong.  I've seen him lean

against the house hours and glare at the sea.  His eyes say

no boat will come.  His harsh throated seemingly

good natured mother bends her back to the soil

and there at least all grows well.  When I speak with him

his eyes move away to the sea and I imagine

the red in his face from drink is also from

some ancient tribal shame. To him I'm wealthy.

When we talk I know how wealthy I am.

 

The police have him on file: petty theft.

I'm certain he steals to make up for the nothing he finds

every day in the sea, and to find money for drink.

Some days a woman picks him up, a sister I'm told,

takes him away and hours later delivers him back

passed out.  Next morning again he's propped against

the house, the tide out in his eyes.  I imagine

his sister, if that's who she is, knows oblivion

is what he must have often to survive.

 

I have much to tell him.  And nothing.  I'd start

with the sea.  I'd say, there was another sea something

like this long ago, and another me.  By the time

I got to the point he'd be looking away and be right.

No two hurts are the same, and most have compensations

too lovely to leave.  At night, a photo glows alive

inside him when his mother's asleep and the cops

aren't watching. It lights up in the dark

whenever he looks hard and by dawn has burned out.

 

I almost forget: he'd do anything for you.  Love him

for what you might have become

and love him for what you are, not that far

from him.  We are never that far.  Love

everyone you can.  The list gets longer and shorter.

We're seldom better than weather.  We're nearly as good

as a woman we met in passing once at Invergarry.

Don't be sorry, for him or for self.  Love the last star

broken by storm. And love you.  You hold it together.

 

Holding it together is the ensemble performance of non-separation. “We are never that far.”

This morning I came across The Dish from 2013 where Andrew Sullivan included this poem:

Thought Problem 

by Vijay Seshadri 

 

How strange would it be if you met yourself on the street?

How strange if you liked yourself,

took yourself in your arms, married your own self,

propagated by techniques known only to you,

and then populated the world? Replicas of you are everywhere.

Some are Arabs. Some are Jews. Some live in yurts. It is

an abomination, but better that your

sweet and scrupulously neat self

emerges at many points on the earth to watch the horned moon rise

than all those dolts out there,

turning into pillars of salt wherever we look.

If we have to have people, let them be you,

spritzing your geraniums, driving yourself to the haberdashery,

killing your supper with a blowgun.

Yes, only in the forest do you feel at peace,

up in the branches and down in the terrific gorges,

but you’ve seen through everything else.

You’ve fled in terror across the frozen lake,

you’ve found yourself in the sand, the palace,

the prison, the dockside stews;

and, long ago, on this same planet, you came home

to an empty house, poured a Scotch-and-soda,

and sat in a recliner in the unlit rumpus room,

puzzled at what became of you.

(From 3 Sections © by Vijay Seshadri)

I am left with the inquiry, its own poem, a worthy koan:

What-is

Becoming

of me 

munchy crunch and baby roo

 boy born on 31st

has grown up well --

let’s celebrate that!

you must travel the path alone

Reading The Bible With and Without Jesus, How Jews and Christians Read the Same Stories Differently • by Amy-Jill Levine & Marc Zvi Brettler, 2020. 

It does seem that the world is begun and sustained by stories. That which is told about somethings is often that which is believed. For better or worse.

And if the narrators-in-chief wield enough power and exercise the greatest threat of punishment for disbelief, that narrative has staying power.

Follow the opportunity to seek out perception,

But you must travel the path alone.

If you have not found illumination,

Go where you may achieve completion.

    --Ch’en Hsien (1634- 1654)

Chen Xian [Ch’en Hsien] 陳賢

(1613?-1672?)

“Guanyin” 1661

觀音

Hanging scroll, ink and color on paper

112.3 x 40.8 cm. (44 1/4 x 16 1/8 in.)

 

A single figure of the Bodhisattva Guanyin sits on a strongly patterned rug, with shoes in front, sutras placed to one side, and holding a fly-whisk. The image is distinctly feminine, as is usual for the later periods of Buddhism, and much attention was given to the creation of a lovely and attractive image. The painting is signed in the lower right, Chen Xian, with one seal reading Songqi, “Pine River,” while the colophon by the artist is signed Songqi, Jian, perhaps an alternate name meaning “durable” rather than “virtuous.” 

 

Maybe that’s why zen stories seem so cryptic and off-center, challenging the reader to dare make sense of them. 

Cultures and societies, institutions and smaller units of identity-making organizations, write mission statements, offer rationales, histories, identity narratives, proclamations, and “abouts” on Facebook, LinkedIn, Blogs, Instagram, and ’take your clothes off and act sexy’ apps.

Everyone says ‘believe my telling.’

Governments add ‘or else.’ As did dominant institutions like nations and churches and corporations.

Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, hears the cries of the world. Often it is the cries of those whose stories do not add up, who suffer the telling of other’s stories decimating their lives.

Maybe that's why I prefer metaphors. They're shorter. They suggest and infer. They don't try to overpower or control.

The one simple thing about metaphor is that it moves

us from one place to another, the word itself of restless

parts, from buried Greek meta meaning “over, across,

behind” and phoreo – “to bring, bear, carry.”

--Marianne Boruch

These days I seem to sit alone and watch the tone of branches moving on the mountain. 

You could say they're going nowhere but where they are with grace. But neither am I. And I ain't got much grace.

If you're going to tell me stories, be brief, and add question marks at end of each paragraph.

Is God is an incomplete haiku unconcerned about how many syllables remain?

holy hush of ancient sacrifice

Mostly, if I had to admit it, I’d rather not know.

A living nescience seems refreshing. But an attentive living nescience. Not one of those ignorant boorish types of dullardry wherein stupidity masquerades as premium sophistry and pronounces itself the wisest most accomplished being ever conceived by woman. Our current instance of such proclamation is insufferably obvious and lives between Lake America and the Gulf of America 

“I think it's much more interesting to live not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong. I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degreeshttps://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prolixity of uncertainty about different things, but I am not absolutely sure of anything and there are many things I don't know anything about, such as whether it means anything to ask why we're here. I don't have to know an answer. I don't feel frightened not knowing things, by being lost in a mysterious universe without any purpose, which is the way it really is as far as I can tell.”

― Richard P. Feynman

 People want to know if I am well. 

I don’t know. I can’t tell. And good intentions pave all the way to hell.

Although I am surprised whenever one additional breath follows another.

My new motto is “One nap at a time.”

There, at least, preludes of unknown travels speed by without coherence or prolixity.

Hence, a modest aphasia and dizzying circumlocution sweeps the path with straw broom leading to latch of hermitry gate.

resolved

 Sometimes a lot of things hurt.

When so, then so, let them.

tat tvam asi and bohm’s ‘implicate'

Peer Gynt Suite, No. 2, Op. 55 Part 1. The Abduction of the Bride, Ingrid’s Lament, plays. 

A good background to the prattle of pundits trying to find new ways to tell us about the most absurd man ever to hold public office and his idiotic actions and rantings intended to foist his will and wealth into greater magnitude.

Gynt’s Arabian Dance prances across air waves. Earlier I watched documentary about the reintroduction of Przewalski's horses into China's Jungar Basin and Gobi Desert which, remarkably, helped revive dead soil, return native vegetation, and slow desertification.

“What is the ground of everything?” asks the Upanishads. 

“Brahman!”

Brahman, in the Upanishads (Indian sacred writings), the supreme existence or absolute reality. The etymology of the word, which is derived from Sanskrit, is uncertain. Though a variety of views are expressed in the Upanishads, they concur in the definition of brahman as eternal, conscious, irreducible, infinite, omnipresent, and the spiritual core of the universe of finiteness and change. Marked differences in interpretation of brahman characterize the various schools of Vedanta, the system of Hindu philosophy based on the writings of the Upanishads.  (https://www.britannica.com/topic/brahman-Hindu-concept)

“The individual is where the whole becomes local,” says the documentary on David Bohm and the Upanishads, about the "implicate order.” 

The notion of implicate and explicate orders emphasizes the primacy of structure and process over individual objects. The latter are seen as mere approximations of an underlying process. In this approach, quantum particles and other objects are understood to have only a limited degree of stability and autonomy.^[3]

Bohm believed that the weirdness of the behavior of quantum particles is caused by unobserved forces, maintaining that space and time might actually be derived from an even deeper level of objective reality. In the words of F. David Peat, Bohm considered that what we take for reality are "surface phenomena, explicate forms that have temporarily unfolded out of an underlying implicate order." That is, the implicate order is the ground from which reality emerges.^{[4] wikipedia}

It seems hard to understand. We are not part of it. We are it.

I reread the Chandogya Upanishad

The Chandogya Upanishad is one of the oldest and most important Upanishads, belonging to the Sama Veda. It explores profound spiritual ideas through stories, dialogues, and philosophical teachings. A central theme is the concept of “Tat Tvam Asi” (“That Thou Art”), expressing the oneness of the individual soul (Atman) with the universal soul (Brahman). The text emphasizes the power of meditation, sound, and knowledge, especially the sacred syllable Om. It includes lessons on ethics, self-discipline, and the pursuit of ultimate reality beyond material existence. Through symbolic narratives, it guides seekers toward liberation and inner realization.       https://vedantastudents.com/chandogya-upanishad/

The whole cannot be analyzed. Only dwelt-as.

God cannot be understood.

Rest in the unknowing incomprehension of the unknowable.

There, right there.

Here, only here.