snippets

1.

We’ve not known in this country someone like our chief executive. 

Now we do.

In Maine there’s this saying, “Hard telling, not knowing.”

2.

When Christ finally realized there was no one to save him, he stood before Pilate, a bloody representation of this truth.

Then he was killed.

When we realize this truth, we say, “Nah, not me."

We’re not killed, maybe, but something more intriguing. We glean what Christian means. And walk away.

3.

If eternal means only now, no time, then now is only what God is, only what life is. 

desultory

 Some call

These wanderings

Spontaneous

Others 

That it is

Being lost

Unfocused

Disconnected 

Without enthusiasm 

Rain

slowly arriving 

dawn 

come no further

 It’s not prayer

But I pray

The way break

Lights follow car

Always ready

To swell stop

before rain

 Last night

Final pee

Yellow-green eyes

Just beyond

Enclosure fence

Woman put Apple peals

I wave

Dog unphased

Late night snack

where monks go to meditate

 Mice graveyard

Behind hall boxes

Charnel smells

popinjay

 Reading about Irish crime family 

Doing billion dollar cocaine business

Money laundering, ocassional hits

Sometimes prison, the danger and

Glamor of it all

I realize I’m way out of my depth

Criticizing the first family of crime

In the U.S., as though nobody knew

Of their shenanigans, their popinjay

Struts, smiles, sneers, brazenness

New Yorker article (when do I ever

Open the magazine?) reads like a

Netflix movie causing me to 

Remember what an old shit I am

Poking my nose into someone’s

Corrupt but powerful, maybe necessary

Business this time of the world. That’s

Why we watch the telly, to be entertained

By cruel crime and corruption— best to

Leave the real criminality to itself

I look around at books by my chair — 

Philo the Jew, Changing Light at

Sandover, Latin American Poetry, 

The Journal of Religion — out of date

Sunday New York Times — Ilia Delio —

It has always been this way, nobodies

Like me wander about the edges of 

Culture curious about things they’ll never

Comprehend, and the real players, smug

And untouchable, sitting at center, parrots

4 am

Late do I finish night prayer.

Late do I have any idea what I am doing. 

1. Te lucis ante términum,

   1. Before the ending of the day,

Rerum Creátor póscimus,

   creator of the world, we pray

Ut solíta cleméntia

   that with thy wonted favor thou

Sis præsul ad custódiam.

   wouldst be our guard and keeper now

…   ….  …

Salve, Regína, mater misericórdiæ:

   Hail holy Queen, Mother of mercy,

Vita, dulcédo, et spes nostra, salve.

   our life, our sweetness, and our hope.

Ad te clamámus, éxsules, fílii Hevæ.

   To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve.

Ad te suspirámus, geméntes et flentes in hac lacrimárum valle.

   To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping In this valley of     tears.

Eia ergo, Advocáta nostra, 

   Turn then, most gracious Advocate,

illos tuos misericórdes óculos ad nos convérte.

   thine eyes of mercy toward us.

Et Jesum, benedíctum fructum ventris tui,

   And after this our exile show unto us

nobis post hoc exsílium osténde.

   the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

O clemens! O pia! O dulcis Virgo María!

   O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary. 

….  …   …

Upon reflection, there’s no place else I’d rather be, nothing else I’d rather be doing.

Hic et nunc!

Hic et nunc!

bedtime

 It’s just pain

It’s not like it’s something important 

It’s just pain

ah ee i owe you

 Fewer words

Tell more

night office

 Earth doesn't tire

Turns, spins revolves, floats — tell me

What are you, doing

We are this cosmos

Dangling emptiness watching 

Itself — sees nothing

This look through night chant

Monastic choir rising

Falling into God

and a one and a two and a three

 Feels like each breath is

Practicing to be final

One —a rehearsal 

ecoutez bien

Perhaps it is listening itself. 

The body does not know how to discourse or to listen to a discourse. This which is unmistakably perceivable right where you are, absolutely identifiable, yet without form, this is what listens to the discourse.

—Rinzai (d.867) dailyzen

Drop the”I” drop the “you”, try not to think about it. 

Can you hear it?

(Me neither.What now?)

I don’t know.

Where do I go from here?

I don’t know.

(pause, pause...)

...   ...   ...

Or this:

“The body,” Rinzai (d. 876) tells us, “does not know how to discourse or to listen to a discourse ... This which is unmistakably perceivable right where you are, absolutely identifiable yet without form - this is what listens to the discourse.” Here the Chinese master, along with Kabir and the rest, is echoing the Surangama Sutra (a pre-Zen Indian scripture) which teaches that it’s absurd to suppose that we see with our eyes, or hear with our ears: it’s because these have melted together, and vanished into the absolute Emptiness of our “original bright and charming Face,” that experience of any sort is possible.”

― Douglas E. Harding, On Having No Head: Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious

prelapsarian

 This place

So much the way it is

No reactivity,

No wanting something other

hodie si vocem dei audiveritis, nolite obdurare corda vestra

God, I’m told, is here.

I am here, I’m told. You’d think

These tellings matter

dharma study

 Sound of icy road

Gusty wind through bare branches —

Purring cat on chest

refuge

 Deer dooryard forage

Little one limps behind mom

Sound of gun, distance

just noting

 Body pain

Snowy night

Cold outside

Thank you

Veterans 

a gap, missing part, or void in something, such as a manuscript, logical argument, or a physical space

We are living under the rule 

of a man who doesn't care.

It’s unusual to be so damaged, 

We suffer his lacunae.

referential unveiling of everything, all at once, simultaneously coming to be

 Eyes must be open to see coming to definition shapes of civil dawn occurring outside window.

Revelation of what is there seems like creation out of nothing dark and unshapen.

There but not yet apparent.

We’ve called it creation, from nothing.

Appearance requires the availability of someone to perceive it.

Nothing is unpercieved. 

Something is when what is there is seen by someone there to see it.

Readiness is all.

What’s right is each instant revealing itself in vicinity of an awareness available to allow and acknowledge what is coming to be sustained by necessary attention willing to take in and allow to be the thing itself as it is.

Way I see it, wrong has no way of sustaining itself. No one is actually there to sustain what is not there for any length of time absent the vivifying nurturance of actual care. 

What is wrong has no nurture in nature to thrive beyond false positive.

So, we stay close to what is right, wait for it to rub sleep from eyes, stretch our limbs, and walk out into light. 

Take heart! What’s right and what’s true will prevail — only with creative presence revealing itself to itself.

If you will. If we will. If I will.

Freely assent to it all.

Dwell with wisdom and love surrounded by what is here.

Coming to be with it as parent, as apparent participipant in whole process of revelation.

We are creating the cosmos, the universe, the coming-to-be of what-is, always and only here, and, now.

Can you see, 

what I am,

 referring to

As

Who I am

Coming to be 

With 

Care

betcha tomorrow never comes

 Comes midnight

All bets are off

Tomorrow dies

Into today

from where (the cosmos) to where

 In prison today

Bonaventure’s center

everywhere periphery

nowhere —  quantum

God, nirvana, aesthetic

thislife not afterlife

double speak

 Listening to radio play 1984

Like reading New York Times 

Front page

every now is not then

 Mindfulness is reincarnation

To dwell in present moment is to not be dead

Here and now is the only thing that is

feel better as a human being

In a conversation On Time, Mystery, and Kinship, An Interview with Jane Hirshfield  in Convergence magazine, October 24, 2024, Hirshfield says:

 JHIt’s only like four lines. So I probably have it by heart, but I’m going to find it in the book that I have, because then I won’t be nervous about getting a word wrong. What I was perplexed by was, how can anyone who has children or grandchildren or imagines the future, how can anyone not behave—2004, remember?—as if global warming is established fact, and as if we might need to do something to prevent its getting worse? And so I’ll read you the poem and then I’ll say why this introduction led to this poem.

Global Warming 

 

When his ship first came to Australia,

Cook wrote, the natives

continued fishing, without looking up.

Unable, it seemed, to fear what was too large to be comprehended.

Now that’s a true story, and I found it in the historian Robert Hughes book about Australia. But why this poem led to this title and this framing—why that story led to this—is it helped me find compassion for the climate deniers. And I want to find compassion. I do not want to be angry, and I do not want to be totally bewildered, which is how I was feeling, and say, How can anyone—said the indignant, leaping little Jane inside of me, How, how, how?And when I found this story, I understood how: “unable to fear what was too large to be comprehended.” And, you know, right or wrong, I’m sure there were some people who understood just fine and decided to be short-term greedy over long-term concerned. But I feel better as a human being if I can find compassion. —Ibid

 . . .

There are many things too large to be comprehended. 

I go about my fishing.

. . .

I also read Stephen Batchelor’s After Buddhism, Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age (2015).

He is interested in translating suffering as reactivity.

Non-reactivity is the experience of nirvana -- not reacting, but responding.

The transpersonal unity that is God, this is an arrival, he says, worth our interest.

He writes:

Consider how Gotama understands the Indian metaphor of rivers losing their identity when they pour into the ocean. The Muaka Upanishad says: “As the flowing rivers disappear into the sea, losing their name and form, thus a wise man, freed from name-form, goes to the Divine One.”[54] Here the aim of human life is to lose one’s identity as a person differentiated by name-form and merge into the transpersonal unity of God. For Gotama, however, the ocean becomes a metaphor for his dharma and the community of those who practice it. “Just as the great rivers on reaching the ocean lose their former names and identities, so also those of the four castes—nobles, brahmins, merchants, and workers—having gone forth from home to homelessness in the dharma and discipline, abandon their former names and identities and are just called ‘wanderers, followers of the Sakiyan Son.’”[55] Instead of losing oneself in mystic union with the Absolute, one loses one’s class identity in order to practice the dharma as a free, self-creating person.

        --Stephen Batchelor, Ibid, 7. Experience, (7) 

. . .

My dharma room is quiet. 

Everyone is here. 

Practice continues. 

There is a fishing pole leaning behind door.

There’s no bait and no hook at end of line.

redecorating

 When absurdity reveals its face 

take down all mirrors 

look away do something else

No image means 

no issue to face

We are free when

Invisible

Say good

Bye

that’s amore

Moon rises over bald mountain

One is across the road

The other 238,856 miles away —

So it seems, so it seems

ice out

 early winter

hits this land

icy hatred and cruelty

cover the streets

only a sane mind

and warm heart

can reverse 

this frigid time --

cosmic algorithm

longs for caring defrost

waits for

it

είμαστε εύθραυστοι,

of course we’re fragile

anything can hurt us

but its the sharp bad ideas

that cut the deepest

like “we don’t want you here”

like “poor people are disgusting”

stop it!

heal the sickness of ideology

heal the ugliness of self-referential

narcissism and grandiosity, you

are now patient number one in

this current moral plague

get treatment, go for healing

don’t throw up on the rest of us

we have our own lies to negotiate

our own deceptions to navigate

we don’t need yours, not a bit --

let’s assume you’re simply hurting

someone in pain, innerly distraught 

deep-rooted conflict, emotional nausea

we can commit to helping you heal

we don’t have to scream and curse you

we’ve not exhausted sympathy, empathy

we’re not cruel, unfeeling, you’re one of us

do you see this? can you understand this?

you are not alone until you are alone --

and if you are alone, we are all alone

an abyss of unconnected dissolution

so, stop it, stop the ugly screenplay

written for you by the worse self within

throw it out, face a new blank page

stare at it, don’t make a mark, wait ...

it will come to you, the healing diacritical

mark, the word that begins anew what longs

to connect to next word, gathering phrase

sustaining sentence full of copulatives and

parallel lines, verses of interspecific gather

a realization of something you are not yet --

we are fragile

don’t let the fear of it run you into psychosis

yes, you will live on further until you die

but you won’t die detached from everything

the way you seem to be right now

thinking you are the only one, the best, the king --

you’re not, you’re one of us, be that, before it's

too late, for you, for us, forgone and forlorn

wound and round we go

 round up the jews

round up the latinos

round up führer’s enemies

round up president’s critics

germany wound up ugly

america grounds up decency

and we the people? our wound

is too deep to feel, but mortal

hitler was ugly in belief and act

trump is ugly with ice and lies

fury and furor follow indignity

round and round we go

and where it’ll stop

we know, we know

dos-à-dos

Two cats

Roam house

Where mice

Show and go

if i didn’t care

When tired, 

sleep.

Zen wisdom

Rainy night

do we really all lie, most of the time

 into House

long live 

curmudgeons --

much to see

oddly

get up, go ahead, do something, move

Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation today:

Elias Chacour is a Palestinian Arab-Israeli and a former archbishop of the Melkite Greek Catholic church in Palestine. At one point in his ministry, Chacour went against the orders of local authorities to build a secondary school to educate the youth in his community in Galilee. He drew on his understanding of the Beatitudes to strengthen him in overcoming many challenges to its completion:   Knowing Aramaic, the language of Jesus, has greatly enriched my understanding of Jesus’ teaching. Because the Bible as we know it is a translation of a translation, we sometimes get a wrong impression. For example, we are accustomed to hearing the Beatitudes expressed passively:  Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they shall be satisfied.  Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.  Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.  Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God.  “Blessed” is the translation of the word makarioi, used in the Greek New Testament. However, when I look further back to Jesus’ Aramaic, I find that the original word was ashray, from the verb yashar. Ashray does not have this passive quality to it at all. Instead, it means “to set yourself on the right way for the right goal; to turn around, repent; to become straight or righteous.”   How could I go to a persecuted young man in a Palestinian refugee camp, for instance, and say, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted,” or “Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of justice, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven”? That man would revile me, saying neither I nor my God understood his plight, and he would be right.  When I understand Jesus’ words in Aramaic, I translate like this:      Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you who are hungry and thirsty for justice, for you shall be satisfied.  Get up, go ahead, do something, move, you peacemakers, for you shall be called children of God.  To me this reflects Jesus’ words and teachings much more accurately. I can hear him saying, “Get your hands dirty to build a human society for human beings; otherwise, others will torture and murder the poor, the voiceless, and the powerless.”  Christianity is not passive but active, energetic, alive, going beyond despair….  “Get up, go ahead, do something, move,” Jesus said to his disciples.   Ultimately, the secondary school was completed and allowed to stand, despite the lack of official permits for water and electricity. https://cac.org/daily-meditations/set-yourself-on-the-right-way/

Prison was closed to volunteers today. 

I admit to loving cancellations. 

As well as the notion of going beyond despair.

from here to deeper here

 I watch moonlight

On empty road

Very slowly

Pale distance

Lumbering gait

One car

Passes through

This meditation

Vigiling 

Sacred transition

From here to

Deeper here

an unasked koan

Not sure it’s understood what is meant by the word hermitage. It’s where a hermit lives. It’s not really a meditation center. It’s not really much of anything anymore, if it ever was.

So it’s nice when exiting the barn there is a car in the dooryard and a man standing next to it. He was wondering about the “Dogen” center and if people came on retreat here. “No,” I said, "we don’t do much public stuff anymore." An Israeli, he tells me about his children, his interest in Buddhism, and I point him to the chapel/zendo.

The last few days we’ve run into three or four old-timers from meetingbrook, whether at marine harbor, small grocery store, large grocery store. It feels like a school reunion, to which I never go.

The hermitage has gone inside itself.

I love that there are places groups gather to meditate. Our conversations seem to be our only public practice -- on zoom three times a week, in prison twice a week, and soul-friend conversations whenever they happen. Although, the other resident at the hermitage carries the frequency of such encounters.

I have gone remarkably idiorrhythmic. 

It’s not really an advance in practice. More like a meandering haphazard awareness that everyplace is meditation hall, every person is sangha practitioner, each bit of news is dharma talk, whatever arises is koan study.

Bald Mountain across the way grows dark. A tilting fade of blue sky above it with darker clouds scattered. The clock-change sobers everything.

Perhaps one thing a hermit does is live the alone.

The alone, or the Alone, is a curious mystery. Hard to tell whether it is a general meshugana, or some form of undiagnosed idiopathy that arises and remains. Or, giving a positive spin, there is a beckoning into legitimate contemplative homeopathy burrowing below an asymptomatic absorption into the unknown.

The world is a monastery, this residence is a hermitage, my life is a mendicancy dependent on what falls into the begging bowl of my grateful soul.

           circumnavigating an unasked koan

 

My words are leaves

falling through bare branches

on a path never swept clear 

I let them settle where they fall

my life has no direction

at all 

both a concern

and (surprisingly, happily)

a joy 

(wfh, nunc) 

sorge

 “Being in the world is essentially care.” (Martin Heidegger)

If so, those who act in uncaring ways are, essentially, not in the world.

One can only wonder where they are?

If not here, where?

With so many in the current Washington DC administration, we look at their attitudes and actions are reasonably conclude they’re not from around here.

They live a little distance from themselves.

And very far from the rest of us.

je suis au milieu des transparences

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=87&issue=6&page=1 (ff)

I find Les Transparents, 

by Rene Char.

Then it occurs to me:

Nothing is hidden from us

We are the ones invisible

Dwelling as

Not willing to be seen

We think: ‘I’d love to see God’

But, alors, God is not to be seen —

God is “affable and quick of tongue”

And we are morose 

and slow to hear

Transparencies, that’s what we are

Reluctant to be morning

Sunlight glinting off passing cars

nothing follows now

 I will

sleep

now

and then --

there will be

nothing

left 

unsaid --

nothing

after elections, something in the air tonight

 something was lighter

in the air today

like breaking surface

gasping for air --

the relief that barrier

can be broached

no hand holding down head

fresh breath suddenly drawn

it is about time

 Thinking of Peter Maurin (1877-1949), his curiously written essays, friendship with Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker.

Blowing the Dynamite 

 

Writing about the Catholic Church,

a radical writer says:

“Rome will have to do more

than to play a waiting game;

she will have to use

some of the dynamite

inherent in her message.”

To blow the dynamite

of a message

is the only way

to make the message dynamic.

If the Catholic Church

is not today

the dominant social dynamic force,

it is because Catholic scholars

have failed to blow the dynamite

of the Church.

Catholic scholars

have taken the dynamite

of the Church,

have wrapped it up

in nice phraseology,

placed it in an hermetic container

and sat on the lid.

It is about time

to blow the lid off

so the Catholic Church

may again become

the dominant social dynamic force.

https://www.easyessays.org/

The Catholic Church, like the US Government, is a potential force for good, if the personnel within each are able to transcend their personal and moral flaws.

As does, the above sentence, apply to me.

(Damn, non-duality!)