truth be told

 It doesn’t matter

If we like or dislike

What matters is

If what we like or dislike

Is able and free to go on

As what it is in itself

Free of our likes

Or dislikes

know no fear, know no grief

It is from the first millennium BCE.  

6. Those who see all creatures in themselves

And themselves in all creatures know no fear.

 

7. Those who see all creatures in themselves

And themselves in all creatures know no grief.

How can the multiplicity of life

Delude the one who sees its unity? 

 

(--from Isha Upanishad, Translation by Eknath Easwaran )

We’ve had a very long time to consider these issues and ponder the question asked.

How are we doing? 

you, all

I have

    loved

You all

    My life

fullness

Been thinking about corruption.

How things fall apart.

How, at core of things, there is care. But so hard to access.

What am I missing? 

 All this is full. All that is full. From fullness, fullness comes.

When fullness is taken from fullness, Fullness still remains.

OM Shanti Shanti Shanti 

 

(– Opening invocation to the Isha Upanishad)

 Watched Heather Cox Richardson and found her refreshing. Knowledge, intellect, insight. Might as well have accurate understanding rather than rabid emotion.

These people, while obnoxious and fear-mongering, cannot sustain their foundation-less footing.

Can they?

he christened this new being protean man

 Robert J. Lifton died.

Dr. Lifton suggested that a new kind of person was emerging, with new tools for adaptation, a product of the breakdown of traditional institutions and the threat of human extinction. He christened this new being Protean Man, named for Proteus, the Greek god who constantly changed forms.      (--NYT obituary)

It is time to change form.

As form is emptiness, emptiness form. 

나는 곧 죽을 것 같은데 내 마음도 모르겠어 *

*(naneun god jug-eul geos gat-eunde nae ma-eumdo moleugess-eo) (I asked for “soon dead” and “don’t know mind” and it gave me Korean that says "I'm going to die soon and I don't even know my heart"

I might be ignorant, but I’m aiming to not know. 

Ignorance is not exactly not knowing.

Ignorance is actually that we know something really,

Really well,

But it's the wrong thing.

To not know means I don't use my knowing to kill this moment.

I don't clobber the moment with all my knowing,

All of my expertise,

--Frank Ostaseski, in Learning to Live Fully, Tricycle 

Seung Sahn’s “soon dead” and “don’t know mind” are two teachings from my 1970s initial encounter with the Korean Zen Master that stay with me.

And even if there is no “me” -- what remains of the functioning “I” will swirl around those teachings like a gyroscope tipping this way and that atop a table in an empty room on a Saturday afternoon.

if no one shows up, is there no one there

 Zen master used 

to say “Soon dead”

He was right

“soon” is dead

At its obsequies

no one came

all slowly, thereafter

belatedly gone

none no one

 I

Has

No poetry

Has

I

and be done with it

Write 

me

A small

Poem

but only a minute

“Cherish those that seek the truth but beware of those that find it.”

-- Voltaire

Watched some of the hearing with the Secretary of Human Services, Robert Kennedy Jr.

Something is very wrong.

If someone told me to upend truth, I would ask Mr. Kennedy to do that job.

I’m sure time will correct the imbalance he exemplifies.

I prefer to think that the abnormality personified by Mr Trump and his surrounding henchmen is only a temporary sickness that will come to its end with time and increasingly astute scrutiny.

We are not as stupid as they prefer us to be. They cannot defeat time and decency.

They have found their truth of burying the truth and that makes them sickeningly certain of their dominance and inevitable victory.

But they are deluded.

They cannot endure.

Compare Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) brilliant essay, 

“About Truth and lie in the extra-moral sense.” (June 1873, about 151 years ago). “In some  remote corner of the universe, which was poured out flickering in innumerable solar systems,  there was once a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. It was the most haughty and mendacious minute of "world history": but only a minute. After a few breaths of nature, the star froze, and the clever animals had to die.” (--in Martin Heidegger as Interrogator: The Final Paradigm, by Daniel Fidel Ferrer) 

These people lack interior insight, that which is not manipulable nor grandiose. Interior insight is the ability to look within and see that which has no exterior manipulative usefulness, only what is true in itself, that which creates and nurtures the ding an sich, that which is in itself Itself.

They grasp for what is easy. 

Τὶ εὔκολον; Τὸ ἄλλῳ ὑποτίθεσθαι.

Tì eúkolon? Tò állōi hupotíthesthai.

"What is easy? To advise another." — Thales 

They cannot comprehend that what is difficult is to allow oneself to be educated by αυτοφωτισμός (aftofotismós) (self-illumination), to be advised by τι είναι αλήθεια από μόνο του (ti eínai alítheia apó móno tou ) (what is true in itself.) It has nothing to do with the manipulation of another.

These charletons.

They are too clever.

They are noise and smoke.

Do not be fooled! 

freeing one from attachment and clinging

Chapter 6: Tolerance without Resentment

The Buddha said, “When a malicious person hears about

goodness and intentionally comes to provoke trouble, you should

restrain yourself; do not be angry or reprimand him. Evil deeds

will fall back upon the evil-doer.” 

                       -- The Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters

Going about my business, listening to The Phenomenology of Spirit by Georg Wilhelm Hegel, I hear the words "In the void, nothing is known."

And I am intrigued.

Does it suggest that that in the void "nothing" is known? Or the opposite? That not-knowing is the essence of the void?

That not-knowing is most intimate?

Dizang asked Fayan, "Where are you going?"

Fayan said, "Around on pilgrimage."

Dizang said, "What is the purpose of pilgrimage?"

Fayan said, "I don't know."

Dizang said, "Not knowing is most intimate."                             

 -- Zoketsu Norman Fischer

 https://everydayzen.org/teachings/not-knowing-is-most-intimate/ 

Weary of the blah, blah, blah of the cultural/political instigations and posturing of the majority of DC provocateurs, I content myself with denser diversion and intellectually intriguing possibilities in philosophy and spirituality. I prefer my own unintelligible investigation.

I find this paper:

Law entails its own inversion, Hegel tells us: the law of electricity necessitates its positivity and negativity together as one; the law of against murder entails the constituting the crime, the punishment, and the absence of murder as a positively existing condition, all together in one totality (Hegel 2018: 96).10 Hegel makes a very simple remark about this situation, one which we’ve already touched on. The beyond is the simple turning-away of immediate objective existence from itself. To say that the laws of the world are beyond the immediately sensible world says nothing else than that this immediate world possesses negativity within itself. Immediate objects automatically exclude us from them; further, they (the objects) posit a beyond that mediates the differentiation of themselves. The world immanently excludes itself from itself, positing a beyond of itself from within itself. Thus, this supersensible realm that I must by necessity presuppose is not negatively nothing. It is the positive nothing that belongs to the objective world as such; it is what Hegel calls the “void:” 

 

in the void, nothing is known… because it is defined as the very other-worldly beyond of consciousness… Suppose we are nonetheless to take there to be something in the void after all; this is a void which came about as the void of objective things but which now must be taken both as emptiness in itself, or as the void of all spiritual relations, or even as the void of the differences of consciousness as consciousness – and if the void is taken as this complete void, which is also called the holy, nonetheless there is supposed to be something with which to fill it out, even if it is only filled out with daydreams, or with appearances which consciousness itself creates. If so, then consciousness would just have to rest content with being so badly treated, for it would deserve no better, while daydreams themselves are still better than its emptiness (Hegel 2018: 87). 11

The other-worldly-beyond of the understanding is just the negation of this understanding within the world. This amounts to everything we have already proposed: the understanding demands its own negation, its own exclusion. But, furthermore, it is the void of consciousness as positively determined in the structure of the objective world. The understanding is slowly approaching its act of self-exclusion, in terms of the self- exclusion of the world. The holy is the daydreaming of the understanding; the real existence of illusion in the world, the truth of which is the frozen night of the world, constitutive of consciousness as such. That emptiness which the understanding wants to fill its own errors with is the nullity of the world to itself. The understanding had to posit the supersensible world of law as the determining principle of its own experience, but the consequence is that the differentiation of objects in the world is the world differentiating itself and thereby explicitly determining the possibility of error, the partiality of objects according to their property-being or their thing-being.

(-- from Hegel's Understanding: Absence, Accident, Alienated  by Virgil Lualhati McCorgray, University of Georgia, United States, in International Journal of Zizek Studies, Volume 15 Number 3)

Aristotle begins his Metaphysics with this:

"ALL men by nature desire to know. An indication of this is the delight we take in our senses; for even apart from their usefulness they are loved for themselves; and above all others the sense of sight. For not only with a view to action, but even when we are not going to do anything, we prefer seeing (one might say) to everything else. The reason is that this, most of all the senses, makes us know and brings to light many differences between things." 

https://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/metaphysics.1.i.html

And the question arises for me, is the desire to know a reluctance to not-know? If not-knowing is most intimate, is there a built-in avoidance of intimacy in our desire to know? Is the second noble truth -- “that suffering is caused by craving (or tanha), which includes desire, attachment, and aversion to sensory pleasures, existence, and non-existence" (AI) a clarification of a way of being that might be more advantageous to our human experience -- namely, to live without craving or desire is (paradoxically) a more radically desirous way of being for us?

Is desire itself different from desiring something? Is ignorance itself different from not knowing something?

A student I am working with is studying Śūnyatā. 

In Buddhism, śūnyatā (Sanskrit for "emptiness") is the concept that all phenomena, including the self, lack inherent, independent existence and are instead interdependent and constantly changing. It doesn't mean "nothingness," but rather that things are empty of fixed, isolated reality, existing only in relation to causes and conditions. Understanding śūnyatā is a profound insight that leads to the cessation of suffering by freeing one from attachment and clinging. (AI)

As the world changes, I change. As I change -- does the world change?

Is attempting to know “other” -- is the desire to possess, manipulate, or occupy “the other” -- a formula for detached being, alienation, aloofness, and coldness?

Is intimacy authentic suffering? Is the icon of the Bodhisattva of compassion, the one who hears the cries of the world, an example of authentic suffering different from the artificial suffering of our personal desires?

Is desirelessness an entranceway to the type of suffering pointed to in the Christ story, in the Bodhisattva ideal wherein communion and community -- a mystical body incorporating and incarnating our nascent wholeness -- is a reality where nothing is known?

Where nothing is known . . . (with all the ambiguity and seeming contradictoriness involved) . . . is everything loved?  

Is this why Buddha, Lao Tzu, and Jesus are so difficult to comprehend and even more difficult to follow?

Is this why true and profound intimacy is such a strange notion to the ordinary way we view the world?

vida con gracia

My doctrine is to think the thought that is unthinkable, to practice the deed that is non-doing, to speak the speech that is inexpressible, and to be trained in the discipline that is beyond discipline.

Those who understand this are near; those who are confused are far. The Way is beyond words and expressions, is bound by nothing earthly. Lose sight of it an inch, or miss it for a moment, and we are away from it.

-- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters, in dailyzen

 Brew coffee

Forget news

Try something else

Not sleeze and riches

Listen to Zen Physics

The Science of Death, 

the Logic of Reincarnation

c.2012 David Darling

Sidestep the crude 

Let first family accrue billions

It’s beyond you, let them grift

they are so good at it

no, for us, the hoi polloi, 

life is not luxurious, not 

full of coverup and payoff

but, rather, coffee and donuts

and sitting in chapel-zendo 

walking vespers, lighting 

incense, two candles, turning

hourglass, watching 

hola !

life 

with 

grace 

aliens and hoaxes

Sex trafficking

Is ok with Donald Trump 

Maybe he will re-think

This awfulness

Maybe rivers will turn

And run backwards

étonnamment

the point of prayer

is silence

stillness

where nothing

happens (astoundingly)

until the heart bows

with reverence at

the simplicity of it

fausseté

 no one likes a liar

(that’s a lie)

we love liars

they’re so unreliable

you never know 

what they’ll say

which end run 

around truth

we’re learning a lot

about lying

how truth is cheap

bought and sold 

by creeps who 

don’t care, don’t dare

face veracity

their scarcity

their empty soul

equally empty eyes

their disguise

tries to mask their death 

never having learned

truth tellers cannot die

wait for it

 Maybe Texas National Guard

Will fight Illinois Guard

In the streets

Trump will declare

Martial Law and that

Will be that

The rest of us

Will buy groceries

And wait it out

The end of democracy,

Voting, and whatever

It was we once knew

saved by reluctance

 thought about buying a car

found out it costs money

in dooryard, my old pickup

needing inspection and work

we know one another

thinking about fixing it

like any relationship

the cost of continuance

la insouciante

 One day

I wrote

Nothing

Forgive 

me my

Insouciance

knowing (not) being

 I have nothing

To say

To you

But you

Want something 

Else

You

(Know)

It

but was absolutely unscrupulous

 Woke up thinking of Alcibiades.

Alcibiades (born c. 450 BCE, Athens [Greece]—died 404, Phrygia [now in Turkey]) was a brilliant but unscrupulous Athenian politician and militarycommander who provoked the sharp political antagonisms at Athens that were the main causes of Athens’ defeat by Sparta in the Peloponnesian War(431–404 BCE).

… 

In 412 Alcibiades helped stir up revolt among Athenian allies in Ionia, on the west coast of Asia Minor, but Sparta now turned against him, and he moved to Sardis to exercise his charm on the Persian governor. When some Athenian officers in the fleet began to plan an oligarchic coup, he held out hopes that if the democracy was overthrown he could secure financial support from Persia. In this he failed and, discarded by the oligarchs who had seized power, he was recalled by the Athenian fleet, which remained loyal to the democracy and needed his abilities. From 411 to 408 he helped Athens to a spectacular recovery, defeating the Spartan fleet in the Hellespont at Abydos (411) and Cyzicus (410) and regaining control over the vital grain route from the Black Sea. These successes encouraged him to return in 407 to Athens, where he was welcomed with enthusiasm and given supreme control of the conduct of the war. In a typically bold gesture he led the procession to the Eleusinian festival by road in spite of the danger from the Spartan force at Decelea, but, in the same year, after a minor naval defeat in his absence, his political enemies persuaded the people to reject him, and he retired to a castle in Thrace. He remained, however, a disturbing influence on Athenian politics and destroyed any hopes of a political consensus. When the Athenians at Aegospotami (405) facing the Spartans in the Hellespont grew increasingly careless, he warned them of their danger. But he was ignored, and, when the Athenians lost their whole fleet in a surprise attack by the Spartan admiral Lysander, Alcibiades was no longer safe in his Thracian castle. He took refuge in Phrygia in northwestern Asia Minor with the Persian governor, who was induced by the Spartans to have him murdered. 

 

Perhaps the most gifted Athenian of his generation, Alcibiades possessed great charm and brilliant political and military abilities but was absolutely unscrupulous. His advice, whether to Athens or Sparta, oligarchs or democrats, was dictated by selfish motives, and the Athenians could never trust him enough to take advantage of his talents. Moreover, the radical leader Cleon and his successors carried on a bitter feud with him, which at the critical period undermined Athenian confidence. Alcibiades could not practice his master’s virtues, and his example of undisciplined and restless ambition strengthened the charge brought against Socrates in 399 of corrupting the youth of Athens.

—Britannica https://www.britannica.com/biography/Alcibiades-Athenian-politician-and-genera

 History has had its share of figures whose allegiances and ambition rifled the course of nations, states, and persons’ lives.

There’s a troubling example of that in the United States these days.

Ah, history, we hardly know ya!

the point of cruelty is cruelty

Too many surds

I can’t know

What the irrational

Mean means

but you have to leap.

 Robert Reich shared this poem:

Leap Before You Look 

-- by W. H. Auden (1940)  

 

The sense of danger must not disappear: 

The way is certainly both short and steep, 

However gradual it looks from here; 

Look if you like, but you will have to leap. 

Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep 

And break the by-laws any fool can keep; 

It is not the convention but the fear 

That has a tendency to disappear. 

The worried efforts of the busy heap, 

The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer 

Produce a few smart wisecracks every year; 

Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap. 

The clothes that are considered right to wear 

Will not be either sensible or cheap, 

So long as we consent to live like sheep 

And never mention those who disappear. 

Much can be said for social savoir-faire, 

But to rejoice when no one else is there 

Is even harder than it is to weep; 

No one is watching, but you have to leap. 

A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep 

Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear: 

Although I love you, you will have to leap; 

Our dream of safety has to disappear.

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/two-poems-that-feel-apt 

via haecceitas

 I am not god

I am good with this

This is enough

in, field, practice

 Well, that’s that. No wearing white after Labor Day

Listen to Keith Olbermann on Tommy John surgery

Read about Bobby Shantz soon to be 100, he lives

Where I lived in Pennsylvania

The quiet of it! September first on sunporch with cats

The quiet of it, bees purpling morning moist

Of course we are poor passing facts

Remaining nameless, dog barking on mountain 

remembering a ritual, 31 august

 

with obscure curiosity

Amidst a thousand clouds and ten thousand streams 

There lives one ex-scholar,

By day wandering these green mountains

At night coming home to sleep beneath a cliff

Suddenly spring and fall have already passed by

And no dust has piled up to disturb this stillness

Such happiness, what do I depend on?

Here it’s as tranquil as autumn river water.

Han Shan (~ 730) in dailyzen

august 31 is new year’s eve

tomorrow, September, begins anew 

drawing down summer, arising autumn

recalling when I stepped into classrooms

that first day of classes, the newness

now an old man, reading Philo, Hegel, 

Maseo Abe, Thomas á Kempis, Sunday

New York Times, Philosophy Now, 

The New Yorker --- just to keel, keep hand in

on off-chance someone asks for lecture

I could tell them something un-understandable

asking them to ponder incomprehensible things

like someone beyond Being wandering trail

up and around mountain, on roads, in dooryard --

my mind has gone on walkabout, listens to

unfamiliar, sees without understanding

takes joy in absence of felicity, content

with obscure curiosity, the passing breeze