Night covers
Everything
With wet leaves
Sunday, November 30, 2025
co-creators of world, co-destroyers of world
It is that time of year when we wonder who we are, where we’ve come from, and where we might be going.
In the Christian metaphor, it is Advent preceding some mysterious birth. In the Buddhist metaphor it is Buddha’s Enlightenment preceding some kind of radical liberation. In the metaphor of what we call ‘my personal life’ it is the exploration of who and what I am in the surround of being, non-being, fullness and emptiness.
After reading from PHILO: FOUNDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS PHILOSOPHY IN JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM (2 VOLUMES), by Wolfson, Harry Austryn. Published by Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1948 -- I turn to Nishida Kitaro and the Kyoto School of Philosophy.
People are people
I am I
Unperturbed,
I take the path
I take
(Waka written in 1934, quoted by Michiko Yusa in Zen & Philosophy – An Intellectual Biography of Nishida Kitaro, p 257)
It is not that “I am empty,” but rather, that “emptiness is I” (Masao Abe, Zen and Western Thought, 13)
To be religious is to live from the standpoint of emptiness
Nishida goes to great lengths to describe the process whereby ultimate reality, i.e., nothingness, what he also calls the “formless world,” is also dynamic, and self-expresses as the world of forms – the phenomenal/historical world – through the conscious self of each individual, which is a field of nothingness (basho), at once “creating” the world in the present moment, and allowing individuals to become true selves and true individuals. More precisely, the conscious individual selves at all times reflect the world and, as it were, re-process it to match their concrete experience, in a two-way movement which turns individuals collectively into co-creators of the world, not out of any autonomous power, but as conduits for the self-expression of ultimate reality.
https://thekyotoschoolofphilosophy.wordpress.com/emptiness-is-i/
There’s a thought -- “conscious individual selves...as conduits for the self-expression of ultimate reality.”
And even if we are unaware of that-with-which we are co-creating the world, we are taken with the seemingly impossible fact that we might, indeed, be co-creating this world.
On the other hand, unluckily, if we do not think about it, it won’t matter to us how and however the world comes to be and continues to come to be with or without our conscious participation.
For example, a haiku/koan:
why does trump
fully pardon
drug smugglers
violent criminals
and the fraudulent
Sometimes the answer to difficult koans are staring us right in the face.
nothing to say
Was I asked if I wanted life?
Were you?
Cat got yer tongue?
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin'
Is just a hard way to go
Liturgical season of Advent comes up.
I’m still wondering whether the wandering tedium of our telling life stories is how we mismanage the deeper unspeakable story that ever our perennial “hold on, hold on, he’s gonna be born” folktale exudes each final month of year.
Who wouldn’t want to look at the old rodeo poster and then look at back door through hallway waiting for a particular non-judging savior to take you away?
There’s a tedium to tropes.
A familiar narrative unnecessary to believe in anymore, only the necessary retelling and curtaining up the stage where costumes and props tinsil the mythic cavelike invitatory intuitions of origin and omega of this going off in the morning, coming home in the evening, with nothing to say.
What angel scares the hell out of some young girl with the notion that she wouldn’t just be washing dishes the remainder of her days?
Have a look out window to green bird feeder where red cardinal and clunky bluejay arrive and depart their morning seeds.
Whatever it was meant to be the angel from mount sinai told the old climber about why he was there and what to do tomorrow — something broke off the stoney page and fell into a deep narrow crevice where consciousness cannot retrieve it.
And this now old woman scuttling aisles of grocery cannot remember what is lost behind curtain call and removal of stage makeup.
Every year, the playwright hands out creased and coffee-stained script with modest revisions that soggy memories faintly recall with fading clarity, reciting lines and moving downstage as someone rehearses “behold, I bring you…” for the two thousand and twenty fifth time with impeachable tonality and confused characterization.
We’re all old women. And we’re all old men, another child that's grown old.
We’re waiting for that cave beneath our consciousness to undarken.
Were wondering about this nothing to say.
Saturday, November 29, 2025
sauerkrautsuppe, vorfreude
There is no future. We have to create it.
There is no past. We have forgotten it.
It is a characteristic tendency of human beings
to indulge in emotions such as happiness,
grief, or anger in response to present conditions,
failing to balance these feelings
with the awareness that
present conditions are results of past causes.
It is illogical to face the present
only as an object of enjoyment
or tolerance, neglecting to use
it as the opportunity to create the future.
--Muso Kokushi (1275-1351)
At Friday Evening Conversation many talked about their thanksgiving, its rituals, its dishes.
I couldn’t find my voice.
It was as though I was suspended in the air following stepping off the day before and realizing there was no ground of tomorrow.
Only the assertion that today is today.
The rare opportunity to remain silent except to recommend Ensō’s mistress’s Kraut Soup which I’ve not tasted in a while.
Except for the promise that, in due time, I will.
with all, little due respect
These are dark days
Snow is coming
The turning earth
Doesn’t give a hoot
Whether trump lives
or dies — it merely
Turns — Mars varies
Between 34 million to
250 million miles away
From our deathbed vigil
For a disgraceful man —
You’ve got to admire
His pluck and morbid vim
While watching booster
Slither back to base
Demeaning departure
Gone justice gone dignity
Friday, November 28, 2025
one’s inherent nature
It occurs that all technology is modeled on the insights and observations of the human mind.
We have cameras because we have eyes, opthalmic nerves, and synapses in the brain.
The world as we know it, meaning the mechanical and exterior manifestation in concrete manipulable technicity, has its origin in the imaginative configuring of the mental processes taking place in the interior, the human cognition and creative impulse acted upon by something prior and more powerful than our abilities.
Conduits.
Instruments.
Co-creators.
I understand some would say that even such explanation is far too far down the path from the more innate creativity presaging humanity wherein the very essence of “creator” hovers over and within what we are calling “human” enacting upon the external world what is an internal impulse to originate.
“If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him”
― Linji
Looking to the exterior to explain the exterior is an act of circular rationalization.
The inner is the outer.
The impulse to translate “Om mane padme hum” as “Behold what is within without” (or, behold what is without within) is nascent investigation of the unicity of being (or, valiantly, the univocity of being given expression in a seeming diversity of appearances.
The sacred and the ordinary are not two.
If you love the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still bobbing in the sea of delusion.”
― Línjì Yìxuán (d.866AD)
There are phrases that express the intuition:
"As above, so below."
It may be noted that the original Arabic of the verse in the Emerald Tablet itself does not mention that what is above and what is below are "as" or "like" each other, but rather that they are "from" each other:
English translation of the Arabic:[24] That which is above is from that which is below, and that which is below is from that which is above. (wikipedia)
The question occurs: 1) What is within me? 2) What is within us?
The evidence suggests: 1) That which is without me. 2) That which is without us.
Are we what-is revealed in the world?
Are we goodness and grace? (Yes!)
Are we malevolence and disgrace? (Yes!)
A core theme in Linji’s teaching is the transcendence of dualistic thinking. He taught that distinctions such as right and wrong, delusion and enlightenment are themselves obstacles to the realization of the true nature of mind. Linji’s teachings urged students to let go of all conceptualizations, pointing to the “empty mind” or the mind free from attachments as the path to realizing one’s inherent Buddha Nature.
https://the-summa.notion.site/Linji-School-100e1fead75e80fe8d45fa084310d7f0
What is the true nature of mind?
Six AM, an MRI for mistress of the good dog Ensō. Then, Buttermilk Pancake with blueberry sauce overlooking Camden Harbor afterward. Across table -- eggs, sausage, potatoes toast. There was coffee and tea. Nice place. Nice people.
What used to cost $12.99 now costs $42.00 +.
But that’s just me.
I suppose I’ll continue to wrestle with the words found sixty years ago in Thomas à Kempis (d.1471): "A wise man once said `As often as I have been among men, I have returned home a lesser man.”
(Seneca, Epist.VII) https://www.worldinvisible.com/library/akempis/imitation/chapter%2020.htm
I still don’t completely grasp this pericope. But it stays with me.
If I were to recompose his and Seneca’s thought, I might say: “As often as I think I am outside of where I am, I discover that, within which, I have never stepped out of -- except by deluded thinking.”
It’s an inside job seen outside. If there is any looking to be done, look there!
doing nothing wrong
If God is good, loving, and true
It stands to reason why it is
We are not God
Who is good
Who is loving
Who is true?
Don’t fret
Don’t feel bad. . .
You’ve
done
nothing
wrong
Thursday, November 27, 2025
ηλίθιοι
Young woman dies from gunshot.
An awful fact.
Trump administration blames all immigrants.
In the sorrow of her death I’m ashamed of the idiots who exploit their phobic ideology of hate against people from away.
ηλίθιοι, οι ηλίθιοι αφθονούν
Idiots abound.
sie brechen ihr fasten
The quiet
Birds fly
To and from
Green feeder
Hanging mid-air
Frühstück im Flugzeug
(Breakfast on the fly)
juste judex córdium
The heart is a just judge.
Earlier
Gone now
1. Nox atra rerum cóntegit
1. Dark night covers.
Terræ colóres ómnium:
The colors of all things on earth;
Nos confiténtes póscimus
We pray to you, confessing our sins,
Te, juste judex córdium.
O just Judge of hearts.
2. Ut áuferas piácula,
2. That you take away our sins,
Sordésque mentis ábluas:
Wash our mind from uncleanness,
Donésque, Christe, grátiam,
And, for your grace, O Christ,
Ut arceántur crímina.
That all our sins be routed.
3. Mens ecce torpet ímpia,
3. Behold our soul lies motionless
Quam culpa mordet nóxia:
In its wickedness and the grip of guilty sin holds it fast.
Obscúra gestit tóllere,
Yet its desire is to put away the works of darkness
Et te, Redémptor, quǽrere.
And to seek You, its Redeemer.
4. Repélle tu calíginem
4. Strongly repel the darkness
Intrínsecus quam máxime,
Which is in us;
Ut in beáto gáudeat
That the blest may rejoice
Se collocári lúmine.
To be set in the light.
5. Præsta, Pater piíssime,
5. Most loving Father, hear our prayer,
Patríque compar Unice,
And you, O Christ co-equal Son,
Cum Spíritu Paráclito
Who with the Spirit Paraclete
Regnans per omne sǽculum.
Rule all the ages as they run.
Amen.
Amen.
1. Nox atra rerum cóntegit
Wednesday, November 26, 2025
an infidel’s antidote
I was looking for the line at end of Archibald MacLeish’s play “J.B.” when I came upon this article from secular humanism.org.
The conclusion of which:
My Sin! Teach me my sin!
My wickedness!
Surely iniquity that suffers
Judgment like mine cannot be secret.
Mine is no childish fault,
no nastiness
Concealed behind a bathroom door.
. . . Mine is flagrant,
Worthy of death, of many deaths,
Of shame, loss, hurt, indignities
Such as these! Such as these!
Eventually, in response to anguished
entreaty, God deigns to address J.B. à la
the Book of Job. The Almighty brow-
beats the supplicant with a scroll of
divine feats: “Canst thou bind the sweet
influences of the Pleiades? Canst thou
thunder with a voice like God? Hast thou
commanded the morning? Hast thou
given the horse strength?” And so on.
Overwhelmed by the force majeure,
J.B. bows his head, wrings his hands,
and whispers: “I abhor myself—and
repent.” Sufficiently prostrate, he re-
coups health, wealth, and wife.
The wife’s reappearance precipitates
a startling denouement. In the final
scene, Sarah induces her husband to
abjure faith in a benevolent Providence.
Divine justice, she tells him, is a figment
of the obtuse mind. It doesn’t exist:
You wanted justice, didn’t you?
There isn’t any. There’s the world . . .
Cry for justice and the stars
Will stare until your eyes sting. Weep,
Enormous winds will thrash the
water.
Cry in sleep for your lost children,
Snow will fall . . .
You wanted justice and there was
none—
Only love.
On human love alone, J.B. must
henceforth pin his hopes:
Blow on the coal of the heart.
The candles in churches are out.
The lights have gone out in the sky.
Sadder but wiser, J.B. concludes that
God doesn’t minister to human needs:
“He does not love. He Is.” In the Broad-
way version of the play, J.B. adds:
I will not
Duck my head again to thunder—
That bullwhip cracking at my ears!—
although
He kills me with it.
In a play within the play, MacLeish
skewers the Old Testament deity. From
a lofty platform, two circus vendors qua
ham actors, Zuss and Nickles, assume
the roles of God and Satan. As they
watch the turbulent life of J.B. unfold,
they comment on events and their own
characters. Nickles-Satan limns the
Almighty as a swaggering ogre who bul-
lies a spineless victim:
God comes whirling in the wind reply-
ing—
What? That God knows more than he
does.
That God’s more powerful than he!—
Throwing the whole creation at him!
Throwing the glory and the Power!
What’s the Power to a broken man
Trampled beneath it like a toad
already?
What’s the glory to a skin that stinks!
And this ham actor [J.B.]!—what
does he do?
“Thank you!” “I’m a worm!” “Take
two!”
Plays the way a sheep would play it—
Pious, contemptible, goddamn sheep
Without the spun goddamn sheep
Without the spunk to spit on
Christmas!
Zuss lamely defends the Almighty.
God torments J.B. because misery
begets piety:
It’s from the ash heap God is seen
Always! Always from the ashes.
Every saint and martyr knew that.
Only a fool or a deity, Nickles retorts,
would proffer such a vacuous premise:
And so he suffers to see God:
Sees God because he suffers.
Beautiful!
. . . A human face would shame the
mouth that said that!
Were J.B. schooled in logic, adds
Nickles, he would have understood long
ago that the Almighty, if indeed omnipo-
tent, isn’t benevolent:
I heard upon his dry dung heap
That man cry out who cannot sleep:
“If God is God He is not good,
If God is good He is not God.”
A staunch humanist and de facto
atheist, Archibald MacLeish scorned the
concept of an inscrutable Almighty. Like
William Blake, he deemed votaries of
Yahweh (Blake’s “Nobodaddy”) devil wor-
shipers. For MacLeish, “God” was the
manifestation of the human capacity for
empathy and altruism. Human love, he
remarked, creates God. While as natur-
al creatures we were bound to suffer,
the suffering needn’t be bootless. “Our
labor always,” he wrote, “is to learn
through suffering to love.”
(--from "The Book of Job and J.B.: Faith and Reason", by Gary Sloan, June-July 2006
https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2006/06/22160324/p49.pdf
Sloan began the article with:
Archibald MacLeish’s play J.B.,
which won the Pulitzer Prize for
drama in 1958, offers an infidel’s
antidote to the relentless fideism of its
biblical counterpart.
I’m not much of an infidel.
I have too many questions not to have faith in something beyond my comprehension.
I am, however, interested in antidotes to poisonous beliefs that cripple intelligence and send true believers down treacherous inclines on dangerous slopes attacking their version of nonbelievers.
That line I was looking for? It was Sarah speaking to J.B., saying to him:
You wanted justice and there was
none—
Only love.
I always pause whenever I hear the words ‘justice’ and ‘love.'
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)