is there

Love 

All 

There is

All

Love

Is there

it is not the time you think it is

 It calculates as twenty one years ago.

But eternal now means it is just happening in what we call the present.

Good night, dear sister, rest peacefully.

simply stumbling around

 2. Subtleties of Daily Life

One day Shih-t’ou said, “I’ve come to visit you. What have you been doing?” 

The Layman said, “If you’re asking what I do every day, there’s nothing to say about it.”
 

Shih-t’ou said, “What did you think you were doing before I asked you about it?”
 

The Layman made up a verse:

What I do every day

 Is nothing special:

I simply stumble around.

 What I do is not thought out, 

Where I go is unplanned.

 No matter who tries to leave their mark,

The hills and dales are not impressed.

 Collecting firewood and carrying water 


Are prayers that reach the gods.

 Shih-t'ou approved, saying, “So, are you going to wear black or white? * 

The Layman said, ''I will do whatever is best.”  

It came to pass that he never shaved his head to join the sangha.
...   ...   ... 
 

* Black robes were worn by monks, and white robes were worn by laypeople.  

(--from, The Sayings of Layman Pang, tr. by James Green)

all is possible

The old monk wrote poetry.

Can the Creator of all lure poetry out of a stone?

Or cause a stirring of Divine Love in a human heart?

All is possible for the Creator of all,

Who loves to manifest the impossible

In endless configurations. 

(—Thomas Keating, “Out of a Stone”)

And the rest of we elderly monastics think about reheating coffee and toasting English muffin spreading organic peanut butter and cherry preserves from France.

The non-dual heart/mind abandons the dueling heartless mind to it’s necessary demise and it’s disintegration/reintegration into selfsame oneness.

walking mountain, tending gravesite

 

nihilism and the american religion

 Perhaps we've been looking at the current American administration and the Corona Virus pandemic from too narrow a perspective.

It might need a philosophical analysis to register the import of the man and the virus.  

The reason why Nishitani, in his middle period, likened emptiness to the all- transcending empty sky is because he sought to understand emptiness in relation to the problem of how to overcome nihilism. Nihilism is not prior to religion. Rather it is an event in history that comes after the age of religion – one which, moreover, denies any possibility of gaining salvation through religion. It nullifies all the various philosophical endeavors (of which religion is the supreme example) that humans have engaged in to overcome the nihility confronting them. Nihilism was born from the midst of religion, and has the same sublime loftiness as religion. At the same time, it can be likened to a new virus that burst forth into the world, bearing the power to invalidate all previous religions and incapable of being cured by any religion. It is characterized by a complete negativity and self-enclosure (heisasei 閉 鎖性) that no human-centered religion preaching the quest for inner meaning can resolve. There is no way to deal with nihilism from the outside. 

(--in Nishitani’s Philosophy of Emptinessin “Emptiness and Immediacy” by Hase Shōtō)

The nihilism that has erupted from the highest office of American government cannot be overcome from the outside.

And those on the inside are, it seems, too smitten with the boons of ill-gotten gain to bite the hand that feeds them.

The perversity is staggering. 

The upcoming election looms.

There was a zoom gathering this morning on Men and Loss.

Grief resounds and will continue to for the next few weeks of uncertain outcome

morning desk

 

this limitless world

"But do not ask me where I am going, 

As I travel in this limitless world, 

Where every step I take is my home." 

     — Dōgen Zenji

final row readings and vespers rockport harbor

we must take the utmost care

Eagle Poem 

       (by Joy Harjo)

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can’t see, can’t hear;

Can’t know except in moments

Steadily growing, and in languages

That aren’t always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.

(--Joy Harjo, “Eagle Poem” from In Mad Love and War. Copyright © 1990 by Joy Harjo, in Poetry Foundation)

response to student in code of the warrior ethics class

[GM had been writing about 'dueling' in prison.]

Apart from some spelling and grammar bandaids needed, I really like this paper. It serves well as a  prompt for further conversation and deliberation. Nicely done!

Your focusing on dueling in the place wherein you dwell lifts the subject from dim historical intellectual ‘entertainment’ and plops it down into an intensively felt and lived environment. You represent your opinions well and you describe the everyday duel with the eye of a participant observer.

I want to retrieve your words: "When I said that human nature is naturally evil I truly meant it." They lead me to look again at ‘evil’ and its interpretation. Aside from the awfulness of the repercussions of evil, I ask myself an originary question — whence does it come? I’ve heard many of the mythic stories, the theological stories, and the speculative thinking about evil — but I am also interested in the philosophical origin of it. Here’s my current take: 

There is word in Sanskrit, Avidyā:

 Avidyā (अविद्या) is a Vedic Sanskrit word, and is a compound of "a" and "vidya", meaning "not vidya". The word vidya is derived from the Sanskrit root Vid, which means "to know, to perceive, to see, to understand".^[1] Therefore, avidya means to "not know, not perceive, not understand". The Vid*-related terms appears extensively in the Rigveda and other Vedas.^[1] Avidya is usually rendered as "ignorance" in English translations of ancient Indian texts, sometimes as "spiritual ignorance".^[7][8]

The word avidyā is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *weid-, meaning "to see" or "to know". It is a cognate of Latin vidēre (which would turn to "video") and English “wit". (Wikipedia)

And:

In the yogic sense, avidya means something that goes far beyond ordinary ignorance. Avidya is a fundamental blindness about reality. The core ignorance we call avidya isn't a lack of information, but the inability to experience your deep connection to others, to the source of being, and to your true Self.  (Yoga Journal)

So here’s the question for me — Are we by nature good or evil? Or, is there a permeating ignorance that covers, shields, and deflects our attention from what is core, caring, and connecting in the realm of being and existence?

This attention or awareness is what, in my opinion, philosophy and spirituality assists in uncovering and making present to us. I’d go further and say that, it seems to me, this attention or awareness once awakened does not look at some “thing” that is good or evil, as through good and evil were some object or objective state that exists in and of itself. Rather, when you or I begin to see through the permeating ignorance within and without ourselves, it is our ‘seeing’ itself that carries with it, in its very action or activity of seeing,  what we have come to call ‘good’ or ‘evil’.

In plain talk — we are plagued by ignorance.  

We experience it in people, in. institutions, in history, and, yes, in ourselves. Seeing, knowing, or understanding — all of which seem fundamental in the process of approaching what we call ‘love’ — these three activities seem to be in constant conflict with blind reactivity, cultivated erroneous opinion, and intentional misinterpretation of another’s actions or words.

So, is there evil? Yes, there are innumerable examples of unkindness, cruelty, and separating-out behavior. Is there good? Yes, there are innumerable examples of kindness, healing, and connecting behavior.

But, (in my opinion, for conversation’s sake) good and evil are not a ‘thing’ nor a ‘person’. They are activities of mind and body that either hold on to ignorance or break through it to seeing, knowing, understanding, and — a worthwhile wish — to loving connection with what is within and that which surrounds us.

Thanks for the prompt!

—bh, 13-14oct20

yes

Yes.

Try to say it.

Yes.

what (would have been) purpose of visit

A happy and grateful Thanksgiving to our Canadian neighbors.

So glad Celtic Colors is streaming from Cape Breton. 

Our car is still in dooryard.

the thought occurs

May she remain a good Catholic, good mother & wife, good scholar & judge, & a good person.

Unless she withdraws until after election, she will always be seen as Trump’s folly, McConnell’s lie, Graham’s cynicism, & Republican dishonesty. A painful brand!

Too bad. She seems nice.

thây

Thich Nhat Hanh is 94 today.

Good for him!

presentiating

As time collapses

Into Itself, God is not-

Yet here, umwelt now

umbrage, an annoyance of emptiness

Desire is not good nor bad, just unnecessary.

(Someone takes umbrage at these words. More must be said.)

We reach out our hand. There is, we think, something we desire to have.

We desire, we think, someone, something.

We are, I submit, not yet thinking.

‘Not yet’ is God’s name, is (let’s consider) what is God.

Why say this?

Because we are desire itself.

And there is nothing else. Nothing not what and who we are.

Our misapprehension is believing what we desire is other than us.

What we actually want is to be at peace with who and what we are.

That mind, the Christ mind, the Buddha mind, sees everything and everyone as-it-is.

Empty yourself.

See through desires until you see yourself, desire itself.

Originary vitality tension vibrantly arising up through all being all beings.

Empty of self, emptiness itself, whole and entire, as itself throughout creation.

Let it go.

Let it be.

Itself, no other, as it is.

Theodore Roethke’s final three lines of his poem The Manifestation are wonderful:

 What does what it should do needs nothing more. 

 The body moves, though slowly, toward desire . 

 We come to something without knowing why.

They are koan to me. 

What is equally wonderful is the whole poem:

The Manifestation

Many arrivals make us live: the tree becoming
Green, a bird tipping the topmost bough,
A seed pushing itself beyond itself,
The mole making its way through darkest ground,
The worm, intrepid scholar of the soil—
Do these analogies perplex? A sky with clouds,
The motion of the moon, and waves at play,
A sea-wind pausing in a summer tree.

What does what it should do needs nothing more.
The body moves, though slowly, toward desire.
We come to something without knowing why.

(—from The Far Field: Last Poems, by Theodore Roethke)

 Or maybe it is the final stanza of his poem In a Dark Time that asks for last say:

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. 
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind….

(—from In a Dark Time, poem by Theodore Roethke)

Free... 

The annoyance of what is not yet here.

no others

Cold air through morning open windows. 

 "Wherever there are others there is a self.

Wherever there are no others there can be no self."

     — Wei Wu Wei

There’s an election in early November. 

Grinding coffee beans in kitchen. 

God is realizing Itself in all things manifestly present.

Looking around. Can we see what is here?

nunc dimittis

Not to be anything, nor to be nothing,  only falling temperatures tonight.

"The moment we desire to be something, we are no longer free." — Zen proverb

Not to be free, nor to be unfree, only warm blankets after night prayer.

dog whistle

Did you ever think

in this country the terror

in plain sight -- his face

ceremony

Take all the day’s news

Put it in your heart, sit, breathe—

Brew tea, steep, sip, sigh

keeping mostly silent

anicca, anatta, shunyata

There is an empty

place within where nothing dwells --

visit and then leave

hosmer stillness

 

pax et bonum

For Francis

Everything went away

But Christ

Look no

Further

Than this

If you desire

All good and

Peace, look here

Write

This

Down (he told Leo)

Laughing at 

His own

Disappearance 

i’ll go with e.e.cummings

 

my mind is

by E. E. Cummings

my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell
and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal
tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex
-ecute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming
something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings.

 (—Best Poems Encyclopedia)

karma at it's best, (she writes), a response

First there’s Mandy and wife Kathryn:

https://twitter.com/PatinkinMandy/status/1312152046175313920?s=20

 and

https://twitter.com/patinkinmandy/status/1312360154554404864?s=21

Then there’s this response to opinion piece in The New York Times from:

 Ann,  

Canada

   Oct. 2

Times Pick

I would be hypocrite if I said I wished Trump and his wife a speedy recovery. Quite frankly, I see this situation as karma at it's best. Trump, though various regressive and inhumane policies, has put so many people in danger and at risk and not just from Covid. He has never, in any of his self-promoting appearance, expressed sympathy for the many people who have died from Covid in the U.S. While he cannot be held personally responsible for the havoc the virus itself has wreaked, he has not done much to help the situation. He has set a poor example by dismissing the seriousness of the virus and supporting bizarre conspiracy theories around it. While other people are still waiting to be tested or can't afford to be tested or cared for, he and his cronies got daily testing and can well afford the medical care needed to get through it. He cares for no one but himself and his quest to stay in power. So I will shed no tears for him.

the presence of spirits and the angels

Are there Guardian Angels? Do we have Guardian Angels? 

A pious belief? Or something beyond our perception and understanding?  

From The Physics of Angels: 

"RUPERT: Do you think there are practical ways of making friends with the angels? For example, in various Jewish ceremonies there are invocations of the archangels Michael, Uriel, Raphael, and Gabriel as the guardians of the four directions. And Christians in the Catholic tradition have a particular opportunity to make friends with the angels at Michaelmas, the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, on 29 September. Do you think there are things we can do apart from being more open to God, and the spirit of truth and justice, specifically to invoke the angels? 

"MATTHEW: Yes, there are rituals and invocations that are present already in church traditions, and some that have to be resurrected. And we need new rituals to invoke angels; I think that these will come as we allow our minds to wander more into the living cosmos. Technology could play a great role in helping us envision the angels — for example, the wonderful photographs we now have of stars being born and galaxies spiraling. But I don't think we should underestimate the path of the struggle for justice and truthfulness. This is about inner work. Certainly truthfulness is. Hildegard is saying that where there is inner work, it does indeed open the communication with angels. 

"The same is true in struggling for justice. Remember that angels often visit people in prison. St. Peter was liberated from prison by an angel. Sometimes I think that Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and other great souls that have spent time in prison have found angelic support there. 

"So the struggle for justice is not an abstraction. It's a way of learning and a way of opening the heart. I know one Catholic sister, for example, a very fine and holy woman, who tells me her greatest mystical experience is being taken away in the paddy wagon by police when she protests at military bases and nuclear power plants — that is when she most feels the presence of spirits and the angels. 

"So the struggle for justice is a path that opens our hearts up and allows angels to rush in. The struggle, certainly around ecological issues, is going to get more intense in our lifetime, and we need to see these struggles as rituals. And angels come to healthy and authentic rituals. 

"RUPERT: That's an exciting prospect, the struggle for justice and the struggle for a new relationship with the environment taking place in alliance with the angels and with their help. It gives it a bigger dimension. It is an empowering thought, because otherwise it's just a handful of people fighting against huge vested interests and economic and political powers. We need all the help we can get. 

"MATTHEW: And surely then guardian angels of children must be awfully interested in the ecological crisis. The children's future depends on a healthy planet."  

(--Guardian Angels Day,  October 2,  in, Spirituality and Practice,, quoting Matthew Fox and Rupert Sheldrake)  

The message?

That we are not alone, in ways we cannot even fathom.

The world is not only stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can imagine. 

German mathematical physicist and philosopher Werner Heisenberg’s words were these:

“Not only is the Universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.” (― Werner Heisenberg, Across the Frontiers)

Russian philosopher Nicholai Berdyaev said that “God created the world by imagination.” 

German philosopher Martin Heidegger said: “The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.”

And, finally, the nursery rhyme:

Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream,
Merrily merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream.

Science and spirituality share a common unknown: 

All the stars, planets and galaxies that can be seen today make up just 4 percent of the universe. The other 96 percent is made of stuff astronomers can't see, detect or even comprehend.

These mysterious substances are called dark energy and dark matter. Astronomers infer their existence based on their gravitational influence on what little bits of the universe can be seen, but dark matter and energy themselves continue to elude all detection.

"The overwhelming majority of the universe is: who knows?" explains science writer Richard Panek,... "It's unknown for now, and possibly forever."

(—Space,com) 

Some message beckons.

An angelos, an angel, messenger, Greek Original Word: ἄγγελος, ου, ὁ  .

We continue to be uncertain whether to look at the finger pointing to the moon, or look to the moon itself. 

What we are capable of is the looking. 

We look through the nothing that is there and the something that is not there.

Ludwig Wittgenstein in Philosophical Investigations suggests we “Don’t think, Look!”

lisieux

A small flower in 

bright moonlight recites prayer —

quietly, Thérèse

the world darkens

Perhaps poetry best captures the sad and chilling experience of listening to and watching the president of the United States in the debate last night.

No place at last is better than the world. The world

is no better than its places. Its places at last

are no better than their people while their people

continue in them. When the people make

dark the light within them, the world darkens.

 

(—from A Poem On Hope, by Wendell Berry)

Berry began his poem with the line: “It is hard to have hope. It is harder as you grow old”.

as you walk here to there

The "els" have it today:

1. Micha'el --  מִיכָאֵל -- who is like God

2. Gabri'el -- גַבְרִיאֵל -- strength of God

3. Rapha'el -- רָפָאֵל  -- healing of God 

They are recounted as spiritual, non-corporeal beings -- immaterial, individual, and immortal.

Hard for we mortal, material, time-grasped beings to acquaint. 

When I walk in cemeteries there are frequent depictions of angels about. It is an aspect of mysterious belief not easy to ground.

Nevertheless, 

"Cemeteries are the only definitively calm places around." (Why There Is No 'Happily Ever After, The School of Life, )

It's like the grammar school joke remembered: 

Q: Why are there walls and gates around cemeteries? 

A: Because people are dying to get in. 

I wish you likeness, strength, and healing today, along with associated peace, as you walk here to there. 

the future is now

Looking at the past

Stopping finally —

There’s nothing there

What is here is the

One looking

Seeing what is

Underfoot

Earth

Alone

anatomy of isolation

Just because you are depressed doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you.

What’s right with you is that you feel. Which becomes a burden.

Those who don’t feel are not depressed because they don’t care.

To care you have to feel.

If you don’t care, everything is just fine. 

For you.

No burden bothers.

Don’t vote for someone who can’t be bothered.

יהי חתום בספר החיים

“G’mar chatima tova” is the customary greeting on Yom Kippur. In English, it means “May you be sealed in the Book of Life.” 

...   ...   ...

It is Yom Kippur

...   ...   ...

לַחֲזוֹר

Return

(One might say)

To One’s source

One’s life

Responding

...   ...   ...

[T]he central theme of the High Holiday season is teshuvah (תְּשׁוּבָה), a word often translated as "repentance," though it's more accurately understood as turning (shuv) to God in response to His call. Indeed, teshuvah can mean both these things: turning and answering... A related Hebrew word is nacham (נָחַם), which literally means to "sigh" as a way of expressing regret or sorrow, usually in response to something in the past. Sometimes nacham is used to express the idea of comfort, in the sense of consolation for something lost.  The ancient Greek translation of the Bible (i.e., LXX and NT) generally used the word strepho (στρέφω) for the word shuv, and the word metanoia (μετάνοια) for nacham.   

—Teshuvah of the Mind, Being Transformed by God’s Truth)

write off

 Please don’t tax your conscience, mr president, it’s so costly to be bothered by other people’s problems.

a workshop to ponder

the dread wheel narrows

 So much concerns a

          white majority

sprinkled with second 

           amendment rights 

reigning puddles where 

            truth once grounded

becomes muddy footsteps 

            slogging 

across chicken droppings

car parked in middle of dooryard tire tracks

Did he create the conversation?

Did she?

Or did the conversation create them?

Hardly anything is what it seems to be.

You don’t have to know.

You just have to be there.

A chocolate chip cookie helps.

and word, I imagine, becomes flesh

Last night’s conversation took place between bookshed and meditation cabin around fire pit with Thai pizza and a visiting repairer of rocking chair.

This morning two pictures pop up.

I must go to zendo to sit with memory-presence of young bodhisattva off on his journey to see everything and everyone just as they are.

good company