intimate
interrelationality
with
what
is
immediate.Another way to imagine one's way into that which is correlationally, authentically, inchoately whole within and without.
'He Took Us to the Mountaintop'"Many of us, grown men, were crying," Kyles tells Renee Montagne. "We didn't know why we were crying. We had no way of knowing that would be the last speech of his life. And then he took us to the mountaintop ..."
"Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life — longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. (— the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.)
Kyles says he's "so certain" that King "knew he wouldn't get there, but he wouldn't tell us that. That would have been too heavy for us, so he softened it."
Afterward, "we had to help him to his seat behind that powerful, prophetic speech,"Kyles says. "He preached himself through the fear of death," Kyles says. "He just got it out of him. He just ... dealt with it. And we were just standing there. It was like, what did he know that we didn't know?"
A Dream Partially Fulfilled
Kyles, who still preaches in Memphis, says that while much of King's dream has been realized, there's much more to do.
When he speaks to people who were not alive or too young to remember King, Kyle says he tells them, "we're not going to get to the place where we can say, 'Dr. King's dream has been realized. Now we can go to the beach.' That's not going to happen. Much of it has been realized, but there is so much to do. But each generation will have its portion, and that helps to keep the dream alive."
(--from, King Remembered on 40th Anniversary of Death, April 4, 2008, 4:00 PM ET, Heard on All Things Considered)
I read “Directive” as one of those few rare poems that are, by Frost’s definitive hope, “a momentary stay against confusion.” The margin of “a momentary stay” is the saving grace of “Directive” and, greatly, its theme. Whoever demands a more ample margin had better be guided up Billy Graham’s public aisle; whoever can exist without metaphor had best forget Frost. But whomever “Directive” privately converts (Frost asks no less) can find his margin roughly extended in that strangely unknown Frost poem, “An Empty Threat”:
Better defeat almost,
If seen clear,
Than life’s victories of doubt
That need endless talk talk
To make them out.
Terribly though doubt assailed him, nowhere in his work is Frost defeated by it. Skeptically as a lot of poems talk, nowhere in them is doubt victorious. Nor is there any poem that argues “almost better defeat," whether seen clear or not. What must be seen clear is the poised sequence of those words I’ve just disordered. My misquote, “almost better defeat," is narrowly, but wholly and perfectly, different from “better defeat almost.” The difference is as great as one man’s life might be from another’s; the distinction in order is, as Frost would have it, of the order of the distinction between prose and poetry. Defeat-almost was the ordeal of Frost’s life; it is the narrow victory his major poems dramatize, and the human margin of their greatness. As it climbs to marginal redemption through a myth made local by image, through an ordeal heightened by metaphor, “Directive” is one of the greatest. It stays defeat by bettering being lost.
This frosty morning.
(--from, Robert Frost’s Prime Directive, by Philip Booth. Originally appeared in Master Poems of the English Language, edited by Oscar Williams (Pocket Books, 1966). Reprinted in Trying to Say it: Outlooks and Insights on How Poems Happen by Philip Booth (University of Michigan, 1996). on poets.org)
Ephesians 6:12 New International Version (NIV)
12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.And yet, it seems there's lots of help from Washington Republicans, Banking Industry, Corporations worldwide, White Nationalists, Sex Traffickers, Drug Cartels, Liars of all stripes, Police excesses, Defense industries, the perduring Unawakened Ignorant, and (let's face it) me (dammit) -- all the contributors to the less-than-glorious potential of life-in-the-world as realized by loving, caring, and compassionate beings.
"If you are going to follow Jesus, you better look good on wood."
"No principle is worth the sacrifice of a single human being.
"The gift we can offer others is so simple a thing as hope."
"One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the U.S. around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better."
"Faith is rarely where your head is at. Nor is it where your heart is at. Faith is where your a-- is at!"
"The Jesuits I know who have died and all their lives were great teachers, they're the least remembered people."
"You have to struggle to stay alive and be of use as long as you can."
"Because success is such a weasel word anyway, it's such a horribly American word, and it's such a vamp and, I think it's a death trap."
"You can't bank on the outcome."
https://www.ibtimes.com/daniel-berrigan-famous-quotes-renowned-jesuit-priest-poet-peace-activist-dies-94-2362192
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
(--from, “When Death Comes,” poem by Mary Oliver)
Once there was a way
To get back homeward.
Once there was a way
To get back home.
(--from, Golden Slumbers, by JOHN LENNON, PAUL MCCARTNEYThis is now.
The Red Wheelbarrow
so much depends
upon
a red wheel
barrow
glazed with rain
water
beside the white
chickens.
(--Poem by William Carlos Williams, 1883 - 1963)At prison graduation ceremony yesterday an unconsummated moment when an unfinished carved book (they say) was not presented to me upon the rumor I was finished teaching for the university (and/or) at the prison. I could neither confirm nor deny the rumor beyond my typical end of term "I'm done!"
ILU COTO
individual learning understanding conversation together
(ilu coto translates as: the illusion of barrier, opening beyond preserve/reserve)
1x1 conversation, contemplative, meditative, corresponding
ilu coto is the invitation to converse with one another about things that open us to what is present, and what is beyond our ordinary awareness.
A New Seminar
there's
so much
at 4AM
silence reveals
as darkness
retiring
slips away
within
without
notice
(--wfh, 16jan19)
Ultimately, morality, wisdom, and meditation are equally vital aspects of the Way that mutually condition one another. Awakening reveals the no-thingness of things—that no thing is apart from all other things. To realize truly that there is only this nature, with no “other” outside us, is to naturally want to refrain from causing harm, just as we refrain from doing harm to one of our own limbs or eyes. The Ten Cardinal Precepts then articulate how to live up to this vision of things as they are—as one. Conversely, by upholding the precepts even before awakening, we are allowing the afflictions that obstruct that experience to loosen and dissolve. And since the precepts collectively may be seen as a description of enlightened conduct, in harmonizing with them we are actualizing our buddhanature.
(--from, Pain, Passion, and the Precepts, In upholding the precepts, we actualize our buddhanature, By Bodhin Kjolhede, WINTER 2011)
The Hypokeimenon Story.
Modernism also gave new meaning to what it means to be a subject, and the primary source of this innovation was the ego cogito of Descartes’ Meditations. The pre-Cartesian meaning of subject (Gk. hypokeimenon; Lat. subiectum) can still be seen in the "subjects" one takes in school or the "subject" of a sentence. In this ancient sense all things are subjects, things with "underlying [essential] kernels," as the Greek literally says and as Greek metaphysics proposed. (As opposed to substance metaphysics, the process view of this pansubjectivism makes all individuals subjects of some sort of experience.) After Cartesian doubt, however, there is only one subject of experience of which we are certain--viz., the human thinking subject. All other things in the world, including persons and other sentient beings, have now become objects of thought, not subjects in their own right. Cartesian subjectivism, therefore, gave birth simultaneously to modern objectivism as well. With the influence of the new mechanical cosmology, the stage was set for uniquely modern forms of otherness and alienation. https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/hypokeim.htmAnd this:
Hypokeimenon (Greek: ὑποκείμενον), later often material substratum, is a term in metaphysics which literally means the "underlying thing" (Latin: subiectum).
To search for the hypokeimenon is to search for that substance which persists in a thing going through change—its basic essence. (Wikipedia) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypokeimenon
20. In his broader “history of being,” Heidegger traces “subjectivism” back to Plato, whose doctrine of the ideas begins a movement whereby truth is no longer understood solely in terms of the manifestation of entities themselves but, instead, becomes a feature of our own “representational” capacities. In this way, truth becomes a matter of the way we secure our knowledge of entities rather than of the prior way entities disclose themselves to us. (On this “displacement of the locus of truth” from being to human subjectivity, see Thomson 2005, p. 160.)
21. The modern prejudice that (to put it simply) all meaning comes from the human subjectreaches its most powerful apotheosis in Nietzsche and Freud. From Heidegger's perspective, however, this phenomenologically mistaken view misses (and subsequently obscures) the fact that meaning emerges at the prior practical intersection of human beings with their worlds (as well as in our engaged negotiations with one another). Heidegger is thus an ethical realist, one whose phenomenological investigations led him to recognize that the world is no mute partner but, rather, actively contributes to our most profound sense of what matters (see below and Thomson 2004).
22. In “The Origin of the Work of Art,” Heidegger again presents his phenomenological conception of “existence” as a way to undercut and transcend the modern subject/object dichotomy: “In existence, however, humanity does not first move out of something ‘interior’ to something ‘exterior’; rather, the essence of existence is the out-standing standing within the essential separation [i.e., the ontological difference between being and entities thought in terms of the essential strife that joins “earth and world”] belonging to the clearing of beings.” (PLT 67/GA5 55)
23. As this suggests, Heidegger's later work is dedicated to detecting, resisting, and, ultimately, transcending what he took to be the core of the Nazi ideology. For a justification of this admittedly provocative claim, see Thomson 2011, Ch. 7. On Heidegger's attempt to transcend aesthetics from within, see also Sallis 2008, Ch. 8.
(--Notes to Heidegger's Aesthetics, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger-aesthetics/notes.htmlThere you are!
Spring flowers, autumn moon,
Summer breeze, winter snow
When the mind is free from
Unnecessary thoughts,
Every season is just perfect!
-- Ekai. (DailyZen)
1 Jn 4:19-5:4
Those who love God must also love their brother and sister.
A reading from the first Letter of Saint John
Beloved, we love God because
he first loved us.
If anyone says, “I love God,”
but hates his brother, he is a liar;
for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen
cannot love God whom he has not seen.
This is the commandment we have from him:
whoever loves God must also love his brother.
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is begotten by God,
and everyone who loves the father
loves also the one begotten by him.
In this way we know that we love the children of God
when we love God and obey his commandments.
For the love of God is this,
that we keep his commandments.
And his commandments are not burdensome,
for whoever is begotten by God conquers the world.
And the victory that conquers the world is our faith.
(--from Readings, Thursday after Epiphany)
"He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glasses." (--from, A Painful Case, by James Joyce, in The Dubliners)Elsewhere, say, in Washington, another man wanders through chaos reaching for anyone nearby to cling to something solid.
山不转路转
Shān bù zhuǎn lù zhuǎn
A mountain cannot turn, but a road can
It is not necessary to continue in the same direction, there are other alternatives to avoid an obstacle
There's more than one way to skin a cat
mountain no turn road turn
http://www.chinasage.info/proverbstrive.htmSurely there is a road the rest of us can peregrinate.
Whirled by the three passions,
One's eyes go blind;
Closed to the world of things,
They see again.
In this way I live:
Straw hatted, staff in hand,
I move illimitably,
Through earth, through heaven.
- Ungo (1580-1659) (dailyzen.com)I look forward to seeing that day.
Q: "And you don't want to be forgotten?"
A: "Who wants to be forgotten?"
(--Loujain al-Hathloul, interviewed by Mona EL Naggar, NYT video, Ladies First: Saudi Arabia's Female Candidates
The cosmogenic myth common in Sumer was that of the hieros gamos, a sacred marriage where divine principles in the form of dualistic opposites came together as male and female to give birth to the cosmos. In the epic Enki and Ninhursag, Enki, as lord of Ab or fresh water (also the Sumerian word for semen), is living with his wife in the paradise of Dilmun where
Despite being a place where "the raven uttered no cries" and "the lion killed not, the wolf snatched not the lamb, unknown was the kid-killing dog, unknown was the grain devouring boar", Dilmun had no water and Enki heard the cries of its goddess, Ninsikil, and orders the sun-god Utu to bring fresh water from the Earth for Dilmun. As a result,
Dilmun was identified with Bahrain, whose name in Arabic means "two seas", where the fresh waters of the Arabian aquifer mingle with the salt waters of the Persian Gulf. This mingling of waters was known in Sumerian as Nammu, and was identified as the mother of Enki.
(-- Enki, Wikipedia)I can imagine the earliest experience of water. It must have seemed that one was drinking God, washing with God, cooking with God, immersing in God.
3. Thales says Water is the Primary Principle
Aristotle defined wisdom as knowledge of certain principles and causes (Metaph. 982 a2-3). He commenced his investigation of the wisdom of the philosophers who preceded him, with Thales, the first philosopher, and described Thales as the founder of natural philosophy (Metaph. 983 b21-22). He recorded: 'Thales says that it is water'. 'it' is the nature, the archê, the originating principle. For Thales, this nature was a single material substance, water. Despite the more advanced terminology which Aristotle and Plato had created, Aristotle recorded the doctrines of Thales in terms which were available to Thales in the sixth century B.C.E., Aristotle made a definite statement, and presented it with confidence. It was only when Aristotle attempted to provide the reasons for the opinions that Thales held, and for the theories that he proposed, that he sometimes displayed caution.
(-- Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Thales of Miletus (c. 620 B.C.E.—c. 546 B.C.E.)Walking with leashed Rokpa in City of Rockland yesterday, melting sand and snow brown puddles at edge of every corner, waiting for new tires to be mounted, I am splashed by passing car with the essence of things on black coat and space grey trousers because that's just the way of things.
In his essay “The Crack-Up,” F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” (--in, 1919: The Year of the Crack-Up, by Ted Widmer, NYT, 31dec18)