not in my neighborhood you wouldn’t

What do Taylor Swift, Bruce Springsteen, and James Comey have in common?

The ire of the man occupying the position of resolute desk sitter on Pennsylvania Avenue.

We are in grammar school.

It is lunchtime.

A sulking kid looms over kids eating lunch.

He finally recognizes it is his lunch they are eating.

He is despondent.

He calls his mommy and daddy.

He wants them arrested and thrown out of school.

He is every wiseguy bully I’ve ever seen walking streets of Bensonhurst and Bath Beach.

Except -- he is a paper mache mask that hides a toxic visage looking out from deep victimhood.

It doesn’t make him a bad person, only a very sad and lonely person for whom fear is sole asset.

mirroring reality

 One changes everything

Not two

Everything changes one

vespers

 Day dims

Sitting on porch

Light folds in

movement, not explanation

God doesn’t explain 

God presents

We don’t know what 

To do with God

We don’t know how

To move with God

at end of tether, twisting in wind

The American administration 

hurts the American people -- there’s

something very wrong with this --

but nobody has any idea how to correct

such blatantly fraudulent criminality --

a staggering situation, a terrible reality,

a good time to abjure

cat sits, everything flows

sit zazen with panta rhea

on porch --

nothing to report

quibla

 where do all signs point?

    I know! I know!

  They point to where God is...

    has been, will be

the sound tree will put forth new leaves,

Of course I have complaints about my Catholic ethos, history, and serious ruptures of trust and confidence.

So I read historian Pelikan’s words with curiosity. 

“Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living. And, I suppose I should add, it is traditionalism that gives tradition such a bad name.”

― Jaroslav Pelikan, The Vindication of Tradition: The 1983 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities

 Merriam-Webster has it:

tradition, noun

Synonyms of tradition

1. a. : an inherited, established, or customary pattern of thought, action, or behavior (such as a religious practice or a social custom)

  b : a belief or story or a body of beliefs or stories relating to the past that are commonly accepted as historical though not verifiable.   … the bulk of traditions attributed to the Prophet … —J. L. Esposito

2 : the handing down of information, beliefs, and customs by word of mouth or by example from one generation to another without written instruction

   3 : cultural continuity in social attitudes, customs, and institutions

   4 : characteristic manner, method, or style in the best liberal tradition

The Online Etymological Dictionary has it:

tradition(n.) 

 

late 14c., tradicioun, "statement, belief, or practice handed down from generation to generation," especially, in theology, "belief or practice based on Mosaic law," later also of Christian practice, from Old French tradicion "transmission, presentation, handing over" (late 13c.) and directly from Latin traditionem (nominative traditio) "a delivering up, surrender, a handing down, a giving up" (also "a teaching, instruction," and "a saying handed down from former times”).

This is a noun of action from past-participle stem of tradere "deliver, hand over," from trans- "over" (see trans-) + dare "to give" (from PIE root *do- "to give"). Tradition is thus a doublet of treason (q.v.).

The meaning "a long-established custom" is from 1590s. The notion in the word is of customs, ways, beliefs, doctrines and such things "handed down" from ancestors to descendants.

Used by 1718 in reference to the hadiths of Islam and doctrine supposed to have been revealed but not written down. In the fine arts and literature, "the accumulated experience and achievements of previous generations." 

 

What I mean by tradition involves all those habitual actions, habits and customs, from the most significant religious rite to our conventional way of greeting a stranger, which represent the blood kinship of 'the same people living in the same place'. ... We become conscious of these items, or conscious of their importance, usually only after they have begun to fall into desuetude, as we are aware of the leaves of a tree when the autumn wind begins to blow them off—when they have separately ceased to be vital. Energy may be wasted at that point in a frantic endeavour to collect the leaves as they fall and gum them onto the branches: but the sound tree will put forth new leaves, and the dry tree should be put to the axe. [T.S. Eliot, "After Strange Gods"] 

 

The senses of tradition and treason still overlapped as late as 1450s, when tradition could mean "betrayal," and Middle English traditour was "betrayer, traitor." Traditores in early Church history was the (Latin) word for those who during the persecutions surrendered the Scriptures or holy vessels to the authorities, or betrayed brethren. 

 T.S. Eliot’s referencing Matthew 3:10 and Luke 3:9 -- "but the sound tree will put forth new leaves, and the dry tree should be put to the axe” stands out for me.

It is spring. New leaves emerge. 

This is not a repudiation of the past. 

It is the continuity of what has been into what will be.

If I surrender.

As I am wont to do.

Were I willing.

If “I” as separate consideration were to fall away.

check them at the door

 Watching congress question administration leaders.

The hostility of the exchanges.

Glad they don’t allow guns to be carried.

as moon rises

 When the breeze

Carries no sound

Creator is passing

not another word

I like it that people want to be more mindful

I like it that there is more concern about lies and deception.

I like it that interest in God seems on the rise.

Everyday life is enough for me. Getting up, going to bed

Truth is also interesting, not worrying about bald-faced lies

And God, the unseen sustaining reality, seems unreachable

I’m glad there’s an American/Peruvian, Augustinian pope

I’m sorry Jason Tatum was injured in game four in New York

I’m not a Celtics fan, not for a long time, it’s awkward

I’m unchurched these days, a hermit who stays close at home

I read religion, poetry, philosophy, current political absurdity

finding myself praying and meditating whenever silence calls

I’m sure I’ll be dead soon, it’s just the way things go, we die

I don’t expect to see God, nor heaven, nor hell, nor nothing

A time will come no one will call my name, I’ll not answer 

When spring buds stretch out on mountain, birds come and go

cars pass on Barnestown road, cats and dog snooze and stretch

I’ll not answer because I am gone, no need to say another word

crucify them

 It’s an odd time

I’d rather

We were sane

But, no, we are 

Insane — look

At us, and weep

three, in passing

 1.

I might believe --

it's hard to tell

breath, check

sight, check

words, yes

for now, yes

2.

whenever silence

then God

there, there, there

can you hear

now

3.

before I was

where I now am

I was nowhere

since arriving

here, I am

nowhere else

democracy cannot survive too much ignorance

If we listen carefully, even the dead try to educate us. 

Justice David H. Souter, who died last week at age 85, made few public appearances after he retired from the Supreme Court in 2009. When he did, he stayed away from politics. 

 

But a seemingly bland question from an audience member at a New Hampshire arts center in 2012 provoked an impassioned response from the justice, who was the opposite of excitable. 

 

He said he was worried that public ignorance about how American government works would allow an authoritarian leader to emerge and claim total power. “That is the way democracy dies,” he said. 

 

“An ignorant people can never remain a free people,” the justice said. “Democracy cannot survive too much ignorance.” 

 

Not understanding how power is allocated among the three branches of government, he said, leaves a void that invites a strongman. After a crisis, he said, “one person will come forward and say, ‘Give me total power, and I will solve this problem.’” 

 

That was four years before Donald J. Trump, as he accepted the Republican presidential nomination for the first time, said something strikingly similar: “Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone 

can fix it.”

 

There is no reason to think Justice Souter had Mr. Trump in mind when he spoke. Among the things the justice did not pay attention to were New York real estate and reality television.

(--in, A Warning From Justice Souter: Democracy Is in Peril, NYT, 12may25)

It might be too late.

I understand that possibility.

But if I drown in the horrifying swell of disingenuous and deceptive churning waters, I prefer to go down well-informed and non-delusional.

Would that my country would attend the wisdom of thoughtful men and women such as the recently departed Justice.

apparently distinct singularities

Interesting reading. 

Introduction: Christianity as Physics

THE LATEST OBSERVATIONS OF THE COSMIC BACKGROUND radiation show that the universe began 13.7 billion years ago at the Singularity. Stephen Hawking proved mathematically that the Singularity is not in time or in space, but outside both. In other words, the Singularity is transcendent to space and time. According to the theologian Thomas Aquinas, “God created the Universe” means simply that all causal chains begin in God. God is the Uncaused Cause. In physics, all causal chains begin in the Singularity. The Singularity itself has no cause. For a thousand years and more, Christian theologians have asserted that there is one and only one “achieved” (actually existing) infinity, and that infinity is God. The Cosmological Singularity is an achieved infinity.  

The Cosmological Singularity is God.

“But,” the average person may protest, “the ‘Cosmological Singularity’ is not my idea of God. I picture God as a kindly, white-haired old man, loving but with immense power. The ‘Cosmological Singularity’ (whatever that is) is too abstract, too intellectual to be my God, the God I pray to every night. It sounds like some crazy idea some physicist would dream up. It’s definitely not the God of Judaism or Christianity.” 

 

Not so. The Cosmological Singularity is the Judeo-Christian God. Think of it this way. Everybody knows that when you flip a light switch, the light goes on because an electrical current flows in the wires in the walls. Everybody also knows that electrons carry the electric charge whose motion makes the electric current. I invite you to imagine an “electron”—you must have some image of an electron, since you use the word. 

 

Now let me ask you: when you imagined an “electron,” did you imagine an excitation of a quantized, relativistic fermion field, part of an electroweak doublet? Unless you are a professional physicist, I know you didn’t. You probably imagined a little ball of some sort. Such an image is good for some purposes, even in physics. One can compute a fairly accurate value for the “drift velocity” of the electrons through the wire using the “little ball” image of the electron. But did you know that the electrons which carry the current in the wire are at a temperature of 80,000 degrees Celsius (140,000 degrees Fahrenheit)?1 You might wonder, If the conduction electrons are at that high a temperature, why don’t they melt the wires? Why don’t they start a fire and burn the house down? The reason is that the conduction electrons can’t give up their high-temperature energy to the wires. But to understand why the electrons can’t give up their energy, one has to go beyond the “little ball” image of the electron. (One has to think “quantized fermion.”) 

 

Similarly, everyone has an image of “God,” but to really understand what God really is and how He could interact with the universe, one must use a theory beyond everyday commonsense physics. Contrary to what many physicists have claimed in the popular press, we have had a Theory of Everything for about thirty years. Most physicists dislike this Theory of Everything because it requires the universe to begin in a singularity. That is, they dislike it because the theory is consistent only if God exists, and most contemporary scientists are atheists. They don’t want God to exist, and if keeping God out of science requires rejecting physical laws, well, so be it. 

 

My approach to reality is different. I believe that we have to accept the implications of physical law, whatever these implications are. If they imply the existence of God, well then, God exists.

We can also use the physical laws to tell us what the Cosmological Singularity—God—is like. The laws of physics tell us that our universe began in an initial singularity, and it will end in a final singularity. The laws also tell us that ours is but one of an infinite number of universes, all of which begin and end in a singularity. If we look carefully at the collection of all the universes—this collection is called the multiverse— we see that there is a third singularity, at which the multiverse began. But physics shows us that these three apparently distinct singularities are actually one singularity. The Three are One.

(--in, The Physics of Christianity, Author: Frank J. Tipler)  

In prison today, considering love. Song came to mind, “You Make Me Feel Brand New.” Conversation about the layers of etymology and hierophany. How even the most secular and plebeian songs have in their hidden dna an aliveness that ascends into the sacred realm no matter how they began.

How Neil Douglas-Klotz spoke of every syllable as a living being.

One man had just graduated from UMA with a degree in music. Another man, a follower of the Nation of Islam, saying that love is the very air we breathe. A round-table of musing aloud.

Amusing ourselves with good conversation.

a time to choose

 Politics is the plaything of poseurs

Doing the right thing is real life

We make a choice —

To be real, or political

mit, avec, con, με

 In the beginning

Was the mother

And the mother was

With God

And the mother

Was . . .

No, that’s not it

In the beginning

Was nothing other

Than itself

And this nothing

Was with

God . . .

“With”

Is what

God is

Whatever is with

Is what 

mothers God

Soon, perhaps

Soon God will

Mother us

As we

Mother

God

Yes, that’s it

Without 

Undue

Time lapse 

Mother

Will be seen

As is

That 

Which is

With

Yes

That’s it . . .

With

God be-with

Mother be-with

You

As you are

With-in

(Itself)

silentio

 Just keeping 

the possibility 

in mind that there is 

some presence of what is 

called God extant and 

vital in the world —

is serious consideration 

worth attention

Perhaps In silence…

 A possibility

There’s not yet

enough 

silence

inherently (in)complete

"What’s your name? I have seen you before. What’s your name? May I walk you to your door?”  (Don & Juan, 1962)

Names of the unified mind are

Buddha-nature,

True suchness, the hidden essence,

The pure spiritual body,

The pedestal of awareness,

The innocent, universal round mirrorlike knowledge,

The open source, the ultimate truth,

And pure consciousness.

The enlightened ones of the past, present, and future,

And all of their discourses,

Are all in your fundamental nature, inherently complete.

You do not need to seek,

But you must save yourself;

No one can do it for you.

--Xuefeng (822–908) dailyzen

I’m torn between the Buddha of history or the Arhat of Pennsylvania Avenue. If I’m meant to accept what appears before me, then the wizard of woefulness is my spiritual test. Yes, he is awful; yes he is crude and impertinent, vulgar and mean-spirited -- but he is our president, the only one we have, and (somehow) occupies an office and role that demands our respect. Even if a priest has been a pedophile, we trust that the priesthood remains, somehow, more than the sexual abuser. So, too, the presidency.

Since I’ve been ABC (a buddhist catholic) for over sixty years, and AZC (a zen contemplative) for the same half-century-plus, I’ve come to appreciate the complexity of judgment and the value of judicious evaluation. I also appreciate the failure and brokenness of my resolve and practice.

I find very little about the current president to recommend him. A letter of recommendation would be filled with abhorrent details of fraud, corruption, sexual abuse, grift and graft, lies, illegal activity, sour temperament bordering on vile cruelty and obnoxious surliness. 

But still, he is my brother, and were he in Maine State Prison I’d visit and invite him to meetingbrook conversations with others interested in sorting out things and deepening our lives.

We understand those final three lines:   

    You do not need to seek,  

    But you must save yourself; 

    No one can do it for you.

Of course I apply the same to myself, there’s no escaping (the) singularity. As someone inherently incomplete, as someone not inherent -- but irrelevant, inappropriate, extraneous, impertinent -- I understand the paradoxical nature of being-human, and sit with that complexity, looking out into penitential wholeness for dharmic/religious reincorporation.

quitte, s’il vous plâit

There’s no shame 

in being 

a bad president.

Pick yourself

Up, dust yourself off

And resign.

We’ll be fine

Without you

If you go away

yes

 Is

One

All

There

Is

ginnungagap*

In prison today conversation about thought and matter, purusha and prakriti, form and emptiness.

Norse-man, Greek-man, Hindu/pagan-man, two Buddhist/catholic-folks, and a waiting Stephen Dunn poem not gotten to.

Energy and utterance.

Essence and existence.

Time now and never other.

It was good company and worthwhile experience.

….  …   …

* In Norse mythology, Ginnungagap (old Norse: [ˈɡinːoŋɡɑˌɡɑp]; "gaping abyss", "yawning void") is the primordial, magical[1][2] void mentioned in three poems from the Poetic Edda[3][4] and the Gylfaginning, the Eddaic text recording Norse cosmogony. Wikipedia

even though warriors and nuggets lose

a good day

new pope

breakfast pastry

evening walk

sit nomen omnium benedictum

 I will not 

tell you

my name 

do not 

ask again

my name 

is un-

pronounceable 

my name

is your 

soundless gaze

my name 

your eyes

our vision 

white smoke

everyone waits

to see

what will 

come to be

perhaps

only (simple)

presence

emerges

if we

were 

able

to see

neutrinos pierce me into slivers of absence

mud and mire

all impertinence

obviates me

so I am gone

you don’t see me

only microscopic

residue

floating in headlamp

on night walk

with good dog

in dooryard

outside barn

gabbiano, sei minuti

 seagull sits

on roof peak of

Sistine Chapel

just above and

off to side of

stovepipe with

no smoke rising 

7:39pm in Rome 

surely some sign

some revelation

at hand -- or,

just a quiet evening

in the history of

papacy, in history 

of world, flies away

7:45pm -- signing off

tranquillement

I look over at the Buddha

quiet guy

I look over at man on cross

quiet guy

Rain sounds on roof of porch

quiet sky

Night has no where to go,

sits, tranquillement

gauging

Many think Donald Trump is dishonest, cynical, and stupid. 

 

I don’t know if that’s the case. 

 

I prefer to think he is merely an unaware, unkind, and self-absorbed man. 

 

I suspect there are differences between the two sets of three descriptives. 

 

Siskel and Ebert* used to ask whether the movie watcher liked the character(s) in the film.  

 

It was the criteria for staying with the film and caring about its story. 

 

I don’t care for the president.

Nor the story he is trying to tell. 

And doing it so poorly.

. . .

* The question "Do you care for the characters in the movie?" was a recurring theme in their reviews, particularly in their "thumbs up/thumbs down" judgments. Siskel and Ebert valued the emotional connection viewers could have with the characters, and this question helped them gauge the effectiveness of the film's character development. 

:

• If they felt a strong emotional connection to the characters, they would often praise the film for its ability to make the audience care about the characters' fates and experiences.
• If they felt the characters were underdeveloped or unlikable, they would criticize the film for its inability to engage the audience in a meaningful way.
• They would also discuss how well the actors portrayed the characters, and whether the actors were believable and engaging in their roles.   (--AI) 

via transitus

 I never wanted

to be a zen priest

and am not

I once thought

to be a catholic priest

but did not

I now think that

being nothing but this

is a kind of priestliness

and even that is not

something I wish to be --

looking to road out window

and just like that, there they were

 two Baltimore orioles on roadside bushes in drizzling rain

outside front picture window in rural Maine between mountains --

morning is replete with color, complete with visiting birdlife

rien

Very little

Goes on

This time

Of night

I see

None of it

inside word

Colum McCann’s Apeirogon, A Novel.

History, its tensions and heartbreak, as art.

Words that are alive. Life an inside word

a fragment of reality

Islamic Ulama, Jewish Rabbinic, and Christian Exegetic dialogue in prison this morning. You never know what will arise. 

And this did.

Koran, Torah, Gospels -- the time went by, and it was time for count, the dogmatic rubric of prison.

It steals into my heart

BY SRI CHINMOY

There was a time when I loved

The fantastic fabrics of the mind.

There was a time

When I lived my life

Based on culled fictions.

There was a time

When I was satisfied

With a fragment of reality,

Splintered, broken and smashed.

But now a lucid illumination

Steals into my heart.

The eternal Presence

Of Infinity’s Light

Feeds my Vision’s Dawn.

                    (c. Sri Chinmoy, 1973)

Translation, interpretative hermeneutic, exegetical subtleties -- good humor and agreeable differences.

A good “rtsod pa”* was had. 

                                                                                                                                                   

* In Tibetan monastic tradition, the debate is known as "rtsod pa" (pronounced "tsod-pa").This term refers to the formal, rigorous philosophical debate practice used for studying and clarifying Buddhist doctrines (AI)