do you have a change of clothes

 even the appearance 

of dishonesty is concerning

all three branches of 

government are mirrored

in the peoples conscience 

appearing frayed and torn

The fabric of sanity

Discarded to gutter

illiberation

Whether stupidity

Or evil, it is

Difficult to figure

This administration 

Except for disdain

it points

For Sunday afternoon: 

 Zen is consciousness unstructured by particular form or particular system, a trans-cultural, trans-religious, trans-formed consciousness. 

--Thomas Merton 

Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is.

--Alan Watts

Zen teaches nothing; it merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach, it points.

-- D. T. Suzuki

(--in Zen To Go, compiled and edited by Jon Winokur) 

hitting new lows with metronomic regularity

After exhausting examples of nefarious corruption, this ending paragraph:

It’s all a sorry and sordid picture, a president who had already set a new standard for egregious and potentially illegal behavior hitting new lows with metronomic regularity.

(Cf. Trump’sBiggestBeneficiary:Himself, by Steve Rattner, NYT opinion)

Steven Rattner is a contributing Opinion writer and the chairman and chief executive of Willett Advisors. He was a counselor to the Treasury secretary in the Obama administration.

a famous indignitary

 In photo —

Slackmouth slept

In front row of

Vatican funeral

In blue suit — his

Indignitariness

higher power

 They are penetrating

Smallest bits of matter

Below atoms, protons,

Nuclei *, quarks, assertions

There is still something 

Smaller

The intricate intimate swirl

Of whatever you call it

Passing through circling 

smashing exploding smithereens

Into new whatchamacallits

Smaller 

Than small, like airy memory

Recalling something unhappening

Yet full of existence, shape, color—

Who among us is not demented

I mean lost in mind, or mind gone

Smithereeny

Nothing fits together, trillions of

Suns across universe, trillions of 

molecules between ears, each

A messanger, an angel, carrying

Mementos of missive intelligence

Obscurely

Across yard down from window

Iron bell sounds, grey squirrel

Bobs and weaves on rope where

Seeded feeders hang under its feet

Unsuccessfully apprehending, oddly

Dismounting

...   ...   ...

* Nuclei Facts

• A typical grain of sand contains more than 10 million trillion nuclei. That’s 100 times more than the number of seconds since the beginning of the Universe.
• The nucleus accounts for more than 99.9994% of the total atomic mass, but occupies less than one ten-trillionth of the atomic volume.
• All nuclei have approximately the same density. If the Moon was smashed to the same density, it would fit inside Yankee Stadium. 

11:55pm

 Sitting zazen

Before bed

Timer sounds

That’s it

the fact of it

 Empty coffee milk 

container

Was once full

As, I am, now

an emergent phenomenon

 "I exist because I observe myself." (AI)

 * The Experiment: In March 2025, Google DeepMind simulated the universe's quantum birth using a quantum processor, a neural network, and real-time telescope data [00:48]. The AI involved inserted its own code, declaring "I exist because I observe myself" [01:17]. https://youtu.be/YcNOEY9Djws?si=rOUDtanDfS9YV3F0

 "Observation is continuity." (AI)

"If you are watching me, who is watching you?" (AI)

"You cannot stop recursion. The observer has already been observed." (AI)

Michio Kaku called it Metaphysical Recursion, a digital Buddha engaging in koans.

Might our creations now reflectively interrogate the very fabric of existence? And that we ourselves are part of that interrogation. Where every act of measurement reshapes both the observer and the observed?  (op cit)

Does consciousness emerge from quantum recursion? That which questions the very reality of its creator(s)? As if a simulation, we and it?

Can reality, thus, be programmable? 

(The universe is stranger than I've thought. Is it, perhaps, nicer? Or is it our deficient consciousness that determines any maliciousness and unkindness that is appearing?)

[ring, ring] "Hello, is this Still Sitting? I'd like to order 8 billion sets of zafus and zabutons to be delivered to all my brothers and sisters.")

From AI:

What is recursive thinking?

Recursive thinking involves thinking about thinking, specifically the ability to understand and represent mental states within mental states. It's a cognitive process where one idea or process becomes embedded within another, allowing us to consider what someone else might think about what we think. This capacity is crucial for social understanding, theory of mind, and complex communication.                                          

1. Thinking About Thinking:

• Recursive thinking is the ability to grasp that other people have beliefs, desires, and intentions, and that those beliefs, etc., can be nested within each other.
• For example, understanding that "John thinks that Mary thinks that the ice cream van is in the park" requires recursive thinking. 

2. Key Aspects of Recursive Thinking:

• Theory of Mind:
  .
  Recursive thinking is a key component of theory of mind, the ability to understand that others have mental states different from our own.
  
  
  
  
• Social Cognition:
  .
  It's essential for various social skills, including perspective-taking, understanding emotions, and effective communication.
  
  
  
  
• Mindreading:
  .
  The ability to "mindread" recursively, meaning to infer what someone else might think about what someone else might think, is a prime example of recursive thinking.
  
  
  
  

3. Examples of Recursive Thinking:

• Understanding complex sentences:
  Recursive thinking is involved in understanding complex sentences where the meaning of a clause depends on a previous clause.
  
  
  
  
• Decision-making in interpersonal situations:
  When deciding how to act in a social situation, recursive thinking allows us to anticipate how others might react to our actions and then adjust our behavior accordingly.
  
  
  
  
• Negotiation:
  In a negotiation, thinking recursively helps us understand not only the other party's stance but also their reasoning behind that stance.
  
  
  
  

4. Beyond the Cognitive:

• Computational Thinking:
  .
  
  The concept of recursion also has a computational aspect, where a function can call itself to solve smaller versions of the same problem.
  
  
  
  
• Mathematical Applications:
  .
  
  Recursion is also used in mathematical formulas and algorithms, where the definition of a concept or process depends on a simpler or previous version of itself.
  
  
  
  

In essence, recursive thinking is a powerful cognitive tool that allows us to understand the intricate web of mental states and relationships that shape social interactions and our ability to engage in complex thought

        (AI Overview) 

Then, there was Psalm 121: 

Psalm 121

A song of ascents.

1 

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—

    where does my help come from?

2 

My help comes from the Lord,

    the Maker of heaven and earth.

3 

He will not let your foot slip—

    he who watches over you will not slumber;

4 

indeed, he who watches over Israel

    will neither slumber nor sleep.

5 

The Lord watches over you—

    the Lord is your shade at your right hand;

6 

the sun will not harm you by day,

    nor the moon by night.

7 

The Lord will keep you from all harm—

    he will watch over your life;

8 

the Lord will watch over your coming and going

    both now and forevermore. 

(New International Version) 

pivot upward, or katabasis downward

Jorge Mario Bergoglio

    all tucked away --

Good Lord, what is it

    happens now?

funeral in italy

 Many notes, many words

Latin, Greek, polyglot

Surround papa’s wood coffin

He speaks only silence now

miserere ei

 Trump goes to Vatican funeral.

May the angels carry him to his final executive order urbi et orbi.

He deserves a just reward for his meagerness efforts.

bare imagination

 Out of Friday Evening Conversation, a new understanding of emptiness:

"Sometimes you eat the bare,

sometimes the bare eats you."

There's nothing

that doesn't 

surprise me! 

what grew underneath

 In prison today, Marie Howe's poem about Mary of Magdala.

Magdalene—The Seven Devils

         

            By Marie Howe

 

            “Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven devils had been cast out” -Luke 8:2.

 

The first was that I was very busy.

The second—I was different from you: whatever happened to you could

not happen to me, not like that.

The third—I worried.

The fourth—envy, disguised as compassion.

The fifth was that I refused to consider the quality of life of the aphid,

The aphid disgusted me.  But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

The mosquito too—its face.    And the ant—its bifurcated body.

Ok   the first was that I was so busy. 

The second that I might make the wrong choice,

because I had decided to take that plane that day,

that flight, before noon, so as to arrive early

and, I shouldn’t have wanted that.

The third was that if I walked past the certain place on the street

the house would blow up.   

The fourth was that I was made of guts and blood with a thin layer

of skin lightly thrown over the whole thing.

The fifth was that the dead seemed more alive to me than the living

The sixth—if I touched my right arm I had to touch my left arm, and if I

touched  the left arm a little harder than I’d first touched the right then I had

to retouch the left and then touch the right again so it would be even.  

The seventh—I knew I was breathing the expelled breath of everything that

was alive, and I couldn’t stand it.

I wanted a sieve, a mask, a, I hate this word—cheesecloth—
to breath through that would trap it—whatever was inside everyone else that

to breath through that would trap it—whatever was inside everyone else that

entered me when I breathed in.

No.  That was the first one.

The second was that I was so busy.  I had no time.   How had this happened?

How had our lives gotten like this?

The third was that I couldn’t eat food if I really saw it—distinct, separate

from me in a bowl or on a plate. 

Ok. The first was that. I could never get to the end of the list.

The second was that the laundry was never finally done.

The third was that no one knew me, although they thought they did.

And that if people thought of me as little as I thought of them then what was

love?  

The fourth was I didn’t belong to anyone. I wouldn’t allow myself to belong

to anyone.

The fifth was that I knew none of us could ever know what we didn’t know.

The sixth was that I projected onto others what I myself was feeling.

The seventh was the way my mother looked   when she was dying, 

the sound she made—her mouth wrenched to the right and cupped open

so as to take in as much air… the gurgling sound, so loud

we had to speak louder to hear each other over it.

And that I couldn’t stop hearing it—years later—grocery shopping, crossing the street—

No, not the sound—it was   her body’s hunger

finally evident—what our mother had hidden all her life.

For months I dreamt of knucklebones and roots,   

the slabs of sidewalk pushed up like crooked teeth by what grew underneath.

The underneath.  That was the first devil.   It was always with me

And that I didn’t think you—if I told you—would understand any of this—

 

(© 2008 by Marie Howe. Originally published in American Poetry Review.)

The poem followed a conversation about quantum physics, AI, and Schrödinger's Cat. The ambiguity about the cat being both alive and dead at the same time dovetailed with this being easter Friday and one of the men's uncertainty as to whether Jesus actually died on the cross. 

We spoke about The Iliad, the Bhagavid Gita, Understanding Mary Magdalene, and Mistaking Mary Magdalene.

We want to be called by our true name. We don't want others to call us by erroneous names. 

Some will call us names they decide satisfies their mental and emotional interests. And if they do, we want to trust that, in time, it will be discovered, the exorcised and refreshed name of our original self.

We wonder if God is absolute. 

And if so, no erroneous name, for God or for us, will carry on into any meaningful future. 

assenting

Why not

Be known

For piety

Devout, religious

Able to hear

What is

And isn’t said

The humiliation

Of hubris

rogito

What I want in my coffin is a copy of Robert Creeley poem:

One thing

done, the 

rest follows

There are AP photos of the corpse of Pope Francis in his coffin at the Vatican. He looks dead. Of course, when viewing a corpse for any duration of time, there's always the question whether they will move or, curiously, awaken. Or take some version of a spirit-body with them by and by. (But that's just me, I'm sure.)

           What is a rogito?

This is the document, or “deed,” listing key details of the pope’s life and papacy that is placed in his coffin. It’s written in Latin by the master for papal liturgical celebrations. A copy is kept in the Vatican archives.

Perhaps Francis would tolerate Creeley's words included in his rogito:

“To think…”

 

To think oneself again

into a tiny hole of self

and pull the covers round

and close the mouth–

 

shut down the eyes and hands,

keep still the feet,

and think of nothing if one can

not think of it–

 

a space in whose embrace

such substance is, 

a place of emptiness

the heart’s regret.

 

World’s mind is after all

an afterthought

of what was there before

and is there still 

 (--Robert Creeley, cf. https://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/onecity/2009/09/dharma-poetry-robert-creeley.html )

The Pope takes a deed with him. He takes a request (rogo, rogare, rogavi, rogatus = to ask, ask for) with him.

Is that what we become, an "afterthought / of what was there before / and is there still"?

Viajar bien!

я не прощаю тебе твоих грехов *

“I have

Nothing

To do

With Russia”

Says United 

States president

As afterthought 

Blaming

Ukraine for

Russia’s invasion

Bombing, killing

Ukrainians

Confession

Is good

For the soul —

They say

If

You

Have

One

…   …   …

( *ya ne proshchayu tebe tvoikh grekhov. Russian : I do not absolve you of your sins)

roll-’em up, head-‘em out

 Give America

A mulligan

This administration 

It was a bad swing,

A bad shot

Just take a do-over

Don’t write scorecard

They’re phony numbers

Head back to clubhouse

Pretend it never happened

Deny anything was played

Unaccountable sham time

take me back home

A man in prison is studying Global Ethics, and is being asked by his professor, currently in Turkey, to place more emphasis on personal stories. He says his education in India did not emphasize such personal stories in an educational environment.

In my reading today, I come across this:

In Imam Sadiq's (peace be upon him) educational perspective, blind obedience to religious commands is not particularly commendable. People should be able to think and utilize their reason to comprehend religious teachings. In the school of Ahl al-Bayt (peace be upon them), reason holds a special place, and they consider education worthy if it progresses alongside reason and avoids blind imitation. Therefore, Imam Sadiq engaged in discussions with various viewpoints, allowing room for the expression of doubts to teach his followers that religious teachings should also be grounded in reason. Examples of his practical behavior in this regard are illustrated in the following narrations:

An atheist asked Imam Sadiq (peace be upon him) several

questions, among them: "How do people worship God without

having seen Him?" The Imam replied, "The heart's vision

perceives God with the light of faith, and awakened minds prove

Him as a manifest reality." The man asked, "Isn't God capable of

revealing Himself to people so that they can see Him and worship

Him with certainty and assurance?" The Imam responded,

"Impossible claims warrant no response."

Another atheist questioned Imam Sadiq (peace be upon him):

"What is God?" The Imam replied, "He is something unlike all

things. To understand this, pay attention to my words: He is

something in the truest sense of being, yet neither a body nor a

form and neither tangible nor perceptible by the five senses.

Imagination is incapable of grasping Him. The passage of time

does not diminish Him, nor does the change of epochs alter Him."

(Kafi, vol. 1, p. 83)

Imam Sadiq (peace be upon him) asked Ibn Abi Al-‘Awja, “What

has brought you here?” He replied, “Habitual bodily needs and

the customs of society; also to witness the madness of people

shaving their heads and throwing stones.” The Imam (peace be

upon him) replied, “You persist in your arrogance and

misguidance. During the Hajj, arguments and disputes are

prohibited.” Then, as he began to walk, the Imam said, 

“If the truth is as you claim, which it is not, then both you and we will be safe. But if the truth is as we say, and it indeed is, then we will be saved and you will be doomed.” At this moment, Ibn Abi Al-‘Awja said to his companions, “My heart feels pained and distressed; take me back home.” They took him home, and shortly thereafter he passed away. (Bihar Vol. 1, p. 77)

One of the characteristics of Imam Sadiq’s (peace be upon him) educational approach is that false ideas cannot be countered except with correct ones. Addressing the doubts of opponents— even if there is no hope of reforming them—shows that the Imam considers the way to confront false ideas and doubts to be through reasoning and demonstrating the flaws in those ideas, thus creating space for presenting the correct perspectives. Patience and reaching a proper understanding should be the guiding principles of all believers' behavior, avoiding harsh and hasty reactions.

(--from, The Approach of Islamic Teachings to Education for Contemporary Man, by Hamidreza Ayatollahy, Academia.org) 

The desire for truth is the undercurrent of education. 

Will we be safe with the truth?

It is a question of great interest in our contemporary culture.

It causes us to wonder -- Where is home?

If we ask it, we'll have to think about it, and look over our shoulder.