Saturday, December 10, 2011

Coming to: ad venire;14

We renew promises this feast of Thomas Merton at morning practice in the Thomas Merton Bookshed Retreat.
  Another contrast with Augustine is his sense of humour. No-one can be all bad who says of Michelangelo’s Moses that “I’m glad the thing couldn’t speak, for it would probably have given out some very heavy statements”; or of Platonic philosophy that “there is a considerable difference between Plato and Plotinus, but I am not enough of a philosopher to know what it is. Thank God I shall never again have to try and find out, either.” Even when he performs some meritorious action, he scrupulously points out his mixed motives. Here he is on the way to hospital to be treated for appendicitis:
  ‘In the Fourteenth Street subway there was a drunk. And he was really drunk. He was lying prostrate in the middle of the turnstiles, in everybody’s way. Several people pushed him and told him to get up and get out of there, but he could not even get himself up on his feet.
  ‘I thought to myself: “If I try to lift him out of there, my appendix will burst, and I too will be lying there in the turnstiles along with him.” With my nervousness tempered by a nice warm feeling of smugness and self-complacency, I took the drunk by the shoulders and laboriously hauled him backwards out of the turnstiles and propped him up against the wall. He groaned feebly in protest.
  ‘Then, mentally congratulating myself for my great solicitude and charity towards drunks, I entered the turnstile and went down to take the train to the hospital. As I looked back, over my shoulder, from the bottom of the stairs, I could see the drunk slowly and painfully crawling back towards the turnstile, where he once again flung himself down, prostrate, across the opening, and blocked the passage as he had done before.’
 
 Thus he skillfully deflates the whole drama and convinces the reader that the act was at once infinitely unimportant and infinitely worth doing. This is, of course, true of everything we do; but the truth is easier to assimilate when you see it in action. http://www.universalis.com/-500/today.htm
Back in Wohnkuche we retell stories about our foolishness over the years -- the farms and properties we thought might be meetingbrook, the visit to the Bishop we thought might be a new form of religious life, the pleasant fiasco of meetingbrook in the marketplace we thought would keep us solvent. Mostly we reminisce about the lovely odd and wonderfully off-center folks passing through meetingbrook -- and still do.
“What is it not to sin? Do not ask much; go, the silent flowers will tell you.” (Angelus Silesia né Johannes Scheffler (1624-1677) )
Folly is the unwritten history of meetingbrook.
Foolishness
For other uses, see Foolish and Fool.
Foolishness is the lack of wisdom. In this sense it differs from stupidity, which is the lack of intelligence.[citation needed] An act of foolishness is sometimes referred to as a folly.

Foolishness and wisdom are contrasted in Paul's letter to the Corinthians. He condemns intellectual arrogance and advocates a humble attitude of foolishness in which it is then possible to learn. Plato likewise said, "He is the wisest man who knows himself to be ill-equipped for the study of wisdom" but Paul makes a distinction between wisdom and the reason of the Greeks.[1][2]
(Wikipedia)
Still, we recite our promises, affirm we wish to continue them, then Saskia does bell chant, a lovely listening to the unabashed sound of brass bowl saying what it and inviter converse.
Three promises:

Contemplation, Conversation, Correspondence.
...as held by Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage“m.o.n.o.”(monastics of no other).

Contemplation is the promise of simplicity.
It is a gift of poverty inviting open waiting, receptive trust, attention, and watchful presence. It is a simple Being-With.
It is attentive presence.

Conversation is the promise of integrity.
It is a chaste and complete intention to listen and speak, lovingly and respectfully, with each and all made present to us. It is a wholeness of listening and speaking.
It is root silence.

Correspondence is the promise of faithful engagement.
It is responsible attention and intention offered obediently to the Source of all Being, to the Human Family, to Nature. It is a faithful engagement with all sentient beings, with this present world, with existence with all its needs & joys, sorrows & hope.
It is transparent service.

…………………………………………………………………

Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage invites & welcomes individuals interested in the practice of these 3 promises in their life. Whether the interest is in conversing, praying, deepening, learning, or even holding these 3 promises, we invite you to enter the inquiry and stillness. May the loving light and the compassionate peace of the Christ and the Bodhisattva accompany and support the efforts of each one.

………………………………………………………………..

Quotes:
 
1. We are going to have to create a new language of prayer. (Thomas Merton, Calcutta 1968)

2. When you go apart to be alone for prayer…see that nothing remains in your consciousness mind save a naked intent stretching out toward God. Leave it stripped of every particular idea about God (what he is like in himself or in his works) and keep only the awareness that he is as he is. Let him be thus, I pray you, and force him not to be otherwise. (Anonymous)

3. I long for a great lake of ale. / I long for the men of heaven in my house. / I long for cheerfulness in their drinking. / And I long for Jesus to be there among them. (Brigid, Celtic saint)

4. It is not by closing your eyes that you see your own nature. On the contrary, you must open your eyes wide and wake up to the real situation in the world to see completely your whole Dharma Treasure, your whole Dharma Body. The bombs, the hunger, the pursuit of wealth and power - these are not separate from your nature….You will suffer, but your pain will not come from your own worries and fears. You will suffer because of your kinship with all beings, because you have the compassion of an awakened one, a Bodhisattva. (Thich Nhat Hanh)

5. He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion. (Sokei-an)
Videbimus!
Latin
Verb
vidēbimus
first-person plural future active indicative of videō
"we shall see, we shall perceive; we shall look (at)"
"we shall observe, we shall note"
"we shall understand, we shall perceive, we shall comprehend"
"we shall look (at), we shall consider, we shall reflect (upon)"
"we shall look out for, we shall see to, we shall care for, we shall provide, we shall make sure" 
(-from Wiktionary)
Prosit!

Friday, December 09, 2011

Coming to: ad venire; 13

In text during Thursday Evening Conversation the phrase "as it is" was read.
Lesson 342
I let forgiveness rest upon all things,
For thus forgiveness will be given me.

I thank You, Father, for Your plan to save me from the hell I made. It is not real. And You have given me the means to prove its unreality to me. The key is in my hand, and I have reached the door beyond which lies the end of dreams. I stand before the gate of Heaven, wondering if I should enter in and be at home. Let me not wait again today. Let me forgive all things, and let creation be as You would have it be and as it is. Let me remember that I am Your Son, and opening the door at last, forget illusions in the blazing light of truth, as memory of You returns to me.

Brother, forgive me now. I come to you to take you home with me. And as we go, the world goes with us on our way to God.
(ACIM lesson 8dec2011)
Is occurred to me it would make a good name for a dog, "as it is," or, Asitis.

Another phrase, "as we go" arises in final sentence, wishing to transform into a name. Hence, "Aswego."

This morning it occurs further that it is a good name for God: Asitis Aswego.

My friends in AA might connect with this neologism/neonate and happily smile at meeting the new arrival.

Through that smile of recognition we hear soft voice saying: "I come to you to take you home with me."

And we are taken with it.

Thursday, December 08, 2011

Closer to our time, there is John Lennon, who in 1980 passed through our sight and disappeared.

IMAGINE

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one


(Lyrics by John Lennon)

Be as one; live as one.

Good words!
What did Buddha see? What breath did he take?

Also this 8th of December, along with the clear transmission of light through her mother into Mary, on this date:
Sakyamuni's Great Awakening

Traditions vary on what happened. Some say he made a great vow to nirvana and Earth to find the root of suffering, or die trying. In other traditions, while meditating he was harassed and tempted by the god Mara (literally, "Destroyer" in Sanskrit), demon of illusion.[3][4] Other traditions simply state that he entered deeper and deeper states of meditation, confronting the nature of the self.
In the Pali Canon, there are several discourses said to be by Buddha himself, relating to this story. In The Longer Discourse to Saccaka (MN 36),[5] the Buddha describes his Enlightenment in three stages:
During the first watch of the night, the Buddha discovered all of his past lives in the cycle of rebirth, realizing that he had been born and reborn countless times before.
During the second watch, the Buddha discovered the Law of Karma, and the importance of living by the Eightfold Path.
During the third watch, the Buddha discovered the Four Noble Truths, finally reaching Nirvana.
In his words:
“ My heart, thus knowing, thus seeing, was released from the fermentation of sensuality, released from the fermentation of becoming, released from the fermentation of ignorance. With release, there was the knowledge, 'Released.' I discerned that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world.'[5] ”

All traditions agree that as the morning star rose in the sky in the early morning,[6] the third watch of the night, Siddhartha finally found the answers he sought and became Enlightened, and experienced Nirvana.[6] Having done so, Siddhartha now became a Buddha or "Awakened One".[6][3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodhi_Day
I'll breathe well knowing what Buddha saw.
Bodhi Day -- or Rohatsu, as it's known in Japan -- is the day the Buddha awakens. It's the day he finds enlightenment, sitting under the pipul tree.
A dear friend asked me the question I'm usually asking: so what? What does Bodhi Day mean? Disclaimer here: I'm not a worshipping kind of Buddhist. I don't believe the Buddha was a god, nor even divine. The whole point to Buddhism is that a human being did this -- achieved enlightenment. And that the rest of us -- because he elected to teach -- can also choose that path.
So here's what I believe, and why Bodhi Day is important:
I believe in little enlightenments -- like the day I realised that all the people and beings and plants and seas and fallen stars still live. In our breaths. That as we breathe out, we breathe our own cells into the air. And as we breathe in, we breathe in dinosaurs and comets and poets and bees and Frederick Douglass and Christopher Marlowe and Rumi and wars and loss and love and all that makes up our amazing world. And this connects us. To each other ~ in a kind of web that extends in all directions. Forever.

(from, Bodhi Day, Rohatsu, or Waking Up; Beliefnet; a personal insight into Rohatsu. BY: Britton Gildersleeve
Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/Inspiration/Articles/Bodhi-Day-Rohatsu-or-Waking-Up.aspx#ixzz1fxA8srZi
Exhale well today!

Coming to: ad venire; 12

Drops drip from ceiling onto chest as I sleep. My chest. Wind groans through large cedars at north edge of house. 4:15am and all is 8Dec. This is the feast celebration of life passing through solid obstacles to reveal itself as nothing other than life-itself-through-itself, or, as some call it, Immaculate Conception.

Mary, the story has it, experienced mu-ge, no-barrier, during her arrival in form. The childhood prayer was: "O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee."

A zen koan prayer might be phrased: How does no-barrier allow no-other to appear with nothing present?

(Pause for effect.) Then response: Rain on sleeping man passes through dream without drenching one image!

Hello, Mary! Hello, all that is passing through! Today is your moveable feast!

And what a feast!

Last night I say to students not to fear the word "nothing."
Peonies

This morning the green fists of the peonies are getting ready
to break my heart
as the sun rises,
as the sun strokes them with his old, buttery fingers

and they open--
pools of lace,
white and pink--
and all day the black ants climb over them,

boring their deep and mysterious holes
into the curls,
craving the sweet sap,
taking it away

to their dark, underground cities--
and all day
under the shifty wind,
as in a dance to the great wedding,

the flowers bend their bright bodies,
and tip their fragrance to the air,
and rise,
their red stems holding

all that dampness and recklessness
gladly and lightly,
and there it is again--
beauty the brave, the exemplary,

blazing open.
Do you love this world?
Do you cherish your humble and silky life?
Do you adore the green grass, with its terror beneath?

Do you also hurry, half-dressed and barefoot, into the garden,
and softly,
and exclaiming of their dearness,
fill your arms with the white and pink flowers,

with their honeyed heaviness, their lush trembling,
their eagerness
to be wild and perfect for a moment, before they are
nothing, forever?

(Poem: "Peonies," by Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press).
Fallingness is our given nature.

As so, nothing falls through each, and, all, falling together!

Wednesday, December 07, 2011

Coming to: ad venire; 11

Submission. To be sent under.
"God is not an object; God is the absolute Subject." (Henry Corbin, in The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism)
No predicate. No modifier. Verb implied and contained in Subject. No reference outside itself. Nothing outside itself.

Thrown under. ("Subject" 'sub'= under; 'jacere'= to throw). "Throw" - Origin: Middle English thrawen, throwen to cause to twist, throw, from Old English thrāwan to cause to twist or turn; akin to Old High German drāen to turn, Latin terere to rub, Greek tribein to rub, tetrainein to bore, pierce (Mirriam-Webster)

Teirein, Greek, to wear out. Is God, as absolute Subject, that which is wearing out, wearing out whatever thinks itself not-god; rubbing down, twisting and turning the mistaken perception or belief that there is 'other' that exists on its own, separate, even separate but equal, in relation to what-is-called-god? Is our phrase "Thrown under the bus" -- meaning colloquially to sacrifice or do away with, really a riddle phrased to be turned over and looked at again? To throw under the "bus" (when reversed) becomes "sub" or "under." Hence, to throw under the under.
Steiner (1978) offers a demarcation in that, a further aspect of Dasein, as argued by Heidegger, is that Dasein is grounded in language; Being-in-the-world expresses itself in discourse. Furthermore, he made a distinction between ‘Rede’, ‘the speech of Dasein’ and ‘Gerede’, ‘talk’. He avoided the triteness of using the term ‘idle chatter’ for ‘talk’ because it was far too reassuring for what he wanted to say. For Heidegger, ‘talk’ had lost its primary relationship-of-being toward the talked about entity and all that ‘talk’ was doing was to ‘pass words along’ or, to ‘gossip emptily’, fostering illusions of understanding that have no real comprehension. Dasein-with-others takes place in an echo chamber of nonstop bogus interaction, with no cognition as to what is being communicated (Steiner 1978).

The differences between authentic and inauthentic lives were contrasted by Heidegger through the agencies of fear set against anxiety, ‘speech’ contrasted with ‘talk’, genuine wonder opposed to mere novelty. Each disparate category comes about as an expected outcome of the complete antithesis between the self-possession of true Dasein and the collective lack of perception of an existence carried out in terms of ‘oneness’ and ‘theyness’. Heidegger denoted this latter state as ‘Verfall’ (‘a falling away from’ ‘a cadence into decline’). Heidegger was careful to point out that the condition of ‘Verfallensein’ (a fallen state) is not sinful, nor is the term meant to cast a moral value judgement.
Heidegger wrote;

“Dasein has, in the first instance, fallen away [abgefallen] from itself as an authentic potentiality for Being its self, and has fallen into the ‘world’. ‘Fallenness’ into the world means an absorption in Being-with-one-another, in so far as the latter is guided by idle talk, curiosity and ambiguity. Through the Interpretation of falling, what we have called the ‘inauthenticity’ of Dasein may now be defined more precisely. On no account however do the terms ‘inauthentic’ and ‘non-authentic’ signify ‘really not’, as if in this mode of Being, Dasein were altogether to lose its Being. ‘Inauthenticity’ does not mean anything like Being-no-longer-in-the-world, but amounts rather to quite a distinctive kind of Being-in-the-world – the kind which is completely fascinated by the ‘world’ and by the Dasein-with of Others in the ‘they’. Not-Being-its-self [Das Nicht-es-selbst-sein] functions as a positive possibility of that entity which, in its essential concern, is absorbed in a world. This kind of not-Being has to be conceived as that kind of Being which is closest to Dasein and in which Dasein maintains itself for the most part."

For Heidegger then, ‘inauthenticity’ and ‘fallenness’ are not mere mishaps or erroneous options. Rather they are essential components of existence, because Dasein is always Dasein-with and a Being-in-the-world into which we have been thrown. Acceding to the enticement of living a mundane existence is simply a part of existing itself. ‘Fallenness’ was a positive for Heidegger in the sense that there must be ‘inauthenticity’, ‘theyness’, and ‘talk’, for Dasein to become aware of its loss of self and strive for its return to authentic Being. ‘Verfall’ turns out to be the completely essential prerequisite towards the repossession of self, the struggle toward true Dasein (Steiner 1978).

Dasein is committed to searching out the authentic via the inauthenticity of its Being-in-the-world and Heidegger said that authentic existence is not something which floats above everyday fallingness. He postulated that a proper instrument is needed for seizing the everydayness and he said that that instrument is ‘care’ [Sorge]. Because in the condition of inauthenticity we ‘fall away from ourselves’, Heidegger said that we simultaneously fall into a frenetic busyness and an emptiness that gives rise to a sense of the uncanny. As we flap about feeling ‘homeless’ our everyday familiarity is shattered (Steiner 1978).

It is uncanniness that declares the pivotal moments in which Angst brings Dasein face to face with the terrible freedom of deciding whether to remain in inauthenticity or to endeavor to attain self-possession. ‘Sorge’ is the means of transcendence beyond being Dasein-with and Dasein-in to become Dasein-for and Sorge must be a ‘care for’ many things. These things include a concern for others, a care for the ready-to-hand, but in principle Sorge is a caring for the presentness and obscurity of Being itself (Steiner 1978). Heidegger said;
“When Dasein ‘understands’ uncanniness in the everyday manner, it does so by turning away from it in falling; in this turning away, the ‘not-at-home’ gets ‘dimmed down’. Yet the everydayness of this fleeing shows phenomenally that anxiety, as a basic state of mind, belongs to Dasein’s essential state of Being-in-the-world, which, as one that is existential, is never present-at-hand but is itself always in a mode of factical Being-there – that is, in the mode of a state of mind.”
For Heidegger, it is Sorge that signifies a mans existence and makes it meaningful. To be-in-the-world in an authentic existential pretext is to be ‘careful’. Heidegger concluded that ‘care’ is the primordial state of Being as Dasein strives towards authenticity (Steiner 1978).

(from, What Heidegger Means by Being-in-the-World, by Roy Hornsby, http://royby.com/philosophy/pages/dasein.html
Spirituality, or classical metaphysics,(Greek: τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά), where being-qua-being is focus of attention, is not easy to understand. It is difficult to submit, to be sent under. We prefer to be on top of things, even over the top. To rise to the heights. To stand above, to lord over. To make it to the highest peak. This is perhaps why there is no taste for authentic spirituality in the marketplace of spiritual materialism. Even "One nation under God" fails to alert attention to what is proclaimed. "Indivisible with liberty" seems even more foreign.
While everyone else
Is so busy striving,
The lone traveler
Is at ease by himself.
He's been living outside of convention
For a long time now;
In his pouch there is nothing at all.
When he walks,
He takes a cane for a companion;
When he talks,
He has the rocks for an audience.
If you ask him what his religion is,
When hungry it's a bowl of rice.

- Wen-siang (1210-1280)
What is uncanny is that we care.

Even if we don't know what to do or what to say, we care.

Being thrown-into and fallen-away we are dwelling at the portal of submission where care, dare I say, compassion and love, long to emerge through our being-in-the-world with one another into an understanding distinct and indivisible, as simple as a bowl of rice, a religion of proximate awareness, a philosophy of unity with diversity.

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

I stopped the talk by Robert Kennedy SJ, Roshi as he was saying about awakening that it was "clarity of mind from beginning to end."

Tuesday Evening Practice in Merton Retreat had a time limit. And that's that.

Even if no beginning. Even if no end.

Clarity of mind.

Suffices.

Coming to: ad venire; 10

Rest well. Feel well.

That's what I say as I leave to the person I am visiting in the psychiatric unit. Two others arrived as I did. Thus I remained a silent fourth in an echoing room during fragments of an old ritual conversing around phantom fire pit comfortable with nothing to say. They could be visiting me.
The Mountains' Friend

The broad arms of this dusty world
Hold few true friends.
One feels the pangs of loneliness, and sees
How cold the autumn air becomes!
But no, behold your search is ended here,
For countless mountains,
Blue afar, and green ones near,
Remain your friends eternally.

- Jakushitsu Genko Zenji (1290–1368)
For a while it is difficult to determine who is the patient and who the visitors. This happens at prison also; who's the cop, the inmate, the staff, the visitor? Pericopes of memory arise and are given words. Thoughts enter without knocking. Side glances thrown without trace of irony. Subtle theater in long run, actors no longer cue lines, it is a random emergence of Ionesco and Beckett writing absurd cross-dialogue. Somewhere, having forgotten play in progress, director sips espresso looking out blinds behind window reflecting back images of medicated theories with no clock on wall.
IN THE GALLERY OF THE ORDINARY

In their excess, their blowsy dreaming
and King Solomon-like tempers, the clouds
possess the grandeur of eighteenth-century oils,

when a painter earned his profession
as an anatomist. Those artists of verdigris
and gamboge, too gorged on joy, perhaps,

treated that blank pasture of the “heavens”
like something that had lived.
Their crawly undoings remind us

of the mean curiosities of sheep, the sea’s
half-remembered boil, or a few twisted bolls
of cotton—the morning phosphorescent

or sunset a dull, worn-out gilt.
The nights there were scumbled with light.
How could we ever have taken them

for the abstinence of art?

(Poem by William Logan)
I am perfectly at home in the curious ordinary of displaced images. Those who look for order and odes will squirm amid the erratic and unrhymed arias of unprocessed poetry. The protocol placers are wealthy with set pieces while the riffraff pencil or scampish bamboo brush hardly recognize what dull-lead or stone-rubbed black ink leave as trace behind.

What I really want to say has to do with Sintaklaas.
Saint Nicholas

St. Nicholas "Lipensky" (1294 Russian icon)
Bishop of Myra, Defender of Orthodoxy, Wonderworker, Holy Hierarch
Born c. 270 AD (the Ides of March)[1]
Patara, Lycia, Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey)
Died 6 December 343 AD
Myra, Lycia
Honored in Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, Lutheranism
Canonized Pre-Congregation
Major shrine Basilica di San Nicola, Bari, Italy
Feast
6 December [O.S. 19 December](main feast day)
9 May [O.S. 22 May](translation of relics)
(The "O.S." dates are for the Julian Calendar used by most Eastern churches)[2]
Attributes Vested as a Bishop. In Eastern Christianity, wearing an omophorion and holding a Gospel Book. Sometimes shown with Jesus Christ over one shoulder, holding a Gospel Book, and with the Theotokos over the other shoulder, holding an omophorion
Patronage Children, sailors, fishermen, merchants, broadcasters, the falsely accused, prostitutes, repentant thieves, pharmacists, archers, pawnbrokers

St Nicholas
Saint Nicholas (Greek: Άγιος Νικόλαος, Hagios ["holy"] Nicolaos ["victory of the people"]) (270–6 December 343),[3][4] also called Nikolaos of Myra, was a historic 4th-century saint and Greek[5] Bishop of Myra (Demre, in Lycia, part of modern-day Turkey). Because of the many miracles attributed to his intercession, he is also known as Nikolaos the Wonderworker (Greek: Νικόλαος ο Θαυματουργός, Nikolaos o Thaumaturgos). He had a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him, and thus became the model for Santa Claus, whose modern name comes from the Dutch Sinterklaas, itself from a series of elisions and corruptions of the transliteration of "Saint Nikolaos". His reputation evolved among the faithful, as was common for early Christian saints.[6] In 1087, his relics were furtively translated to Bari, in southeastern Italy; for this reason, he is also known as Nikolaos of Bari. His feastday is 6 December [O.S. 19 December].
(--Wikipedia)
Here's to fishermen, prostitutes, and pawnbrokers!

Here's to filling shoes with candy and small gifts on this feast!

Here's to all the disorders and disrepair needing master-craftsmen to refashion!

Art is no abstinence.

Poetry is the next phase unphrased, merely attended.

Monday, December 05, 2011

Raven lands on dead branch. Surveys wetland. Leaps into downward sweep. Disappears.

What has it seen?

Where gone?
"Simplicity is the integration and unification of human capacities.
It is the peak sustained by a whole mountain of interconnected and interdependent parts, in which each part acts according to its nature while in complete harmony with every other part.
The vegetative, animal, and human faculties act in concert, each contributing in its own way and integrated into the more developed levels of consciousness. In this way they all are joined in complete submission to the spiritual will, which in turn is totally open to the divine will, both in oneself and in all one’s relationships." 

( - Thomas Keating, from the December issue of
The Contemplative Outreach News)
It is back on limb. Bald Mountain takes shape all around it's shimmering black placement.

Gone again, mountain returns to itself.

Coming to: ad venire; 9

I am listening for god. I am looking for god.

I will not hear god. I will not see god.

God is listening through me. God is seeing through me.

God is, as I am, nowhere to be heard. God is, as I am, nowhere to be seen.
Because you grasp labels and slogans,
You are hindered by those labels and slogans,
Both those used in ordinary life and those
Considered sacred.
Thus they obstruct your perception of objective truth,
And you cannot understand clearly
.
- Linji (d. 867)
Let's begin again.

I am listening for god. There is no "I."
There is only "I am" listening through what "I" mistakenly think of as me.

I am looking for god. There is no "I."
There is only "I am" looking through what "I" mistakenly think of as me.

What is...god...listening to?
What is...god...looking for?

God is listening to the empty sound where "I" no longer clinks against anything.
God is looking for nothing in that place where "I" once thought it was but cannot occupy due to absence.

Only god is. Nothing else is.

What does this mean?

Look!
Listen!

Stop no...stopping here!

Go on!

Really...go on!

What is going on?
Who is going on?
Archaic Torso of Apollo

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast’s fur:

would not, from all the borders of itself,
burst like a star: for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life
.

(Poem by Rainer Maria Rilke)
We are neither here nor there.

Where are we? Where am I?
We don't know. I don't know.

For "here/there" is no place.
"That" does not see you.

You are listened through.
You are seen through.

God is doing-this. Listening.
God is observing-this. Looking.

Is there anyone hearing?
Is there anyone seeing?

Yes, yes, no/one.

Yes, yes, every/one.

You are correct -- there is nothing being said here.

Only the saying itself, the seeing itself, matters.

God is seeing/itself.
God is saying/itself.

God is where I am not to be found.


Sunday, December 04, 2011

Coming to: ad venire; 8

Sabbath. (Sabbaton, in Greek. Shabbath, in Hebrew.) To rest.
Seeing into Nothingness
This is the true seeing,
The eternal seeing

- Shen-hui (8th cent)
Emmet Fox says that righteousness is harmonious thinking.

May each rest well. Today. In life. Through death.

Allowing whatever we are coming to brighten the night.