Saturday, January 09, 2016

above and beyond yes and no

Yes

above all

mercy

knows no

bounds;

no

knows

mercy,

all, above

Yes

Friday, January 08, 2016

what makes us grateful

There were 10 of us for Buddhist practice and meetingbrook conversation in prison this morning.

There were 5 of us attending the needs of a woman in the emergency department of an Augusta hospital this afternoon and evening.

There are two of us returning tired to the hermitage.

A white dog climbs stairs.

God remains a mystery.

This makes us grateful.

Thursday, January 07, 2016

absurd times absurd is absurd squared

Listening to information about TPP, WTO, and NAFTA I'm convinced that the age of Governments is over and the world of Corporations has replaced them.

Here's how it works: people elect politicians, they then make laws benefitting corporations, then they resign and work for the corporations, being paid with the money they funneled to themselves.

Real people are diminished and Corporations are now virtual people. 

People are deemed idiots not to see the absurd way things operate in this absurd world.

Wednesday, January 06, 2016

fellow volunteer, friend from prison Buddhist/conversation group, sends Rumi, perfect


                                ONLY BREATH

Not Christian, or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi or zen. Not any religion.

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist

am not an entity in this world or next.
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner only that
breath breathing human being. 


(--Rumi, An Excerpt from the translations of Coleman Barks)

Tuesday, January 05, 2016

philosophy of education

Learn for yourself what is your passion.
Learn for others what they need you to know for you to do their work.
Learn for the situation what it wants to teach you.

Lernen lassen, workliche.

stoking wood stove, haiku

2 degrees with wind

house draws itself in, prayer

finds its way through dark

Monday, January 04, 2016

Pass me, poetry, please

I'm a better Catholic because I'm Buddhist.

I'm a better Buddhist because I'm Christian.

As an agnostic, I'm a better human.


In another exchange, Fr. Thomas Keating, one of the founders of the Centering Prayer movement, whose purpose is to renew the Christian mystical tradition, asked: "..when one has shed this ego-centeredness with its aggression and selfish self-seeking, is there not still an identity left, which may actually be very good?" 
The Tibetan monk Trungpa Rinpoche responded: "Well, I think now we have reached the key point. Egolessness means that there is no ego –at all." 
Fr. Keating: "That’s what I thought it meant…" 
Trungpa Rinpoche: "Union with God cannot take place when there is any form of ego. Any whatsoever. In order to be one with God, one has to become formless. Then you will see God." 
Fr. Keating: "This is the point I was trying to make for Christians by quoting the agonizing words of Christ on the cross. He cried out, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34) It seems that his sense of personal relationship with God, as God’s son, had disappeared. Many interpreters say that this was only a temporary experience. But I am inclined to think, in light of the Buddhist description of no-self, that he was passing into a stage beyond the personal self, however holy and beautiful that self had been. That final stage would then also have to be defined as the primary Christian experience. Christ has called us Christians not just so that so that we will accept him as savior, but so that we will follow the same process that brought him to his final stage of consciousness." 126 
CHRISTIANITY IN THE CRUCIBLE OF EAST-WEST DIALOGUE: A Critical Look at Catholic Participation By James Arraj Originally published by Inner Growth Books, LLC, 2001 ISBN: 0-914073-03-6 (paperback edition) and GOD, ZEN AND THE INTUITION OF BEING By James Arraj Originally published by Inner Growth Books, LLC, 1988 ISBN: 0-914073-20-6 (paperback edition) Copyright James Arraj.Loc 825, kindle)

Thay, it is said, cannot speak

This suggests a rethinking of that --
Thich Nhat Hanh, Poetry, Peace, Shambhala Sun, Lion's Roar, BuddhismCalligraphy by Thich Nhat Hanh

Sunday, January 03, 2016

a lone pre sent,


silence
re
cords
everything
snug
ly
as a 
whole
with
a bow
in pass
ing