abscondita est vita

 I disappear

not to be   (seem)

thank you for your kindness

for everything

If you should sight me

no need to    (say hello)

you can, if you want

say a small prayer

for all of us the disappeared

In death in life    (in birth)

universe blinks on and off at more than 1 trillion cycles every second

 Friday morning prison

with billy collins poem

our ordinary loveliness

speaking instant reality 

as it comes and goes  

passing into mythos

dia-critical

 1.

I have long

wondered about God --

now I wander within God

finding myself nowhere

2.

I figure I only have

a few days to live --

what a grand success

to have lived until now

3.

where is the inside where

the outside --

(don't ask ...where)

reside now...

4.

be outrageous

it beats

the heart's

inne-r-age

one red brick beside gray stone

 brown squirrel under yew bush

there's nothing there for you

yesterday I moved your cousin

off the road, smashed and bloodied

one lives one dies one walks road

snow bowl closed in the rain

the world is imagination

we seldom use it well

only soundless diaphanous haecceity

  the gaze 

soundless language 

only watchful 

semiotic 

philologists 

can see through 

a hermeneutic 

without detection 

or meaning 

only diaphaneity 

only haecceity 

cat food and international task

 they think

I follow

them

the cats

go down 

stairs

their complaints

about 

each other

for peace 

in world

I'll follow

then fly

to gaza/israel

and ukraine/russia

it will

be a busy

day

opening tins

and satisfying

stomachs

ecce esse

Christus natus est 

    what does it mean to say

    Christ is born

Latin word for "to be"

    is esse

"Is" born

the word for "behold"

    is ecce

And so --

    ecce esse

    behold being

Christ is

    being born

Sit with

    this

a while

consider

    what is

being

    revealed

the getting out, or, moving through with

We trend toward being-with-out.

Drizzly Wednesday.

"The universe is God in evolution. We are Christ in evolution. We are God's becoming."

    (--Ilia Delio, re Teilhard de Chardin's thought)

Or, as Robert Creeley wrote:

The Rain 

All night the sound had

come back again,

and again falls

this quiet, persistent rain.

 

What am I to myself

that must be remembered,

insisted upon

so often? Is it

 

that never the ease,

even the hardness,

of rain falling

will have for me

 

something other than this,

something not so insistent—

am I to be locked in this

final uneasiness.

 

Love, if you love me,

lie next to me.

Be for me, like rain,

the getting out

 

of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-

lust of intentional indifference.

Be wet 

with a decent happiness.  

             (--from Selected Poems of Robert Creeley by Robert Creeley, c.1991) 

May the glorious 

tumblesault

of God

be-with-in 

you! 

outer world is our inner projection

 Tarping remaining

Ground drop wood as rain begins —

Monks in France chant Prime

This radical emptiness

Cannot last for much longer

slavery must end

 We’re on our own, no

reliance on external authority —

See your own way through

It’s all that’s left us

morning zazen

1.

 everything is

part of it

nothing is

all of it

2.

grooming mountain

snow made 

from

blowing machines

Ragged to 

welcome skiers

3.

chapel-zendo

window open

breeze wavers banner of

symbols of faiths --

as eight auspices

swivels its hips

epilogue

 Last thing this Christmas 

Strangely empty and serene

Just like God like Christ

on maroon zabuton

 Dead mouse resting smile

On back beside black zafu

My Christmas zazen

I take and place beside rock

Where God’s ground leaves — this small monk

beauty and value

 Nativity

by Gary DuBois*

. . . 

*"Over the course of working with stone from discarded scraps, I’ve come to see this work as a redemptive metaphor — beauty and value restored to the broken and rejected. In a society full of broken and hurting people the story of these stones reminds me that there is hope. Hope of redemption even for broken people, like me."

(Gary DuBois)

I wrote a poem once. It's titled "The Stones Speak, I am Silent" (Thomas, in film "Mindwalk")

You know, as Merlin once said to King Arthur... "Don't dishonor your feast by rejecting what's come to it". (Thomas, in film "Mindwalk" 1990)

and so, it is thisness

Nothingness. 

There is no such thing as self-sufficiency.  

"Let there be light." (Genesis 1:3) 

Things are worded into appearance.

What is, who is, this worder?

What is, who is, this wonder?

Things cannot exist on their own, which means, in reality, they do not exist. (--in Philosophy of Nothingness and Love, by Kiyokazu Nakatomi) 

God, we might say, does not exist.

God, you might think, chose not to be on (t)his own, but to enter into a newly created relationality that (perhaps) there was no need for before because there was only the unexpressed being-of-God.

God, you might say, was (is) the nothingness out of which all that is comes to be.

But coming-to-be does not necessarily imply standing out from (ex-isting) that which is ground-of-being.

God, it might be said, is the ground-of-being.

And all that has been brought into being is part and parcel of that ground-of-being.

It is only when we believe we are separate from that ground, only when we act in such a way that indicates our actions are predicated on an ignorance of the reality, or belief that the core ground-of-being that is our nature is not our intrinsic and inchoate nature or true reality, that such illusory perception, such erroneous belief, takes on a working delusion so prevalent in our existing world with its preference of comparative merit, hierarchical privilege and superiority.

So it is, as some say, we are broken. 

"Who told you that you were naked?" (Genesis 3:11)

Broken away from root relationality with its concomitant impetus of compassionate interaction, helpful service, and loving humility. Scattered on earth's floor like broken branches after storm, aftermath of bad belief and odd ideology. "Let's be great again!" (Our odd pretense toward exclusionary dominance.)

God does not exist. We do not exist.

God is the invisible yet transparent clarity-presence of what we confusedly call 'control.'

When I first read (at then friend and poet John Maloney's insistence) Philip Whalen's book of poems fifty years ago On Bear's Head there was this piece that now reveals itself:

4:2-59 Take I

What I need is lots of money

No

What I need is somebody to love with unparalleled energy

and devotion for 24 hours and then goodbye

I can escape too easily from this time & this place

That isn’t the reason I’m here

What I need is where am I

Sometimes a bed of nails is really necessary to any man

Or a wall (Olson, in conversation, “That wall, it has to be there!”)

Where are my hands.

Where are my lungs.

All the lights are on in here I don’t see nothing.

I don’t admit that this is personality disintegration

My personality has a half-life of 10♾️ years; besides

I can put my toe in my mouth

If (CENSORED), then (CENSORED), something like

Plato his vision of the archetypal human being

Or the Gnostic Worm.

People see me; they like that . . .

I try to warn them that it’s really m

They don’t listen; afterwards they complain

About how I had no right to be really just that:

Invisible & in complete control of everything.

(pp. 26-27, On Bear's Head, by Philip Whalen, c.1960)

 Clarity-presence.

This might be what the feast we call Christmas really is about.

Christ-revelation as the embodiment of God realized as the Itself, (Ganz andere ohne andere = Wholly other without other.) 

Perhaps -- Thisness.

Realization of the Itself -- (that which we've come to call 'God') -- would be for us a liberation from illusion, a letting go of the loneliness of separation, a surrendering into the ground-of-being wherein all is recognizable as being what it is, namely, itself (Itself).

We have become so obsessively determined to make 'other', to create 'other', to dominate and eliminate 'other', to battle and denegrate 'other' -- that the fragmentation and destruction of ourselves and the world has become the primordial enterprise of individuals, governments, corporations, and nations.

We have forgotten who and what we are.

We have forgotten Being. 

We've tried to uproot ourselves from Ground.

We've sent ourselves on a fool's errand.

Zen Buddhists constantly ask: "What is this?" This, yes This -- What is This?

This.

Thisness.

Something to ponder. Today, tonight, tomorrow, the next twelve days, for the rest of our lives.

And so this is Christmas. (Thanks John and Yoko!)

And so, it is Thisness.

May it be so, for each, for all!

shut down and sit up

 Of course there’s something

Wrong with this body, pains and 

odd irks, signaling

ends and uninteresting

Explanations going off

after three am

 There’s no words to paste

Listening to Fairy Tale

Of New York, sweet chant