Reading book Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason, by Justin E. H. Smith.
You'd think it would be off-putting. On the contrary, I find it encouraging. Anytime something appears to capture what is actually taking place, I affirm its willingness to walk beside me for a suitable duration.
So far, good company.
Maybe we should just shut up.
The Meaning Of Existence
Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.
Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.
(--poem by Les Murray)
cf. https://mikefinnsfiction.com/2021/03/16/some-thoughts-on-the-meaning-of-existence-by-les-
murray/#:~:text=Everything%20except%20language%20knows%20the,freedom%20of%20my%20talking%20mind.
Or, perhaps, more modestly, attend with no-mind, watchful.
What do you think?
Aristotle's description of God's activity as νόησις νοήσεως, a "thinking of thinking," in chapters 7 and 9 of Metaphysics 12 raises some of the most significant and challenging questions in philosophy.
(in, Aristotle on God As Thought Thinking Itself, by Thomas De Koninck
Review of Metaphysics 47 (3):471-515 (1994) Jstor
Two thousand three hundred forty six years gone, Heidegger thought that we are still not thinking.
God seems still beyond us.
God help us!
In this simulation of the universe —
Mountain home walking,
You don’t step on dust,
Seldom meet anyone;
Who’s ashamed to be poor?
Tired? Then rest.
What do you need a mat for?
Forget about the form
And the shadow will disappear.
Gensei (1623-1668) dz
—there is nothing moving.
Go there.
Inflated globe hangs
from ceiling
pinned
coffee bean fifty
pound empty burlap
Asobagri, 100%
Certified organic
It is my reminder
(As is everything)
Of Sanyassin
Moving through
Mind/Body space
A desolation row
Such a large ocean
Such an immense
Cosmos —
If you want to know
Who you are
And what this is
(Oh -- There’s the sun!)
Ninety three million
Miles away — right
There at window bamboo
Shade, right here on
Back of hand —
Empty pathos
This cold room
silencio
y
soledad
“The only thing that can save the world from complete moral collapse is a spiritual revolution.” (—opening line, Prologue, The Ascent to Truth, by Thomas Merton, 1951)
Seems so.
In prison this morning we read from the Chandogya Upanishad, 8.7-12.
It was an in and out morning, some able to stay briefly, others late due to late meds, others for other appointments, some for long haul. Eight of us wondering about self, soul, spirit, breath.
Someone introduced (what he called) preconceived semantics. (He referred to S.I. Hayakawa.) Another wandered our attention to the semantics of individual letters of the alphabet by Laurel Airica and related a piece to illustrate.
The word semantics originated from the Ancient Greek adjective semantikos, meaning 'relating to signs', which is a derivative of sēmeion, the noun for 'sign' (--wikipedia).
Sometimes words don’t convey.
Meaning remains remote.
We have a way to go.
Living a spiritual life
a meditative life
a contemplative
is no longer in
monastery, convent
or some such place
not in temple, zendo
mosque, hermitage or
parish church group
where, then, is it
It is in the solitude
of uncertainty
that place where
emptiness is no
mystical comfort
where the next breath
is a long shot, a pause
at end of exhalation
No talk of God
no certificates, thanks
or rounds of applause
A saint is deep within
silence and soliloquey
where what once was
God
is now where absence
goes to pray
not knowing
anything (yes)
all too well
It feels
Awkward
That
America’s
Greatest danger
Is the man
Wanting to be
It’s president —
And it is,
Awkward
It was a hard time.
On March 7, 1965, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate brigadier general, Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and U.S. senator who stood against Black rights, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met the unarmed marchers with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. They fractured John Lewis’s skull and beat Amelia Boynton unconscious. A newspaper photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead in the arms of another marcher, illustrated the depravity of those determined to stop Black voting.
(—in Letters from an American, by Heather Cox Richardson, 6mar24)
It is a hard time.
dog snoozes
cat naps
sun slants
in glass door
red squirrel
under feeder
will not
stop looking
for what
feeds it
for unbroken
sustenance
Oh, if we only had wit …
I am such that I do not know right and wrong and cannot distinguish false and true;
I lack even small love and small compassion,
And yet, for fame and profit, enjoy teaching others.
(—quote by Shinran, the founder of the Jodo Shinshu school of Pure Land Buddhism. Tricycle)
…and the wisdom to see humor in the absurd, and absurdity in those of us who do not see how absurd we are!
A time
Will come
When truth
Will matter
Until then
Comfort one
Another —
We live
Within
Lies
No outer
Resemblance
Let’s say I’ve only a passing interest in primary politics.
But, hey, how do you like them Vermonters!
Good time in prison
Yesterday talking about
The present
Which is not
Something, not
Here nor there
The present is
What we are
Moving through
It’s not
A thing not
A place
The present
Is what we are
Moving through
Duality is daunted,
Singularity
Decimated
Only the
Present will
Save us, and
The present
Is what we are
Moving through
upsy-daisy
let me
lift you
child --
no need
for fear
we adults
are here
to spare
you dark
shivers of
ill-intent
come let’s
get ice-cream
and play
with puppy
who looks
to us
for
some
joy
If there's ill-will, there's a wayward skill.
There is, perhaps, a larger story behind the majority’s musings on future congressional actions. Its decision to go beyond what was required to decide a specific question and suggest the boundaries of future legislation pushed it from judicial review into the realm of lawmaking.
For years now, Republicans, especially Republican senators who have turned the previously rarely-used filibuster into a common tool, have stopped Congress from making laws and have instead thrown decision-making to the courts.
Two days ago, in Slate, legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern noted that when Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was Senate majority leader, he “realized you don’t need to win elections to enact Republican policy. You don’t need to change hearts and minds. You don’t need to push ballot initiatives or win over the views of the people. All you have to do is stack the courts. You only need 51 votes in the Senate to stack the courts with far-right partisan activists…[a]nd they will enact Republican policies under the guise of judicial review, policies that could never pass through the democratic process. And those policies will be bulletproof, because they will be called ‘law.’”
(--Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 4mar24),
Let's applaud the creativeness of duplicity.
Let's fight then for a better concept of reciprocity.
Let's call dis-maneuvering what it is, disheartening.
Count on the Center for Action and Contemplation, every time:
After almost fifty years of being a Franciscan Sister, I learned that beauty for Franciscan theologians and philosophers is the ultimate and most intimate knowing of God, another name for God, the name for God. Saint Bonaventure and Blessed John Duns Scotus teach that the beauty and diversity of creation nourish us through suffering and loss. When we’ve run out of purpose, when memories of war sicken us, when Earth is attacked with unparalleled savagery for coal, gas, oil, timber, and profit, when poverty runs rampant and extreme wealth for very few soars, when friends betray us, and everyone we love lives far away … then, still beauty endures, and helps us make it through. Like God…. [2]
I sense now that soul knows itself and its life within the great compassionate Mystery we strive to name. Soul stirs, rises, grows toward and within the unnameable silence and beauty of God, a mothering watery God, a rain beyond Catholic, beyond any specific religion or creed, a rain that soothes us in suffering and challenges complacency. Soul flowers in this rain of the worlds, of meteor showers, of the cosmos. [3]
(—from “The Stones Cry Out” by Marya Grathwohl)
Count on it.
Con-
Versation
Where a
Con
Talks
To himself
Whole
World
Occupies his
Echo
Over and
Over, new
Gospel for
Tired
Christians, a
Caberet
Stale smoke
Phantom
Carasal
Head fog
Until what
Is seen
Isn’t
There, what
Is there
Isn’t
Seen —
Staring
Becomes
Our bedside
Vigiling
Desperate
Lunacy like
Shriven
Communicants
Believing each
Bite chews his
Defeating
Sneer
Over and
Over
Again
Falling away
It is falling
Away
Watching
Arms fall
Away
Feet going
One by
One
There’s no
Recognizing
Myself
Shattered
Mirror in
Pieces
Only sound
Breathing
Itself
Schopenhauer wrote:
“A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.”
Essays and Aphorisms)
There's no-one here right now to ask if that is true.
three meatballs
with Breton
crackers
four cookies
green juice
pills
all fitting
in these words
So many ways to think.
Here’s one by Lincoln,
Our conversation touched on one of Lincoln’s insights, which governed his approach to slavery. This was a moral issue, but Lincoln did not assume that his opposition to slavery made him a better person than its proponents. Quite the opposite. In a 1854 speech to an audience in the free state of Illinois, Lincoln made a statement that, from the perspective of the twenty-first century, is almost disorienting.
He first declared that the Southern slaveholders were neither better, nor worse than we of the North, and that we of the North were no better than they. If we were situated as they are, we should act and feel as they do; and if they were situated as we are, they should act and feel as we do; and we never ought to lose sight of this fact in discussing the subject.
What leader would say in a speech, in the divided year of 2024, “Our side is no better as human beings than the people on the other side”? Present-day political rhetoric tends toward the opposite conclusion. It’s common instead to paint the other side as pure evil. Lincoln didn’t do that—though he was willing to say the other side was profoundly wrong.
(—Steve Inskeep, Abraham Lincoln, social scientist, Substack 3mar24)
I’ll think about that.
The natural world is imbued with soul.
Without such soul recognition and mirroring, we are alienated and separated from nature, and quite frankly, ourselves. Without a visceral connection to the soul of nature, we will not know how to love or respect our own soul. Instead, we try various means to get God and people to like or accept us because we never experience radical belonging to the world itself. We’re trying to say to ourselves and others, “I belong here. I matter.” Of course, that’s true! But contrived and artificial means will never achieve that divine purpose. We are naturally healed in this world when we know things center to center, subject to subject, and soul to soul.
I think of soul as anything’s ultimate meaning which is held within. Soul is the blueprint inside of every created thing telling it what it is and what it can become. When we meet anything at that level, we will respect, protect, and love it.
(--Richard Rohr, The Soul of Nature, 3mar24)
Don't go anywhere else.
To be, saved
rain throughout the night
earth takes in water from sky
like prayers into soul
learn to pray always
each breath arriving as god's
true being, here --
passing through realty
nothing to look for elsewhere