twenty years later

At end of 

conversation on

Shunyata she said 

“To be one with 

God 

is to no longer 

know God.”

i would not have been here without it

 Id like to 

thank Friday

For staying 

Until

It’s end

samskaras

 God might be. Good.

But, do we want. 

God to be. Good?

Volition and intention

Karma, action, is womb

For us to be born into

This. Next instant. Free

skhisma

 She told us the word at Tuesday evening conversation, “schismogenesis”.

I’d not heard it before.

Schismogenesis is a term in anthropology that describes the formation of social divisions and literally meaning "creation of division", the term derives from the Greek words σχίσμα skhisma "cleft" (borrowed into English as schism, "division into opposing factions"), and γένεσις genesis "generation, creation" (deriving in turn from gignesthai "be born or produced, creation, a coming into being"). The term was introduced by anthropologist Gregory Bateson and has been applied to various fields  https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Schismogenesis

This is that time. 

Cleft and theft.

por la misericordia de nuestra realidad más profunda

 They say Jephthah made a deal with God — Help me defeat the Ammonites and I’ll sacrifice to you the first person who greets me when I return to my household. He beat them. It was his 12 year old daughter who came dancing out to greet him on his return. He grieved his bad luck. (What did he expect?) Then, after three weeks, he sacrificed her in flames. (Cf Judges 11:29-39)

 Stephen King must have written that novel.

Derangement and horrible tales sometimes fill what is (oddly) called sacred scripture.

My cat stretches on brown blanket.

I’d rather read Carse on The Religious Case Against Belief.

Some sacrifice people in order to achieve some benefit for themselves in their derangement. 

Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Vladimir Putin display this derangement. Perhaps new books of the Bible will be written on them. Lord knows they have their flock and followers willing to summon new apotheoses.

The world, despite our best hopes, is mostly absurd. History often a theater of the absurd. Individuals, with their dramatic beliefs, diminish themselves in stature and sensibility by embracing the far fetched and proclaim the nonsensic shamanic credos of their feverish imaginations gone askew.

Forgive me, I stopped drinking alcohol some thirty years ago, and the hangover drapes itself over the nonsensical thinking and proclamation of my surrounding communitas.

We dwell in an ethos and culture of imponderables. So we make things up. Much of our telling is a prevarication on an ill-conceived and diseased apprehension of what we like to call ”reality.”

(Don’t mind me, I’m busy contemplating cottage cheese penetrated by remaining strawberry jam.) It is Thor’s Day. I will not get hammered today. Rather, I grieve for those slaughtered in Cambodia, German concentration camps, Gaza, Ukraine, Tulsa, the trail of tears, the fields of Flanders, the terrain of the Iliad and Odyssey. 

Tolstoy asked, What then must we do?

I’ll sit here a little longer pondering that question.

What I won’t do is ask God for some favor promising to kill some folk if I am granted the favor.

Call me old fashioned, but live and let live still sounds attractive.

And may all the tyrants, dictators, and fascists fall face down in a mud puddle.

And may the souls of all our departed, through the mercy of our deepest reality, rest in peace! Amen

adoremus, venite

 Nuns at Neumz chant compline

Small joys

Psalms and antiphons

Clarity of bells

presto, disincarnato

Cardiologist says

You can live with the weariness,

get surgery, and/or, soon enough die

Ophthalmologist says You can live 

with the cloudiness, start unseeing

or get lasered

Oncologist says

MRI will tell advancement

in pancreas, millimetering

Also, Waldenström 

 macroglobulinemia, he says, is

a slow train, but will get there

Oral surgeon

has done his damage

says someday I'll adjust

Nurse practitioner says

diabetes is loading its guns

adjusting its scopes

Priest says, who? What's 

his name? Forgive me, I

Don't know him

Former friends say

yeah, I remember him,

odd, quiet, what was his name?

Meditatiion community says

no, can't picture him

did he ever sit with us?

My parents, grandparents, 

sister. those I've known all say -- 

we're dead, let the living figure it out

Jesus says

let him without thick skin

toss the last scone

Buddha says:

if you meet him on the road

call ICE, ship him to dark site

And you, yes you, what say you?

"I say I can't dine, can't dance, Ive

got to purchase a cow."  MU!

The best news I've ever gotten:

"Cheer up, Bill, things are only 

going to get worse!"

(That last advice from Trappist

monk who kept sheep, wrote

poetry, sold jams, and sat zazen)

Being nobody is good practice

a time comes soon when insight

will perfect with disincarnation

honoring what is and who were

Cedar tree

Outside window

Across dooryard 

driveway

God’s within

Within God

This Wednesday

Morning

Candle 

And

Incense

Burn

a new vocabulary

Epigraph to James Carse’s book The Religious Case Against Belief:

 To believe is to know that one believes, and to know that one believes is no longer to believe.

— JEAN-PAUL SARTRE

Mr Carse was on the selection committee that kindly awarded me a small fellowship to do graduate work in religion in 1969/1970. 

With my gratitude, 

A description of his book:

Through careful , creative analysis, James P. Carse's The Religious Case Against Belief reveals a surprising truth: What is currently criticized as religion is, in fact, the territory of belief. Looking to both historical and contemporary crises, Carse distinguishes religion from belief systems and pinpoints how the closed-mindedness and hostility of belief has corrupted religion and spawned violence the world over. Drawing on the lessons of Galileo, Martin Luther, Abraham Lincoln, and Jesus Christ, Carse creates his own brand of parable and establishes a new vocabulary with which to study conflict in the modern world. Carse uses his wide-ranging understanding of religion to find a viable and vital path away from what he calls the Age of Faith II and toward open-ended global dialogue. 

https://ebook.yourcloudlibrary.com/library/CamdenPublicLibrary/search?query=James%20carse

The rest of Sartre's quote goes:

Thus to believe is not to believe any longer because that is only to believe. [For instance, say that I believe that Peter likes me. Then I know that I believe this. But I also am aware that there is no external evidence for this belief because Peter could just be pretending. Hence I also believe that Peter does not like me. The same arguments hold for the belief in God, as we saw in Kierkegaard. This is why belief (like faith) is different from knowledge.] 

(--found in Sartre: Nothingness and Bad Faith, pp.3-4,  https://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~degray/CP05/Sartre%20-%20Nothingness-Bad-Faith.pdf) 

surrounding, inhabiting

 I have not found God

nor is God findable

I do not look for God

nor am I not merely looking

rather, God remains within

and fully without

I cannot look for something

that will not be seen

and so -- here we are, looking

through Being to see what is not

what is completely beyond Being

surrounding, inhabiting, Reality

not even a poem can make up something like this

 That's what the poet said after reading his poem.

The First Law of Thermodynamics

He was a good ole boy, and when he died his friends carried out
his final wish—the body was cremated and the ashes stuffed
into shotgun shells. They walked through the woods he loved
and fired aimlessly into the trees—he came down everywhere
in a powdery rain, a pollen of ashes that once was the memory
of a boy walking under trees showering him with leaves.

(Poem by Joseph Stroud) 

 Which leaves us grateful.

we come here to be alone

 I have

no

relationship with

God --

one without two

disappearance

Itself

acknowledging retreatant

 dry stones

in empty brook

this

is why we pray

this

is how we meditate

wenn das alles ist, was es gibt

 I am closing in

Nearing, if you will,

Nothing at all

There is no comfort

In this realization —

Just this, itself

at the wake

 After he dies

Many will say

Goodbye, good luck

We’re done with you

Let absurdity end

That’s over

We will look at

Each other and wonder

How it was allowed

To happen

The raw idiocy

The moral mud

on seeing photo of old friend

 it is good to arrive

at this age

because this is the

age we are

this very year, every 

age is good

because it is

the age you are

look around

everything is

the age it is

without exception

there is no other

age to be when 

you are the age you are

do not commit suicide

rather, look around

everything is the age

it is, nothing else

do not kill another

when flowers receive 

water there is nothing

else to say, just water

in soil, Sunday morning

è nel profondo della vita

quando la morte rientra in sé 

è nel profondo della vita

when death reenters itself 

it is deep within life

each step down to open gate

the surprise of morning

the ability to walk, the quiet

mountain, the good st Bernard/

border collie hunkering

in dooryard outside barn

it is sunday morning, no peignoir

no complacency, no church

just sunlight on bald mountain, 

dry ground lifting each foot

everything has returned within

remembering signs and symbols

liturgical phrases, ritual, sounds

catholic and zen buddhist, an

archeology of buried remains

walking back up to good dog

there’s no place to go, I am the 

journey, pilgrim reentering itself 

when death comes 

back to itself 

it is in the 

depths of life

bon nuit

 He’s a hermit

What’s that? 

He lives alone

Even with others

Prefers solitude

Can’t easily abide

Garrulous insistence

constant commentary

Knows death

Is very next breath

Not nostalgic

Understands nothing

Wants (that) nothing

Wouldn’t recognize it

If he held it in hand

Thinks midnight is

The perfect time

Watches it

 go by

un respiro, un altro

all we can do

is look out

into daylight

be grateful

for what was

and wasn’t

what is

and isn’t

I no longer

look for god

nessuna necessità

shoes under

rocking chair

one tilted

the passing cars

sudden silence

заблуждение любит дураков *

Neighborly,

brotherly,

my good friend

words cannot cover

the hate and cruelty

russia destroying

ukraine, the multi felon

pats hand and shoulder

of war criminal like

sweethearts over 

croissants, my good

friend

russia russia russia

he is alone in his

delusion,  and yet

*zabluzhdeniye 

lyubit 

durakov

*delusion

loves

fools

s'élever au-dessus des choses

 If I understand this

You say the woman

Was lifted up into

Where? The sky?

Heaven?

Let’s say she was

Taken up into 

Somewhere beyond

I’ll go with that

(For now)

That makes two, maybe

Three going that route

Ok, fine, let’s say

It’s so —

One question,

Will it rain soon, and

Why is bodily ascending

Assumpting necessary

i don't know why you say, "goodbye", I say, "hello"

I’d like

To say

Hello

But I’m

Too far

 Into goodbye

👋 

To want

To say

Hello

“ce n’est pas triste, vraiment, juste vide”

 The question was asked in prison today what level of worry or concern there was about the future of things, internationally, with AI, climate change, militarily, cyber warfare, the condition of psyche and consciousness.

Responses were the spectrum. “Beyond worried,” one said. 

Then Donald Justice:

Poem [“This poem is not addressed to you”]

BY DONALD JUSTICE

This poem is not addressed to you.

You may come into it briefly,

But no one will find you here, no one.

You will have changed before the poem will.

Even while you sit there, unmovable,

You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.

The poem will go on without you.

It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.

It is not sad, really, only empty.

Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.

It prefers to remember nothing.

Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.

Your type of beauty has no place here.

Night is the sky over this poem.

It is too black for stars.

And do not look for any illumination.

You neither can nor should understand what it means.

Listen, it comes without guitar,

Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.

And there is nothing in it to comfort you.

Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.

You will forget the poem, but not before

It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.

It has been most beautiful in its erasures.

O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!

Nor is one silence equal to another.

And it does not matter what you think.

This poem is not addressed to you.

Copyright Credit: Donald Justice, "Poem [This poem is not addressed to you.]" from Collected Poems. Copyright © 2006 by Donald Justice

And Emily Dickinson:

I’m Nobody! Who are you? 

BY EMILY DICKINSON

I'm Nobody! Who are you?

Are you - Nobody - too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Dont tell! they'd banish us - you know!

 

How dreary - to be - Somebody!

How public - like a Frog -

To tell your name - the livelong June -

To an admiring Bog!

Source: The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Variorum Edition (The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998)

Enter Nature.

Disappears into Reality.

“It is not sad, really, only empty”.

perdu sans toi

 I 

cannot 

find 

God

One

of

us

is 

lost

απορία και απορία

 Awareness 

of

Not-being

A christian

Awareness 

of

Not-being

Someone wise

Nears

Both

With no

Movement

through the shadow side of life

Richard Rohr writes about The Mystery of the Cross. In his meditation he contrasts Jewish thinking and Greek thinking. He says:

 Paul insists that strict adherence to neither worldview can finally succeed because they don’t have the ability to “incorporate the negative,” which will always be present. He recognizes that the greatest enemy of ordinary daily goodness and joy is not imperfection, but the demand for some supposed perfection or order. There seems to be a shadow side to almost everything; all things are subject to “the principalities and powers” (Ephesians 6:12). Only the unitive or nondual mind can accept this and not panic; in fact, it will grow because of it, and even grow beyond it. 

Neither a liberal pattern nor a conservative pattern can deal with disorder and misery. Paul believes that Jesus has revealed the only response that works. The revelation of the cross makes us indestructible, Paul says, because it reveals there is a way through all absurdity and tragedy. That way is precisely through accepting absurdity and tragedy, trusting that God can somehow use it for good. If we can internalize the mystery of the cross, we won’t fall into cynicism, failure, bitterness, or skepticism. The cross gives us a precise and profound way through the shadow side of life and through all disappointments.

https://cac.org/daily-meditations/the-mystery-of-the-cross/

It remains beyond me.

“[A]ccepting absurdity and tragedy, trusting that God can somehow use it for good” remains beyond me.

It could be right out of a Zen Buddhist teaching — “there is absurdity and tragedy, move through them with equanimity!”

Rationalization and logical inference positing God as supreme agent, befuddled by what the world has chosen, yet willing to transform the chosen hatred and cruelty into a beneficial outcome — does not bring me either emotional or intellectual comfort.

Baby, I've been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew ya

And I've seen your flag on the marble arch

Love is not a victory march

It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

—Leonard Cohen

 I concede I am missing something.

I experience absurdity. I see tragedy. 

My “thank you, Lord” is hard to come by.

Surely I am missing something.

It is as though, somewhere beyond all that is, someone is gathering up shards of broken vase and refashioning some loveliness not experienced before. As though some audience now nods heads and makes approving sounds as if some confident magician is performing an astonishing magic trick.

I’ll bite. Is that it?

I suspect many would frown at such impertinence.

Bad into good — an absurdist sleight of hand?

No, I suspect that centuries of theological exegesis have this topic covered six ways to Friday.

Good for them.

Some among us, like the woman who writes out of her pain and despair, live in the cold and broken with some fierce resolve and gritty continuance that never quite explains supernatural gratitude. I read her words, I see her blue canvas — I marvel.

What does it mean to say —“Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world, have mercy on us”?

What does it mean that the French monastery bells call me into something remarkably irresolute?

solennité du calme

 Particles of 

moisture

Float in air

Outside barn

Late at night

Dog lays down

ground 

silence

mistakes or misunderstandings

Dōgen would nod if i were to add to zen, philosophy, both of which are one continuous mistake.

We have forgotten 

How to read

How to pause

(—Pierre Hadot)

Two of his books that have been translated into English provide us with further metaphilosophical insight into Hadot: Philosophy as a Way of Life (initially published in French in 1981) and What Is Ancient Philosophy? (first published in French in 1995). The latter book is the smoother read, but the former is the more substantial contribution, consisting of a deeper account of Hadot’s particular philosophical themes.

Philosophy as a Way of Life explains that the goal of history is to structure an account of events from which conclusions can be drawn. In contrast to Michel Foucault – who advocates the ceaseless development of new readings of texts and events – Hadot believed that it is possible to understand the past once a sufficiently cogent account has been given of it. Yet the project of understanding the past remains incomplete, due to the faults of historians who have come before. As Hadot writes, “error was the result of bad exegetical mistranslation, and faulty understanding. Nowadays, however, historians seem to consider all exegetical thought as the result of mistakes or misunderstandings” (Philosophy as a Way of Life, trans. Michael Chase, p.74).

In an essay called ‘Spiritual Exercises’, Hadot connects ancient and more modern thinkers around the theme of reasoning in conjunction with living. Reading is not a departure from this central motif: “And yet we have forgotten how to read: how to pause, liberate ourselves from our worries, return into ourselves, and leave aside our search for subtlety and originality, in order to meditate calmly, ruminate, and let the texts speak to us” (p.109). Hadot’s anxiety about the crises of information, entertainment and advertising confronted by modern people represents a common thread with other philosophers, and his solution to this problem is to focus upon reading, upon thinking, upon living a well-reasoned life. Other contemporary thinkers working on similar issues include Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, MacIntyre and Pirsig, to name just a handful; but it is no accident that, of all these philosophers, the one most focused upon maintaining and encouraging the practical application of philosophical thought is the one whose work is the most accessible.

(—in philosophy now) https://philosophynow.org/issues/113/Pierre_Hadot_1922-2010

If i were to pause any further i would be a rooted tree on a dry mountain in midcoast maine. 

And the spiritual exercises of passing bird, hot sun, and needed rain would be my only companions.

Recluses are odd companions.

They know you’re there, feel your sound, yet still let you be unto yourself.

Friendship is the learning of shared solitude.

non et sic

 It’s a silly life

Run by silly people

I have no solution

No, no, no

Now then,

There will be

Soup for dinner

Yes? Of course, yes