Fusatsu
The Ten Grave Precepts
Kennebec River Zen Center
I’ll be working on — “See the perfection; Do not speak of other’s errors or faults.”
(A slog, for sure.)
Sunday, January 04, 2026
never underestimate a throw-away phrase
God showed up
Where I was
Just sitting
“How are things
In your country?”
God asked —
“Damned
If I know,”
I said —
“You are,
And you do,”
God revealed
Funny how
Words still
Mean something
what is is never not what is
Dawn doesn't care
About human stupidity
It shows up
Bringing light
To darkest
Night
Saying — here
Try again
How kind
The cosmos
Suggesting life
Without ideology
zen is not difficult, it is impossible: don’t try it
No barriers
No boundaries
Still
No disturbing
One’s
Edgeless edge
Zen students
All, we reside
In cornerless
Whole
Not stepping
Over, nor
Remaining behind
This very place
This very
Moment
An entirety
As it is
Each particular
Nescient glance
Saturday, January 03, 2026
in the few seconds remaining, i’d like to say
“Nothing is more important than family.”
(That’s the copy for an advertisement for the ACLU.)
It doesn’t surprise me they’ve become Buddhists --
“Nothing” needs to be explored
I notice that my primary strategy is to give up
I leave things, jobs, houses, organizations --
positive take, letting go; negative take, bailing out;
as plane plummets (state, soul) jump and tumble
as I fall I ponder what will happen when I hit ground,
(here it comes! here it comes!)
I think I'll pray -- what will I say?
ok, I’ve got it, "Dear God, my name is . . . uh oh” (sp*#@!lat)
as your soul, so the land
Rethinking my life
I now know uselessness
We have a president
Who is troublesome
Not I, not anybody
Can do anything
About him — so we
Watch and wonder
Exactly how he will
Kill us, democracy
America itself
why we don’t care what happens to them
In the inch
Of Maine
Where I live
No bombs
In the mind
Of America
It can do
Nothing wrong
In the realm
Of right and wrong
We pass, preferring
Fear and doubt
There are no tanks
On road, no missiles
Destroying homes —
We are safe and sound
Friday, January 02, 2026
mots difficiles
Q: Have you learned nothing?
A: [thinks a while]
Yes, yes I have.
Q: [unsure of the ambiguity]
That’ll teach you.
A; [realizes he has nothing to say]
[and can’t say it]
rarely and reluctantly, closeness itself
Do you write poetry?
No, I don’t.
What do you write?
Words
Oh!
“As birds’ wings beat the solid air without which none could fly so words freed by the imagination affirm reality by their flight” (Williams et al. The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams. Vol.1, 1909-1939 235). https://www.theintima.org/re-embodying-medicine-william-carlos-williams-and-the-ethics-of-attention#:~:text=Yes%2C%20profound%20concepts%20arise%20in,about%20the%20process%20of%20observation.
No one would accuse me of writing poetry.
Czesław Milosz ended his poem Ars Poetica? with these lines:
The purpose of poetry is to remind ushow difficult it is to remain just one person,for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,and invisible guests come in and out at will.What I'm saying here is not, I agree, poetry,as poems should be written rarely and reluctantly,under unbearable duress and only with the hopethat good spirits, not evil ones, choose us for their instrument.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49455/ars-poetica-56d22b8f31558
Goethe wrote:
"Words are but noise and smoke" (or "Names are but sound and smoke, / Obscuring heavenly light” (--Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Faust, Part One)
It occurs to me that what we call “God” is our worded approximation of inner experience finding Itself in the appearing landscape.
For some folks this is ‘seeing' God. For some this is ‘hearing' God or ‘speaking with’ God. These are perfectly adequate approximations.
approximation | əˌpräksəˈmāSHən |
noun
a value or quantity that is nearly but not exactly correct: these figures are only approximations.
• a thing that is similar to something else, but is not exactly the same: the band smashed up their equipment in an approximation of rock star behavior.
. . .
approximation
noun
1 a general approximation is that a ten degree rise in temperature doubles the rate of reaction. estimate, estimation, guess, conjecture, rough calculation, rough idea, surmise; guesswork; informal guesstimate; North American English informal ballpark figure.
2 we can only look for an approximation to the truth about these matters. semblance, outward appearance, likeness, resemblance, similarity, correspondence, comparison. (Dictionary)
It has been said that no one has ever seen God, except:
- John 1:18: "No one has ever seen God, but the one and only Son, who is himself God and is in closest relationship with the Father, has made him known" (NIV).
- 1 John 4:12: Also states, "No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us”.
Perhaps poetry is the energy of the transcendent breathed into language.
And for our Christian brothers and sisters, what they call ‘Christ’ is the embodied expression
of God languaged into human form.
Rumi wrote that "Silence is the language of God; all else is poor translation.”
John of the Cross said, "God's first language is silence.”
Perhaps real poetry is more deflection than reflection. A via negativa. All that can be unsaid, all that can be unseen, residing within each ding-an-sich (see Kant), there, but unmanifest:
In Kantian philosophy, the thing-in-itself (German: Ding an sich) is the status of objects as they are, independent of representation and observation. The concept of the thing-in-itself was introduced by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and over the following centuries was met with controversy among later philosophers.[1] It is closely related to Kant's concept of noumena or the objects of inquiry, as opposed to phenomena, its manifestations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing-in-itself
Poetry is the process allowing things to be themselves with, perhaps, appreciation and contemplative respect.
Our tendency as humans is to make things other than they are. We wish to fashion things according to our preferences. We want to own things. We want to own persons.
To be well-within-oneself, to let something be-itself, is a hard-sell for our acquisitive nature.
I’m not saying that the best poetry is unwritten.
But close to it.
Intimately close to it.
parlare per dissuadere qualcuno dal buttarsi giù
The last
Funeral you
Attend is
Your own
I will
Not commit
Suicide in
Winter
Too cold
Hard ground
Mittened hands
Slippery ice
Nor spring
Too muddy
Black flies
Mosquitoes
Screw it
Death has
To be
No bother
The way
Orange juice
Or farina
Just happens
The other
Side of
Fresh coffee
Buttered toast
does anybody know what time it is
Thursday
Is
One more
Reason
To
Stop
Naming
Anything
Ready?
What is
Today?
Eh?
I manage
To stay up
Til midnight
And it’s
The wrong day
Happy 2 January!
Everything
Is vacated, just
Another Friday
A snoring dog
Shikantaza
Near full moon
Thursday, January 01, 2026
but it moves (eppur si muove)
Finish Suor Maria Celeste’s story along with that of her father Galileo Galilei. The book was Galileo’s Daughter by Dava Sobel. (1999).
The delight of it. The trouble they’d seen.
The hubris of power and choosing belief over learning.
How we deprive others and make them suffer.
license plate said fitzie
Remind me
How anything matters
But eyes recognizing
Simple love
As it occurs
No fanfare
No grand bows
Brown paper bag
Three people hug
Absence of fourth
Middle of B&Gs
Rockport Maine
Last day of year
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)