Where go when there's no where to go?
Salt-water farm on North Harbour on Aspey Bay, Cape Breton? Or Inn, shop, and house in quiet town on Broad Cove in Lunenburg County Nova Scotia?
Bayview and Barnestown Camden?
Time is passing every moment;
How can you be complacent and waste it,
Seeing death is but a breath away?
- Kuei-Shan (771-854)
One breath away, one breath near.
Breath alone along the way.
It's the birthday of beat poet Lew Welch, born in Phoenix, Arizona (1926). He's the author of many collections of poetry, including Hermit Poems (1965) and At Times We're Almost Able To See (1965). He said, "Seeking perfect total enlightenment is like looking for a flashlight when all you need the flashlight for is to find your flashlight." (from The Writers Almanac, 16Aug, by Garrison Keillor)
Each place is now here.
Friday, August 15, 2003
Charlie and Sonny wondered warily if one were being diss'd by the other.
If I simply say what I see, without making it a dart at the other, then the other is invited to say what they see -- unpunctured.
Constantly be aware, without stopping.
When the aware mind is present,
It senses the formlessness of things.
Constantly see your body as empty and quiet,
Inside and outside communing in sameness.
Plunge the body into the realm of reality,
Where there has never been any obstruction.
- Tao-hsin (580-651)
Life in prison is testy. Like outside life in the world, only more so, everyone is doing time, and hardly anything said or seen is what it seems to be.
We were talking about the Christian feast of the Assumption of Mary -- reading Jean Guitton. Something about the obscure distance or mysterious space that occurs at death but before completion of movement to another dimension. Ryan wondered about standing in the river with Heraclitus. Charlie about the middle of extremes -- as when an immovable object is met with an unstoppable force. Michael said he gravitated to extremes. Sonny described at his near-death experience looking down and realizing he had no body -- but was there.
Where it went testy was the way Sonny and Dick sounded to Charlie and Ryan -- like they ...knew...and the others didn't. That's always a difficult presentation to sit through. Charlie balked. Sonny cut short. Vaughn was silent.
Saskia had the final word as trumpet sounded retreat to cell at end of rec and work period. She told of how we often hear everything through the conditioning we carry with us -- that she does -- gets defensive and reactive, and forgets that the other is just saying what and how they see what is there for them.
Conditioning is a volume knob on the sounds coming through our psyche.
Later Dick thought he might have said aloud what he 'd been thinking -- that his life is fact, like a book you read. The book has it there and down as it is. The reader takes it in, agrees or disagrees, sees or doesn't, tosses it away or keeps on going. That's how he talks his life.
Sometimes, we say, it feels testy.
It all seems testy these days.
We've got to say what we see.
The task is to take the testy and go on.
Go on, and go on, until we are gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond. Awake.
Awake from the nightmare of antagonism, through the dream of recombination, into the reality Assumption invites – One’s Body – undifferentiate, indistributive, and resolute.
Finally become Yes!
If I simply say what I see, without making it a dart at the other, then the other is invited to say what they see -- unpunctured.
Constantly be aware, without stopping.
When the aware mind is present,
It senses the formlessness of things.
Constantly see your body as empty and quiet,
Inside and outside communing in sameness.
Plunge the body into the realm of reality,
Where there has never been any obstruction.
- Tao-hsin (580-651)
Life in prison is testy. Like outside life in the world, only more so, everyone is doing time, and hardly anything said or seen is what it seems to be.
We were talking about the Christian feast of the Assumption of Mary -- reading Jean Guitton. Something about the obscure distance or mysterious space that occurs at death but before completion of movement to another dimension. Ryan wondered about standing in the river with Heraclitus. Charlie about the middle of extremes -- as when an immovable object is met with an unstoppable force. Michael said he gravitated to extremes. Sonny described at his near-death experience looking down and realizing he had no body -- but was there.
Where it went testy was the way Sonny and Dick sounded to Charlie and Ryan -- like they ...knew...and the others didn't. That's always a difficult presentation to sit through. Charlie balked. Sonny cut short. Vaughn was silent.
Saskia had the final word as trumpet sounded retreat to cell at end of rec and work period. She told of how we often hear everything through the conditioning we carry with us -- that she does -- gets defensive and reactive, and forgets that the other is just saying what and how they see what is there for them.
Conditioning is a volume knob on the sounds coming through our psyche.
Later Dick thought he might have said aloud what he 'd been thinking -- that his life is fact, like a book you read. The book has it there and down as it is. The reader takes it in, agrees or disagrees, sees or doesn't, tosses it away or keeps on going. That's how he talks his life.
Sometimes, we say, it feels testy.
It all seems testy these days.
We've got to say what we see.
The task is to take the testy and go on.
Go on, and go on, until we are gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond. Awake.
Awake from the nightmare of antagonism, through the dream of recombination, into the reality Assumption invites – One’s Body – undifferentiate, indistributive, and resolute.
Finally become Yes!
Thursday, August 14, 2003
We are home.
Even so, we ask again and again, 'Where is home?"
My home is a cave, without a thing in it.
Pure and marvelously empty,
As bright and clear as the sun.
A dish of mountain vegetables is sufficient,
And a patched cloak is plenty of cover for me.
Let a thousand wizards show up to grant me any wish!
I already have the Supreme Buddha
In my possession!
- Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831)
Some 1400 miles whirlwind driving, winding through New Brunswick -- St Stephen and St. Andrews, through St. John and Moncton -- to Nova Scotia.
To Cape Breton Island. To Cape North. To a screened porch on North Harbour. Looking around. Wondering, "Is this retreat home?"
Vespers at St. Joseph's after crossing Mackenzie Mountain from Gampo Abbey. The openness of an unlocked church. Stained glass narrative of the sea through life, death, and resurrection.
When we arrive home we find there is no other place than home.
All there is -- is home.
Welcome home.
There.
Even so, we ask again and again, 'Where is home?"
My home is a cave, without a thing in it.
Pure and marvelously empty,
As bright and clear as the sun.
A dish of mountain vegetables is sufficient,
And a patched cloak is plenty of cover for me.
Let a thousand wizards show up to grant me any wish!
I already have the Supreme Buddha
In my possession!
- Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831)
Some 1400 miles whirlwind driving, winding through New Brunswick -- St Stephen and St. Andrews, through St. John and Moncton -- to Nova Scotia.
To Cape Breton Island. To Cape North. To a screened porch on North Harbour. Looking around. Wondering, "Is this retreat home?"
Vespers at St. Joseph's after crossing Mackenzie Mountain from Gampo Abbey. The openness of an unlocked church. Stained glass narrative of the sea through life, death, and resurrection.
When we arrive home we find there is no other place than home.
All there is -- is home.
Welcome home.
There.
Wednesday, August 13, 2003
Interview Questions for Buddhists in Maine:
(sent by Holly N. of Windhorse Project)
Do you consider yourself a Buddhist?
Yes – In the way I consider myself human and alive for now.
Have you formally taken refuge?
There are two of us – Saskia and I – that I here refer to.
Yes – We have pronounced the 3 Refuges aloud and in public hearing.
If yes, when and with whom?
After studying and practicing for nearly 30 years I spoke aloud the refuges in mid-nineties with Saskia in the presence of several people at Meetingbrook.
In addition, Saskia pronounced them at a retreat with monks of the Order of Interbeing.
So too, we have formulated and pronounced in public our own Meetingbrook promises. These are promises of Contemplation, Conversation, and Correspondence.
Is this person still one of your teachers? How often do you see them?
Thich Nhat Hanh is a wonderful teacher for us. We see him through his writings as well as those who trust him. We passed each other 20 years ago, bowed in silence, alone together in an alley between buildings at Smith College where he sat on steps in solitude before his talk. Not since.
In addition, each person we listen to or speak with is for us the person of the teacher, the Buddha. In our Christian monastic tradition and metaphor this would be similar to receiving each as Christ.
Do you have other teachers? Are they from different lineages?
Yes. Many teachers, many lineages.
Who are your favorite Buddhist teachers/authors?
Shunryu Suzuki, Thich Nhat Hanh, Denys Rackley, Jack Kornfield, Larry Rosenberg, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, D.T.Suzuki, Pema Chodron, Chogyam Trungpa, Joko Beck, Sokei An, Keiji Nishitani, Maseo Abe, Seung Sahn, Dalai Lama, Barbara Rhodes, Dogen Zenji, Bankai, Toni Packer, Ryokan, Basho, Ikkyu, Issa, Siddhartha Gautama, and many others.
Do you feel that mingling Buddhist traditions can strengthen practitioners or become an obstacle to serious practice?
Strengthen.
Would you recount your interest in Buddhism chronologically?
In 1966, while in a contemplative year of prayer and study with the Franciscans, I picked up and read the book “Beyond East and West,” by John Wu. That was my beginning. Thomas Merton was my bridge and D.T. Suzuki was the stepping-stone from the bridge. In 1974/75 I began attending retreats, public lectures, Dharma talks in the city. I sat zazen with Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn and associates in Cambridge, Providence, and New York. While caring for a friend after surgery in the mid-eighties I sat with Eido Roshi and experienced the Japanese tradition.
As a solitary I practiced zazen alone for 20 years following.
Two 10-day Buddhist/Christian retreats, in 1980 and 1990, led by a Catholic Carthusian monk, knit nicely the common silence of Buddhist Meditation Practice and Christian Contemplative Prayer. This monk, Denys Rackley, is someone to whom my gratitude continues to flow. He died in 1998 at age 76.
From 1990 we intentionally began to consider what emerges as Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage.
Now we silently sit and converse with practitioners from various traditions -- inter-religious and non-religious -- whoever longs to practice what is true and loving.
We practice between traditions, not only Buddhist, but also Christian. We consider ourselves Catholic/ Buddhists open to all authentic expressions of faith, knowledge, practice, & inquiry. (With regard to the “Buddhist/Catholic” designation, we find ourselves most often in the “/” – the slash/place, the between/connection place.)
Saskia’s introduction to Buddhism came in 1984. In 1990 her first 10 day retreat was done with Denys Rackley, (a Carthusian Monk) whose practice was Catholic /Vipassana. Her Buddhist/Christian practice continues as such.
Would you recount your interest in Buddhism geographically?
Every place I am. Every place there is. Every place we are.
Where do you live now?
Camden, Maine.
Are you part of a study group or a Sangha? How many people are in it?
We belong to Meetingbrook Hermitage with its bookshop/bakery.
There is a core group of several dozen people who, in lesser groups of 3 to 15 attend one or the other of the evening conversations at the bookshop. There are a few who attend once in a while the daily practice times held at the hermitage.
There is no fixed residential community aside from the two dogs, a cat, and us. There is no pledge of affiliation to Meetingbrook encouraged, nor any pledged affiliation with any other or outside organizations. We are independent. When our practice deepens, we'll fall into interdependence.
As in our initial description, so we remain -- “Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage intends to serve a loosely knit association of individuals who travel the meditative & contemplative road from dependence to independence to interdependence in their spiritual lives. Providing a forum and place for solitaries, hermits, seekers & contemplatives, the hermitage invites anyone interested in silence, simplicity, stillness, or times of solitude to deepen their spiritual life in their own locations, and, by day visits, writing, overnight stays, individual and group sitting, listening & learning -- to experience Meetingbrook.” {http://www.meetingbrook.org/about.htm}
Do you feel there are adequate resources for your practice here in Maine? Please explain.
Yes. Everywhere is Buddha-nature. Everyone is Buddha-nature. Practice is everywhere available.
We have only to open our eyes, ears, mouth, mind, and heart. When we engage with compassion each and every being, each and every situation – we are practicing.
There is much to practice!
It is, in my view, important to locate practice in the ordinary, everyday, non-scripted realities right in front of us – the ones life presents itself through, and in, and as.
It is lovely to have formal practice centers and retreats. It is equally lovely to realize that each one of us is the practice itself.
My prayer is that when we meet each other we come to see there is no other.
Practice, in this view, is the process of enlightening that prayer and experience with one another. From this emerge simplicity, integrity, and faithful engagement.
We’ll know we are practitioners when there is seen attentive presence, root silence, and faithful engagement.
…………..
Holly asks:
Please pass this survey onto to any Buddhists you know in Maine.
Please send it to holly@windhorseproject.org
Or the Windhorse Project, 226 Ludwig Road, Hope, Maine, 04847. Many thanks!
………….
Thanks Holly,
Bill Halpin & Saskia Huising
(sent by Holly N. of Windhorse Project)
Do you consider yourself a Buddhist?
Yes – In the way I consider myself human and alive for now.
Have you formally taken refuge?
There are two of us – Saskia and I – that I here refer to.
Yes – We have pronounced the 3 Refuges aloud and in public hearing.
If yes, when and with whom?
After studying and practicing for nearly 30 years I spoke aloud the refuges in mid-nineties with Saskia in the presence of several people at Meetingbrook.
In addition, Saskia pronounced them at a retreat with monks of the Order of Interbeing.
So too, we have formulated and pronounced in public our own Meetingbrook promises. These are promises of Contemplation, Conversation, and Correspondence.
Is this person still one of your teachers? How often do you see them?
Thich Nhat Hanh is a wonderful teacher for us. We see him through his writings as well as those who trust him. We passed each other 20 years ago, bowed in silence, alone together in an alley between buildings at Smith College where he sat on steps in solitude before his talk. Not since.
In addition, each person we listen to or speak with is for us the person of the teacher, the Buddha. In our Christian monastic tradition and metaphor this would be similar to receiving each as Christ.
Do you have other teachers? Are they from different lineages?
Yes. Many teachers, many lineages.
Who are your favorite Buddhist teachers/authors?
Shunryu Suzuki, Thich Nhat Hanh, Denys Rackley, Jack Kornfield, Larry Rosenberg, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, D.T.Suzuki, Pema Chodron, Chogyam Trungpa, Joko Beck, Sokei An, Keiji Nishitani, Maseo Abe, Seung Sahn, Dalai Lama, Barbara Rhodes, Dogen Zenji, Bankai, Toni Packer, Ryokan, Basho, Ikkyu, Issa, Siddhartha Gautama, and many others.
Do you feel that mingling Buddhist traditions can strengthen practitioners or become an obstacle to serious practice?
Strengthen.
Would you recount your interest in Buddhism chronologically?
In 1966, while in a contemplative year of prayer and study with the Franciscans, I picked up and read the book “Beyond East and West,” by John Wu. That was my beginning. Thomas Merton was my bridge and D.T. Suzuki was the stepping-stone from the bridge. In 1974/75 I began attending retreats, public lectures, Dharma talks in the city. I sat zazen with Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn and associates in Cambridge, Providence, and New York. While caring for a friend after surgery in the mid-eighties I sat with Eido Roshi and experienced the Japanese tradition.
As a solitary I practiced zazen alone for 20 years following.
Two 10-day Buddhist/Christian retreats, in 1980 and 1990, led by a Catholic Carthusian monk, knit nicely the common silence of Buddhist Meditation Practice and Christian Contemplative Prayer. This monk, Denys Rackley, is someone to whom my gratitude continues to flow. He died in 1998 at age 76.
From 1990 we intentionally began to consider what emerges as Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage.
Now we silently sit and converse with practitioners from various traditions -- inter-religious and non-religious -- whoever longs to practice what is true and loving.
We practice between traditions, not only Buddhist, but also Christian. We consider ourselves Catholic/ Buddhists open to all authentic expressions of faith, knowledge, practice, & inquiry. (With regard to the “Buddhist/Catholic” designation, we find ourselves most often in the “/” – the slash/place, the between/connection place.)
Saskia’s introduction to Buddhism came in 1984. In 1990 her first 10 day retreat was done with Denys Rackley, (a Carthusian Monk) whose practice was Catholic /Vipassana. Her Buddhist/Christian practice continues as such.
Would you recount your interest in Buddhism geographically?
Every place I am. Every place there is. Every place we are.
Where do you live now?
Camden, Maine.
Are you part of a study group or a Sangha? How many people are in it?
We belong to Meetingbrook Hermitage with its bookshop/bakery.
There is a core group of several dozen people who, in lesser groups of 3 to 15 attend one or the other of the evening conversations at the bookshop. There are a few who attend once in a while the daily practice times held at the hermitage.
There is no fixed residential community aside from the two dogs, a cat, and us. There is no pledge of affiliation to Meetingbrook encouraged, nor any pledged affiliation with any other or outside organizations. We are independent. When our practice deepens, we'll fall into interdependence.
As in our initial description, so we remain -- “Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage intends to serve a loosely knit association of individuals who travel the meditative & contemplative road from dependence to independence to interdependence in their spiritual lives. Providing a forum and place for solitaries, hermits, seekers & contemplatives, the hermitage invites anyone interested in silence, simplicity, stillness, or times of solitude to deepen their spiritual life in their own locations, and, by day visits, writing, overnight stays, individual and group sitting, listening & learning -- to experience Meetingbrook.” {http://www.meetingbrook.org/about.htm}
Do you feel there are adequate resources for your practice here in Maine? Please explain.
Yes. Everywhere is Buddha-nature. Everyone is Buddha-nature. Practice is everywhere available.
We have only to open our eyes, ears, mouth, mind, and heart. When we engage with compassion each and every being, each and every situation – we are practicing.
There is much to practice!
It is, in my view, important to locate practice in the ordinary, everyday, non-scripted realities right in front of us – the ones life presents itself through, and in, and as.
It is lovely to have formal practice centers and retreats. It is equally lovely to realize that each one of us is the practice itself.
My prayer is that when we meet each other we come to see there is no other.
Practice, in this view, is the process of enlightening that prayer and experience with one another. From this emerge simplicity, integrity, and faithful engagement.
We’ll know we are practitioners when there is seen attentive presence, root silence, and faithful engagement.
…………..
Holly asks:
Please pass this survey onto to any Buddhists you know in Maine.
Please send it to holly@windhorseproject.org
Or the Windhorse Project, 226 Ludwig Road, Hope, Maine, 04847. Many thanks!
………….
Thanks Holly,
Bill Halpin & Saskia Huising
Friday, August 08, 2003
It can equally be said this birthday is the first and it is the last.
Heavy rain and fog -- this morning -- dawning.
The moon is a house
In which the mind is master.
Look very closely:
Only impermanence lasts.
This floating world, too, will pass.
- Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481)
Leaving shop last night, high tide just outside door of small cape on harbor, Jon asks if there is anything special about 59. "No," I answer. He nods. Says goodnight. I say, "I love you." Door closes. We rush off to Graves Market for chocolate with only a few minutes before 9pm closing.
Advice to a Girl
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed;
Lay that on your heart,
My young angry dear;
This truth, this hard and precious stone,
Lay it on your hot cheek,
Let it hide your tear.
Hold it like a crystal
When you are alone
And gaze in the depths of the icy stone.
Long, look long and you will be blessed:
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed.
(Poem by Sara Teasdale from Mirror of the Heart, Macmillan).
The definition of the word possess, "to have as one's own property," must be seen through. We normally think ownership, as in materially, legally belonging to the occupying person and none other.
The "One" is all there is.
Property, "the sum total of items owned; possessions collectively," can be looked at as that which belongs to One, that which is near and dear to all.
When we see what is near, when we see through the eyes of what-is-called-God, we see all there is.
Our brothers and sisters in Islam Surah 112, Say: He is Allah, the one and only God the Eternal, the Absolute He begot none, nor was He begotten and there is none comparable to Him.
A commentator goes on to say: The Arabic term "Ahad" used here to refer to the unity of Allah.
The unity of Allah is such that there is no reality and no true and permanent existence except His. Moreover, every other being acquires what ever power it possessed from the effective power of Allah which rules over this world. Nothing else whatsoever plans anything for the world nor decides, for that matter, anything in it. (Commentary, Surah 112, Purity of Faith - al Ikhlas, http://www.youngmuslims.ca/online_library/tafsir/syed_qutb/Surah_112.htm)
Metaphysicians from earliest Greece say, Being is, non-Being is not.
Our brothers and sisters at their thresholds say Sh'ma, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
Jesus said, The Father and I are one.
Siddhartha Gautama said at end of his life, "From now on, brothers and sisters, you are on your own."
What does it mean to be on one's own? What does it mean to be one with the Father? What does it mean to Be? What does it mean that nothing else is? What does it mean to hear One?
Perhaps it means, one and all, this Friday is our birth.
Can we see, can we possess, this?
"Long, look long and you will be blessed," said Sara.
Watch and pray,
first and last,
for – this -- blessing!
(wfh)
Love what is...our very own.
Heavy rain and fog -- this morning -- dawning.
The moon is a house
In which the mind is master.
Look very closely:
Only impermanence lasts.
This floating world, too, will pass.
- Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481)
Leaving shop last night, high tide just outside door of small cape on harbor, Jon asks if there is anything special about 59. "No," I answer. He nods. Says goodnight. I say, "I love you." Door closes. We rush off to Graves Market for chocolate with only a few minutes before 9pm closing.
Advice to a Girl
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed;
Lay that on your heart,
My young angry dear;
This truth, this hard and precious stone,
Lay it on your hot cheek,
Let it hide your tear.
Hold it like a crystal
When you are alone
And gaze in the depths of the icy stone.
Long, look long and you will be blessed:
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed.
(Poem by Sara Teasdale from Mirror of the Heart, Macmillan).
The definition of the word possess, "to have as one's own property," must be seen through. We normally think ownership, as in materially, legally belonging to the occupying person and none other.
The "One" is all there is.
Property, "the sum total of items owned; possessions collectively," can be looked at as that which belongs to One, that which is near and dear to all.
When we see what is near, when we see through the eyes of what-is-called-God, we see all there is.
Our brothers and sisters in Islam Surah 112, Say: He is Allah, the one and only God the Eternal, the Absolute He begot none, nor was He begotten and there is none comparable to Him.
A commentator goes on to say: The Arabic term "Ahad" used here to refer to the unity of Allah.
The unity of Allah is such that there is no reality and no true and permanent existence except His. Moreover, every other being acquires what ever power it possessed from the effective power of Allah which rules over this world. Nothing else whatsoever plans anything for the world nor decides, for that matter, anything in it. (Commentary, Surah 112, Purity of Faith - al Ikhlas, http://www.youngmuslims.ca/online_library/tafsir/syed_qutb/Surah_112.htm)
Metaphysicians from earliest Greece say, Being is, non-Being is not.
Our brothers and sisters at their thresholds say Sh'ma, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.
Jesus said, The Father and I are one.
Siddhartha Gautama said at end of his life, "From now on, brothers and sisters, you are on your own."
What does it mean to be on one's own? What does it mean to be one with the Father? What does it mean to Be? What does it mean that nothing else is? What does it mean to hear One?
Perhaps it means, one and all, this Friday is our birth.
Can we see, can we possess, this?
"Long, look long and you will be blessed," said Sara.
Watch and pray,
first and last,
for – this -- blessing!
(wfh)
Love what is...our very own.
Thursday, August 07, 2003
Questioning is a particular spiritual practice.
We engage what is presenting itself when we ask into it. By asking into, or questioning something, we expand the boundaries of our perceived proscribed self.
That self, when absorbed by a question into unknown possibilities of response, ceases to exist as a separate detached self. It never was separate, not for an instant. And yet, the felt experience of the vast majority of us is separate, detached distance from another or others.
Nor are there any others – not on the field of unity. True, on the field of utility, each is distinct, localized, and bearer of specific identification or drivers license number.
Here in a thatched hut
Hidden among mountain peaks,
With barely room for one,
I’m suddenly invaded
By wandering white clouds.
- Koho Kennichi
With gratitude to my mother and father, grandparents, ancestors and predecessors as far back as back can go – I acknowledge that somewhere in the procession of being a human being was born with the name I carry even until today.
Coming-into-being-seen!
Happy the day!
Gratefulness!
Is love itself what is grounding us as oneself?
Parthenogenesis [Greek = virgin birth], far from being an aberration, might be the mystery of love’s substance finding itself through oneself.
Only when we love the mother can we love the father.
Thereby loving oneself.
I face the 8th joyfully!
We engage what is presenting itself when we ask into it. By asking into, or questioning something, we expand the boundaries of our perceived proscribed self.
That self, when absorbed by a question into unknown possibilities of response, ceases to exist as a separate detached self. It never was separate, not for an instant. And yet, the felt experience of the vast majority of us is separate, detached distance from another or others.
Nor are there any others – not on the field of unity. True, on the field of utility, each is distinct, localized, and bearer of specific identification or drivers license number.
Here in a thatched hut
Hidden among mountain peaks,
With barely room for one,
I’m suddenly invaded
By wandering white clouds.
- Koho Kennichi
With gratitude to my mother and father, grandparents, ancestors and predecessors as far back as back can go – I acknowledge that somewhere in the procession of being a human being was born with the name I carry even until today.
Coming-into-being-seen!
Happy the day!
Gratefulness!
Is love itself what is grounding us as oneself?
Parthenogenesis [Greek = virgin birth], far from being an aberration, might be the mystery of love’s substance finding itself through oneself.
Only when we love the mother can we love the father.
Thereby loving oneself.
I face the 8th joyfully!
Wednesday, August 06, 2003
We're uncertain how surprised Jesus was when he experienced himself transfigured before the eyes of Peter, James, and John. It's good to have community or sangha around when something unusual happens to you,
To be aware when your mind is going astray
Is indeed a good thing.
Then you must focus your attention
And gather it in and not let
It run off anymore.
This is the meditation work of
Taking charge and preserving the mind
Of reverence.
If your mind does not know where it is,
And everything is vague and uncertain,
What kind of meditation is this?
- Hu Juren (1434-1484)
It is unusual to have dead people appear, to have your clothes turn dazzling, and to hear the voice of an unseen being announce you as someone to be listened to.
While he was praying, his face changed its appearance, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly two men were there talking with him. They were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in heavenly glory and talked with Jesus about the way in which he would soon fulfill God's purpose by dying in Jerusalem. Peter and his companions were sound asleep but they woke up and saw Jesus' glory and the two men who were standing with him. As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, 'Master, how good it is that we are here! We will make three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ He did not really know what he was saying. While he was still speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them with its shadow, and the disciples were afraid as the cloud came over them. A voice said from the cloud, 'This is my Son whom I have chosen--listen to him!" (Luke 9:28-35, from the New Catholic Bible)
What could he have thought? Perhaps he was uncertain, "And everything is vague and uncertain, / What kind of meditation is this? "
Perhaps his mind did not know where it was.
With no mind, one must be right where one is.
In Hiroshima on this date 58 years ago -- a mindless slaughter. On Mount Tabor longer than that ago -- a command to listen.
Today I listen. Not three tents. Not one tent. No tents.
Only listen.
Says who?
Ask! Question without hope of answer.
A voice? Whose?
We're uncertain.
Good.
To be aware when your mind is going astray
Is indeed a good thing.
Then you must focus your attention
And gather it in and not let
It run off anymore.
This is the meditation work of
Taking charge and preserving the mind
Of reverence.
If your mind does not know where it is,
And everything is vague and uncertain,
What kind of meditation is this?
- Hu Juren (1434-1484)
It is unusual to have dead people appear, to have your clothes turn dazzling, and to hear the voice of an unseen being announce you as someone to be listened to.
While he was praying, his face changed its appearance, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly two men were there talking with him. They were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in heavenly glory and talked with Jesus about the way in which he would soon fulfill God's purpose by dying in Jerusalem. Peter and his companions were sound asleep but they woke up and saw Jesus' glory and the two men who were standing with him. As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, 'Master, how good it is that we are here! We will make three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ He did not really know what he was saying. While he was still speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them with its shadow, and the disciples were afraid as the cloud came over them. A voice said from the cloud, 'This is my Son whom I have chosen--listen to him!" (Luke 9:28-35, from the New Catholic Bible)
What could he have thought? Perhaps he was uncertain, "And everything is vague and uncertain, / What kind of meditation is this? "
Perhaps his mind did not know where it was.
With no mind, one must be right where one is.
In Hiroshima on this date 58 years ago -- a mindless slaughter. On Mount Tabor longer than that ago -- a command to listen.
Today I listen. Not three tents. Not one tent. No tents.
Only listen.
Says who?
Ask! Question without hope of answer.
A voice? Whose?
We're uncertain.
Good.
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
Lately, there's a curious moving about in mind and with feet.
Many are expressing a desire to change their way of living. Some say they want more simplicity. Some, community. Some want to change their lives by finding out and releasing who they really are. Others are wandering about on vacation, while still others meander vacant and confused.
In addition, an unusual number of people are interiorly packing and ridding the unnecessary for an exodus not yet fully understood.
To nurture this mind,
The most important work
In everyday activities
Is not to be overcome
By things.
- Wu Yubi (1391-1469)
Is the most important work to undergo what is -- here -- in heart and eye?
The Wild Geese
Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.
(Poem by Wendell Berry from Collected Poems 1957-1982, North Point Press).
"Here" is a hard place to dwell. So many feel that life is elsewhere. I once did -- perhaps still do -- feel that the lives some of us live are separated from what we imagine to be Life Itself.
Surely, the terror and suffering inflicted daily around the world by war, famine, disease, and accidents have a feel of anomaly and exception about them. If so, what constitutes harmonious, peaceful, non-disastrous life in this world?
Dare we ask? Dare we listen for response?
He was found among the teachers, and we are told he was 'listening to them and asking them questions,' the thing that is most difficult of all in human conversation. What man can really listen to others and ask questions? But there are children who can, for they are not encumbered by prejudices, they go to the heart of the mystery. An intelligent child is a metaphysician: in the presence of the doctors of the Law, he is outside the Law, he is all spirit. That alone would have been enough to explain the 'quick understanding' that amazed them in his answers.
(pp. 41-42, from section The Independence of the Son, in The Blessed Virgin, by Jean Guitton, 1949)
Quick understanding eludes. In its place are bromide, spin, and obfuscation of spurious motivation.
We must ask. We must listen.
What must we do to see eternal life?
This question, here, is ancient and timely.
I am…listening.
Many are expressing a desire to change their way of living. Some say they want more simplicity. Some, community. Some want to change their lives by finding out and releasing who they really are. Others are wandering about on vacation, while still others meander vacant and confused.
In addition, an unusual number of people are interiorly packing and ridding the unnecessary for an exodus not yet fully understood.
To nurture this mind,
The most important work
In everyday activities
Is not to be overcome
By things.
- Wu Yubi (1391-1469)
Is the most important work to undergo what is -- here -- in heart and eye?
The Wild Geese
Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.
(Poem by Wendell Berry from Collected Poems 1957-1982, North Point Press).
"Here" is a hard place to dwell. So many feel that life is elsewhere. I once did -- perhaps still do -- feel that the lives some of us live are separated from what we imagine to be Life Itself.
Surely, the terror and suffering inflicted daily around the world by war, famine, disease, and accidents have a feel of anomaly and exception about them. If so, what constitutes harmonious, peaceful, non-disastrous life in this world?
Dare we ask? Dare we listen for response?
He was found among the teachers, and we are told he was 'listening to them and asking them questions,' the thing that is most difficult of all in human conversation. What man can really listen to others and ask questions? But there are children who can, for they are not encumbered by prejudices, they go to the heart of the mystery. An intelligent child is a metaphysician: in the presence of the doctors of the Law, he is outside the Law, he is all spirit. That alone would have been enough to explain the 'quick understanding' that amazed them in his answers.
(pp. 41-42, from section The Independence of the Son, in The Blessed Virgin, by Jean Guitton, 1949)
Quick understanding eludes. In its place are bromide, spin, and obfuscation of spurious motivation.
We must ask. We must listen.
What must we do to see eternal life?
This question, here, is ancient and timely.
I am…listening.
Monday, August 04, 2003
Why is silence so vital?
Does language, when overused, fail to hold true to what is conveyed through it?
Meaning to get away from intellectualization
And avoid word traps,
I sailed across the sea to search for the
Transmission beyond the teachings;
Went on pilgrimages till my sandals broke
And found water in the clear stream,
The moon in the sky.
- Kakua (1143 - ?)
Today water falls from sky; moon hides under stone in stream.
Sylvia looked at two of us on Saturday and said: "You say 'I don't know anything,' and John says, 'We know everything.' -- which is true?"
She's right about what was said. I don't know anything. We know everything.
Ego is clueless. Sangha is wise.
Silence is vital. Silence reveals community.
Community is vital silence.
Does language, when overused, fail to hold true to what is conveyed through it?
Meaning to get away from intellectualization
And avoid word traps,
I sailed across the sea to search for the
Transmission beyond the teachings;
Went on pilgrimages till my sandals broke
And found water in the clear stream,
The moon in the sky.
- Kakua (1143 - ?)
Today water falls from sky; moon hides under stone in stream.
Sylvia looked at two of us on Saturday and said: "You say 'I don't know anything,' and John says, 'We know everything.' -- which is true?"
She's right about what was said. I don't know anything. We know everything.
Ego is clueless. Sangha is wise.
Silence is vital. Silence reveals community.
Community is vital silence.
Sunday, August 03, 2003
Right now, Buddhists sit at Molyneaux Yoga-barn. Quakers sit at Vesper Hill Children's Chapel, and various Christian denominations listen to scripture readings and remember the life of Jesus.
Sunday morning attentiveness!
Old cedars and ancient cypresses impale rosy mists,
Through huge boulders and hanging vines
A small path winds;
Even monkeys and cranes won’t
Come to a mountain this desolate.
Only the wind-borne cassia pods
That fill my thatched hut.
- Tesshu Tokusai (? – 1366)(dailyzen)
At hermitage, birds trill expanding silence with their sound, Saskia slices mushrooms and beans for soup (nicking thumb in process), and I read the scriptures of daily postings from newspapers and websites about secrets and mysteries of human behavior, incomprehensible political maneuvers, and the common experience we mostly all have to make sense of the odd goings-on in the world.
It occurred to me yesterday that I seldom say to individuals, "I'd love for you to be part of what we love to imagine as community dwelling in simplicity, peace, and service -- sweetness grounded in prayer, contemplation, and meditation."
This insight came when earlier in the day a woman left the shop and the feeling remaining was, "Are we being excluded? She doesn't seem to include us in speaking or thinking about things she knows we too are interested in." It had to do with co-housing exploration. About community. The sense of seclusion sometimes lingers like an echo in a large empty room.
There's the mirror!
Whatever we think about another must be thought about oneself. Whatever is said about another must be said about oneself.
Until it dissolves, my ego sees itself as organizing someone in solitary seclusion. It matters not at all that the majority of time is spent in the ready presence of others coming and going, sitting and seeking, conversing and reflecting. Still, the image is of someone in hermit solitude with: Only the wind-borne cassia pods / That fill my thatched hut.
I would love for many individuals to be part of what we love to imagine as community dwelling in simplicity, peace, and service -- sweetness grounded in prayer, contemplation, and meditation.
There. I've said it.
May I be forgiven my excluding ego.
It is, after all, Sunday.
All exclusions herewith exempt.
Right?
Now?
Yes!
Sunday morning attentiveness!
Old cedars and ancient cypresses impale rosy mists,
Through huge boulders and hanging vines
A small path winds;
Even monkeys and cranes won’t
Come to a mountain this desolate.
Only the wind-borne cassia pods
That fill my thatched hut.
- Tesshu Tokusai (? – 1366)(dailyzen)
At hermitage, birds trill expanding silence with their sound, Saskia slices mushrooms and beans for soup (nicking thumb in process), and I read the scriptures of daily postings from newspapers and websites about secrets and mysteries of human behavior, incomprehensible political maneuvers, and the common experience we mostly all have to make sense of the odd goings-on in the world.
It occurred to me yesterday that I seldom say to individuals, "I'd love for you to be part of what we love to imagine as community dwelling in simplicity, peace, and service -- sweetness grounded in prayer, contemplation, and meditation."
This insight came when earlier in the day a woman left the shop and the feeling remaining was, "Are we being excluded? She doesn't seem to include us in speaking or thinking about things she knows we too are interested in." It had to do with co-housing exploration. About community. The sense of seclusion sometimes lingers like an echo in a large empty room.
There's the mirror!
Whatever we think about another must be thought about oneself. Whatever is said about another must be said about oneself.
Until it dissolves, my ego sees itself as organizing someone in solitary seclusion. It matters not at all that the majority of time is spent in the ready presence of others coming and going, sitting and seeking, conversing and reflecting. Still, the image is of someone in hermit solitude with: Only the wind-borne cassia pods / That fill my thatched hut.
I would love for many individuals to be part of what we love to imagine as community dwelling in simplicity, peace, and service -- sweetness grounded in prayer, contemplation, and meditation.
There. I've said it.
May I be forgiven my excluding ego.
It is, after all, Sunday.
All exclusions herewith exempt.
Right?
Now?
Yes!
Friday, August 01, 2003
We know little.
We suspect there’s much we don’t know.
But it's what we don't know we don't know that's most intriguing.
Not a clue. Not an inch closer to the far side of the edge of what we suspect is the limit of possible knowledge.
One minute of sitting, one inch of Buddha.
Like lightning all thoughts come and pass.
Just once look into your mind-depths:
Nothing else has ever been.
- Manzan (1649 – 1709)
We don't know what we are doing. We have no idea why we've made it to our 8th year at the harbor. No understanding why we sit in prison every other Friday having each time the best conversations that can be had.
Some embryo nourishes itself within the glimpse each emits toward the other around the table. No explaining. Mere re-presenting one in the other.
To conform one's will completely to the template of divine love is a spiritual practice that [Jacob] Boehme refers to as "putting on the body of Christ.
(p.39 in Love Is Stronger Than Death, The Mystical Union of Two Souls, by Cynthia Bourgeault)
Second body? Mystical body? Embodiment?
Who knows?
Surely some know?
No.
One.
Knows.
We suspect there’s much we don’t know.
But it's what we don't know we don't know that's most intriguing.
Not a clue. Not an inch closer to the far side of the edge of what we suspect is the limit of possible knowledge.
One minute of sitting, one inch of Buddha.
Like lightning all thoughts come and pass.
Just once look into your mind-depths:
Nothing else has ever been.
- Manzan (1649 – 1709)
We don't know what we are doing. We have no idea why we've made it to our 8th year at the harbor. No understanding why we sit in prison every other Friday having each time the best conversations that can be had.
Some embryo nourishes itself within the glimpse each emits toward the other around the table. No explaining. Mere re-presenting one in the other.
To conform one's will completely to the template of divine love is a spiritual practice that [Jacob] Boehme refers to as "putting on the body of Christ.
(p.39 in Love Is Stronger Than Death, The Mystical Union of Two Souls, by Cynthia Bourgeault)
Second body? Mystical body? Embodiment?
Who knows?
Surely some know?
No.
One.
Knows.
Thursday, July 31, 2003
Richard says keep it spiritual, not political.
He has separated and subtracted heaven from hell and called the remainder earth.
Beware of gnawing the ideogram of nothingness:
Your teeth will crack.
Swallow it whole, and you’ve a treasure
Beyond the hope of Buddha and the Mind.
The east breeze fondles the horse’s ears:
How sweet the smell of plum.
- Karasumaru-Mitsuhiro (1579–1638)(dailyzen)
The time has come to re-unite and recover heaven and hell with earth.
Incarnation demands it. Enlightenment will have it no other way. Resurrection concretizes the retrieval. Final liberation empties the distinctions and trinitizes the reality of heaven/hell/earth in one's own bodily reality.
Every day bodies are deadened in Iraq. It becomes increasingly evident shortsighted and narrow-thinking warmongers are bamboozling America and the world. The sorrow is not only personal and particular for families and loved ones of those daily killed; it is also devastating for the safety of the soul of clear-hearted and clear-minded people everywhere.
The ideogram of nothingness sloppily drawn by the Bush administration is cracking and rotting teeth.
The ideogram of nothingness treasured by mindful practitioners of clear seeing is the integrity of authentic souls responding faithfully to what is right there in front of them.
In other words, one and the same reality can be the damnation of some and the salvation of others. So much depends on whether truth is how we scold each other, or truth is how we hold each other. Scolders damn. Holders save.
And letting each go their own way -- held in prayer, not fear -- is how we pass through the body of what is called God.
I am sorrowed by war. I am also sorrowed by arrogant unawareness posing as cocky certitude.
Richard will have to wait. Heaven/hell/earth will not be separated in the name of easing people quietly past the disturbing ugliness of war and posturing pretense of patronizing power.
Instead, in the morning he Saskia and I will go into the prison to be with each and everyone arriving at table for conversation. We might talk about the threats of bodily harm by frustrated cowards sucker-punching someone's teeth out. Or we might talk about the intense and beyond-death love between a monk and a hermit-priest. Maybe we'll explore how science is replacing religion in hosting our awareness of God. Who knows?
For this night, July's end is chilly. August brushes off its jacket.
How sweet the fragrance -- the silence of life indivisible.
He has separated and subtracted heaven from hell and called the remainder earth.
Beware of gnawing the ideogram of nothingness:
Your teeth will crack.
Swallow it whole, and you’ve a treasure
Beyond the hope of Buddha and the Mind.
The east breeze fondles the horse’s ears:
How sweet the smell of plum.
- Karasumaru-Mitsuhiro (1579–1638)(dailyzen)
The time has come to re-unite and recover heaven and hell with earth.
Incarnation demands it. Enlightenment will have it no other way. Resurrection concretizes the retrieval. Final liberation empties the distinctions and trinitizes the reality of heaven/hell/earth in one's own bodily reality.
Every day bodies are deadened in Iraq. It becomes increasingly evident shortsighted and narrow-thinking warmongers are bamboozling America and the world. The sorrow is not only personal and particular for families and loved ones of those daily killed; it is also devastating for the safety of the soul of clear-hearted and clear-minded people everywhere.
The ideogram of nothingness sloppily drawn by the Bush administration is cracking and rotting teeth.
The ideogram of nothingness treasured by mindful practitioners of clear seeing is the integrity of authentic souls responding faithfully to what is right there in front of them.
In other words, one and the same reality can be the damnation of some and the salvation of others. So much depends on whether truth is how we scold each other, or truth is how we hold each other. Scolders damn. Holders save.
And letting each go their own way -- held in prayer, not fear -- is how we pass through the body of what is called God.
I am sorrowed by war. I am also sorrowed by arrogant unawareness posing as cocky certitude.
Richard will have to wait. Heaven/hell/earth will not be separated in the name of easing people quietly past the disturbing ugliness of war and posturing pretense of patronizing power.
Instead, in the morning he Saskia and I will go into the prison to be with each and everyone arriving at table for conversation. We might talk about the threats of bodily harm by frustrated cowards sucker-punching someone's teeth out. Or we might talk about the intense and beyond-death love between a monk and a hermit-priest. Maybe we'll explore how science is replacing religion in hosting our awareness of God. Who knows?
For this night, July's end is chilly. August brushes off its jacket.
How sweet the fragrance -- the silence of life indivisible.
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
We're losing the connection.
As Congress goes on vacation for a month I propose a vacation for our troops in Iraq.
How is it that officials in government go off to play and rest while men and women in the military stare down bullets and grenades in Iraq?
Those who sent American forces into harms way should remain at their jobs until our military is brought home.
The flowers, the maple leaves in autumn,
And the wintry snows covering
The field all white.
How beautiful they are
Each in its way!
I fear my attachments
Still did not go beyond
The sensuous, for I now
Know what Reality is.
- Daito Kokushi (1282-1334)
Who knows what Reality is?
Who knows what is taking place?
Reality is what is taking place. No explanation, defense, or apology can do anything to Reality but dress up or camouflage what is taking place.
These days I am attached to the suspicion we Americans are in a foreign country shooting and killing citizens of that country because we feel that we can. This suspicion suggests we are blindly following leaders who trample people's lives to enact their political and ideological purposes.
At Tuesday Evening Conversation, reading a Buddhist Vipassana practitioner, it occurs to me that at center there must be wholesome, fearless, and forgiving Reality. "We" do not forgive. Rather "we" step out of the way and allow forgiveness, i.e. Reality Itself, to take place. Our task is to recognize whenever fractured, fearful, vengeful behavior is interfering with the free expression of Reality.
It is not possible to replicate freedom using enslaving, eradicating behavior as means –- means of murder and assassination. It is not patriotic to send men and women to murder and maim citizens of another country in the name of eradicating evil and demolishing terrorism. Terrorism has many costumes worn by many ideologies.
What is taking place from the hands of our Executive Branch of government is beginning to resemble something dark and dead. What this administration identifies as evil falls prey to naked aggression and terrible killing of human beings that resembles the evil so glibly denunciated.
Our "patriotic" reaction to the cruel criminal acts of 9/11 has been to behave like war-crazed hornets throwing themselves madly against anything perceived disturbing the security of the home nest.
We are retaliating without the safeguards of democracy and decency America has traditionally come to demand in all aspects of American involvement with its own and other people.
My attachment to my suspicions becomes more noticeable. A dull, flat, colorless fear arises – one that suspicion detects is a goal of retaliatory justice.
I fear my attachments. I dislike my suspicions.
Are we falling from the center? Is the center beginning to crumble?
Do unreflective and terrifying men loose mere anarchy on the world?
Is the true center -- at heart of everything -- Reality?
If the center is Reality, this Reality is wholesome, fearless, and forgiving. We must not allow fractured, fearful, vengeful men to break our connection with our very heart, Reality Itself, and substitute falsity, lies, and invented explanations.
We must return to center.
Detach from separating inventions.
Face True Reality. Not the invented, hijacked fears planted by twin-terrified actors -- criminal Al-Quaeda, and retribution-minded U.S. administration.
See the many faces Reality asks us to recognize, love, and forgive.
Recognize How beautiful they are / Each in its way!
Only connect.
Sparkle green.
As Congress goes on vacation for a month I propose a vacation for our troops in Iraq.
How is it that officials in government go off to play and rest while men and women in the military stare down bullets and grenades in Iraq?
Those who sent American forces into harms way should remain at their jobs until our military is brought home.
The flowers, the maple leaves in autumn,
And the wintry snows covering
The field all white.
How beautiful they are
Each in its way!
I fear my attachments
Still did not go beyond
The sensuous, for I now
Know what Reality is.
- Daito Kokushi (1282-1334)
Who knows what Reality is?
Who knows what is taking place?
Reality is what is taking place. No explanation, defense, or apology can do anything to Reality but dress up or camouflage what is taking place.
These days I am attached to the suspicion we Americans are in a foreign country shooting and killing citizens of that country because we feel that we can. This suspicion suggests we are blindly following leaders who trample people's lives to enact their political and ideological purposes.
At Tuesday Evening Conversation, reading a Buddhist Vipassana practitioner, it occurs to me that at center there must be wholesome, fearless, and forgiving Reality. "We" do not forgive. Rather "we" step out of the way and allow forgiveness, i.e. Reality Itself, to take place. Our task is to recognize whenever fractured, fearful, vengeful behavior is interfering with the free expression of Reality.
It is not possible to replicate freedom using enslaving, eradicating behavior as means –- means of murder and assassination. It is not patriotic to send men and women to murder and maim citizens of another country in the name of eradicating evil and demolishing terrorism. Terrorism has many costumes worn by many ideologies.
What is taking place from the hands of our Executive Branch of government is beginning to resemble something dark and dead. What this administration identifies as evil falls prey to naked aggression and terrible killing of human beings that resembles the evil so glibly denunciated.
Our "patriotic" reaction to the cruel criminal acts of 9/11 has been to behave like war-crazed hornets throwing themselves madly against anything perceived disturbing the security of the home nest.
We are retaliating without the safeguards of democracy and decency America has traditionally come to demand in all aspects of American involvement with its own and other people.
My attachment to my suspicions becomes more noticeable. A dull, flat, colorless fear arises – one that suspicion detects is a goal of retaliatory justice.
I fear my attachments. I dislike my suspicions.
Are we falling from the center? Is the center beginning to crumble?
Do unreflective and terrifying men loose mere anarchy on the world?
Is the true center -- at heart of everything -- Reality?
If the center is Reality, this Reality is wholesome, fearless, and forgiving. We must not allow fractured, fearful, vengeful men to break our connection with our very heart, Reality Itself, and substitute falsity, lies, and invented explanations.
We must return to center.
Detach from separating inventions.
Face True Reality. Not the invented, hijacked fears planted by twin-terrified actors -- criminal Al-Quaeda, and retribution-minded U.S. administration.
See the many faces Reality asks us to recognize, love, and forgive.
Recognize How beautiful they are / Each in its way!
Only connect.
Sparkle green.
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Something is wrong.
Sitting in the Mountains
Rock slab seat
Legs folded
Sitting alone
Not loathing noise
Not savoring silence
The carefree clouds concur.
- Jakushitsu (1290–1367)
Someone is stealing our country.
Count me out. Recount the constitution. Something is missing.
I give no permission to kill in my name. Yet, many die, supposedly that I might live in a free country. But free countries do not lie and kill the way tyrannical countries do. My country lies and kills in the very name of freedom.
What's the difference?
God is badly served by lies and men that lie.
Even the mountains hide their faces in grief and shame.
I support the resignation of men that lie, wage war, and erode freedom.
Who will lead us returning what was lost to its rightful place?
Have we lost our way?
Spiritually.
Come home!
Sitting in the Mountains
Rock slab seat
Legs folded
Sitting alone
Not loathing noise
Not savoring silence
The carefree clouds concur.
- Jakushitsu (1290–1367)
Someone is stealing our country.
Count me out. Recount the constitution. Something is missing.
I give no permission to kill in my name. Yet, many die, supposedly that I might live in a free country. But free countries do not lie and kill the way tyrannical countries do. My country lies and kills in the very name of freedom.
What's the difference?
God is badly served by lies and men that lie.
Even the mountains hide their faces in grief and shame.
I support the resignation of men that lie, wage war, and erode freedom.
Who will lead us returning what was lost to its rightful place?
Have we lost our way?
Spiritually.
Come home!
Monday, July 28, 2003
Live alone? With others? Live alone together? Live as one is in community?
Standing alone beneath a solitary pine;
Quickly the time passes.
Overhead the endless sky
Who can I call to join me on this path?
- Ryokan (1758-1831)
This is why we search, smile, and seem foolish to so many.
"We do what only lovers can: make a gift out of necessity." (Leonard Cohen )
What is the necessity?
Draw nearer.
Listen.
Breathe.
Live.
Standing alone beneath a solitary pine;
Quickly the time passes.
Overhead the endless sky
Who can I call to join me on this path?
- Ryokan (1758-1831)
This is why we search, smile, and seem foolish to so many.
"We do what only lovers can: make a gift out of necessity." (Leonard Cohen )
What is the necessity?
Draw nearer.
Listen.
Breathe.
Live.
Sunday, July 27, 2003
Death gives us pause.
Life looks both ways -- toward birth and death -- and moves on.
Here you can rest and become
Clean, pure, and lucid.
Bright and penetrating,
You can immediately return,
Accord, and respond to deal with events.
Everything is unhindered,
Clouds gracefully floating
Up to the peaks, the moonlight
Glitteringly flows
Down mountain streams
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157)
Brooks dry up this July end.
On Zafu this morning, the sheer silence and stillness of wooden floor!
Openness to others -- this is not only an attitude toward death but also toward people and toward truth. Love and knowledge are the two supreme forms of openness to otherness. Love and knowledge are therefore our "rehearsal for Death."
(cf. Plato Phaedo 64a)* --p.42, from Love is Stronger that Death, by Peter Kreeft
[64a] when he is to die, and has strong hopes that when he is dead he will attain the greatest blessings in that other land. So I will try to tell you, Simmias, and Cebes, how this would be.
“Other people are likely not to be aware that those who pursue philosophy aright study nothing but dying and being dead. Now if this is true, it would be absurd to be eager for nothing but this all their lives, and then to be troubled when that came for which they had all along been eagerly practicing.”
And Simmias laughed and said, “By Zeus,
(* Phaedo, Plato)
We eagerly practice.
Pausing.
Prayer.
(Silence -- conversing openly with others).
Life looks both ways -- toward birth and death -- and moves on.
Here you can rest and become
Clean, pure, and lucid.
Bright and penetrating,
You can immediately return,
Accord, and respond to deal with events.
Everything is unhindered,
Clouds gracefully floating
Up to the peaks, the moonlight
Glitteringly flows
Down mountain streams
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157)
Brooks dry up this July end.
On Zafu this morning, the sheer silence and stillness of wooden floor!
Openness to others -- this is not only an attitude toward death but also toward people and toward truth. Love and knowledge are the two supreme forms of openness to otherness. Love and knowledge are therefore our "rehearsal for Death."
(cf. Plato Phaedo 64a)* --p.42, from Love is Stronger that Death, by Peter Kreeft
[64a] when he is to die, and has strong hopes that when he is dead he will attain the greatest blessings in that other land. So I will try to tell you, Simmias, and Cebes, how this would be.
“Other people are likely not to be aware that those who pursue philosophy aright study nothing but dying and being dead. Now if this is true, it would be absurd to be eager for nothing but this all their lives, and then to be troubled when that came for which they had all along been eagerly practicing.”
And Simmias laughed and said, “By Zeus,
(* Phaedo, Plato)
We eagerly practice.
Pausing.
Prayer.
(Silence -- conversing openly with others).
Saturday, July 26, 2003
Folks from Findhorn find the shop this Friday. Married there, they return to Maine. They look for community.
A piece of mind as clear as the sky
Where clouds float freely into all.
This quiet night I do not lean toward sleep
But listen for leaves falling in my yard.
- Kuo-Yin ( c. 1111)
Robert and Su.Sane sit with Sam and Susan a while. The first two will do an art show at the library in autumn. The second two show tool sharpening skills at Rockland Apprenticeshop this afternoon.
Joanie's leg goes flex and flatten on machine in bed. Saskia's LCD computer screen goes kaput in southern Maine during a workman's comp audit. Barbara H will leave Camden in a few days after several years for New York State. Richard O' returns south to Florida after vacation.
The little boy was drawing when his mother noticed and asked, "What are you drawing, Jimmy?"
The little boy, without looking up, answered, "A picture of God."
"But Jimmy," his mother replied, "Nobody knows what God looks like."
"They will once I'm finished."
(p.55, in Doing Nothing Coming to the End of the Spiritual Search, by Steven Harrison)
God is not what we think God is. Nor are we who we think we are.
So -- What is God? And -- Who are we?
At Times I Have
At times I have happy ideas,
Ideas suddenly happy, in among ideas
And the words in which they naturally shake free ...
After writing, I read ...
What made me write that?
Where have I been to find that?
Where did that come to me from? It is better than
me ...
Shall we have been, in the world, at the most, pen
and ink
With which somebody writes properly what we here
jot?...
(18.12.1934) (--from 'Selected Poems' translated from Fernando Pessoa by J.Griffin.)
Tom and Lloyd, Saskia and I read Pessoa and Bozarth, Cummings and Basho for poetry at Friday Evening Conversation.
Friedrich Nietzsche asked the obvious question: "Which is it -- is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's blunders?" (p.56, Harrison)
I prefer poetry.
There, it is neither question nor answer that matters.
Rather, poetry moments us.
Summering leaf holds in heat and sudden shower.
No blunder.
A piece of mind as clear as the sky
Where clouds float freely into all.
This quiet night I do not lean toward sleep
But listen for leaves falling in my yard.
- Kuo-Yin ( c. 1111)
Robert and Su.Sane sit with Sam and Susan a while. The first two will do an art show at the library in autumn. The second two show tool sharpening skills at Rockland Apprenticeshop this afternoon.
Joanie's leg goes flex and flatten on machine in bed. Saskia's LCD computer screen goes kaput in southern Maine during a workman's comp audit. Barbara H will leave Camden in a few days after several years for New York State. Richard O' returns south to Florida after vacation.
The little boy was drawing when his mother noticed and asked, "What are you drawing, Jimmy?"
The little boy, without looking up, answered, "A picture of God."
"But Jimmy," his mother replied, "Nobody knows what God looks like."
"They will once I'm finished."
(p.55, in Doing Nothing Coming to the End of the Spiritual Search, by Steven Harrison)
God is not what we think God is. Nor are we who we think we are.
So -- What is God? And -- Who are we?
At Times I Have
At times I have happy ideas,
Ideas suddenly happy, in among ideas
And the words in which they naturally shake free ...
After writing, I read ...
What made me write that?
Where have I been to find that?
Where did that come to me from? It is better than
me ...
Shall we have been, in the world, at the most, pen
and ink
With which somebody writes properly what we here
jot?...
(18.12.1934) (--from 'Selected Poems' translated from Fernando Pessoa by J.Griffin.)
Tom and Lloyd, Saskia and I read Pessoa and Bozarth, Cummings and Basho for poetry at Friday Evening Conversation.
Friedrich Nietzsche asked the obvious question: "Which is it -- is man one of God's blunders or is God one of man's blunders?" (p.56, Harrison)
I prefer poetry.
There, it is neither question nor answer that matters.
Rather, poetry moments us.
Summering leaf holds in heat and sudden shower.
No blunder.
Thursday, July 24, 2003
Left alone, Cesco ate cherry Kuchen piece of cake in van while Sando and we visited Joanie in Windward Gardens.
Talent discarded
wisdom wiped away
you return to foolishness
No desire to leave traces of bungling
to a world of dust.
(-- Jakushitsu)
At Meher Baba conversation Wednesday evening Ken spoke of the silence and the veil of ignorance. Saskia's insight was that breaking the silence is lifting the veil of ignorance.
It's not a matter of words or wordlessness.
You were saying?
No trace.
Speaking Now into Being is entering Sacred Silence.
Talent discarded
wisdom wiped away
you return to foolishness
No desire to leave traces of bungling
to a world of dust.
(-- Jakushitsu)
At Meher Baba conversation Wednesday evening Ken spoke of the silence and the veil of ignorance. Saskia's insight was that breaking the silence is lifting the veil of ignorance.
It's not a matter of words or wordlessness.
You were saying?
No trace.
Speaking Now into Being is entering Sacred Silence.
Monday, July 21, 2003
Nothing prepares us for the loss of meaning.
Petals drop from flower like words from language -- and we are bare -- ready realization of empty presence.
I watch a teacher lecture on the sutras
His eloquence flows like running water.
Expounding on the five stages
And the eight categories,
He explains them with unequaled cleverness.
They proclaim themselves masters
And others believe it.
However, question them about the essence of Zen
And they have no useful answer.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)
The essence of Zen?
He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion. (Sokei-an)
We didn't open the shop yesterday. We instead worked all day and night on codes and numbers for the other work Saskia does in order to support the shop. It was nice to be away from the crowds that a busy summer weekend of craft fairs and wooden boat shows and harbor festivals that Camden, Rockland, and Belfast hosted this sunny mid-summer. We're the only shop in the area in high summer that has to close its doors in order to make some money.
At Evening Practice we read from Speaking of Silence, Christians and Buddhists on the Contemplative Way. Participants in a forum talk about monasticism and the changing dynamics East and West for new populations wishing to engage and encounter the mysteries of God and Bare Reality.
Jim says something about the need for a new organic expression of the spiritual life.
We're ready for such an organic change.
Our every act, from morning to night, is our religion.
Blessed be the presence.
The reality.
Of this.
It is our body and blood.
Christ.
Nearing, and nearly empty of any other meaning.
Now seeing us as no useful answer.
Seeing Itself?
Petals drop from flower like words from language -- and we are bare -- ready realization of empty presence.
I watch a teacher lecture on the sutras
His eloquence flows like running water.
Expounding on the five stages
And the eight categories,
He explains them with unequaled cleverness.
They proclaim themselves masters
And others believe it.
However, question them about the essence of Zen
And they have no useful answer.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)
The essence of Zen?
He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion. (Sokei-an)
We didn't open the shop yesterday. We instead worked all day and night on codes and numbers for the other work Saskia does in order to support the shop. It was nice to be away from the crowds that a busy summer weekend of craft fairs and wooden boat shows and harbor festivals that Camden, Rockland, and Belfast hosted this sunny mid-summer. We're the only shop in the area in high summer that has to close its doors in order to make some money.
At Evening Practice we read from Speaking of Silence, Christians and Buddhists on the Contemplative Way. Participants in a forum talk about monasticism and the changing dynamics East and West for new populations wishing to engage and encounter the mysteries of God and Bare Reality.
Jim says something about the need for a new organic expression of the spiritual life.
We're ready for such an organic change.
Our every act, from morning to night, is our religion.
Blessed be the presence.
The reality.
Of this.
It is our body and blood.
Christ.
Nearing, and nearly empty of any other meaning.
Now seeing us as no useful answer.
Seeing Itself?
Friday, July 18, 2003
Charlie and Joe sit with Cheryl and I in education room in prison.
"Look around, see what is about you as you move to what is in your sights -- this is how we keep balance," says Joe.
In a pellucid ocean,
Bubbles arise and dissolve again.
Just so, thoughts are no different
From ultimate reality,
So don’t find fault; remain at ease.
Whatever arises, whatever occurs,
Don’t grasp-release it on the spot.
Appearances, sounds, and objects
Are one’s own mind;
There’s nothing except mind.
- Niguma
Charlie was called to the hospital.
Soon we'd have to leave early due to administrative special circumstances in the close (maximum) security unit.
Joe said, "What you are seeing -- it's all about balance."
It occurs he might be saying:
"What you are,
seeing --
it's all about,
balance."
Cheryl says, "If we read someone else with grace, and let others read us with grace, we allow graciousness to dwell in our midst."
This is what we want -- patience. (L. patior = to suffer, permit, or allow.)
To listen is to suffer what is heard.
We're in prison. We listen to each other. Suffering is shared. Patience is practiced.
Joe says that when he is leaving someone he says, "Keep in touch with yourself."
If we are what we wish to learn, then there is no teaching, only presence learning from itself.
Last night Joanie calls from hospital, she'd fallen, breaking her leg. We visit after leaving razor-wire fence. She's in surgery.
We pray for her, and for Eleanor and Douglas, and all suffering the conversation with age and frailty.
One breath at a time -- we touch one another -- with presence.
Remain at ease
"Look around, see what is about you as you move to what is in your sights -- this is how we keep balance," says Joe.
In a pellucid ocean,
Bubbles arise and dissolve again.
Just so, thoughts are no different
From ultimate reality,
So don’t find fault; remain at ease.
Whatever arises, whatever occurs,
Don’t grasp-release it on the spot.
Appearances, sounds, and objects
Are one’s own mind;
There’s nothing except mind.
- Niguma
Charlie was called to the hospital.
Soon we'd have to leave early due to administrative special circumstances in the close (maximum) security unit.
Joe said, "What you are seeing -- it's all about balance."
It occurs he might be saying:
"What you are,
seeing --
it's all about,
balance."
Cheryl says, "If we read someone else with grace, and let others read us with grace, we allow graciousness to dwell in our midst."
This is what we want -- patience. (L. patior = to suffer, permit, or allow.)
To listen is to suffer what is heard.
We're in prison. We listen to each other. Suffering is shared. Patience is practiced.
Joe says that when he is leaving someone he says, "Keep in touch with yourself."
If we are what we wish to learn, then there is no teaching, only presence learning from itself.
Last night Joanie calls from hospital, she'd fallen, breaking her leg. We visit after leaving razor-wire fence. She's in surgery.
We pray for her, and for Eleanor and Douglas, and all suffering the conversation with age and frailty.
One breath at a time -- we touch one another -- with presence.
Remain at ease
Thursday, July 17, 2003
Innocence.
Not knowing.
Buddhists are asked to have great faith, great doubt, and great effort.
When I went to meditate in mountain-range solitude,
I briefly encountered realization of mind itself.
When I practiced without distraction,
A continual understanding arose.
Now it doesn’t depend on a state of mind.
I’m content with resolution in a birthless state.
I wander in mountain-range solitude,
Or else perform seated retreat in a cave.
Or in the midst of an assembly;
This current continues without interruption.
- Godrakpa (1170-1249)
Walking into the barn last night Cisco stops, listening. I stop, listening. To the left of the door leading from barn to mud room the white and black of a skunk.
We exit. Leave the skunk be. Enter house from dooryard. No stink, no fuss, turn around, go another way. Good we were silent.
What do we know? We have stories we tell about ideas or experience. Some stories we believe. Some we reject. Sometimes we follow stories down the road. Sometimes we find ourselves in a beautiful clearing. Sometimes we fall into a ditch.
Cheryl talked about intention, then eurhythmic "ah" from a Steiner workshop she attended. Sylvia read from a book about dreams -- how they are a place we go for learning. David said, "No judgments." Saskia spoke of sailing, of not trying to impose your will on the wind and water.
We are asked to be attentively and alertly aware of what is passing through us. Allowing passage, constructing no barrier to what is passing through.
Cheryl's brother Kirk sent this poem:
LESSON #1
It is as simple as this
If I wake in the morning
I get up
If I die before the dawn
I don't
Everything else
is story.
(--Kirk, c.2003)
Nature, that which is of itself so (tzu-jan), follows its course spontaneously.
Two stories pass through today:
1. War is a loud lie enacted for all to hear and see.
2. Truth, that which is just like this, quietly finds its own way out into clear light.
In this truth there is great faith. In the lie of war there is great doubt. In natural innocence revealing itself through our lives, there is great effort to simply allow artificial barriers dissolve and genuine sacred openness flow through.
Water seeking lowest place. Water source of life. Of itself flowing through.
Humility.
Not knowing.
Buddhists are asked to have great faith, great doubt, and great effort.
When I went to meditate in mountain-range solitude,
I briefly encountered realization of mind itself.
When I practiced without distraction,
A continual understanding arose.
Now it doesn’t depend on a state of mind.
I’m content with resolution in a birthless state.
I wander in mountain-range solitude,
Or else perform seated retreat in a cave.
Or in the midst of an assembly;
This current continues without interruption.
- Godrakpa (1170-1249)
Walking into the barn last night Cisco stops, listening. I stop, listening. To the left of the door leading from barn to mud room the white and black of a skunk.
We exit. Leave the skunk be. Enter house from dooryard. No stink, no fuss, turn around, go another way. Good we were silent.
What do we know? We have stories we tell about ideas or experience. Some stories we believe. Some we reject. Sometimes we follow stories down the road. Sometimes we find ourselves in a beautiful clearing. Sometimes we fall into a ditch.
Cheryl talked about intention, then eurhythmic "ah" from a Steiner workshop she attended. Sylvia read from a book about dreams -- how they are a place we go for learning. David said, "No judgments." Saskia spoke of sailing, of not trying to impose your will on the wind and water.
We are asked to be attentively and alertly aware of what is passing through us. Allowing passage, constructing no barrier to what is passing through.
Cheryl's brother Kirk sent this poem:
LESSON #1
It is as simple as this
If I wake in the morning
I get up
If I die before the dawn
I don't
Everything else
is story.
(--Kirk, c.2003)
Nature, that which is of itself so (tzu-jan), follows its course spontaneously.
Two stories pass through today:
1. War is a loud lie enacted for all to hear and see.
2. Truth, that which is just like this, quietly finds its own way out into clear light.
In this truth there is great faith. In the lie of war there is great doubt. In natural innocence revealing itself through our lives, there is great effort to simply allow artificial barriers dissolve and genuine sacred openness flow through.
Water seeking lowest place. Water source of life. Of itself flowing through.
Humility.
Monday, July 14, 2003
Full moon over cabin.
Earlier, smell of skunk through kitchen window.
God, embodied in the world, drives away in Subaru wagon and BMW motorcycle from Sunday practice.
Earlier, Sue and Peg returned to dock and took off in their Ford 250 turbo-diesal.
We must replace those who unworthily distort truth. The living and the dead deserve a truth-telling for which to live and to die.
The universe is very, very large.
Earlier, we thought everything passes away.
Truth, as it is, allows passage through.
Moving through what is true we embody what is found there.
Our prayer is for all to travel well through each.
Prayer embodies each passing through all.
We are to travel light.
Spare us!
Earlier, smell of skunk through kitchen window.
God, embodied in the world, drives away in Subaru wagon and BMW motorcycle from Sunday practice.
Earlier, Sue and Peg returned to dock and took off in their Ford 250 turbo-diesal.
We must replace those who unworthily distort truth. The living and the dead deserve a truth-telling for which to live and to die.
The universe is very, very large.
Earlier, we thought everything passes away.
Truth, as it is, allows passage through.
Moving through what is true we embody what is found there.
Our prayer is for all to travel well through each.
Prayer embodies each passing through all.
We are to travel light.
Spare us!
Saturday, July 12, 2003
Everything belongs to itself.
It is no longer possible to take sides and limit the appearance of anything. Categorization and claims of ownership are beginning to be seen not as the skill of intellect or wealth of proprietary economy. Rather, consciousness itself is beginning to grasp the startling realization that no one owns anything, everything belongs to itself.
Don’t be surprised,
Don’ be startled;
All things will arrange themselves.
Don’t cause a disturbance,
Don’t exert pressure;
All things will clarify themselves.
- Huai-nan-tzu
Aseity and Tao -- for example.
[Aseity, (Latin: a, from; se, self) The property by which a being exists of and from self, a property belonging to God alone, who exists without other cause than Himself, who is independent and self-sufficient; regarded by many Fathers and theologians as the best way of expressing the very essence of God.
New Catholic Dictionary - Catholic Encyclopedia, God: His Knowability, Essence, and Attributes, Saint Louis, 1921 (ed.)]
Call God 'God', if we wish, but what is 'God' but that which is of itself. That which "of-itself-is" (Chinese, tzu-jan) is What-Is, happening.
Tao means basically "way", and so "course"; the course of nature. Lao-tzu said the way of the functioning of the tao is "so of itself"; that is to say it is spontaneous. Watch again what is going on. If you approach it with this wise ignorance, you will see that you are witnessing a happening. In other words, in this primal way of looking at things there is no difference between what you do, on the one hand, and what happens to you on the other. It is all the same process. Just as your thought happens, the car happens outside, and so the clouds and the stars.
When a Westerner hears that he thinks this is some sort of fatalism or determinism, but that is because he still preserves in the back of his mind two illusions. One is that what is happening is happening to him, and therefore he is the victim of circumstances. But when you are in primal ignorance there is no you different from what is happening, and therefore it is not happening to you. It is just happening. So is "you", or what you call you, or what you will later call you. It is part of the happening, and you are part of the universe, although strictly speaking the universe has no parts. We only call certain features of the universe parts. However you can't disconnect them from the rest without causing them to be not only non-existent, but to never to have existed at all.
When a one experiences oneself and the universe happening together, the other illusion one is liable to have is that it is determined in the sense that what is happening now follows necessarily from what happened in the past. But you don't know anything about that in your primal ignorance. Cause and effect? Why obviously not, because if you are really naive you see the past is the result of what is happening now. It goes backwards into the past, like a wake goes backwards from a ship. All the echoes are disappearing finally, they go away, and away, and away. And it is all starting now. What we call the future is nothing, the great void, and everything comes out of the great void. If you shut your eyes, and contemplate reality only with your ears, you will find there is a background of silence, and all sounds are coming out of it. They start out of silence. If you close your eyes, and just listen, you will observe the sounds came out of nothing, floated off, and off, stopped being a sonic echo, and became a memory, which is another kind of echo. It is very simple; it all begins now, and therefore it is spontaneous. It isn't determined; that is a philosophical notion. Nor is it capricious; that's another philosophical notion. We distinguish between what is orderly and what is random, but of course we don't really know what randomness is. What is 'so-of-itself,' sui generis in Latin, means coming into being spontaneously on its own accord, and that, incidentally, is the real meaning of virgin birth.
That is the world, that is the tao, but perhaps that makes us feel afraid. We may ask, "If all that is happening spontaneously, who's in charge? I am not in charge, that is pretty obvious, but I hope there is God or somebody looking after all this." But why should there be someone looking after it, because then there is a new worry that you may not of thought of, which is, "Who takes care of the caretaker's daughter while the caretaker is busy taking care?" Who guards the guards? Who supervises the police? Who looks after God? You may say "God doesn't need looking after" Oh? Well, nor does this.
(from Taoism, by Alan Watts)
What will happen if and when all things are allowed to be what they are?
Nature is tzu-jan, it of-itself-is.
In prison yesterday Jeff kept relating his life in prison to the plant Josh brought in and set at the center of the table. The soil, the roots, water, light, and relatedness to all else around it and him -- the need to be in harmony. Charlie quoted someone who wondered whether we have to see in order to believe, or believe in order to see. Duke, Ritchie, Nancy, Saskia, and I surrounded these observations and questions.
Each is of-itself-so.
Each is all. All in each.
Greet God!
It is no longer possible to take sides and limit the appearance of anything. Categorization and claims of ownership are beginning to be seen not as the skill of intellect or wealth of proprietary economy. Rather, consciousness itself is beginning to grasp the startling realization that no one owns anything, everything belongs to itself.
Don’t be surprised,
Don’ be startled;
All things will arrange themselves.
Don’t cause a disturbance,
Don’t exert pressure;
All things will clarify themselves.
- Huai-nan-tzu
Aseity and Tao -- for example.
[Aseity, (Latin: a, from; se, self) The property by which a being exists of and from self, a property belonging to God alone, who exists without other cause than Himself, who is independent and self-sufficient; regarded by many Fathers and theologians as the best way of expressing the very essence of God.
New Catholic Dictionary - Catholic Encyclopedia, God: His Knowability, Essence, and Attributes, Saint Louis, 1921 (ed.)]
Call God 'God', if we wish, but what is 'God' but that which is of itself. That which "of-itself-is" (Chinese, tzu-jan) is What-Is, happening.
Tao means basically "way", and so "course"; the course of nature. Lao-tzu said the way of the functioning of the tao is "so of itself"; that is to say it is spontaneous. Watch again what is going on. If you approach it with this wise ignorance, you will see that you are witnessing a happening. In other words, in this primal way of looking at things there is no difference between what you do, on the one hand, and what happens to you on the other. It is all the same process. Just as your thought happens, the car happens outside, and so the clouds and the stars.
When a Westerner hears that he thinks this is some sort of fatalism or determinism, but that is because he still preserves in the back of his mind two illusions. One is that what is happening is happening to him, and therefore he is the victim of circumstances. But when you are in primal ignorance there is no you different from what is happening, and therefore it is not happening to you. It is just happening. So is "you", or what you call you, or what you will later call you. It is part of the happening, and you are part of the universe, although strictly speaking the universe has no parts. We only call certain features of the universe parts. However you can't disconnect them from the rest without causing them to be not only non-existent, but to never to have existed at all.
When a one experiences oneself and the universe happening together, the other illusion one is liable to have is that it is determined in the sense that what is happening now follows necessarily from what happened in the past. But you don't know anything about that in your primal ignorance. Cause and effect? Why obviously not, because if you are really naive you see the past is the result of what is happening now. It goes backwards into the past, like a wake goes backwards from a ship. All the echoes are disappearing finally, they go away, and away, and away. And it is all starting now. What we call the future is nothing, the great void, and everything comes out of the great void. If you shut your eyes, and contemplate reality only with your ears, you will find there is a background of silence, and all sounds are coming out of it. They start out of silence. If you close your eyes, and just listen, you will observe the sounds came out of nothing, floated off, and off, stopped being a sonic echo, and became a memory, which is another kind of echo. It is very simple; it all begins now, and therefore it is spontaneous. It isn't determined; that is a philosophical notion. Nor is it capricious; that's another philosophical notion. We distinguish between what is orderly and what is random, but of course we don't really know what randomness is. What is 'so-of-itself,' sui generis in Latin, means coming into being spontaneously on its own accord, and that, incidentally, is the real meaning of virgin birth.
That is the world, that is the tao, but perhaps that makes us feel afraid. We may ask, "If all that is happening spontaneously, who's in charge? I am not in charge, that is pretty obvious, but I hope there is God or somebody looking after all this." But why should there be someone looking after it, because then there is a new worry that you may not of thought of, which is, "Who takes care of the caretaker's daughter while the caretaker is busy taking care?" Who guards the guards? Who supervises the police? Who looks after God? You may say "God doesn't need looking after" Oh? Well, nor does this.
(from Taoism, by Alan Watts)
What will happen if and when all things are allowed to be what they are?
Nature is tzu-jan, it of-itself-is.
In prison yesterday Jeff kept relating his life in prison to the plant Josh brought in and set at the center of the table. The soil, the roots, water, light, and relatedness to all else around it and him -- the need to be in harmony. Charlie quoted someone who wondered whether we have to see in order to believe, or believe in order to see. Duke, Ritchie, Nancy, Saskia, and I surrounded these observations and questions.
Each is of-itself-so.
Each is all. All in each.
Greet God!
Thursday, July 10, 2003
It was the combination of reflection about evil and asking how we practice through this thing called evil that was Wednesday Evening Conversation.
It was the curious question about self and no-self that made the column by James Carroll interesting.
It is the sadness felt by many for the current situation of death and disorder in Iraq that permeated the conversation.
Bush's war against evil
By James Carroll, 7/8/2003
IN THE GOTHIC splendor of the National Cathedral, that liturgy of trauma, George W. Bush made the most stirring - and ominous - declaration of his presidency. It was Sept. 14, 2001. ''Just three days removed from these events,'' he said, ''Americans do not yet have ''the distance of history.'' But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.''
The statement fell on the ears of most Americans, perhaps, as mere rhetoric of the high pulpit, but as the distance of history lengthens, events show that in those few words the president redefined his raison d'etre and that of the nation - nothing less than to ''rid the world of evil.'' The unprecedented initiatives taken from Washington in the last two years are incomprehensible except in the context of this purpose.
President Bush, one sees now, meant exactly what he said. Something entirely new, for Americans, at least, is animating their government. The greatest power the earth has ever seen is now expressly mobilized against the world's most ancient mystery. What human beings have proven incapable of doing ever before, George W. Bush has taken on as his personal mission, aiming to accomplish it in one election cycle, two at most.
What the president may not know is that the worst manifestations of evil have been the blowback of efforts to be rid of it. If one can refer to the personification of evil, Satan's great trick consists in turning the fierce energy of such purification back upon itself. Across the distance of history, the most noble ambition has invariably led to the most ignoble deeds. This is because the certitude of nobility overrides the moral qualm that adheres to less transcendent enterprises. The record of this deadly paradox is written in the full range of literature, from Sophocles to Fyodor Dostoyevski to Ursula K. LeGuin, each of whom raises the perennial question: What is permitted to be done in the name of ''ridding the world of evil''?
Is lying allowed? Torture? The killing of children? Or, less drastic, the militarization of civil society? The launching of dubious wars? But wars are never dubious at their launchings. The recognition of complexity - moral as well as martial - comes only with ''the distance of history,'' and it is that perspective that has begun to press itself upon the American conscience now.
Having forthrightly set out to rid the world of evil, first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq, has the United States, willy-nilly, become an instrument of evil? Lying (weapons of mass deception). Torture (if only by US surrogates). The killing of children (''collaterally,'' but inevitably). The vulgarization of patriotism (last week's orgy of bunting). The imposition of chaos (and calling it freedom). The destruction of alliances (''First Iraq, then France''). The invitation to other nations to behave in like fashion (Goodbye, Chechnya). The inexorable escalation (''Bring 'em on!''). The made-in-Washington pantheon of mythologized enemies (first Osama, now Saddam). The transmutation of ordinary young Americans (into dead heroes). How does all of this, or any of it, ''rid the world of evil''?
Which brings us back to that Gothic cathedral of a question: What is evil anyway? Is it the impulse only of tyrants? Of enemies alone? Or is it tied to the personal entitlement onto which America, too, hangs its bunting? Is evil the thing, perhaps, that forever inclines human beings to believe that they are themselves untouched by it? Moral maturity, mellowed across the distance of history, begins in the acknowledgement that evil, whatever its primal source, resides, like a virus in its niche, in the human self. There is no ridding the world of evil for the simple fact that, shy of history's end, there is no ridding the self of it.
But there's the problem with President Bush. It is not the moral immaturity of the texts he reads. Like his callow statement in the National Cathedral, they are written by someone else. When the president speaks, unscripted, from his own moral center, what shows itself is a bottomless void.
To address concerns about the savage violence engulfing ''postwar'' Iraq with a cocksure ''Bring `em on!'' as he did last week, is to display an absence of imagination shocking in a man of such authority. It showed a lack of capacity to identify either with enraged Iraqis who must rise to such a taunt or with young GIs who must now answer for it. Even in relationship to his own soldiers, there is nothing at the core of this man but visceral meanness.
No human being with a minimal self-knowledge could speak of evil as he does, but there is no self-knowledge without a self. Even this short ''distance of history'' shows George W. Bush to be, in that sense, the selfless president, which is not a compliment. It's a warning.
James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.
This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 7/8/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
We have much to reflect on.
We have much to question.
We have much sorrow to move through.
Learned friends,
When you hear me speaking
Of the void, please do not
Grasp the void.
The first thing is not to grasp
The void.
If you sit in meditation
With an empty mind,
You will grasp the
Unrecordable voidness.
- Altar Sutra
I asked Annie what an alternative was to grasping the void.
She repeated the question, and then paused. She remained paused. She was looking through the windows toward Mt. Battie.
However stained, clouded and smoky the windows, she continued to look through without words.
It was the curious question about self and no-self that made the column by James Carroll interesting.
It is the sadness felt by many for the current situation of death and disorder in Iraq that permeated the conversation.
Bush's war against evil
By James Carroll, 7/8/2003
IN THE GOTHIC splendor of the National Cathedral, that liturgy of trauma, George W. Bush made the most stirring - and ominous - declaration of his presidency. It was Sept. 14, 2001. ''Just three days removed from these events,'' he said, ''Americans do not yet have ''the distance of history.'' But our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil.''
The statement fell on the ears of most Americans, perhaps, as mere rhetoric of the high pulpit, but as the distance of history lengthens, events show that in those few words the president redefined his raison d'etre and that of the nation - nothing less than to ''rid the world of evil.'' The unprecedented initiatives taken from Washington in the last two years are incomprehensible except in the context of this purpose.
President Bush, one sees now, meant exactly what he said. Something entirely new, for Americans, at least, is animating their government. The greatest power the earth has ever seen is now expressly mobilized against the world's most ancient mystery. What human beings have proven incapable of doing ever before, George W. Bush has taken on as his personal mission, aiming to accomplish it in one election cycle, two at most.
What the president may not know is that the worst manifestations of evil have been the blowback of efforts to be rid of it. If one can refer to the personification of evil, Satan's great trick consists in turning the fierce energy of such purification back upon itself. Across the distance of history, the most noble ambition has invariably led to the most ignoble deeds. This is because the certitude of nobility overrides the moral qualm that adheres to less transcendent enterprises. The record of this deadly paradox is written in the full range of literature, from Sophocles to Fyodor Dostoyevski to Ursula K. LeGuin, each of whom raises the perennial question: What is permitted to be done in the name of ''ridding the world of evil''?
Is lying allowed? Torture? The killing of children? Or, less drastic, the militarization of civil society? The launching of dubious wars? But wars are never dubious at their launchings. The recognition of complexity - moral as well as martial - comes only with ''the distance of history,'' and it is that perspective that has begun to press itself upon the American conscience now.
Having forthrightly set out to rid the world of evil, first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq, has the United States, willy-nilly, become an instrument of evil? Lying (weapons of mass deception). Torture (if only by US surrogates). The killing of children (''collaterally,'' but inevitably). The vulgarization of patriotism (last week's orgy of bunting). The imposition of chaos (and calling it freedom). The destruction of alliances (''First Iraq, then France''). The invitation to other nations to behave in like fashion (Goodbye, Chechnya). The inexorable escalation (''Bring 'em on!''). The made-in-Washington pantheon of mythologized enemies (first Osama, now Saddam). The transmutation of ordinary young Americans (into dead heroes). How does all of this, or any of it, ''rid the world of evil''?
Which brings us back to that Gothic cathedral of a question: What is evil anyway? Is it the impulse only of tyrants? Of enemies alone? Or is it tied to the personal entitlement onto which America, too, hangs its bunting? Is evil the thing, perhaps, that forever inclines human beings to believe that they are themselves untouched by it? Moral maturity, mellowed across the distance of history, begins in the acknowledgement that evil, whatever its primal source, resides, like a virus in its niche, in the human self. There is no ridding the world of evil for the simple fact that, shy of history's end, there is no ridding the self of it.
But there's the problem with President Bush. It is not the moral immaturity of the texts he reads. Like his callow statement in the National Cathedral, they are written by someone else. When the president speaks, unscripted, from his own moral center, what shows itself is a bottomless void.
To address concerns about the savage violence engulfing ''postwar'' Iraq with a cocksure ''Bring `em on!'' as he did last week, is to display an absence of imagination shocking in a man of such authority. It showed a lack of capacity to identify either with enraged Iraqis who must rise to such a taunt or with young GIs who must now answer for it. Even in relationship to his own soldiers, there is nothing at the core of this man but visceral meanness.
No human being with a minimal self-knowledge could speak of evil as he does, but there is no self-knowledge without a self. Even this short ''distance of history'' shows George W. Bush to be, in that sense, the selfless president, which is not a compliment. It's a warning.
James Carroll's column appears regularly in the Globe.
This story ran on page A19 of the Boston Globe on 7/8/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.
We have much to reflect on.
We have much to question.
We have much sorrow to move through.
Learned friends,
When you hear me speaking
Of the void, please do not
Grasp the void.
The first thing is not to grasp
The void.
If you sit in meditation
With an empty mind,
You will grasp the
Unrecordable voidness.
- Altar Sutra
I asked Annie what an alternative was to grasping the void.
She repeated the question, and then paused. She remained paused. She was looking through the windows toward Mt. Battie.
However stained, clouded and smoky the windows, she continued to look through without words.
Tuesday, July 08, 2003
Fog over coast all day.
Words and speech, fine concepts
If pursued, will lead us astray.
Let us leave these behind
And nothing is closed to us.
The moment we are illumined within
We bypass all barriers.
- Seng-ts-an (d.606)(dailyzen.com)
Tonight it rains.
The great thing is not things but God Himself Who is not things but ourselves, and the world, and everything, lost in Him Who so fully is that we come closer to Him by imagining He is not. (from letter to John Harris from Thomas Merton, May 5, 1959, in The Hidden Ground of Love, The Letters of Thomas Merton, c.1985)
The Buddhist teacher told Betty Ann even the Buddha spoke about the relative and the unconditioned world. That's how self and no-self were to be considered.
Sando lay stretched on dirt and gravel in parking lot at shop by harbor.
Imagine God not?
Joan has a new silver Toyota pickup. And a zafu. Dick helped tie rope around world war two surplus climbing rungs used as fence on patio. Brad watched quart of oil poured into van crankcase.
Pizza in harbor room while Jon's in Boston.
Ourselves.
Lost.
Words and speech, fine concepts
If pursued, will lead us astray.
Let us leave these behind
And nothing is closed to us.
The moment we are illumined within
We bypass all barriers.
- Seng-ts-an (d.606)(dailyzen.com)
Tonight it rains.
The great thing is not things but God Himself Who is not things but ourselves, and the world, and everything, lost in Him Who so fully is that we come closer to Him by imagining He is not. (from letter to John Harris from Thomas Merton, May 5, 1959, in The Hidden Ground of Love, The Letters of Thomas Merton, c.1985)
The Buddhist teacher told Betty Ann even the Buddha spoke about the relative and the unconditioned world. That's how self and no-self were to be considered.
Sando lay stretched on dirt and gravel in parking lot at shop by harbor.
Imagine God not?
Joan has a new silver Toyota pickup. And a zafu. Dick helped tie rope around world war two surplus climbing rungs used as fence on patio. Brad watched quart of oil poured into van crankcase.
Pizza in harbor room while Jon's in Boston.
Ourselves.
Lost.
Monday, July 07, 2003
The war continues.
Man on aircraft carrier with grand statements how we won, people freed -- he's gone on to next agenda.
One by one soldiers are being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their families ask why.
The next agenda keeps those who might be able to answer very busy. Money being raised. Political strategy being planned.
What's wrong with war is the way it goes on.
War is the belief someone else must die for our plans. Every war sets ideology and plans above ordinary life.
End war today.
No ideology.
No plans.
Just...
life.
Man on aircraft carrier with grand statements how we won, people freed -- he's gone on to next agenda.
One by one soldiers are being killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their families ask why.
The next agenda keeps those who might be able to answer very busy. Money being raised. Political strategy being planned.
What's wrong with war is the way it goes on.
War is the belief someone else must die for our plans. Every war sets ideology and plans above ordinary life.
End war today.
No ideology.
No plans.
Just...
life.
Sunday, July 06, 2003
A hermit lives as-one-is.
Alone with others, there is no difference.
Merton's closet friend is now a friend of mine and lives on Patmos. Robert Lax is a hermit in society, perhaps pointing the way ahead for today's contemplative. He is a poet who lives alone and yet loves people. Everyday he walks in the streets and talks to many friends he has made in thirty years on the island and to any strangers he thinks may need help. He is concerned, compassionate and sensitive. He is a close and loyal friend and will say that friendships are an important part of his life, but every evening he returns to an empty house and centres himself within its silence as he has for over forty years. Out of that silence and solitude emerge the insights of his poems and the revelations of his conversation on being alone in the world today. (Pp.xv-xvi, in Hermits, The Insights of Solitude, by Peter French c.1996)
There’s a mistaken belief that hermits live cut off from other people away from human contact. It is an ingrained belief somehow connected to the point of view that God is separate from ordinary life, or, that there is something special about undergoing suffering in order to placate, and place oneself nearer, God.
Zazen is the practice of stilling body and mind. When body/mind is allowed to drop façade and frantic business and busyness a restful release occurs.
Set aside all involvements and let myriad things rest. Zazen is not thinking of good, not thinking of bad. It is not conscious endeavor. It is not introspection. Do not desire to become a Buddha; let sitting or lying down drop away. Be moderate in eating and drinking. Be mindful of the passing of time and engage your self in zazen as though saving your head from fire. On Mt. Huangmei the Fifth Ancestor practiced zazen to the exclusion of all other activities.
- Dogen (1200-1253)
We need not sit and face a wall for years. We need not sever parts of our bodies to prove dedication. And we need not slavishly follow the teachings of someone else even though they reached their goal.
When each person is himself or herself they are practicing as-one-is. When each thing is itself the Itself is found.
In Christian terms, when Jesus became fully who he really was, God was no other place.
We are ‘saved’ when all we think is not God dissolves into simple realization – as one might hear bird-call of a warm afternoon.
The very breath of that singing is in and through our own ears and nostrils.
Zazen is the no-mind breeze of which one is aware.
Without expectation, without explanation – each is itself – and the next thing that occurs, occurs of itself.
Engage your self in what you are aware of.
Forget your self.
What-you-are-aware-of, that is the practice of zazen.
A hermit lives as-one-is. What one is aware of -- that is where we are alone with others.
Poem
writes
itself --
every
single
one-of-them.
(wfh)
Unhiding.
Alone with others, there is no difference.
Merton's closet friend is now a friend of mine and lives on Patmos. Robert Lax is a hermit in society, perhaps pointing the way ahead for today's contemplative. He is a poet who lives alone and yet loves people. Everyday he walks in the streets and talks to many friends he has made in thirty years on the island and to any strangers he thinks may need help. He is concerned, compassionate and sensitive. He is a close and loyal friend and will say that friendships are an important part of his life, but every evening he returns to an empty house and centres himself within its silence as he has for over forty years. Out of that silence and solitude emerge the insights of his poems and the revelations of his conversation on being alone in the world today. (Pp.xv-xvi, in Hermits, The Insights of Solitude, by Peter French c.1996)
There’s a mistaken belief that hermits live cut off from other people away from human contact. It is an ingrained belief somehow connected to the point of view that God is separate from ordinary life, or, that there is something special about undergoing suffering in order to placate, and place oneself nearer, God.
Zazen is the practice of stilling body and mind. When body/mind is allowed to drop façade and frantic business and busyness a restful release occurs.
Set aside all involvements and let myriad things rest. Zazen is not thinking of good, not thinking of bad. It is not conscious endeavor. It is not introspection. Do not desire to become a Buddha; let sitting or lying down drop away. Be moderate in eating and drinking. Be mindful of the passing of time and engage your self in zazen as though saving your head from fire. On Mt. Huangmei the Fifth Ancestor practiced zazen to the exclusion of all other activities.
- Dogen (1200-1253)
We need not sit and face a wall for years. We need not sever parts of our bodies to prove dedication. And we need not slavishly follow the teachings of someone else even though they reached their goal.
When each person is himself or herself they are practicing as-one-is. When each thing is itself the Itself is found.
In Christian terms, when Jesus became fully who he really was, God was no other place.
We are ‘saved’ when all we think is not God dissolves into simple realization – as one might hear bird-call of a warm afternoon.
The very breath of that singing is in and through our own ears and nostrils.
Zazen is the no-mind breeze of which one is aware.
Without expectation, without explanation – each is itself – and the next thing that occurs, occurs of itself.
Engage your self in what you are aware of.
Forget your self.
What-you-are-aware-of, that is the practice of zazen.
A hermit lives as-one-is. What one is aware of -- that is where we are alone with others.
Poem
writes
itself --
every
single
one-of-them.
(wfh)
Unhiding.
Saturday, July 05, 2003
Ken stopped by and spoke about Meher Baba late morning. In late afternoon sky darkens with storm clouds. Sailors make it in before downpour.
Sitting on top of a boulder,
The gorge stream icy cold.
Quiet fun holds a special charm.
Fogged-in on deserted cliffs,
A fine place to rest.
The sun leans and tree shadows sprawl;
While I view the ground of my mind,
A lotus comes out of the mud.
- Han-shan
Sky was hard to read. We are hard to read.
I don't have to tell you that the coiled double DNA helix containing the information on a human individual, that Hermetic caduceus within the nucleus of each of the individuals hundred thousand billion cells, weighs no more than one hundred thousandth of a gram but, when extended, is approximately the same length of the individual himself, so that the number of possible sequences at the molecular level is vast. If written in the three-letter words of the four-letter alphabet, a human being is determined by a genetic narrative long enough to fill the equivalent of five hundred Bibles. In the meantime human beings have discovered this for themselves.
-- That's right. They have uncovered our profoundest concept -- namely, that life is ultimately reading. They themselves are the Book of Books (p.4, in The Discovery of Heaven, by Harry Mulisch)
Three Tibetans, one Canadian/Camdenite, two Rocklanders, and one South Hope crew made it through the pre-storm debate about what kind of story they'd be telling.
The downpour lasted a half hour.
The sun returned.
Faith is the opening of the heart and mind to what is right here before our eyes.
Jesus, the Gospel reading says, is astonished at his townsfolk's lack of faith.
Do we see what is here in our midst?
Faith. Reading oneself.
A fine place to rest.
No lie.
Sitting on top of a boulder,
The gorge stream icy cold.
Quiet fun holds a special charm.
Fogged-in on deserted cliffs,
A fine place to rest.
The sun leans and tree shadows sprawl;
While I view the ground of my mind,
A lotus comes out of the mud.
- Han-shan
Sky was hard to read. We are hard to read.
I don't have to tell you that the coiled double DNA helix containing the information on a human individual, that Hermetic caduceus within the nucleus of each of the individuals hundred thousand billion cells, weighs no more than one hundred thousandth of a gram but, when extended, is approximately the same length of the individual himself, so that the number of possible sequences at the molecular level is vast. If written in the three-letter words of the four-letter alphabet, a human being is determined by a genetic narrative long enough to fill the equivalent of five hundred Bibles. In the meantime human beings have discovered this for themselves.
-- That's right. They have uncovered our profoundest concept -- namely, that life is ultimately reading. They themselves are the Book of Books (p.4, in The Discovery of Heaven, by Harry Mulisch)
Three Tibetans, one Canadian/Camdenite, two Rocklanders, and one South Hope crew made it through the pre-storm debate about what kind of story they'd be telling.
The downpour lasted a half hour.
The sun returned.
Faith is the opening of the heart and mind to what is right here before our eyes.
Jesus, the Gospel reading says, is astonished at his townsfolk's lack of faith.
Do we see what is here in our midst?
Faith. Reading oneself.
A fine place to rest.
No lie.
Friday, July 04, 2003
Have we learned to read?
"Meetingbrook is a refuge for the spiritually homeless." That's what Maria told Saskia last night after Thursday Evening Conversation.
Whenever a thought occurs,
Be aware of it.
As soon as you are aware of it,
The attachment to it will lessen.
If you remain for a long enough
Period less caught on objects,
You will naturally become unified.
This it the essential art of zazen.
- Dogen (1200-1253)
Michael and Rachel wandered in as Tom said we are being lived through. We are asked to move through what is being lived through us. Michael used the phrase 'common union' after speaking of RNA. There'd been a quote from Harry Mulisch about DNA and each individual being the Book of Books.
Trust and faith practice no barriers.
Trust, in terms of science, means we continue to ask into the code of life, obvious or hidden, without fear and without prejudice to what is emerging. Science goes beyond beliefs that precede experience. Science, like Zen, points to what is seen. "Forget what you know. Believe what you see." (James Van Praagh)
Faith, in religious terms, is willingness to follow the inquiry wherever it leads. Faith asks 'What is this?' with open heart open mind, willing to move through what is being questioned, willing to embody the response. This is where what we know about God is secondary to what we see through the sight of God.
I will no longer speak much with you, for the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me, but the world must know that I love the Father and that I do just what the Father has commanded me. Get up, let us go. (Jn.14: 30-31)
Referencing the ruler of the world -- whether the prince of lies in biblical parlance, or lies and distortions of truth by secular and religious rulers in our time and times past -- Jesus wishes both to warn and reassure us.
The warning confirms there are dangerous times and dangerous persons in the world. Truth, love, justice, and peace will be ravaged in the name of truth, justice, love, and peace.
Reassurance is given that this one, here the Christ, is free. Jesus -- now in the transforming process of suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension -- will not be deceived or overcome by lies. Rather -- truth, love, justice, and peace are the body of Christ that will be illuminated by the breath and sight of the Holy Spirit.
In a curious translation a Sunday Missal (1961) translated by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, the words for (Jn.14: 30-31) read, “ For in Me he has nothing.” The (New American Bible) translation, “He has no power over me” feels different even from “he has no hold on me,” used in the Jerome Biblical Commentary (1968) by Bruce Vawter.
Three phrasings:
1· “in Me he has nothing,” has the ring of kenosis – a self-emptying – wherein the prince arrives at an abandoned place, a nothingness that has dissolved its ego, no longer bound by any real or imagined enticements to separated, divided, or dualistic being in the world.
2· “no power over me,” suggests mightiness, a well-defended fortress against which the prince cannot prevail, left standing impotent and frustrated.
3· “no hold on me,” has the feel of freedom from coercion, lack of entrapment, a loosing of conditioning that allows the speaker to avoid the clutch of the prince.
And there are other translations. “There are limitations inherent in all translations,” the editors of the JBC tell us. If we are to read the scriptures of the Judeo-Christian tradition we have to acknowledge the difference and limitation of the words presented to us.
So also with the Book of Books in the prologue of Harry Mulisch’s The Discovery of Heaven. The millions of data within a cell. The inner reading available to us. The translation each one of us presents to the outer world.
Martin Heidegger writes, "In his draft for the hymn 'Mnemosyne' (Memory), Hoelderlin says:
"We are a sign that is not read,
We feel no pain, we almost have
Lost our tongue in foreign lands."
(from Lecture 1 in What Is Called Thinking, MH quoting Friedrich Holderlin)
Freedom longs to be read -- “…less caught on objects, You will naturally become unified…”
Zazen is the reading, the “common union” we embody with stillness and silence.
'Read me,' says freedom.
Come home.
"Meetingbrook is a refuge for the spiritually homeless." That's what Maria told Saskia last night after Thursday Evening Conversation.
Whenever a thought occurs,
Be aware of it.
As soon as you are aware of it,
The attachment to it will lessen.
If you remain for a long enough
Period less caught on objects,
You will naturally become unified.
This it the essential art of zazen.
- Dogen (1200-1253)
Michael and Rachel wandered in as Tom said we are being lived through. We are asked to move through what is being lived through us. Michael used the phrase 'common union' after speaking of RNA. There'd been a quote from Harry Mulisch about DNA and each individual being the Book of Books.
Trust and faith practice no barriers.
Trust, in terms of science, means we continue to ask into the code of life, obvious or hidden, without fear and without prejudice to what is emerging. Science goes beyond beliefs that precede experience. Science, like Zen, points to what is seen. "Forget what you know. Believe what you see." (James Van Praagh)
Faith, in religious terms, is willingness to follow the inquiry wherever it leads. Faith asks 'What is this?' with open heart open mind, willing to move through what is being questioned, willing to embody the response. This is where what we know about God is secondary to what we see through the sight of God.
I will no longer speak much with you, for the ruler of the world is coming. He has no power over me, but the world must know that I love the Father and that I do just what the Father has commanded me. Get up, let us go. (Jn.14: 30-31)
Referencing the ruler of the world -- whether the prince of lies in biblical parlance, or lies and distortions of truth by secular and religious rulers in our time and times past -- Jesus wishes both to warn and reassure us.
The warning confirms there are dangerous times and dangerous persons in the world. Truth, love, justice, and peace will be ravaged in the name of truth, justice, love, and peace.
Reassurance is given that this one, here the Christ, is free. Jesus -- now in the transforming process of suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension -- will not be deceived or overcome by lies. Rather -- truth, love, justice, and peace are the body of Christ that will be illuminated by the breath and sight of the Holy Spirit.
In a curious translation a Sunday Missal (1961) translated by the Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, the words for (Jn.14: 30-31) read, “ For in Me he has nothing.” The (New American Bible) translation, “He has no power over me” feels different even from “he has no hold on me,” used in the Jerome Biblical Commentary (1968) by Bruce Vawter.
Three phrasings:
1· “in Me he has nothing,” has the ring of kenosis – a self-emptying – wherein the prince arrives at an abandoned place, a nothingness that has dissolved its ego, no longer bound by any real or imagined enticements to separated, divided, or dualistic being in the world.
2· “no power over me,” suggests mightiness, a well-defended fortress against which the prince cannot prevail, left standing impotent and frustrated.
3· “no hold on me,” has the feel of freedom from coercion, lack of entrapment, a loosing of conditioning that allows the speaker to avoid the clutch of the prince.
And there are other translations. “There are limitations inherent in all translations,” the editors of the JBC tell us. If we are to read the scriptures of the Judeo-Christian tradition we have to acknowledge the difference and limitation of the words presented to us.
So also with the Book of Books in the prologue of Harry Mulisch’s The Discovery of Heaven. The millions of data within a cell. The inner reading available to us. The translation each one of us presents to the outer world.
Martin Heidegger writes, "In his draft for the hymn 'Mnemosyne' (Memory), Hoelderlin says:
"We are a sign that is not read,
We feel no pain, we almost have
Lost our tongue in foreign lands."
(from Lecture 1 in What Is Called Thinking, MH quoting Friedrich Holderlin)
Freedom longs to be read -- “…less caught on objects, You will naturally become unified…”
Zazen is the reading, the “common union” we embody with stillness and silence.
'Read me,' says freedom.
Come home.
Thursday, July 03, 2003
How much time remains?
I enjoy my lifelong path
Between misty vines and rocky caves
In the wilds there’s room to spare
And time to accompany clouds
This road doesn’t reach the world
Only the mindless can climb
I sit alone nights on a couch of stone
While the round moon comes up Cold Mountain
- Han-shan
There is a shift needed. Meaning, like soggy toast, falls from itself. Mind cannot find meaning.
Each thing resides in its own place. Overturned bottom-painted rowboat. High grass along two-wheel road. Resignation of tossed shirts atop one another.
A lovely emptiness disturbs with peace the mindless rest between this and that. It's been that way all day. No memories are formed. Nothing is forgotten.
Something mere. A simple quiet. Uncomprehending yet bemusing lack of interest.
What on one level gives every appearance of vacancy -- if seen in shifting light -- becomes just one gaze without someone gazing nor something gazed at.
Even the world is metaphor.
Off to the side a poet hears nothing to word.
The Buddha says we're on our own.
The Christ wonders why he's been abandoned.
I enjoy my lifelong path
Between misty vines and rocky caves
In the wilds there’s room to spare
And time to accompany clouds
This road doesn’t reach the world
Only the mindless can climb
I sit alone nights on a couch of stone
While the round moon comes up Cold Mountain
- Han-shan
There is a shift needed. Meaning, like soggy toast, falls from itself. Mind cannot find meaning.
Each thing resides in its own place. Overturned bottom-painted rowboat. High grass along two-wheel road. Resignation of tossed shirts atop one another.
A lovely emptiness disturbs with peace the mindless rest between this and that. It's been that way all day. No memories are formed. Nothing is forgotten.
Something mere. A simple quiet. Uncomprehending yet bemusing lack of interest.
What on one level gives every appearance of vacancy -- if seen in shifting light -- becomes just one gaze without someone gazing nor something gazed at.
Even the world is metaphor.
Off to the side a poet hears nothing to word.
The Buddha says we're on our own.
The Christ wonders why he's been abandoned.
Tuesday, July 01, 2003
Comes sunfalling this 1st of July.
Sun starts at treetops. Comes down mountain. Pauses on canopy leaf. Sets itself inside Nuthatch chirp just beyond honey spackle rough wood light crossing cabin porch. Warms face of barn where Phoebe stutter-stop on Gaia flagpole in and out passing.
Why sit? Because we're here and we do.
Why sunrise? Because birds chirp and earth turns.
Why pray? Why look? Why listen?
Because God is breath itself breathing through our silent song. Presence practices itself through awake and aware stillness. Light moves itself through all that holds and reflects it's passing.
...
Sit, over. Next, chant. Bow, return to porch.
...
If you think that you have cut off
Illusory mind,
Instead of simply clarifying how
Illusory mind melts,
Illusory mind will come up again,
As though you had cut
The stem of a blade of grass
And left the root alive.
- Menzan Zuiho (1682-1769)(dailyzen.com)
Patches of sunlight spot ground pathing itself back up to sound of brook. Longer song and stretch of car noise. Woman arrives with four fresh flowers and two groomed dogs. Three and four of them resume silent stillness surrounding sunlight through window at rest on wall and blanket covering zafu and zabuton.
Red squirrel and chipmunk, Cardinal and Chickadee choral green mottled morning at foot of Ragged Mountain. Lite breeze pushes white "Open" letters under dove carrying olive branch on purple banner hanging off corner of cabin.
Today the Catholic parish, Our Lady of Good Hope, has its first resident pastor since a year ago. He arrives and says Mass at 8am. The tradition of remembering the presence, sight, and passage of Christ is done in gesture, word, and liturgical gratefulness in a building named 'gathering place' in the middle of town.
Here, sunlight settles over, in, and through the living earth. Birdcall, like sanctuary bell, beckons awareness to what is taking place. Here and there "what is taking place" watches with Christ as we, awake or asleep, rest in his peace.
Now, Lord, dismiss me.
Melt.
Sun starts at treetops. Comes down mountain. Pauses on canopy leaf. Sets itself inside Nuthatch chirp just beyond honey spackle rough wood light crossing cabin porch. Warms face of barn where Phoebe stutter-stop on Gaia flagpole in and out passing.
Why sit? Because we're here and we do.
Why sunrise? Because birds chirp and earth turns.
Why pray? Why look? Why listen?
Because God is breath itself breathing through our silent song. Presence practices itself through awake and aware stillness. Light moves itself through all that holds and reflects it's passing.
...
Sit, over. Next, chant. Bow, return to porch.
...
If you think that you have cut off
Illusory mind,
Instead of simply clarifying how
Illusory mind melts,
Illusory mind will come up again,
As though you had cut
The stem of a blade of grass
And left the root alive.
- Menzan Zuiho (1682-1769)(dailyzen.com)
Patches of sunlight spot ground pathing itself back up to sound of brook. Longer song and stretch of car noise. Woman arrives with four fresh flowers and two groomed dogs. Three and four of them resume silent stillness surrounding sunlight through window at rest on wall and blanket covering zafu and zabuton.
Red squirrel and chipmunk, Cardinal and Chickadee choral green mottled morning at foot of Ragged Mountain. Lite breeze pushes white "Open" letters under dove carrying olive branch on purple banner hanging off corner of cabin.
Today the Catholic parish, Our Lady of Good Hope, has its first resident pastor since a year ago. He arrives and says Mass at 8am. The tradition of remembering the presence, sight, and passage of Christ is done in gesture, word, and liturgical gratefulness in a building named 'gathering place' in the middle of town.
Here, sunlight settles over, in, and through the living earth. Birdcall, like sanctuary bell, beckons awareness to what is taking place. Here and there "what is taking place" watches with Christ as we, awake or asleep, rest in his peace.
Now, Lord, dismiss me.
Melt.
Sunday, June 29, 2003
Today begins our 8th year.
Three moments, some say objects, more likely icons, in the cabin, our chapel/zendo, from floor to gable, this morning, catch my attention.
A man of the Way comes rapping
At my brushwood gate,
Wanting to discuss the essentials of Zen experience.
Don’t take it wrong if this mountain monk’s
Too lazy to open his mouth:
Late spring warblers singing their heart out,
A village of drifting petals.
- Jakushitsu Genko (1290-1367)
Seated Buddha on floor.
Cross-center circling outward/inward hangs eye-level.
Mother/child embrace gazes from rafter height across to loft.
These three items, maybe occasions of reflection, tell the day our life as we sit.
Contemplation;
Conversation;
Correspondence.
Or:
Awareness,
Sacrifice,
Nuptiality.
Today, eight years ago, we opened the doors of Meetingbrook Bookshop/Bakery. Ed says after Susan from Indiana leaves and John from Philadelphia walks back uptown that he doesn't know how we've managed to stay open. True.
How? A grinding. Two and a third. Wearing away edges. Smoothing one into another's contours.
Needless to say, all this has felt like being ground between two millstones, but one thing is more and more clear each time the stones go round: I don't desire anything in the world, not writing, not teaching, not any kind of consolation or outward activity: I simply long with my whole existence to be completely consecrated to God in every gesture, every breath and every moment of my mind and body, to the exclusion of absolutely everything, except Him: and the way I desire this, by His grace, is the way it is among the Trappists. (Thomas Merton, in letter to Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Dec.6,1941)
Two need not be oppositional. Rather, two is prelude to three. Three is not a crowd. Three is the way two become themselves. Three is the child one and one go through two to be.
There is music and laughter, puns and quiet spots at the shop this sunny Sunday afternoon.
Here is the threesome for today:
Shunyata, (Transparant stillness);
Kenosis, (Emptying oneself);
Sandokai. (Harmony of Difference and Equality), or, one and two meet greeting touch.
Schooner with growlish engine passes through harbor channel. Sam and Susan leave under loon call. Carter and SSH talk dance steps by dark and cool fireplace. Robert and Su.Sane sing with Saskia, Virginia and Hugh on patio. Lola watches Mt. Battie under green straw hat.
There it is.
Every time I bow when entering and leaving chapel/zendo I move through Contemplation, Conversation, and Correspondence.
Child of this bow, parenting transparency and emptiness, greet and touch with harmony.
Peter and Paul give way to each one ever after.
A village of drifting petals.
Lovely.
Three moments, some say objects, more likely icons, in the cabin, our chapel/zendo, from floor to gable, this morning, catch my attention.
A man of the Way comes rapping
At my brushwood gate,
Wanting to discuss the essentials of Zen experience.
Don’t take it wrong if this mountain monk’s
Too lazy to open his mouth:
Late spring warblers singing their heart out,
A village of drifting petals.
- Jakushitsu Genko (1290-1367)
Seated Buddha on floor.
Cross-center circling outward/inward hangs eye-level.
Mother/child embrace gazes from rafter height across to loft.
These three items, maybe occasions of reflection, tell the day our life as we sit.
Contemplation;
Conversation;
Correspondence.
Or:
Awareness,
Sacrifice,
Nuptiality.
Today, eight years ago, we opened the doors of Meetingbrook Bookshop/Bakery. Ed says after Susan from Indiana leaves and John from Philadelphia walks back uptown that he doesn't know how we've managed to stay open. True.
How? A grinding. Two and a third. Wearing away edges. Smoothing one into another's contours.
Needless to say, all this has felt like being ground between two millstones, but one thing is more and more clear each time the stones go round: I don't desire anything in the world, not writing, not teaching, not any kind of consolation or outward activity: I simply long with my whole existence to be completely consecrated to God in every gesture, every breath and every moment of my mind and body, to the exclusion of absolutely everything, except Him: and the way I desire this, by His grace, is the way it is among the Trappists. (Thomas Merton, in letter to Catherine de Hueck Doherty, Dec.6,1941)
Two need not be oppositional. Rather, two is prelude to three. Three is not a crowd. Three is the way two become themselves. Three is the child one and one go through two to be.
There is music and laughter, puns and quiet spots at the shop this sunny Sunday afternoon.
Here is the threesome for today:
Shunyata, (Transparant stillness);
Kenosis, (Emptying oneself);
Sandokai. (Harmony of Difference and Equality), or, one and two meet greeting touch.
Schooner with growlish engine passes through harbor channel. Sam and Susan leave under loon call. Carter and SSH talk dance steps by dark and cool fireplace. Robert and Su.Sane sing with Saskia, Virginia and Hugh on patio. Lola watches Mt. Battie under green straw hat.
There it is.
Every time I bow when entering and leaving chapel/zendo I move through Contemplation, Conversation, and Correspondence.
Child of this bow, parenting transparency and emptiness, greet and touch with harmony.
Peter and Paul give way to each one ever after.
A village of drifting petals.
Lovely.
Saturday, June 28, 2003
Where are the schoolyard monitors?
Anyone not a schoolyard bully recognizes the sneer of schoolyard bullies. It says, "My way. I win. You lose. Get over it!"
It has been asked,
“How should those who enter the
path apply their minds?”
All things are originally uncreated
And presently undying.
Just let your mind be free;
You don’t have to restrain it.
See directly and hear directly;
Come directly and go directly.
When you must go,
Then go.
When you must stay,
Then stay.
This is the true path.
A scripture says, “Conditional
existence is the site of enlightenment,
insofar as you know it as it really is.
- Niu-t’ou Hui-chung (683-769)
Stay or go? It comes to this.
Schoolyard bullies push and punch, poke and piss so everyone knows their power, possession, and pontification.
The United States has dealt with schoolyard bullies and had their own. Sometimes they go away on their own, they grow older, their sneer fades.
Anyone who has experienced a schoolyard bully knows their charm and their arrogance. If you don't suck up to them you stay away from them. Their inner circle grab and control as much as they can while they can and usually keep it even afterwards -- after they've been replaced, shamed, or merely disappear.
It is time to impeach the schoolyard bully.
His lie is in our face.
He and his lie must go.
To make way for a true path, the false path must be abandoned.
We must not allow stay what must go.
Monitors!
Anyone not a schoolyard bully recognizes the sneer of schoolyard bullies. It says, "My way. I win. You lose. Get over it!"
It has been asked,
“How should those who enter the
path apply their minds?”
All things are originally uncreated
And presently undying.
Just let your mind be free;
You don’t have to restrain it.
See directly and hear directly;
Come directly and go directly.
When you must go,
Then go.
When you must stay,
Then stay.
This is the true path.
A scripture says, “Conditional
existence is the site of enlightenment,
insofar as you know it as it really is.
- Niu-t’ou Hui-chung (683-769)
Stay or go? It comes to this.
Schoolyard bullies push and punch, poke and piss so everyone knows their power, possession, and pontification.
The United States has dealt with schoolyard bullies and had their own. Sometimes they go away on their own, they grow older, their sneer fades.
Anyone who has experienced a schoolyard bully knows their charm and their arrogance. If you don't suck up to them you stay away from them. Their inner circle grab and control as much as they can while they can and usually keep it even afterwards -- after they've been replaced, shamed, or merely disappear.
It is time to impeach the schoolyard bully.
His lie is in our face.
He and his lie must go.
To make way for a true path, the false path must be abandoned.
We must not allow stay what must go.
Monitors!
Friday, June 27, 2003
Losing Heart
Not
permitted to leave house, only escape is poetry, landscape
like Kurokawa’s “Waiting in the Fog” framing what
remains
of mind. Dissolving like millions of assisted
living residents whose children take time from busy lives
to watch
them disappear. It occurs like birds turning into scent of seed.
Straight lines to other places are diverted. Suddenly something
stops.
Eyes look around. There are sounds belonging to themselves.
Breeze with fragrance carries bell toll. It is not death, but
another irreverence,
ill-mannered barging in, knocking over water glass, meek smile
asking, “who are you?” I have lost my heart, “… what we call
heart –
intending by that term the organ of intelligence which takes
its meanings whole and live, not masticated into chewed abstractions.”
(So says
Archibald MacLeish in Poetry and Experience, p.21). Gone as day is gone
at dusk, just able to make out shapes behind shapes in whispering fog,
blending
shape of face you loved yesterday, (was it?), or long indefinite pronunciation ago,
when lost your gaze fell through and beyond what’s their name right there.
(wfh, 27june03)
Not
permitted to leave house, only escape is poetry, landscape
like Kurokawa’s “Waiting in the Fog” framing what
remains
of mind. Dissolving like millions of assisted
living residents whose children take time from busy lives
to watch
them disappear. It occurs like birds turning into scent of seed.
Straight lines to other places are diverted. Suddenly something
stops.
Eyes look around. There are sounds belonging to themselves.
Breeze with fragrance carries bell toll. It is not death, but
another irreverence,
ill-mannered barging in, knocking over water glass, meek smile
asking, “who are you?” I have lost my heart, “… what we call
heart –
intending by that term the organ of intelligence which takes
its meanings whole and live, not masticated into chewed abstractions.”
(So says
Archibald MacLeish in Poetry and Experience, p.21). Gone as day is gone
at dusk, just able to make out shapes behind shapes in whispering fog,
blending
shape of face you loved yesterday, (was it?), or long indefinite pronunciation ago,
when lost your gaze fell through and beyond what’s their name right there.
(wfh, 27june03)
Thursday, June 26, 2003
Holly told about retreats these few months. Buddhist settings here and abroad. Like cut made by saw or knife in hand of clear-seeing user she sliced through our curiosity with unresisting deft.
My hut isn’t quite six feet across
Surrounded by pine, bamboos, and mountains,
An old monk hardly has room for himself
Much less for a visiting cloud.
- Shih-wu (1272-1352
Harvard Pluralism Project writes asking if we are "still active".
We are still, active.
There is so little room remaining.
Even the cat can't find his way out.
At Holly's Laura Soul Friend conversation I find my epitaph:
"He was a pain in the ass,
Now he isn't."
There's room for all of us here.
If we are still.
Active.
My hut isn’t quite six feet across
Surrounded by pine, bamboos, and mountains,
An old monk hardly has room for himself
Much less for a visiting cloud.
- Shih-wu (1272-1352
Harvard Pluralism Project writes asking if we are "still active".
We are still, active.
There is so little room remaining.
Even the cat can't find his way out.
At Holly's Laura Soul Friend conversation I find my epitaph:
"He was a pain in the ass,
Now he isn't."
There's room for all of us here.
If we are still.
Active.
Tuesday, June 24, 2003
Who will speak for us when we find silence?
The great way of the buddhas is profound, wondrous, inconceivable; how could its practice be easy? Have you not seen how the ancients gave up their bodies and lives, abandoned their countries, cities, and families, looking upon them as shards of tile? After that they passed eons living alone in the mountains and forests, bodies and minds like dead trees; only then did they unite with the way. Then they could use the mountains and rivers for words, raise the wind and rain for a tongue, and explain the great void, turning the incomparable wheel.
- Dogen (1200-1253)
Who will listen to us when we have nothing to say?
As we know Zachariah was doubtful of the angel's words and was struck speechless, literaly. Elizabeth conceived and gave birth to a son. Eight days later at his circumcision she said he was to be named John, but her relations and neighbors objected because no one had had that name in her family. So they gave a writing tablet to Zachariah who wrote,
"...His name is John... whereupon he regained his speech. All were amazed and wondered... 'What will this child turn out to be?'..."
Zachariah then prayed the well known "Benedictus" Canticle, which is used during Lauds every morning throughout the world. It is a song of blessing and thanksgiving. God has kept his promise, remembered his covenant with Abraham, and this child John is to prepare the way for the fulfillment of that promise, which is,
"...the rising Sun to visit us, to give light to those in darkness... to guide our feet into the way of peace..."
(June 24, Patronal Feast of The Monastery of Christ in the Desert, The Birth of St. John the Baptist)
Who will settle for the particular, peculiar, and partial in a wordless return to love?
Essay on the Personal
Because finally the personal
is all that matters,
we spend years describing stones,
chairs, abandoned farmhouses--
until we're ready. Always
it's a matter of precision,
what it feels like
to kiss someone or to walk
out the door. How good it was
to practice on stones
which were things we could love
without weeping over. How good
someone else abandoned the farmhouse,
bankrupt and desperate.
Now we can bring a fine edge
to our parents. We can hold hurt
up to the sun for examination.
But just when we think we have it,
the personal goes the way of
belief. What seemed so deep
begins to seem naive, something
that could be trusted
because we hadn't read Plato
or held two contradictory ideas
or women in the same day.
Love, then, becomes an old movie.
Loss seems so common
it belongs to the air,
to breath itself, anyone's.
We're left with style, a particular
way of standing and saying,
the idiosyncratic look
at the frown which means nothing
until we say it does. Years later,
long after we believed it peculiar
to ourselves, we return to love.
We return to everything
strange, inchoate, like living
with someone, like living alone,
settling for the partial, the almost
satisfactory sense of it.
(poem by Stephen Dunn)
Who will read the invisible all around us?
Circles of angels, and great clouds of darkness
By the mighty hand of man invite us to take hold.
But a question lodges deep, and we must ask again --
Who wrote the life in the ancient dust that falls to earth like invisible rain?
Who wrote the life in the ancient dust that falls to earth like invisible rain?
(from "Invisible Rain," song by Tom Albury, in Ragged Works)
Who, in deed, am I?
Who in deed, are you?
Silence says nothing and is seen in particular, peculiar, partial acts.
We are articulate silent expressions of gratefulness.
Touching.
Moving through.
What is, here.
The great way of the buddhas is profound, wondrous, inconceivable; how could its practice be easy? Have you not seen how the ancients gave up their bodies and lives, abandoned their countries, cities, and families, looking upon them as shards of tile? After that they passed eons living alone in the mountains and forests, bodies and minds like dead trees; only then did they unite with the way. Then they could use the mountains and rivers for words, raise the wind and rain for a tongue, and explain the great void, turning the incomparable wheel.
- Dogen (1200-1253)
Who will listen to us when we have nothing to say?
As we know Zachariah was doubtful of the angel's words and was struck speechless, literaly. Elizabeth conceived and gave birth to a son. Eight days later at his circumcision she said he was to be named John, but her relations and neighbors objected because no one had had that name in her family. So they gave a writing tablet to Zachariah who wrote,
"...His name is John... whereupon he regained his speech. All were amazed and wondered... 'What will this child turn out to be?'..."
Zachariah then prayed the well known "Benedictus" Canticle, which is used during Lauds every morning throughout the world. It is a song of blessing and thanksgiving. God has kept his promise, remembered his covenant with Abraham, and this child John is to prepare the way for the fulfillment of that promise, which is,
"...the rising Sun to visit us, to give light to those in darkness... to guide our feet into the way of peace..."
(June 24, Patronal Feast of The Monastery of Christ in the Desert, The Birth of St. John the Baptist)
Who will settle for the particular, peculiar, and partial in a wordless return to love?
Essay on the Personal
Because finally the personal
is all that matters,
we spend years describing stones,
chairs, abandoned farmhouses--
until we're ready. Always
it's a matter of precision,
what it feels like
to kiss someone or to walk
out the door. How good it was
to practice on stones
which were things we could love
without weeping over. How good
someone else abandoned the farmhouse,
bankrupt and desperate.
Now we can bring a fine edge
to our parents. We can hold hurt
up to the sun for examination.
But just when we think we have it,
the personal goes the way of
belief. What seemed so deep
begins to seem naive, something
that could be trusted
because we hadn't read Plato
or held two contradictory ideas
or women in the same day.
Love, then, becomes an old movie.
Loss seems so common
it belongs to the air,
to breath itself, anyone's.
We're left with style, a particular
way of standing and saying,
the idiosyncratic look
at the frown which means nothing
until we say it does. Years later,
long after we believed it peculiar
to ourselves, we return to love.
We return to everything
strange, inchoate, like living
with someone, like living alone,
settling for the partial, the almost
satisfactory sense of it.
(poem by Stephen Dunn)
Who will read the invisible all around us?
Circles of angels, and great clouds of darkness
By the mighty hand of man invite us to take hold.
But a question lodges deep, and we must ask again --
Who wrote the life in the ancient dust that falls to earth like invisible rain?
Who wrote the life in the ancient dust that falls to earth like invisible rain?
(from "Invisible Rain," song by Tom Albury, in Ragged Works)
Who, in deed, am I?
Who in deed, are you?
Silence says nothing and is seen in particular, peculiar, partial acts.
We are articulate silent expressions of gratefulness.
Touching.
Moving through.
What is, here.
Saturday, June 21, 2003
Andre will soon move from maximum-security razor wire fence to minimum-security farm fenced pastures. At end of conversation he wondered whether soul was what connected mind and heart. It set us thinking.
If you place your body in the realm
Of equanimity and noncontention,
And let your mind roam in the
Territory of evenness and nondisturbance,
And water them every day with
Fair words and fine deeds of sage worthies,
Then you are sure to progress.
- Wu Yubi (1391-1469)
We lose our soul when the connection is broken. It's not possible to dwell soulfully only in mind or only in heart. For we humans, soul moves through heart and mind as breath moves through space between you and me.
Connects, not as clasps hold two things together, but as light illumines what is there for another's appreciation to move through.
Diane says breath and light works well for her. Spirit breathing light in, through, and with what is there, whoever is there.
Andre leaves his poem and this conversation with us.
CONSTRUCTION
I could run as fast as Olympic track stars,
and still my back would be facing the wall,
cornered, I'm a goner,
surrounded by voices warning me to stop annoying them,
they're not the ones who scorn,
and the further I get from them,
the more I hear the talk of politicians,
more trees and land gets destroyed,
then they join me, with the cars and trucks they convoy,
making loud noises with bright spot lights on them
as they perform,
and I'm called awkward, because I don't see anything glorious,
I'm bored by what they call modern,
It's like a segment from the land of the lost,
complete regression,
It's hard to teach people to respect and cherish
the mud they step in,
especially if they believe they're the best thing
to happen to this planet,
and they've got all the weapons and answers,
so who am I to question.
(poem by Andre H)
Perhaps question is soul making its way between heart and mind.
Who am I? What is this? Where are you?
We move through all needing connection with question. Asked out loud or pondered silently within, question contacts one and one, moving through this contact, this connection, on its way beyond and through, going on.
Andre's final line might be asking --- "so who am I to soul?"
Move well through. Dwell still in peace.
Construct.
Soul.
If you place your body in the realm
Of equanimity and noncontention,
And let your mind roam in the
Territory of evenness and nondisturbance,
And water them every day with
Fair words and fine deeds of sage worthies,
Then you are sure to progress.
- Wu Yubi (1391-1469)
We lose our soul when the connection is broken. It's not possible to dwell soulfully only in mind or only in heart. For we humans, soul moves through heart and mind as breath moves through space between you and me.
Connects, not as clasps hold two things together, but as light illumines what is there for another's appreciation to move through.
Diane says breath and light works well for her. Spirit breathing light in, through, and with what is there, whoever is there.
Andre leaves his poem and this conversation with us.
CONSTRUCTION
I could run as fast as Olympic track stars,
and still my back would be facing the wall,
cornered, I'm a goner,
surrounded by voices warning me to stop annoying them,
they're not the ones who scorn,
and the further I get from them,
the more I hear the talk of politicians,
more trees and land gets destroyed,
then they join me, with the cars and trucks they convoy,
making loud noises with bright spot lights on them
as they perform,
and I'm called awkward, because I don't see anything glorious,
I'm bored by what they call modern,
It's like a segment from the land of the lost,
complete regression,
It's hard to teach people to respect and cherish
the mud they step in,
especially if they believe they're the best thing
to happen to this planet,
and they've got all the weapons and answers,
so who am I to question.
(poem by Andre H)
Perhaps question is soul making its way between heart and mind.
Who am I? What is this? Where are you?
We move through all needing connection with question. Asked out loud or pondered silently within, question contacts one and one, moving through this contact, this connection, on its way beyond and through, going on.
Andre's final line might be asking --- "so who am I to soul?"
Move well through. Dwell still in peace.
Construct.
Soul.
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Think through. See through.
When I look into my life there is much not intelligible. Often what is not understandable is that which is a lie. If it is not true, it is not there. Lies are like that. They disappear what is there.
On Going to see a Taoist Master
A dog barking and the sound of water;
Peach blossoms heavy with dew.
In these deep woods, deer can be seen;
At noon along the stream, I hear no bell.
Wild bamboo divides gray clouds;
Waterfalls hang from blue peaks.
No one knows where you’ve gone;
Disheartened, I lean against a second,
Now a third pine. ( - Li Po)
A Zen Master said when you change your mind now you change the past. Things are seen as what they are, not as the lie told or lived. Seeing though allows things their original shape. Lies distort. Seeing original shape sets clear.
It is sobering to see the lies in one’s life.
David, Lola, Silvia, Lloyd, Susan, Saskia and I thought about what it meant being knots in a fishing web net –- an image used by Raimon Panikkar. To refuse to be that knot, or to appropriate (inappropriately) the knot of another, is to be the lie in the net of relationship. Without perfect (moving through) relationality between one knot and another, there are gaps through which much is lost.
When I lie, I let others fall through where I’d been into a lost space from which only attentive presence might restore and reshape them. I have let many fall through into lost space by my lies, by my not being there, or knot being where it was not called for.
The net of perfect inter-connective inter-relationship is determined by attentive, truthful presence.
If we impose our false self, or withdraw our true self, then the whole net is affected.
Contemplative and meditative practice invites us to look through our lives. When we see absence, presence is called for. When we see lies, truth is called for. And when we see tangled, inappropriate, and misappropriated blockages, patient and compassionate unraveling is called for.
Mostly, a contrite spirit. And a pure heart. This is the sacrifice that is called for.
To make whole again is making holy what has been lost to sight.
I’ve leaned against the second, the third pine. I’ve heard the sound of no bell. I have not known where you’ve gone.
I ask now to look at where I’ve been.
I long to see through who I really am.
When I look into my life there is much not intelligible. Often what is not understandable is that which is a lie. If it is not true, it is not there. Lies are like that. They disappear what is there.
On Going to see a Taoist Master
A dog barking and the sound of water;
Peach blossoms heavy with dew.
In these deep woods, deer can be seen;
At noon along the stream, I hear no bell.
Wild bamboo divides gray clouds;
Waterfalls hang from blue peaks.
No one knows where you’ve gone;
Disheartened, I lean against a second,
Now a third pine. ( - Li Po)
A Zen Master said when you change your mind now you change the past. Things are seen as what they are, not as the lie told or lived. Seeing though allows things their original shape. Lies distort. Seeing original shape sets clear.
It is sobering to see the lies in one’s life.
David, Lola, Silvia, Lloyd, Susan, Saskia and I thought about what it meant being knots in a fishing web net –- an image used by Raimon Panikkar. To refuse to be that knot, or to appropriate (inappropriately) the knot of another, is to be the lie in the net of relationship. Without perfect (moving through) relationality between one knot and another, there are gaps through which much is lost.
When I lie, I let others fall through where I’d been into a lost space from which only attentive presence might restore and reshape them. I have let many fall through into lost space by my lies, by my not being there, or knot being where it was not called for.
The net of perfect inter-connective inter-relationship is determined by attentive, truthful presence.
If we impose our false self, or withdraw our true self, then the whole net is affected.
Contemplative and meditative practice invites us to look through our lives. When we see absence, presence is called for. When we see lies, truth is called for. And when we see tangled, inappropriate, and misappropriated blockages, patient and compassionate unraveling is called for.
Mostly, a contrite spirit. And a pure heart. This is the sacrifice that is called for.
To make whole again is making holy what has been lost to sight.
I’ve leaned against the second, the third pine. I’ve heard the sound of no bell. I have not known where you’ve gone.
I ask now to look at where I’ve been.
I long to see through who I really am.
Wednesday, June 18, 2003
Seeping from myself. Weather coming in.
Silent sitting sunshine in cabin earlier. Tea and yogurt, english muffin and rhubarb, peanut butter and banana on porch. Man, woman, two dogs keep eye on path going up to brook.
Seeking But Not Finding the Recluse
Under the pine
I ask the boy;
He says: “My Mistress is gone
To gather herbs.
I only know
She’s in those mountains,
In those deep clouds,
But I don’t know where.”
- Chia Tao(dalyzen)
Flowers in boxes outside cabin windows. Color peaks bee interest.
Here at the shop John and Bob speak of the way people identify themselves racially and ethnically, their own perceptions and society's perceptions, none of which satisfies
Such green full leaf branching over rough wood stillness.
CF: I would like to proceed with one of your quotes: "When man breaks his connection with Earth, wanting to fulfill himself, he becomes a monster who destroys himself. When man breaks his connection with heaven, wanting to lead himself on his own, he becomes an automaton that destroys others."
You have said both an external and internal peace are indispensable. Which do you sense is our correct relationship with the earth and ‘heavens’?
RP: It would be both horizontal and vertical at the same time. The individual separate from the others, or from the earth or the divine, does not exist. We, by our very nature, belong both to earth and to the divine. We are conscious and free parts of a whole, but not as puppets that can be easily directed by threads, but rather we find ourselves within a cosmic interweaving or network. The human being is a person, not an individual. I understand a person as ‘a knot in a net’ of relationships. These threads connect us with our fellow men, the earth and divinity. The more conscious the person is, the more he realizes that his person reaches out to the confines of the world. That is the realized man.
CF: Within this network, how do we learn to move the right threads? Traditionally, religions have served to provide us with points of reference. Nowadays, however, there are many people who reject these religious systems because they no longer fulfill them, realizing at the same time that there is another dimension of reality which we are still not aware of. What’s changing in us?
RP: The realization that no separation exists between ourselves and our reality, and from that emerges a new consciousness, what I call a new innocence. In broad terms, it emerges from the knowledge of our ‘ignorance’, of knowing that our knowledge does not exhaust knowledge, not because we know ignorance, but because we understand our limitations: it is a consciousness born from a conflict of knowledge. Then we overcome knowledge through a leap of faith, confidence, sensitivity, intuition.
Underlying this there would be what I call the Cosmotheandric Principle, in which what is divine, what is human and what is earthly (let everyone find their own terminology) are the three irreducible dimensions which constitute what is real. These three parts are not juxtaposed simply by chance, but they are essentially related and together constitute the Whole. They are parts because they are not the whole, but they are not parts which can be separated from the whole.
(in The new innocence -- Interview with Raimon Panikkar, by Carmen Font. Interview with the author and President of the Center for Intercultural Studies, Raimon Panikkar, calling for a new awareness of the limitations of human knowledge in order to make room for the Divine.) (From the October 1996 issue of Share International)
Holly rounds rim of Tibetan bowl. Sounds it. Sam and Susan leave. Tonight is Erika's art opening in Rockland.
Yellow bags are readied for dump.
Tide levels.
Silent sitting sunshine in cabin earlier. Tea and yogurt, english muffin and rhubarb, peanut butter and banana on porch. Man, woman, two dogs keep eye on path going up to brook.
Seeking But Not Finding the Recluse
Under the pine
I ask the boy;
He says: “My Mistress is gone
To gather herbs.
I only know
She’s in those mountains,
In those deep clouds,
But I don’t know where.”
- Chia Tao(dalyzen)
Flowers in boxes outside cabin windows. Color peaks bee interest.
Here at the shop John and Bob speak of the way people identify themselves racially and ethnically, their own perceptions and society's perceptions, none of which satisfies
Such green full leaf branching over rough wood stillness.
CF: I would like to proceed with one of your quotes: "When man breaks his connection with Earth, wanting to fulfill himself, he becomes a monster who destroys himself. When man breaks his connection with heaven, wanting to lead himself on his own, he becomes an automaton that destroys others."
You have said both an external and internal peace are indispensable. Which do you sense is our correct relationship with the earth and ‘heavens’?
RP: It would be both horizontal and vertical at the same time. The individual separate from the others, or from the earth or the divine, does not exist. We, by our very nature, belong both to earth and to the divine. We are conscious and free parts of a whole, but not as puppets that can be easily directed by threads, but rather we find ourselves within a cosmic interweaving or network. The human being is a person, not an individual. I understand a person as ‘a knot in a net’ of relationships. These threads connect us with our fellow men, the earth and divinity. The more conscious the person is, the more he realizes that his person reaches out to the confines of the world. That is the realized man.
CF: Within this network, how do we learn to move the right threads? Traditionally, religions have served to provide us with points of reference. Nowadays, however, there are many people who reject these religious systems because they no longer fulfill them, realizing at the same time that there is another dimension of reality which we are still not aware of. What’s changing in us?
RP: The realization that no separation exists between ourselves and our reality, and from that emerges a new consciousness, what I call a new innocence. In broad terms, it emerges from the knowledge of our ‘ignorance’, of knowing that our knowledge does not exhaust knowledge, not because we know ignorance, but because we understand our limitations: it is a consciousness born from a conflict of knowledge. Then we overcome knowledge through a leap of faith, confidence, sensitivity, intuition.
Underlying this there would be what I call the Cosmotheandric Principle, in which what is divine, what is human and what is earthly (let everyone find their own terminology) are the three irreducible dimensions which constitute what is real. These three parts are not juxtaposed simply by chance, but they are essentially related and together constitute the Whole. They are parts because they are not the whole, but they are not parts which can be separated from the whole.
(in The new innocence -- Interview with Raimon Panikkar, by Carmen Font. Interview with the author and President of the Center for Intercultural Studies, Raimon Panikkar, calling for a new awareness of the limitations of human knowledge in order to make room for the Divine.) (From the October 1996 issue of Share International)
Holly rounds rim of Tibetan bowl. Sounds it. Sam and Susan leave. Tonight is Erika's art opening in Rockland.
Yellow bags are readied for dump.
Tide levels.
Tuesday, June 17, 2003
We touch.
Then go on.
The effect of Father Zossima's death on Alyosha, and the latter's ecstasy when he dashes out of the hermit's cell, probably better express Dostoevsky's own sense of the divinity of all creation. Alyosha falls face downwards on the earth, swearing to love it until the end of the ages, as though threads from all these countless of God's worlds had all coincided within his soul at once, and it trembled all over, in "the contiguity with other worlds"'.
((Pp.33-34 in A Pelican in the Wilderness, Hermits, Solitaries, and Recluses, c. 2002, by Isabel Colegate)
At shop a man says his mother is not dissolving but being chopped up at the nearing end of her life. She tells him she doesn’t know what will happen. She asks him to pray for her.
A woman's father is dying. She will go to visit at end of week. Out on sea wind blows in gusts tonight. Saskia tells her we'll pray for him and for her. She says she doesn't know much about prayer.
No one knows. This is what we hear. To pray is to open heart and mind to God. To invite one another into same place. However unknown.
Cherry blossoms filling the ground,
Sunset filling my eyes:
Blossoms vanished, spring old,
I feel the passing years.
When blossoms were at their finest
I neglected to call.
The blossoms did not betray me.
I betrayed the blossoms.
- Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672)
Everything tells us to call.
That all might be well.
We go on.
Touched.
Then go on.
The effect of Father Zossima's death on Alyosha, and the latter's ecstasy when he dashes out of the hermit's cell, probably better express Dostoevsky's own sense of the divinity of all creation. Alyosha falls face downwards on the earth, swearing to love it until the end of the ages, as though threads from all these countless of God's worlds had all coincided within his soul at once, and it trembled all over, in "the contiguity with other worlds"'.
((Pp.33-34 in A Pelican in the Wilderness, Hermits, Solitaries, and Recluses, c. 2002, by Isabel Colegate)
At shop a man says his mother is not dissolving but being chopped up at the nearing end of her life. She tells him she doesn’t know what will happen. She asks him to pray for her.
A woman's father is dying. She will go to visit at end of week. Out on sea wind blows in gusts tonight. Saskia tells her we'll pray for him and for her. She says she doesn't know much about prayer.
No one knows. This is what we hear. To pray is to open heart and mind to God. To invite one another into same place. However unknown.
Cherry blossoms filling the ground,
Sunset filling my eyes:
Blossoms vanished, spring old,
I feel the passing years.
When blossoms were at their finest
I neglected to call.
The blossoms did not betray me.
I betrayed the blossoms.
- Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672)
Everything tells us to call.
That all might be well.
We go on.
Touched.
Sunday, June 15, 2003
Cosmotheandric?
Ask Now -- Facing One Another.
Creation. Creator. Creating.
Alone on my zazen mat
I forget the days as they pass
The wisteria has grown thick
Over the eaves of my hut
The subtle Way of Bodhidharma
I never give it a thought
Does anyone know the truth of Zen
Or what to ask about it?
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)
Moses said to the people: "Ask now of the days of old, before your time, ever since God created man [woman, and all sentient beings] upon the earth; ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of? Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?
(Deut.4:32-34)
Sitting circle, we surround surrender. Who will give in first?
And behold I am with you always until the end of the age. (Mt.28:29)
The abstract concept of the Trinity is moving from triangle to circle. No longer tripodal image of three. Now, with you and me, we are a-round.
We pray for each moving through all. We pray for the inspiration with which each permeates each in everyday life. We pray all will be one as one is itself.
The mystery of the Trinity as portrayed by the church seems to leave woman out of the picture. This will change. It will change because awareness asks it to change. Woman-mother and man-father are gendered approximations of the reality of creativity.
Creativity itself, creative-being itself, and intuitive-inspiring-creating itself!
These relating, undifferentiating, and unfolding aspects of sacred reality surround us in our ordinary day-to-day living cosmotheandric experience in the world.
Church need not fret. It is confirmation. New names are taken. Spirit creates something new.
Come, we say, Holy Spirit.
Bless, we say, all unceasing surrounding interpenetrating movement of the Sacred Itself.
Today it rains.
Glistening green festive beloved solemnity!
Ask Now -- Facing One Another.
Creation. Creator. Creating.
Alone on my zazen mat
I forget the days as they pass
The wisteria has grown thick
Over the eaves of my hut
The subtle Way of Bodhidharma
I never give it a thought
Does anyone know the truth of Zen
Or what to ask about it?
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)
Moses said to the people: "Ask now of the days of old, before your time, ever since God created man [woman, and all sentient beings] upon the earth; ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did anything so great ever happen before? Was it ever heard of? Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?
(Deut.4:32-34)
Sitting circle, we surround surrender. Who will give in first?
And behold I am with you always until the end of the age. (Mt.28:29)
The abstract concept of the Trinity is moving from triangle to circle. No longer tripodal image of three. Now, with you and me, we are a-round.
We pray for each moving through all. We pray for the inspiration with which each permeates each in everyday life. We pray all will be one as one is itself.
The mystery of the Trinity as portrayed by the church seems to leave woman out of the picture. This will change. It will change because awareness asks it to change. Woman-mother and man-father are gendered approximations of the reality of creativity.
Creativity itself, creative-being itself, and intuitive-inspiring-creating itself!
These relating, undifferentiating, and unfolding aspects of sacred reality surround us in our ordinary day-to-day living cosmotheandric experience in the world.
Church need not fret. It is confirmation. New names are taken. Spirit creates something new.
Come, we say, Holy Spirit.
Bless, we say, all unceasing surrounding interpenetrating movement of the Sacred Itself.
Today it rains.
Glistening green festive beloved solemnity!
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