Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage Update
April 2004
Theme: Nonsiding, Undeciding, and Nothing Special – A Buddhist, Christian, and Ordinary Reflection of This Season
My heart hurts at the sides and decisions of current war in Iraq. Even the nothing-special that is Meetingbrook considers what to do.
I
April is not a cruel month. Cruelty is the work of men and women intent on forcing their beliefs on others. Cruelty accompanies betrayal. Betrayal is holding on to broken beliefs. Broken beliefs are sharp slicing shards that bloody the hand of the person holding tight to them. This hand usually strikes out at those considered unbelievers. In striking these faces both hand and face sear with pain and blood. Each suffers. All suffer because broken belief is held tight.
There is nothing wrong with having beliefs. Beliefs provide guideposts to us on our way. What we hold as true helps us on our setting out and setting forth. Beliefs sometimes shore up faith. Faith is seeing without certainty. Faith trusts what it sees to be what it is. Belief is the wrapping we place on faith. We feel often that belief strengthens faith. This is a feeling based on a belief in what faith sees without certainty.
Seeing requires itself and what is seen.
Seeing is what faith embodies. Embodying what is seen is a direct connection not mediated by anything outside of the intimate interpenetrating encounter. When seeing sees what is seen, there is no separating the reality-come-to-light.
Nothing can be said. Nothing is what is said when seeing embodies what is seen. What is seen and what is said is nothing. Between what is seen and what is said is nothing. This realization of nothing is an experience of emptiness.
In emptiness each is what it is. Each is whole. Nothing comes between one thing and another thing, one person and another person, or one thought and another thought. This nothing, this empty-no-space, allows immediate response -- whether with word or activity -- to take place on its own. This response is responsive to the one evoking, what is being said or what is being done, and the one being evoked by the word or the act.
Broken beliefs are to be discarded. They are to be let go and not used against others. What is important always is right here. What is right here is what is right here. This right here is also called the true. What is truth? Truth is right here and (as a Zen Master once said) "just like this." What is this? This is what is taking place in and with our presence. What is presence? Presence is this moment speaking or acting without interference by thought or doubt.
What is thought? Thought is the attempt to hold what is taking place. What is doubt? Doubt is calling into question what is taking place. Both thought and doubt are useful enterprises. However, when they interfere with direct engagement with what is taking place this moment, presence suffers. Or, we suffer the absence of presence. Absence of presence is the distance inserted between our words/actions and what is taking place right before us.
Absence of presence is similar to grabbing one view as it attempts to pass us and holding it fast. We are jerked from the flow of seeing what is taking place, and riveted to a particular view – like snapshots from vacation – sidelining us a distance from where we are.
Very often we fade our lives in that distance. We disappear in that absence.
II
When we become attached to views we stagger-stop on our journey through daily life and life as a whole.
It is curious to consider life fading and disappearing -- curious to live distantly and absently. To do so might be part and parcel of the ability we have to decide, the ability to make a decision. Deciding is a useful enterprise. Surely it is. And yet, what of undeciding? What value is there in undeciding? In our culture undeciding is confused with indecision, and therefore considered a flaw or weakness – we say, ‘They cannot choose between two things,’ or ‘They are plagued by indecision, they are indecisive.’
To be undeciding is not the same as indecisive. Undeciding suggests there is no decision to be made; indecisive suggests an unwillingness or inability to choose between two things or paths.
In this Easter season there is an aspect of resurrection we might explore. Might we understand incarnation in light of resurrection, and resurrection in light of incarnation? Was Jesus' resurrection his very incarnation? How come to see whether one thing is isomorphic (i.e. of one form) with or separate from another? What if there was no "decision" to be made? (The word ‘decision,’ from ‘de’ – ‘caedere’ = to cut off, means cutting away the other.)
Is the uniqueness of the Christian metaphor the undeciding of the divine/human? Was Jesus' incarnation/resurrection the undeciding of anything other?
Buddhists say that no choice, choicelessness, is strong practice leading to clear seeing of each as-it-is.
Bankai, a 17th century Japanese Zen master said, “Don’t side with yourself.”
III
(A Sidestep)
Meetingbrook is at its annual April nexus of decision. The question is whether we can afford to keep the doors open of the bookshop/bakery, or to fold merely into hermitage without harbor presence in Camden.
The issue is simple: the shop on the harbor is a place of hospitality, quiet respite, and refuge, sharing of views, laughter, and conversation. The shop is lovely, but we can no longer fund it on our own with the work we do.
There are many friends of Meetingbrook. We have one person (of the many people who consider Meetingbrook a touchstone and a safe place to reveal and converse varied points of view), who thinks we should not be open. She feels – not inaccurately – (especially for Saskia the first 4 months of the year in her other work to pay rent) that the strain to finance the shop is too high. This person, with wise connection to 12 step views, no longer comes to Meetingbrook, not wanting to enable its continuance. We are delighted to have her as friend-in-absence. The rest of those who come in and out feel it would be very unfortunate if we closed.
Expenses and income for Meetingbrook Bookshop and Bakery result from goods for sale. This venture is mostly a wash, i.e., no real profit from retail sales. We are distinctively small. In Camden there are now two other full-service general bookstores and two other used/antiquarian bookstores as well as a store that sells books alongside their games and clothing. Meetingbrook’s specialty niche of books is related to monastic, interreligious, interfaith, ecumenical spirituality as well as ecology, poetry, prayer and religious thought – we are less a retail force than a place of hospitality and reflection. In this regard we utilize the room above the shop as a retreat room or place of respite stay for short periods of time by those in need, (as one might a sanctuary). There is no set charge for the use of this room even though this is one of the sweetest rooms on the harbor; rather use of it is by donation only. The room is available for general use daily when not occupied. People have likened Meetingbrook to a Poustinia in the marketplace.
An additional service Saskia provides is taking anyone who asks, especially those with no prior experience, on short sails during the summer months on her 26’ O’Day that she shares with her nephews. These sails are also no charge and serve either as an afternoon’s outing or an overnight retreat. She takes a wide spectrum -- from paraplegic and elderly or those with illness, to those who would never sail except for her gentle captaining. Her’s is an everyday gift of the sea.
In addition to the shop, Saskia works with self-insured worker’s compensation audits in the first quarter of the year. I teach part-time as adjunct, now two courses, in the fall for the University of Maine System at Thomaston. Income from these efforts is folded into the running of bookshop/bakery. Some who frequent Meetingbrook make financial donations. In the past three years this has been between thirteen hundred and eighteen hundred dollars each year. To date, we have not requested nor actively sought any financial help, choosing instead to make a go of it by ourselves, with the quiet generosity of those wishing to donate to the tea-pot to help defray rent. We have neither reserves nor independent means to draw from to keep the shop functioning.
If we were more clever retail business owners we might be on better footing. But from our opening day 8 years ago we have been intent to be, first and foremost, a place of contemplation, conversation, and correspondence. Much of our time is given to matters of individual or communal importance, interpersonal or personal interest related to any individual coming through the doors. Attention to each is vital, and the intention to practice deep listening and loving speech, are hallmarks of both ordinary and formal conversation and interaction. It is our practice to be present. Sometimes it is wearing. With financial strain it is more wearing.
Still, we do not bring in sufficient income to relieve the economic strain. Something must change.
Some suggest strategies to look for monies to continue us as a community resource.
There are suggestions made to us:
1. We move to a subscription membership. Ask those who value Meetingbrook’s presence at the harbor to contribute a yearly sum to defray the cost of rent, utilities, and fees – (e.g. $19,000 per annum divided by the number of subscribers).
2. Seek grants and do fundraising. Meetingbrook is a community resource, open six days a week for 8 years now, holding public conversations 6 hours a week on spirituality, practice, thought, everyday concerns, and personal journeys through each. Include retreat opportunities (room above shop, 3rd Saturday at hermitage), semi-weekly conversations in prison, and daily presence for group or individual conversations about anything – and we have a unique presence and service for local and visiting population.
3. Watch for and invite, in joyful hope, a patron. If someone of means were to grace Meetingbrook with gift – once or continuously – we would be grateful, stay open where we are, and deepen Meetingbrook as a place of conversation, collation, and recollection for as long as we are capable.
For eight years we have said, “All events at Meetingbrook are free, open, and informal.”
Might we undecide our presence?
Contact us with your way of good will. April’s end is the nexus to end or continue our lease.
IV
(Returning)
Is there a difference between thoughtless action and action without thought? Thoughtless action, also called acting on impulse or from ideology, is acting in reaction to what is taking place. This often appears as blind striking out, or anger-slap. Action without thought, also called right-action or engaged-activity, is acting in harmonious concert with what is taking place. This often appears as seamless embrace, or effortless kindness and assistance.
When we act from intention or motivation that is separate from the reality of what is taking place right before us -- or in some other geographical region of the world -- we fall into a doubtful reality and an absence of kindness. In that pit we've fallen into is unreality and cruelty. The longer we stay there, the more unkind and cruel we become.
My heart hurts. The pain is from unkindness and cruelty. And I cry there.
I cry because I am unkind and cruel there. I cry because unkindness and cruelty reach me from anyplace they are committed by any person, any nation, or any betrayal.
What can I do? At first it feels like nothing. Then I go beyond. I feel the hurt and accept the pain for what it is. I cannot ignore it or pretend it isn't there. Iraq pains me. The actions of the American government are hurting. The intentions and ideology slapped on others by this dubious war are hurting. The broken beliefs and self-siding heresy preached by doubtfully ordained executive pretenders are frightening weapons -- they bloody the hands faces limbs and hearts of many men women and children throughout the world every day.
What is heresy? Heresy means other opinion. What is opinion? Opinion is what we hold onto in the absence of truth. Opinions are substitutes or blankets for truth – especially when truth does not serve well our opinions and needs to be hidden. Opinions in service to falsity are lies in costume. How do we arrive at truth? A Zen Master once said it was simple -- to arrive at the truth just drop all your opinions.
If opinions are dropped -- what is there then? Yes – this is a koan -- 'what is’ is there then -- or, here now. ‘What is’ – by any other name – is what is. Variously called God, Truth, Reality, the Absolute, the Ground of Being, Source, Way, the One, or the Good – ‘what is’ is what is no matter what it is called. Positing this ‘what is’ in the forms of these names is explanation human consciousness arrives at through history and evolution of thought, experience, and intuition,
V
My heart continues to hurt. My mind runs frightened. What to do? Run away? Become cynical? Despair? Sit still? Pray silently? Shout dementia down? Or, speak honestly the promptings of my heart -- breathe and open to what is right here?
The season of departures engages and enters this season of arrivals.
Many arrivals make us live: the tree becoming
Green, a bird tipping the topmost bough,
A seed pushing itself beyond itself,
The mole making its way through darkest ground,
The worm, intrepid scholar of the soil--
Do these analogies perplex? A sky with clouds,
The motion of the moon, and waves at play,
A sea-wind pausing in a summer tree.
What does what it should do needs nothing more.
The body moves, though slowly, toward desire.
We come to something without knowing why.
(--Poem, "The Manifestation" by Theodore Roethke)
Letting go attachments, not siding with my ‘self,’ undeciding, embracing nothing-special and allowing what is whole to remain what it is – this is the nexus.
This is the binding connection we each have with one another – namely --what is light and what is true.
Live in the nowhere that you came from,
Even though you have an address here.
(--Rumi)
I finish this Update on April 19. It has been unwriting itself for three weeks. This morning, in his ever-welcome “The Writer’s Almanac” Garrison Keillor notes:
“… On this day, April 19, 1943, the first day of Passover, hundreds of German soldiers entered the ghetto in rows of tanks, planning to destroy the ghetto in three days. But resistance fighters fought back with the guns and grenades they had been storing. Fighting went on for days; when they ran out of grenades and bullets the Jews fought with kitchen knives, chair legs—whatever they could get their hands on. They hid in their trenches and tunnels and in the sewers. They held out for almost a month, but on May 16 the revolt ended. Nazis burned down buildings, shot many of the remaining Jews, and sent the rest of them to concentration camps.
On the forty-fifth anniversary of the uprising, a survivor named Irena Klepfisz said, "What we grieve for is not the loss of a grand vision, but rather the loss of common things, events and gestures. . . . Ordinariness is the most precious thing we struggle for, what the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto fought for. Not noble causes or abstract theories. But the right to go on living with a sense of purpose and a sense of self-worth -- an ordinary life."
What is there?
What is here?
Even if we disappear -- it is a joy to serve each one, to serve what is here.
In ordinariness.
Gratefully,
Saskia & Bill, Sando, Cesco, Mu-ge, and all who grace Meetingbrook
19 April 2004,
Patriots Day in New England, Running of Boston Marathon, 4th Game of 1st Boston Red Sox/New York Yankees 2004 meetings, Second Monday after Easter, and our ordinary Monday off.
Monday, April 12, 2004
"I said nothing in secret. Why question me? " (Jesus, in John's account of the Passion)
After late spring rain
The falling petals swirl
Weightlessly; celestial scent
Covers my patched robe
A simple vacant mind
Has no place to go
Resting on the peak
I watch the clouds return.
- Han-shan Te-ch?’ing (1546-1623)
If we are to understand the resurrection we will have to come face-to-face with nothing.
"I have spoken openly to the world," Jesus replied.
"I always taught in synagogues or at the temple,
where all the Jews come together.
I said nothing in secret.
Why question me?
Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said."
When Jesus said this,
one of the officials nearby struck him in the face.
(from John 18:12-27, NIV)
Did his saying that he said "nothing" in secret get Jesus slapped and killed?
No wonder we are so frightened about nothing.
The will of God -- "this way of the good will," as Rudolf Bultmann uses the phrase -- follows:
...but he taught men that the present instant is the moment of decision, in which it is possible to yield up every claim of one's own and submit obediently to the will of God. It is this way of the good will, that Jesus preached, which leads man directly to the awareness of his own unworthiness and worthlessness in the sight of God, and of his own situation as faced with inevitable decision; it is only here that he learns the profoundest meaning of God's forgiveness, which one can receive only as a little child.
(p.74, in Form Criticism, by Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Kundsin, c.1934)
Nothingness, emptiness, vacancy -- the requisites for resurrection.
Was Jesus' resurrection his very incarnation? Was there no "decision" to be made? ("Decision" means "cutting away the other.") Was Jesus' incarnation the undeciding of divine/human?
Nothing left out. Nothing to insanely reach for. Nothing to own. Nothing to lose.
The whole is the whole -- it cannot be divided. Nothing can said about undivided wholeness.
Jesus said nothing when Pilate asked him, "What is truth?"
When Jesus said 'nothing,' when Jesus said 'this'...he was struck in the face.
If nothing, we've forgotten this about Jesus.
The sun slants through trees and comes in to Mu-ge our black and white coon cat lazing on daybed in kitchen.
When we awake, will we remember?
After late spring rain
The falling petals swirl
Weightlessly; celestial scent
Covers my patched robe
A simple vacant mind
Has no place to go
Resting on the peak
I watch the clouds return.
- Han-shan Te-ch?’ing (1546-1623)
If we are to understand the resurrection we will have to come face-to-face with nothing.
"I have spoken openly to the world," Jesus replied.
"I always taught in synagogues or at the temple,
where all the Jews come together.
I said nothing in secret.
Why question me?
Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said."
When Jesus said this,
one of the officials nearby struck him in the face.
(from John 18:12-27, NIV)
Did his saying that he said "nothing" in secret get Jesus slapped and killed?
No wonder we are so frightened about nothing.
The will of God -- "this way of the good will," as Rudolf Bultmann uses the phrase -- follows:
...but he taught men that the present instant is the moment of decision, in which it is possible to yield up every claim of one's own and submit obediently to the will of God. It is this way of the good will, that Jesus preached, which leads man directly to the awareness of his own unworthiness and worthlessness in the sight of God, and of his own situation as faced with inevitable decision; it is only here that he learns the profoundest meaning of God's forgiveness, which one can receive only as a little child.
(p.74, in Form Criticism, by Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Kundsin, c.1934)
Nothingness, emptiness, vacancy -- the requisites for resurrection.
Was Jesus' resurrection his very incarnation? Was there no "decision" to be made? ("Decision" means "cutting away the other.") Was Jesus' incarnation the undeciding of divine/human?
Nothing left out. Nothing to insanely reach for. Nothing to own. Nothing to lose.
The whole is the whole -- it cannot be divided. Nothing can said about undivided wholeness.
Jesus said nothing when Pilate asked him, "What is truth?"
When Jesus said 'nothing,' when Jesus said 'this'...he was struck in the face.
If nothing, we've forgotten this about Jesus.
The sun slants through trees and comes in to Mu-ge our black and white coon cat lazing on daybed in kitchen.
When we awake, will we remember?
Sunday, April 11, 2004
Note: Meetingbrook will be closed and on retreat Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We will re-open Tuesday 13 April. May the reflections invited by this time deepen the resolve for peace, truth, and love in each heart!
...........................
Easter.
Once, word was made flesh.
Now body returns as silence dwelling within us. Carefully -- light and truth .
Like salt in water,
Like adhesive in coloring,
It is certainly there,
But you don’t see its form;
So is the monarch of mind.
Dwelling inside the body,
Going in and out the senses,
It responds freely to beings,
According to conditions,
Without hindrance, succeeding,
At all it does.
- Fu Shan-hui (487-659)
Morning's first nuthatch lands on feeder outside chapel/zendo just before sunrise at 6:02am.
May the risen Lord
breathe on our minds and open our eyes
that we may know him in the breaking of the bread,
and follow him in his risen life.
(--from Alternative Prayer, Easter Sunday, Lauds)
Breathe, and open!
A seeing silence.
Yes.
...........................
Easter.
Once, word was made flesh.
Now body returns as silence dwelling within us. Carefully -- light and truth .
Like salt in water,
Like adhesive in coloring,
It is certainly there,
But you don’t see its form;
So is the monarch of mind.
Dwelling inside the body,
Going in and out the senses,
It responds freely to beings,
According to conditions,
Without hindrance, succeeding,
At all it does.
- Fu Shan-hui (487-659)
Morning's first nuthatch lands on feeder outside chapel/zendo just before sunrise at 6:02am.
May the risen Lord
breathe on our minds and open our eyes
that we may know him in the breaking of the bread,
and follow him in his risen life.
(--from Alternative Prayer, Easter Sunday, Lauds)
Breathe, and open!
A seeing silence.
Yes.
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Note: Meetingbrook will be closed and on retreat Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We will re-open Tuesday 13 April. May the reflections invited by this time deepen the resolve for peace, truth, and love in each heart!
...........................
What sound?
From an ancient homily for Holy Saturday
Something strange is happening - there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.
He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all”. Christ answered him: “And with your spirit”. He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light”.
I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.
See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.
I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.
Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.
(--from Vigils, or, Office of Readings, Holy Saturday, in Liturgy of the Hours)
Quiet.
In the grave.
Each one of us, "...for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. "
A single cloud envelops
Ten thousand streamside pines
Before my door,
The flowing water babbles all the time
No matter if it’s day or if it’s night
I snore until the bell across
The ridge ends my blissful dreams.
- Han-shan Te-ch’ing (1546-1623)
Sound of passage.
...........................
What sound?
From an ancient homily for Holy Saturday
Something strange is happening - there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.
He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all”. Christ answered him: “And with your spirit”. He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light”.
I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.
See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.
I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.
Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.
(--from Vigils, or, Office of Readings, Holy Saturday, in Liturgy of the Hours)
Quiet.
In the grave.
Each one of us, "...for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. "
A single cloud envelops
Ten thousand streamside pines
Before my door,
The flowing water babbles all the time
No matter if it’s day or if it’s night
I snore until the bell across
The ridge ends my blissful dreams.
- Han-shan Te-ch’ing (1546-1623)
Sound of passage.
Friday, April 09, 2004
Note: Meetingbrook will be closed and on retreat Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We will re-open Tuesday 13 April. May the reflections invited by this time deepen the resolve for peace, truth, and love in each heart!
.......................
Good Friday.
Who is startled?
Mu-ge gets long taste of outdoors. Saskia and dogs visit Mom. They are near monastery. I stay at hermitage with Mu-ge, birds, squirrels, and solitude.
13. See, my servant shall prosper, he shall be raised high and greatly exalted.
14. Even as many were amazed at him-- so marred was his look beyond that of man, and his appearance beyond that of mortals--
15. So shall he startle many nations, because of him kings shall stand speechless; For those who have not been told shall see, those who have not heard shall ponder it.
(Isaiah 52 {NAB})
Who is startled remembering the death of Jesus today?
Startling is the vehemence of destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and Palestine. Just as startling is absence of authentic anguish at daily deaths caused by greed and mindlessness on the part of individuals or corporations. Drugs, sex, and guns are rife throughout subcultures numbed and dazed by circumstance, without genuine connection to the larger world -- except when individuals are used and discarded when the buy is done, the itch is scratched, or the bullet is fired.
Without the case made for Jesus (by any other name) within the tortures and terrorism of contemporary Golgotha (i.e. mount of execution) -- it is merely his name and story recounted in church and cinema. There is no body, no spirit present if the holy one is not dwelling within each and all. And not just in the terrible -- this holy, strong, and immortal one must also be dwelling within the sweet, the askance, and the delightful.
Otherwise, Jesus dies this good friday and is buried. End of story.
And that just might be that.
Without what must come to be -- without the startling realization -- Jesus is in his tomb, gone to earth, done with his life -- and the stark celebration today is what it has become for many: something done by others, quaint tradition, and let's move on to what really runs the world.
What is the startling realization?
External sky empty of
Substantiality and characteristics;
Internal nature of mind
Empty of substantiality and characteristics.
The way the insubstantial sky
Appears is that it may appear as anything.
The ceaseless insubstantial nature
Of mind may also appear as anything.
- Godrakpa (1170-1249)
As anything.
It is startling to imagine that the Christ -- the reality Jesus died through -- may appear as anything.
If we do not look around at where we live, look into the eyes and hearts of those near us in silence, we might be unwilling to be startled.
Marengo
Out of the sump rise the marigolds.
From the rim of the marsh, muslin with mosquitoes,
rises the egret, in his cloud-cloth.
Through the soft rain, like mist, and mica,
the withered acres of moss begin again.
When I have to die, I would like to die
on a day of rain--
long rain, slow rain, the kind you think will never end.
And I would like to have whatever little ceremony there might be
take place while the rain is shoveled and shoveled out of the sky,
and anyone who comes must travel, slowly and with thought,
as around the edges of the great swamp.
(Poem: "Marengo," by Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press).
Good Friday is a day to travel through slowly and with thought.
If not Christ, what reality do we die through?
Last season's downed leaf and broken branch are strewn along our sight rising the mountain. Look there.
Look anywhere. The mystery we die through is there to see us though.
Isaiah helps: "For those who have not been told shall see, those who have not heard shall ponder it."
Anywhere now -- it is the gift of the mystery of the day -- to see, to ponder.
Holy is...holy and strong... holy immortal one: see and ponder each and every one of us!
This day.
.......................
Good Friday.
Who is startled?
Mu-ge gets long taste of outdoors. Saskia and dogs visit Mom. They are near monastery. I stay at hermitage with Mu-ge, birds, squirrels, and solitude.
13. See, my servant shall prosper, he shall be raised high and greatly exalted.
14. Even as many were amazed at him-- so marred was his look beyond that of man, and his appearance beyond that of mortals--
15. So shall he startle many nations, because of him kings shall stand speechless; For those who have not been told shall see, those who have not heard shall ponder it.
(Isaiah 52 {NAB})
Who is startled remembering the death of Jesus today?
Startling is the vehemence of destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and Palestine. Just as startling is absence of authentic anguish at daily deaths caused by greed and mindlessness on the part of individuals or corporations. Drugs, sex, and guns are rife throughout subcultures numbed and dazed by circumstance, without genuine connection to the larger world -- except when individuals are used and discarded when the buy is done, the itch is scratched, or the bullet is fired.
Without the case made for Jesus (by any other name) within the tortures and terrorism of contemporary Golgotha (i.e. mount of execution) -- it is merely his name and story recounted in church and cinema. There is no body, no spirit present if the holy one is not dwelling within each and all. And not just in the terrible -- this holy, strong, and immortal one must also be dwelling within the sweet, the askance, and the delightful.
Otherwise, Jesus dies this good friday and is buried. End of story.
And that just might be that.
Without what must come to be -- without the startling realization -- Jesus is in his tomb, gone to earth, done with his life -- and the stark celebration today is what it has become for many: something done by others, quaint tradition, and let's move on to what really runs the world.
What is the startling realization?
External sky empty of
Substantiality and characteristics;
Internal nature of mind
Empty of substantiality and characteristics.
The way the insubstantial sky
Appears is that it may appear as anything.
The ceaseless insubstantial nature
Of mind may also appear as anything.
- Godrakpa (1170-1249)
As anything.
It is startling to imagine that the Christ -- the reality Jesus died through -- may appear as anything.
If we do not look around at where we live, look into the eyes and hearts of those near us in silence, we might be unwilling to be startled.
Marengo
Out of the sump rise the marigolds.
From the rim of the marsh, muslin with mosquitoes,
rises the egret, in his cloud-cloth.
Through the soft rain, like mist, and mica,
the withered acres of moss begin again.
When I have to die, I would like to die
on a day of rain--
long rain, slow rain, the kind you think will never end.
And I would like to have whatever little ceremony there might be
take place while the rain is shoveled and shoveled out of the sky,
and anyone who comes must travel, slowly and with thought,
as around the edges of the great swamp.
(Poem: "Marengo," by Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press).
Good Friday is a day to travel through slowly and with thought.
If not Christ, what reality do we die through?
Last season's downed leaf and broken branch are strewn along our sight rising the mountain. Look there.
Look anywhere. The mystery we die through is there to see us though.
Isaiah helps: "For those who have not been told shall see, those who have not heard shall ponder it."
Anywhere now -- it is the gift of the mystery of the day -- to see, to ponder.
Holy is...holy and strong... holy immortal one: see and ponder each and every one of us!
This day.
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Let's begin wisdom.
"Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth." (Pema Chodron)
"Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." (Prov. 1:7)
At Wednesday's Laura Conversation we spoke among the nine of us about practicing moving closer to fear.
What I teach people just
Requires you not to take
On the confusion of others.
Act when necessary,
Without further hesitation or doubt.
When students today do not attain this,
Wherein lies their sickness?
The sickness is in not
Trusting yourself.
If your inner trust is insufficient,
Then you will frantically go along
With changes in situations,
And will be influenced and
Affected by myriad objects,
Unable to be independent.
If you can stop the mentality
Of constant frantic seeking,
Then you are no different
From Zen masters and Buddhas
- Linji (d. 866)
A response to Sylvia's question about 'panic' was that it might mean being 'all over the place' and not, in Pema's words, nailed "right to the point of time and space that we are in."
What we're talking about is getting to know fear, becoming familiar with fear, looking it right in the eye -- not as a way to solve problems, but as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and thinking. The truth is that when we really begin to do this, we're going to be continually humbled. There's not going to be much room for the arrogance that holding on to ideals can bring. The arrogance that inevitably does arise is going to be continually shot down by our own courage to step forward a little further. The kinds of discoveries that are made through practice have nothing to do with believing in anything. They have much more to do with having the courage to die, the courage to die continually.pp.2-3 in When Things Fall Apart, Heart Advice for Difficult Times, by Pema Chodron, c.1996)
Passover, Sacred Triduum, and chaotic fighting and killing in Iraq coincide this week. It is a time of departures. In history and in the present we are facing stories of departure with the open uncertainty of return. The rituals of religion and war leave us uncertain and concerned about life and death.
"Nothing is more dangerous to a republic than fanatics unconstrained by democratic politics. Yet in a second term of this administration, that's exactly what we'll have." (--in www.commondreams.org, from "W.'s Second Term: If You Think the First is Bad..." in April, 2004 issue of the American Prospect, by Robert B. Reich, professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University).
Politics and public safety vie with ritual and liturgical remembrance in the cradle of civilization and Holy Land -- where three monotheistic views stare warily at human experience.
Fear is not an abstraction. Fear is a practice for our eyes and heart. The mind may know what ideal and ideology it wishes to impose on the external world, but it is the heart that enters with apprehension and uncertainty the intuitive impulse to inner responsive compassion.
Su.Sane said, "Fear is not knowing where we are in the alchemy of transformation."
This wisdom of not knowing, this innocence of quivering anticipation, longs to begin a new life in the world.
Beginning with us. Beginning as we are beginning.
Directly, eye to eye with God, each willing not to run away, willing to die, to live.
Joanie cried. Lola held her hand.
Robert left a chocolate bar.
"Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth." (Pema Chodron)
"Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." (Prov. 1:7)
At Wednesday's Laura Conversation we spoke among the nine of us about practicing moving closer to fear.
What I teach people just
Requires you not to take
On the confusion of others.
Act when necessary,
Without further hesitation or doubt.
When students today do not attain this,
Wherein lies their sickness?
The sickness is in not
Trusting yourself.
If your inner trust is insufficient,
Then you will frantically go along
With changes in situations,
And will be influenced and
Affected by myriad objects,
Unable to be independent.
If you can stop the mentality
Of constant frantic seeking,
Then you are no different
From Zen masters and Buddhas
- Linji (d. 866)
A response to Sylvia's question about 'panic' was that it might mean being 'all over the place' and not, in Pema's words, nailed "right to the point of time and space that we are in."
What we're talking about is getting to know fear, becoming familiar with fear, looking it right in the eye -- not as a way to solve problems, but as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and thinking. The truth is that when we really begin to do this, we're going to be continually humbled. There's not going to be much room for the arrogance that holding on to ideals can bring. The arrogance that inevitably does arise is going to be continually shot down by our own courage to step forward a little further. The kinds of discoveries that are made through practice have nothing to do with believing in anything. They have much more to do with having the courage to die, the courage to die continually.pp.2-3 in When Things Fall Apart, Heart Advice for Difficult Times, by Pema Chodron, c.1996)
Passover, Sacred Triduum, and chaotic fighting and killing in Iraq coincide this week. It is a time of departures. In history and in the present we are facing stories of departure with the open uncertainty of return. The rituals of religion and war leave us uncertain and concerned about life and death.
"Nothing is more dangerous to a republic than fanatics unconstrained by democratic politics. Yet in a second term of this administration, that's exactly what we'll have." (--in www.commondreams.org, from "W.'s Second Term: If You Think the First is Bad..." in April, 2004 issue of the American Prospect, by Robert B. Reich, professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University).
Politics and public safety vie with ritual and liturgical remembrance in the cradle of civilization and Holy Land -- where three monotheistic views stare warily at human experience.
Fear is not an abstraction. Fear is a practice for our eyes and heart. The mind may know what ideal and ideology it wishes to impose on the external world, but it is the heart that enters with apprehension and uncertainty the intuitive impulse to inner responsive compassion.
Su.Sane said, "Fear is not knowing where we are in the alchemy of transformation."
This wisdom of not knowing, this innocence of quivering anticipation, longs to begin a new life in the world.
Beginning with us. Beginning as we are beginning.
Directly, eye to eye with God, each willing not to run away, willing to die, to live.
Joanie cried. Lola held her hand.
Robert left a chocolate bar.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Here.
Gazing this morning at roaring stream coming out from under ice where two brooks meet, I am merely the meeting-point of what is looking from both sides of this face.
As someone who dwells in the thin place between Contemplative Catholic and Zen Buddhist ways of looking and listening, I enter this week with open wonder at the open mystery of interconnection, interpenetration, and interdependence involved with human life/divine life.
Spring has come again
The snow has finally stopped
The crescent moon and
Leafless trees look
Thinner than before
At night I push my window open
And gaze into space
Beyond my pillared eaves
Spreads a sky of stars.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)
It is full moon in Maine. Passover tonight. Holy Week saunters. Saskia's final road-trip. Chill morning. And on C-Span, words defending and anguishing war.
Rain Travel
I wake in the dark and remember
it is the morning when I must start
by myself on the journey
I lie listening to the black hour
before dawn and you are
still asleep beside me while
around us the trees full of night lean
hushed in their dream that bears
us up asleep and awake then I hear
drops falling one by one into
the sightless leaves and I
do not know when they began but
all at once there is no sound but rain
and the stream below us roaring
away into the rushing darkness
(Poem: "Rain Travel," by W.S. Merwin, from Travels, Knopf, c.1992; on "Writer's Almanac")
Dark start alone on journey -- all of us -- no matter how familiar the scroll, scripture, ritual, or routine. When we encounter the long reflections of religious depths we are on our own -- whether with others, or in solitude.
It is the nature of the profound to meet us alone in places abandoned with no assurances. Still, we allow ourselves to be led into such circumstances of encounter when we proceed with humility to the open place of liturgical mystery.
James Arraj in his God, Zen and the Intuition of Being, writes in "Chapter 8: Zen Catholicism?" the following:
The two religious galaxies of Christianity and Buddhism begin, not to collide, but intersect and occupy the same space. This poses a challenge for Christianity that is comparable to its meeting with Greek thought or with the natural sciences. (1) How Zen might interact with Catholicism is one aspect of this larger encounter, and one we can look at under three different headings: Zen and western Catholics, Zen and oriental Catholics, and Zen Buddhism and Catholicism.
ZEN AND WESTERN CATHOLICS
A road has been opened up for a Catholic understanding of Zen by men like Heinrich Dumoulin, H.M. Enomiya LaSalle, William Johnson and Thomas Merton. Where does it lead? Where does it go once we see that Catholics can appreciate and practice Zen? What will happen when Catholics begin to attain enlightenment? It is then that it will be crucial for us to understand as clearly as possible the differences between Zen enlightenment and the ultimate goal of Christian life, and the different inner horizons that distinguish the Catholic from the Zen Buddhist.
For the Catholic, enlightenment is an absolute only in a particular order. It is not an absolute absolutely, which is reserved for union with God through love. But if Catholics begin to advance on the way of enlightenment under the guidance of Zen Buddhists, then it is possible that they will feel a tension between these two different ways of looking at enlightenment. Having gone through the gateless gate, how readily can they come forth and understand this experience, not in the traditional categories of Zen Buddhism, but within the perspectives of faith? How transparent will enlightenment be to divine union? How much will it capture the Catholic by its deep actuality and bedazzle him so he will have great difficulty in reflecting on this experience in a Christian way, especially since Christian reflection on Zen enlightenment has just begun?
The more a Catholic penetrates deeply in Zen the more will he have to ponder these questions, be aware of their potential dangers and strive to overcome them in order that the riches of Zen will flow into Catholic life.
ZEN AND ORIENTAL CATHOLICS
When will the day come when we have a distinctive Indian, Chinese or Japanese Catholicism? Catholicism is no more intrinsically Greek than Japanese. It is the task, immensely difficult and exciting, of oriental Catholics to create a Buddhist Catholicism or Zen Catholicism. This can take place if we can see the inner nature of enlightenment, and see that it not only does not conflict with faith, but is a beautiful creation of men and women who share an identical longing with Christians for the Absolute. Then Catholics could take up this age-old work of people called to grace and illuminate it with the treasures of their own faith while this very faith becomes enriched by a new understanding.
ZEN BUDDHISM AND CATHOLICISM
If Catholics can turn to Zen, is it impossible to imagine Zen Buddhists becoming Catholics? This would demand that Catholics carefully articulate their own metaphysical and mystical traditions and show that they are not antithetical to the heart of Zen. But could a call to faith appear in the very midst of enlightenment? And could it not already be doing so in certain cases? John of the Cross describes how when a ray of light enters a dark room, if there is dust in the air the light becomes visible, and if the air is pure the light is not seen. He uses this example as a way of describing the rare contemplative state in which the light of contemplative union strikes an exceptionally purified spirit and plunges it into forgetfulness. (2) What of the inner mind and heart of those men and women who have forsaken all things and attained to this night luminous with existence? What hidden longings remain in the midst of enlightenment calling out to some unimaginable depth? And if contemplative union would begin to dawn, how could it be spoken of or known in the ordinary sense of the term? And if such a person could sense this calling, and in some cases its fruition, and then see that the Gospel was nothing else but the explicitation of this inner mystery, would becoming a Catholic be a betrayal of Zen or its crown? None of this implies that right now the Zen Buddhist is any less close to God than Catholics, for God calls all people to Himself and is the judge of how they respond. But if God has revealed Himself and calls out in the very midst of enlightenment, then imagine the Zen-Catholicism that would be born if this call were heard.
(in Christianity in the Crucible of East-West Dialogue / God, Zen and the Intuition of Being
by James Arraj.) (http://www.innerexplorations.com/catew/gz8.htm)
The kitchen is quiet but for refrigerator motor and crackle inside woodstove. Sando sleeps on daybed. Mu-ge grooms in wicker basket. Cesco lies in middle room between Janet's round table and cold fireplace. It is time to ready departure for harbor.
So much of this week is about readying departure.
What hidden longings remain in the midst of enlightenment calling out to some unimaginable depth?
Are we nearly ready to hear that call?
And let go.
Now.
Gazing this morning at roaring stream coming out from under ice where two brooks meet, I am merely the meeting-point of what is looking from both sides of this face.
As someone who dwells in the thin place between Contemplative Catholic and Zen Buddhist ways of looking and listening, I enter this week with open wonder at the open mystery of interconnection, interpenetration, and interdependence involved with human life/divine life.
Spring has come again
The snow has finally stopped
The crescent moon and
Leafless trees look
Thinner than before
At night I push my window open
And gaze into space
Beyond my pillared eaves
Spreads a sky of stars.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)
It is full moon in Maine. Passover tonight. Holy Week saunters. Saskia's final road-trip. Chill morning. And on C-Span, words defending and anguishing war.
Rain Travel
I wake in the dark and remember
it is the morning when I must start
by myself on the journey
I lie listening to the black hour
before dawn and you are
still asleep beside me while
around us the trees full of night lean
hushed in their dream that bears
us up asleep and awake then I hear
drops falling one by one into
the sightless leaves and I
do not know when they began but
all at once there is no sound but rain
and the stream below us roaring
away into the rushing darkness
(Poem: "Rain Travel," by W.S. Merwin, from Travels, Knopf, c.1992; on "Writer's Almanac")
Dark start alone on journey -- all of us -- no matter how familiar the scroll, scripture, ritual, or routine. When we encounter the long reflections of religious depths we are on our own -- whether with others, or in solitude.
It is the nature of the profound to meet us alone in places abandoned with no assurances. Still, we allow ourselves to be led into such circumstances of encounter when we proceed with humility to the open place of liturgical mystery.
James Arraj in his God, Zen and the Intuition of Being, writes in "Chapter 8: Zen Catholicism?" the following:
The two religious galaxies of Christianity and Buddhism begin, not to collide, but intersect and occupy the same space. This poses a challenge for Christianity that is comparable to its meeting with Greek thought or with the natural sciences. (1) How Zen might interact with Catholicism is one aspect of this larger encounter, and one we can look at under three different headings: Zen and western Catholics, Zen and oriental Catholics, and Zen Buddhism and Catholicism.
ZEN AND WESTERN CATHOLICS
A road has been opened up for a Catholic understanding of Zen by men like Heinrich Dumoulin, H.M. Enomiya LaSalle, William Johnson and Thomas Merton. Where does it lead? Where does it go once we see that Catholics can appreciate and practice Zen? What will happen when Catholics begin to attain enlightenment? It is then that it will be crucial for us to understand as clearly as possible the differences between Zen enlightenment and the ultimate goal of Christian life, and the different inner horizons that distinguish the Catholic from the Zen Buddhist.
For the Catholic, enlightenment is an absolute only in a particular order. It is not an absolute absolutely, which is reserved for union with God through love. But if Catholics begin to advance on the way of enlightenment under the guidance of Zen Buddhists, then it is possible that they will feel a tension between these two different ways of looking at enlightenment. Having gone through the gateless gate, how readily can they come forth and understand this experience, not in the traditional categories of Zen Buddhism, but within the perspectives of faith? How transparent will enlightenment be to divine union? How much will it capture the Catholic by its deep actuality and bedazzle him so he will have great difficulty in reflecting on this experience in a Christian way, especially since Christian reflection on Zen enlightenment has just begun?
The more a Catholic penetrates deeply in Zen the more will he have to ponder these questions, be aware of their potential dangers and strive to overcome them in order that the riches of Zen will flow into Catholic life.
ZEN AND ORIENTAL CATHOLICS
When will the day come when we have a distinctive Indian, Chinese or Japanese Catholicism? Catholicism is no more intrinsically Greek than Japanese. It is the task, immensely difficult and exciting, of oriental Catholics to create a Buddhist Catholicism or Zen Catholicism. This can take place if we can see the inner nature of enlightenment, and see that it not only does not conflict with faith, but is a beautiful creation of men and women who share an identical longing with Christians for the Absolute. Then Catholics could take up this age-old work of people called to grace and illuminate it with the treasures of their own faith while this very faith becomes enriched by a new understanding.
ZEN BUDDHISM AND CATHOLICISM
If Catholics can turn to Zen, is it impossible to imagine Zen Buddhists becoming Catholics? This would demand that Catholics carefully articulate their own metaphysical and mystical traditions and show that they are not antithetical to the heart of Zen. But could a call to faith appear in the very midst of enlightenment? And could it not already be doing so in certain cases? John of the Cross describes how when a ray of light enters a dark room, if there is dust in the air the light becomes visible, and if the air is pure the light is not seen. He uses this example as a way of describing the rare contemplative state in which the light of contemplative union strikes an exceptionally purified spirit and plunges it into forgetfulness. (2) What of the inner mind and heart of those men and women who have forsaken all things and attained to this night luminous with existence? What hidden longings remain in the midst of enlightenment calling out to some unimaginable depth? And if contemplative union would begin to dawn, how could it be spoken of or known in the ordinary sense of the term? And if such a person could sense this calling, and in some cases its fruition, and then see that the Gospel was nothing else but the explicitation of this inner mystery, would becoming a Catholic be a betrayal of Zen or its crown? None of this implies that right now the Zen Buddhist is any less close to God than Catholics, for God calls all people to Himself and is the judge of how they respond. But if God has revealed Himself and calls out in the very midst of enlightenment, then imagine the Zen-Catholicism that would be born if this call were heard.
(in Christianity in the Crucible of East-West Dialogue / God, Zen and the Intuition of Being
by James Arraj.) (http://www.innerexplorations.com/catew/gz8.htm)
The kitchen is quiet but for refrigerator motor and crackle inside woodstove. Sando sleeps on daybed. Mu-ge grooms in wicker basket. Cesco lies in middle room between Janet's round table and cold fireplace. It is time to ready departure for harbor.
So much of this week is about readying departure.
What hidden longings remain in the midst of enlightenment calling out to some unimaginable depth?
Are we nearly ready to hear that call?
And let go.
Now.
Monday, April 05, 2004
It is a week many think about salvation.
Is it Christ who saves us? Or are we saved within ourselves? Are these two sentences two separate possibilities? I think not.
Names of the unified mind are
Buddha-nature,
True suchness, the hidden essence,
The pure spiritual body,
The pedestal of awareness,
The innocent, universal
Round mirror-like knowledge,
The open source, the ultimate truth,
And pure consciousness.
The enlightened ones of the
Past, present, and future,
And all of their discourses,
Are all in your fundamental nature,
Inherently complete.
You do not need to seek,
But you must save yourself;
No one can do it for you.
- Xuefeng (822 - 908)
After all the cases have been made for what happened those few days two thousand years ago -- who beat the man, who judged him, who spoke what words, who was at his feet the final minutes, who buried him, who went to the tomb, who saw what, who felt what, who recognized whom in the breaking of the bread? -- we still have to live in the present moment as it is.
Thus I will bless you throughout my life,
and raise my hands in prayer to your name;
my soul will be filled as if by rich food,
and my mouth will sing your praises and rejoice.
I will remember you as I lie in bed,
I will think of you in the morning,
for you have been my helper,
and I will take joy in the protection of your wings.
My soul clings to you...
(from Psalm 62 (63))
Scholars have their reasoned theories that form into credible narratives. No matter what Paul and others believed about the quick return of the messiah and the ending of the world -- the world is still here, and the messiah is either an idea whose time has not yet come or the messiah is a totally different presence as yet undetected.
There is a brush painting of the 6th Patriarch tearing up sutras. He appears determined to eradicate those troublesome accounts. He is a madman performing his transmission to us outside of scripture.
Just after sitting down, a woman at breakfast many years ago at the Corner Shop asked me if I'd accepted Jesus as my personal savior. It wasn't the conversation I thought we'd have. I looked at her, pausing. I was wondering what kind of eggs to order. I was wondering why that question had never meant much to me. I had eggs over easy. With rye toast.
I don't think much about salvation. Not from anyone else. Not from anywhere.
Those troublesome scriptures.
Outside them...within oneself...how safe are we face to face with what is right here right now?
There's another famous transmission koan that deals with the 6th Patriarch. He showed up at the 5th Patriarch's (Obai), monastery, and everybody ignored him. He's just this kid and he couldn't read. Even so, Obai recognized him right away, but he stuck him pounding rice. Then one day, Obai decided to hold a poetry contest to decide who would be his successor. Everyone thought the head monk, Jinshu, who was very intelligent and an excellent scholar, would win easily. Jinshu's poem said:
"The body is the Linden tree,
the mind is a clear mirror stand.
Wipe it clean;
Never let dust adhere to it."
It's really a description of zazen. We sit and focus on our breath. Thoughts, ideas, and concepts come up and we let them go, wiping it clean. The there's just calm water — this clear mirror that reflects everything. It's not a bad poem, but the 6th Patriarch looked at it and decided to compose his own poem, which someone else had to write out for him:
"The Linden intrinsically has no trunk,
Also, the clear mirror is not the stand.
There is nothing from the beginning,
What is there that dust and rubbish can adhere to?"
When he saw the 6th Patriarch's poem, Obai said, "This guy's got it. He's not clinging to 'I've got something wrong with me that I have to fix; I've got some thoughts I have to let go of.' He's not clinging to 'I am a mirror; I am this, I am that." All along there's nothing to cling to. Where's the dust? You just made it up. Obai called the 6th Patriarch into his rooms and he said, "You're my successor, but since they don't like you and you're so young, they'll kill you if I publicly recognize you."
During transmission, the teacher gives the disciple a Kesa, or robe. Obai said, "Here's my robe; take it and run." Unfortunately, a monk named Myo, once a general, pursued the 6th Patriarch. Myo must have thought, "We've been here a long time, working hard, and this kid comes along and steals the robe." Myo caught up with the 6th Patriarch at Mount Daiyu. When the Patriarch saw Myo, he said, "This robe represents the faith. How can it be competed for by force? I will allow you to take it away." Myo tried to lift the robe, but he couldn't. It finally dawns on Myo and he said, "I came for the Dharma, not the robe. I beg you, please reveal it to me."
And the Patriarch said, "Think neither good nor evil. At that very moment, what is the primal face of Monk Myo?" Now we're back to "don't speak about other's errors and faults." What is your true nature? Who are you? The story says that "in that instant, Myo suddenly attained deep realization." Still, he wasn't satisfied and he asked whether there was anything secret in the teaching. The 6th Patriarch answered, "What I have now preached to you is no secret at all. If you reflect on your own true face, the secret will be found in yourself." Then Myo said, "Though I have been at Obai with the other monks, I have never realized what my true self is. Now thanks to your instruction, I know it is like a man who drinks water and knows for himself whether it is cold or warm." That's exactly the same thing as Mahakashyapa's smile.
(from talk, "The Flower of No Separation," by Anne Seisen Saunders, Sensei)
No secret at all.
In yourself.
No dust and rubbish.
No adherence.
True self...with cup of coffee.
Is it Christ who saves us? Or are we saved within ourselves? Are these two sentences two separate possibilities? I think not.
Names of the unified mind are
Buddha-nature,
True suchness, the hidden essence,
The pure spiritual body,
The pedestal of awareness,
The innocent, universal
Round mirror-like knowledge,
The open source, the ultimate truth,
And pure consciousness.
The enlightened ones of the
Past, present, and future,
And all of their discourses,
Are all in your fundamental nature,
Inherently complete.
You do not need to seek,
But you must save yourself;
No one can do it for you.
- Xuefeng (822 - 908)
After all the cases have been made for what happened those few days two thousand years ago -- who beat the man, who judged him, who spoke what words, who was at his feet the final minutes, who buried him, who went to the tomb, who saw what, who felt what, who recognized whom in the breaking of the bread? -- we still have to live in the present moment as it is.
Thus I will bless you throughout my life,
and raise my hands in prayer to your name;
my soul will be filled as if by rich food,
and my mouth will sing your praises and rejoice.
I will remember you as I lie in bed,
I will think of you in the morning,
for you have been my helper,
and I will take joy in the protection of your wings.
My soul clings to you...
(from Psalm 62 (63))
Scholars have their reasoned theories that form into credible narratives. No matter what Paul and others believed about the quick return of the messiah and the ending of the world -- the world is still here, and the messiah is either an idea whose time has not yet come or the messiah is a totally different presence as yet undetected.
There is a brush painting of the 6th Patriarch tearing up sutras. He appears determined to eradicate those troublesome accounts. He is a madman performing his transmission to us outside of scripture.
Just after sitting down, a woman at breakfast many years ago at the Corner Shop asked me if I'd accepted Jesus as my personal savior. It wasn't the conversation I thought we'd have. I looked at her, pausing. I was wondering what kind of eggs to order. I was wondering why that question had never meant much to me. I had eggs over easy. With rye toast.
I don't think much about salvation. Not from anyone else. Not from anywhere.
Those troublesome scriptures.
Outside them...within oneself...how safe are we face to face with what is right here right now?
There's another famous transmission koan that deals with the 6th Patriarch. He showed up at the 5th Patriarch's (Obai), monastery, and everybody ignored him. He's just this kid and he couldn't read. Even so, Obai recognized him right away, but he stuck him pounding rice. Then one day, Obai decided to hold a poetry contest to decide who would be his successor. Everyone thought the head monk, Jinshu, who was very intelligent and an excellent scholar, would win easily. Jinshu's poem said:
"The body is the Linden tree,
the mind is a clear mirror stand.
Wipe it clean;
Never let dust adhere to it."
It's really a description of zazen. We sit and focus on our breath. Thoughts, ideas, and concepts come up and we let them go, wiping it clean. The there's just calm water — this clear mirror that reflects everything. It's not a bad poem, but the 6th Patriarch looked at it and decided to compose his own poem, which someone else had to write out for him:
"The Linden intrinsically has no trunk,
Also, the clear mirror is not the stand.
There is nothing from the beginning,
What is there that dust and rubbish can adhere to?"
When he saw the 6th Patriarch's poem, Obai said, "This guy's got it. He's not clinging to 'I've got something wrong with me that I have to fix; I've got some thoughts I have to let go of.' He's not clinging to 'I am a mirror; I am this, I am that." All along there's nothing to cling to. Where's the dust? You just made it up. Obai called the 6th Patriarch into his rooms and he said, "You're my successor, but since they don't like you and you're so young, they'll kill you if I publicly recognize you."
During transmission, the teacher gives the disciple a Kesa, or robe. Obai said, "Here's my robe; take it and run." Unfortunately, a monk named Myo, once a general, pursued the 6th Patriarch. Myo must have thought, "We've been here a long time, working hard, and this kid comes along and steals the robe." Myo caught up with the 6th Patriarch at Mount Daiyu. When the Patriarch saw Myo, he said, "This robe represents the faith. How can it be competed for by force? I will allow you to take it away." Myo tried to lift the robe, but he couldn't. It finally dawns on Myo and he said, "I came for the Dharma, not the robe. I beg you, please reveal it to me."
And the Patriarch said, "Think neither good nor evil. At that very moment, what is the primal face of Monk Myo?" Now we're back to "don't speak about other's errors and faults." What is your true nature? Who are you? The story says that "in that instant, Myo suddenly attained deep realization." Still, he wasn't satisfied and he asked whether there was anything secret in the teaching. The 6th Patriarch answered, "What I have now preached to you is no secret at all. If you reflect on your own true face, the secret will be found in yourself." Then Myo said, "Though I have been at Obai with the other monks, I have never realized what my true self is. Now thanks to your instruction, I know it is like a man who drinks water and knows for himself whether it is cold or warm." That's exactly the same thing as Mahakashyapa's smile.
(from talk, "The Flower of No Separation," by Anne Seisen Saunders, Sensei)
No secret at all.
In yourself.
No dust and rubbish.
No adherence.
True self...with cup of coffee.
Sunday, April 04, 2004
Shut-up and go home?
It is almost time.
"A time comes when silence is betrayal." (Martin Luther King, quoting Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam statement of executive committee, 1967)
Jesus will have to wait for humanity this week.
In the earlier story he arrives amid rooting celebration with palms and cheering shouts. In the emerging story humanity is still swinging a club that bashes heads and bloodies the ground. There is no celebration today.
The groaning rivers of the ocean rise
The star vibrates quickly in its corona
And the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating
(-from poem, "The Poet's Obligation," by Pablo Neruda)
By week's end there will be a story of betrayal, death, and expectation through darkness of an arising that will stun listeners for centuries.
I have no plans to see the Gibson movie of the passion of the Christ -- instead I saw the frontline documentary on Rwanda, "the triumph of evil," about Hutu mass killings of Tutsis -- some 800,000 murders during 100 days in 1994 -- while the world did little or nothing.
I don't need to hiss at the story of Judas betraying Jesus -- I have the deception by lies and betrayal of lives by top administration executives who sent the United States to war, sent men and women to kill men and women, sent death and destruction after kissing its former puppet and sending him into a hole in the ground.
I don't need Hollywood films or Washington myths about the savior of the world reaping billions for celebrities, churches, and the culture of curios -- I have read about the obscene profits and payoffs given entertainment, corporations and influence peddlers which has taken the name of savior into the marketplace of murky religiosity and the ideology of spiritual pretence.
A hard cold rain
A forest of wind
Late at night
The lotus drips
Who knows the dream
That entrances the world
Is simply the luminous
Prajna mind
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)
I don't think the dream that entrances the world is the Prajna mind. I wish Han-shan were right. Instead, the dream seems to be less wise, the mind less clear.
I don't need the ritual remembrance of Passover or the Last Supper -- I have encountered scores of contemporary killings of innocent children, first-born revenge, molestation and sacrifice in the name of holiness.
I don't want to feel sorry for someone murdered two thousand years ago by people who had difficulty with his understanding of God -- there are too many millions of deaths these past nine decades by people who had difficulty with the words "mine" and "yours" and "ours."
A poem by Pablo Neruda:
To whoever is not listening to the sea this Friday morning
to whoever is cooped up in house or office, or factory or woman
Or street or mine or dry prison cell
To him I come and without speaking or looking
I arrive and open the door of his prison
And a vibration starts up vague and insistent
A long rumble of thunder adds itself to the weight of the planet
And the foam.
The groaning rivers of the ocean rise
The star vibrates quickly in its corona
And the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating
So drawn on by my destiny
I ceaselessly must listen to
And keep the seas lamenting in my consciousness
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
So that wherever those in prison may be
wherever they suffer the sentence of the autumn
I may be present with an errant wave
I may move in and out of windows
And hearing me my eyes may lift themselves
Asking how can I reach the sea
And I will pass to them saying nothing
The starry echoes of the wave
The breaking up of foam in quicksand
The rustling of salt withdrawing itself
The gray cry of seabirds on the coast
So through me freedom and the sea
will call to the shrouded heart.
( -- poem, "The Poet's Obligation," by Pablo Neruda)
The lament of the sea is a scripture not yet translated for us.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons [and daughters] of God, and our brothers [and sisters] wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men [and full women], and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
(-- from "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," a talk by Rev. Martin Luther King, 4 April 1967. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html)
Martin was assassinated one year later -- 4 April 1968. I remember him today.
If betrayal is our common flaw, we must speak it aloud in an attempt to recognize it for what it really is.
Betrayal is the act that tries to fix broken belief. It is the attempt to wrest broken belief from hands bloodied by sharp slicing shards of what was once held as true. Betrayal refuses to allow emerging forms of what is true to take shape, transfigure, die and resurrect, and finally be true to what is now -- what is this reality -- greeted with direct, open, and engaging compassion. What else is God?
The myth that belief is worth spilling blood for, that power retains power by pouring the blood of enemies, and that blood (as they say) is thicker than water -- is a mythos and a muthos, a story with silence that entrances us with the paradoxical silence-of-betrayal and betrayal-of-silence.
The house of Odysseus in Ithaka is an aggregate of spaces, some entirely public and others more intimate and inaccessible. The innermost recesses of the house are associated with Penelope's chastity, while the megaron is essentially a masculine space. Eurykleia is a boundary crosser; like nurses in later literature, and by virtue of her advanced years, she acts as a liaison between male and female spaces. Appropriately Eurykleia is often featured in the role of doorkeeper, guarding the provisions of the house, and locking away the female servants during the revenge. Cognate with this role is the concept of women's silence, for in the constellation of symbols associated with female chastity, symbols which include the interior domestic spaces, feminine silence is one of the most conspicuous. Eurykleia's importance is signified by her guardianship of various portals, while her loyalty and feminine excellence are signified by her silence. Telemachos exacts an oath of silence from Eurykleia at the door leading into the storeroom, one of the most important areas of the oikos, and traditionally guarded by women (2.349-360).
Eurykleia's allegiance to the male members of the household is again signified when she keeps the secret of Odysseus' identity. By contrast the twelve faithless maidservants, who divulge the secrets of the women's spaces (i.e. Penelope's unraveling) have concourse with men in the megaron and beyond, passing through the doors of the house into the suitors' beds.
Eurykleia's contribution to her master's triumph is to keep women silent and behind closed doors (e.g.19.16). This way of viewing Eurykleia's role helps us to define more precisely the difficult term apteros muthos, which appears to describe Eurykleia's reaction to a man's order in three out of its four occurrences; all four occurrences have something to do with doors. Building on Clark's discussion, I argue against Russo's conclusion that apteros muthos identifies the male speaker. I contend that the formula refers to the speechless responses of Eurykleia and Penelope, who understand the need for silence at sensitive moments in the plot.
{Works Cited:
Clark, Matthew "Was Telemachus Rude to His Mother? Odyssey 1.356-59" CPh 96.4 (2001) 335-354
Russo, Joseph, Fenandez-Galiano, Manuel, and Heubeck, Alfred A commentary on Homer's Odyssey v. III (Oxford UP, Oxford, 1992)
(http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:RorZJx2D09IJ:www.fp.ucalgary.ca/grst/conferences/Colloquium/fletcher-bstract.pdf+muthos+and+silence&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)}
"Oikos" in Greek means home.
"Muthos" in Greek means silence.
Is it time to go home and shut up? Or is it time to leave home and open one's mouth?
This week it is time to enter a hermitage full of the sound of what is being said with and without words.
The nursing thin place -- where silence words stillness, and stillness silences words.
Contemplating resurrection as incarnation.
Is this the absurd wisdom of an emerging story of "the same mind that was in Christ Jesus" (Philippians's 2:5)?
Is this emergence Prajna's mind? (The Jerusalem Bible, c.1966, phrased the line: "In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus...")
This time; this mind.
This open silence?
It is almost time.
"A time comes when silence is betrayal." (Martin Luther King, quoting Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam statement of executive committee, 1967)
Jesus will have to wait for humanity this week.
In the earlier story he arrives amid rooting celebration with palms and cheering shouts. In the emerging story humanity is still swinging a club that bashes heads and bloodies the ground. There is no celebration today.
The groaning rivers of the ocean rise
The star vibrates quickly in its corona
And the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating
(-from poem, "The Poet's Obligation," by Pablo Neruda)
By week's end there will be a story of betrayal, death, and expectation through darkness of an arising that will stun listeners for centuries.
I have no plans to see the Gibson movie of the passion of the Christ -- instead I saw the frontline documentary on Rwanda, "the triumph of evil," about Hutu mass killings of Tutsis -- some 800,000 murders during 100 days in 1994 -- while the world did little or nothing.
I don't need to hiss at the story of Judas betraying Jesus -- I have the deception by lies and betrayal of lives by top administration executives who sent the United States to war, sent men and women to kill men and women, sent death and destruction after kissing its former puppet and sending him into a hole in the ground.
I don't need Hollywood films or Washington myths about the savior of the world reaping billions for celebrities, churches, and the culture of curios -- I have read about the obscene profits and payoffs given entertainment, corporations and influence peddlers which has taken the name of savior into the marketplace of murky religiosity and the ideology of spiritual pretence.
A hard cold rain
A forest of wind
Late at night
The lotus drips
Who knows the dream
That entrances the world
Is simply the luminous
Prajna mind
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)
I don't think the dream that entrances the world is the Prajna mind. I wish Han-shan were right. Instead, the dream seems to be less wise, the mind less clear.
I don't need the ritual remembrance of Passover or the Last Supper -- I have encountered scores of contemporary killings of innocent children, first-born revenge, molestation and sacrifice in the name of holiness.
I don't want to feel sorry for someone murdered two thousand years ago by people who had difficulty with his understanding of God -- there are too many millions of deaths these past nine decades by people who had difficulty with the words "mine" and "yours" and "ours."
A poem by Pablo Neruda:
To whoever is not listening to the sea this Friday morning
to whoever is cooped up in house or office, or factory or woman
Or street or mine or dry prison cell
To him I come and without speaking or looking
I arrive and open the door of his prison
And a vibration starts up vague and insistent
A long rumble of thunder adds itself to the weight of the planet
And the foam.
The groaning rivers of the ocean rise
The star vibrates quickly in its corona
And the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating
So drawn on by my destiny
I ceaselessly must listen to
And keep the seas lamenting in my consciousness
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
So that wherever those in prison may be
wherever they suffer the sentence of the autumn
I may be present with an errant wave
I may move in and out of windows
And hearing me my eyes may lift themselves
Asking how can I reach the sea
And I will pass to them saying nothing
The starry echoes of the wave
The breaking up of foam in quicksand
The rustling of salt withdrawing itself
The gray cry of seabirds on the coast
So through me freedom and the sea
will call to the shrouded heart.
( -- poem, "The Poet's Obligation," by Pablo Neruda)
The lament of the sea is a scripture not yet translated for us.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons [and daughters] of God, and our brothers [and sisters] wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men [and full women], and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
(-- from "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," a talk by Rev. Martin Luther King, 4 April 1967. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html)
Martin was assassinated one year later -- 4 April 1968. I remember him today.
If betrayal is our common flaw, we must speak it aloud in an attempt to recognize it for what it really is.
Betrayal is the act that tries to fix broken belief. It is the attempt to wrest broken belief from hands bloodied by sharp slicing shards of what was once held as true. Betrayal refuses to allow emerging forms of what is true to take shape, transfigure, die and resurrect, and finally be true to what is now -- what is this reality -- greeted with direct, open, and engaging compassion. What else is God?
The myth that belief is worth spilling blood for, that power retains power by pouring the blood of enemies, and that blood (as they say) is thicker than water -- is a mythos and a muthos, a story with silence that entrances us with the paradoxical silence-of-betrayal and betrayal-of-silence.
The house of Odysseus in Ithaka is an aggregate of spaces, some entirely public and others more intimate and inaccessible. The innermost recesses of the house are associated with Penelope's chastity, while the megaron is essentially a masculine space. Eurykleia is a boundary crosser; like nurses in later literature, and by virtue of her advanced years, she acts as a liaison between male and female spaces. Appropriately Eurykleia is often featured in the role of doorkeeper, guarding the provisions of the house, and locking away the female servants during the revenge. Cognate with this role is the concept of women's silence, for in the constellation of symbols associated with female chastity, symbols which include the interior domestic spaces, feminine silence is one of the most conspicuous. Eurykleia's importance is signified by her guardianship of various portals, while her loyalty and feminine excellence are signified by her silence. Telemachos exacts an oath of silence from Eurykleia at the door leading into the storeroom, one of the most important areas of the oikos, and traditionally guarded by women (2.349-360).
Eurykleia's allegiance to the male members of the household is again signified when she keeps the secret of Odysseus' identity. By contrast the twelve faithless maidservants, who divulge the secrets of the women's spaces (i.e. Penelope's unraveling) have concourse with men in the megaron and beyond, passing through the doors of the house into the suitors' beds.
Eurykleia's contribution to her master's triumph is to keep women silent and behind closed doors (e.g.19.16). This way of viewing Eurykleia's role helps us to define more precisely the difficult term apteros muthos, which appears to describe Eurykleia's reaction to a man's order in three out of its four occurrences; all four occurrences have something to do with doors. Building on Clark's discussion, I argue against Russo's conclusion that apteros muthos identifies the male speaker. I contend that the formula refers to the speechless responses of Eurykleia and Penelope, who understand the need for silence at sensitive moments in the plot.
{Works Cited:
Clark, Matthew "Was Telemachus Rude to His Mother? Odyssey 1.356-59" CPh 96.4 (2001) 335-354
Russo, Joseph, Fenandez-Galiano, Manuel, and Heubeck, Alfred A commentary on Homer's Odyssey v. III (Oxford UP, Oxford, 1992)
(http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:RorZJx2D09IJ:www.fp.ucalgary.ca/grst/conferences/Colloquium/fletcher-bstract.pdf+muthos+and+silence&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)}
"Oikos" in Greek means home.
"Muthos" in Greek means silence.
Is it time to go home and shut up? Or is it time to leave home and open one's mouth?
This week it is time to enter a hermitage full of the sound of what is being said with and without words.
The nursing thin place -- where silence words stillness, and stillness silences words.
Contemplating resurrection as incarnation.
Is this the absurd wisdom of an emerging story of "the same mind that was in Christ Jesus" (Philippians's 2:5)?
Is this emergence Prajna's mind? (The Jerusalem Bible, c.1966, phrased the line: "In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus...")
This time; this mind.
This open silence?
Friday, April 02, 2004
One view at a time.
Observe the empty monarch of mind;
Mysterious, subtle, unfathomable,
It has no shape or form,
Yet it has great spiritual power,
Able to extinguish a thousand troubles
And perfect ten thousand virtues.
Although its essence is empty,
It can provide guidance.
When you look at it,
It has no form; call it,
And it has a voice.
It acts as a great spiritual leader;
Mental discipline transmits scripture.
- Fu Shan-hui (487-659)
Many views listened to and looked at, one at a time. Each time there is a conversation.
Denis Saleh, a contemporary poet and author writes: "I have been hard at work now longer than I like to remember, on a novel set in Ancient Egypt. I found out how the pyramids were built: slowly. Almost anything can be done, it seems, if one proceeds slowly enough, but we moderns simply cannot grasp this." (p.104. in One Dharma, The Emerging Western Buddhism, by Joseph Goldstein, c.2002)
Patience asks slowness. Readiness emerges only after we arrive at and accept who and where we are.
A variety of scriptures join the well-known ones. Christianity, says Marcus Borg, has two types of expression -- earlier and emerging. Sayings of Jesus not well-known become more familiar with publication of the Gospel of Thomas.
Now what is typical about these sayings is that in each instance, these sayings want to say that if you want to understand what Jesus said, you have to recognize yourself. You have to know yourself, know who you are. It begins with a saying about the Kingdom of God, "if you seek the Kingdom of God in the sky then the birds will precede you. And if you seek it in the sea, then the fish will precede you, but the Kingdom is in you. And if you know yourself then you know the Kingdom of God." (The Kingdom of the Father, in fact, it always says in the gospel of Thomas. Normally the Kingdom of the Father, not the Kingdom of God.) "But if you don't know yourself, you live in poverty." And poverty is understood as the ignorance of a life in its physical existence. Knowledge is understood to be the knowledge of one's divine origin, of the fact that one has come from the Kingdom. That we are on this earth only in a sojourn....
(Helmut Koester: John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School; found in "From Jesus to Christ," Frontline, PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/thomas.html)
What frustrates and discourages most about our world these days resonates in the Dan Berrigan line, "Bodies belong where words are." False transmission of scripture is disincarnating. Words that are disembodied are as empty as the nothing that follows comments beginning with the words "conservative" or "liberal." We no longer speak with each other. Instead we pontificate from fixed positions aiming to sound right and strong.
We need bodies that resonate the origin of words.
We practice with one another the art of being alone with no other. Meetingbrook calls this m.o.n.o. (monastics of no other) -- meant to encourage the heart of prayer, namely, sojourning through the intimate thin place absent othering.
Each view in its own time.
Observe the empty monarch of mind;
Mysterious, subtle, unfathomable,
It has no shape or form,
Yet it has great spiritual power,
Able to extinguish a thousand troubles
And perfect ten thousand virtues.
Although its essence is empty,
It can provide guidance.
When you look at it,
It has no form; call it,
And it has a voice.
It acts as a great spiritual leader;
Mental discipline transmits scripture.
- Fu Shan-hui (487-659)
Many views listened to and looked at, one at a time. Each time there is a conversation.
Denis Saleh, a contemporary poet and author writes: "I have been hard at work now longer than I like to remember, on a novel set in Ancient Egypt. I found out how the pyramids were built: slowly. Almost anything can be done, it seems, if one proceeds slowly enough, but we moderns simply cannot grasp this." (p.104. in One Dharma, The Emerging Western Buddhism, by Joseph Goldstein, c.2002)
Patience asks slowness. Readiness emerges only after we arrive at and accept who and where we are.
A variety of scriptures join the well-known ones. Christianity, says Marcus Borg, has two types of expression -- earlier and emerging. Sayings of Jesus not well-known become more familiar with publication of the Gospel of Thomas.
Now what is typical about these sayings is that in each instance, these sayings want to say that if you want to understand what Jesus said, you have to recognize yourself. You have to know yourself, know who you are. It begins with a saying about the Kingdom of God, "if you seek the Kingdom of God in the sky then the birds will precede you. And if you seek it in the sea, then the fish will precede you, but the Kingdom is in you. And if you know yourself then you know the Kingdom of God." (The Kingdom of the Father, in fact, it always says in the gospel of Thomas. Normally the Kingdom of the Father, not the Kingdom of God.) "But if you don't know yourself, you live in poverty." And poverty is understood as the ignorance of a life in its physical existence. Knowledge is understood to be the knowledge of one's divine origin, of the fact that one has come from the Kingdom. That we are on this earth only in a sojourn....
(Helmut Koester: John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School; found in "From Jesus to Christ," Frontline, PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/thomas.html)
What frustrates and discourages most about our world these days resonates in the Dan Berrigan line, "Bodies belong where words are." False transmission of scripture is disincarnating. Words that are disembodied are as empty as the nothing that follows comments beginning with the words "conservative" or "liberal." We no longer speak with each other. Instead we pontificate from fixed positions aiming to sound right and strong.
We need bodies that resonate the origin of words.
We practice with one another the art of being alone with no other. Meetingbrook calls this m.o.n.o. (monastics of no other) -- meant to encourage the heart of prayer, namely, sojourning through the intimate thin place absent othering.
Each view in its own time.
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Whose name?
It is hard not to be sickened by cruelty, terrorism, and arrogance.
A deep practice is needed to pass through anger and political obfuscation and arrive at a profound personal peace -- one that does not ignore either the world as it is or what might be called heaven as yet uninhabited.
The world as it is appears very unkind at times. Heaven as yet uninhabited seems very hidden.
Just by listening with your eyes
you can fold back on yourself and
merge into that primal
stream of awareness
like a river is swallowed by the
immensity of the ocean.
Only then will you know
the point to live from.
- Ji Aoi Isshi
Have we forgotten "the point to live from"?
Have we forgotten the silence needed to hear the soundless word of life itself pointing to the point we are to live from?
1 Does not Wisdom call, and Understanding raise her voice?
2 On the top of the heights along the road, at the crossroads she takes her stand;
3 By the gates at the approaches of the city, in the entryways she cries aloud:
4 "To you, O men, I call; my appeal is to the children of men.
5 You simple ones, gain resource, you fools, gain sense.
6 "Give heed! for noble things I speak; honesty opens my lips.
22 "The LORD begot me, the first-born of his ways, the forerunner of his prodigies of long ago;
23 From of old I was poured forth, at the first, before the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no fountains or springs of water;
25 Before the mountains were settled into place, before the hills, I was brought forth;
26 While as yet the earth and the fields were not made, nor the first clods of the world.
27 "When he established the heavens I was there, when he marked out the vault over the face of the deep;
28 When he made firm the skies above, when he fixed fast the foundations of the earth;
(- from Proverbs 8)
It is time to learn how to call things by their true names. Cruelty is cruelty, terrorism is terrorism, and arrogance is arrogance. It is no longer tolerable to spin and pretend false names change the false into the true. Nor can what is true be called false and thereby satisfy anyone with integrity.
Wisdom here has a pivotal role in the creation itself. But how? This passage suggests an answer in saying that God "set a compass on the face of the depth." This is more than a poetic utterance; it shows how consciousness creates a world around itself. This principle operates in us individually, in each moment, so you can catch a glimpse of it in ordinary cognition.
[Martin] Heidegger suggests that Heraclitus described this process of cognition as "picking out" and even used a term for it -- logos (from the Greek legein, "to gather" or "to pick out"). Logos is usually translated as "word." Although it has an enormous range of other meanings as well, it can accurately be described as the "word," because as consciousness goes through its experience and picks out some special feature of it -- an object, external or internal -- it instantly appends a name to it, a word. In this sense it is the "word" that brings the word into being. The ancient Hebrews made this fact the centerpiece of their worldview. They believed that the name for a thing was identical to the thing itself: as one Kabbalistic aphorism says, "God and his name are one."
(pp.139-40, in Inner Christianity, A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition, by Richard Smoley, c.2002)
We must be the one we are.
Lies make false two.
One is deeper truth.
And your name is?
It is hard not to be sickened by cruelty, terrorism, and arrogance.
A deep practice is needed to pass through anger and political obfuscation and arrive at a profound personal peace -- one that does not ignore either the world as it is or what might be called heaven as yet uninhabited.
The world as it is appears very unkind at times. Heaven as yet uninhabited seems very hidden.
Just by listening with your eyes
you can fold back on yourself and
merge into that primal
stream of awareness
like a river is swallowed by the
immensity of the ocean.
Only then will you know
the point to live from.
- Ji Aoi Isshi
Have we forgotten "the point to live from"?
Have we forgotten the silence needed to hear the soundless word of life itself pointing to the point we are to live from?
1 Does not Wisdom call, and Understanding raise her voice?
2 On the top of the heights along the road, at the crossroads she takes her stand;
3 By the gates at the approaches of the city, in the entryways she cries aloud:
4 "To you, O men, I call; my appeal is to the children of men.
5 You simple ones, gain resource, you fools, gain sense.
6 "Give heed! for noble things I speak; honesty opens my lips.
22 "The LORD begot me, the first-born of his ways, the forerunner of his prodigies of long ago;
23 From of old I was poured forth, at the first, before the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no fountains or springs of water;
25 Before the mountains were settled into place, before the hills, I was brought forth;
26 While as yet the earth and the fields were not made, nor the first clods of the world.
27 "When he established the heavens I was there, when he marked out the vault over the face of the deep;
28 When he made firm the skies above, when he fixed fast the foundations of the earth;
(- from Proverbs 8)
It is time to learn how to call things by their true names. Cruelty is cruelty, terrorism is terrorism, and arrogance is arrogance. It is no longer tolerable to spin and pretend false names change the false into the true. Nor can what is true be called false and thereby satisfy anyone with integrity.
Wisdom here has a pivotal role in the creation itself. But how? This passage suggests an answer in saying that God "set a compass on the face of the depth." This is more than a poetic utterance; it shows how consciousness creates a world around itself. This principle operates in us individually, in each moment, so you can catch a glimpse of it in ordinary cognition.
[Martin] Heidegger suggests that Heraclitus described this process of cognition as "picking out" and even used a term for it -- logos (from the Greek legein, "to gather" or "to pick out"). Logos is usually translated as "word." Although it has an enormous range of other meanings as well, it can accurately be described as the "word," because as consciousness goes through its experience and picks out some special feature of it -- an object, external or internal -- it instantly appends a name to it, a word. In this sense it is the "word" that brings the word into being. The ancient Hebrews made this fact the centerpiece of their worldview. They believed that the name for a thing was identical to the thing itself: as one Kabbalistic aphorism says, "God and his name are one."
(pp.139-40, in Inner Christianity, A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition, by Richard Smoley, c.2002)
We must be the one we are.
Lies make false two.
One is deeper truth.
And your name is?
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Nine Americans killed today in Iraq. Five Soldiers, four civilians -- says the news.
How can we ever lose interest in life?
Spring has come again
And cherry trees bloom in the mountains.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)
The political situation in America and Iraq is unsettling and, it seems, unraveling.
Right or wrong, you are still telling a lie if you tell someone the opposite of what you know is the right answer to the question, and do so with the intention to deceive. (p.132, in Truth In Religion, the Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth, by Mortimer J. Adler)
The airwaves have been filled with excoriating charges and allegations of misrepresentation and deception. The politics of the powerful holding tightly to power is unattractive and demeaning. It is always a question of who dares tell the truth -- and who survives the telling.
What makes one's opinions of beliefs true or false? The answer parallels the answer to the question about the difference between truthful and untruthful speech. Just as truthful speech consists in the agreement between what you say and what you think, and untruthful speech consists in saying the opposite of what you think, so truth in what one thinks consists in the agreement between what one thinks and the way things really are. Conversely, falsity in what one thinks consists in the disagreement between what one thinks and the way things really are.
Aristotle summed this up in the following impeccable statement: To have truth in one's mind -- in what one thinks, believes, or opines -- consists in thinking that that which is, is, or that which is not, is not. Conversely, to have falsity in one's mind consists in thinking that that which is, is not, or that which is not, is. Thomas Aquinas said the same thing even more succinctly. He defined truth in the human intellect as the agreement or conformity of the mind with reality, and falsity as the opposite of that. (pp.132-133, Adler)
Clouds hang heavy. I wonder if it is me. No, says one of the two folks sitting by the fire, it's the pressure -- low and heavy.
Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality
with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the
form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on
a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the
name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and
every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father.
- Philippians 2:6-11
Who can grasp form, God, or equality? Who can grasp the change each is asked to embody as reality requests a new form, a new comprehension of what-is called God, a new appreciation of what it means to be of the same measure?
Underlying this definition of truth and falsity are two assumptions that Aristotle and Aquinas made , which in my judgment, are philosophically defensible and tenable.
The first is that there exists a reality that is independent of the human mind, to which the mind can either conform or fail to conform. In other words, what we think does not create or in any way affect what we are thinking about. It is what it is, whether we think about it or not and regardless of what we think about it.
The second assumption is that this independent reality is completely determinate. This is Aristotle's metaphysical principle of contradiction. Nothing can both be and not be at the same time. Anything which does exist cannot both have and not have a certain attitude at one and the same time.
( -p.133, Adler)
I recall a poem written forty years ago, the final lines I wrote then went something like:
Is truth to be discarded
when the mighty challenge the low?
Where does one go
To face a lie,
To shed one's skin?
The two men talk about aerial warfare as "Democracy Now" comes on the airwaves. Oddly enough, it is a show from two days ago that the local station airs.
"Good soup," one says, dunking bread. The other leaves -- he's heard it all before.
I go for a walk.
How can we ever lose interest in life?
Spring has come again
And cherry trees bloom in the mountains.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)
The political situation in America and Iraq is unsettling and, it seems, unraveling.
Right or wrong, you are still telling a lie if you tell someone the opposite of what you know is the right answer to the question, and do so with the intention to deceive. (p.132, in Truth In Religion, the Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth, by Mortimer J. Adler)
The airwaves have been filled with excoriating charges and allegations of misrepresentation and deception. The politics of the powerful holding tightly to power is unattractive and demeaning. It is always a question of who dares tell the truth -- and who survives the telling.
What makes one's opinions of beliefs true or false? The answer parallels the answer to the question about the difference between truthful and untruthful speech. Just as truthful speech consists in the agreement between what you say and what you think, and untruthful speech consists in saying the opposite of what you think, so truth in what one thinks consists in the agreement between what one thinks and the way things really are. Conversely, falsity in what one thinks consists in the disagreement between what one thinks and the way things really are.
Aristotle summed this up in the following impeccable statement: To have truth in one's mind -- in what one thinks, believes, or opines -- consists in thinking that that which is, is, or that which is not, is not. Conversely, to have falsity in one's mind consists in thinking that that which is, is not, or that which is not, is. Thomas Aquinas said the same thing even more succinctly. He defined truth in the human intellect as the agreement or conformity of the mind with reality, and falsity as the opposite of that. (pp.132-133, Adler)
Clouds hang heavy. I wonder if it is me. No, says one of the two folks sitting by the fire, it's the pressure -- low and heavy.
Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality
with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the
form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on
a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the
name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and
every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father.
- Philippians 2:6-11
Who can grasp form, God, or equality? Who can grasp the change each is asked to embody as reality requests a new form, a new comprehension of what-is called God, a new appreciation of what it means to be of the same measure?
Underlying this definition of truth and falsity are two assumptions that Aristotle and Aquinas made , which in my judgment, are philosophically defensible and tenable.
The first is that there exists a reality that is independent of the human mind, to which the mind can either conform or fail to conform. In other words, what we think does not create or in any way affect what we are thinking about. It is what it is, whether we think about it or not and regardless of what we think about it.
The second assumption is that this independent reality is completely determinate. This is Aristotle's metaphysical principle of contradiction. Nothing can both be and not be at the same time. Anything which does exist cannot both have and not have a certain attitude at one and the same time.
( -p.133, Adler)
I recall a poem written forty years ago, the final lines I wrote then went something like:
Is truth to be discarded
when the mighty challenge the low?
Where does one go
To face a lie,
To shed one's skin?
The two men talk about aerial warfare as "Democracy Now" comes on the airwaves. Oddly enough, it is a show from two days ago that the local station airs.
"Good soup," one says, dunking bread. The other leaves -- he's heard it all before.
I go for a walk.
Sunday, March 28, 2004
Saskia's bread goes flop. "I waited too long," she says. "It's not fair," she concludes.
All along the trail of moss,
I followed your wooden shoeprints.
White clouds hung around your little island
Where spring grass hid your unlocked door.
I enjoyed the colors of pines after rain
And reached the river's source
Along the mountain trail.
Facing the stream and the flowers
I came inside a sense of Zen,
Yet cannot find the words.
- Liu Chang Ching (709-780)
After reading two of her poems last evening, Eva told us about a recent experience -- the sudden car-fire that screamed up around her once she turned off engine in a parking garage in Bangor. There was an instant, she said, when the thought "I'm dead" was equally engulfing. Next instant the Rumanian picnic was on the ground and she was outside and away from the blaze. The car was consumed. She tells the story, she says, over and over -- the trauma, she says, brushes bit by bit from her in each telling.
The first poem was an ode to 'Yellow.' The second, about her visit to a garden show. Next time she'll bring one of the fire.
Whenever learners or those beyond learning awaken the mind, for the first time they plant one buddha-nature. Working with the four elements and five clusters, if they practice sincerely they attain enlightenment. Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment. This is because the four elements and five clusters and plants, trees, fences and walls are fellow students; because they are of the same essence, because they are the same mind and the same life, because they are the same body and the same mechanism.-
(-- Dogen Zenji, Japanese Zen Buddhist Grand Master, 'Awakening the Unsurpassed Mind, #31,' Translated by Thomas Cleary, Rational Zen: The Mind of Dogen Zenji)
Tommy came in after Saturday Afternoon Tea and Literature, as did a couple from Dover-Foxcroft. A woman visiting from D.C. sat by remaining coals in fireplace talking with Saskia.
If trauma, as Ryan yesterday in prison put it, "shoots us into the landscape across the wilderness, stretched out," what is the recognizing and retrieval process of integration and re-integration that follows? The sudden experience that sends us places beyond preparedness or borders, the experience of any trauma -- whether soldier in battle, victim of crime, or shock mystical encounter -- is most often unsettling and displacing. And yet...
And yet, the unasked-for mutation of awareness which occurs affects us in several ways. We are thrown beyond the known, and we glimpse a relationality previously not contemplated. Hence, often, fear. There is a fear that shudders within us when we are asked to consider we are not just the contained image we cultivate about ourselves. We are a wider reality, one that invites us to look around and contemplate our very being with the question -- "Is this, too, who I am?"
Is this 'The fear of the Lord'? Is our ability and willingness to hold open the possibility of inclusive recognition -- is that awareness the regenerative mystery creating anew from those stretched and empty spaces between starting point and arrival-after-being-thrown, a displaced scattered body capable of refashioning and enfleshing a mystical body not excluding a thing, a place, or a person?
Dogen's "same essence, same mind, same life, same body, same mechanism?"
Francis' leper -- the one he kisses?
For behold, the kingdom of God is within you.- (Luke 17:21)
Are we within this awareness when we allow ourselves to reach though the expedient delusions we perform as habit -- and touch, embrace, and welcome home all that is there within us?
When we hear the phrase, "Wherever you go, there you are," are we willing to contemplate that what is there, what is anywhere, is who we are?
When we look there, we arrive here.
Well within.
Flopped bread is equally delicious!
All along the trail of moss,
I followed your wooden shoeprints.
White clouds hung around your little island
Where spring grass hid your unlocked door.
I enjoyed the colors of pines after rain
And reached the river's source
Along the mountain trail.
Facing the stream and the flowers
I came inside a sense of Zen,
Yet cannot find the words.
- Liu Chang Ching (709-780)
After reading two of her poems last evening, Eva told us about a recent experience -- the sudden car-fire that screamed up around her once she turned off engine in a parking garage in Bangor. There was an instant, she said, when the thought "I'm dead" was equally engulfing. Next instant the Rumanian picnic was on the ground and she was outside and away from the blaze. The car was consumed. She tells the story, she says, over and over -- the trauma, she says, brushes bit by bit from her in each telling.
The first poem was an ode to 'Yellow.' The second, about her visit to a garden show. Next time she'll bring one of the fire.
Whenever learners or those beyond learning awaken the mind, for the first time they plant one buddha-nature. Working with the four elements and five clusters, if they practice sincerely they attain enlightenment. Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment. This is because the four elements and five clusters and plants, trees, fences and walls are fellow students; because they are of the same essence, because they are the same mind and the same life, because they are the same body and the same mechanism.-
(-- Dogen Zenji, Japanese Zen Buddhist Grand Master, 'Awakening the Unsurpassed Mind, #31,' Translated by Thomas Cleary, Rational Zen: The Mind of Dogen Zenji)
Tommy came in after Saturday Afternoon Tea and Literature, as did a couple from Dover-Foxcroft. A woman visiting from D.C. sat by remaining coals in fireplace talking with Saskia.
If trauma, as Ryan yesterday in prison put it, "shoots us into the landscape across the wilderness, stretched out," what is the recognizing and retrieval process of integration and re-integration that follows? The sudden experience that sends us places beyond preparedness or borders, the experience of any trauma -- whether soldier in battle, victim of crime, or shock mystical encounter -- is most often unsettling and displacing. And yet...
And yet, the unasked-for mutation of awareness which occurs affects us in several ways. We are thrown beyond the known, and we glimpse a relationality previously not contemplated. Hence, often, fear. There is a fear that shudders within us when we are asked to consider we are not just the contained image we cultivate about ourselves. We are a wider reality, one that invites us to look around and contemplate our very being with the question -- "Is this, too, who I am?"
Is this 'The fear of the Lord'? Is our ability and willingness to hold open the possibility of inclusive recognition -- is that awareness the regenerative mystery creating anew from those stretched and empty spaces between starting point and arrival-after-being-thrown, a displaced scattered body capable of refashioning and enfleshing a mystical body not excluding a thing, a place, or a person?
Dogen's "same essence, same mind, same life, same body, same mechanism?"
Francis' leper -- the one he kisses?
For behold, the kingdom of God is within you.- (Luke 17:21)
Are we within this awareness when we allow ourselves to reach though the expedient delusions we perform as habit -- and touch, embrace, and welcome home all that is there within us?
When we hear the phrase, "Wherever you go, there you are," are we willing to contemplate that what is there, what is anywhere, is who we are?
When we look there, we arrive here.
Well within.
Flopped bread is equally delicious!
Saturday, March 27, 2004
Arriving.
The young man nornally setting up the small room for his tutoring is not in his classroom where he helps prep GED with other inmates. Diane winces when asked, saying only he'll be in the supermax for a time -- a lengthy one. She doesn't say why and I don't ask -- simply the fact of his absence and the reorganization of the room we use for the day's conversation.
It is over four years we've been going into Maine State Prison, first in Thomaston, now in Warren, for Meetingbrook Conversations: The Practice of Listening and Thinking With Others. It's been seventeen years I've been in and out since first teaching a college course in the old prison in 1987/88.
Every other Friday, from 8:30am-10:45am three of us enter the maximum security prison in Warren, thread our way through metal detectors, long corridors, sliding steel heavily bolted doors, past guards and prisoners walking to visits or jobs. We traverse outdoor crossroads between minimum, maximum, & supermax housing units, past flagpole and up walkway to large building that quarters recreation, education, chaplainry, & substance abuse services. A few more secure doors are opened and we enter the place where conversations are held. Yesterday we landed in a rearranged classroom absent our sometime attendee -- the floor of the larger room with a few computers has just been mopped and is wet.
Silent Illumination
Silently and serenely,
One forgets all words;
Clearly and vividly,
It appears before you.
When one realizes it,
Time has no limits.
When experienced,
Your surroundings come to life.
Full of wonder is the pure illumination.
- Hung Chih Cheng Chueh (1092-1157)
Even in prison -- some would say, because of prison -- illumination comes to life. Years ago we speculated the connection between monastic life and prison life. Time, routine, alertness, and subtle fear pervade both. (Monks used to consider the 'fear of the Lord' as beginning wisdom; inmates experience fear more proximate and equally unexplainable.)
Sonny looked at his life over three years in independent classes for college credit and saw things out loud that had been hidden below silent anger. As least three of the contemporary participants tell of autobiographical writing they do -- as well as poetry, philosophical meditation, and correspondence that surpasses the "Hi, I'm fine, I need..." variety. Prison is no mere metaphor. Every time I exit prison I am aware what a gift it is to be able to visit and converse, and not to have to reside there.
We engage in Meetingbrook Conversations in Prison to broaden community. The conversations at shop and prison are a transmission of felt relationality between two aspects of one community -- whether we call it Meetingbrook community or Human community. Each person is where and who they are right now. Our longing is to engage in conversations that invite each participant, in or out, to listen and think with others -- to practice presence -- a practice that transcends our understanding of it.
Charlie, Ryan, Chris, Nancy, Saskia, Joe, and myself sat around the table Friday. We read from Lewis Thomas' Lives of a Cell, a weblog of mine, a reflection of Ryan's, William Barrett's Irrational Man, excerpts from a biker-writer from Maine, and selections from G.I. Gurdjieff's Views from the Real World, and Meetings with Remarkable Men.
Nancy said the Buddha emphasized "direct experience."
Direct experience of what?
Saskia said, "In nature there are no words, just to be with what is there."
Ryan spoke of the way some individuals experience trauma in their lives -- the feeling of being "Shot into the landscape across the wilderness, stretched out, followed by the need to draw their spirit back into its residing reality -- the here and now they are familiar with in place and time."
"When I look, what I see is..." -- said Chris wrestling with the question whether we are capable of seeing things in and of themselves, or only through our conditioning and conceptual categories. (Yet, his words suggest a more primal grasp, namely, "When I look, what I see...is.")
So, too, Ryan's words in a written piece he brought, "...only if my intention is, as is 'said,' 'right.'"
(His words are heard, "Only if my intention...is...'as is'-'said'... --right?")
The notion of unveiling "as-is, said" intrigues. Is it possible to experience things-as-they-are without the infiltrating conditioning of experience and idea determining the "as-is, said" to be other than what is said of itself?
There is a way, I think,
that it allows me to listen --
it's so different from the
way that old mind of mine
copes (and "makes up" things...)
It says not to pray like
I have... it's almost like
a 'freedom walk of prayer'
that creates and energizes itself...
little is the desire in
me to mess with this
beauty-goodness
yet the other thing --
the other half --
remains --
but it is -- well,
something else?
forget these notes
(--Ryan's reflection, "I would be remiss not to attempt notes --", 3/20/04)
We say goodbye. Shake hands. Depart one way and the other. Walk long portico. Pass through heavy doors. Collect driver's licenses and car keys. Step out to curved drive past sign "No weapons." The morning is exactly as it is.
I say to Nancy I had an insight into her "direct experience" comment.
"Tell me," she says.
I say direct experience is, "Bearing out through two rights one's reality." Later it seems a simpler looking at the meaning of the phrase might yield -- "Undergoing opening."
We let the dogs out of green car. They yawn, pee, meander, and return.
At end of curved entry-road we turn left.
Departing.
The young man nornally setting up the small room for his tutoring is not in his classroom where he helps prep GED with other inmates. Diane winces when asked, saying only he'll be in the supermax for a time -- a lengthy one. She doesn't say why and I don't ask -- simply the fact of his absence and the reorganization of the room we use for the day's conversation.
It is over four years we've been going into Maine State Prison, first in Thomaston, now in Warren, for Meetingbrook Conversations: The Practice of Listening and Thinking With Others. It's been seventeen years I've been in and out since first teaching a college course in the old prison in 1987/88.
Every other Friday, from 8:30am-10:45am three of us enter the maximum security prison in Warren, thread our way through metal detectors, long corridors, sliding steel heavily bolted doors, past guards and prisoners walking to visits or jobs. We traverse outdoor crossroads between minimum, maximum, & supermax housing units, past flagpole and up walkway to large building that quarters recreation, education, chaplainry, & substance abuse services. A few more secure doors are opened and we enter the place where conversations are held. Yesterday we landed in a rearranged classroom absent our sometime attendee -- the floor of the larger room with a few computers has just been mopped and is wet.
Silent Illumination
Silently and serenely,
One forgets all words;
Clearly and vividly,
It appears before you.
When one realizes it,
Time has no limits.
When experienced,
Your surroundings come to life.
Full of wonder is the pure illumination.
- Hung Chih Cheng Chueh (1092-1157)
Even in prison -- some would say, because of prison -- illumination comes to life. Years ago we speculated the connection between monastic life and prison life. Time, routine, alertness, and subtle fear pervade both. (Monks used to consider the 'fear of the Lord' as beginning wisdom; inmates experience fear more proximate and equally unexplainable.)
Sonny looked at his life over three years in independent classes for college credit and saw things out loud that had been hidden below silent anger. As least three of the contemporary participants tell of autobiographical writing they do -- as well as poetry, philosophical meditation, and correspondence that surpasses the "Hi, I'm fine, I need..." variety. Prison is no mere metaphor. Every time I exit prison I am aware what a gift it is to be able to visit and converse, and not to have to reside there.
We engage in Meetingbrook Conversations in Prison to broaden community. The conversations at shop and prison are a transmission of felt relationality between two aspects of one community -- whether we call it Meetingbrook community or Human community. Each person is where and who they are right now. Our longing is to engage in conversations that invite each participant, in or out, to listen and think with others -- to practice presence -- a practice that transcends our understanding of it.
Charlie, Ryan, Chris, Nancy, Saskia, Joe, and myself sat around the table Friday. We read from Lewis Thomas' Lives of a Cell, a weblog of mine, a reflection of Ryan's, William Barrett's Irrational Man, excerpts from a biker-writer from Maine, and selections from G.I. Gurdjieff's Views from the Real World, and Meetings with Remarkable Men.
Nancy said the Buddha emphasized "direct experience."
Direct experience of what?
Saskia said, "In nature there are no words, just to be with what is there."
Ryan spoke of the way some individuals experience trauma in their lives -- the feeling of being "Shot into the landscape across the wilderness, stretched out, followed by the need to draw their spirit back into its residing reality -- the here and now they are familiar with in place and time."
"When I look, what I see is..." -- said Chris wrestling with the question whether we are capable of seeing things in and of themselves, or only through our conditioning and conceptual categories. (Yet, his words suggest a more primal grasp, namely, "When I look, what I see...is.")
So, too, Ryan's words in a written piece he brought, "...only if my intention is, as is 'said,' 'right.'"
(His words are heard, "Only if my intention...is...'as is'-'said'... --right?")
The notion of unveiling "as-is, said" intrigues. Is it possible to experience things-as-they-are without the infiltrating conditioning of experience and idea determining the "as-is, said" to be other than what is said of itself?
There is a way, I think,
that it allows me to listen --
it's so different from the
way that old mind of mine
copes (and "makes up" things...)
It says not to pray like
I have... it's almost like
a 'freedom walk of prayer'
that creates and energizes itself...
little is the desire in
me to mess with this
beauty-goodness
yet the other thing --
the other half --
remains --
but it is -- well,
something else?
forget these notes
(--Ryan's reflection, "I would be remiss not to attempt notes --", 3/20/04)
We say goodbye. Shake hands. Depart one way and the other. Walk long portico. Pass through heavy doors. Collect driver's licenses and car keys. Step out to curved drive past sign "No weapons." The morning is exactly as it is.
I say to Nancy I had an insight into her "direct experience" comment.
"Tell me," she says.
I say direct experience is, "Bearing out through two rights one's reality." Later it seems a simpler looking at the meaning of the phrase might yield -- "Undergoing opening."
We let the dogs out of green car. They yawn, pee, meander, and return.
At end of curved entry-road we turn left.
Departing.
Friday, March 26, 2004
Note: Conversation in Prison this morning. Bookshop/Bakery closed today. No conversation this evening. Re-opening Saturday morning for 9:30am "The Many Faces of Death" conversation.
............
Thirty-two minutes walking entry road to Snow Bowl. Dogs carry then drop sticks, relieve themselves, figure the pattern of my back-and-forth clips road-to-parking-lot, and lay in wait for return.
Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
-- W. B. Yeats (quoted in Irrational Man, A Study in Existential Philosophy, by William Barrett)
Melting and mud -- the status of early spring morning under drizzle-sky hovering fog -- as if an unheard command is given that "Everything shall be wet and softening this watch!"
Shall we also rummage the heart today? To find -- what?
What work is common to us, however tucked away and undetected? Where do we start -- especially since the majority of us believe we are well-along (thank you) the path of our lives? Is it possible, even true, that we are ever and always at the beginning -- just at start -- of our lives?
"Stigmergy" is a new word, invented recently by Grasse to explain the nest-building behavior of termites, perhaps generalizable to other complex activities of social animals. The word is made of Greek roots meaning "to incite to work," and Grasse's intention was to indicate that it is the product of work itself that provides both the stimulus and instructions for further work.
Grasse needed his word in order to account for the ability of such tiny, blind, and relatively brainless animals to erect structures [the termite nests, which excepting perhaps a man-made city are the most formidable edifices in nature] of such vast size and internal complexity. Does each termite possess a fragment of blueprint, or is the whole design, arch by arch, encoded in his DNA? Or does the whole colony have, by virtue of the interconnections of so many small brains, the collective intellectual power of a huge contractor?
(pp.156-7, chapter "Living Language", in The Lives of a Cell, Notes of a Biology Watcher, by Lewis Thomas, c.1974)
Fragments? Or collective?
What is the configuration of power and creativity running through us as individual fragments or collective intelligence? And how do we interpose ourselves to inquire and share benefits of our inquiry and resources?
So many threads! So many faces, minds, hands, and hearts! How do we proceed? Where start?
It is easy to lose the thread (from ter, to rub, twist -- possibly also the root of termite). Are you there? (p.164, Thomas)
Am I?
Are you?
Can we be?
A start.
............
Thirty-two minutes walking entry road to Snow Bowl. Dogs carry then drop sticks, relieve themselves, figure the pattern of my back-and-forth clips road-to-parking-lot, and lay in wait for return.
Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
-- W. B. Yeats (quoted in Irrational Man, A Study in Existential Philosophy, by William Barrett)
Melting and mud -- the status of early spring morning under drizzle-sky hovering fog -- as if an unheard command is given that "Everything shall be wet and softening this watch!"
Shall we also rummage the heart today? To find -- what?
What work is common to us, however tucked away and undetected? Where do we start -- especially since the majority of us believe we are well-along (thank you) the path of our lives? Is it possible, even true, that we are ever and always at the beginning -- just at start -- of our lives?
"Stigmergy" is a new word, invented recently by Grasse to explain the nest-building behavior of termites, perhaps generalizable to other complex activities of social animals. The word is made of Greek roots meaning "to incite to work," and Grasse's intention was to indicate that it is the product of work itself that provides both the stimulus and instructions for further work.
Grasse needed his word in order to account for the ability of such tiny, blind, and relatively brainless animals to erect structures [the termite nests, which excepting perhaps a man-made city are the most formidable edifices in nature] of such vast size and internal complexity. Does each termite possess a fragment of blueprint, or is the whole design, arch by arch, encoded in his DNA? Or does the whole colony have, by virtue of the interconnections of so many small brains, the collective intellectual power of a huge contractor?
(pp.156-7, chapter "Living Language", in The Lives of a Cell, Notes of a Biology Watcher, by Lewis Thomas, c.1974)
Fragments? Or collective?
What is the configuration of power and creativity running through us as individual fragments or collective intelligence? And how do we interpose ourselves to inquire and share benefits of our inquiry and resources?
So many threads! So many faces, minds, hands, and hearts! How do we proceed? Where start?
It is easy to lose the thread (from ter, to rub, twist -- possibly also the root of termite). Are you there? (p.164, Thomas)
Am I?
Are you?
Can we be?
A start.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Note: We are closed today, Thursday. No conversation this evening.
....................
Muted morning.
Hillside is unmoving carpet of tired brown with patches of withdrawing white snow. Sky says rain soon in grey mutter cloud cover.
My mind is inclined to quiet;
Outside of things,
I lodge in the brush.
The sense of the mountains is best
When you reach their depths;
The source of the valley stream, distant,
Is naturally purified.
For the rest of my life,
All that's missing is death;
All thoughts and worries
Are settled already.
Recluses should leave no tracks;
People stop asking their names.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)
We leave no tracks when we remain where we are and simply be what we are.
Stillness doesn't mean no-motion. Stillness is movement within itself. It is not interested with articulated contrasts between where once we were and where now we are -- rather, mere presentation of one's reality without comment is sufficient for the moment. The 'moment' is its own revelation. Nothing need be added or articulated. The brown leaves on ascending Ragged Mountain are speaking -- they announce to the mountain and inhabitants the very reality of the moment.
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!"
(Luke 1:26 - 28 )
Today is the Feast of the Annunciation. Gabriel tells Mary she is the mother of God. (Not 'she will become' the mother, but that she is.) Mary says, "Let it be." And the Word that creates everything is itself in creation.
Itself in creation! The phrase could be the response made by every being to the question "Who or what are you?"
"Itself in creation!" -- is who I am, is what I am."
Brown leaves remain still moving within themselves outside kitchen window.
"Let it be," in today's idiom, means, "Drop it!" A leaf understands this, and responds faithfully to it.
Mary was who she was, as was Gabriel, as was Jesus.
(Janet says it is John's birthday today. We break fast into their presence.)
We greet John, full of grace, and see all-he-is with him.
Remarkable.
....................
Muted morning.
Hillside is unmoving carpet of tired brown with patches of withdrawing white snow. Sky says rain soon in grey mutter cloud cover.
My mind is inclined to quiet;
Outside of things,
I lodge in the brush.
The sense of the mountains is best
When you reach their depths;
The source of the valley stream, distant,
Is naturally purified.
For the rest of my life,
All that's missing is death;
All thoughts and worries
Are settled already.
Recluses should leave no tracks;
People stop asking their names.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)
We leave no tracks when we remain where we are and simply be what we are.
Stillness doesn't mean no-motion. Stillness is movement within itself. It is not interested with articulated contrasts between where once we were and where now we are -- rather, mere presentation of one's reality without comment is sufficient for the moment. The 'moment' is its own revelation. Nothing need be added or articulated. The brown leaves on ascending Ragged Mountain are speaking -- they announce to the mountain and inhabitants the very reality of the moment.
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!"
(Luke 1:26 - 28 )
Today is the Feast of the Annunciation. Gabriel tells Mary she is the mother of God. (Not 'she will become' the mother, but that she is.) Mary says, "Let it be." And the Word that creates everything is itself in creation.
Itself in creation! The phrase could be the response made by every being to the question "Who or what are you?"
"Itself in creation!" -- is who I am, is what I am."
Brown leaves remain still moving within themselves outside kitchen window.
"Let it be," in today's idiom, means, "Drop it!" A leaf understands this, and responds faithfully to it.
Mary was who she was, as was Gabriel, as was Jesus.
(Janet says it is John's birthday today. We break fast into their presence.)
We greet John, full of grace, and see all-he-is with him.
Remarkable.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Note: We are closed today, Wednesday. No Evening Conversation.
....................
Zen Catholic.
Susan's dog, Rougie, died a few weeks ago. We met her and Lucky, her Great White Pyrenees, at their van in parking lot of Grave's Market. Robert, Su.Sane, and Sandra arrive and join the sunny circle. Talk of birds and this and that. Cars arrive and depart as we talk. Elly waves hello. The sun is warm.
Mountain of Samadhi
This mountain has neither
ugly rocks nor clumsy trees.
It raises itself ten thousand feet
towards the cold heaven.
Even a stray cloud does not
cling around the mountain.
Only the moon showers its
pale light abundantly over the summit.
- Jakushitsu (1290–1368)
The mountain raises itself.
Bananas, yogurt, two half gallons of orange juice, two Cadbury chocolate bars, frozen pizza, some bakery goods, and Bangor Daily News. These came before parking lot conference and earlier Mass at Our Lady of Good Hope.
If God is, and God is the creator and inspiration of all life, we begin there. If God, alongside being the inner core sustaining breath of each thing in existence, is the origin and seed of God (or the Itself) realizing Itself in humankind, there is the belief of many that Jesus enjoyed a distinct and unique realization of what-is-in-Itself, namely, the reality of God as Itself.
At Mass this morning the thought that God, suffusing everything, emerges specifically and fully in the person of Jesus, is as feasible an understanding as the belief that Jesus, in his awakened understanding, saw that everything shared in the reality he shared.
Reception and sharing of bread and wine, the cleansing and sustaining function of water, the soothing and healing properties of anointing with oil, deep listening, loving community, dedication to holiness and service, the pervasive flowing through of the Sacred Spirit -- these enacting behaviors are universal and worthy of reflection.
In the Catholic tradition, the one most familiar to me, these elements are also known as: Eucharist, Baptism, Extreme Unction (or Sacrament of the Sick), Reconciliation (or Confession), Matrimony, Holy Orders, Confirmation.
Jesus, who has come to be called 'the Christ', is looked on by those calling themselves Christian as the focal point for beliefs encompassing the divinization of humankind and all creation, and the humanization of the divine mystery and source of all being. If, indeed, there were a being or reality (sometimes named 'what-is-called-God'), that being/reality would not (I would think) be separate from the being/reality of each and every one of us.
The breath, or voice, of God is that which creates, embodies, and sustains each and every particle, thing, and being (as far as we are capable of knowing) in existence.
Is there any end to this?
“Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself, and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man. Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.
“I can do nothing on my own authority; as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me”.
(John 5:17 - 30)
Having life in himself, or, life-in-itself, is (we might say) the gift of creation. The references to 'resurrection of life' and 'resurrection of judgment' have in common 'resurrection.'
To 'judge' -- (from 'jus' = right or law; and 'dicere' = decide or say) -- means, "to determine or pronounce after inquiry and deliberation" (per Webster’s 7th). Thus to judge is to think, to form an estimate of something.
It is an interesting consideration that is made in contemporary environments emphasizing meditation, contemplation, and consciousness -- namely, that 'life' and 'judgment' might be seen as two ways of experiencing our being. More precisely, to live life as a whole as an experience in itself is remarkably different than evaluating and analyzing fragments and situations that compartmentalize behavior and opinion.
What is the will of God? Some say love. Perhaps it is the longing to express and experience oneself -- the "itself" -- as ground and source of what is in existence. It is an interesting consideration to reflect on -- that "the will of him who sent me" means there is no separation of will, no fragmentation dividing 'my' will from 'the Father's' will. That what we call 'my' will as perceived separate from God's will is, in fact, a delusion -- albeit an expedient delusion. How we contemplate or even deliberate this inseparate possibility tells us a great deal about who we think we are in each other's life, how we go about living life, and (more emphatically), the manner with which we encounter or respond to conflict and hostility in the world.
On the radio, officials interview each other trying to piece together what is known and what is hidden about 9/11. If these men and women are not solely attempting to place blame on each other, then they are hoping to find a way to relieve the world of terrorism, and perhaps to find a way to relieve the world of narrow rule by the militarily powerful and financially wealthy to the exclusion, in breath and voice, of the weak and poor.
Zen, at root, means 'seeing.' Catholic, at root, means 'universal, whole.'
Seeing the whole.
Inestimable.
One's life.
....................
Zen Catholic.
Susan's dog, Rougie, died a few weeks ago. We met her and Lucky, her Great White Pyrenees, at their van in parking lot of Grave's Market. Robert, Su.Sane, and Sandra arrive and join the sunny circle. Talk of birds and this and that. Cars arrive and depart as we talk. Elly waves hello. The sun is warm.
Mountain of Samadhi
This mountain has neither
ugly rocks nor clumsy trees.
It raises itself ten thousand feet
towards the cold heaven.
Even a stray cloud does not
cling around the mountain.
Only the moon showers its
pale light abundantly over the summit.
- Jakushitsu (1290–1368)
The mountain raises itself.
Bananas, yogurt, two half gallons of orange juice, two Cadbury chocolate bars, frozen pizza, some bakery goods, and Bangor Daily News. These came before parking lot conference and earlier Mass at Our Lady of Good Hope.
If God is, and God is the creator and inspiration of all life, we begin there. If God, alongside being the inner core sustaining breath of each thing in existence, is the origin and seed of God (or the Itself) realizing Itself in humankind, there is the belief of many that Jesus enjoyed a distinct and unique realization of what-is-in-Itself, namely, the reality of God as Itself.
At Mass this morning the thought that God, suffusing everything, emerges specifically and fully in the person of Jesus, is as feasible an understanding as the belief that Jesus, in his awakened understanding, saw that everything shared in the reality he shared.
Reception and sharing of bread and wine, the cleansing and sustaining function of water, the soothing and healing properties of anointing with oil, deep listening, loving community, dedication to holiness and service, the pervasive flowing through of the Sacred Spirit -- these enacting behaviors are universal and worthy of reflection.
In the Catholic tradition, the one most familiar to me, these elements are also known as: Eucharist, Baptism, Extreme Unction (or Sacrament of the Sick), Reconciliation (or Confession), Matrimony, Holy Orders, Confirmation.
Jesus, who has come to be called 'the Christ', is looked on by those calling themselves Christian as the focal point for beliefs encompassing the divinization of humankind and all creation, and the humanization of the divine mystery and source of all being. If, indeed, there were a being or reality (sometimes named 'what-is-called-God'), that being/reality would not (I would think) be separate from the being/reality of each and every one of us.
The breath, or voice, of God is that which creates, embodies, and sustains each and every particle, thing, and being (as far as we are capable of knowing) in existence.
Is there any end to this?
“Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself, and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man. Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.
“I can do nothing on my own authority; as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me”.
(John 5:17 - 30)
Having life in himself, or, life-in-itself, is (we might say) the gift of creation. The references to 'resurrection of life' and 'resurrection of judgment' have in common 'resurrection.'
To 'judge' -- (from 'jus' = right or law; and 'dicere' = decide or say) -- means, "to determine or pronounce after inquiry and deliberation" (per Webster’s 7th). Thus to judge is to think, to form an estimate of something.
It is an interesting consideration that is made in contemporary environments emphasizing meditation, contemplation, and consciousness -- namely, that 'life' and 'judgment' might be seen as two ways of experiencing our being. More precisely, to live life as a whole as an experience in itself is remarkably different than evaluating and analyzing fragments and situations that compartmentalize behavior and opinion.
What is the will of God? Some say love. Perhaps it is the longing to express and experience oneself -- the "itself" -- as ground and source of what is in existence. It is an interesting consideration to reflect on -- that "the will of him who sent me" means there is no separation of will, no fragmentation dividing 'my' will from 'the Father's' will. That what we call 'my' will as perceived separate from God's will is, in fact, a delusion -- albeit an expedient delusion. How we contemplate or even deliberate this inseparate possibility tells us a great deal about who we think we are in each other's life, how we go about living life, and (more emphatically), the manner with which we encounter or respond to conflict and hostility in the world.
On the radio, officials interview each other trying to piece together what is known and what is hidden about 9/11. If these men and women are not solely attempting to place blame on each other, then they are hoping to find a way to relieve the world of terrorism, and perhaps to find a way to relieve the world of narrow rule by the militarily powerful and financially wealthy to the exclusion, in breath and voice, of the weak and poor.
Zen, at root, means 'seeing.' Catholic, at root, means 'universal, whole.'
Seeing the whole.
Inestimable.
One's life.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Monday, March 22, 2004
Deep cold night.
Remembering walking dirt road alongside water and woods at Rockport harbor early morning. Deb is with her Golden up from golf course. We park in Vesper Hill space piled with recent snow. The dogs are happy to run. We are happy to walk.
Trampling the grass has made three paths.
Looking up at the clouds makes
Neighbors in the four directions;
There are birds to help with the
Sound of the singing, but there
Isn't anyone to ask about the
Words of the Dharma.
Today among these withered trees,
How many years make one spring?
- Han Shan (c 730)
Three paths criss-cross each other trying to catch scent. The four directions turn suddenly and ask us for a match. After week of weakness enclosed in mulling quiet we make way to Corner Shop for breakfast after long walk. An old and worn hull floats in cove at mooring sealing planks swell with salt wet.
One path is mountain solitude. Second is marketplace immersion. Third is amalgamating one place or the other -- to merge into a single body.
The name Han Shan means: Cold Cliff, Cold Mountain, or Cold Peak. Han Shan is known in Japan as "Kanzan." Han Shan was considered, when older, to be an eccentric Taoist, crazy saint, mountain ascetic mystic, and wise fool. He went many ways and back again the way fools do. There is no counting on a fool to show us the way -- there are too many variables for fools to be satisfied with only one.
At that time, Imperial Counselor Zhou Hai Men was lecturing on Yan Ming metaphysics. When he heard of my arrival, he called on me bringing a few dozen of his followers along. He began a discussion by referring to the saying: “One cannot realize the truth until one understands the condition of day and night.”
A Daoist elder who was sitting among them responded. “The condition is consciousness,” he said. “And day and night are waking and sleeping. The same consciousness that functions during our daylight actions, functions during the night in our dream actions.” The audience showed its approval.
Counselor Zhou then turned to me. “Venerable old Chan Master,” he said, “though everyone else seems to be satisfied with this interpretation, I am not. Please give us your opinion.”
“What is the source of the quotation?” I asked
“It is from The Book of Changes,” be answered, reciting a few additional sentences.
“These words are a wise man’s advice to men that they should transcend Samsara and get beyond birth and death,” I said.
The Counselor applauded. “Only this old master’s interpretation accords with the text. The meaning is now clear.” But his followers didn’t understand and asked for further explanation.
“Day and night are the illusion called birth and death,” the counselor explained. “Not until one is delivered from the conditions of this illusion, can one experience reality.”
(-- from "Purify Your Mind" -- The Fifty-first Year {1596-7}, by Han Shan)
Last evening Jory spoke the phrase "expedient delusion" and we smiled in recognition. We have ours. Each day.
The night is cold. Wood snuggles in woodstove
Purify Your Mind
Your True Nature is deep, like still, clear water in a lake.
If you allow the bottom to be stirred by love and hate,
Waves of passion will arise. What was clear will become murky.
With your vision obstructed, you will not notice
How your troubles are increasing.
If you look with desire upon people or things,
You throw mud into the clear water.
If you allow yourself to become another’s desire.
You are like oil poured on passion’s fire.
When the clamoring ego sinks to silence,
Burning hells will turn to ice.
Let your ego slip gently towards a muted death.
When the ego’s eyes are closed, in vain does harm appear.
This death does not come easy. Be on guard against old habits
That, haunting, come to quicken it. Be steadfast and endure.
Alertness brings awareness and awareness is a light that in a
Searing flash obliterates all traces of the ghost.
Let your True Nature shine forth in perfect clarity.
Rest easy in the pure, serene stillness of the One.
Alone, you are a sovereign. Yourself, a precious kingdom.
Reign with peace and harmony!
What external force can possibly invade?
(poem by Han Shan)
Those words 'steadfast,' 'endure,' and 'alertness' feel like crumpled wrappers from once enjoyed delicacies. Never finally discarded, these fallen-to-floor scrunched balls of mispronounced words become playthings of black and white cat ever trying to push them under rug away from sight.
Who to ask about the "Words of the Dharma" the crazy saint questions?
Ghost disrobing failure is not yet obliterated.
Midnight.
Remembering walking dirt road alongside water and woods at Rockport harbor early morning. Deb is with her Golden up from golf course. We park in Vesper Hill space piled with recent snow. The dogs are happy to run. We are happy to walk.
Trampling the grass has made three paths.
Looking up at the clouds makes
Neighbors in the four directions;
There are birds to help with the
Sound of the singing, but there
Isn't anyone to ask about the
Words of the Dharma.
Today among these withered trees,
How many years make one spring?
- Han Shan (c 730)
Three paths criss-cross each other trying to catch scent. The four directions turn suddenly and ask us for a match. After week of weakness enclosed in mulling quiet we make way to Corner Shop for breakfast after long walk. An old and worn hull floats in cove at mooring sealing planks swell with salt wet.
One path is mountain solitude. Second is marketplace immersion. Third is amalgamating one place or the other -- to merge into a single body.
The name Han Shan means: Cold Cliff, Cold Mountain, or Cold Peak. Han Shan is known in Japan as "Kanzan." Han Shan was considered, when older, to be an eccentric Taoist, crazy saint, mountain ascetic mystic, and wise fool. He went many ways and back again the way fools do. There is no counting on a fool to show us the way -- there are too many variables for fools to be satisfied with only one.
At that time, Imperial Counselor Zhou Hai Men was lecturing on Yan Ming metaphysics. When he heard of my arrival, he called on me bringing a few dozen of his followers along. He began a discussion by referring to the saying: “One cannot realize the truth until one understands the condition of day and night.”
A Daoist elder who was sitting among them responded. “The condition is consciousness,” he said. “And day and night are waking and sleeping. The same consciousness that functions during our daylight actions, functions during the night in our dream actions.” The audience showed its approval.
Counselor Zhou then turned to me. “Venerable old Chan Master,” he said, “though everyone else seems to be satisfied with this interpretation, I am not. Please give us your opinion.”
“What is the source of the quotation?” I asked
“It is from The Book of Changes,” be answered, reciting a few additional sentences.
“These words are a wise man’s advice to men that they should transcend Samsara and get beyond birth and death,” I said.
The Counselor applauded. “Only this old master’s interpretation accords with the text. The meaning is now clear.” But his followers didn’t understand and asked for further explanation.
“Day and night are the illusion called birth and death,” the counselor explained. “Not until one is delivered from the conditions of this illusion, can one experience reality.”
(-- from "Purify Your Mind" -- The Fifty-first Year {1596-7}, by Han Shan)
Last evening Jory spoke the phrase "expedient delusion" and we smiled in recognition. We have ours. Each day.
The night is cold. Wood snuggles in woodstove
Purify Your Mind
Your True Nature is deep, like still, clear water in a lake.
If you allow the bottom to be stirred by love and hate,
Waves of passion will arise. What was clear will become murky.
With your vision obstructed, you will not notice
How your troubles are increasing.
If you look with desire upon people or things,
You throw mud into the clear water.
If you allow yourself to become another’s desire.
You are like oil poured on passion’s fire.
When the clamoring ego sinks to silence,
Burning hells will turn to ice.
Let your ego slip gently towards a muted death.
When the ego’s eyes are closed, in vain does harm appear.
This death does not come easy. Be on guard against old habits
That, haunting, come to quicken it. Be steadfast and endure.
Alertness brings awareness and awareness is a light that in a
Searing flash obliterates all traces of the ghost.
Let your True Nature shine forth in perfect clarity.
Rest easy in the pure, serene stillness of the One.
Alone, you are a sovereign. Yourself, a precious kingdom.
Reign with peace and harmony!
What external force can possibly invade?
(poem by Han Shan)
Those words 'steadfast,' 'endure,' and 'alertness' feel like crumpled wrappers from once enjoyed delicacies. Never finally discarded, these fallen-to-floor scrunched balls of mispronounced words become playthings of black and white cat ever trying to push them under rug away from sight.
Who to ask about the "Words of the Dharma" the crazy saint questions?
Ghost disrobing failure is not yet obliterated.
Midnight.
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Note: We are closed today, Sunday.
.................
A few inches of new wet snow.
Gate after gate
Adorned with festal pine
Spring has come
To each and every house,
Garnishing all with new green.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)
Green? Not in Maine today. White.
Sun shines through.
Church, this Sunday, our warm kitchen. Michael Thoms speaks with Leonard Shlain in a New Dimensions radio interview on WERU broadcast from Orland Maine..
Women formulated the concept of a month, which in turn allowed them to make the connection between sex and pregnancy. Upon learning the majestic secret of time these ancestral females then gained the power to refuse sex when they were ovulating. Men were forced to confront women who possessed a mind of their own.
Women taught men about time and the men used this knowledge to become the planet’s most fearsome predator. Unfortunately, they also discovered that they were mortal. Men, then invented religions to soften the certainty of death. Subsequently, they belatedly grasped the function of sex. The possibility of achieving a kind of immortality through heirs drove men to construct patriarchal cultures whose purpose was to control women’s reproductive choices.
(Leonard Schlain, in Sex, Time, & Power)
We can now pass on information that is not contained in DNA. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water. Who would have imagined?
Who could have imagined God?
Let there always be quiet, dark churches in which people can take refuge....Houses of God filled with his silent presence. There, even when they do not know how to pray, at least they can be still and breathe easily.
(in New Seeds of Contemplation, by Thomas Merton)
Being still and breathing easy -- refuge. Whether it is snowflake, sunlight, silence, or what-is-called-God -- we stretch through symbols of the felt-relational and poise at the empty center -- the heart of prayer.
In dealing with symbolism one enters an area where reflection, synthesis, and contemplation are more important than investigation, analysis, and science. One cannot comprehend a symbol unless one is able to awaken, in one's own being, the spiritual resonances which respond to the symbol not only as sign but as 'sacrament' and 'presence'...The true symbol does not merely point to some hidden object. It contains in itself a structure which in some way makes us aware of the inner meaning of life and of reality itself...A true symbol points to the very heart of all being, not to an incident in the flow of becoming.
(in, Life and Loving, Merton)
Mu-ge comes in from barn. Eggs with sausage and cheese in pan on stove. Two tulips, one open one not yet, on table-desk under photograph of man praying grace over bread, soup, and book.
Every place, every day, is full of worship.
All is in God as God is in all.
Bancha tea!
.................
A few inches of new wet snow.
Gate after gate
Adorned with festal pine
Spring has come
To each and every house,
Garnishing all with new green.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)
Green? Not in Maine today. White.
Sun shines through.
Church, this Sunday, our warm kitchen. Michael Thoms speaks with Leonard Shlain in a New Dimensions radio interview on WERU broadcast from Orland Maine..
Women formulated the concept of a month, which in turn allowed them to make the connection between sex and pregnancy. Upon learning the majestic secret of time these ancestral females then gained the power to refuse sex when they were ovulating. Men were forced to confront women who possessed a mind of their own.
Women taught men about time and the men used this knowledge to become the planet’s most fearsome predator. Unfortunately, they also discovered that they were mortal. Men, then invented religions to soften the certainty of death. Subsequently, they belatedly grasped the function of sex. The possibility of achieving a kind of immortality through heirs drove men to construct patriarchal cultures whose purpose was to control women’s reproductive choices.
(Leonard Schlain, in Sex, Time, & Power)
We can now pass on information that is not contained in DNA. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water. Who would have imagined?
Who could have imagined God?
Let there always be quiet, dark churches in which people can take refuge....Houses of God filled with his silent presence. There, even when they do not know how to pray, at least they can be still and breathe easily.
(in New Seeds of Contemplation, by Thomas Merton)
Being still and breathing easy -- refuge. Whether it is snowflake, sunlight, silence, or what-is-called-God -- we stretch through symbols of the felt-relational and poise at the empty center -- the heart of prayer.
In dealing with symbolism one enters an area where reflection, synthesis, and contemplation are more important than investigation, analysis, and science. One cannot comprehend a symbol unless one is able to awaken, in one's own being, the spiritual resonances which respond to the symbol not only as sign but as 'sacrament' and 'presence'...The true symbol does not merely point to some hidden object. It contains in itself a structure which in some way makes us aware of the inner meaning of life and of reality itself...A true symbol points to the very heart of all being, not to an incident in the flow of becoming.
(in, Life and Loving, Merton)
Mu-ge comes in from barn. Eggs with sausage and cheese in pan on stove. Two tulips, one open one not yet, on table-desk under photograph of man praying grace over bread, soup, and book.
Every place, every day, is full of worship.
All is in God as God is in all.
Bancha tea!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)