This is no time to fall apart and throw away what holds us together

We’ve grown accustomed to explaining things away.

I wonder when we will near embodying what is true.

Good is to practice the Way and to follow truth.
Great is the heart that is in accord with the Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

October will fall into November in two days. The light in Northeast New England will dim and shrink on the ground with curling leaves drying in night frost.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough
(Poem, "In a Station of the Metro," by Ezra Pound, published in Poetry magazine in 1913J

We’ll think of saints and souls. We’ll continue to pray for Ed who sleeps deep in hospital.

We’ll look to the end of Election Day and hope for the spirit of a people to rise from its own dark slumber.

We will cease explaining when we embody truth. We will present ourselves. We’ll see through one another.

Let’s pray for that. Let’s elect this prospect.

We’ll be indistinguishable word/body/act.

The word of God will return in us.

Charlie feels acceptance is giving up.

Those who are pure in heart and single in purpose are able to understand the most supreme Way. It is like polishing a mirror, which becomes bright when the dust is removed. Remove your passions, and have no hankering, and all will be revealed to you.
(- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters)

Michael feels similar to Doug. As does Ryan, Greg, Les, Rusty, Vaughn, Eli, Saskia and I. As well as Lao Tzu and David Wagoner.

Stand still. We know where you are. You are not lost.

To see what is really there we need one another. The Sangha. The community.

The conversation in prison listens to the voice of the soul.

Today the way opens for New England baseball fans: The Boston Redsox have won the World Series!

If you endeavor to embrace the Way through much learning, the Way will not be understood. If you observe the Way with simplicity of heart, great indeed is this Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

An email from Chicago:
From Peter Gammons, quoting someone else (I believe):
"Calvinism is finally dead in New England."

I can't help but think of the fellow who lived above the shop, listening to the games on his radio during summer evenings, that loyalty for all those decades without his team winning the Series. Imagine.

It's like we're free now. The Sox are just another team, its fans just another set of fans. The misery and negativity and fear and paranoia: all gone. It's just a game again, not a history of failure.

Red Sox Nation is no longer Preterite Nation. Amen to all that.

Dan comes into shop with guitar in its case. On the case a sticker: "Thank God I'm an agnostic."

Joanie sorts common-reading-box. Myles' bookcases have fit themselves throughout shop and hermitage harbor room. Tom the mailman says he's from Connecticut -- an ambivalent topography of baseball allegiance. Leonard demands I read, not return to him, Pete Hamill's Snow in August. The crisp air in Maine feels clear and full of sunlight.

It's only a game -- that's what they say.

And water is only wet.

Wash well today!

I got irritable yesterday when a bevy of "Defeat Bush" passions found themselves gathered at the shop. It wasn't that I disagreed with their assessment. It was more that the negativity coming from the Bush-likes and Bush-dislikes is wearying and yet so vital as election nears.

To be free from the passions
And to be calm,
This is the most excellent Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

Excellent way or not, there are innumerable voices claiming we are lost should Bush and cohorts be elected. It would be, they say, a confirmation for the first time by the people of the United States that we are, indeed, what George Bush says we are. This prospect of resembling what Bush and Co say we are -- empire, pre-emptive warriors, ignorer of human rights, ignorer of environmental sanity, ignorer of democracy and rights of citizens, global omnivores, and Christian fundamentalists intent on saving our sorry souls and ignoring the rest of the world -- this is what those who fear and feel helpless in the face of Bush are worried about, this is what their passionate desire to defeat bush is all about.

Are we lost?

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
(Poem by David Wagoner)

The irony. Even this beautiful poem sounds calm and ready to carry on should our lostness and our Bushness coincide.

We'll have to find a new creativity to help see our way through.

I'd rather George Bush go back to Texas.

That's my feeling.

But for now, I'll be still.

And be found.

Here.

There is a light that goes beyond the muted faint shadows of our current world. We wander in dark confusion away from our true home.

Consider the world light,
And the spirit is not burdened;
Consider the myriad things slight,
And the mind is not confused.
Consider life and death equal,
And the intellect is not afraid;
Consider change as sameness,
And clarity is not obscured.
- Lao-tzu

Buddhist Zen and Christian Contemplation work together to let authentic light through.

"… For me the mu-experience, triggered by my working on the koan of Joshu’s dog, literally shook me inside out, and kept me laughing and even crying for about three days, as I remember. People around me must have thought I was going crazy then. I can only say at this point that the experience enabled me to see the truth, the forcefulness, the real reality of what Paul wanted to express in Galatians 2:20 - "It is no longer I that live, but Christ in me!" (Ruben Habito’s response to Koun Yamada’s Questions to Christians, "Christianity in the Crucible of East-West Dialogue" http://www.innerexplorations.com/catew/cru1.htm)

When we get close to wisdom residing inward, we see the closeness of practice and faith from seemingly different views found in different religions.

"Hardly anyone today would question whether Zen enlightenment and similar experiences in other non-Christian religions are genuine experiences of the Absolute, even though they are impersonal in nature. Were they personal in nature, they would be the same as an experience of God in the Christian sense… Genuine mystical experience resists all attempts at conceptual expression. This means that anyone who attempts to do so will utilize the categories available, although this, by its very nature, can easily lead to misunderstandings.

"In enlightenment, the Buddhist experiences his deepest self as one with absolute existence, and is strengthened as a result in his faith in the nonduality of all existence. The Christian and anyone who believes in a personal God experiences the self not only in himself, but also in his relationship to an absolute personal reality."
(Hugo Enomiya Lassalle, Living in the New Consciousness. p. 121-122.)

We benefit from looking into the profound. Whether from a religious point of view, philosophy, poetry, nature, or ordinary open-hearted conversation -- we create the place where light begins to glow.

This is no time for short-sighted, bigoted, or petty statements that create fear, darkness, or loneliness.

Words must become lighted corridors through which we are heartened to search for the way home.

Do not accept sorry or cynical rhetoric.

Let's re-create a place of trust.

Let's come home.

Everyone.

What is truly creative must create itself.

In prison one Friday, Joe and I were talking about irony. Our context was an Independent Study on “Fantasy, Myth, and Enchantment as Self Discovery.”

“Irony,” from Greek, eironeia, is "feigned ignorance."

i·ro·ny n. pl. i·ro·nies 1. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. 2. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning. 3. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See Synonyms at wit1. 4. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: “Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated” (Richard Kain). 5. An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity. See Usage Note at ironic. 6. Dramatic irony. 7. Socratic irony. (From http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=irony )

It is an ironic time in politics, baseball, and creative life. We pretend we do not know what is happening. Bush and Kerry will face off on November 2nd. The Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals begin a World Series best of 7 on Oct 23rd. And contemplative creators continually have to decide to allow what is pulsing through them for presence in the world to come through and take “place” in the world.

What is our place in the world?

When the mind neither sorrows nor delights, that is supreme attainment of virtue. To succeed without changing is supreme attainment of calm. To be unburdened by habitual desires is supreme attainment of emptiness. To have no likes and dislikes is supreme attainment of equanimity. Not getting mixed up with things is supreme attainment of purity. Those who can accomplish these five things reach spiritual illuminations. Those who reach spiritual illumination are those who attain the inward. (- Huai-nan-tzu)

Perhaps the “inward” is the thin-place between the dualistic notions of inside and outside. Perhaps the inward is our place in the world.

God is the only creator ab initio The creation of works of art would therefore come under the head of the active life, as the enjoyment of works of art would come under that of the contemplative life. But the essential difference, as I have already pointed out, is this – that the writer of a poem or the composer of a symphony has as his end, neither possession nor contemplation, but the bringing of a new sort of thing in the world. The poet or painter may indeed give us recognizable likenesses of the forms of common experience; to this extent they use imitation as a means to their further ends. But the poem or the painting in itself is a thing in itself and not an imitation of anything already in the world. It is sui generis, a new creation, and belongs to a different order of being from anything it imitates. Y.B. Yeats speaks of the poets as people whose work exists not primarily to help or to inform us. When we read them, he says, we “have added to our being, not to our knowledge.” It is the impulse to “add to being” which is the distinctive mark of the creative way of life. (p.117 “The Three Faces of Love” by A.D. Hope, in The Poet’s Work, 29 Masters of 20th Century Poetry on the Origins and Practice of their Art, edited by Reginald Gibbons, c.1979)

How do we add to what is? Is that where the inward takes place? The place of the inward is fully dwelling Being.

The essential thing about education for the creative life as distinct from education for the active or the contemplative life is this: that what is truly autonomous must be self-initiating, or it stops being autonomous. For the active life the ends in view are practical ends which depend for their formulation on the known facts about man and society. The form that education for the active life should take can therefore be determined in advance. Similarly, for the contemplative life of the world as it exists in its object and perhaps God insofar as he is knowable. The conditions of the contemplative life can therefore be set out in advance. But the ends of the creative life can therefore be set out in advance. But the ends of the creative life can only be surmised, and the great difference between its conditions and the other two modes of human existence is that what is truly creative must create itself. This is the axiom on which any view of education for the creative life must be based. (pp.119-120, A.D. Hope)

Creating itself (or, the Creative Itself) is perhaps God insofar as God is knowable.

Irony is feigned ignorance. We cultivate ignorance in the same way we miss facts until someone gathers them in a way and, when shown, we say, “Oh, I see.”

You've always painted the Bush administration as these macho poseurs, phony gunslinger tough guys. Is that the kind of daddy we're looking for?

Yeah. And that's probably why Bush didn't let his own daddy speak at the Republican National Convention -- which was unbelievable that a former president who went to war with Iraq wasn't given a speaking slot. But Bush didn't want the real daddy, because the real daddy has differences with him on the Iraq war. The ironies of that are beyond belief. The father went to war in Iraq to defend the principle that you can't invade another country unilaterally; the son goes to war with Iraq to establish the principle that you can invade another country unilaterally.
(“Ms. Bush-Bash,” Does anyone understand Dubya better than New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd? By John Colapinto, Oct 6, 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine)

I’d not seen Dowd’s observation before.

Nor had Ron Suskind comprehended what he’d been told two years ago:
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: "Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you." When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, "Look, I'm not going to debate it with you."
October 17, 2004, IN THE New York Times MAGAZINE, “Without a Doubt" By Ron Suskind

Perhaps the time for debate is over. We’ve listened to each other too long. It is time to allow those who know best to run things, run our lives, run the country and the world. Perhaps, as Aldous Huxley’s Mustapha Mond in Brave New World says:
"The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma." Mustapha Mond (p.220)

"Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books [i.e. the Bible, the Imitation of Christ, Varieties of Religious Experience, Works of John Cardinal Newman] locked up in the safe. They're smut"-Mustapha Mond (p. 234)

Then, another voice is heard:
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
-Mustapha Mond and John the Savage (p.240)

I claim the right to be unhappy. Right now Boston has the reality of playing in the World Series and the possibility of winning. Right now the election between Bush and Kerry is still open to a fair and deliberative choice. Right now we each have an opportunity in our lives not to have to feign ignorance in order to have voice in the world.

"Place" is "Creating Itself.”

Inwardly.

Free.

Crisp cool evening.

In autumn
Even though I may
See it again,
How can I sleep
With the moon this evening?
- Dogen (1200-1253)

In the empty silence of the night I recall five years ago my sister's final hours.

I write Lori Ann, Anthony, Frank, and Mark -- companions on that vigil.

Each going on.

With love.

To pretend to know, when there is only unknowing, is an unkind and selfish thing to do.

The human body is a little universe
Its chill tears, so much wind-blown sleet
Beneath our skins, mountains bulge, brooks flow
Within our chests lurk lost cities, hidden tribes

Wisdom quarters itself in our tiny hearts
Liver and gall peer out, scrutinize a thousand miles
Follow a path back to its source, else be
A house vacant save for swallows in the eaves
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)

In the New York Times (Published: October 12, 2004) there was a page one article entitled "Group of Bishops Using Influence to Oppose Kerry" By David D. Kirkpatrick and Laurie Goodstein. It quoted the Archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, about the upcoming election, the positions of the candidates, matters of abortion, along with moral considerations of conscience. I wrote the Archbishop and was sent a transcript of the complete interview. It was sent as a clarification of the reported conversation.

A section of the transcript reads:
NYT: Archbishop Burke in St. Louis caught my attention again on Friday [October 1]. he issued a statement basically stating that it's a sin if you vote for a pro-choice politician, I believe he was saying even if that wasn't the reason you voted for him, that you voted for a pro-abortion politician that is still something that you ought to confess. Is that...?

AB [Archbishop]: I don't believe that's where you should start. The place to start would be, does our voting for someone make us responsible for what that person does as a legislator or as a judge?...And the answer is yes, because we are in some ways materially -- we use the word "materially" -- cooperating in that person's activity because we've given [him or her] the platform to be elected. Now, if the person does something wrong, our participation is remote, but if we knew they were going to do something wrong and we approved of it, our responsibility would be really be close, even if we knew they were going to do something wrong and we voted for them for another reason, we would still be responsible in some ways.

The standing is if you know someone is going to do evil and you participate in that in some way, you are responsible. So it's not..."if you vote this way, should you go to confession?" The question is, "if you vote this way, are you cooperating in evil?" Now, if you know you are cooperating in evil, should you go to confession? The answer is yes. There's a more sophisticated thing here...it's not so crude. The reason I want to stress that is because it is not like bishops are issuing edicts about who should vote for whom. It's issuing statements about how a Catholic forms her conscience, or his conscience...and remote material cooperation or proximate material cooperation is cooperation, and it's important for Catholics to know that, to be sophisticated in their judgments.

This argument is chewing gum on sole of shoe. It makes responsibility a combination of fortune-telling and pre-emptive challenge.

"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell

I wrote back.

Dear Archbishop Chaput –

I’ve read the complete transcript you sent. Thank you. I re-read the Times article.

I’ll mention one thought while doing this reading, namely: It is a difficult task to delineate public policy and personal morality.

My love for the Church is not diminished over five dozen years. My love for the people in and out of the Church seeks increase.

When the Church seeks to inform the conscience of individuals and general citizenry –she does right. But the difficulty of maintaining the razor’s edge of modeling/informing versus influencing/threatening is surely a sharp edge worth careful contemplation.

It seems to me that my opposition to abortion as a Catholic is and should be readily available for disclosure. The same is true for the issues of war, capital punishment, genocide, abuse of all sorts, and refusal to consider and reflect on the perspectives (in good faith) offered by those with whom I might differ.

And yet, the law of the land must be based on deliberations common to the values and judgment of the general populace as filtered through the good offices of legislative and judicial office holders. Fight, yes, for the candidate of your choice, and the values you choose as sacred – but avoid the dirty stick of ex-communication, non-reception of communion, and public condemnation of character based on legal and public deliberation of moral/religious matters. Pre-emptive elimination or character assassination based on suspected or speculative future wrong is a dangerous heuristic or haruspication – even for a Church so involved with a God we claim to be wise and loving as well as eternal and without limits.

My preference is to encourage individual and community via compassionate, open, and deliberate means – genuine dialogue -- to consider God, grace, forgiveness, and prayer. And to urge change of behavior based on those realities (God, grace, forgiveness, and prayer). Authentic change, as you know, comes from within. External incrimination is a blunt and numbing control – not worthy of Christ-mind seeking to gather safely those who long for the embodied presence of God-with-us.

Of course we are a little stupid. We generally can’t see the wholeness of life. We need examples of wholeness – or at least, mending broken individuals who have felt the pain of flaw and anguish. We are brother and sister in the family of God. Perhaps our only sanity is coming to see that inter-relatedness.

I will not burden you any further. Your task might be different than mine. You are a very visible man in a very big office as part of a very powerful organization.

I will pray for you and your work as part of my daily intention.

May all of us be happy, may all beings be safe, and may all beings come to dwell in our true home!

And may you, my brother, know and experience the peace and sanity you work so hard to convey to others!

Bill

p.s. I, too, will be taking my ballot to our chapel/zendo for silent prayer prior to casting my vote. Thank you for the prompt.

These men are trying hard to preserve the form of something whose core is empty. It is emptiness -- the impermanent and ephemeral, the diaphanous and unbounded openness -- that dwells at our core. Yet institutions spring up attempting to control what is not there. It seems to be the curious fate of men with power to try to capture the wind in a wire fence.

Fact is -- we're all just passing through.

Let the contest continue.

Unknowing.

And finding one’s way through.

When religious people think of God, God is usually a dualistic, external, and anthropomorphic construct.

As flowing waters disappear into the mist
We lose all track of their passage
Every heart is its own Buddha
Ease off; become immortal

Wake up: the world’s a mote of dust
Behold heaven’s round mirror
Turn loose: slip past shape and shadow
Sit side by side with nothing save Tao
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)

Christians hardly admit that God became human. Willing to celebrate the birth of Jesus and allow the belief that God became man, there is still a hesitation to give up the notion that God is really above all this creation, humanity, and existence.

But wholeness is wholeness.

It would be useful if Christians actually believed what is one of the core beliefs of Christianity: Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis; "The Word became flesh, and dwells between (among) us..." (from John 1: 1-14)

Either God became one of us, or Christianity merely has had a good spin for two thousand years.

The prophet Jeremiah wrote:
The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; for they broke my covenant and I had to show myself their master, says the LORD.
But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
No longer will they have need to teach their friends and kinsmen how to know the LORD. All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.
(Jeremiah 31:31-34)

"Sin," division and separation, will be forgiven, gone, and forgotten.

It is wholeness that puts to rest the strain and illusion of a divided reality.

Going beyond, or having gone beyond the numbing sleep of separation and fragmentation of half-knowledge, we vow to live what is here with courage, compassion, and wisdom.

It is not just a one day Christmas celebration, but a vital need, to embody the reality of wholeness. Hodie Christus Natus Est Pro Nobis -- "Today Christ is born with us."(Antiphon to Magnificat – Vespers of the Christmas day)

It is a lot to meditate on.

A contemplation beyond us.

This is where we must go.

Are we willing?

What's wrong will always be wrong. That's what poet Richard Hugo wrote as the first line of his poem "Villager."

Iraq is no-place to us. That's because we've lost our way. Our way, we like to think, used to be the modeling of freedom and justice. Now, losing our way at home, we try to impose on others a facsimile of what we've stopped believing in.

If that sounds harsh, listen to the words of a writeup about Seymour Hersh interviewed recently in Berkeley, California:
There was more -- rumors of atrocities around Iraq that to Hersh brought back memories of My Lai. In the evening's most emotional moment, Hersh talked about a call he had gotten from a first lieutenant in charge of a unit stationed halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. His group was bivouacking outside of town in an agricultural area, and had hired 30 or so Iraqis to guard a local granary. A few weeks passed. They got to know the men they hired, and to like them. Then orders came down from Baghdad that the village would be "cleared." Another platoon from the soldier's company came and executed the Iraqi granary guards. All of them.

"He said they just shot them one by one. And his people, and he, and the villagers of course, went nuts," Hersh said quietly. "He was hysterical, totally hysterical. He went to the company captain, who said, 'No, you don't understand, that's a kill. We got 36 insurgents. Don't you read those stories when the Americans say we had a combat maneuver and 15 insurgents were killed?'

"It's shades of Vietnam again, folks: body counts," Hersh continued. "You know what I told him? I said, 'Fella, you blamed the captain, he knows that you think he committed murder, your troops know that their fellow soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Complete your tour. Just shut up! You're going to get a bullet in the back.' And that's where we are in this war."

The story seemed to leave Hersh sincerely, deeply saddened. While his critics may call him a "muckraker" and unpatriotic, on Friday night it was obvious that Hersh takes the crumbling of America's image, very, very personally.
(On Friday evening, Oct. 8, Seymour Hersh, investigative journalist extraordinaire, was interviewed on the campus of UC Berkeley by KQED host Michael Krasny.)http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/

War is personal. It must be taken thus.

We're frightened by the mind of the men who cheerlead us during the war.

Hugo was right -- What's wrong will always be wrong.

Today is the feast of Teresa.
If we plant a flower or a shrub and water it daily it will grow so tall that in time we shall need a spade and a hoe to uproot it. It is just so, I think, when we commit a fault, however small, each day, and do not cure ourselves of it.
(--St Teresa of Avila)

Until we learn love.

A far cry away.

Let's not forget who we are.

Suzanne, John, Joanie, Su Sane, Robert, Erika, Saskia, Sylvia, Dirk, Will, Sandra, and I read and conversed about "True self or No self?" by Jack Kornfield at Wednesday Evening Laura Conversation.

Is the cause of hostilities in war and elsewhere our failure to recognize our true self? In and through one another?

All so vague:
The reasons why in autumn
All fade away
And there’s just this
Inexplicable sadness.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

There will be two men debating tonight. They each want to win the presidential election.

Leaves fall. Creative imagination is on hold. The sadness we feel is partially caused by the way these men split us in two.

We are not two. We cannot trust any man who tries to divide us.

Is there anyone who understands the true self?

We have to be something to comprehend it.

If we remember who we are, those who divide will be forgotten.

The Boston Red Sox open against the New York Yankees tonight in the American League Championship Series. Schilling will face Mussina. They'll throw whatever they have at one another.

Scaling the crags
Where azalea bloom, not for plucking
But for hanging on!
The saving feature of this rugged
Mountain face I’m climbing.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

The baseball battle will be a welcome alternative to the bloodier battles taking place in Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq.

Also Tuesday, the military resumed air strikes in nearby Fallujah, said to be the hideout of the terrorist network run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant responsible for numerous bombings, kidnappings and beheadings, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.

The military said it hit a center for Zarqawi "terrorist meetings" in one strike and a "known terrorist safe house" in another. The safe house was being used by Zarqawi associates at the time of the strike, a statement said.

Wire service reports said at least one of the buildings hit was a restaurant. The Associated Press reported that five people died in the strike on the restaurant.
("U.S., Iraqi Forces Raid Ramadi Mosques, Air Strikes Resume in Fallujah," By Fred Barbash, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, October 13, 2004; 7:30 AM, in Washington Post, Tuesday, October 12, 2004) [Note: Tomorrow's date is on this news posting. It evokes magical thinking -- that we might be able to forestall tomorrow's pain by diverting it from its temporal course. It is today here, it says, might we change tomorrow today?]

I'd rather we stole a base than set up bases, hit a triple than cripple bodies, throw a 2-hitter than split two countries in two with the cruelty of war and foolishness of want, power, and false security.

What is it we fail to comprehend about the mystery of life we call God?
Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloriae tuae."Heaven and earth are full of your glory." (in Te Deum)

This war of ideology, bombs, and bullets is a shame. Baseball playoffs with runs, hits, and errors -- with full counts, pitching changes, and stretching for extra bases -- are better expressions of skill, strategy, and human excellence than the ugly (though some say, necessary) behavior of warfare.

Let the championships begin!

Let warfare end!

Let us play!

Maybe we can fake it. At least for a while until, with practice faking it, we might ease into the thing itself.

And what is this thing? It's in the bag.

If you want to catch a rat
You don’t need a fancy cat
If you want to learn the principles
Don’t study fine bound books
The True Pearl’s in a hemp sack
The Buddha nature rests in huts
Many grasp the sack
But few open it.
- Shih-te

If we could shut up, be still, sit down, and look at the sack awhile...maybe we'll see there's nothing to say.

Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God, and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything - in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It's impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it.
(~ Thomas Merton)

We don't see God because we are in God as God is in us. This dualistic language is the way we normally describe something whose explanation might satisfy the intellect. It never does.

Let's fake it.

Let's say nothing.

Without dualistic language we wouldn't know what to say.

Let's open the sack, and say nothing.

Another debate. Are we better informed?

I no longer think any explanation satisfies. We know the truth not by analytic assessment but by embodied resonance. It is a sensory experience that conveys truth and recognizes falsity.

The Buddhas left their Sutras
Because people are hard to change
It’s not just a matter of saintly or stupid
Each and every heart throws up its barricade
Each piles up his own mountain of karma
How could they guess that what they clasp so close
Is sorrow
Unwilling to ponder, as day and night
They do embrace the falsehood of the flesh
- Shih-te

We recognize truth when we hear it. We feel the false in the pit of our stomach.

The religion of souls should follow the law of development of bodies. (from An instruction by St Vincent of Lerins)

Spirituality embodies.

The way we sit, walk, and move through being itself.

No convincing the mind. Surrendering body.

Feeling surely all.

All hermits dwell in the hidden presence of others.

If you are not put off
By the voice of the valley
And the starry peaks,
Why not walk through the shady cedars
And come see me?
- Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831)

Actually, each of us lives amid curious personnae rarely seen mute and naked of mask.

October 6. St. Bruno [1032-1101]
Bruno was brought up at Reims in Eastern France and, as a priest, later taught at the Cathedral school there. He decided to become a hermit (possibly as a result of witnessing the deplorable personal behaviour of the Archbishop, who had to be deposed), and after an unsuccessful start near Cologne moved down to the French Alps near Grenoble where the Bishop gave him, and six followers, a plot of land which was to be the origin of the first Charterhouse (Chartreuse), and of the Carthusian Order named after it. The Carthusians developed a life of extreme simplicity, based on the early models of hermit life in Egypt rather than on the Rule of St. Benedict, then dominant in Europe. The design of their buildings, with individual cells built around a Church, rather than within a large communal building emphasises the character of their spiritual life. Bruno later made another foundation in Southern Italy where he died in 1101. Given the strict nature of their rule, there have never been many Carthusians; there is only one house in England at Parkminster in West Sussex.
(http://www.hullp.demon.co.uk/SacredHeart/saint/StBruno.htm)

So many of us are Carthusian in soul.

We wander about, exclaustrated outsiders, in the middle of chaos masquerading as sanity.

Bruno gave the vision.

We give long gaze.

The shepherd monk who sells Trappist jams told us to maintain the balance between hermitage and marketplace.

Once I lived in community. Now, as near-hermit, the Laura-footpath between town and mountain is worn deep.

Torn and tattered is this life.
Food? Wild vegetables from the roadside.
The shrubs and bushes advance toward my hut.
Often the moon and I sit together all night,
And more than once I have lost myself among
The wild flowers,
Forgetting to return home.
No wonder I left the community life:
How could such a crazy monk live in a temple?
- Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831)

We wondered at university class today what metaphor carries us through the difficulties of everyday life. William, Este, Dennis, Laura, Bethany, Jessica, Bonnie, Denise, and Robert read their poems with their particular metaphor. We read David Whyte's poem "Revelation Must Be Terrible" as we contemplated what it feels like to resonate the bitter and the beautiful.

My metaphor is hermit solitude.

It helps me through the sometimes crowded opinions that press in from all sides.

We go apart and we return.

The mystic soul sets out to see what is difficult to see, and comes back to say what is difficult to say.

With or without sound.

Silence throughout.

Feast of Francis. Three walks in woods today.

At night, deep in the mountains,
I sit in meditation
The affairs of men never reach here;
Everything is quiet and empty,
All the incense has been swallowed up
By the endless night.
My robe has become a garment of dew.
Unable to sleep I walk out into the woods—
Suddenly, above the highest peak,
The full moon appears.
- Hakuin (1686-1768)

Over twig, root, and stone -- the silent visit to mountain family -- a coming to earth, a return home.

Back at cabin Mu-ge carries lifeless bird. Its warm light body is laid at foot of garden statue of Francis.

“And who is my neighbour?” (from Luke 10)

The quiet joy of looking around at the answer.

"Tota pulchra est..."

When Francis died the earth didn't care. The earth was happy to receive its loopy son back into its arms.

The ways of proclaiming
The Mind all vary,
But the same heavenly truth
Can be seen
In each and every one.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

We covered the statue of Francis with white cloth at Transitus ceremony in cabin tonight. Lit incense. Blew out candle. And left.

As we, the human beings, form part of the divine body (sarira), we are strictly related to every animate and inanimate beings of this universe, constituting one "organic whole. Consequently, we are responsible for the well being or suffering of the body, viz, of this universe with all its varieties of beings. The Buddhists thus believe that there is nothing that we do that affects only ourselves: "The entire Universe is helped by our acts of compassion but is harmed by our acts of violence and unkindness."
(Kurian Kachappilly, in paper, "'Holocoenotic' Nature Of Ecology: An Indian Perspective Of Ecotheology and Process Thought")

The solitude that Thomas Merton longed for burned him until there was nothing left of him. He knew it was coming twenty years before it arrived. The final pages of his Seven Storey Mountain, speaking as God, laid it out in searing brand.

Still, we, like Francis, have to learn we've never been other than earth. Our ambivalence echoes like the characters in Samuel Beckett's play:
Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!
(Estragon to Vladimir, in Waiting For Godot)

I don't mind living on the outside of everything. I forget that sometimes. I complain. I try to pretend it matters. That I am nowhere to be found.

Living within God is enough.

There's nowhere to go.

Staying at home.

Alone together.

Earthen.

It is not religion causing this war. It is men who choose retribution rather than reason.

Those thinking of giving up their faith because fundamentalists have kidnapped the forms of expression and names of belief should think further. Forms are empty. Emptiness is form.

If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?
(--Graham Greene)

The forms of belief and faith can be stolen, misused, and made to seem apparently real. This is being done with Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Islam is not terrorism. Christianity is not imperial might. Judaism is not a militaristic state.

Emptiness is a more profound religion. It is the core of each religion. There is nothing there -- and what is to be here is created each time new.

IV
She says, ``I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?''
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evenings, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.
(From poem, "Sunday Morning," by Wallace Stevens)

The forms of religion are collapsing. They are being looted by political greed and private gain. Compassion and love are tools in the hands of advertisers and propagandists. As the forms cave in on themselves -- like the images of twin towers brought down because they could be brought down -- religions shudder in the bare light of naked revelation.

VIII
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, ``The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.''
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or an old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
(Stevens)

If emptiness is the heart of what was once religion, it can only be embodied by men and women willing to become awake and human.

From now on Mullah, Priest, and Rabbi will divest their clerical clothing and redress the wrongs done in the name of religion. From now on each man and woman will allow the animals and elements to consecrate hands and feet with the very gloriousness of creation.

What once we called God -- out there and supreme commander -- will reassert as itself the Word of Creation. That empty breath will find its way through no-where, no-place, and no-thing -- emerging as it is, as it was, and as it will be in the very instant of revelation expressing each now, and now, and now.

What now we call God -- in each here, and grace itself -- is humility of presence coming to be in and as each unfolding moment.

We've never really accepted creation. We've never surrendered to the Word of Life made language. We've never allowed the Most High to become human. In these three prohibitions unawake men have stolen religion and made of it a lifeless, wordless, inhuman institution.

But what do I know? I can only walk with dogs on early morning mountain path through sun-slant mist and wet green grass -- a loveliness of solitude emerging with itself.

I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings

Guardian angels brighten the way.

Lighting and guarding.

Ruling and guiding.

To God's love.

Committing.

Here.

Is there any help for a life in danger of devastation?

Azriel, an old wanderer is the sole survivor of a pogrom which destroys his small Carpathian community. Its people are sworn, should any of them survive, never to speak of the town's last days and nights of wait and terror. And so for decades he roams the earth searching for someone with the authority to release him from his vow. At last, fifty years after the event, Azriel encounters a young stranger who wishes to die. What arguments can he invoke to dissuade him? He decides to tell the story of the death of his town, breaking his vow in hopes his story will save a life. (An Annotated Bibliography, The Oath, by Elie Wiesel. http://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/bibliography/)

No telling. No place. No matter when. It is an attempt to break a paradigm, no longer to story what shouldn’t be told.

Moshe the madman was taking an oath of silence when out in the gym someone took a barbell weight across his head. The book closed on Moshe in Kolvillag staying alone on the abandoned table as we were spirited out men-lined corridor, out guarded door, down end of season fading flowers, as sound of ambulance siren floats over razor-sharp rolled cutting wire into nether silence.

I climb the tower for a look,
Gradually feeling
Their serene effect.
In smoke-blue haze,
Massed peaks
Appear as if joined.
When will I climb
And set foot there,
And gaze on all
Creation below?
- Chia Tao (779-843)

The Hospice Memorial Service around corner past library was called out and done. Candles stood vigil in empty chapel as silent plants newly set down languished near abandoned lectern. A man down and red with his own life not far away and nearly extinguished could easily be named on list for next service. But for now the drill: secure and search, inquire and tighten. But first, evacuate civilians procedure is priority number one.

Life is fragile. It spins on a dime. Prison is no place to find yourself.

Keep us safe, Lord, while we are awake, and guard us as we sleep, so that we can keep watch with Christ and rest in peace. (Nunc Dimittis, Compline)

And yet, no place is where we find ourselves.

We pass through what is taking place with awareness and compassion.

The name Azriel means ‘God is my aid.’

Humility of presence.

Archangels are the mirrors of our consciousness. That's what Stephen Mitchell wrote in his Meetings with the Archangel, A Comedy of the Spirit, c.1998

Today is the feast of Michael, Gabriel, Raphael -- likeness, might, and healing -- Archangels.

Is consciousness the space within which every possibility dwells in the open?

If you can see a thought as it arises
This awareness will at once destroy it.
Whatever state of mind should come,
Sweep it away, put it down.

Both good and evil states
Can be transformed by mind.
Sacred and profane appear
In accordance with thoughts.
- Han Shan Te Ch’ing (1546-1623)

Clusters of galaxies of thought amid endless empty space of transparent consciousness.

To be between is to be interested...(L. inter {between} + esse {to be} = to be between)...and ready to leap from one truth into the next truth.

Without fear.

Mirroring.

What is.

Rising from the dead. How is that?

You need not seek the real,
Mind originally is Buddha.
The familiar becomes remote,
The strange seems familiar.

Day and night,
Everything is wonderful.
Nothing you encounter confuses you.
These are the essentials of mind.
- Han Shan Te Ch’ing (1546-1623)

It is often said that we do not stay dead. Death is an instantaneous transition from one form of life to no form. What seems odder to consider is that we have not been born.

When some Christian believers claim to be born again, does their position compound the problem -- namely, if never born to begin with, what does it mean to say someone is born again?

The Buddha Mind you have from your parents innately is unborn, so it has no beginning and no end. There is not even a hair's breadth of anything you can call delusion. So get it squarely in your minds that there is nothing arising from inside. The main thing is simply not getting involved with the world of externals. That which is not involved with the world of externals is the Buddha Mind, and since the Buddha Mind is marvelously illuminating, when you abide in this marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind just as it is, there is no delusion, no enlightenment. . . . In the innate Buddha Mind, there is neither joy, sorrow nor anger – nothing but the Buddha Mind itself, marvelously illuminating and seeing clearly.
(from Sermons, by Bankei)

Zen Master Bankei refers to the unborn as true reality. Apostle Paul says that life is not ended, merely changed.

No birth, no death -- only life.

These two days in the Harbor Room, hermiting. Full moon rises behind birch bark. Fog bank under orange moon over Penobscot Bay islands. Mosquitoes dusking along low tide docks. Man in condo window eats pretzels and nuts. I had banana with peanut butter ending two day fast.

Student papers read one day early. Plastic chairs scrape wooden deck at waterfront restaurant next door, orders for drinks taken, menus handed out. Man in small pram rows past boat named Economy tied to finger float. Woman with digital camera take picture of moon with flash. Man inhales cigarette, coughs.

New fog bank takes moon away.

What we call full moon is uninhibited sunlight on moon. When the earth does not impose shadow on moon, it is fully reflective of origin light in this solar system.

On earth oil prices hit unprecedented $50 dollars a barrel.

There's this feeling it is time to go within.

When death comes, will there even be a desire to continue through resurrection to some clarity of life in the dwelling place we call God? If reality is non-dual, how occupy any place considered outside the mythic consciousness of unification?

In any case, none of the Buddha’s extant sermons states that a transcendental Being does not exist. Rather, this great master’s emphasis was on the pragmatics of the spiritual path, which he understood as a way out of the maze of the world. His indifference to metaphysical guesswork not only left ample scope for practical experimentation, but also reduced the danger lurking in non-dualist schools of thought -- namely, that of false idealism and self-delusion.
(p.36, in Wholeness or Transcendence? Ancient Lessons For The Emerging Global Civilization, by Georg Feuerstein, c.1992)

White sparkling trail across water from transformed moon risen from fog bank to ongoing journey across its sphere of this part of the galaxy.

For now, how we go on.

We need stillness.

While everyone else
Is so busy striving,
The lone traveler
Is at ease by himself.
He’s been living outside of convention
For a long time now;
In his pouch there is nothing at all.
When he walks,
He takes a cane for a companion;
When he talks,
He has the rocks for an audience.
If you ask him what his religion is,
When hungry it’s a bowl of rice.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)

Walking town in emptiness with sound.

You are in our midst, Lord, your name we bear; therefore do not abandon us, Lord, our God. (Jeremiah 14:9)

That name is each glance, step, and sound.

Stillness.

Alone.

We are afraid of death because we believe we have been born.

The Mountains’ Friend

The broad arms of this dusty world
Hold few true friends.
One feels the pangs of loneliness, and see
How cold the autumn air becomes!
But no, behold your search is ended here,
For countless mountains,
Blue afar, and green ones near,
Remain your friends eternally.
- Jakushitsu Genko Zenji (1290–1368)

Countless eternity.

But while they were all marvelling at everything he did, he said to his disciples, “Let these words sink into your ears; for the Son of man is to be delivered into the hands of men”. But they did not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them, that they should not perceive it; and they were afraid to ask him about this saying.
(Luke 9:43 - 45)

No understanding. Concealed from us. Unperceiving. Don't ask. Don't hear.

Georgiana said the doctor once gave her 8 years until death. Another doctor told her she was born. Jean, Pia, and Saskia spoke about death, near death, and nearing death just before they went for a sail. They returned alive.

Every utterance is a translation of the phrase, "I am alive."

Michael, reading W.B. Yeats without his glasses, read the line. "Surely some revolution is at hand!"

The dead surely are all about us. They sell death. They encourage death. They deny death. They ignore the deaths of others. And, they cultivate coma prelude to death by hypnotized posturing and posing, marketing a facsimile of life without breath, without spirit.

We are invited to attend these wakes.

Surely, some resurrection yawns!

By being awake.

If I see myself through -- atonement is near.

Because you grasp labels and slogans,
You are hindered by those labels and slogans,
Both those used in ordinary life and those
Considered sacred.
Thus they obstruct your perception
Of objective truth,
And you cannot understand clearly.
- Linji (d. 867)

It all depends on where the mind puts God. If "out there," then there's all the measuring, contrasting, judging, and favoring with which to contend. If "within it all" then issues like motivation, intent, common vision, and self-realization come to the fore.

I have seen the trouble, which God has given the sons of men to be exercised in it. He has made all things good in their time, and has delivered the world to their consideration, so that man cannot find out the work which God has made from the beginning to the end. (Ecclesiastes 3:10-11)

It is hidden from us. No "there" there? Is "God" not all there? This is not easy to say.

And he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” (Luke 9:19)

Jesus asks. Peter hazards a guess. Who knows? Where does the mind put the "what" it thinks about?

It turns within me. You. Us.

Yom Kippur.

One at a turn.

More authentic words are needed.

This war strangles and chokes with moribund explanation.

It is not enough to repeat over and over "Saddam," "Hates freedom," Evil doers."

We have to look closer to home, and ask why Americans are so disconnected from war and so lulled by rhetoric.

What I call perfection of seeing
Is not seeing others
But oneself
- Chuang-tzu (3rd cent BC)

Is that it? Do we not see ourselves? Not see our indifference to death in Iraq and Afghanistan? Ours and theirs? Not feel the awfulness of the carnage and chaos there. How can this be? Are we missing something? Is war merely a matter of words and distance to us?

Something deeply shameful has us in its grip. We carefully nurture a spirit of detachment toward the wars we pay for. But that means we cloak ourselves in cold indifference to the unnecessary suffering of others -- even when we cause it. We don't look at any of this directly because the consequent guilt would violate our sense of ourselves as nice people. Meaning no harm, how could we inflict such harm?

In this political season, the momentous issue of American-sponsored death is an inch below the surface, not quite hidden -- making the election a matter of transcendent importance. George W. Bush is proud of the disgraceful history that has paralyzed the national conscience on the question of war. He does not recognize it for what it is -- an American Tragedy. The American tragedy. John Kerry, by contrast, is attuned to the ethical complexity of this war narrative. We see that reflected in the complexity not only of his responses, but of his character -- and no wonder it puts people off. Kerry's problem, so far unresolved, is how to tell us what we cannot bear to know about ourselves. How to tell us the truth of our great moral squandering. The truth of what we are doing today in Iraq.
(Published on Tuesday, September 21, 2004 by the Boston Globe, from
Why Americans Back the War , by James Carroll) http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0921-01.htm

We will not hear the truth of the absurd and awful death-fest in Iraq until something turns in our psyche and soul.

These are days to turn around.

Lot's Wife

And the just man trailed God's shining agent,
over a black mountain, in his giant track,
while a restless voice kept harrying his woman:
"It's not too late, you can still look back

at the red towers of your native Sodom,
the square where once you sang, the spinning-shed,
at the empty windows set in the tall house
where sons and daughters blessed your marriage-bed."

A single glance: a sudden dart of pain
stitching her eyes before she made a sound . . .
Her body flaked into transparent salt,
and her swift legs rooted to the ground.

Who will grieve for this woman? Does she not seem
too insignificant for our concern?
Yet in my heart I never will deny her,
who suffered death because she chose to turn.
(Poem by Anna Akhmatova)

By becoming salt will we return to earth to preserve a flickering remnant of nameless Name and groundless Ground?

By choosing to turn, not seeing others, but oneself.

Words like "decency," "truthfulness," and "humility."

Maybe, even...

"Atonement."

Word!

War is terrible. Worse.

War is all that we believe God is not. War is hateful, destructive, and cruel.

This war against Iraq is deadly reminder we as a people might have no sense of what God is or that God is.

Why are Iraqis, Americans, and others dying in warfare? We are confused.

Why are the nations in a ferment? Why do the people make their vain plans?
The kings of the earth have risen up; the leaders have united against the Lord, against his anointed.
Let us break their chains, that bind us; let us throw off their yoke from our shoulders!
The Lord laughs at them, he who lives in the heavens derides them.
Then he speaks to them in his anger; in his fury he throws them into confusion:
(Psalm 2)

The reasons for invasion, insurgency, and mutilating suffering have been given again and again, neither satisfying nor instilling confidence. The rhetoric, like the terrible destruction to life and limb, is disturbing and ugly. Something uncertain is happening in and to this country

Both the cynic and fundamentalist alike await a catastrophe that will either put America in its place or prove Armageddon. To both, God is fiction. To both, truth is fabrication.

It is tiresome to listen to mistruth. Still we continue to listen for forthright words. It is equally unpleasant to hear "lies" levied against opposing views. Worst of all is the suspicion that a "game" is being played -- a game of 'message, attack, deny and destroy messenger.' This game is so finely hewn in playbooks of professional dissemblers that so-called 'ordinary citizens' are baffled pawns of traceless deceptions that they, in turn, take up with hearty endorsement, without awareness they are doing so.

Not Moving Even One Step

The rain falling too lightly to shape
an audible house, an audible tree,
blind, soaking, the old horse waits in his pasture.

He knows the field for exactly what it is:
his limitless mare, his beloved.
Even the mallards sleep in her red body maned
in thistles, hooved in the new green shallows of spring.

Slow rain streams from the fetlocks, hips, the lowered head,
while she stands in the place beside him that no one sees.

The muzzles almost touch.
How silently the heart pivots on its hinge.
(Poem: "Not Moving Even One Step" by Jane Hirshfield, from The Lives of the Heart , 1997.)

Standing near those who suffer this blind war is an old God weary with human anger, heart opening to cries of pain and anguish. On this field each comes close without touching, listens for faint sound, looks through memory of obscure forms for any recognizable, reassuring movement.

Till now you seriously considered yourself to be the body and to have a form. That is the primal ignorance which is the root cause of all trouble.
(- Ramana Maharshi, 1879-1950)

I cannot tell you how odd it feels to be in that field.

With what is.

Called.

God!

Hear?

If Hashem, (what is called 'God'), is Reality, what are we waiting for?

Step back on your own to look into reality long enough to attain an unequivocally true and real experience of enlightenment. Then with every thought you are consulting infinite teachers.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

We spoke of martyrs at Friday Evening Conversation. Not those committing suicide, nor those committing murder -- but those who give up their life for their faith in God. Put in other words -- those who are willing to relinquish their current form so as not to deny Reality, which is that within which, for which, and as which we live our lives.

Jesus Christ, although he shared God’s nature [though he was in the form of God], did not try to seize equality with God for himself; but emptied himself, took on the form of a slave, and became like a man – not in appearance only, for he humbled himself by accepting death – even death on a cross.
For this, God has raised him high, and given him the name that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bend, in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue will proclaim “Jesus Christ is Lord”, to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2)

As with most things in this existence, we are not well informed.

Martyrs are the ones who witness Infinite Wholeness and surrender their lives to authentic and compassionate relationship with all formed therein. (We must not confuse murderers and destructive suicides with the term 'martyr.')

It is a task to encounter one's being in Being.

...If man "is" anything at all, he is Nietzsche's "undefined animal," whose infinite scope and possibility consist precisely in the knowledge of his own temporal limitation, in the knowledge that he will die, and in his power to endure and transcend such knowledge...
(in Commentary, Vol. 7 • April 1949 • No. 4, Simon, Ernst, What Price Israel's "Normalcy"?translated from the German by Ralph Manheim)

We are not who and what we think we are. We are, rather, who and what we are. To see with the light of Reality is to witness Reality Itself, or Sacred Being, or, What Is -- called Enlightenment.

Enlightenment means rising above thought, not falling back to a level below thought, the level of an animal or a plant. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before. You use it mostly for practical purposes, but you are free of the involuntary internal dialogue, and there is inner stillness. When you do use your mind, and particularly when a creative solution is needed, you oscillate every few minutes or so between thought and stillness, between mind and no-mind. No-mind is consciousness without thought. Only in that way is it possible to think creatively, because only in that way does thought have any real power. Thought alone, when it is no longer connected with the much vaster realm of consciousness, quickly becomes barren, insane, destructive.
(from Chapter 1, "You are not your mind," in The Power of Now, By Eckhart Tolle)

Jesus didn't try to grasp with the mind what he was. Nor should we, what we are.

Being is the eternal, ever-present One Life beyond the myriad forms of life that are subject to birth and death. However, Being is not only beyond but also deep within every form as its innermost invisible and indestructible essence. This means that it is accessible to you now as your own deepest self, your true nature. But don't seek to grasp it with your mind. Don't try to understand it. You can know it only when the mind is still. When you are present, when your attention is fully and intensely in the Now, Being can be felt, but it can never be understood mentally. To regain awareness of Being and to abide in that state of "feeling-realization" is enlightenment.
(Tolle)

Being what we are is a place to dwell in peace. It is only there we dwell in compassionate relationship with everyone and everything,.

No waiting. No invading other lands and nations. No destroying real or perceived enemies. No reducing one another to laughing-stock or lifeless-corpse.

Say...

No more.

One's own name is no name.

Listen!

Say

No

More.

Rosh Hashana, 5765.

Barukh atah Adonai, Elohaynu, melekh ha-olam,
Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe,

asher kid’shanu b’mitzvotav, v’tzivanu
who sanctifies us with his commandments, and commands us

l’had’lik neir shel [shabbat v'shel] yom tov (Amein)
to light the candles of [Shabbat and of] the holiday (Amen)

Blessed be the Name of the Lord!

("Hashem" means "the name." Traditional Jews use the name "Hashem" instead of "God" to show their respect to God by not taking his name lightly and only using the proper name God in prayers.)

HaShem is the Hebrew transliteration of the yod-hey-vav-hey (v - u - v - h) name, and literally means "The Name" This name is normally not written together, i.e. Without the dashes. "HaShem" is used 7484 times in the TaNaK (the old testament). Neither HaShem, nor it's Greek equivalent is ever used in the Apostolic Writings. The first use, of HaShem, is in:

Bereshit (Genesis) 2:4 This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created. When HaShem God made the earth and the heavens--

HaShem means "self existent" or "eternal", according to Strong’s (3068).
(http://www.thewatchman.net/hashem.html)

Hashem is Reality.

We must face Reality.

Learning is difficult. More than that, it is a joy.

We need a new and formal context to understand what education is becoming.

David Blacker in his article EDUCATION AS THE NORMATIVE DIMENSION
OF PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS, writes:
My answer attempts to renew a dialogically-grounded humanism, an old educational ideal that finds the beginnings of a compelling and novel defense in the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer. Gadamer’s writings present a theoretical framework for articulating a case for education as such against those who would justify it on narrowly utilitarian grounds. But that is not all. Gadamer argues that we miss the phenomenon completely when we think of education [Bildung] as something we use for our own private (or even collective) purposes, whether these be judged good or ill — or that we exactly use it at all. Rather, if the same categories even apply, it would be more correct to say that education uses us. Consequently, although we may be said to allow it to happen in certain ways, education as Bildung eludes us when we obtrude too severely on its proper sphere. In what follows, I will attempt to show how Gadamer makes sense of these bizarre claims.
(http://www.ed.uiuc.edu/EPS/PES-Yearbook/93_docs/BLACKER.HTM)

To learn, we speak through what is before us. This “dialogue”, this speaking through, passes through that which is between us.

At Becky's Piano Recital

She screws her face up as she nears the hard parts,
Then beams with relief as she makes it through,
Just as she did listening on the edge of her chair
To the children who played before her,
Wincing and smiling for them
As if she doesn't regard them as competitors
And is free of the need to be first
That vexes many all their lives.
I hope she stays like this,
Her windows open on all sides to a breeze
Pungent with sea spray or meadow pollen.
Maybe her patience this morning at the pond
Was another good sign,
The way she waited for the frog to croak again
So she could find its hiding place and admire it.
There it was, in the reeds, to any casual passerby
Only a fist-sized speckled stone.
All the way home she wondered out loud
What kind of enemies a frog must have
To make it live so hidden, so disguised.
Whatever enemies follow her when she's grown,
Whatever worry or anger drives her at night from her room
To walk in the gutsy rain past the town edge,
Her spirit, after an hour, will do what it can
To be distracted by the light of a farmhouse.
What are they doing up there so late,
She'll wonder, then watch in her mind's eye
As the family huddles in the kitchen
To worry if the bank will be satisfied
This month with only half a payment,
If the letter from the wandering son
Really means he's coming home soon.
Even old age won't cramp her
If she loses herself on her evening walk
In piano music drifting from a house
And imagines the upright in the parlor
And the girl working up the same hard passages.
Poem: "At Becky's Piano Recital" by Carl Dennis, from New and Selected Poems © Penguin.

Each passage we traverse is our education. How do we “hold together” that which passes through us? Is confusion the passageway of education toward learning?
Some students recently noted a “confusion” with what they were hearing. They worried their “understanding” was in jeopardy. Would I please “focus” more clearly.

I am sympathetic with their experience. I have always found philosophy, or thinking about what is real, present, and available to us, to be a stretching confusion -- from where we are to where we suppose truth resides. So much of learning is a journeying between things. This journeying between might be the back and forth of dialogue in disagreement with another or the mind-walk to and from some idea hidden in the dark shadows of absent comprehension. Soon enough we come to suspect that the “between” is the actual residing place of understanding – not a fixed place with stone foundation, but a moveable feast of solitude romancing community for a brief tryst.

Under these conditions, Gadamer argues, this phenomenon of play may provide a “clue to ontological explanation”; in the interpretive dialogue hermeneutic understanding establishes with its object, something comes about which is to a degree independent of both of them. In other words, as the prejudices of the interpreting consciousness are put into play with those of the object — as their horizons are “fused” — a common living language emerges.4 This symbolic meeting ground of tradition, which both depends upon individuals and structures their being-in-the-world, is largely what Hegel had in mind by Spirit, which comes to know itself through a process of Bildung (i.e., culture, development, education — the latter in what Dewey would call its “honorific” sense). As David Ingram describes the process:

"Gadamer compares Bildung to a progressive fusion of horizons in which interpreter and tradition are elevated to participation in a higher universality. This fusion is at once the cancellation of both the parochial prejudices of the interpreter which impede access to the unique message of the tradition and the dead anachronisms implicit in the latter as well as the preservation and extension of what is common to both of them. The moment of cancellation results in a dual negation whereby both the being of the interpreter and the being of the tradition are altered.5"

Unlike Hegel, however, Gadamer does not posit an end-state of absolute knowledge in which Spirit comes to know itself in toto. His concept of experience is much more open-ended than Hegel’s; it does not “progress” through the undergoing of stages but rather renders itself ever more open to new experiences. This is the true meaning of education for Gadamer; Bildung is a never-ending process of openness and a perpetual fusion of horizons, arising through dialogue, in which the ideal is never to stop learning.

As Gadamer famously concludes the “Afterword” to Truth and Method (after some 579 pages!): “the ongoing dialogue permits no final conclusion. It would be a poor hermeneuticist who thought he could have, or had to have, the last word.”6 The truly educated person — the true “hemeneuticist” — then, is “radically undogmatic” and ever open to the “experience that is made possible by experience itself.” (355) Such a person is open for education through intercourse with others as he or she undergoes a “continually recurring temptation to engage oneself in something or to become involved with someone.”7 The educated person is so “dialogically sensitive” that the mere presence of the other (perhaps even to mind only) can help break up her biases and enlarge her vision.

To make the notion of Bildung more concrete, then, Gadamer recasts it as a dialogue between interpreter and tradition in which the latter is experienced as a Thou. This point must be stressed: he is not saying that individuals like teachers and students in every case ought to engage in an intersubjective give-and-take. (In fact, he argues explicitly against erecting dialogue as a model for pedagogy.) Accordingly, sharing in this historically-constituted conversation does not mean that I experience tradition as the opinion of some person or other, but that I am able to enter into it as into a game made up of myself and other persons but not reducible to any of us. In this edifying tradition-forming, revising and conserving dialogue taking place in language — Hegelian Spirit conversing with itself — arises Bildung, which I see as the normative dimension of philosophical hermeneutics
(from EDUCATION AS THE NORMATIVE DIMENSION OF PHILOSOPHICAL HERMENEUTICS, by David Blacker University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign )

Open, and present, dialogically sensitive, and radically undogmatic – we welcome that which holds us together.

We learn by conversing in the thin place between ourselves and everything else.

Are we willing?

To learn?

Yet...

Silence is the true friend that never betrays. (Confucius)

Interdependence Day! John Duffy's composition at Camden Opera House. Later, Compline at St. Thomas'.

This country says it is at war. It's not.

War demands sacrifice and wholeness of effort on the part of all the country. Not here. Here we send money, guns, and corporate accountants to manage the business transactions while young military personnel get shot at, wounded, and killed.

It is turning out badly.

But, by some magical talking trick of rhetoric the vast majority of Americans believe all is well and we are in good hands with the conjurers in charge.

We'll have to sing with more heart. Make better harmony. Lift melody to loftier lilt.
That's what John Duffy, Glen Jenks, and Anthony Antolini said and performed today.

And the rest of us?

Learn deep, seeing, silence.

What if "the Lord" was translated and interpreted as "the true self of each one of us"?

One instant is eternity;
When you see through this one instant,
You see through the one who sees.
- Wu-men (1183-1260)

Would we remember who we are? Would this Self-Remembering become our primary task?

The essential point in learning Zen is to make the roots deep and the stem firm. Twenty-four hours a day, be aware of where you are and what you do. When no thoughts have arisen and nothing at all is on your mind, you merge with the boundless and become wholly empty and still. Then your actions are not interrupted by doubt and hesitation. This is called the fundamental matter right at hand. As soon as you produce any opinion or interpretation, and want to attain Zen and be a master, you have already fallen into psychological and material realms. You have become trapped by ordinary senses and perceptions, by ideas of gain and loss, by ideas of right and wrong. Half drunk and half sober, you cannot manage effectively.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

For generations and millennia we have lived with the sorrow of self-forgetfulness and non-recognition of neighbor.

Lamentations 5:1 - 22
O Lord, remember what has happened to us;
look on us and see our degradation.

Our inheritance has passed to aliens,
our homes to barbarians.

We are orphans, we are fatherless;
our mothers are like widows.

We drink our own water -- at a price;
we have to pay for what is our own firewood.

The yoke is on our necks; we are persecuted;
we are worked to death; no relief for us.

We hold out our hands to Egypt,
or to Assyria, just to get enough bread.

Our fathers have sinned; they are no more,
and we ourselves bear the weight of their crimes.

Slaves rule us;
no one rescues us from them.

At peril of our lives we earn our bread,
by risking the sword of the desert.

Our skin is as hot as the oven,
such is the fever of famine.

They have raped the women in Zion,
the virgins in the towns of Judah.

Princes have been hanged at their hands;
the face of the old has not been respected.

Youths have toiled at the mill;
boys have collapsed under loads of wood.

The elders have deserted the gateway;
the young men have given up their music.

Joy has vanished from our hearts;
our dancing has been turned to mourning.

The garland has fallen from our heads.
Woe to us, because we have sinned!

This is why our hearts are sick;
this is why our eyes are dim:

because Mount Zion is desolate;
jackals roam to and fro on it.

But you, O Lord, you remain for ever;
your throne endures from age to age.

You cannot mean to forget us for ever?
You cannot mean to abandon us for good?

Make us come back to you, O Lord, and we will come back.
Renew our days as in times past,

unless you have utterly rejected us,
in an anger that knows no limit.

Today is 9/11.

Is it nearing time to remember and recognize?

The true self of each one of us?

This day. This way.

Right at hand.

For this, we pray!

The war continues. Men die. Women die. Children die. The Secretary of Defense is determined to prove everyone opposed to the war wrong.

Genevieve asks the question: “What level of awareness makes us alive?”
Is it possible we have not yet come alive, that our awareness is not yet deep enough?


TO A TERRORIST

For the historical ache, the ache passed down
which finds its circumstance and becomes
the present ache, I offer this poem

without hope, knowing there's nothing,
not even revenge, which alleviates
a life like yours. I offer it as one

might offer his father's ashes
to the wind, a gesture
when there's nothing else to do.

Still, I must say to you:
I hate your good reasons.
I hate the hatefulness that makes you fall

in love with death, your own included.
Perhaps you're hating me now,
I who own my own house

and live in a country so muscular,
so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
only to mean well, and to protect.

Christ turned his singular cheek,
one man's holiness another's absurdity.
Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,

the surge. I'm just speaking out loud
to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse,
doomed to become mere words.

The first poet probably spoke to thunder
and, for a while, believed
thunder had an ear and a choice.
(Poem by Stephen Dunn)

If we mean well, if we really want to protect, we’ll have to go deeper to see how we are not yet alive, and are deadening others with our good reasons for war.

We resist war by serving the dying. In the faces of those emerging from death – those coming alive with awareness of truth and love – we see ourselves through the delusion of war.

He said to him, 'My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.'" (Luke 15:32)

We are coming through a terrible time. We’ve been lost. We thought war was a way to spawn freedom; when all that was wanted was justice. We thought force and power were ways to impose our culture and way of life; when the real desire of each human being is simply to love and be loved as the only way life is full of grace.

September is a new year.

Let’s awaken and come alive.

Finish war.

Try speaking to thunder.

Honor the choice to listen to and hear one another.

Mary was born. The sea was begun. Whatever it is -- mother's life is also itself mothered.

Or, as Rahda said tonight, "There is an awareness at which aliveness occurs."

He changed whatever was burdensome, servile and oppressive not what is light and liberating, so that we should be enslaved no longer under the elemental spirits of the world, as the Apostle says, nor held fast as bondservants under the letter of the law.
This is the highest, all-embracing benefit that Christ has bestowed on us. This is the revelation of the mystery, this is the emptying out of the divine nature, the union of God and man, and the deification of the manhood that was assumed. This radiant and manifest coming of God to men most certainly needed a joyful prelude to introduce the great gift of salvation to us. The present festival, the birth of the Mother of God, is the prelude, while the final act is the fore-ordained union of the Word with flesh. Today the Virgin is born, tended and formed and prepared for her role as Mother of God, who is the universal King of the ages.
(-- From a discourse by Saint Andrew of Crete)

Is awareness aliveness? Are we dead when absent awareness? Is this what Jesus was saying with, "Let the dead bury the dead"? Is that what Krishna was telling Arjuna? (Rahda asked this in circle tonight.)

Robert thinks beyond-thinking is the creative. Sandra has happily consumed memory. Michael looks forward to January and February's nothingness. The Buddha's final saying --"From now on, [we're] on our own," begins to come alive.

There is much to celebrate in this creative mother.

Awareness mothers what is alive!

After the woman's brain stopped, her body finally stopped. Two phone calls told us today. Sandy died in her home this afternoon.

Mind has no color,
Is neither long nor short,
Doesn’t appear or disappear;
It is free from both purity and impurity;
It was never born and can never die;
It is utterly serene.
This is the form of our
Original mind,
Which is also our original body.
- Hui-hai (8th cent)

So much of what we call life is a leaving of home, wandering, and then returning home. We've come to name these processes birth, life, and death. These names, for many among us, seem to suffice.

In the Noh plays and the old legends performed in the Kabuki theatre, the most striking and most significant passages are those where nothing is spoken at all, and the actor has to express everything wordlessly from within, by the most economical and yet concentrated mime and gestures.
(-- Gustie L. Herrigel, Zen in the Art of Flower Arrangement, p.288 in The World of Zen, ed. Nancy Wilson Ross)

'Wordlessly from within!' Such words make a sacred ground for rest and respect.

Among the great things which are to be found among us, the Being of Nothingness is the greatest.
(-- Leonard Da Vinci, Dairies and Notes; Ross)

We might as well love dust and dirt. The phenomenal -- the play of human existence.

We'll return to earth on our way through familiar ground.

Making of ourselves a light -- (as the poet's final instruction suggests.) From now on -- on our own.

Everything -- yes, everything -- for giving.

Everything become itself.

Don't look back? Don't look ahead?

The Way is arrived at by enlightenment. The first priority is to establish resolve-it is no small matter to step directly from the bondage of the ordinary person into transcendent experience of the realm of sages. It requires that your mind be firm as steel to cut off the flow of birth and death, accept your original real nature, not see anything at all as existing inside or outside yourself, so all actions and endeavors emerge from the fundamental.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

Where look?

"The more real things get, the more like myths they become. There have always been myths, but the myths of earlier times were, I’m convinced, bad ones, because they made people sick. So certainly, if we can tell evil stories to make people sick, we can also tell good myths that make them well."(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, German filmmaker)

Look here?

Encircle.

Humility grounds.

Is humility of soul and poverty of spirit an interwoven unity?

We need a face to see with kindness and grace.

You cannot describe it or draw it,
You cannot praise it enough or perceive it.
No place can be found in which
To put the Original Face;
It will not disappear even
When the universe is destroyed.
- Mumon (13th cent)

The masks of the world are growing hideous. Hateful speech from all sectors of belief. Holding hostages in fear. Ordinary people blown out of airplanes by bombs. People on streets blown up by walking bombs also killing themselves in the attack. Leaders of the most militarily and economically powerful nation savaging any opponent who dares to run against them for the public office they hold. Celebrity athletes whose fame and riches put them above any alleged crime -- whether murder, rape, assault, or abuse. The masks cover, barely, looks of scorn and sneering victory that are muted by cleverly crafted words that end with, "Lets move on; Put this behind us; Stop living in the past; Going forward."

It's not that the hideous should not exist. It does. It has to be acknowledged as a fact. It's more that it is no longer called "hideous." It has been re-named as: "I'm convinced of my ideology;" "No one will prove my belief wrong;" "You ought to remain afraid;" and, "The unfortunate things I have been accused of." Nothing is wrong any longer; everything is formulaic: "We'll deal with it, and, going forward, we'll be vindicated." A Sept.6 issue New Yorker cartoon this week shows a man entering what we assume is his bedroom, another man climbing out of his bed, as the woman says from her side of the bed: "I know what you're thinking, but let me offer a competing narrative."

Is it possible there are no more facts? Only fictional versions of perception viewed from a varying perspective? Is mask, originally the amplification of sound in open theater, now becoming a hiding place and distorting face of lies -- lies re-named "expedient" or "convenient"?

Does soul weary and shrivel under this new, expedient, and footless use of mask?

It has been suggested that, once in time, we were all told what to do and say -- from ancient times in Vedic India, Homeric Greece, or Mosaic Palestine -- that we were puppets, un-evolved recipients of external 'guidance' -- but that, at a certain point in history, that form of no-consciousness ceased. What has occurred is a mutation, an evolution or implantation of a new inner voice. This voice is oneself, is conscious, is of itself -- an authentic voice capable of knowing truth, one that senses clarity, and resonates wisdom.

That voice must be found. That voice must be practiced. That voice, alone, is our way through to humility and grace. That voice is capable of silencing whatever hideous false sound is playing through the masks we wear loudly proclaiming what is not authentic, kind, or true. That voice will be a combination of silence, music, and sweet harmony -- once it is found, activated, and allowed to speak.

Dearly beloved, when our Lord Jesus Christ was preaching the Gospel of the kingdom and healing various illnesses throughout the whole of Galilee, the fame of his mighty works spread into all of Syria, and great crowds from all parts of Judea flocked to the heavenly physician. Because human ignorance is slow to believe what it does not see, and equally slow to hope for what it does not know, those who were to be instructed in the divine teaching had first to be aroused by bodily benefits and visible miracles so that, once they had experienced his gracious power, they would no longer doubt the wholesome effect of his doctrine. In order, therefore, to transform outward healings into inward remedies, and to cure men's souls now that he had healed their bodies, our Lord separated himself from the surrounding crowds, climbed to the solitude of a neighboring mountain, and called the apostles to himself. From the height of this mystical site he then instructed them in the most lofty doctrines, suggesting both by the very nature of the place and by what he was doing that it was he who long ago had honoured Moses by speaking to him. At that time, his words showed a terrifying justice, but now they reveal a sacred compassion, in order to fulfill what was promised in the words of the prophet Jeremiah: Behold the days are coming, says the Lord, when I shall establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. After those days, says the Lord, I shall put my laws within them and write them on their hearts.

And so it was that he who had spoken to Moses spoke also to the apostles. Writing in the hearts of his disciples, the swift hand of the Word composed the ordinances of the new covenant. And this was not done as formerly, in the midst of dense clouds, amid terrifying sounds and lightning, so that the people were frightened away from approaching the mountain. Instead, there was a tranquil discourse which clearly reached the ears of all who stood nearby so that the harshness of the law might be softened by the gentleness of grace, and the spirit of adoption might dispel the terror of slavery.

Concerning the content of Christ's teaching, his own sacred words bear witness; thus whoever longs to attain eternal blessedness can now recognize the steps that lead to that high happiness. Blessed, he says, are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. It might have been unclear to which poor he was referring, if after the words Blessed are the poor, he had not added anything about the kind of poor he had in mind. For then the poverty that many suffer because of grave and harsh necessity might seem sufficient to merit the kingdom of heaven.

But when he says: Blessed are the poor in spirit, he shows that the kingdom of heaven is to be given to those who are distinguished by their humility of soul rather than by their lack of worldly goods.
(from A sermon by Pope St Leo the Great, Office of Readings, Thursday, Week 22)

We are often caught between competing narratives about what is taking place.

We'll have to learn to think through what is placed before our eyes, ears, and feet.

Ground ourselves.

Find holy ground.

Stand up, on our own feet.

Stand still.

And speak one's heart.

Where we are.

As we are.