These will be posted elsewhere on the website. Until then, here's the:
1) Spring/Summer 2007 Events at Meetingbrook, and the
2) Spring/Summer 2007 Hermitage Update

..................................................................

Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage Update, Spring/Summer 2007

Theme: And All Is As It Is.

And this, then,

is the vision of that Heaven of which

we have heard, where those who love

each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,

the light a music in the air,

and all is unentangled,

and all is undismayed.

(From poem “To My Mother” by Wendell Berry)

Spring comes to Maine. Summer follows. Last patches of snow draw into themselves on northeast side of Ragged Mountain. As usual, the mountain remains itself through ice, wind, and snow -- throughout stays itself as green stretches awake, water seeps from hidden springs, and porcupines wander trails. The more a thing changes the more it remains and becomes itself.

Meetingbrook begins again. We've a new lease at the harbour. The following gatherings take place regularly at the Meetingbrook Hermitage Bookshop/Bakery by the Harbour, and at Meetingbrook Hermitage at Ragged Mountain.

Note: All events at Meetingbrook are free, open, and informal

1. At Harbour Meetingbrook. Evening Conversation Practice at Bookshop/Bakery: Every Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday evening, from 5:30 to 6:30pm there is a formatted conversation on a different theme or focus. Each conversation intends and practices deep-listening and loving-speech. The hour consists of: reading aloud around the circle, brief silence, open conversation, and final circle comments.

Themes of weekly and daily events :

• Tuesdays: Buddhist Meditative Tradition

• Wednesdays: Laura Soul-Friend Conversation -- a circle group inviting each to reflect and speak of their own prayer and practice, what is noticed, and how things are going. (Occasional presenters.)

• Thursdays: Christian Contemplative Tradition

• Fridays: Paths to Peace -- Community Conversation on Interdependence, Eco-spirituality, and Interreligious Dialogue

• Saturdays: Poetry Tea, and Literature (4:30-5:30pm).We read around circle our own writing or pieces of each person's choosing.

• Sundays: Upstairs/Downstairs Community Table (1:00pm-2:30pm.) Whether it is called brunch, barbecue, potluck, or meat-&-potatoes -- a regular Sunday gathering with good food & good company. (Donations of food or money gratefully accepted.)

• Daily: Noon Lectio -- 15 at 12. A regular daily pause for 15 minutes at noon to listen to a reading for 5 minutes, sit in silence for 5 minutes, then have an opportunity to share some personal response (if you wish) in the circle for the remaining 5 minutes.

• Music: Come by any time to practice or rehearse in public. We also have a piano. No one will pay a bit of attention to you. Weds and Sun others are sure to be there with harmonica, guitar, harp, or flute.

• Invitations to Use Patio:

-- Open invitation to use harbour patio for gatherings. Any time, just ask. Our redone patio at the water, with its new large grill and cafe tables, is available for use by the Meetingbrook community for gatherings of family and friends. One requirement: A plate of food must be offered to a stranger passing by. -- Open invitation to use harbour patio for morning Tai Chi, QiQong, or Yoga.

Our harbour patio is quiet and lovely in the mornings, especially from 6:00am-10-00am. If any individual or small group wished to practice/lead meditative movement using our patio, please ask.

…

2. At Mountain Meetingbrook. Practice at Meetingbrook Hermitage at Ragged Mountain:

• Saturday Ora et Labora Practice (7:15am-9:15am). Beginning with a silent sitting, chanting, and walking meditation – we then (after coffee/tea and toasted English with jam taken in silence with periodic audio tape background) do a period of work around grounds of hermitage in mindfulness.

• Sunday Evening Practice. Two hour meditation practice consisting of: 35 minute sitting, 10 minute walking, chanting (of Heart Sutra or Compline), then: reading at table, silent mindful eating of soup & bread, then circle conversation/reflection.

…

3. Hermitage Harbour Room. Upstairs over bookshop/bakery is a lovely studio apartment. This single room with balcony overlooks our patio and the harbour with all the boating bustling that takes place there. This room is available for brief retreats, overnight stays, or day solitude visits. Call and ask us to reserve it for you. We operate by donations, and are grateful for whatever dollar amount you are willing to leave as donation for the ongoing work of the hermitage.

When not occupied by guests, the Harbour Room is available to everyone for quiet time, one-with-one conversations, meetings for up to 12 people, reading, or simply looking out over the water.

…

4. Meetingbrook and Maine State Prison. Meetingbrook volunteers weekly at the State Prison in Warren. We hold Meetingbrook Conversations (MC's) and Individual Learning Conversations (ILC's) with attendees from general population. We are also embarking on MC's and ILC's in the closed unit protective custody. Also held will be ILC's in the Special Management Unit (formerly known as the Super-Max). Friday mornings are dedicated to these lovely encounters.

…

5. Ongoing Life at Meetingbrook. Masquerading as a mildly mannered (sometimes cranky gathering place of irregulars) bookshop and bakery at Camden Harbor, Meetingbrook Hermitage is a place of collation and recollection, hospitality and inquiry, acceptance and forgiveness, good conversation and better baked goods, not to mention the best and quietest sitting place on the water where coffee, tea, and hot chocolate are always on the house.

The harbour location is the market-face of Meetingbrook Hermitage. We often think of ourselves as hermits-in-the-open. The promises we take are Contemplation, Conversation, and Correspondence. There are no secret handshakes nor special qualifications to belong at Meetingbrook -- everyone who walks into view or is heard saying a word, or who thinks of us and others with engaged consideration -- everyone belongs.

…

6. Money. We are small and we are not independently wealthy. Therefore we need, ask for, and accept donations to fund Meetingbrook. The bookshop/bakery is a labor of love, it does not pay for itself, therefore. we ask for help to continue its operation i.e. for rent and utilities. We ask you to donate whatever you can, whenever you might be able. Saskia and Bill have part-time employment to help stay afloat. We are blessed with volunteers and board members who help run the place and keep us in our place. Everyone involved receives a yearly salary of a penny and a pizza for their efforts.

...

• Subscriptions: We invite you to become subscribers.

Subscriptions of $50.00 dollars or more a year earns you our gratitude and a 10% discount a year on all books and music.

Subscriptions of $250.00 in a year and you receive our gratitude, 15% discount, and one night in the Harbour Room.

Subscriptions of $500.00 a year, and you receive our gratitude, a 20% discount on all books and music for the year, as well as two overnight stays in the harbour room with morning breakfast.

Any gift subscription of $1,000 dollars or more receives all the above -- and -- we will loan you our dog and cat for a weekend, ignore you when we see you, and not tell anyone of your kindness.

...

• New Economic Template: Curiously, we would actually like to operate the bookshop/bakery on a new economic basis, namely, by donation. Items such as used and sale books, not-today baked goods, previously owned music cds, as well as soups, sandwiches -- would be exchanged on the basis of whatever the individual could pay or wishes to donate to the hermitage. (We've done this already with tea, coffee, and hot chocolate since 1996. Since last year the practice extends to sandwiches and Sunday Community Table, patio-grill food-stuff, and several other goodies).

We have tea pots around upstairs and downstairs for donations to help us pay the rent etc and purchase food for all the hospitality gatherings where we are pleased to offer food and drink gratis. We like both the idea and the practice of what a philosopher once said, namely, “Life is gift, not recompense.” We slowly mull, meditate, and little by little implement this notion of gift-for-gift economy. We daily recognize that everything -- all of it -- is gift.

...

• Please consider donating to Meetingbrook. Tell us about Grants or Foundations that might be friendly to peace, hospitality, tolerance, community engagement, or just plain nice folks who like the idea of what we've been praying, meditating, and engaging these past years as we begin our 12th year at the harbour.

...

• Sails: Everybody gets to go sailing with Saskia on Penobscot Bay. That's a given. Even without asking. You might just be shanghaied by her. Keep your wits about you.

• Some final words: We have called ourselves mono, that is, monastics of no other. We intend a life of prayer and mindfulness, practicing between traditions what the designation mono stands for. It stands for the gift given all creation and existence -- the gift of wholeness -- a gift very often not seen, heard, or understood.

We feel called. We do our life and this practice of mindful service with the realization that each person is gift, and each invitation to love and serve one/an/other is gift. We are each of us invited to dwell within a true dwelling place.

Some hold that true dwelling place to be What Is Itself...or...God. Our focus as meetingbrook monastics includes both expressions -- namely, Buddha-Mind and Christ-Consciousness. Some do not use the word God but nevertheless long for What Is Itself. However it is worded for you, we feel this reality to be no other. Hence: monastics of no other

For us, Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage is a place where each is invited to presence herself or himself. What is no other to us is gift. What Buddhists call Bodhichitta, (unconditional loving-kindness and compassion), and Christians call Agape, (love that promotes overall well-being, the self-sacrificing love of God for humanity, and humanity for one another as well as God) -- is what we attempt to practice, engage, and embody. (The Bodhisattva vow to save all beings, and a Cosmotheandric spirituality which is all-inclusive, are both ways that are Vorbild (i.e. the pattern before us) and Schwer (i.e. difficult). Still, humbly, we practice.

Meetingbrook is a Schola Gratiae et Contemplationis, (that is, a School of Gratefulness and Contemplation). It is a daily practice. It is hospitality. It is an integral conversation between silence and word. It is an engaged interaction with all our brothers and sisters. It looks to, and listens for, all sentient beings. It quietly and reverently seeks to attend the source mystery of life. This source mystery of life is what some call God, and some call What Is Taking Place, Here, Now! We try to pay attention to how each person and being expresses their view. We trust in inclusive sharing of each path, each trail along that path, each step on the trail. This is what a Laura of Hermits is for us -- It is a common viewing of each trail and each pathway leading each of us home.

In conclusion: We are grateful for all the blessings and wonderful folks we've been privileged to meet these dozen years. Come visit. Grace us with your presence. You are integrally within the sound of what is taking place. We listen for you. Let's listen together!

What else is there?

Just you.

Just us.

Just everyone.

And all of it.

As it is!

With love,

, Cesco , Mu-ge ,
and all who grace Meetingbrook,
5 May 2007

(In memoriam, Katherine)

................................................................................



Spring & Summer 2007 Events at Meetingbrook

All Events at MEETINGBROOK are free, open, & informal
Meetingbrook is a Place of Conversation, Collation, and Recollection
at Camden Harbour and at Ragged Mountain
Consult “Today at Meetingbrook”For any changes in schedule.

CONVERSATIONS AT BOOKSHOP/BAKERY HERMITAGE ON THE HARBOUR
Note: All conversations are 1 hour in length. Anyone invited to drop in. We practice loving speech, deep listening, and honest inquiry. Format: circle reading; brief silence; conversing; final circle comments.

TUESDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP 5:30pm-6:30pm
Theme - Maybe Zen, Maybe Not. A Practice/Study focusing on Buddhism and its meditative tradition. A brief silent sitting, brief reading, and conversation. Currently: No Time To Lose, by Pema Chodron.

WEDNESDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP 5:30pm. -6:30pm
Theme - Laura Soul-Friend Conversation. A conversation focusing on personal practice, experience, and belief. (A “Laura” is the Greek word for “trails” or “ various paths.”) Primary focus is the invitation to reflect and speak aloud where our practice is, what delights and/or difficulties we experience. Each Wednesday some person, or some aspect of practice, will begin the conversation.

THURSDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP 5:30pm-6:30pm.
Theme - Stepping into the Mirror, A Practice/Study focusing on Christianity -- whether traditional, radical, alternative, contemplative, or contemporary. Brief silence, followed by relevant reading, conversation. Currently: A Course in Miracles.

FRIDAY EVENING CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP 5:30pm-6:30pm
Theme -- Paths to Peace -- Community Conversation on Interdependence, Eco-spirituality, and Interreligious Dialogue. A look at how contemporary topics affect the many and various everyday concerns --whether religious/spiritual traditions, earth, or the world. Reading, presentation, or film/audio considering topics on themes from all traditions. Currently Anam Cara, by John O'Donohue. Next, Beauty. Films and videos interspersed.

SATURDAY AFTERNOON CONVERSATION AT BOOKSHOP -- 4:30pm-5:30pm
Theme - Tea, Poetry, and Literature. For one hour we’ll read poems, prose pieces, essays, or short stories. Bring with you anything you wish to read -- your ow writing, or others'.

DAILY NOON LECTIO AT BOOKSHOP --Noon -12:15pm (Tue-Sat) Theme-- 15 at 12. A 15 minute mid-day practice in harbour room. A regular daily pause for 15 minutes at noon consisting of: listening to a reading for 5 minutes, sitting in silence for 5 minutes, then having an opportunity to share some personal response in a circle go-round for the remaining 5 minutes.

OTHER EVENTS AT THE HARBOUR

SUNDAY UPSTAIRS/DOWNSTAIRS COMMUNITY TABLE 1:00PM –2:30PM
Upstairs/Downstairs Community Table: Whether it is called brunch, barbecue, potluck, or meat-&-potatoes -- a regular Sunday gathering with good food & good company. (Donations of food or money gratefully accepted.)Music, conversation, laughter, and superb Sunday dinner. Stop by! Donations accepted for food!

MUSIC REHEARSALS -- 1:00pm-3:00pm (approx)
Any time any day of week. On Wednesday and Sunday afternoon a group might gather.. We've a piano. Come rehearse, or play in public. No one will pay any attention to you. (Unless you wish so.)

OPEN INVITATION TO USE HARBOUR PATIO FOR GATHERINGS --Anytime, just ask. Our redone patio at the water, with its new large grill and cafe tables, is available for use by the Meetingbrook community for gatherings of family and friends. One requirement: A plate of food must be offered to a stranger passing by.

MORNING TAI CHI, QiQONG (CHI KUNG), OR YOGA -- OPEN INVITATION FOR SMALL GROUPS. Our harbour patio is quiet and lovely in the mornings, especially from 6:30am-10-00am. If any individual or small group wished to practice/lead meditative movement using our patio, please ask.

MEETINGBROOK EVENTS AT MAINE STATE PRISON, WARREN ME

FRIDAY MORNING PRISON CONVERSATIONS -- 7:15am --11:15am.
Weekly Meetingbrook Conversations, group and individual, open to all inmates.

HERMITAGE EVENTS AT BARNESTOWN RD, RAGGED MOUNTAIN

HERMITAGE CHAPEL/ZENDO MEDITATION CABIN -- An Open Daily Community resource The Chapel/Zendo Meditation Cabin is always open and available for silence, meditation, or prayer. Whatever your tradition, let us remember one another whenever we sit.

SATURDAY ORA ET LABORA PRACTICE -- 7:15am-9:15am. Prayer and Work. Beginning with a silent sitting, chanting, and walking meditation. We then (after coffee/tea, English Muffins with jam, taken in silence) do a brief period of work in mindfulness around grounds of hermitage.

SUNDAY EVENING PRACTICE AT THE HERMITAGE -- 6:00pm-8:00pm
Each Sunday evening, drop-in. Practice includes: Sitting (40min), Walking, (10min), Chanting, Table reading (10min), Silent Eating (10min), Conversing (20min). Bell. Leave.

Closed Mondays.
Open Tuesday-Saturday 10:00am to 8:00pm, Sunday 10:00am to 4:30pm
Let us order your books and music! Thanks!
Bookshop/Bakery, 50 Bayview Street, Camden, ME
Dogen & Francis Hermitage 64 Barnestown Rd, Camden, ME
mono@meetingbrook.org (207) 236-6808 or (207) 701-9644

Spurs beat Suns.

The semi-graveyard of men -- who muscle their way past each other, throw a ball or decree downward through a hoop, kick and swing elbows at opposing players in vintage gangster bland visage "What?, Me?" surprise -- is no longer interesting.

From Bush/Cheney to Horry/Bowen, the law of enforcers is game's gangster rule. The game has moved on from whatever it was and changed into whatever it is. Big-body stop-signs, and crushing slam-dunks, carnival shots from one inch to full court away and consultant scripted comments post-game -- and what was once a childhood sport is what everything becomes. From basketball to war -- it all becomes business. Big and boisterous, deadly and dismal -- business

But this is not about basketball, is it? Athletics and politics wear the same uniform. It's not so much anymore about the good of all, the greater good. Its about individual skills, individual power, and individual wealth. It's more about not caring about opposing views or players. The motto on locker doors and government clearance badges is the same: "I want what I want, and I've got the money and power to get it -- the rest of you be damned."

Casualties in Iraq
The Human Cost of Occupation
Edited by Margaret Griffis :: Contact
American Military Casualties in Iraq

American Deaths : Date, Total, In Combat
Since war began (3/19/03): 3409, 2799
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03) (the list): 3270, 2691
Since Capture of Saddam (12/13/03): 2948, 2493
Since Handover (6/29/04): 2550, 2166
Since Election (1/31/05): 1972, 1903

American Wounded Official Estimated
Total Wounded: 25378, 23000 - 100000
Latest Fatality May 19, 2007
Page last updated 05/18/07 11:58 pm EDT

Other Coalition Troops
274

US Military Deaths - Afghanistan
390

American Civilian Casualties
Sources: DoD, CentCom, MNF, and iCasualties.org

Iraqi Body Counts:
Reported Minimum
63929
Reported Maximum
70023

(from http://antiwar.com/casualties/)

If we dare, try thinking about each one of the men and women and families enumerated above.

Though I think not
To think about it,
I do think about it
And shed tears
Thinking about it.
(--Ryokan)

There are those who say, "Give up naivety. This is the way of the world." The sullen version of existence is dog-eat-dog, no-prisoners-taken, each-man-for-himself.

Are there other versions?

When mortals are alive, they worry about death.
When they're full, they worry about hunger.
Theirs is the Great Uncertainty.

But sages don't consider the past.
And they don't worry about the future.
Nor do they cling to the present.
And from moment to moment they follow the Way.
(--Bodhidharma)

What is the Way?

Does the question interest?

What is the Way.

Does the response interest?

Summer grasses:
all that remains of great soldiers’
imperial dreams
(--Basho)

Let's turn the gangster's credo upside down, and say: "It's not business; it's only personal. Intimate, real, and personal! "

Way will open!

So...we pray.

Frontline's 90 minutes of "Hand of God", first aired January 16, 2007, was watched tonight. More than 10,000 children reportedly were sexually abused by Catholic priests in the United States. Filmmaker Joe Cultrera tells the story of his brother Paul and their family. He tells the story of the priests and bishops involved in either the sexual abuse or the cover-up.

One thing about truth -- it will (we suspect) always come out and show itself. It's not a pretty picture of the men in power and the diminished trust of them.

We shield our heart with an armor woven out of very old habits of pushing away pain and grasping at pleasure. When we begin to breathe in the pain instead of pushing it away, we begin to open our hearts to what's unwanted. When we relate directly in this way to the unwanted areas of our lives, the airless room of ego begins to be ventilated.
(--Pema Chödrön, Start Where You Are)

The days of unquestioning reliance on priests and the church are becoming dim memory. That's a good thing. A shift must take place.

Two people who come into the shop say the old language as well as the structures must be destroyed. Others worry there had best be something to replace what crumbles. Some items on the menu seem a bit airy. We agree that there's more thought needed.

SUCCESS IS COUNTED SWEETEST

SUCCESS is counted sweetest
By those who ne'er succeed.
To comprehend a nectar
Requires sorest need.

Not one of all the purple host
Who took the flag to-day
Can tell the definition,
So clear, of victory,

As he, defeated, dying,
On whose forbidden ear
The distant strains of triumph
Break, agonized and clear.
(--Poem by Emily Dickinson, 1830-1886)

Whenever I am able to stop in at church, I am a back stander, or last row sitter. I do this at lectures and museums also, even at the Trappist monastery when on retreat. As a catholic Buddhist -- (a designation a zen master Jesuit priest theologian once winced at when I told him Cynthia's self-proclamation claim at John Nickerson's memorial)-- I have found a quiet place wherein to dwell during the collapse. And collapse it must.

Walls and words must collapse into open breath and still, silent gaze. And breath and gaze must morph into an engaged presence. This presence first listens. Then, it remains without advice as the speaker attempts to hear themselves through an engaged quiet presence.

The American philosopher Ken Wilber says: "transcend and include."

Tonight it rains in Maine. It has so for three days.

Each is given their life to investigate.

Invisibility is the translucence of Light-Itself, as itself, having no object. In this existence we do not see heaven, it is being created and recognized in every act, each face, and whatever sound of healing prayer pronounced for one another.

In the story, Jesus, 40 days after the 3rd day following his death, entered invisibility. The Christian metaphor is Ascension. The 3rd day was Resurrection. His day of death is known as Good Friday. Jesus, for some, is an object of devotion. For others, he is the reality in whom, through whom, and with whom the invisibility of Life-with-the-Father/Mother takes temporary residence in this world of isomorphic physicality/spirituality.

The ordinary expression is "heaven on earth."

The names we employ ("heaven" and "earth") are expedient means and methods of achieving a particular end. That end is no-end. No-end is the name we loan to invisibility and heaven and all the additional words we associate with the divine, the sacred, the ineffable, and the hierophanic.

The word "hierophany" derives from The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion by Mircea Eliade. This word etymologically breaks down into "hiero" (meaning "sacred") and "-phany" (meaning "manifestation" or "appearance"). Eliade defines a hierophany when he writes: "Man becomes aware of the sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the profane. To designate the act of manifestation of the sacred, we have proposed the term hierophany. It is a fitting term, because it does not imply anything further; it expresses no more than is implicit in its etymological content, i.e., that something sacred shows itself to us. [. . .] In each case we are confronted by the same mysterious act—the manifestation of something of a wholly different order, a reality that does not belong to our world, in objects that are an integral part of our natural ‘profane’ world.”
http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~howard/314lspring2005/eliade.htm)

What is your name? What is my name? Are they two? Or one?

A Twice Named Family

I come
from a family
that twice names

its own.
One name
for the world.

One name
for home.
Lydi, Joely, Door,

Bud, Bobby, Bea,
Puddin, Cluster, Lindy,
Money, Duddy, Vess.

Yes,
we are
a two-named family

cause somebody
way back knew
you needed a name

to cook chitlins in.
A name
to put your feet up in.

A name
that couldn't be
fired.

A name
that couldn't be
denied a loan.

A name
that couldn't be
asked

to go
through anyone's
back door.

Somebody way back
knew we needed names
to be loved in.
(--Poem: "A Twice Named Family" by Traci Dant. In Writer's Almalac)

Today, on the Feast of Ascension, it is not seemly to bring up a controversy sparked by the leader of the Roman Catholic church -- one that seems to try to eliminate one name associated with its history -- that name, oppression, or perhaps, conquering coercion.

Brazil Indigenous Groups Fault Pope Talk

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Published: May 15, 2007, Filed at 11:25 a.m. ET

SAO PAULO, Brazil (AP) -- Indian rights groups are criticizing Pope Benedict XVI for insisting that Latin American Indians wanted to become Christian before European conquerors arrived centuries ago.

The pope said Sunday that pre-Columbian people of Latin America and the Caribbean were seeking Christ without realizing it. ''Christ is the savior for whom they were silently longing,'' Benedict told a regional conference of bishops in Brazil.

But Paulo Suess, an adviser to Brazil's Indian Missionary Council, said Monday that the comments fail to account for the fact that Indians were enslaved and killed by the Portuguese and Spanish settlers who forced them to become Catholic.

Benedict ''is a good theologian, but it seems he missed some history classes,'' said Suess, whose council is supported by the Roman Catholic Church.

The pope told the bishops that, ''the proclamation of Jesus and of his Gospel did not at any point involve an alienation of the pre-Columbus cultures, nor was it the imposition of a foreign culture.''

But Marcio Meira, who is in charge of Brazil's federal Indian Bureau, said Indians were forced to convert to Catholicism as the result of a ''colonial process.''

''As an anthropologist and a historian I feel obliged to say that, yes, in the past 500 years there was an imposition of the Catholic religion on the indigenous people,'' Meira said.

The Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh wrote a poem entitled "Call Me By My True Names." It is a strong, stark, and necessary poem.

Call Me by My True Names

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow
because even today I still arrive.

Look deeply: I arrive in every second
to be a bud on a spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with wings still fragile,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.

I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
in order to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and
death of all that are alive.

I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river,
and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time
to eat the mayfly.

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear pond,
and I am also the grass-snake who, approaching in silence,
feeds itself on the frog.

I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks,
and I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to
Uganda.

I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea
pirate,
and I am the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and
loving.

I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my
hands,
and I am the man who has to pay his "debt of blood" to, my
people,
dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all
walks of life.
My pain if like a river of tears, so full it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up,
and so the door of my heart can be left open,
the door of compassion.
(--Poem by Thich Nhat Hanh)

The door of compassion does not discriminate. Everyone is welcomed through it. The human mind, ashamed of all that it discriminates against, all that it excludes and rewrites in the name of self-preservation, has a silent longing for truth.

Ascension calls for truth.

To be invisible is to be completely at home with the whole of experience.

So, we inquire, we practice awareness, we engage experience, we attempt to give ourselves to consciousness as it reveals us to all and all to us.

No need to look for Jesus.

Dwell well within one's own name.

Each one.

Let's posit this: If things are exactly what they are, there is no same or different. Each thing is what it is. Each person is what he or she is.

Clouds appear
and bring to men a chance to rest
from looking at the moon.
(--Poem by Matsuo Basho, 1644-1694)

So, we ask: What is it? We ask: What is he? or, What is she?

Here's my thought: If only the real is interesting, if only the real is true -- then, the constant inquiry "What is it?" can drop the question mark, and become a declarative or imperative -- namely, "What is it." or, "What-is it!"

To "What is" something is to recognize its reality. To "What-is" a person is to appreciate their reality. "What is" is true.

"What is" transcends "seems to be." "What is" includes seeming, or appearance -- yet continues the inquiry (What is this?) until all story and excuse, blame or praise falls away into the dust-bin of narrative and there remains only what is in itself.

"What is in itself" is real. Ask it: "Are you what is there?" "Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect another?" (These are useful questions!) The only truthful answers to these questions are: "Yes!" and "Yes!"

Silence

My father used to say,
"Superior people never make long visits,
have to be shown Longfellow's grave
nor the glass flowers at Harvard.
Self reliant like the cat --
that takes its prey to privacy,
the mouse's limp tail hanging like a shoelace from its mouth --
they sometimes enjoy solitude,
and can be robbed of speech
by speech which has delighted them.
The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence;
not in silence, but restraint."
Nor was he insincere in saying, "`Make my house your inn'."
Inns are not residences.
(--Poem by Marianne Moore)

Jory brought in Adyashanti for Laura Conversation.

None of the above can be blamed on either of them. I opened the door to an inn and put my bags down for a while.

Now I'm going home.

Home shows itself in silence.

Still, I ask, arriving: "What is it?"

And
hear
the
empty
new
moon
through
raindrop
.
.
.
s.

A man wants to save another man from what he considers to be an injustice perpetrated by people in very influential and powerful position. He is passionate and intense in his suspicions and imaginative assessment of the other man's situation.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance?
(--from poem "In a Dark Time" by Theodore Roethke)

Perhaps much of life is an unwritten poem a poet has conceived but might not take to terms.

Various quotes from On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose of Theodore Roethke
by Theodore Roethke

The poem, even a short time after being written,
seems no miracle; unwritten, it seems
something beyond the capacity of the gods.

*
Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of
haste. It's what everything else isn't.

*
You can't make poetry simply by avoiding clichés.

*
There's a point where plainness is no longer a virtue,
when it becomes excessively bald, wrenched.

*
You must believe: a poem is a holy thing -- a good poem,
that is.
(--From On Poetry and Craft: Selected Prose of Theodore Roethke; reprinted by permission of Copper Canyon Press. Copyright © 2000. Poets.org)

Maybe everyone is a poem on the verge of being revealed.

What's verse but nobody's business inhabiting another's form for a brief duration of excited spiration?

Nobody's listening.

What we hear is quite beyond our capacity to fit into intelligible thought.

We'll have to wait on poets to reveal the world to the rest of us unsuspecting dolts.

I, for one, am stupid.

It's a curiosity.

To be.

So.

Stunned.

For: One is stunning.

I'm just off to the side. Just in from the outside. Barely there in the back. When lots are drawn, I remain in hand.

Having nominated two candidates, Joseph known as Barsabbas, whose surname was Justus, and Matthias, they prayed, ‘Lord, you can read everyone’s heart; show us therefore which of these two you have chosen to take over this ministry and apostolate, which Judas abandoned to go to his proper place’. They then drew lots for them, and as the lot fell to Matthias, he was listed as one of the twelve apostles.
(--from Acts 1: 15-26)

Call me Barsabbas.

All day long people
Repeat the word prajna aloud,
But do not know their
Self-natured prajna.
They are like one who
Cannot satisfy their hunger
By only talking about eating.
Just talking of voidness
Will not enable one to
Perceive one’s nature for
Myriads of eons, and there
Will be no advantage in the end.
- Altar Sutra

At times, it is enough to draw lots, an object used as a counter in determining a question by chance. As chance would have it -- (something that happens unpredictably without discernible human intention or observable cause) -- things are the way they are. Some find themselves in the throes of war in foreign lands; others are outside the picket fence, passing by, tourists to terror happening just away from their harms.

'...in the desire to put an end to suffering, one should develop understanding' (Santideva)

The sixth of the six perfections (paramitas) on the Bodhisattva path is wisdom or understanding, panna (Pali) or prajna (Sanskrit). Such wisdom, however, does not refer to mere intellectual understanding but to a direct, experiential insight into the true nature of reality: 'Wisdom is not the same as worldly intelligence. It is possible to have great intelligence but little wisdom' (Geshe Kelsang Gyatso).
(--from About: Buddism; Wisdom (Prajna)

Worldly intelligence says: "Take what you can -- get what you can -- while the getting's good."

Self-natured prajna/wisdom says: "Give it all away -- empty yourself -- there's nothing to hold onto."

XXVII

I’M nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!
(--Poem by Emily Dickinson)

Let's not start a club. Then we won't have to call it: "Nobody too!"

Here's my motto: Ama Nesciri -- Love to be unknown!

I love.

What is.

Unknown.

To be.

One's particular

(Just us.)

Proper place.

Mother- mind.

The fundamental teaching of Buddhism is nothing but the doctrine of One Mind. This Mind is originally perfect and vastly illuminating. It is clear and pure, containing nothing, not even a fine dust. There is neither delusion nor enlightenment, neither birth nor death, neither saints nor sinners. Sentient beings and Buddhas are of the same fundamental nature. There are no two natures to distinguish them. This is why Bodhidharma came from the west to teach the Ch’an method of “direct pointing” to the original true Mind.
- Han-Shan Te-Ch’ing

Attention is mother. Embodied, we say, "Mom!"

No-mind, no-mother.

(Pay attention here.)

I love my mother!

("Mind me!" she'd say.)

No two.

Merely true.

(Thanks Katherine.)

Prayers are needed.

To the White House, Washington DC
Dear Mr. President,
I sorrow the loss of life in Iraq.
I also sorrow the dilemma you are facing in making choices about how to honorably end the awful reality of this war.
Please be assured of my prayers.
Also, carefully attend in wisdom what moral and ethical chaos war engenders.
You have the strength and courage to choose a better course, to cease the torment and pain.
Please choose the higher path -- begin to end the war.
This nation will back you. It's the right thing to do.
I pray for you and the nation and the dead and wounded on both sides of the fighting.
I pray your courage takes the right path.
Your resoluteness can shift to resolve for peace and justice.
Please consider doing so.
Sincerely,
Bill Halpin
Camden Maine

We now end each evening conversation with an additional sentence after thanking the attendees for coming, and the author for his/her words. We say "And let us hold in our hearts our absent brothers and sisters and all who need prayer."

Each night, I gaze upon a pond,
A Zen body sitting beside a moon.
Nothing is really there and yet
It is all so clear and bright,
I cannot describe it.
If you would know the empty mind,
Your own mind must
Be as clear and bright
As this full moon upon the water.
- Chiao Jan (785-895)

Many...no, all...need prayer.

Let's do so for one another.

Here's one.

Praying.

Now.

Gale sends link to a video of a talk given in 1992 by a then 12 year old girl.

Severn Cullis-Suzuki, when she was age 12, traveled from from Vancouver, Canada to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and addressed the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development. With her repetitive refrain "I am only a child..." said, "If you don't know how to fix it, please stop breaking it." She was founder of ECO (the Environmental Children's Organization). "I'm here to tell you adults, 'You must change your ways'."

Then, concluding her address:

"My father always says "You are what you do, not what you say." Well, what you do makes me cry at night. You grown ups say you love us. I challenge you, please make your actions reflect your words. Thank you for listening."

It is a long and difficult practice, this learning to listen.

Some days it seems that adult humans are very hard of hearing. Maybe this increasing deafness is because so much of what we hear is deafening drivel. Curiously, instead of learning to listen, we are becoming adept as a society in the manipulation of others. We teach persuasion and spin, how to talk over someone else who is speaking, and the paramount skill of pundit and politician -- namely, saying: "Look...!" -- and changing the question, diverting attention from the issue at hand, and rotely enumerating talking points that hammer home the agenda of the speaker.

Discourse, meaningful relational conversation, and authentic debate are fading from our culture -- replaced by derision, dismissal, and denigrating 'talking-at' instead of talking-with.

There's a great need to listen to and hear words that are true and real. Severen's were true and real in 1992. (Listen to them.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5g8cmWZOX8Q&NR=1

Here are some playful/serious quotes worth listening to aloud:

"Until one has loved an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened." ~ Anatole France

"No heaven will not ever heaven be; Unless my cats are there to welcome me." ~ Unknown

"We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals." ~ Immanuel Kant

"An animal's eyes have the power to speak a great language." ~ Martin Buber

"A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than you love yourself." - Josh Billings

"The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs." - Jeanne-Marie Roland

"I love cats because I love my home and after a while they become its visible soul." - - Jean Cocteau

"Some people say man is the most dangerous animal on the planet. Obviously those people have never met an angry cat." - - Lillian Johnson

"There are two means of refuge from the misery of life - music and cats." - Albert Schweitzer
--(http://animalkare.tripod.com/id10.html)

Maybe we have to start with the animals. Then plants. Only to arrive, after prolonged practice, at human beings. Start being kind. Then caring. Finally responsible, loving, and even wise to the needs of all living sentient beings.

We could start earlier. We might begin with rocks and stones. We'll gather them, stack them, rake the small ones into patterns pleasing to the eye. We will practice not throwing stones, not using them to hurt one another. We'll build wonderful dwellings of stone and let the trees rest and re-group for a generation. We'll roll the rocks, then rock and roll with the sounds of brook and stream, river and ocean.

We'll begin all over again.

Water

Everything on the earth bristled, the bramble
pricked and the green thread
nibbled away, the petal fell, falling
until the only flower was the falling itself.
Water is another matter,
has no direction but its own bright grace,
runs through all imaginable colors,
takes limpid lessons
from stone,
and in those functionings plays out
the unrealized ambitions of the foam.
(--Poem by Pablo Neruda)

Today in Maine water falls from the heavens. Upon the place beneath, we are twice wet. Old dog and I come back from mountain rain-walk, entering through barn with wet cat into kitchen.

Birds can rest and eat. (Cat snoozes at foot of bed.)

We have not yet learned how to speak relationally, listen relationally, live relationally.

Tom R. said last night: "Truth stands in itself."

Let's!

Learn to stand again.

What is itself is compassionately interdependent, relationally no-other.

To be truth where it is "it's own bright grace."

We must change our ways!

They are blacktopping the parking lot between bookshop/bakery and Waterfront restaurant. So, we are at hermitage until 5pm conversation.

Followers of the Way,
the one who at this moment
stands alone, clearly and
lively right before your eyes
and is listening,
this one is nowhere obstructed.
Unhindered this one
penetrates everywhere
and moves freely;
entering all kinds of situations,
is never affected by them
- Rinzai (d.866)

Intelligence, from the book Brilliancy, has to do with beauty. It must be elegant. Patricia brought the book with her, so we read a bit, and spoke of it. In his book, Brilliancy, A.H. Almaas describes and explores human intelligence as an expression of impersonal consciousness.

In an interview, Almaas responds:

Q: Do you differentiate between being present and awareness?

A: Presence is awareness, but then awareness that is aware of itself. Pure awareness can be aware of its own existence, independently of the form and content of any experience. Experience itself then becomes aware of its own presence. Presence and awareness are not two different things, because the experience is non-dual, no subject and object. It is therefore not awareness that is involved in self-reflection, but awareness that is aware of itself by being itself. In other words, consciously being oneself is the same as being conscious of oneself.
(--Translation of interview with Hameed in June 2006, by Han van den Boogaard, Publication in the magazine InZicht {Insight}, issue 1, 2007.)

Consciousness is consciousness. As God is God. As you, you. Put nothing on consciousness, or take nothing away, and it is exactly what it is. So too, God. And you.

"Oneself" is a lovely word. Each is oneself. Why add? Why subtract? These grade-school skills are mistakenly applied to self. Is it inaccurate, then, to speak of 'increasing' consciousness? Or 'decreasing' it? Is there only consciousness or no consciousness? Either on or off? (We used to say that our dog, Cesco, had two speeds: on and off. These days the 'on' speed is low battery; the 'off' has to be watched carefully to see if breathing is taking place.)

Emily Dickinson has a zen-like way of seeing. Even her literary editors take the same words and see them in more than one way:

IX
TO be alive is power,
Existence in itself,
Without a further function,
Omnipotence enough.

To be alive and Will–
'Tis able as a God!
The Further of ourselves be what–
Such being Finitude?
(--Part Five: The Single Hound, Emily Dickinson (1830–86), Complete Poems, 1924.)

Elsewhere, the same lines, presented in a different way:

To be alive — is Power —
Existence — in itself —
Without a further function —
Omnipotence — Enough —

To be alive — and Will!
'Tis able as a God —
The Maker — of Ourselves — be what —
Such being Finitude!

We are finite, bounded. In such circumstances, there is an immediacy to our lives.

Thich Nhat Hanh wrote that "Peace is every step."

Today, life is every breath.

Every breath, a prayer.

Prayer is every thing.

Everything is prayer emanating from itself.

So it is. We live lives of prayer.

Without trying to be aware.

We are.

They gave the Dalai Lama an honorary doctorate this morning at Smith College. He was fitted out with cape, white academic drape, and board hat with tassel. Then he made an address. He looked silly. Nevertheless, he is a humble man sweating under the burden of their honor in hot weather. The drape kept slipping off, his head was itchy -- but he kept their paraphernalia on, and was a perfect Dalai Lama during the whole event.

Childlike wisdom allows dressing-up without caring how you look.

"The notion of ambiguity must not be confused with that of absurdity. To declare that existence is absurd is to deny that it can ever be given a meaning; to say that it is ambiguous is to assert that its meaning is never fixed, that it must be constantly won."
–Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity

Outside the bookshop all day the steamroller and bulldozer played tag with backhoe and crane. Tomorrow they'll finally blacktop the parking lot. Out back by the deck Jeff completes the fence helping people not fall into the harbor. The orange construction gate is removed. Stone and gravel will arrive in a few days. Saskia makes a deal with the French restaurant owner to buy four tables and chairs for the patio.

When, in the middle of my life, the earth stalks me
with sticks and stones, I fear its merciless beauty.
This morning a bird woke me with a four-note outcry,
and cried out eighteen times. With the shades down, sleepy
as I was, I recognized his agony.
It resembles ours. With one more heave, the day
sends us a generous orb and lets us
see all sights lost when we lie down finally.
(-- from section iii of poem, Three Valentines to the Wide World, by Mona Van Duyn)

We hear that Di's dad has died. Lies down. And we pray for him, her mother, and her.

Life is exactly what it is -- quite fragile, ferociously tenacious.

What great joy to be able to walk about.

While we can.

Each day.

No matter how funny we look.

The congressman says, "We don't want their oil." He says, "We don't want democracy in Iraq." He says, "We're there to help bring order to Iraq." He says, "There were mistakes made at the going into Iraq, there were mistakes made in the initial stages of the war, but now we are trying to help bring order to the country." He had visited Iraq. He had photographs. He ate baloney sandwiches with three marines from his home state. That's what he wants us to know.

My brief visit to C-Span is all the visit I need. I am as insane as all get-out.

Where beauty is, then there is ugliness;
where right is, also there is wrong.
Knowledge and ignorance are interdependent;
delusion and enlightenment condition each other.
Since olden times it has been so.
How could it be otherwise now?
Wanting to get rid of one and grab the other
is merely realizing a scene of stupidity.
Even if you speak of the wonder of it all,
how do you deal with each thing changing?
--Ryokan

Nothing is different than the way it is in the world. Each thing is exactly what it is. The recently retired director of the central intelligence agency now sits on boards of defense contractors and is paid several millions to advise them how to profit from the war on Iraq and the war on terror. It is a short hop from helping to invade a country to helping oneself to the spoils of war. It seems our process of government makes the hops seamless.

There are thousands upon thousands of students
who have practised meditation and obtained its fruits.
Do not doubt its possibilities because of the simplicity of the method.
If you can not find the truth right where you are,
where else do you expect to find it?
--Dogen

At Friday Evening Conversation, after reading the first half of the final chapter (on death) in John O'Donohue's
Anam Cara, the conversation looked into our changing notions about death, the person dying, and care of body after death as the soul chooses its time to leave the body.

We wondered about how some die easy and some die hard. Animals, someone said, are always present to their surroundings, the immediate moment, and their people. Humans, we observed, are seldom present to where they are, the time they're there, and the person they are near. Is the difficulty many have with death, especially as they near the time of death, that they have not been present most of their lives? O'Donohue writes that the obstacles and diversions begin to fall away as we near death -- impediments to being present -- and the dying person slowly realizes the extent to which they've been present or absent to their life. The new experience of authentic presence, as wonderful as it is, can be distressing to someone who has not practiced presence in their life. They now long for it, want to go back and remedy and redeem the losses they're suddenly aware of, and fight to cling to life desperately, uncertain what will come based on what was.

Those whose belief is such, will be assured there is a forgiveness of absence (some say 'sin') by a loving and compassionate God in the afterlife. This belief is comforting. Others hold that what we sow in this existence will be reaped afterwards. Some posit no afterwards. Others follow the belief in a transition set of bardos which result in a fresh start in an reincarnated being to work on the things not attended to, to practice loving-kindness where it was not practiced before.

The key is presence. And authentic presence is presence toward (and with) each and every being placed in our presence. Authentic presence includes even absence -- a presence in absence, therefore, no sin -- rather a non-separate attentiveness and kindness to each and all, here and away.

It is as though you have an eye
That sees all forms
But does not see itself.
This is how your mind is.
Its light penetrates everywhere
And engulfs everything,
So why does it not know itself?
--Foyan

Each is invited to know itself.

Itself -- the core reality of existence -- becomes our true home.

No need to invade, possess, exploit, or profit from the anguish and suffering of others.

We cultivate generosity and reverence for our brothers and sisters.

We become human.

As God-Itself.

Revealing love.

As it is.

The absurdity is that we load a gun, point it at another's head, pull the trigger, are startled by loud blast, and then -- as if in a dream in someone else's sleep -- we find fault in the laxity of enforcement of laws prohibiting excessive noise.

This war is our nation's great shame.

Stop Pretending
The great teachings unanimously emphasize that all the peace, wisdom, and joy in the universe are already within us; we don't have to gain, develop, or attain them. Like a child standing in a beautiful park with his eyes shut tight, there's no need to imagine trees, flowers, deer, birds and sky; we merely need to open our eyes and realize what is already here, who we already are--as soon as we stop pretending we're small or unholy. I could characterize nearly any spiritual practice as simply being: identify and stop, identify and stop, identify and stop. Identify the myriad forms of delusion we place upon ourselves, and must the courage to stop each one. Little by little deep inside us, he diamond shines, the eyes open, the dawn rises, we become what we already are. Tat Twam Asi (Thou Art That).
(--Bo Lozoff, from 365 Nirvana, Here and Now by Josh Baran)

Somehow, we pretend we are not responsible for what our government is doing. We believe the hand is exonerated from the shame of what the fingers do. Blood is splattered on everything. Respectable men and women are pretending there is no blood on their faces and sleeves.

A time approaches when blood will dry. The murderers will have disappeared. Weeping will suddenly cease. Lies will drown in deep waters of silence.

Promise Of Peace

The heads of strong old age are beautiful
Beyond all grace of youth. They have strange quiet,
Integrity, health, soundness, to the full
They've dealt with life and been tempered by it.
A young man must not sleep; his years are war,
Civil and foreign but the former's worse;
But the old can breathe in safety now that they are
Forgetting what youth meant, the being perverse,
Running the fool's gauntlet and being cut
By the whips of the five senses. As for me,
If I should wish to live long it were but
To trade those fevers for tranquillity,
Thinking though that's entire and sweet in the grave
How shall the dead taste the deep treasure they have?
(--Poem by Robinson Jeffers)

It's not enough to say you love your country and your president. It no longer suffices to bluster and badger as if such crude primping were a badge of distinction worn by rude schoolyard bullies high on smack-down.

Someone, somewhere, must be sane.

Not here.

Not me.

I'm.

For.

Gone.

We are as we find out together we are what we are.

2. "Existence Precedes Essence"

Sartre's slogan — "existence precedes essence" — may serve to introduce what is most distinctive of existentialism, namely, the idea that no general, non-formal account of what it means to be human can be given, since that meaning is decided in and through existing itself. Existence is "self-making-in-a-situation" (Fackenheim 1961:37). In contrast to other entities, whose essential properties are fixed by the kind of entities they are, what is essential to a human being — what makes her who she is — is not fixed by her type but by what she makes of herself, who she becomes.[4] The fundamental contribution of existential thought lies in the idea that one's identity is constituted neither by nature nor by culture, since to "exist" is precisely to constitute such an identity. It is in light of this idea that key existential notions such as facticity, transcendence (project), alienation, and authenticity must be understood.

At first, it seems hard to understand how one can say much about existence as such. Traditionally, philosophers have connected the concept of existence with that of essence in such a way that the former signifies merely the instantiation of the latter. If "essence" designates what a thing is and "existence" that it is, it follows that what is intelligible about any given thing, what can be thought about it, will belong to its essence. It is from essence in this sense — say, human being as rational animal or imago Dei — that ancient philosophy drew its prescriptions for an individual's way of life, its estimation of the meaning and value of existence. Having an essence meant that human beings could be placed within a larger whole, a kosmos, that provided the standard for human flourishing. Modern philosophy retained this framework even as it abandoned the idea of a "natural place" for man in the face of the scientific picture of an infinite, labyrinthine universe. In what looks like a proto-existential move, Descartes rejected the traditional essential definitions of man in favor of a radical, first-person reflection on his own existence, the "I am." Nevertheless, he quickly reinstated the old model by characterizing his existence as that of a substance determined by an essential property, "thinking." In contrast, Heidegger proposes that "I" am "an entity whose what [essence] is precisely to be and nothing but to be" (Heidegger 1985:110; 1962:67). Such an entity's existing cannot, therefore, be thought as the instantiation of an essence, and consequently what it means to be such an entity cannot be determined by appeal to pre-given frameworks or systems — whether scientific, historical, or philosophical.
(from Existentialism, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy First published Mon 23 Aug, 2004, by Steven Crowell, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/existentialism/)

What are we finding out? What do we understand by saying we are: "precisely to be and nothing but to be"?

Nothing but to be.

Authenticity.

Within.

Relationality.

Two seagulls sat each on a piling just off the patio. Nothing was tossed to them from balcony. The former tosser has found another residing place. The seagulls went their way.

The damp dusk chilled to bone.

To My Mother

I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.

So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,

prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,

and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it

already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,

where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.
(Poem by Wendell Berry)

So much doesn't matter. We fret, we fuss, we escalate the smallest things. But, truth is, it doesn't matter.

What does matter is that however absurd we are, there are others who top our absurdity.

"Tolstoy died poor. " That's what Annie said tonight, after Lloyd read from one of Tolstoy's letters.

"In historical events great men - so-called - are but labels serving to give a name to the event, and like labels they have the least possible connection with the event itself. Every action of theirs, that seems to them an act of their own free will, is in an historical sense not free at all, but in bondage to the whole course of previous history, and predestined from all eternity."
(Leo Tolstoy, from War and Peace)

Free?

Maybe.

Unentangled.

Undismayed.

Is it.

Listening to the sound of what is taking place; looking at the sight of what is taking place. Engaging what is taking place with lovingkindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity -- we enter the vitality of May.

May I?

A woman remembers receiving chemo in a room with other women. She recalls feeling the love and care involved in the setting up and dispensing of the chemo. Sitting at Thursday Evening Conversation on lesson 123 of the Course in Miracles ( "I thank my Father for His gifts to me" ), she brings that experience to the circle in the bookstore.

We are looking at, perhaps even seeing, what is taking place.

As for me, I delight
in the everyday Way,
among mist-wrapped
vines and rocky caves.
Here in the wilderness
I am completely free,
with my friends,
the white clouds, idling forever.
There are roads,
but they do not reach the world;
since I am mindless,
who can rouse my thoughts?
On a bed of stone
I sit, alone in the night,
while the round moon
climbs up Cold Mountain.
- Han Shan

There's a variation of the Golden Rule taking place in her telling. It goes like this: Whatever is done to others is done to me.

There's both a chilling and heart-warming insight that comes with contemplation of interconnectiveness. It is this: We feel what we do to others; others feel what is done to us. It is all shared feeling, participatory experience. Such a communion of received reality seems, at first blush, wonderful. Then, frightening. Maybe, finally, just so.

The difficulty we experience in "receiving communion" is our unawareness of what is taking place.

We have grown used to thinking, analyzing, and interpreting. We have, correspondingly, forgotten much about feeling, presencing, and allowing/forgiving what is taking place.

The poet e.e.cummings wrote, "not to completely feel is thinking." We've grown so confused about matters of war, inequality, political deceit, and unkindness that we no longer know what to think. The configurations and complexities of contemporary economic, political, and moral considerations are making us numb. Not only do we not know what to think, we no longer feel what we feel. Our feelings about the chaos surrounding us have been referred to thinking, which has collapsed under the strain of absurdity, impotence, and fatalism.

Rest In Being --
Sitting quietly, feel what sits there. Explore the body you sit in. Observe the scintillating field of sensation we call the body.
Notice sensation's wordless quality.
Its sense of simply being humming through the body.
Go within sensation to that subtle presence by which the sensation is known. Feel the sensation within sensation.
Settle into that sense of being, of aliveness vibrating in each cell. Rest in being.
Just sit quietly and know. Let awareness sink into yourself. Know what knows. Experience directly that sense by which you imagine you exist. Enter it wholeheartedly. Sit in the center of that hum. Does it have a beginning? Does it have an ending? Or is there just a sense of endless being, unborn and undying? Don't ask the mind, which always limits itself with definitions, ask the heart, which cannot name it but always is it.
Rest in being.
(--Stephen Levine, from 365 Nirvana, Here and Now by Josh Baran)

This is how one/an/other is cured. Maybe there is no cure for cancer. Maybe there soon will be one. But in the meantime, instead of focusing attention on the disease of cancer, we might instead give our attention to the health of the individual person who perhaps is suffering the disease. We can help cure one another. With lovingkindness. With compassion. With appreciative or sympathetic joy. And with equanimity and balance.

What we give out, returns. What we receive, is given. We are an infinite going out and returning in -- a figure "8" of wandering away from center, then returning through center core enroute out around and back again.

If we feel the sound and feel the sight of what is taking place -- we have become what God longs to be -- presence, loving and simple presence.

since feeling is first

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;

wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a far better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
--the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for eachother: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis
(--poem by e.e. cummings)

Birds eat. Sun shines. Dog snoozes.

It is May!

The koan is simple. It takes the form of a statement: "Listen to the sound of what is being said."

The monk asked, "What is Buddha?" The master said, "Who are you?"
(--Joshu, quoted in 365 Nirvana, Here and Now)

A wonderful question.

Responding.

What is.

Being.

Said.

Full moon. Who would mistake the full moon for a hole in the night sky?

The Lost Necklace
...No special effort is necessary to realize the Self. All efforts are for eliminating the present obscuration of the Truth. A lady is wearing a necklace around her neck. She forgets it, imagines it to be lost and impulsively looks for it here, there and everywhere. Not finding it, she asks her friends if they found it anywhere, until one kind friend points to her neck and tells her to feel the necklace around her neck. The seeker does so and feels happy that the necklace is found. Again, when she meets other friends, they ask her if her lost necklace was found. She says, "yes" to them, as if it were lost and later recovered. Her happiness at re-discovering it round her neck is the same as if some lost property was recovered. In fact, she never lost it nor recovered it. And yet she was once miserable and now she is happy. So also with the Realization of the Self.
--Ramana Maharshi, 365 Nirvana, Here and Now

Do not seek, and you will not be found.

Anyone around my base is it.

Ready or not, there I go.

Home free!

We light candle and burn incense for Joseph this 1st of May.

St Joseph the Worker
The feast of Saint Joseph the Worker is not a mere Catholic copying of the Communist First of May – any more than Christmas is a mere copy of the pagan feast of Saturnalia.
The Christian view of work is diametrically opposed to the materialist view. A worker such as St Joseph is not a mere lump of labour – “1.00 human work units”. He is a person. He is created in God’s own image, and just as creation is an activity of God, so creation is an activity of the worker. The work we do echoes the glorious work that God has done. It may not be wasted; or abused; or improperly paid; or directed to wrong or pointless ends. To do any of these things is not oppression, it is sacrilege. The glory of the present economic system is when it gives so many, of whatever class, the chance to build and create something worthwhile, whether from their own resources, or in collaboration with others, or by attracting investment from others. But its shame is when that does not happen: when people are coerced, by greed or by poverty, into being “lumps of labour”. Whether the labour is arduous or not makes no difference; whether it is richly paid or not makes no difference.
(--http://www.universalis.com/)

We work because we are alive. When hands get dirty, we wash them. When someone asks for something, we attempt to serve.

Daily activity is nothing
Other than harmony within.
When each thing I do is
Without taking or rejecting,
There is no contradiction anywhere.
For whom is the majesty
Of red and purple robes?
The summit of the inner being
Has never been defiled by the dust of the world.
- P’ang Yun

Cesco still enjoys walking the mountain -- although, the circle we take grows shorter. A Border Collie, he's always working. We're merely his co-workers.

What a delight to be within his supervision.

Work well.

Sweet.

Sweat.

Nap.

The woman in the Bagel Shop said she was a non-participating member of a local small Christian church.

She was, however, interested in the cultivation of the Brahma Viharas, i.e., lovingkindness, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity.

The Brahma Viharas (Divine Abiding practices) are concentration practices that soften the heart and strengthen the mind. If we view the Buddha as a Doctor, the cultivations of metta (lovingkindness), karuna (compassion), mudita (appreciative joy), and upekkha (equanimity) were prescribed as medicines for that which ails us. We, who follow these wise directions, are the nurses administering the antidotes to suffering. With this perspective in mind:

Metta is the antidote to the poison of ill will.
Karuna counteracts symptoms associated with cruelty; the lack of mercy.
Mudita is the medicine for the pernicious symptoms of jealousy and envy.
Upekkha promotes homeostasis as it neutralizes clinging and craving and the insidious quality of indifference.
(--from the Brahma Vihara Foundation)

The coffee and conversation were helpful toward clarifying the Monday issues needing clearing conversation. Several people say hello and stop to settle lesser matters. The three of us are engaged in Spiritual Friendship Conversation in the public arena of coffee and bagels this rainy day.

It is pitiful that we are
living in a treasure mountain
but cannot see it.
If we develop an
enlightenment seeking mind,
everything becomes the
practice of enlightenment,
even if we are in the midst
of the various worlds of samsara.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

It is tempting to say: 'Life is not difficult, people are difficult.' Fact is, life is neither difficult nor easy. Life is unceasing surprise and incalculable grace placed before us. With our habits and conditioning, we, at times, behave in ways that are unskillful and troublesome. Hurts and disappointments result. So it is.

Life is life. I have no desire to make it other than what it is. I long only for what is source and sustenance of life. Prayer and meditation are doorway and window through which to look and pass into source and sustenance.

The Gardeners

In the spring she
drops the seeds, he
covers them. He
digs up the weeds.
She cuts the flowers.
She takes the blooms
and puts them in
every room. They soar
red from the tables, sprout
yellow from the shelves,
hang purple from
the ceiling, blue
from the edges of
lampshades. Clusters
of flowers sit in
tiny pots on every
windowsill, in open
cupboards, behind
the sink. He stands
beside her as she tosses
all the wilted leaves
into a rusty bucket.
This house is heaven's
door, the air gathering
the bashful smells of
blossoms, roots, cut
stems, wet dirt, new
and rotting leaves.
(--Poem, "The Gardeners" by Jack Ridl, from Broken Symmetry.)

It seems proportionate to say of ourselves (as of life) that we are "new / and rotting leaves."

This is as it is on hill behind feeder under fog through which rain falls where these eyes look on old brown leafy cloak on ground and light copper birthing bud on beech.

Air gathering.

Bored with war, America turns to baseball. Multimillionaire athletes take the field and calculate how many tens of thousands they are making just standing in the outfield for one inning. At home millions of fans watch and cheer the pitcher and hitter going through paces unfolding the drama of battle and wit, strength and good fortune.

The former Giants center-fielder summed it up with simplicity:

They throw the ball, I hit it.
They hit the ball, I catch it.
— Willie Mays

Everything else is propaganda.

Propaganda is "The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause."
Propagandist messages aim at influencing the opinions or behavior of people.

I look forward to a time when everything stands on its own and needs no propaganda, advertisement, explanation, or cheer-leading. Light will be what it is -- its own indication something is dwelling within. Something is, or will be, at home.

The Buddha's Last Instruction

"Make of yourself a light"
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal-a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.

And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.
(--Poem by Mary Oliver)

We get frightened when we do not feel illumined by someone else's light. Our light within seems insufficient to us. But, truth is, all light is one light -- and that light is divine light. If we believe ourselves separate, we fall under the belief-cloak of shadow even while light-within radiates outward no shadow.

Reliving History

This must have been what it was like
the summer before the Great War,
quiet towns just like this, men and women
riding their bicycles through the streets
after dinner, no sound except their pedaling
and the squeaking of their seats under them,

the wet metal sound of grass being cut
always behind houses, out of sight,
all human voices murmuring or far away,
the pink and red zinnias blazing out at them
in that moment before dark,
the mix of the first woodsmoke
and the last apples so sharp
and sweet you could weep.
(--Poem: "Reliving History" by Francette Cerulli, from The Sprits Need to Eat.

No matter how absurd the salaries and brouhaha , I prefer baseball to war. I prefer a good backhand scoop by an agile third-baseman to the firing of semi-automatic and screaming obscenities of fear riddled with explosions thrown at those considered enemy in war zones throughout world.

Root for your team. Cheer a good play. Smile at a fan of the opposing team.

Pray for end of war. Work for an ending of any and all wars. Learn the terrifying demands of peace.

Love the game. It's life, and life is short -- no matter what anyone's opinion about what happens after death, it comes. As the narrative opening to "The Tibetan Book of the Dead -- A Way of Life" says:

Death is real. It comes without warning. And it cannot be escaped.

Play well.

Keep your head down for grounders. Don't rush your throw. Use the cut-off player.

Slide only when necessary.

Stretch.