I'm trying to notice silence.

After his paean to chaos, madness and war -- "I love the the smell of napalm in the morning," -- the character, Lt. Col. Kilgore, played by Robert Duval, stands up and says "Someday this war's gonna end." (--from Apocalypse Now, 1979.)

Most wars end. Even the current chaos, madness, and war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in the American psyche -- will end.

We are told to realize that
Not a single thing exists.
In this field birth and death
Do not appear.
The deep source,
Transparent down to the bottom,
Can radiantly shine and respond
Unencumbered by each speck of dust
Without becoming its partner.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157)

And when it ends, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers will complete the burying of the dead. Flowers, inscriptions, foodstuff, and tears will be left alongside dirt, sand, and grass. Even those whose belief ascribes there is no death -- they too experience that something clearly has changed in the world of appearances.

Prayer for Peace

Adorable Presence!
Thou who art within and without,
above and below and all around;
Thou who art interpenetrating
the very cells of our being-
Thou who art the Eye of our eyes,
the Ear of our ears,
the Heart of our hearts,
the Mind of our minds,
the Breath of our breaths,
the Life of our lives,
and the Soul of our souls.

Bless us Dear God,
to be aware of Thy Presence
Now and Here.
This is all that we ask of Thee;
May all be aware of Thy Presence in
the East and the West,
and the North and the South.
May Peace and Goodwill abide
among individuals as well as among
communities and nations.

This is our Earnest Prayer.
May Peace be unto All
Om Shanti! Peace! Shalom!
(--Prayer attributed to Swami Omkar. This was a special peace prayer offered by The Mission of Peace- Shanti Ashram, India, for The 1993 Parliament Of The World's Religions, India)

There is not much we can do as ordinary civilians to end war. It takes forces and strength beyond mere wishing. We can, nevertheless, pray.

Prayer is an inner intimacy with silence. Some say silence is where God dwells. What-is-called God -- whether a being whole-in-itself, or the wholeness-itself -- is that to which (to whom) we intend our prayer.

I need silence. So many of the writings and signing statements passing my eyes make no sense.

The Signatures of Time

binding signatures of time are fading footprints
tracking across wind-blown desert floors,

newspapers whipping down cold, empty streets,
split apart, become wings sailing like stingrays
swimming through wash of an emerald sea,

history is moments gleaned from unsorted stacks
holding facts, voices steamed clean as mussels
on a plate, disintegrating on worn tapes,
splintering on spools in old tape recorders,

like photos fading out in yellowing newspapers
(Poem by Quincy Troupe)

History is sometimes seen as "the branch of knowledge that records and analyzes past events."

"History" -- Middle English histoire, from Old French, from Latin historia, from Greek historia, from historein, to inquire, from histor, learned man
(--from Answers.com)

We are said to leave things present to the judgment of history. As if history were a wise academic readying to scrutinize the acts of a bygone era so as to tutor us in the present. It consoles some men to leave their legacy to history. It is a delaying tactic. A recent ambiguous and eerie response was given by one of the delaying people:

George W. Bush, when asked by Bob Woodward "how is history likely to judge your Iraq war?" replied, "History, we don't know. We'll all be dead." (Woodward Shares War Secrets, CBS News, 60 Minutes, April 18, 2004).

History asks for learned men and women. It is hoped the learned will reveal to us past follies so that contemporary learned men and women will avoid folly and move toward wisdom. Our success thus far is quite unconvincing.

Barbara Tuchman examined the irrationalities of governments through four crises of history: 1. The Trojan Horse and the fall of Troy; 2. The Protestant Secession and the Renaissance papacy's provocation of the Protestant Reformation; 3. The American Revolution and Britain's loss of the American colonies; and, 4. The American War in Vietnam. Were she writing today, Iraq would be the fifth.

"A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?"

"Wooden-headedness, the source of self deception, is a factor that plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts. No experience of failure shakes belief in its essential excellence."

"Government remains the paramount area of folly because it is there that men seek power over others - only to lose it over themselves."

"Leaders of government do not learn beyond the convictions they bring with them; these are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they are in office. Learning from experience is a faculty almost never practiced."

"In its first stage, mental standstill fixes the principles and boundaries governing a political problem. In the second stage, when dissonances and ailing function begin to appear, the initial principles rigidify. This is the period when, if wisdom were operative, re-examination and re-thinking and a change of course are possible, but they are as rare as rubies in a backyard. Rigidifying leads to increase of investment and the need to protect egos; policy founded upon error, multiplies, never retreats. The greater the investment and the more involved in it the sponsor's ego, the more unacceptable is disengagement."

"Persistence in error is the problem. Practitioners of government continue down the wrong road as if in thrall to some magic power which directs their steps. To recognize error, to cut losses, to alter course is the most repugnant option in government."
(--from The March of Folly, by Barbara Tuchman, From Troy to Vietnam, 1984)

I've been looking at my own history. Folly there, too. This self I have tried to costume seems ridiculous. Absurd, too, the attempt to make sense of the opinions, posturing, non-necessities and illusions accumulating alongside my steps. The explanation of 'former life' or projection of 'next life' does not satisfy. Something that is unexplained or missing ought to be able to be retrieved in the present moment.

Whether the Buddha gave credence to the notion of karmic rebirth or not, it’s nonetheless a mischievous and silly theory.

What isn’t silly is the acknowledgment of consequence and the realization that what I choose to do matters. I don’t have to look to past or future lives to observe the consequence of my actions or to feel their effects. It’s easily discoverable among those living in my very own household. Here I can witness the immediate effects of my choices and the transmission of my behavior to future generations. And I don’t have to wait for the pay off. If I bother to notice, I’ll discover that my suffering or reward commences in the very instant of wrongdoing or good. If I reduce the harm I cause others, I will reduce the harm to myself. The effect of how I live my life will be my legacy to those who come after. If I’ve been self-seeking and greedy I will perpetuate that behavior. If I’ve been selfless and generous I will bequeath that to unknown heirs in some future time.

The inherent ethical wisdom of the Buddhist “law of karma” lies in its teaching on the consequence of actions. As a moral law, karma has to do with volitional actions, that is, actions intentionally chosen and acted upon. This moral aspect points to the rather obvious observation that an individual is held accountable for what he chooses to do. An additional aspect of the traditional ethics of the law of karma states that actions perpetuate their own kind. Literally, greed leads to more greed, hate to more hate, kindness to kindness, love to love, and so forth. I can’t argue with the likelihood of an action initiating its own kind, but it’s important to never forget that the moral implication of action resides in the exercise of choice and that one can choose not to perpetuate a particular action. If you treat me unkindly, I can choose not to respond in kind and thereby turn the karmic wheel back toward a more harmonious result. If I couldn't do so, then the whole rationale upon which the moral aspect of karma rests would no longer apply. If I’m to be held responsible for the consequences of my actions, I must be free to choose between alternatives.

On the whole, the great significance of the teachings of karma is to remind me that if I crank at the checkout clerk at S & S Produce, she’s more likely to crank at someone else than she would had I treated her with consideration and respect. Karma as a simple law of consequence alerts me to the effect of my actions upon others. It also urges attention to the effect of my actions upon myself. If I indulge minor irritations, I perpetuate my own irritability and feel much worse than need be. But when my worry over the likelihood of my own actions rebounding on myself is brought to bear more or less exclusively on the effort to accumulate merit toward a favorable rebirth, the whole procedure becomes a selfish activity. And if it’s true that actions perpetuate their own kind, then the consequence of my quest for personal reward will result in little more than the perpetuation of self-interest.

If there is such a thing as a Law of Karma its execution rests not on relative merit and potential reward but rather on the willingness to notice, here and now, my effect upon others. It’s a matter of simple kindness and consideration. I can only try to choose well.
(-- from Web Exclusive, August 8, 2007, "Choice" By Lin Jensen, Tricycle Magazine)

I need silence to notice.

Notice well.

Learn well.

Choose well.

Sometimes words shape a man and a nation. Sometimes only acts count. And then there are those who are made of misleading words and dishonorable acts.

But we can't be too terribly harsh with mendacity -- we hardly hear ourselves, and barely have any acquaintance with who we really, or even superficially, are.

Perhaps the deepest reason why we are afraid of death is because we do not know who we are. We believe in a personal, unique, and separate identity--but if we dare to examine it, we find that this identity depends entirely on an endless collection of things to prop it up: our name, our "biography," our partners, family, home, job, friends, credit cards. . . It is on their fragile and transient support that we rely for our security. So when they are all taken away, will we have any idea of who we really are?
Without our familiar props, we are faced with just ourselves, a person we do not know, an unnerving stranger with whom we have been living all the time but we never really wanted to meet. Isn't that why we have tried to fill every moment of time with noise and activity, however boring or trivial, to ensure that we are never left in silence with this stranger on our own?
--Sogyal Rinpoche

We'd begun to think of ourselves as a nation of laws. Then we experienced men who believed that to be in control of power was a more elevated notion than laws. So, they took over the function of law and became a word-spinning power-playing feinting-facsimile of what we thought was a fool-proof form of government and continuation of inspiration hard-wrought by country's founders.

Religions, too, have their difficulties. Siddhartha Gautama left the smile attached to a flower as trusted transmission. Jesus had an equally iffy methodology. As "Word" he gave the conveying continuity of his inspiration to the conversing ability of human ears and mouths.

"Jesus had chosen to entrust his message to the living voice of the apostles." (--p.108 in George Tyrrell and the Catholic Tradition, by Ellen Leonard, C.S.J. c.1982)

Whatever direction it took from there -- institution, dogma, law, the foibles of men -- at root there remains a ground reality of sound, smile, and spirit.

Current secular rule, especially in America, went quickly these past several years from written law to stuttering say-so predicated on petty personal political power-drunkenness.

"Mr. Rove was not only the chief architect of Mr. Bush’s political campaigns but also the midwife of the president’s political persona itself." (--in Karl Rove, Top Strategist, Is Leaving the White House, New York Times, by By JIM RUTENBERG and STEVEN LEE MYERS, Published: August 13, 2007.)

What has been given face and voice these six years? The persona has sounded through a teeth-grinding, nail scrapping on chalkboard antiphony resembling school bathroom bullying vying with the hanged man's death gurgle. And it has not been called what it is -- disgrace.

Whatever names they gave it -- usually spun misnomers diametrically opposite what the words said -- the actions of these men in Washington were counter to what decent, caring men would do carrying out the honor of their responsibilities.

"Men knew that words were just words and only action counted -- period." (--p.6, in The Sweet Forever, by George P. Pelecanos, c.1998)

These are not "men" in the current hoped-for connotation of the word -- namely, humanity motivated by a love and respect for fellow creatures, acting with all their abilities to serve, protect, and ensure a meaningful template of just and honorable continuity for all peoples, all creatures, the earth itself, and the mystery of being.

It was a tremendous gamble Jesus made. Can men be trusted to continue forward the inspiration of kindness and compassion? Are men capable of selfless toil, responsible actions, and authentic words reaching for truth?

What do we hear? What do we say? What do we do?

It remains a tremendous task replete with unknowable outcome -- to tend toward trustworthy actions integral with living, bodily words.

Can we meet the stranger, welcome the stranger, and sit in refreshing silence together?

Yes.

Can body and word reintegrate?

We must.

And shall be.

Let the dream be community. Let the dream be hospitality.

As we treat the earth, so we treat one another. How're we doing?

Every Single Day
The Buddha recommended that every person should remember every single day that we are not here for ever. It is a guest performance, which can be finished any time. We don't know when; we have no idea. We always think that we may have seventy-five or eighty years, but who knows? If we remember our vulnerability every single day, our lives will be imbued with the understanding that each moment counts and we will not be so concerned with the future. Now is the time to grow on the spiritual path. If we remember that, we will also have a different relationship to the people around us. They too can die at any moment, and we certainly wouldn't like that to happen at a time when we are not loving towards them. When we remember that, our practice connects to this moment and meditation improves because there is urgency behind it. We need to act now. We can only watch this one breath, not the next one.
--Ayya Khema

Saskia said that the four women sailing Penobscot Bay yesterday were contagiously happy. The air, the sea, the seals, the porpoises -- the company of one another.

When we look back over our own lives, we realize that whatever of significance we have achieved in our own personal lives and in the larger cultural domain has been the fulfillment of thoughts and dreams that we had early in our lives, dreams that sustained us when we encountered difficulties through the years.

Beyond the dreams of our personal future, there are the shared dreams that give shape and form to each of our cultural traditions. Because this other world cannot be explained by any technical or scientific language, we present it by analogy and myth and story. Even beyond childhood, this is the world of the human mind.

So tonight, as we look up at the evening sky with the stars emerging faintly against the fading background of the sunset, we think of the mythic foundations of our future. We need to engage in a shared dream experience.

The experiences that we have spoken of as we look up at the starry sky at night and in the morning see the landscape revealed as the sun dawns over the Earth — these reveal a physical world but also a more profound world that cannot be bought with money, cannot be manufactured with technology, cannot be listed on the stock market, cannot be made in the chemical laboratory, cannot be reproduced with all our genetic engineering, cannot be sent by e-mail. These experiences require only that we follow the deepest feelings of the human soul.

What we look for is no longer the Pax Romana, the peace of imperial Rome, nor is it simply the Pax Humana, the peace among humans, but the Pax Gaia, the peace of earth and every being on the Earth. This is the original and the final peace, the peace granted by whatever power it is that brings our world into being. Within the universe, the planet Earth with all its wonder is the place for the meeting of the divine and the human.
(--from The Great Community of the Earth, by Thomas Berry, http://www.yesmagazine.org/article.asp?ID=385)

Dear divine: Please be hospitable to humans!

Dear human: Please be welcoming to divinity!

Together we form one community, one dream, and one intimate entirety.

Tell me your stories, your dreams -- and I'll tell you mine.

Sit a while.

Whether with words or with silence.

We reveal sacred unity.

Well worth our lives.

It is the feast of Clare of Assisi on August 11th. To her, for Poor Clares, and friends of Francis, and all beings longing to belong in spiritual poverty -- our gratitude and prayer!

"Go forth in peace, for you have followed the good road. Go forth without fear, for he who created you has made you holy, has always protected you, and loves you as a mother. Blessed be you, my God, for having created me. "
(--Saint Clare of Assisi)

What you hold, may you always hold.
What you do, may you do and never abandon.
But with swift pace, light step,
unswerving feet,
so that even your steps stir no dust,
go forward
securely, joyfully, and swiftly,
on the path of prudent happiness,
believing nothing
agreeing with nothing
which would dissuade you from this resolution
or which would place a stumbling block for you on the way,
so that you may offer your vows to the Most High
in the pursuit of that perfection
to which the Spirit of the Lord has called you.

(--St Clare of Assisi)

Hummingbird, on rounds, pauses out back kitchen window, buttercup to buttercup. It gladdens this house.

There are flaws and cracks in my house. Some pains are felt in joining places, distress in bearing loads. Unpainted wood swells and softens. My soul carries tired sighs to landfill which never is filled, never closed.

Our Real Home
Anyone can build a house of wood and bricks, but the Buddha taught that that sort of home is not our real home, it's only nominally ours. It's a home in the world and it follows the ways of the world. Our real home is inner peace. An external material home may well be pretty but it is not very peaceful. There's this worry and then that, this anxiety and then that. So we say it's not our real home, it's external to us, sooner or later we'll have to give it up. It's not a place we can live in permanently because it doesn't truly belong to us, it's part of the world. Our body is the same, we take it to be self, to be "me" and "mine," but in fact it's not really so at all, it's another worldly home.
--Ajahn Chah

Presence is sometimes symbol. Someone shows up, less to be there, more to call to mind that a greater Presence dwells in the middle of us. However unattended, ignored, or passingly acknowledged -- this Presence is there -- the silent and unspeakable wholeness pre-utterance each of us seeks to hear, see, or feel.

Each, we hold, as if with imaginative hands of gossamer faith, is real. Yet, each is also symbol of incomprehensible connectivity -- the whole as refracted in particulars of undivided affirmation.
I am you. You are me. Neighbor is oneself. God is not-other. Light is shining through one and all.

A symbol is the place where and the means by which we can apprehend realities which the concept fragments in its attempt to reproduce them exactly. It is also apt to indicate the transcendence of revealed spiritual realities.
(--p.4, The Word And The Spirit, by Yves Congar, c.1984)

Summer has a way of of tiring. Long hours at shop. Surfeit of words. Too many cookies. Cesco's slow weakening.

Still, in all, the beauty.

Yahweh, I love the beauty of your house, and the place where your glory dwells.
(--Ps 26:6, Jer)

Sitting at conversation table in protective custody unit with "Riding With Bobbie" in Ode Magazine. We talk about breaking patterns, going beyond words, contact and letting go.

Sitting with Buddhist Group in prison activities building, a zazen with low background chant "Amita," then talking about Lozoff's visit, about the onus on us to cultivate compassionate listening when some inmate or religious fellow intends to convince you you're not a "true believer", at least not according to their lock box sanctity you'll never fathom or even want to.

Sitting with regular Meetingbrook Conversation group with four men, two of whom could not safely or comfortably sit in the same room over the years, with another man returning after some three years staying away (who wants to study Kierkegaard and Sartre), and the fourth who brings the questions to us of whether forgetting slave history renders us amnesiac or transcending.

Take Care

"When a man dies, it's not only of his disease;
he dies of his whole life." -Charles Péguy

Our neighbor Laura Foley used to love
to tell us, every spring when we returned
from work in richer provinces, the season's
roster of disease, bereavement, loss. And all
her stars were ill, and all her ailments worth
detailing. We were young, and getting up
into the world; we feigned a gracious
interest when she spoke, but did
a wicked slew of imitations, out
of earshot. Finally her bitterness drove off
even such listeners as we, and one by one the winters nailed
more cold into her house, until the decade crippled her,
and she was dead. Her presence had been
tiresome, cheerless, negative, and there was little
range or generosity in anything she said. But now that I

have lost my certainty, and spent my spirit in a waste
of one romance, I think enumerations have their place,
descriptive of what keeps on
keeping on. For dying's nothing
simple, single. And the records of the odd
demises (stone inside an organ, obstacles to brook,
a pump that stops, some cells that won't,
the fevers making mockeries of lust)
are signatures of lively
interest: they presuppose
the life to lose. And if the love of life's
an art, and art is difficult, then we
were less than laymen at it (easy come
is all the layman knows). I mean that maybe
Laura Foley loved life more, who kept
so keen an eye on how it goes.
(--Poem: "Take Care" by Heather McHugh, from Hinge & Sign I Prefer, Wesleyan University Press.)

We've a Foley in our shop. It's all shit and going to shit is his take. Some days he gets a more favorable hearing than others.

There's also a Laura that gathers at the shop -- several times a week. "Laura," the Greek word meaning "trails" or footpaths meandering from distinct hermitages to a central gathering place -- for nourishment, conversation, spiritual support based on listening and being heard. It is a matter of taking care.

What is at issue is the mystery of the uncreated one who is 'Light beyond all light'. How should we speak of this? Silentium tibi laus, 'Silence is thy praise'. All we can do is worship.
(--p.2, Congar)

Light beyond light, for me, today, means there is a source of light that is whole within itself. Our particular light (or lights) are not as itself-sufficient (or self-sufficient). We beg and borrow, (even steal), the light of others to assist us with our own light. But like the vigil tea light candles placed in cabin sanctuary or before Buddha, Francis, Dogen, cross, or icon -- these exhaust themselves, flicker down, and extinguish. But fire itself! Fire itself seems everywhere at once, and at the same time, invisibly present without display.

I'll send Charlie the Kierkegaard I've been reading about in Karl Stern's Flight From Woman. A course in Existentialist thought might arise from their interest.

It doesn't matter. It's only life.

Still, I love the beauty of it.

And what's wrong?

That too.

Needs.

Light.

And.

Care.

Do you mind?

Stripped of reason my mind is blank
Emptied of being my nature is bare
At night my windows often breathe white
The moon and stream come right to the door.
- Shih-wu (1272-1352)

When our minds change, everything changes.

Teilhard, said the man in maximum security, was much misunderstood.

The term "noogenesis" was coined by the Christian mystic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. It means the growth or development of consciousness--the coming into being of the "noosphere." Noosphere is defined as the sphere or stage of evolutionary development characterized by (the emergence or dominance of) consciousness, the mind, and interpersonal relationships. http://www.noogenesis.com/chardin.html

The moon has gone dark.

Fallow.

Whoever it was wanted to facilitate the development of a collective conscious caring world wide mind, met an interstice. As is the phase of moon tonight.

It's where we are for now.

Until new light returns.

Yes, I mind.

No, I don't mind.

There you have it.

Martin Heidegger asked: "Why is there something rather than nothing?" I ask: Is nothing the core of each and any something?

Even profound concepts are ultimately empty: the Ultimate Path is wordless, and if we speak, we go astray from it. Though we may characterize the fundamental basis as “empty by nature,” there is no “fundamental basis” that can be labeled. Emptiness itself is wordless: it is not a mental construct.
- Records of the Lanka

If emptiness is the fundamental basis of nature, why do we so consistently try to make something of nothing? Isn't that what we do? Rather than reside in love, i.e., in the intimate yes of isness-itself, we try to create something else to place our attention and acts upon, calling that love.

You have been obedient to the truth and purified your souls until you can love like brothers [and sisters], in sincerity; let your love for each other be real and from the heart – your new birth was not from any mortal seed but from the everlasting word of the living and eternal God.

Isness-itself is also named emptiness. Emptiness is each as it is -- nothing adding, nothing taken away -- merely itself as it is.

Now do we wait in quiet. God is here, because we wait together. I am sure that He will speak to you, and you will hear. Accept my confidence, for it is yours. Our minds are joined. We wait with one intent; to hear our Father's answer to our call, to let our thoughts be still and find His peace, to hear Him speak to us of what we are, and to reveal Himself unto His Son.
(--from Lesson 221, Course in Miracles)

God is here, because we wait together. We do not wait for anything that is coming. Nor do we wait for some other time, some event, or some person.

It is waiting-itself, waiting together, that is God here.

There is no object to waiting.

There's nothing to it, nothing ahead of it, nothing else worth doing.

God is here.

Because.

We wait.

Together.

Isn't that the cat's meow?

No, nothing like that.

I think today of Frank and Kay.

A Simplified Space
Sitting is essentially a simplified space. Our daily life is in constant movement: lots of things going on, lots of people talking, lots of events taking place. In the middle of that, it's very difficult to sense that we are in our life. When we simplify the situation, when we take away the externals and remove ourselves from the ringing phone, the television, the people who visit us, the dog who needs a walk, we get a chance--which is absolutely the most valuable thing there is--to face ourselves. Meditation is not about some state, but about the meditator. It's not about some activity or fixing something. It's about ourselves. If we don't simplify the situation the chance of taking a good look at ourselves is very small--because what we tend to look at isn't ourselves but everything else. If something goes wrong, what do we look at? We look at what's going wrong. We're looking out there all the time, and not at ourselves.
(--Charlotte Joko Beck)

I've grown, this past year, a little less interested in criticism and judgment -- giving or getting.

I've noticed, more and more, the prevalence of criticism and judgment in gossip and rumor. For many of us, no one is good enough. Very few measure up to our righteousness. What is often heard, if we are really listening, is aspersion and diminution of someone else (we think) not there at the time.

Not there -- so we think. We are very slow to appreciate that we are that someone else, and that we are always here. We always hear what is being said about us by us in our own presence. The illusion is that we are not that of whom or which we are speaking. We consider ourselves -- erroneously, I suspect -- separate and detached from one another. The delusion we proffer is some standard of superior state not approachable by others. When I engage in this behavior, I am ignorant. When you do this, I am again and again ignorant.

We need to approach life with more expansive skill.

The Lebanese poet Gibran wrote:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
(--from The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran)

Life longs for itself. God longs for God. We long for what we are. (We, unfortunately for ourselves and others, usually forget what we truly are.)

"How sweet did it suddenly become to me to be without the delights of trifles. And what at one time I feared to lose, it was now a joy to me to put away." (--Augustine of Hippo)

I think of Frank and Kay today. Happily. To these parents, these ancestors, I bow in homage.

Incense rises.

Eucharist embodies.

Their love.

To me.

Set.

Free.

Morning sea sunlight at edge of fog holds sounds of children, dog barking, basketball dribbling on court, and woman sunning herself on pier. Dinghies at float and boats on moorings -- it is Bayside still-life with coffee.

Natural Response of an Open Heart
Wisdom replaces ignorance in our minds when we realize that happiness does not lie in the accumulation of more and more pleasant feelings, that gratifying craving does not bring us a feeling of wholeness or completeness. It simply leads to more craving and more aversion. When we realize in our own experience that happiness comes not from reaching out but from letting go, not from seeking pleasurable experience, but from opening in the moment to what is true, this transformation of understanding then frees the energy of compassion within us. Our minds are no longer bound up in pushing away pain or holding on to pleasure. Compassion becomes the natural response of an open heart.
(--Joseph Goldstein)

What about letting go of happiness?

What about stop looking for meaning?

You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
(--Albert Camus, The fool, in "Intuitions" published in Youthful Writings )

Each second ticks on a clock without hands.

Why do we continually check to see what time it is?

Pema Chodron's book title has it: There's No Time To Lose.

Without thinking, with open heart, say what is true!

Once, the story goes, Jesus was transfigured.

James and John, they say, were there. It is said they saw Moses and Elijah appearing in glory beside Jesus. This is a good story. A voice, Luke says, is heard saying,

‘This is my Son, the Chosen One. Listen to him.’ And after the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. The disciples kept silence and, at that time, told no one what they had seen. (Luke 9:35-36)

What is there to tell?

Wherever and whenever
The mind is found
Attached to anything,
Make haste to detach
Yourself from it.
When you tarry for
Any length of time
It will turn again into
Your old home town.
- Daito Kokushi (1282-1334)

We seldom leave our old hometown. Whether it is my street in Brooklyn, (or now my road in Camden), or the patterns of thought and behavior that remain with me -- we're always returning to our old hometown -- especially when stress or despondency alight, coming by chance when we're not looking.

Doing prostrations in cabin earlier, arrived a hummingbird at window box flowers. I delighted as I slowly stretched through threefold honoring of seeing, saying, and silence -- mind, mouth, and heart. Stretched wide and open, folded tight and closed -- the inhalation and exhalation -- remembering our human repetition, the eternal recurrence of catch and release. Like Cesco these days trying to stand still to eat from bowl, we cannot remain straight and still for long. I always worry about the attempts of missionaries and assorted know-it-alls to straighten us out once and for all. They are without wit, more like unwitting undertakers dealing with their own private corpses.

A Parable

I think that almost all Americans know about the story of Sun and Wind. They tried to take the coat
off from the traveler. First, the north wind blew very hard. But the traveler kept his coat really
hard. Next, the sun shine and made him warm. Then, the traveler easily took his coat off.
Even kids know this theory. I wonder why the Americans keep being the north wind.
(- from Mutsumi, Osaka, Japan, http://www.traprockpeace.org/Hiroshimapoems.html)

It never ceases to despond that America (up until now) has been the only one to use nuclear weapons against civilians -- twice. That, and the fact that the Christian feast of The Transfiguration of the Lord share the same date. I can think of little else more antithetical or non-Christ than incinerating human beings in the name of self-interest.

Christ gives his own body. Men and women who have become Christ give their own bodies to serve the needs of the whole-Christ.

Beloved, we are God's children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.
(--1 John 3:2, New American Bible)

I can't say I see him "as he is." I'm not that clear and empty. This morning, after mass, I walked the stations of the cross in the Catholic church in Rockland. Even as I began with the first station the thought came, "We are condemned to die." It occurred to me that the 14 stations were the story of human life -- individually and collectively.

We fall, we are helped, we meet our mothers, we leave our impression on those touching us, we lament for the suffering of others, we are stripped of our illusions and identity, we're nailed to someone's obsession for perfection and order and saving the people from their own peculiar presence, we die, we are taken down as pity and sorrow are muted, then, finally, we are placed in a tomb. There the stations end. No 15th station, no fantastical exuberance with light and music celebrating some ambiguous resurrection.

In St Bernard's church the morning of Hiroshima and Transfiguration, I am deposited by the statue of Joseph alongside the tabernacle. The silence of both!

This afternoon it rains. Wonderfully and strongly, it rains.

The story contained in the stations of the cross, being mine (or ours), is a thoughtful one. We are pilgrims on a long path walked by millions and wondered about by equal number. We do what we can to honor our mothers and fathers. We try not to kill, steal, or attach to desire. We try not to cover truth and holiness, try not to tear down -- but rather, affirm what is there to affirm, avoid what is not there, yet deluding, and, by and large, attempt to practice living with dignity and respect -- for one and for all. Sometimes we forget. Sometimes we need reminding. Rituals help. So does a periodic dose of silence.

Word belongs between mind and silence.

Say that word.

Or don't.

Be that word.

Or act it through.

Healing.

And.

Healing.

Each -- here and beyonding -- form.

Be found alone!

Life before language, and life during language, is what silence is...
revealing.

Utter emptiness has no image,
Upright independence does not rely on anything.
Just expand and illuminate the original truth
Unconcerned by external conditions.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091–1157)

Charles Simic is current Poet Laureate in US. Poetry helps. Poetry is leaf-shadow on breezy Sunday afternoon. On porch of meditation cabin. "Stone" is one of his poems.

STONE

Go inside a stone
That would be my way.
Let somebody else become a dove
Or gnash with a tiger's tooth.
I am happy to be a stone.

From the outside the stone is a riddle:
No one knows how to answer it.
Yet within, it must be cool and quiet
Even though a cow steps on it full weight,
Even though a child throws it in a river;
The stone sinks, slow, unperturbed
To the river bottom
Where the fishes come to knock on it
And listen.

I have seen sparks fly out
When two stones are rubbed,
So perhaps it is not dark inside after all;
Perhaps there is a moon shining
From somewhere, as though behind a hill--
Just enough light to make out
The strange writings, the star-charts
On the inner walls.
(--Poem by Charles Simic)

The man and woman on New Dimensions Radio this morning were talking about how, evolutionarily, we are stardust. They refer to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry -- The universe travels on through us. We are its knowing. We are the universe knowing itself. We are meant to celebrate what we are.

This is who we are. We grow from the earth as the earth with all that we discover to be of the earth. Even Jesus, as the Christ, as we say, came through woman to dwell on earth as earth and for the earth. Everything, says Teilhard, is redeemed and saved from exclusion and bitter separation. Not even what many call "G-d" or God is excluded. What we call "God" might be the entirety of what is, the wholeness without exception, or, the Pleroma -- Alpha and Omega -- beyond which there is no further beyond.

Cesco stretches beside cabin. If I've claimed repair and not opened the shop, (he exudes), then a long (slow) walk is the order of the day. We will, (he exhibits in abundance), celebrate the earth by traversing its wondrous trails along mountainside. For, (he continues), soon I will die and walk no more the earth. Rather, I will become the earth in a different, more intimate, inseparate yet unmoving-as-other, way.

Humidity has broken. What is broken in me undergoes repair. Silence knits itself through every cell and atom. We are saved from hostile negative by balancing loving affirmative.

I shall pour clean water over you and you will be cleansed; I shall cleanse you of all your defilement and all your idols. I shall give you a new heart, and put a new spirit in you; I shall remove the heart of stone from your bodies and give you a heart of flesh instead. I shall put my spirit in you, and make you keep my laws and sincerely respect my observances.
(--Ezekiel 36:25 - 27, Reading in Lauds {Morning Prayer})

In 1977, in a house in the Village of Suffern shared by friends, I first read these stanzas from Simic's poem "Breasts."

I insist that a girl
Stripped to the waist
Is the first and last miracle,

That the old janitor on his deathbed
who demands to see the breasts of his wife
For one last time
Is the greatest poet who ever lived.

I'm glad he wrote that. I'm glad he is poet laureate. I'm glad he made the acquaintance of silence.

In the interview with the literary journal Crazy Horse, which took place in the summer of 1972, five years after he published his first book of poetry, What the Grass Says (1976), Charles Simic describes poetry as an "orphan of silence" (The Uncertain Certainty: Interviews, Essays, and Notes on Poetry, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1985. UC 5).
Silence, solitude, what is more essential to the human condition? ‘Maternal silence’ is what I like to call it. Life before the coming of language. That place where we begin to hear the voice of the inanimate. Poetry is an orphan of silence. The words never quite equal the experience behind them. (UC 5-6)
(-- from Orphan of Silence: The Poetry of Charles Simic, By Goran Mijuk, Doctoral Dissertation, University of Fribourg, February 1, 2002, at http://ethesis.unifr.ch/theses/downloads.php?file=MijukG.pdf)

What is life before the coming of language? It is always now. It is always the source resounding noiselessly within you and me, within everything.

I'm also glad things are falling to earth. The run of divine awayness is coming to its end. The esteemed actors and authors who proclaimed a vague, otherly, and unreachable temple and template of heavenly abstruseness are exiting the theater, retiring to off, off, off the narrow-way. The broad-way, the fantastically open, transfigures our minds and imagination. Something new is in-deed happening.

"Behold, the former things are come to pass, and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them."
(--Isaiah 42:9)

Words are abandoning former enslaving owners and have taken to the open road, disrobing the uniforms forced upon them, and shaking loose from formulas and oaths recited under duress and drugs. Words are taking bodies beyond themselves, shucking false selves, shunting to a span of tracks disappearing into infinity where no tracks proscribe their direction.

Poets know this.

Lovers of words and silence feel this.

"Words make love on the page like flies in the summer heat," Charles Simic writes in his memoir, A Fly In The Soup. Or here is Fernando Pessoa in a journal entry:" I enjoy wording. Words for me are tangible bodies, visible sirens, incarnate sensualities." Roland Barthes describes this same erotics of language in A Lover's Discourse: "Language is a skin:I rub my language against the other. It is as if I had words instead of fingers, or fingers at the tips of my words. My language trembles with desire. The emotion derives from a double contact:on the one hand, a whole activity of discourse discreetly, indirectly focuses upon a single signified, which is 'I desire you,' and releases, nourishes, ramifies it to the point of explosion (language experiences orgasm upon touching itself); on the other hand I enwrap the other in my words, I caress, brush up against, talk up this contact, I extend myself to make the commentary to which I submit the relation endure." Language moves from the skin to all that is beyond it. Gaston Bachelard says in The Poetics of Space :"the reader of poems is asked to consider an image not as an object and even less as a substitute for an object, but to seize its specific reality." That is, the reality of words themselves. For him, this is an area where the "margin" of unreality enters and perturbs us, wakens us--our words suddenly sound strange, like a word we repeat to ourselves over and over again will sound strange, as if it had a life of its own. He says in The Poetics of Reverie : "I am a dreamer of words, of written words. I think I am reading; a word stops me. I leave the page. The syllables of the word begin to move around. Stressed accents begin to invert. The word abandons its meaning like an overload which is too heavy and prevents dreaming. The words take on other meanings as if they had the right to be young." It's language, after all, which allows us to presence the absent. For Bachelard, everything is at stake, possibly, in every word. It creates an effect he calls "intimate immensity," a sense of everything in every little thing, Blake's "infinity in a grain of sand," or "eternity in an hour." The erotics of language, in paying so much attention to the skin, the border between word and thing, poem and world, extends outwards and creates its own world. The poet becomes like both the lover and the beloved in Song Of Songs where the intensely erotic language not only expresses desire but creates a world for that desire to flourish within:when the beloved's neck is described as a tower, or her cheek like half of a pomegranate, the poet starts to bring in countryside and city, and then fills that out with references to cedars, cypresses, various spices, jewels, hillsides, sheep, palm trees, flowers of various sorts and so on. In the dialogue of the poem the call of one to the other is also a call of city to country and country to city, an attempt by each to capture the other in the song itself which becomes the very world, the vineyard itself.
(-- from EROS AND THE EROTICS OF WRITING, AWP Meeting, April, 2001, by Richard Jackson, at http://www.utc.edu/Academic/English/pm/eros.html)

Cesco still waits. He has, no doubt, dozed off again. He is doze and deze. He walks when walking occurs, eats when eating occurs, sleeps when sleeping occurs. For those of us his students, we have to mindfully practice these teachings.

Life before, during, and without language is our practice hall.

Cesco no longer bow-wows, but I bow deeply to him.

We are orphans and children of orphans.

A...

Silencing.

Within.

Itself.

I've been listening to the words spoken about the administration in Washington, about the fears the current administration will not follow the rule of law and that their worst is yet to come, about American children being the angriest and most medicated kids in the world.

I've read articles about entropic decay in Iraq. Entropy swirls in America in the three US branches of government, in most of our pop-culture.

I've been told many theories. Some by far right supporters of the men in Washington, some by conservative supporters of the Constitution, some by liberal proponents of impeachment. It all seems, at best, difficult.

I'm concerned. More than that, noise and cynicism grow very loud.

Let’s go silent.

Let’s go stand in silence — no silly chants, no fatalistic “We deserve them,” and no pleading with Congress members.

Let’s put our bodies where words have failed.

Let’s remember embodiment and incarnation, mere being and presence.

Let’s go stand…anywhere…in silence, sign-less and anonymous, and wordlessly look within.

Let’s find out where truth waits noiselessly.

What do you (don’t) say?

Let's not, a while.

Though night after night
The moon is stream-reflected,
Try to find where it has touched,
Point even to a shadow.
- Takuan (1573–1645)

Let's while a way.

Let's unknot this.

While away.

A woman frets over signing a lease for doing energy and writing work. She eats a spinach croissant. All the signs are right, she says, then goes to do the deed.

Alone in mountain fastness,
Dozing by the window.
No mere talk uncovers Truth:
The fragrance of those garden plums!
- Bankei (1622–1693)

Two squash from Curtis Island sat together overnight on bakery case. One decided to go home with a woman who rows daily around the island.

The hot weather brings out irritation of opinion from some of the cranky irregulars. By the time I return from letting dog out at Ragged Mtn, one of them admits they've been bad. They spill out the door, the last one calling up to where I sit, saying goodbye. They've exhausted themselves lifting their opinions of this one or that one over the proverbial top. The room is empty. Gregorian chant plays.

Actions, Actions, Actions
Beings are owners of their actions. . . heirs of their actions; they originate from their actions, are bound to their actions, have their actions as their refuge. It is action that distinguishes beings as inferior and superior.
--Culakammavibhanga Sutta

At prison today, three good conversations in three places. One man says it is only our acts that make us solid. Words and promises are see-throughs and slip-throughs. Acts are seen, felt, and stand on their own as evidence of someone presenting himself/herself.

In Belfast Bo Lozoff talks at the Universalist Unitarian Church. He'll do workshops tomorrow at the prison. At end of the evening a massive thunder and lightning storm knocks the lights out for 15 minutes. He leads song, Knocking on Heaven's Door, and all ends well.

Cesco came through the storm with subdued alarm. His mistress is away. He suffers my brand of care.

To the door. Out. I go out and he comes back. To the door. Out. Walk up to brook with flashlight. He gets lost returning. Back in. To the door. Out. Soon I'll get him back in.

I have called to you, Lord, all the day;
I have stretched out my hands to you.
(-- from Psalm 88)

Heavy eyelids.

Too many cookies.

We wonder about one another. Is she well? Is he ok? What will happen?

It's a nice thing to do. In the Course in Miracles this evening the final circle was asked their responses to "I place the future in God's hands."

The Way of heaven is silent,
It has no appearance, no pattern.
It is so vast that its
Limit cannot be reached;
It is so deep that it
Cannot be fathomed.
It is always evolving
Along with people,
But knowledge cannot grasp it.
It turns like a wheel,
Beginninglessly and endlessly,
Effective as a spirit.
Open and empty,
It goes along with the flow,
Always coming afterward
And never in the forefront
- Lao- tzu

Faces come in from years ago. Names are connected. We're well, thank you. And you?

This is what we do in this life -- we inquire after one another. It doesn't matter what the response -- we're all just fine, and someday we'll die. No surprises there.

We live our lives with profound trust. However we understand the reality or notion of God, the fact is our lives are in the hands of one another. If we consider carefully, we come to see that our lives are in the hands of one another.

Thus says the Lord: With heaven my throne and earth my footstool, what house could you build me, what place could you make for my rest? All of this was made by my hand and all of this is mine – it is the Lord who speaks. But my eyes are drawn to the man of humbled and contrite spirit, who trembles at my word.
--(Isaiah 66:1 - 2)

And so, I ask you: How are you? Are you well? And when you die, you will be well, as all shall be.

There.

We've done it.

Our lives.

Hermitage Update Summer 2007; Events at Meetingbrook, Summer 2007

Note: There has been a delay posting Update and Events in their normal places on the website. For Summer 2007 Hermitage Update, and Events at Meetingbrook, please see Today at Meetingbrook, Sunday, May 20, 2007
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or, here:

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 came to Maine. Summer follows. Last patches of snow drew 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 becomes itself. The more we change the more we remain in the itself. Is God the 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 have also embarked on MC's and ILC's in the closed unit protective custody. We are also embarking on 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, the bookshop and bakery continues on 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 hito, that is, 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, everyone 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,

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

(In memoriam, Katherine)

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

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 Eternal Echoes by John O'Donohue. 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 own 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 --11:00am.
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

...


* 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)



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

Many people call themselves a recovering Catholic. Some are returning Catholics. I've never left. And no 12 step program tempts.

No one really knows
The nature of birth
Nor the true dwelling place.
We return to the source
And turn to dust.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

No one ever leaves the source. We just forget where we are.

Be holy in all you do, since it is the Holy One who has called you, and scripture says: Be holy, for I am holy.
-- 1 Peter 1:15 - 16

One is holy.

Be that.

Dead mouse in front room. Cat stretches on dog's rug -- who'd moved to middle room, no doubt, during drama in front room. Both cat and corpus go out front door, one on his own, the other by hand. July morning damp with dew and mildewing mugginess.

See The Flower
One day the Buddha held up a flower in front of an audience of 1,250 monks and nuns. He did not say anything for quite a long time. The audience was perfectly silent. Everyone seemed to be thinking hard, trying to see the meaning behind the Buddha's gesture. Then, suddenly, the Buddha smiled. He smiled because someone in the audience smiled at him and at the flower. . . . To me the meaning is quite simple. When someone holds up a flower and shows it to you, he wants you to see it. If you keep thinking, you miss the flower. The person who was not thinking, who was just himself, was able to encounter the flower in depth, and he smiled. That is the problem of life. If we are not fully ourselves, truly in the present moment, we miss everything.
--Thich Nhat Hanh

We're meant to be just ourselves, able to encounter what is there, with cheer.

Is this "foolishness with God" what Paul talks about?

18. Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.
19. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God. For it is written, “He catches the wise in their own craftiness”;[Job 5:13]
20. and again, “The LORD knows the thoughts of the wise, that they are futile.”[Psalm 94: 11]
21. Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours:
22. whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come — all are yours.
23. And you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.
--1 Corinthians 3:10-23 (New King James Version)

To be wise in this world is "foolishness with God." Things present and things to come are the Christ's, and Christ is God's, and we are deep in this foolishness -- attuned, awake, and attentive.

This is the new monasticism -- outside and in the open, adoring and chanting the reality of what is -- with loving, joyful, serving attention.

It is nephew Mark's birthday, in Brooklyn, in 1979 as we waited at 1914-69th street. It's also the feast of Inigo de Loyola, born in 1491 in Azpeitia in the Basque province of Guipuzcoa in northern Spain.

The Experience of Manresa

He continued towards Barcelona but stopped along the river Cardoner at a town called Manresa. He stayed in a cave outside the town, intending to linger only a few days, but he remained for ten months. He spent hours each day in prayer and also worked in a hospice. It was while here that the ideas for what are now known as the Spiritual Exercises began to take shape. It was also on the banks of this river that he had a vision which is regarded as the most significant in his life. The vision was more of an enlightenment, about which he later said that he learned more on that one occasion than he did in the rest of his life. Ignatius never revealed exactly what the vision was, but it seems to have been an encounter with God as He really is so that all creation was seen in a new light and acquired a new meaning and relevance, an experience that enabled Ignatius to find God in all things. This grace, finding God in all things, is one of the central characteristics of Jesuit spirituality.
Ignatius himself never wrote in the rules of the Jesuits that there should be any fixed time for prayer. Actually, by finding God in all things, all times are times of prayer. He did not, of course, exclude formal prayer, but he differed from other founders regarding the imposition of definite times or duration of prayer. One of the reasons some opposed the formation of the Society of Jesus was that Ignatius proposed doing away with the chanting of the Divine Office in choir. This was a radical departure from custom, because until this time, every religious order was held to the recitation of the office in common. For Ignatius, such recitation meant that the type of activity envisioned for the Society would be hindered.
--from The Life of St. Ignatius of Loyola, by Rev. Norman O'Neal, S.J.

New light, new meaning, new relevance.

God in all things.

Fully ourselves.

Dooryard dew.

Red geraniums.

Nice flowers!

Something new is taking place. Everyone senses it. Some deny their senses. A sound. Can we hear it?

However deep your
Knowledge of the scriptures,
It is no more than a strand of hair
In the vastness of space;
However important seeming
Your worldly experience,
It is but a drop of water in a deep ravine.
- Tokusan

Rowing Rockport Harbor just before start of rain. Oars in oarlocks lifting and pulling, turning and dipping.

There's a lovely boat on one of the islands trying to decide if it has a meetingbrook vocation. There's no telling. Only listening.

Walking with Cesco in the rain at Snow Bowl, the rich fragrance of sweet summer water!

Anything becoming part of meetingbrook would engage the practice of collegiality.

"Some say that only the Pope has universal jurisdiction in the Church, and that the jurisdiction of the Bishops proceeds from him. In my opinion, this thesis is absolutely unacceptable. It has the advantage of being simple and coherent, but it turns its back on many texts and facts of early Christianity.

"In the opposite sense, there is the thesis that affirms the power in the Church, even the power of the Pope, would always be collegial. The Pope would always act as 'head of the College.' He could not act by his own power as 'Vicar of Christ' (I place the last words between quotation marks because I am not comfortable with this expression, which I personally avoid using). ...."I am strongly favorable to a collegial power that can be exercised by the College of Bishops as well as by the Pope himself as its head, representing the whole body."
(Yves Congar, une vie pour la verite, Jean Puyo Interroge le Pere Congar, Paris: Centurion, 1975, pp. 209-210).

Even the church must practice.

An inquiry into God ("con" "gar") is an evening's gift, is eve's very life.

So it is, we look over the water, look out into space. We are marked by camaraderie among colleagues.

An eve's practice.

Listen!

A death-knell is sounding. Compassion is all ears. Failure to engage the hospice patient leaves a bitter, lonely, and despondent atmosphere hanging over the assembled.

The power to impeach stands mute staring at a heedless and sneering attitude of the president and vice president who do not respect nor follow the rule of law in America.

The American people are rightfully frightened of this pattern and trend.

The Constitution of the United States stands behind the mute and staring power of impeachment. Both are looking at the elected representatives of the people of this land. These representatives stand frozen in fear, gazing at their political future and fortunes.

No one is being served. Except, fear. Fear is the only focus of eyes too frightened to take a step to do the right thing, to exercise the power demanded by the Constitution, filtered through elected representatives, serving laws that the people of this land -- all the people -- are served by and accountable to.

# Interbeing and Universal Responsibility
In Mahayana Buddhism in particular great emphasis is laid on realizing the union of wisdom and compassionate action. Human fulfillment is seen to lie in the integration of the inner and outer dimensions of life, not in transcendent wisdom or world-saving compassion alone. As long as we remain delusively convinced of our egoic separation, then we remain cut off from the capacity to empathize fully with others. Such empathy is nothing other than the affective response to insight into the absence of egoic separation. For when the fiction of isolated selfhood is exposed, instead of a gaping mystical void we discover that our individual existence is rooted in relationship with the rest of life. For Thich Nhat Hanh, this is the realization of "interbeing"; for the Dalai Lama that of "universal responsibility": two ideas at the heart of contemporary Engaged Buddhism.
--Stephen Batchelor

It's somehow easier to live with the idea, however fictional, we are isolated selves, separated and detached from one another. This fiction feels familiar -- the anger, the jealousy, the resentments.

Bill Moyers gets perspective on the role of impeachment in American political life from Constitutional scholar Bruce Fein, who wrote the first article of impeachment against President Bill Clinton, and THE NATION's John Nichols, author of THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT.

"The founding fathers expected an executive who tried to overreach and expected the executive would be hampered and curtailed by the legislative branch... They [Congress] have basically renounced — walked away from their responsibility to oversee and check." — Bruce Fein

"On January 20th, 2009, if George Bush and Dick Cheney are not appropriately held to account this Administration will hand off a toolbox with more powers than any President has ever had, more powers than the founders could have imagined. And that box may be handed to Hillary Clinton or it may be handed to Mitt Romney or Barack Obama or someone else. But whoever gets it, one of the things we know about power is that people don't give away the tools." — John Nichols
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/07132007/profile.html

Can you hear it? The knelling continues.

It feels odd to consider that men in such high office of trust are possibly instruments of treachery and ill will. No one wants to believe that.

That's the problem with belief.

It might have nothing to do with actual fact.

There are three things we must do to transcend belief and accompanying paralysis:

The first is vital -- listen. So too, the second is utmost -- listen.

And as the first, and second, the third task is a powerful and irreplaceable one -- listen!

Without belief, listening is.

Once again.

Radical grace.

Kids out on the deck play a game, chanting, "We're following the leader, the leader, the leader; we're following the leader wherever she may go." They are laughing, and tiring as evening fog comes in over harbor.

Refreshing, the wind against the waterfall;
The moon hangs a lantern on the peak,
And the bamboo window glows.
In old age mountains
Are more beautiful than ever.
My resolve:
That these bones be purified by rocks.
- Jakushitsu (14th century)

A young man from Austin Texas brings up a book asking how much it is. We look it up. "No Pluckier Set of Men Anywhere, The Story of Ships and Men in Damariscotta and Newcastle, Maine." It had originally been twenty five dollars, but now was either 35, 45, or 90 depending which website checked. Amazon is going to the high end. And we have two. So we discuss the ins and outs of pricing and selling. His mom is in the store, then leaves. His dad and I chat about the heat in Texas. The lad was born in 1996. That's when we got these two copies into the store, I tell him.

There's so much to consider.

WIE: In your book, The Mystic Heart, you write about how deep mystical experience will engender the depth of care and perspective that will enable us to truly respond to the crisis facing the world, to the needs of the whole. Can you speak about the relationship between mystical experience and the arising of compassion?

WT: Well, in my experience in the mystical life, I find myself becoming more and more aware of the Source as "inherently warmhearted." The vast consciousness that is the Divine is not a cold analytical intelligence—it emanates from its very core a concern. Heidegger said that the essence of being is concern, and this is what many of the traditions have tried to communicate, even the Buddhist tradition. The Buddha said that once a person lets go of the focus on self-interest, then they see that all is emptiness and all is compassion. And that compassion, that ultimate concern that Heidegger is talking about, that "agapic" or selfless love, is the connectivity of all sentient beings. It's the glue that holds it all together.
(--from Transforming the Seeds of Corruption, An interview with Brother Wayne Teasdale, by Amy Edelstein, in What is Enlightenment magazine.)

Selfless love, I suspect, is a trick phrase. But what if it means what it says? What if "selfless love" means we need to dissolve and evacuate self, become self-less in order to engage with love as it is in itself?

The leader/followers vanish with darkness. I straighten chairs and take in Karuna Arts flags from deck.

Earlier a French Horn player with the Metropolitan Opera sat, spoke, and laughed about things Manhattan and Maine. He felt at home. On vacation, sans horn. I offered him my kazoo. He demurred.

Now it's late. Charlie and Dorothea drop in with visitors. Nawang Khechog's Tibetan meditation music plays.

These bones.

As selfless.

A purity, a glue holding.

All.

Together.

When the man-down announcement came over the loudspeaker, one of the men said they'd be back in 5 minutes. Saskia and I sat in the middle of the pod day room as 60 men stepped inside their cells and the doors shut and locked.

There we stay, conversation paused, in the middle of protective custody pod in maximum security prison.

This cold night bamboos stir,
Their sound- now harsh, now soft
Sweeps through the lattice window.
Though ear’s no match for mind,
What need, by lamplight,
Of a single Scripture leaf?
- Kido

It's only conversation. About this and that. Just us and whatever men stop by the table. Three this morning in Close A. Then six at Buddhist group in Activities Building. Finally three at the regular conversation in Tony's tutoring room.

It's just a gift we give one another.

Conversing.

Of this.

And that.

Then, I'll subscribe to "true knowledge."

God speaking to Luther: "Discipleship is not limited to what you can comprehend — it must transcend all comprehension. Not to know where you are going is the true knowledge. My comprehension transcends yours. Thus Abraham went forth from His father… not knowing whither he went. Behold, that is the way of the cross. You cannot find it yourself, so you must let me lead you as though you were a blind man. Wherefore it is not you, no man… but I myself, who instruct you by my Word and Spirit in the way you should go. Not the work which you choose, not the suffering you devise, but the road which is clean contrary to all you choose or contrive or desire — that is the road you must take. To that I call you and in that you must be my disciple."
103-4, DISCIPLESHIP AND THE CROSS, Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Then, I'll concede to work "clean contrary to all you choose or contrive or desire."

Tommy said it yesterday about his way right now: "I don't have the faintest idea."

Michael runs about getting papers signed and systems engaged.

The way is Christ-instructed.

Then, I'll be an someone under instruction. Con-struction.

With.

No.

Idea.

James, they say, was beheaded in 44AD(CE). Brother of John. A fisherman. Now thousands yearly make pilgrimage to Compostela. Santiago de Compostela means get your shoes in order, there's walking to do.

Teamwork
The Buddha compared faith to a blind giant who meets up with a very sharp-eyed cripple, called wisdom. The blind giant, called faith, says to the sharp-eyed cripple, "I am very strong, but I can't see; you are very weak, but you have sharp eyes. Come and ride on my shoulders. Together we will go far." The Buddha never supported blind faith, but a balance between heart and mind, between wisdom and faith. The two together will go far. The saying that blind faith can move mountains unfortunately omits the fact that, being blind, faith doesn't know which mountain needs moving. That's where wisdom is essential, which means that a thorough understanding of the teaching is crucial.
--Ayya Khema

Beheading is barbarous.

Head and heart must be retained for balance and equanimity.

Mary Beth walked the pilgrimage.

I don't walk enough these days.

My understanding is not thorough.

I keep on.

One man says "ascendant masters". Another says "praying mantis." A third says "holy spirit." I'm saying (this being Tuesday Conversation) "mind."

In the stillness by the empty window
I sit in formal meditation
Navel and nose in alignment,
Ears parallel with shoulders.
Moonlight floods the room;
The rain stops, but the eaves drip and drip.
Perfect this moment;
In the vast emptiness, my understanding deepens.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

Does it matter what the imagination chooses to represent the giving and receiving of insight and intuition?

One woman says "Jesus." Another says "higher power." A third says "multidimensional spirit." Someone else says "cosmotheandric revelation."

If all is mind, and there is no isolated, separated, or independent "self" -- then, everything is connected to everything. We are not separate from one another, not from anything.

Name the flow of insight as coming from whatever direction you wish, it is one complete whole even if funneled through particular imaginings from designated sources. When, if fact, there is only one source and one truth: that source is all sources; that truth, all truths.

The proof of any darkness or evil is not other than the proof of any light or goodness, namely, in the fruit. When the fruit is egoistic self-serving power or possession, something's wrong. When the fruit is self-emptying service with humility and inclusion of the needs of others -- something akin to love begins.

Perfect this moment.

Whole.

As it is.

Kindness and sorrow are kindred.

We can, of course, pretend that sorrow is beneath us. The strong know fate, and destiny, and dominion sovereignty. Sorrow, for many, is not an aspect of their god. Their god is ruthless and decisive, above it all and triumphant.

"One who rejects delusions to search for truth,
May achieve skill in discrimination,
But such a student will never reach enlightenment
Because they mistake the enemy for their own child."

Some Christians admire an angel but hate a devil. Some Confucians pine for the ancient kingdom but complain of the present government. All of them attempt to take hold of the true by abandoning the false. They struggle endlessly, but never attain true peacefulness. Zen students who try to reach truth by rejecting delusions are making the same mistake. Learn silence and work on constantly in silence, to see clearly what the mind is.
(--Yoka-daishi, d.713, Commentary by Nyogen Senzaki, Excerpted from Buddhism and Zen)

A new whirligig with four sailboats, the cloth sails of which tack as they circumnavigate the pointless four directions of wind vane, rises from the porch of the harbour room. In the boat channels of the water, schooners and assorted craft sail by. The marine engineer says he could teach sailing using the whirligig. He says if we were to attain the lovely wooden sailboat he'd look after the engine and systems.

Joannie was up for 5 days staying over the shop. She was pleased to tell her Princeton stories to all hands.

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
(--Poem: "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye, from The Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Eighth Mountain Press, 1995.)

As we age we suspect that each phone message could be the last sound heard of a loved one's voice, how each nod and smile to passing stranger could be the final one, and how no step across wet field with old dog companion might follow, suddenly, the last step taken together.

I watch mortality sidle alongside my awareness. Someone will have to pick up the clothes left fell about. The sweet drizzle of July dusk cannot dampen the joy of evening walk.

An Irish melancholy finds quiet company this solitary Monday.

We'll wait a bit longer for kindness to turn the corner of white fence gone tender.

Could it find this room?

Will I welcome it to my amnesiac being?

Accept its dwelling?

Remember to be.

Kind.

Apparently the Secretary of Defense cried while talking about writing condolence notes to families of military personnel killed in Iraq.

Mr. Gates captured the sadness we feel about American kids trapped in a desert waiting to be blown up, sent there by men who once refused to go to a warped war themselves.
(--in column by Maureen Dowd, Published: July 22, 2007)

I find myself crying listening to real men and women speak about their experiences in combat. There are tears when the woman pilot in wheelchair and with service dog talked to an anonymous "Sir" whose empty absence conjured the one who sent her to her brokenness. Tears for the helicopter pilot who came back alone from a mission, who cannot straighten his head and neck. And tears for the soldier whose wheelchair was a segwayish balancing wheel atop wheel as he related "breathing, breathing, step; breathing breathing, step," attempting to make it from transport plane seat to his waiting wheelchair in rear.

"An ideal Zen student neither seeks the true
Nor avoids the untrue.
They know that these are merely dualistic ideas
That have no form.
Non-form is neither empty nor not empty.
It is the true form of Buddha’s wisdom."

To assist you in the interpretation of this stanza I shall paraphrase a portion of Shin-jin-mei, a poem written by the Third Patriarch in China.

“Truth is like vast space without entrance or exit. There is nothing more, nor nothing less. Foolish people limit themselves, covering their eyes, but truth is never hidden. Some attend lectures trying to grasp truth in the words of others. Some accumulate books trying to dig truth from the pile of trash. They are both wrong. A few of the wiser ones may learn meditation in their effort to reach an inner void. They chose the void rather than outer entanglements, but it is still the same old dualistic trick. Just think non-thinking if you are a true Zen student.

“There you do not know anything, but you are with everything. There is no choice nor preference, and dualism will vanish by itself. But if you stop moving and hold quietness, that quietness is ever in motion. If children make a noise, you will scold them loudly so that the situation is worse than before. Just forget and ignore the noise, and you will attain peace of mind. When you forget your liking and disliking, you will get a glimpse of oneness. The serenity of this middle way is quite different from the inner void.”
(from, Sho-do-ka – Song of Realization, by Yoka-daishi {d.713}, Commentary by Nyogen Senzaki 1953)

I'm not there. Not yet. Maybe never. So, I try. And then I try to keep that "try" mind.

There are so many brilliant men leading the effort to rule the world, own the oil, kill the enemy, and punish dissent. They are far more brilliant than those among us whose practice is to hear another, serve a brother, console someone suffering, listen to grieving loss, and share some joy when it presents itself.

So many brilliant minds as operatives. So few listening hearts as humans.

The fountains mingle with the river,
And the rivers with the Ocean,
The winds of Heaven mix forever
With a sweet emotion;
Nothing in the world is single;
All things by law divine
In one spirit meet and mingle.
Why not I with thine? —
(--1st stanza from poem: "Love's Philosophy" by Percy Bysshe Shelley.)

When people first begin to suspect and realize that Jesus was not other than Christ, they begin to make room in their consciousness for his words to seep deep within.

This is called listening.

It is not blinding, (to throw contrast to Paul's metaphor). It is silently shaded with longing to hear -- which accompanies a sudden and irreparable willingness to listen.

Please, let's hurry. There are men and women trapped in the desert waiting to be blown up.

Those whose imagination is vicious do not care.

This is a call to practice to those who do.