Her daughter sat on stool. Her best friend on wood bench. She sat by wood stove. The conversation went from John O"Donohue to Eckhart Tolle, to what would I read if I had only a month or little more to live.

Then she said she'd decided. She'd stop chemo. How would the other two feel? They'd respect her wishes. The room fell quiet. That's what I'll do, she said.

To learn to be always in a state of meditation means never to let your vital energy wane. You would never allow it to do so if it were certain that you were to die tomorrow. It wanes because you forget about death. Grit your teeth, fix your gaze, and observe death at this moment. You have to feel it so strongly that is seems as if it’s attacking you. Fearless energy comes from this. At this moment death is right before your eyes. It’s not something you can afford to neglect.
- Suzuki Shosan (1579-1655) Daily Zen

The prospect of death focuses.

She'll come back, she says. I've ordered Anam Cara for her. The final chapter is worth the price of the book.

It's about dying.

It's First Advent.

It's about watching.

As we live and breathe.

The man just turned 75 remembers at age 8 deciding to walk from house to barn to tell his dad he loved him. He tells of how, half way there, he stopped, thought, turned and went back to house. He never did get to say it, his dad dying ten years ago just shy of 100.

But he'd said it out loud, tonight, right there in a circle.

All obstructions of defilements
and karmas of worry and trouble,
are in origin, empty.
All causes and effects
are dreams and illusions.
The great Way is empty and vast.
It is beyond thought and deliberation.
You, at this instant, have this
Dharma and are without lack.
- Fa-yung (593-657)

We think it is too late to retrieve or repair. It's not.

Origin is always at hand.

Fathers remain close.

Listening.

Near the open.

Barn.

I've never been where I'm not now.

Silent Illumination

Silently and serenely, one forgets all words,
Clearly and vividly, it appears before you.
When one realizes it, time has no limits.
When experienced, your surroundings come to life.
Singularly illuminating is this bright awareness,
Full of wonder is the pure illumination.
- Hung Chih Cheng Chueh (1092-1157)

I'm just grateful to be here.

With you.

The light of presence through emptiness.

Singularly radiating is the wondrous Light;
Free is it from the bondage of matter and the senses.
Not binding by words and letters,
The Essence is nakedly exposed in its pure eternity.
Never defiled is the Mind-nature;
It exists in perfection from the very beginning.
By merely casting away your delusions
The Suchness of Buddhahood is realized.
- Seng T’san (d.606)

What is emptiness?

The light of presence-through.

Things get dicey in scripture as end of liturgical year plays out. The Book of Revelation fits the day -- early darkness, wet, chill, rain, gusts between 30-60mph. Maine coast is suitable backdrop for shivering warnings of destruction and decimation.

Before the cape on the harbor blows over we'll brace ourselves with Buddha's words.

Better than a thousand hollow words
is one word that brings peace.
Better than a thousand hollow verses
is one verse that brings peace.
It is better to conquer yourself
than to win a thousand battles.
Then the victory is yours.
(-- Buddha in the Dhammapada)

Of course its the end of the world as we know it. In passing, a former military man says he's exercising his rights before they're taken away by purchasing a lot of bullets and a new gun or two. When asked why, he says a lot of people are frightened by the new people coming into power in Washington. I wonder. He might be in a time-delay reaction-warp to the atmosphere of trepidation so rife these past eight years. Or, he could be a right-wing racist intent on survival once the 'coloreds' start to take over the country. Maybe he's a religious fundamentalist getting ready to shoot for Jesus to help the rapture along. Either way -- I don't know -- the end of the world at times seems an attractive scenario.

I don't own a gun. Like the Zen Abbot eye to eye with the fierce Samurai telling him he could run the monk through with his sword, the monk replies "Didn't you know I could be run through?" I'd like to think when the shooting starts (for some reason I cannot fathom) I'd be able to remember the colloquy and say: "Didn't you know I have one more second to breathe now that I've been shot through?"

When some were talking about the Temple, remarking how it was adorned with fine stonework and votive offerings, Jesus said, ‘All these things you are staring at now – the time will come when not a single stone will be left on another: everything will be destroyed.’ And they put to him this question: ‘Master,’ they said ‘when will this happen, then, and what sign will there be that this is about to take place?’
‘Take care not to be deceived,’ he said ‘because many will come using my name and saying, “I am he” and, “The time is near at hand.” Refuse to join them. And when you hear of wars and revolutions, do not be frightened, for this is something that must happen but the end is not so soon.’ Then he said to them, ‘Nation will fight against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes and plagues and famines here and there; there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.’
(--Luke 21:5-11)

Destruction's not as interesting as you might think. It's something anybody can do. Murder/suicides are increasing. Shooting up malls, churches, and classrooms are happening at an odd alarming rate. Solitary self-inflicted wounds or death seems a choice these days in the same way one might say "I'd like that pink thingy with black trim" at a shop. We're blase about the carnage. We're a nation of options -- if you think this is bad, there's other ways it could get worse -- "choose your poison," the doomsday folks mutter, thinking it sounds profound.

Pema Chodron says that the spiritual life makes room for all of it -- the delightful and the desperate. Things continually fall apart then fall back together again -- only to fall apart once more then come back again. It is the nature of things to fall apart. It is the nature of humans to find a way to continue through the debris. Impermanence is run through and through all of existence.

Hail

Mary who mattered to me, gone or asleep
among fruits, spilled

in ash, in dust, I did not

leave you. Even now I can't keep from
composing you, limbs & blue cloak

& soft hands. I sleep to the sound

of your name, I say there is no Mary
except the word Mary, no trace

on the dust of my pillowslip. I only

dream of your ankles brushed by dark violets,
of honeybees above you

murmuring into a crown. Antique queen,

the night dreams on: here are the pears
I have washed for you, here the heavy-winged doves,

asleep by the hyacinths. Here I am,

having bathed carefully in the syllables
of your name, in the air and the sea of them, the sharp scent

of their sea foam. What is the matter with me?

Mary, what word, what dust
can I look behind? I carried you a long way

into my mirror, believing you would carry me

back out. Mary, I am still
for you, I am still a numbness for you.

(--Poem "Hail" by Mary Szybist, in Poetry Magazine, Nov.2008)

I knew two Marys in Albany. I knew a Mary in Pittsburgh. I knew a Mary in Camden. I knew a Mary in the Bronx. One in Attleboro. Another in Nanuet. All are out of my life. Three have died. No tellin' about the others. We fall apart and go beyond. I bow to their memory. They could be at these words the way southerly wind is at the windows with ecstatic rain. I don't know, at all, where they are. But these words carry them within.

As I set to leave this hermitage room I marvel at the force of wind pounding building, huge swells blowing into harbor, streets abandoned, night fallen. Buddhist conversation was intimate and rich with MaryAnn, Saskia, and Pema.

“Love of the Truth Puts You on the Spot,” is the Naropa Institute motto.

Fall apart and go beyond.

Spot on!

Fr. Joseph spoke about those being remembered (Saints Andrew Dung-Lac and his Companions, Martyrs of Vietnam) before mass this morning.

Like peace activists everywhere, punished, or those who worked and died for racial equality, these martyrs spanning time suffered at the hands of ignorance and uncaring.

A life can end at any moment. What would I want to be my final comprehension?

To look at life is like being in a dream;
It is really noisy being in the dream.
Everything stops when the dreamer suddenly awakens,
And in the same way as a dreamer awakes,
The wise understand how to wake from the dream.
The deluded believe in the dream and are disturbed
That understanding and dreaming seem to be two aspects.
When once the truth is comprehended,
There is no other comprehension.
- Master Pen Ching (d. 761)

There is something I would like to comprehend. Why is it we refuse so passionately to accept within us the broken and suffering? Thus there is lashing out at others, punishing them, treating with scorn and disdain, and finally, missing our true light as it is pushed closed behind doors of fear and clinging opinion. Shut tight with certainty.

Who are the people going beyond lie and fault? Who are they?

They never allowed a lie to pass their lips and no fault can be found in them. (--Apocalypse 14:5)

Do I just not see? So often I live a lie. Do the faultless and truthful pass among us without being...seen?

The thirteen years at this odd shop have taught me some. Some compassion Some wariness. Some patience. Mostly it has taught me some foolishness. The absurdity of my fixed opinions, the absurdity of others' hard and fast habits of thought. Kindness is lacking when we cling to fixed and hard habits of unreflective and uncompromising mental and emotional identity.

Only kindness is worth noting. Tonight I note kindness. Little gifts letting pass what faults rise up. Someone giving some length. Not pinning with flaws easily pinned. Things like waiting for time to go by, finishing making a fool of oneself without someone making it worse by pointing it out.

We are faulty at the same time as we are faultless; living in flaw while being flawless. We are hurtful and inconsiderate while being healing agents touching one another's lives with sudden sparks of gentle consideration. Maybe that's our crazed experience in this existence -- the convoluting glory of forgiveness, the surprising grace of genuine feeling for one another!

The armies of the righteous omnisciently rumble by. Pinning down and pointing out faults and flaws. There's a muteness undergirding all accusation, one that doesn't issue forth from marauding plunderers. The guardians and custodians of others' failures do not share their sound, the sound that reverberates within them that echoes the sound of judgment and castigation spewed from their lips. They hold themselves in camera. Nothing they externalize finds recognition internally. Correspondence is a severed ear. What remains is the projected failure of acceptance in the dismaying sound of detonation that blows hands from bodies. We experience the futility of an unforgiving hand.

If being a Christian means being right, I fail. There's a meanness in us when we refuse to allow kindness to come to light. Offense given, offense taken; defense on field, defense defining fear.

Let's try something new. Let's hold out our hand.

Look Deeply into the Palm of Your Hand

If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.

To be born means that something which did not exist comes into existence. But the day we are "born" is not our beginning. It is a day of continuation. But that should not make us less happy when we celebrate our "Happy Continuation Day."

Since we are never born, how can we cease to be? This is what the Heart Sutra reveals to us. When we have tangible experience of non-birth and non-death, we know ourselves beyond duality. The meditation on "no separate self" is one way to pass through the gate of birth and death.

Your hand proves that you have never been born and you will never die. The thread of life has never been interrupted from time without beginning until now. Previous generations, all the way back to single cell beings, are present in your hand at this moment. You can observe and experience this. Your hand is always available as a subject for meditation.
(-- Thich Nhat Hanh, Present Moment, Wonderful Moment)

Once our hand is touched with kindness things come to light.

Through the gateless gate we pass.

Heart of Christ. Mind of Buddha. Mind of Christ. Heart of Buddha.

The trouble with being born is the forgetting of heart and mind.

Until we begin to lose both.

Oh!

What's the worse thing that could happen?

Don't ask!

The hermit practices the
Bleached Bones Meditation,
The Mahasattva vanishes into the void
Like sweet dew, each of the six senses
Is completely clean and pure,
Both the mind and the world
Are out of the ordinary.
For me, the True Source has
Not yet completely matured,
And the residue of unrooted
Habits still lingers on.
It is like the falcon who although set free,
Still feels the tug of the midnight leash.
- Su Shih (1075)

To ask is to extend from what is within the desire to be connected with what is without.

Any questions?

Stack cord of wood. Listen to Dogma Free America on ipod while carrying and fitting wood. There is no end to the awful things done in the name of dogma.

What will thaw us from the fearful clutch of rigid thinking?

Although we know that a
Frozen pond is entirely water,
The sun’s heat is necessary to melt it.
Although we awaken to the fact
That an ordinary person is Buddha,
The power of dharma is necessary
To make it permeate our cultivation.
When the pond has melted,
The water flows freely.
When falsity is extinguished,
The mind will be numinous
And dynamic and then its function
Of penetrating brightness will manifest.
- Kuei-feng

The notion of king is not attractive. Royalty is not a metaphor I pronounce. I prefer presence.

And when everything is subjected to him, then the Son himself will be subject in his turn to the One who subjected all things to him, so that God may be all in all.
(--1 Corinthians 15:28)

Better to table the king talk and ask what "all in all" really means. It might change everything if that phrase were understood.

Everyone would be intimately present to the inner reality of Reality Itself.

And the King will answer, “I tell you solemnly, in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers [or sisters] of mine, you did it to me.”
(--from Matthew 25:31-46)

I never know who is in front of me. I often disappoint with lack of awareness. I'll have to look into a new way of seeing what is there, seeing through to what is behind what is there, and seeing light even in the darkest dimness in myself and others.

When I meet someone who knows better than anyone, whose criticisms are stored in a dim understanding of our mutuality, who fears that no one is as good as they are -- I have to learn to see.

Metaphors of dominion and dominance are unpronounceable to me. I stutter when they demand to be uttered in the open away from their boxed storage in musty closets.

I look away. I go elsewhere. I'm looking for a way to say a world without comparison.

Two conversation circles with inmates in prison followed by deliberations about teaching a college course on Aesthetics in there, then finding out at security desk I had some other guy's driver's license since two days ago leaving prison security window.

I've been someone else for two days. No wonder I couldn't think straight.

Good and evil all arise from one’s own mind.
But tell me, besides your activities,
thoughts, and discrimination,
What do you call your own mind?
Where does your mind come from?
If you can discern where your own mind comes from,
Then boundless karmic obstruction
Will be cleared away instantly,
And all sorts of marvels will come of themselves
Without being sought.
- Ta Hui (1089-1163)

Being someone else isn't anything you know about. It just happens, as one would look down at the picture on a license you begin to recognize is not yours. How long have I not been me? Not just this time, but at any time?

Stanley Kunitz believed, wrote Sven Birkerts in his essay Clarity and Obscurity in Poetry , "that poems can contain 'moments of wilderness' — lines that don't necessarily themselves make sense but which, when taken away, impoverish the work."

So too with our lives -- events or behavior that make no sense in the general intention of living sanely, but if left out, diminish the life.

Everything is the longing of the most intimate itself for relationality expressing the oneness within.

Chances are there is a progression something like the following: the reverential is the referential is the relational.

What is holy-real is self-referential in its relationality.

What is occurring below and beyond awareness is face to face encounter with who we are within the other. We look, but might not see. We listen, not hearing. Touch, without sensing. Become, and feel, but no comprehension.

What today is called "spiritual" is the web of life in its wholeness inviting and revealing itself to each one of us.

• Prayer, the kind that sits in generous oneness in the surround of the holy (the wholly-other/not-other), helps.
  

• Meditation, the kind that simply attends what is with gracious openness, helps.
  

• Service, the kind that proffers hand and time, presence and attentiveness, to whomever and whatever at the door of our being, helps.

Help, as they say, is on the way.

• When we bow we seem to be bowing to someone or something outside us, but we are bowing to that within ourselves reflecting what is holy-real.

• When we seem to be referencing someone or something outside ourselves, we are directing the energy of bringing back home what longs to belong where it belongs.

• When we surrender illusory autonomy and no longer cultivate separateness we retell original narrative of union and communion.

What is most intimate is that which is within us -- a oneness belonging to each and all.

Hide and Seek

It's hard not

to jump out

instead of

waiting to be

found. It's

hard to be

alone so long

and then hear

someone come

around. It's

like some form

of skin's developed

in the air

that, rather

than have torn,

you tear.

(--Poem "Hide and Seek" by Kay Ryan)

If I forget who I am, no need to remind me. I'll settle for a benign exchange, a kindly nod, a wave in passing.

The way falls lightly from the one within the intimacy of no-name presence.

Each way, found this way, is the way.

Kiewslowski, in Dialogue VII suggests we steal ourselves when we lie about or deny right relationship. This is sudden thought.

If correct relationship is the most intimate encounter with what is one within, we steal the wholeness from itself and deprive ourselves what we are

Nonviolence

Nonviolence belongs to a continuum from the personal to the global, and from the global to the personal. One of the most significant Buddhist interpretations of nonviolence concerns the application of this ideal to daily life. Nonviolence is not some exalted regimen that can be practiced only by a monk or a master; it also pertains to the way one interacts with a child, vacuums a carpet, or waits in line. Besides the more obvious forms of violence, whenever we separate ourselves from a given situation (for example, through inattentiveness, negative judgments, or impatience), we "kill" something valuable. However subtle it may be, such violence actually leaves victims in its wake: people, things, one's own composure, the moment itself. According to the Buddhist reckoning, these small-scale incidences of violence accumulate relentlessly, are multiplied on a social level, and become a source of the large-scale violence that can sweep down upon us so suddenly. . . . One need not wait until war is declared and bullets are flying to work for peace, Buddhism teaches. A more constant and equally urgent battle must be waged each day against the forces of one's own anger, carelessness, and self-absorption.
(- Kenneth Kraft, Inner Peace, World Peace)

We live and die in silent, oftentimes unknown, expression of the longing welling from within.

God is this longing for itself.

There is no path to God.

One's own way is what is longing for itself.

Cold arrives.

Under the trees, among the rocks, a thatched hut:
Verses and sacred commentaries live there together.
I’ll burn the books I carry in my bag,
But how can I forget the verses written in my gut?
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Just in time.

Lecture in prison today: Spirituality -- A Personal Way To What Is Within.

The most intimate is within us we are one.

Hay lay rolled by outer trees off field in Dover-Foxcroft.

Sun slant cold with flutter of flurry a November reminder of what she keeps at bay.

All of the hundreds and thousands of
Dharma doors return to the mind.
The immeasurable subtle virtues
are in the source of mind.
All the doors of perception,
meditation, wisdom,
spiritual penetration,
and transformation are
contained in one’s mind.
- Fa-yung (593-657)

The drive on backroad Maine was worth the winding hills.

There's nowhere, really, to go. And no end in sight.

It is the prayer of passing seconds and horses standing by fence that keeps us sane.

A new furnace and finished kitchen window trim inside as 20 degree dark outside keeps silence.

Are the dead as real as the living?

Moon quarters stretching cloud over cold mountain. At root, we are all homeless.

Sitting Alone

Meditating deeply upon Dharma
Reach the depth of the source.
Branching streams cannot compare to this source!
Sitting alone in a great silence
Even though the heavens turn and the earth is upset,
You will not even wink.
- Jakushitsu Genko Zenji (1290–1368)

I would find a boat with wood burning stove, enough room to turn around, sit and read, place words next to another, and let stars converse in vast aloneness.

"What one writes is merely the ashes of one's experience." (--Franz Kafka)

Black cat stealths to foot of bed. Night passes time playing with falling temperatures. New furnace arrives tomorrow. We burn paper money for warmth.

“The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.” (--Gilbert Chesterton)

Chesterton is ambiguous. Read him both ways.

Be found gone.

White dog comes into room, looks at me, turns, leaves.

The French poet who edited Mythologies looks at words and wants them silent.

Buddhas and ordinary men are equally illusions.
If you go looking for the true form,
it is a speck of dust in the eye.
The burnt bones of this old monk
embrace heaven and earth;
Do no scatter the cold ashes to mountain and sky.
(- Bukko, d. 1286)

I have wandered far from the monastery of silent awareness. Then, tonight, in chapel/zendo, sitting. And walking. Then chanting compline by candlelight. When moon came through new glass wall not even clouds had a word in mind.

Passer-By, These Are Words

Passer-by, these are words. But instead of reading
I want you to listen: to this frail
Voice like that of letters eaten by grass.

Lend an ear, hear first of all the happy bee
Foraging in our almost rubbed-out names.
It flits between two sprays of leaves,
Carrying the sound of branches that are real
To those that filigree the still unseen.

Then know an even fainter sound, and let it be
The endless murmuring of all our shades.
Their whisper rises from beneath the stones
To fuse into a single heat with that blind
Light you are as yet, who can still gaze.

May your listening be good! Silence
Is a threshold where a twig breaks in your hand,
Imperceptibly, as you attempt to disengage
A name upon a stone:

And so our absent names untangle your alarms.
And for you who move away, pensively,
Here becomes there without ceasing to be.
(--Poem by Yves Bonnefoy)

We're not quite sure how to exist without form. Nor if it is wanted.

November today was desolate. Empty. So my soul spilt itself into no container.

All over.

The sense of impending news with formless silence deep enough to remain unsaid.

As we become absent names.

Let him have his money back.

Stop Clenching

The moment we want happiness, we start to cling to it in our mind. First, we cling to our own idea of happiness. We relate to the outside world as a source of satisfaction and look outward for the things we normally associate with happiness--accumulating wealth, success, fame or power. As soon as we become attached to any idea--happiness, success or whatever--there is already some stress. Clinging is itself a stressful state, and everything that derives from it is also stressful. For example, try to clench your hand to make a fist. As soon as you start to clench your hand, you have to use energy to keep your fingers clenched tightly. When you let go of the clenching, your hand is free again.

So it is with the mind. When it is in such a state of clenching, it can never be free. It can never experience peace or happiness, even if one has all the wealth, fame and power in the world.
(-Thynn Thynn, Living Meditation, Living Insight)

Rather, give nothing back.

“Sir,” said he “I had heard you were a hard man, reaping where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered; so I was afraid, and I went off and hid your talent in the ground. Here it is; it was yours, you have it back.” But his master answered him, “You wicked and lazy servant! So you knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I have not scattered? Well then, you should have deposited my money with the bankers, and on my return I would have recovered my capital with interest. So now, take the talent from him and give it to the man who has the five talents. For to everyone who has will be given more, and he will have more than enough; but from the man who has not, even what he has will be taken away. As for this good-for-nothing servant, throw him out into the dark, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth.”’
(--from Matthew 25)

Don't vote for the bailout.

If a capitalist, a king, or a god wants a return on his money experiment, let him find someone else to kowtow to him.

I'm off the bus.

I'm walking.

"When they said REPENT REPENT, I wonder what they meant." It's a Leonard Cohen lyric.

Immovable as mountains,
single-mindedly seeking true awakening,
with a mind inspired to effort
cultivate the path of concentration,
practice diligently for countless eons
with never any regression or digression.
- Avatamsaka Sutra

"There is a crack, a crack in everything
that's how the light gets in."

Another song. Another Cohen meditation.

Friday night foggy mist.

Fire in wood stove.

Comes midnight.

Alaska, Georgia, and Minnesota still await an elected senator.

William P. Young's The Shack has been read and listened to.

There's a lot to be enthusiastic about.

The moon’s appearance, a river of stars,
snow-clad pines, clouds hovering on mountain peaks.
In darkness, they glow with brightness.
In shadows, they shine with a splendid light.
Like the dreaming of a crane flying in empty space,
like the clear, still water of an autumn pool,
endless eons dissolve into nothingness,
each indistinguishable from the other.
In this illumination all striving is forgotten.
- Hung Chih Cheng Chueh (1092-1157)

An American aide worker was killed in Pakistan.

Two American soldiers were killed in Iraq.

Executive signing statements and executive privilege are being tied into a tight unraveling knot.

There's much to be wary about, much to lament.

It rains in Maine tonight.

A good conversation at the shop.

We must be vigilant.

Cynicism is afoot.

Let's change.

What do we value?

Practice is nothing other than the
capacity to arouse fearless energy.
Without this energy,
whatever practices you perform,
whatever virtuous feelings you have,
all are without substance.
Without this energy,
will you be prepared when
you come face to face with death
in your ordinary state of mind?
How then will you persevere over other hardships?
- Suzuki Shosan (1579-1655)

The furnace is gone in the house. It will fall to 25 degrees under the full white moon. Wood stove in kitchen glows through glass doors.

We spoke of animals tonight. Peter Singer's ethic of all animals are equal:

Many philosophers have proposed the principle of equal consideration of interests, in some form or other, as a basic moral principle; but, as we shall see in more detail shortly, not many of them have recognized that this principle applies to members of other species as well as to our own. Bentham was one of the few who did realize this. In a forward-looking passage, written at a time when black slaves in the British dominions were still being treated much as we now treat nonhuman animals, Bentham wrote:

The day may come when the rest of the animal creation may acquire those rights which never could have been witholden from them but by the hand of tyranny. The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sarrum, are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate. What else is it that should trace the insuperable line? Is it the faculty of reason, or perhaps the faculty of discourse? But a full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversable animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose they were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason, nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?
(from ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL, By Peter Singer, from: ANIMAL RIGHTS AND HUMAN OBLIGATIONS)

The light is as midday at midnight.

That we might see.

Wind blows from northwest rippling water as tide begins to fall.

Not drawing the dichotomy between humans and nature, we are not other than nature. Thus we think about how best live in nature considering our needs, animal needs, and the rest of this planet. That's what I'm listening to as ethics philosopher Peter Singer responds to a question about a morally defensible position regarding environment, animals, and nature.

Walking town, living an ethical life suggests mindful appreciation of all of Being along with caring ways of behaving with and within Nature and Being. One zen teacher calls it 100% correct relationship. Responsible and respectful engagement/interaction calls forth from us a new way of being-in-the-world. Awareness invites compassion and forgiveness.

A lord asked Takuan, a Zen Teacher, to suggest how he might pass the time. He felt his days very long attending his office and sitting stiffly to receive the homage of others. Takuan wrote eight Chinese characters and gave them to the man:

Not twice this day
Inch time foot gem
This day will not come again.
Each minute is worth a priceless gem.
- Master Takuan (1573-1645)
http://deoxy.org/koan/32

It is a question of how are we to be with one another. John Rawls' theory of justice contract formulated behind a wall of ignorance suggests the rules and standards we develop will be fairer and more just if the possibility exists that it would be applied equally to us whether we were black or white, male or female, Arab or Italian, Jew or Hindu, rich or poor, very intelligent or not so intelligent.

We are capable of a just society.

A Wonderful Painting

A wonderful painting is the result of feeling in your fingers. If you have the feeling of the thickness of the ink in your brush, the painting is already there before you paint. When you dip your brush into the ink you already know the result of your drawing, or else you cannot paint. So before you do something, "being" is there, the result is there. Even though you look as if you were sitting quietly, all your activity, past and present, is included; and the result of your sitting is also already there. You are not resting at all. All the activity is included within you. That is your being. So all results of your practice are included in your sitting. This is our practice, our zazen.
-Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

To turn our attention to what is already there within us, we participate in the creation of a wonderful society, a wonderful world within which to live in peace and justice for all.

This Veteran's Day, elsewhere in the world the 11th month, 11th day, 11th hour of the signing of the Armistice ending World War I -- we might consider ending all war.

Even the war within our minds.

The war in our hearts.

The physical wars everywhere.

But how?

“...we are invited to forget ourselves on purpose, cast our awful solemnity to the winds and join in the general dance.”
­(--Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation)

The Buddha said everything has Buddha nature. That's a first step. That, and then we have to solve the 1st koan:

Chao-chou's Dog
The Case
A monk asked Chao-chou, "Has the dog Buddha nature or not?" Chao-chou said, "Mu."

Wu-Men's Verse
Dog, buddha nature--
the full presentation of the whole;
with a a bit of "has" or "has not"
body is lost, life is lost.

Take your time.

Start now.

It's 11, 11, 11.

Alone on the bay. Rowing to bell buoy. Rise and fall of oars. Swell and trough of water.

Better than a hundred years of mischief
is one day spent in contemplation.
Better than a hundred years of ignorance
is one day spent in reflection.
Better than a hundred years in idleness
is one day spent in determination.
Better to live one day wondering
how all things arise and pass away.
- Buddha in the Dhammapada

Some solitude at harbor. Walking to Rockport cemetery.

Listening to The Shack, rowing and walking. Rising and falling.

Wondering about September 11th during soup and bratwurst.

The night stillness of inner harbor water.

We are, Paul says, where God lives.

Didn’t you realise that you were God’s temple and that the Spirit of God was living among you?
(1Cor.3)

After years of dark and shadowy hissing that we are stupid but muscular sellers of cellars of fear and cynicism, we hear a clear and open sound that speaks to us as an attentive mother/father saying we are the thoughtful, loving, and just dwelling places of the light-filled holy finding its way through us into the world.

Notes on Serene Reflection

Silently and serenely one forgets all words;
clearly and vividly That appears before you.
When one realizes it, it is vast and without edges;
in Essence, one is clearly aware.
Singularly reflecting is this bright awareness,
full of wonder is this pure reflection.
- Hung Chih (1091-1157)

If we look around with simple wonder, there is a wide vista coming to be seen that has been hidden behind unkindness and deception. We are beginning, again, to see the awakening body/soul of a too long comatose country.

Arthur Miller liked to say that the essence of America was its promise. In the darkest of the dark times, in wartime and drastic economic downturns, in the crucible of witch hunts or racial strife, in the traumatic aftermath of a terror attack, that promise lights the way forward.

This week marked a renewal of America’s promise. Voters went to the polls and placed a bet on a better future, handing the power to an unlikely candidate who promised to draw people together rather than exploit their differences.

The final tally wasn’t close.

We still have two wars to deal with and an economic crisis as severe as any in decades. But we should take a moment to recognize the stunning significance of this moment in history. It’s worth a smile, a toast, a sigh, a tear.

America should be proud.
(Op-Ed Columnist, Take a Bow, America, By BOB HERBERT, Published: November 8, 2008, NYTimes)

It is time to be lovely again.

And humble.

We are ready to be what God is ready to be.

Greet one another as you are.

Step from the darkness of fears out into the open release of tears.

Come home!

Too many voices, too many words, today.
No one had anything of interest to say.

Evening mountains veiled in somber mist,
one path entering the wooded hill:
the monk has gone off,
locking his pine door.
From a bamboo pipe
a lonely trickle of water flows.
- Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672)

It's me, of course.

Sometimes words are ski pole banging against metal trash can.
They rattle along curb, topple into street, strew empty elan.

It's my mind.

There is
no one here
save me

When door closes,
it isn't what is

kept out;

it's what isn't
ready to be

let out.

Invitation and excitement. Issue one, delight in what follows.

All week the conversations have been rich. At shop. At prison. In liturgical dialogue. At university class. In mindful presence without object. What is itself needs nothing more.

Western Peak

Highest mountain in the West,
eighteen thousand miles from the East,
reaching the sky and dwarfing the other peaks.
If one wishes to reach it, one is there already;
for a Zen student can make a mountain
wherever the feet are touching.
- Jakushitsu Genko Zenji (1290 – 1368)

Prayer is dangerous involvement with God. With God there is no bargaining. Everything has to be as it is. No delusion. No wishful thinking.

The old phrase is true, just not as ordinarily conceived: "Out of sight, out of mind."

Mind disappears as eyes merely gaze with love at everything.

Save the world! Look as everything looks; not at.

Transfigure and transform.

That's the invitation.

Excited yet?

How proud we all feel. Something light has turned our heads and made us smile. Even those with mud still on their shoes recognize a sparkling moment and shake their heads.

Non-Effort

The wind in the pines plays a subtle
song, of which I have become
effortlessly aware.
I did not compose it, I do not perform it;
yet it simply is as it is.
Nor do I strain to be aware of it.
It just is as it has always been.
The music, strangely, is as bright as
My Self-lit interior.
If I tried to compose it or
perform it, I could not do so.
If I strained to become aware of it,
it would surely die and fade away.
- Ji Aoi Isshi

Many will be happy to see the backs of those who will be leaving office. We'll wish them well. We won't pretend bygones will go by and fade. We'll lobby for justice and accountability. But not now.

Now belongs to the fully feeling fantastic.

As God is.

My joy.

It feels like months ago. The election.

Better or Worse?

Ordinarily, we spend all our time comparing and discriminating between this and that, always looking around for something good to happen to us. And because of that we become restless and anxious about everything. As long as we are able to imagine something better than what we have or who we are, it follows naturally that there could also be something worse. We are constantly pursued by misgivings that something bad will happen. In other words, as long as we live by distinguishing between the better way and the worse way, we can never find absolute peace such that whatever happens is all right.

When we let go of our thoughts that distinguish better from worse and instead see everything in terms of the Universal Self, we are able to settle upon a different attitude toward life--the attitude of magnanimous mind that whatever happens, we are living out Self which is only Self. Here a truly peaceful life unfolds.
--Kosho Uchiyama, Opening the Hand of Thought

Universal Self is what we call undivided hope.

There's no need for hope.

The world is one.

For now.

President-elect Barack Obama will address the country in a few minutes.

Becoming a buddha is easy,
but ending illusions is hard;
so many frosted moonlit nights
I’ve sat and felt the cold before dawn.
- Shih-wu (1272-1352)

It is a good night.

Note: The bookshop/bakery will be closed Sunday 2Nov08. There will be no Sunday Evening Practice at the hermitage. The shop will re-open for conversation Tuesday Evening at 5:15pm.

.....

The Day of the Dead passes. All Souls Day arrives.

No one dies who sees life as it is.

Of course there is death and loss.

But no one dies... seeing life as it is.

Can you see?

Oh!

Say...

Let the wise one watch over the mind,
So hard to perceive, so artful,
Alighting where it wishes;
A watchfully protected mind
Will bring happiness.
- Dhammapada

The holy has nothing to say.

It is what it does.

All Hallows turns into All Saints.

What is holy invites what is longing for what is holy.

Hermits hide from mankind
Most go to the mountains to sleep
Where green vines wind through woods
And jade gorges echo unbroken
Higher and higher enraptured
On and on simply free
Free of what stains the world
Minds pure like the white lotus
- Han shan

God is. We are. There is nowhere God is not.

Psalm 8
(The greatness of God, the dignity of man)
How wonderful is your name over all the earth, O Lord, our Lord!
How exalted is your glory above the sky!

Out of the mouths of children and infants you have brought praise, to confound your enemies, to destroy your vengeful foes.

When I see the heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and stars, which you set in their place –
what is man, that you should take thought for him? what is the son of man, that you should look after him?

You have made him but one step lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honour; you have set him over the works of your hands.

You have put everything beneath his feet, cattle and sheep and the beasts of the field,
the birds in the air and the fish in the sea, whatever passes along the paths of the waters.

How wonderful is your name above all the earth, O Lord, our Lord!

God's invitation is unlike our invitation. God's invitation is open, refusable, yet always offered.

We are invited by what is.

Taking.

Place.

Between us.

Is born, comes Christ. (That's the phrase that arrived during Thursday Evening Conversation.)

Lesson 303

The holy Christ is born in me today.

Watch with me, angels, watch with me today.

Angels, we've said, are the connective intuitive creative between what God is and where I am.

Wandering

My treasure is the cloud on the peak
The moon over the valley
Traveling east or west
Light and free on the one road
I don’t know whether I’m on the way
Or at home.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

Of course we ask angels to watch with us. They are the seeing of itself.

Section 9. What is the Second Coming?

Christ's Second Coming, which is sure as God, is merely the correction of mistakes, and the return of sanity. It is a part of the condition that restores the never lost, and re-establishes what is forever and forever true. It is the invitation to God's Word to take illusion's place; the willingness to let forgiveness rest upon all things without exception and without reserve.

It is the all-inclusive nature of Christ's Second Coming that permits it to embrace the world and hold you safe within its gentle advent, which encompasses all living things with you. There is no end to the release the Second Coming brings, as God's creation must be limitless. Forgiveness lights the Second Coming's way, because it shines on everything as one. And thus is oneness recognized at last.
(--from Lesson 301, The Course in Miracles)

The invitation.

Given.

Is.

Received.

It is not our doing, not anything, when we are given into the absolute. No gaining; no losing.

The Clod and the Pebble

'Love seeketh not itself to please,
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease,
And builds a heaven in hell's despair.'

So sung a little clod of clay,
Trodden with the cattle's feet;
But a pebble of the brook
Warbled out these meters meet:

'Love seeketh only Self to please,
To bind another to its delight,
Joys in another's loss of ease,
And builds a hell in heaven's despite.'
(Poem by William Blake)

In from Chicago, the couple sat in back through Tuesday Evening Conversation. Reading Eknath Eswaran on Arjuna and Sri Krishna.

Finally coming to proper knowledge.

Arjuna knew himself as warrior.

A knowing transparency.

Alaska is chillier today.

It becomes obvious there are two ways of doing things: the powerful connected way and the weak detached way. I've no way.

The spiritual light shines alone,
far transcending the senses
and their fields;
the essential substance is
exposed, real and eternal.
It is not contained in written words.
The nature of mind has no defilement;
it is basically perfect and complete in itself.
Just get rid of delusive attachments,
and merge with realization of thusness.
- Pai-chang (720 – 814)

Only a week left. Assassination plots are announced, last minute dirt is shaped into mud balls ready for slinging, and the world series prepares to end in a whimper.

Things seem ridiculous. Me too.

Change and Pain

[W]hen we realize that we are forced to change positions because of pain, we should question further to find out if there are other reasons. If the answer is that we change because we want to be comfortable, this is incorrect. It is incorrect because it is a distortion of happiness. The correct answer is that we change in order to "cure" the pain. We do not change to acquire happiness. The wrong answer comes from misunderstanding, and if we do not have the right comprehension when we change positions, defilements can and will spring up. Changing positions to "cure" pain indicates that we have to remedy the situation at all times. We should not misjudge and think that the reason is to attain happiness, since the curing of pain all the time is the same as having to take medicines constantly. It is like nursing a continuous sickness. Thus, we should not look upon nursing sickness and curing pain as being happiness at all.
(--Achaan Naeb, in Jack Kornfield's Living Dharma)

Camus said to be happy is to stop.

I'll do it.

A happy cure.

Stopping.

Here.

Chanting Heart Sutra in zendo was lovely at practice tonight. Reading Thomas Merton at table reminds that darkness of spirit does not point away from God's presence -- that renewal in one's own heart and mind helps reach for light string.

At Waterfall Temple

These peaks gather like snowy swords,
the waterfall a curtain of ice on the cliff.
Gibbons in the tree tops toy with clouds.
among blood-red azaleas.
The cuckoo sings till it bleeds;
from deep in caves, wind gods scream.
Compared to the hearts of people,
these mountain wilds are tame.
- Chang K’o chiu (1265-1345)

Foghorn four miles away tells of diminished view. Small animal in wall is restless. Hot soak surrounds body.

Why be a contemplative? Where does renewal lead?

Fingers feel for small metal whatsit at end of string. A gentle tug? Then?

No telling.

We'll have to wait.

We'll have to see.

Stacking wood, 4th cord, follows sitting on zafu, interspersed with kicking chewed-through soccer ball for ever hopeful Border Collie, perpetually crouched and ready,

Sitting and stacking suggest a way to practice and pray without ceasing. They involve and engage one. One at a time. One breath. One stick. One step. For Rokpa there is always and only one fetch, one run, one return.

We are invited to be the mindful and grateful servants of this one experience. Life unfolding itself.

Searching for Gathered Fragrance Temple
miles of mountains rise into clouds.
Ancient trees darken the narrow trail.
Where is that mountain temple bell?
Snowmelt crashes down on boulders,
the sun grows cold in the pines before
it drowns in the lake.
Keep your karma in good working order;
many dragons lie in wait.
- Wang Wei (701-761)

Perhaps my heart will stop. That's fine. The basement furnace starts and stops.

Attachment to the Body

180. Having accumulated suffering for no purpose
Because of my honoring and serving this body,
What use is attachment and anger
For this thing that is similar to a piece of wood?

181. Whether I am caring for my body in this way,
Or whether it is being eaten by vultures,
It has no attachment or hatred towards these things--
Why then am I so attached to it?

182. If (my body) knows no anger when derided
And no pleasure when praised,
For what reason
Am I wearing myself out like this?
(-- Shantideva, A Guide to the Bodhisattva's Way of Life, trans. by Stephen Batchelor)

With all heart. All mind. All soul. And neighbor as self. Jesus summed it up for his interrogator. It's long odds we'll be willing to forgo our fascination with the fractured, and by allowing the whole, heal the pain of division.

If I was a betting man, I'd take these odds. Odd is regular at our shop. Odd works well coming through our door.

This self I am passing through.

Each thing is itself.

The voidness of the universe
is capable of containing all
things of various forms and shapes,
such as the sun, moon, stars,
mountains, rivers, the great earth,
springs, streams, mountain torrents,
plants, trees and woods,
good and bad people,
good and bad things,
heavens and hells,
all the great oceans.
All these are in the void.
The voidness of worldly people
is also contained in it.
- Altar Sutra

What has become dangerous in this country is the certain belief that everything is something other than what it is.

According to Richard of Saint Victor, there exist three eyes: the occulus carnis, the occulus rationis, and the occulus fidei (the eye of the body, the eye of reason, and the eye of faith). The “third eye” is the organ of the faculty that distinguishes us from other living beings by giving us access to a reality that transcends, without denying, that which captures the intelligence and the senses.
( – Raimon Panikkar)

We're coming closer to a liberating truth. The old lie is exhausted.

“The wonder of an object is that it is not a thought. A thing is first and foremost itself.”
(-- John Donahue, in Beauty)

You think?

No thing!

We transcend by not denying.

Scott said he was told: "I do only what is there, I practice the presence of God." (These were the words of a chaplain who worked with the retarded and brain injured when asked how he was able to do that work.)

Limpid ocean, clear sky,
and moon-reflecting snow;
this is the realm
without a trace of
the holy and sentient.
At the opening
of the diamond eye,
flowers of vanity fall.
The whole universe
vanishes into the realm
of extinction.
- Han-Shan Te-Ch’ing (1586)

When crucifixion was the topic at A Course in Miracles tonight, I researched from behind counter another point of view.

III. Conclusion
Taken together, the three elements of the passion narrative, the darkness that covers the land, the death of a creator figure and the tearing of the temple curtain, point towards the conclusion that the narrator saw the crucifixion as a 'chaoskampf'— one in which Jesus is apparently defeated by the forces of chaos. Alongside the death of this creator figure, one may also see in the tearing of the temple curtain at least a figurative destruction of creation. The crucifixion as depicted in the synoptic gospels therefore demonstrates the unraveling of the old created order prior to the its renewal or, better, replacement, heralded by Jesus’ resurrection. It is this theology of death, destruction and cosmic renewal (not unlike that of the Baal-Mot legend) that informs the synoptic passion narratives.

SUMMARY
The depiction of the events surrounding the crucifixion in the Synoptic Gospels (particularly the darkness and the tearing of the temple curtain) have provoked widely varying responses from New Testament scholars. This article argues that the inclusion of these details in the narrative can be understood by reference to the 'chaoskampf' typology of the Old Testament. Here, as elsewhere in the gospels (e.g. Matt 8,23-27; Mark 4,35-41; Luke 8,22-25), Jesus is presented as a creator figure who confronts the powers of chaos. In this instance however, the powers of chaos emerge temporarily triumphant. The old creation is destroyed, paving the way for a renewal of creation with Jesus’s resurrection.
(-- from The Crucifixion as Chaoskampf: A New Reading of the Passion Narrative in the Synoptic Gospels, by Dominic RUDMAN, in Biblica 84 (2003) 102-107
http://www.bsw.org/project/biblica/bibl84/Ani02.html)

When ego tries to create an alternate universe of small exclusion, something has to die to retrieve the enormity of inclusion. Chaos is entered and is shattered by wholeness. But no one knows what's to follow.

The myth is hopeful. Something arises from the devastation of chaos.

We already love one another. It simply takes practice to realize it.

Not a long life.

Before I was forty I quit my job
and came to tread the way
of saints and sages.
If I come out, it’s just
because I love the hills
and streams.
My ears are clean,
my vision’s ample.
When you ponder it,
this is true happiness.
The golden girdle girds calamity;
purple robes, pain.
Are they better than my briar
cane and cap of straw?
- Chang Yang-Hao

Just life-itself.

Lived as long as it is.

If everything is permitted, nothing must be denied.

In other words, forgiveness is the only truth, deception is illusion pretending to be real.

Your mind that each moment
shines with the light
of nondiscrimination
wherever it may be,
this is the true Samantabhadra.
Your mind that each moment
frees itself
from its shackles,
everywhere knows emancipation.
- Lin chi (d. 867)

If you've done something, own it. If you've not done something, don't pretend you did.

Be of good cheer. Samantabhadra is the embodiment or field of timeless awareness.

Don't reach out for what is not there.

You are what is here.

Engage yourself.

Encounter love.

When Lori called at dusk to remind us nine years ago her mom, my sister, died, I was surprised I'd forgotten to remember.

We sat in silence before the wood stove, a lone candle lighted. At silence's end, we chanted night prayer.

"Protect us Lord while awake, watch over us as we sleep, that awake we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in his peace."  (--Canticle, Nunc Dimittis, from Compline)

Silence continues as water boils, pasta cooks, dog and cat's food prepared, and all turns into itself as it is.

In chapel/zendo a single candle holds the space for each and every one needing reminding through the night.

Perhaps.

Prayer is the intuitive connective creative -- wholeness urging itself through everything feeling itself.

Growing older, I grow into the Tao
I make my home in southern mountains
and go there on a whim to wander alone.
But even in all this splendor, things remain empty.
I climb to the headwaters of the river
where clouds rise up from emptiness.
If I chance to meet another hermit in the woods,
we talk and laugh and never even think of home.
- Wang Wei

Perhaps.

God's name is the nameless now.

Perhaps.

Emptiness itself holds nothing.

Sacred.

Gives way to what is holy.

Guest above shop tells how he'd come close to death. Had "DNR" on chart at foot of bed for several weeks. Then, suddenly, survived. He's unsure there's anything following death. He looks around to see if we're alone as he says this.

In first round of Poetry, Tea, & Literature he recites Thomas Hardy. Next he reads Jane Kenyon. Things could be otherwise. Most likely will be. For all of us. His eyes ask if I know this.

"Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being."
(- Jean Jacques Rousseau)

We live until we die -- that's what he says. Maybe, who knows, something else?

We have to finish a word to let the next word come. We have to stop talking to let the sound of what we say sink in, the sound of who we are find silence.

Saying goodbye after poetry.

He knows he won't be back.

His eyes fill.

He knows far away.

We read Stafford in prison today. In two places, in two conversations. He caught us with his words.

Each of us.

The universal is present
in the individual.
Just so, liberation comes
from recognizing
the subtle in the gross,
the unity in diversity,
the similarity in differences,
the truth in untruth,
the light in darkness,
the life in death.
This is real liberation.
- Nityananda (d.1961)

We try to recognize the fact.

A Ritual To Read To Each Other

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
(Poem by William Stafford)

No need to try to fool each other.

There is no other.

It's just us there in prison.

Morning crossing Park. Two soft boiled eggs, two slices of homemade bread toasted, butter and jam, some coffee, all received in the garden room of a magical house strewn with color, art, books, and cheer.

In the space of a lightning flash,
the world is built and established.
The Buddha’s words are like that lightning:
the words come out, the meaning gathers.
The Buddha is one with all sentient beings:
in the enlightened state no confusion or harm.
- Su Shih (1073)

The thing about hospitality and community is the welcome.

Returning home as stranger no longer.

As days darken earlier.

Rain mirrors the slightest light.

Two presidential candidates end their three debates. Good, it's done.

“Enlightenment” and “Nirvana”?
They are dead trees
to fasten a donkey to.
The scriptures?
They are bits of paper
to wipe mud from your face.
The four merits and the ten steps?
They are ghosts in their graves.
What can these things
have to do with you
becoming free?
- Te-shan (780-865)

Soon we'll vote.

Good, it'll be done.

Now, about becoming free...

It doesn't matter. Not the things that occupy our minds and make us crazy with fear, anxiety, obsession, and craving .

What matters is love. And real trust.

The dharma master lives here at Mt. Chiao,
and yet, in fact, has never lived here at all.
I’ve come here to ask about the dharma,
but the dharma master sees
through me and says nothing.
It isn’t that the dharma master lacks the words,
but that I do not understand the nature of his reply.
- Su Shih (1073)

First drop of wood is stacked. Moon is full.

At Tuesday Evening Conversation we read the chapter "The Four Limitless Qualities" from Pema Chodron's The Places That Scare You. As people drift in and out from restaurant across parking lot, as Mr O arrives from Pennsylvania to stay a while upstairs, and as six of us talk and laugh through the antics of Border Collie and those he herds in our small space -- we try to unearth what matters and what doesn't in the scary times of these days.

May all beings enjoy happiness and the root of happiness.
This first line refers to maitri.

May we be free from suffering and the root of suffering.
And this second line refers to compassion.

May we never be separated from the great happiness devoid of suffering.
This refers to joy.

May we dwell in the great equanimity, free from passion, aggression and prejudice.
This refers to equanimity.
(--from Maitri, The Love That Never Dies, by Pema Chodron, at Berkeley California, Labor Day Weekend, 1997)

We admit there is some -- no, much -- we don't yet understand. This is ok. We sit together in this practice of conversation to bring together our day, our inquiry, our listening, and our willingness to be present to one another.

The things we've been taught to believe "matter" don't always. What matters tonight is this practice of interactive interdependence. Tonight we look within, look around, and look with grateful appreciation at each one stepping through a circle that is free, open, and informal.

We thank each other for coming. We thank Pema Chodron for her words. And we request that we hold in heart and mind all our brothers and sisters, near and away.

Bell rings.

Oh that Bankei!

All things are
perfectly
resolved in the
Unborn.
- Bankei (1622-1693)

Oh that Haldane!

"My suspicion is that the universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose"
(--J.B.S. Haldane, 1892-1964)

Oh that Panikkar!

“The great challenge today is to convert the sacred bread into real bread, the liturgical peace into political peace, the worship of the Creator into reverence for the Creation, the Christian praying community into an authentic human fellowship. It is risky to celebrate the Eucharist. We may have to leave it unfinished, having gone first to give back to the poor what belongs to them.”
(- Raimundo Panikkar, from William R. Crockett, Eucharist: Symbol of Transformation, p. 263)

The moon readies for tomorrow. By barn two cord wood takes shape in moonlight. We'll finish stacking in the morning.

October 2008 full moon: October 14, 20:02 UT (15:02 CDT)
(--earthsky.org)

It is a quiet and great joy to be alive just now!

Don't go looking for anything.

Why do I talk here?
Only because you followers of Tao
go galloping around in search of the mind,
and are unable to stop it.
On the other hand,
the ancients acted in a leisurely
Way, appropriate to
circumstances as they arose.
- Lin-chi (d.867)

Just keep eyes open as you go here and there.

The mystery is that there is anything at all.

See the mystery everywhere.

Some feel it would be nice if God spoke aloud with us.

Sleeping

He slept on his hands.
On a rock.
On his feet.
On someone else's feet.
He slept on buses, trains, in airplanes.
Slept on duty.
Slept beside the road.
Slept on a sack of apples.
He slept in a pay toilet.
In a hayloft.
In the Super Dome.
Slept in a Jaguar, and in the back of a pickup.
Slept in theaters.
In jail.
On boats.
He slept in line shacks and, once, in a castle.
Slept in the rain.
In blistering sun he slept.
On horseback.
He slept in chairs, churches, in fancy hotels.
He slept under strange roofs all his life.
Now he sleeps under the earth.
Sleeps on and on.
Like an old king.
(Poem "Sleeping" by Raymond Carver from Ultramarine. Vintage Books, 1986.)

You'd think we'd have to wake up to hear anything.

Still, even a somnolent God sleep-talks.

Stock markets blow erratically with autumn winds. Folks argue about strategy and speculate about solutions. There's not much of either. Those of independent means criticize those of limited means. Those in debt marvel at millionaires being bailed out and rewarded for their failures.

See for yourself.
Directly transcend the
principles and activities
of the buddhas and patriarchs.
Go through the forest of thorns.
Transcend the barriers
of potential described by
ancestral teachers.
Pass through the silver mountain
and iron wall; then for the first time
you will realize there is a
transcendent fundamental endowment;
you can sit, helping people solve their
sticking points and untie their bonds.
- Shoitsu (1202-1280)

In politics, weaker candidates decide to mount a campaign of dangerous threats to the well-being of stronger candidates. Absurd and stupid inflammatory rhetoric, attempts to stir violence and mayhem, partial truths wrapped in smelly fish stained newspaper, discarded dignity in yellow bags tossed into green transfer skips at town dump. The perpetrators are desperate. Their only hope is inciting violence against their opponents. They play a coy seditious video game with American sensibilities, mowing down terrorists and caricatured enemies, pointing at opposing running mates with disdain and disgust, lightly veiled invitations to lynch and kill, wave smiling to loyal rabid fans as partisan hacks rouse ire from radio and tv perches.

Elected officials, house and senate, executive and judiciary, look away with blank faces and feigned disinterest. If I weren't already insane with disapproval, I'd be tempted to go mad with disbelief.

Someone passing through shop says should anything untoward happen to Barack Obama she'd issue a fatwa against Mr. McCain and Ms. Palin for their participation in the untowardness. The common feeling seems to be that their comportment is unworthy and their demeanor unbecoming of any office they currently hold or aspire to attain.

I'd recommend they concentrate on evidence, analysis, and overt argumentation. Surely we could employ a level of intelligent dialectic that would surpass the tripe and trash of irresponsible voices.

Truth

As children in the schoolroom game
whisper from one end of the class to the other
and garble the message they pass on or change it
beyond recognition, so we
pass on the truth of our kind.

My father heard it from his, something
vaguely involving God, and his father
heard it from his, and so on back
to Abraham, and so father
passed it on to me, but God had dropped out.

And so my son heard it, a wisdom
found inside a Chinese fortune cookie:
"Be good and hope," which he will pass on
to his son, but maybe with good
missing or hope, maybe with love added.

Though love was never meant to mean so much.

(Poem "Truth" by Leonard Nathan from The Potato Eaters. Orchises Press, 1999.)

If we forget love, we'll get what terrifying rhetoric offers.

It's not too late for everyone to change.

A bit more humility.

I'll try.

A group gathers for the Course in Miracles. The afternoon has gone by. A couple stops by to tell they've self-published their art and words. Cigar smokers from Florida return for a warm weather visit and smoke on the patio.

In class last night we tried to focus on evidence, facts, and careful analysis. So many uninformed opinions about national election candidates.  The perpetrators of ignorant slander consider the electorate stupid. We have to prove that premise false.

There is no help in
changing your environment.
The obstacle is the mind,
which must be overcome,
whether at home or in the forest.
If you can do it in the forest,
why not in the home?
Therefore,
why change the environment?
- Ramana Maharshi (d. 1950)

Mind, we think, is inside the brain laden with habit and craving. But mind, say some thinkers, is what is between us, not within us. Thus, to know our "right mind" is to know the right relationship between us. There are frightening men and women who think fear is the ticket to their ascendancy to high office. Fear is the nemesis of love. With fear, no love; with love, no fear. The men and women wanting our fear will not get our love; nor do they want our love. They want our fear packaged as gratitude. They want us grateful they own and invest our fear into their ambitious plans for the world.  

Four Foundations of Mindfulness
“There is, monks, this one way to the purification of beings, for the overcoming of sorrow and distress, for the disappearance of pain and sadness, for the gaining of the right path, for the realization of Nibbana: --that is to say the four foundations of mindfulness.

“What are the four? Here, monks, a monk abides contemplating a body as body, ardent, clearly aware and mindful, having put aside hankering and fretting for the world; he abides contemplating feelings as feelings . . . he abides contemplating mind as mind . . . he abides contemplating mind-objects as mind-objects, ardent, clearly aware and mindful, having put aside hankering and fretting for the world.”
(--Mahasatipatthana Sutta: The Greater Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness, in Thus Have I Heard: The Long Discourses of the Buddha, translated by Maurice Walshe)

The saying should be changed: not 'mind over matter,' but rather, 'mind throughout, between, and beyond matter.' To know one's own mind is to extend out from enclosed spaces into open space of relational inquiry and analysis. We ask questions. We ponder responses. We intuit truth and actuate effort to do what needs to be done.

We need to think carefully. We need to be philosophers of rhetoric and opinion. Plato and Socrates are at hand to help us. Descartes and Rorty are ready. Wittgenstein and James are poised. Maseo Abe and Keiji Nishitani wait in empty silence for a voice asking them their way of viewing the complications of human thought and act.

I didn't understand a word at the Miracles gathering tonight. I was caught thinking about our failing economy and falling manners on political stumps. I do not find anything cute or sexy about demagoguery or dim-witted remarks. I'm old fashioned on this point. I feel candidates should run on their records and their honest plans to fix what needs fixing. We've had enough of character assassination and political chicanery. 

Just in case, I'm listening for Celtic Canadian fiddles from a long distance away. It's Thanksgiving there Monday, Columbus Day here. 

I might have to discover a new ground of gratefulness.  

A poem is where dreams go when no one is watching.

in time of daffodils

in time of daffodils(who know
the goal of living is to grow)
forgetting why,remember how

in time of lilacs who proclaim
the aim of waking is to dream,
remember so(forgetting seem)

in time of roses(who amaze
our now and here with paradise)
forgetting if,remember yes

in time of all sweet things beyond
whatever mind may comprehend,
remember seek(forgetting find)

and in a mystery to be
(when time from time shall set us free)
forgetting me,remember me

(poem by e.e. cummings)

Dream says to falling soul: I'll see you and raise you!

Pema Chodron speaks of hopelessness. Hard to warm to it. And yet, it says now is all there is -- don't hope for it, live it.

Though it has no bridge,
The cloud climbs up to heaven;
It does not seek the aid
Of Gautama’s sutras.
- Ikkuu

After hearing how hopeless life can be, I choose to live it right now for the time being.

Without belief in anything but the willingness to engage what is unfolding.

I write my senators.

I ask they contact their colleague Mr. McCain and ask him to avoid fearful and provocative rhetoric against his rival Mr Obama. I asked Senators Collins and Snowe to help moderate dangerous rhetoric into more civil discourse. I worry that violence will result from heightened smears and accusations. Mr. McCain and Mr. Obama must be held accountable for their public rhetoric.

Sentient beings are really Buddha.
Like water and ice;
Apart from water, no ice;
Outside of sentient beings, no Buddha.
Not knowing it is near
They seek for it afar!
Just like being in water,
But crying for thirst!
- Hakuin

I dislike the vituperative poison slandered through the airwaves.

I like that the point of convergence of liberation theology, Islamic mysticism, and engaged Buddhism is the sense of love that leads to commitment and involvement with the world, and not a turning-away from the world. A form of wisdom that I strive for is the ability to know what is needed at a given moment in time. When do I need to reside in that location of stillness and contemplation, and when do I need to get up off my ass and do whatever is needed to be done in terms of physical work, or engagement with others, or confrontation with others? I'm not interested in ranking one type of action over the other.
(--bell hooks, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review Fall 1992)

Today is the feast of St. Bruno, [1032-1101]. He founded the Carthusians. There have never been many of them. Silence. Solitude. Seclusion. The starkness of spirituality without celebrity. Not much to attract today's seekers.

We have to learn to listen to the strange sounds of the world's spiritual life. Prayer is prayer that appreciates the suffering of others. And longs for joy.

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.
(--Poem by Billy Collins)

We can use innovative genius today.

We cry with thirst for something to keep us alive!

My alarm in the zendo didn't sound, so we sat for 60 minutes instead of 40.

In the language of the Buddha, the word for fuel and for clinging is the same: upadana. The Buddha understood that suffering arises from and is fueled by clinging. When the fuel is removed, suffering is extinguished. By understanding how deep-rooted and subtle clinging is in our own unliberated minds, we come to appreciate the mind of nibbana as refreshingly cool and peaceful.
(--from The Good News. By Gil Fronsdale)

Before leaving shop for hermitage this evening, a woman came in. I recognized her face. She'd become very thin. Her movements were paper brittle. She smiled and asked for our schedule. I had none. After a bit Saskia said the woman had told her she was in hospice -- a friend of our's is her volunteer. We stayed a little later for her, loaned her reading glasses, and told her husband we'd throw her out when we were ready to go. There's not much time for her. She brought the glasses back after she'd stepped out the door. A silence of prayerful gaze followed her.

There's no reason for us to keep the shop open.

The heart needs none.

Francis of Assisi, Meetingbrook chapel/zendo, October 4th, on his feastday:


Rokpa, in chapel/zendo, October 4th, on his 1st birthday,


And up by tent, stalking tennis ball:


Finally, on bridge at brook with his kind friend.


A confluence of sweet events of a single day!

When the man in tie-died shirt asked, I said, "He was a nature mystic. He saw God in everything. In everyone."

Only this
Nothing more
No need to dust
No need to sit
- Feng Kan (7th c)

It's why Francis transcends all explanation. He was where God wished to be.

He gave up. Entered innocence.

Others thought they knew.

Not.

Francis.