It's odd. As though some news is coming. The near obsessive checking to find out. What did Volcker say? What did Soros say? And Krugman? Has the car driven off the cliff into economic ravine? Is there a spinning tire amid broken glass?

Poem

This poem is not addressed to you.
You may come into it briefly,
But no one will find you here, no one.
You will have changed before the poem will.

Even while you sit there, unmovable,
You have begun to vanish. And it does not matter.
The poem will go on without you.
It has the spurious glamor of certain voids.

It is not sad, really, only empty.
Once perhaps it was sad, no one knows why.
It prefers to remember nothing.
Nostalgias were peeled from it long ago.

Your type of beauty has no place here.
Night is the sky over this poem.
It is too black for stars.
And do not look for any illumination.

You neither can nor should understand what it means.
Listen, it comes with out guitar,
Neither in rags nor any purple fashion.
And there is nothing in it to comfort you.

Close your eyes, yawn. It will be over soon.
You will forge the poem, but not before
It has forgotten you. And it does not matter.
It has been most beautiful in its erasures.

O bleached mirrors! Oceans of the drowned!
Nor is one silence equal to another.
And it does not matter what you think.
This poem is not addressed to you.
(Poem by Donald Justice)

I don't think the end is near. Nor do I think that prayer has any place in economics. God is in the desolation of numbers to add up to anything. We'd forgotten. We believed the pastors and priests when they said, Be good and everything will work out!

Mary Oliver wrote "You do not have to be good." I'll go with the poet. It's all a silly charade -- this foppery and finagling -- pretending that it's the Democrat's fault, it's the Republican's fault. They're both bankrupt.

Who the Meek Are Not

Not the bristle-bearded Igors bent
under burlap sacks, not peasants knee-deep
in the rice paddy muck,
nor the serfs whose quarter-moon sickles
make the wheat fall in waves
they don't get to eat. My friend the Franciscan
nun says we misread
that word 'meek' in the Bible verse that blesses them.
To understand the meek
(she says) picture a great stallion at full gallop
in a meadow, who —
at his master's voice — seizes up to a stunned
but instant halt.
So with the strain of holding that great power
in check, the muscles
along the arched neck keep eddying,
and only the velvet ears
prick forward, awaiting the next order.
(Poem by Mary Karr)

I love being sick. It suspends everything. You fall into God. You fall into the fallen crumbs of your life. You don't care that water seeps down the new wall in the kitchen the recently exited guy put up but left leaving up the exterior scaffolding causing catch of snow-melt and ice and shove it under new roof and into room.

Aspirin and Umcka -- that herbal balm -- combine to ease the death that comes with every breath.

The next order?

Steady, boy! Good boy! That's a fine lad!

Justice is right. It doesn't matter what I think.

Dog and cat go out through barn at 4:15am. Log comes in from barn. Wood stove shows orange through front windows.

Right Thinking:
"And what, monks, is Right Thought? The thought of renunciation, the thought of non-ill-will, the thought of harmlessness. This, monks is called Right Thought."
--Mahasatipatthana Sutta: The Greater Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness, in Thus Have I Heard: The Long Discourses of the Buddha, trans. by Maurice Walshe

From time to time everything leaves. I look around; nothing there. I slowly come to see that whatever I want turns out to be bits of charcoal and ash. Is it possible not to want?

At the Fishhouses
by Elizabeth Bishop

Although it is a cold evening,
down by one of the fishhouses
an old man sits netting,
his net, in the gloaming almost invisible,
a dark purple-brown,
and his shuttle worn and polished.
The air smells so strong of codfish
it makes one's nose run and one's eyes water.
The five fishhouses have steeply peaked roofs
and narrow, cleated gangplanks slant up
to storerooms in the gables
for the wheelbarrows to be pushed up and down on.
All is silver: the heavy surface of the sea,
swelling slowly as if considering spilling over,
is opaque, but the silver of the benches,
the lobster pots, and masts, scattered
among the wild jagged rocks,
is of an apparent translucence
like the small old buildings with an emerald moss
growing on their shoreward walls.
The big fish tubs are completely lined
with layers of beautiful herring scales
and the wheelbarrows are similarly plastered
with creamy iridescent coats of mail,
with small iridescent flies crawling on them.
Up on the little slope behind the houses,
set in the sparse bright sprinkle of grass,
is an ancient wooden capstan,
cracked, with two long bleached handles
and some melancholy stains, like dried blood,
where the ironwork has rusted.
The old man accepts a Lucky Strike.
He was a friend of my grandfather.
We talk of the decline in the population
and of codfish and herring
while he waits for a herring boat to come in.
There are sequins on his vest and on his thumb.
He has scraped the scales, the principal beauty,
from unnumbered fish with that black old knife,
the blade of which is almost worn away.

Down at the water's edge, at the place
where they haul up the boats, up the long ramp
descending into the water, thin silver
tree trunks are laid horizontally
across the gray stones, down and down
at intervals of four or five feet.

Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
element bearable to no mortal,
to fish and to seals. . . One seal particularly
I have seen here evening after evening.
He was curious about me. He was interested in music;
like me a believer in total immersion,
so I used to sing him Baptist hymns.
I also sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God."
He stood up in the water and regarded me
steadily, moving his head a little.
Then he would disappear, then suddenly emerge
almost in the same spot, with a sort of shrug
as if it were against his better judgment.
Cold dark deep and absolutely clear,
the clear gray icy water . . . Back, behind us,
the dignified tall firs begin.
Bluish, associating with their shadows,
a million Christmas trees stand
waiting for Christmas. The water seems suspended
above the rounded gray and blue-gray stones.
I have seen it over and over, the same sea, the same,
slightly, indifferently swinging above the stones,
icily free above the stones,
above the stones and then the world.
If you should dip your hand in,
your wrist would ache immediately,
your bones would begin to ache and your hand would burn
as if the water were a transmutation of fire
that feeds on stones and burns with a dark gray flame.
If you tasted it, it would first taste bitter,
then briny, then surely burn your tongue.
It is like what we imagine knowledge to be:
dark, salt, clear moving, utterly free,
drawn from the cold hard mouth
of the world, derived from the rocky breasts
forever, flowing and drawn, and since
our knowledge is historical, flowing, and flown.
(--Poem: "At the Fishhouses," by Elizabeth Bishop from Complete Poems, Farrar, Straus and Giroux).

There's something quietly comforting about the myth of history. It is a pattern of thought outlining a beginning, a middle, and an end. We say, "I've only just begun." Or, "We're right in the middle of it." Then, "I'm coming to the end." It situates us on rulers. Carpenters and politicians fight for the same inch.

Even Buddhists turn our thoughts to impermanence. If things don't last, they must have begun and soon come to an end, right?

"Non-ill-will" sounds like a good name for an inn. Respite care. Final days of tired life.

Head-shaking disgust at fatuous comments by professional ill-willers.

Rather the narrow window of early pre-dawn silence. Men mending their nets. Wharves where going out and coming in is a ritual of tide -- a different way of wandering through history without measuring progress nor suggesting eternal recurrence. A walking stick named 'just this step, just this step.' We have never been here before. We only arrive now.

On frozen pond last night truck plows snow going from edge of land over ice to fish-house, lights fire inside, goes off to town. Fish in February come to hole in his absence to warm themselves.

When things feel like there's nothing here but holes in ice and open spaces side by side in repaired nets, then there's only what some call 'looking' -- just the gaze at end of silence.

Seeing what is. What is there. What is not.

Seal watching.

Thoughts of renunciation. Of harmlessness.

World without end.

Amen.

One thing about illness -- everything takes second fiddle to it.

Tossing and Turning

by John Updike

The spirit has infinite facets, but the body

confiningly few sides.

   There is the left,

the right, the back, the belly, and tempting

in-betweens, northeasts and northwests,

that tip the heart and soon pinch circulation

in one or another arm.

   Yet we turn each time

with fresh hope, believing that sleep

will visit us here, descending like an angel

down the angle our flesh's sextant sets,

tilted toward that unreachable star

hung in the night between our eyebrows, whence

dreams and good luck flow.

   Uncross

your ankles. Unclench your philosophy.

This bed was invented by others; know we go

to sleep less to rest than to participate

in the twists of another world.

This churning is our journey.

   It ends,

can only end, around a corner

we do not know

we are turning.

(Poem "Tossing and Turning" by John Updike, from Collected Poems 1953-1993.  Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.)

Walking snowy ice pond in stiff wind.

Turning back to coldest gust.

I don't even play fiddle.

Note: Rounding out the week, the bookshop/bakery will be closed Friday. We hope to be back Saturday.

Snow plow plows construction container.

Turning the wheel of the Dharma
is the beginning and end
of the whole training.
With this aspiration one starts
giving one's whole heart to the training;
with one's heart in it, one does it.
Depending on it, one looks
for the wonder arousing,
mysterious state behind appearances.
That attained, the transformation
of one's life has been completed.
- Torei (1721-1792)

Pizza. Tow truck. Nice visit.

Note: The Bookshop/Bakery is closed today due to (being under) the weather.

Below zero frozen air sparkling on snow, trees, and roadside brush as we drove Fort Kent to Caribou with early sun gloriously arraying everything with cold loveliness.

Based on Shakyamuni Buddha’s experience and the experience of the buddhas of the past, the main point of Dogen Zenji’s teaching is that zazen is just to become present in the process of zazen itself; this is shikantaza. It is not something you acquire after you have done zazen. It is not a concept of the process; it is to focus on the process itself. It is very difficult to understand this because even though we are always in the process, we don’t focus on it. There are even many schools in Buddhism that still handle Buddhism as a concept. But real Buddhism is to focus completely on the process itself. The process is you.
(--from, To Live is just to Live, by Dainin Katagiri)

Shikantaza is just sitting. Just sitting is being with everything.

Being with is our true nature.

There is no getting away from what we are with.

Note: Away doing other work along the roof of Maine, the bookshop and bakery will be closed Tue and Wed. Will reopen Thursday.

...........

Somewhere in mind.

The presence of fear is a sure sign that you are trusting in your own strength The awareness that there is nothing to fear shows that somewhere in your mind, though not necessarily in a place you recognize as yet, you have remembered God, and let His strength take the place of your weakness. The instant you are willing to do this there is indeed nothing to fear.
(from Lesson 48, A COURSE IN MIRACLES)

We remember.

Where we are.

Where are we?

Practice and simplicity.

Gifts of Dogen and Francis.

We reconsider return.

Hermits to hermitage.

We walk bridge from Fort Kent to Clair over St John River.

And back.

Ninety six nautical miles from Bar Harbor USA to Yarmouth NS.

Who wants to retreat to a house by the sea with a wharf near a fisheries plant rife with fishing boats?

Rain clears from the distant peaks
Dew glistens frostily.
Moonlight glazes the front of
My ivied hut among the pines.
How can I tell you how I am,
Right now?
A swollen brook gushes in the valley
Darkened by clouds.
- Daito (1282-1334

Truth often tells what we're not, what is false.

Everything collapses into itself sooner or later.

Something to look forward to.

He practices online dating. Once he proposed on one knee to a lovely lassy from across the sea. The world has changed. More and more pixils. Fewer glances. There are further contacts coming across his email. Not much, come to think, changes.

There's no self and no person,
How then kinfolk and stranger!
I beg you, cease going
From lecture to lecture;
It's better to seek truth directly.
The nature of Diamond Wisdom
Excludes even a speck of dust.
From "Thus we have heard,"
To "This I believe,"
All's but an array
Of unreal names.
(- Layman P'ang)

Maybe Valentines Day is really about Reese's chocolate peanut butter hearts and M&M's of many colors. What's love got to do with it? I listened to a man's saga. That's my practice. It's not much, really. It's just time and attention. Soon I'll run out of both. That too is a devoutly to be wished acceptance.

The Good Man

The good man.
He is still enhancer, renouncer.
In the time of detachment,
in the time of the vivid heather and affectionate evil,
in the time of oral
grave grave legalities of hate - all real
walks our prime registered reproach and seal.
Our successful moral.
The good man.

Watches our bogus roses, our rank wreath, our
love's unreliable cement, the gray
jubilees of our demondom.
Coherent
Counsel! Good man.
Require of us our terribly excluded blue.
Constrain, repair a ripped, revolted land.
Put hand in hand land over.
Reprove
the abler droughts and manias of the day
and a felicity entreat.
Love.
Complete
your pledges, reinforce your aides, renew
stance, testament.
(Poem, The Good Man, by Gwendolyn Brook

We still look here and there for what is next to show its face. Canada? Camden?

Long ago when the World-Honored One was at Mount Grdhrakuta to give a talk, he held up a flower before the assemblage. At this all remained silent. The Venerable Kasho alone broke into a smile. The World-Honored One said, 'I have the all-pervading True Dharma, incomparable Nirvana, exquisite teaching of formless form. It does not rely on letters and is transmitted outside scriptures. I now hand it to Maha Kasho.'
(--'Sakyamuni Holds Up a Flower', 6th Koan of the Mumonkan

Pizza cooks. Woman rests. Dog curls downstairs by wood stove. Sam played harmonica earlier. Silvia stopped to say she's holding a good thought for the next step of meetingbrook. Billy told Jayen at lecture last night he too would help us disengage from here. These six weeks as work came to end in kitchen at Ragged Mtn, this studio above shop has been home. Like Old Orchard, Camp Ellis, Rye Beach, and Santa Cruz before -- the familiar scent of ocean and sound of silence has nourished.

Tokusan once called on Ryutan to ask for instruction and stayed until night fell. Ryutan said, 'It is getting late; you had better leave.' At last Tokusan said good-bye, lifted up the door curtain, and went out. Noticing that it was dark, he turned back and said, 'It is dark outside.' Ryutan thereupon lit a candle and handed it to him. Tokusan was about to take it when Ryutan blew it out. At this Tokusan was all of a sudden enlightened. He made a bow. Ryutan asked, 'What realization do you have?' Tokusan replied, 'From now on I will not doubt the sayings of any of the great Zen Masters in the world.'

The next day Ryutan mounted the rostrum and declared, 'Among the monks here there is a fellow whose fangs are like swords, and whose mouth is like a bowl of blood. You may strike him with a stick but he will not turn his head. Some day in the future, he will establish his way on a steep and lofty peak.'

Tokusan then took out his notes and commentaries on the Diamond Sutra and in front of the monastery hall he held up a burning torch and said, 'Even though one masters various profound philosophies, it is like placing a single strand of hair in the great sky; even if one gains all the essential knowledge in the world, it is like throwing a drop of water into a deep ravine.' Taking up his notes and commentaries, he burned them all. Then he left with gratitude.
(--Shibayama 2000, p.201, In the 28th koan entitled 'Well-Known Ryutan.')

It has been dark a while.

So many tides come and gone.

So many lines tied and thrown off.

Joseph Goldstein told the story of Mother Teresa when asked about her praying said she doesn't say anything, she listens to God. "And God?, she was asked, "What does God say?" She said, "God says nothing, he also listens."

Listening is the Ur-Wort -- the original word.

The original word is the field of awakening allowing what is being readied for saying to find its sound in unhurried genesis.

All we can do is listen for the sound of what is being said.

And when it is, to receive it, as if everything -- everything -- depended on the sound's origination for the very continuation of creation, the very isness of existence.

The pizza is cut.

Wind sails the harbor.

Leaving with gratitude.

Republicans, oddly, begin to call themselves 'Taliban.'

Lose an election, then choose a metaphor that ensures disdain. A curious course of action.

Our Work in the World
Some people think that they will practice the dharma once they have finished with their worldly business. This is a mistaken attitude because our work in the world never finishes. Work is like a ripple of water continually moving on the surface of the ocean. It is very difficult to break free from our occupations in order to practice dharma. The busy work with which we fill our lives is only completed at the time of our death.
(--Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Meaningful to Behold)

It has been a good week for conversations in prison. Conversation with others, no matter how different opinions might be, is a sign of respect and responsibility transcending usual conditional mind meting out human judgment.

It is hard to understand the lack of respect and responsibility shown by a failing political party moribund and miserly toward the real physical and spiritual needs of citizens in the United States.

Absurd. But exhausting.

The stake driven into the back of a once vital land by unmindful and myopic ideologues has settled mortally close to a compromised faint heart of a bewildered staggering people. It is a sorry story of desperation -- some say, macabre insanity, to murder what you claim to love in the name of a love that feels nothing but depraved and numbing belief in one's own disconnective perfection.

We know God when we don't know.

But serve, with humility and simplicity, one another in real and present ways free from generality, duplicity, or self-serving reference.

May God protect us from men who refuse what God is (ever becoming) in the midst of this world!

Be caring.

Love to be unknown.

Particular and attentive.

To each.

Within.

All.

Without exception.

We are earth.

From time to time something extraordinary is realized: we are earth, earth become aware of itself.

With the groundbreaking synthesis of the German idealists Schelling and Hegel, no longer did humanity need to be seen as being adrift in a state of sin and suffering, as the Church claimed, having “fallen” away from the presence of God in the primordial past. Nor did God have to remain merely a mythic remnant of a more ignorant age, as many scientists continued to insist. Instead, the reality of the Divine could now be understood to reside most fully in our collective future—to be revealed in the world, with increasing depth and clarity, as history marched forward and consciousness evolved. “God does not remain petrified and dead,” said Hegel. “The very stones cry out and raise themselves to Spirit.”

Echoing that sentiment almost two centuries later, the American integral philosopher Ken Wilber wrote, “Both humans and rocks are equally Spirit, but only humans can consciously realize that fact, and between the rock and the human lies evolution.”
(from, A Brief History of Evolutionary Spirituality, by Tom Huston, in What is Enlightenment magazine, https://www.courses.maine.edu/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2fblackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_22106_1%26url%3d)

Becoming aware.

Moment by moment. Stone by tree. By light. Within.

Are we what is extraordinary realizing something ordinary? 

It doesn't matter.

Dreaming, Chuang Tzu became a butterfly;
Waking, the butterfly became a man.
Who knows which is real?
Who know where endless changes end?
The waters of the deepest sea
Return to the smallest stream.
The melon-grower outside the city gate
Was once the King of the Hill.
Even rank and riches eventually disappear.
You know, and still you toil
- Li T’ai-po (701-?)

Not really.

Seven men attend a meetingbrook conversation at the prison in Bucks Harbor in Down-East Maine this morning. From Eckhart Tolle to A-Rod's steroids, poems by Robert Bly and David Ignatow, and various asides -- the nine of us took turns speaking and listening to each other. It's unusual, Tony said, to have such a conversation in prison.

It's a small thing, but a seldom thing, to court real conversation.

Enlightenment as Beginningness

Most people think of enlightenment as a kind of magical attainment, a state of being close to perfection. At this level, one can perform amazing feats, see past and future lives of others, and tune in to the inner workings of the universe. This may be possible for a number of special beings, but for most of us enlightenment is much more in line with what Suzuki Roshi describes. It means having a quality of "beginningness," a fresh, simple, unsophisticated view of things. To have "beginner's mind" in how we approach things is a major teaching. In many ways, the process of enlightenment is clearing away the thoughts, beliefs, and ideas that cloud our ability to see things as they really are in their pristine form.
(--David A. Cooper, Silence, Simplicity and Solitude)

War casualties:
Iraq numbers: US forces -- 31,010 wounded; 4234 dead.
Afghanistan number: US forces -- 648 dead.

These are sad numbers.

Kaddish

Mother of my birth, for how long were we together
in your love and my adoration of your self?
For the shadow of a moment as I breathed your pain
and you breathed my suffering, as we knew
of shadows in lit rooms that would swallow the light.

Your face beneath the oxygen tent was alive
but your eyes were closed. Your breathing was hoarse
but your sleep was with death. I was alone with you
as it was when I was young but only alone now
and now with you. I was to be alone forever
as I was learning, watching you become alone.

Earth is your mother as you were mine, my earth,
my sustenance, my comfort and my strength
and now without you I turn to your mother
and seek from her that I may meet you again
in rock and stone: whisper to the stone,
I love you; whisper to the rock, I found you;
whisper to earth, Mother, I have found my mother
and I am safe and always have been.
(~Poem, Kaddish, by David Ignatow, from New and Collected Poems 1970-1985)

A day will come when I will fall down. Dizziness will overwhelm. I will think, "Oh! This is death!" And no more get up. My brothers and sisters in Iraq and Afghanistan show me the way.

When My Dead Father Called

Last night I dreamt my father called to us.
He was stuck somewhere. It took us
A long time to dress, I don't know why.
The night was snowy; there were long black roads.

Finally we reached the little town, Bellingham.
There he stood, by a streetlamp in cold wind,
Snow blowing along the sidewalk. I noticed
The uneven sort of shoes that men wore

In the early Forties. And overalls. He was smoking.
Why did it take us so long to get going? Perhaps
He left us somewhere once, or did I simply
Forget he was alone in winter in some town?
(Poem: “When My Dead Father Called,” by Robert Bly, from Eating the Honey of Words: New and Selected Poem, Harper Collins).

Last night along tidal river in Machias, we walked dismantled train bed as full moon came through Pine trees. Cold wind braced. Rokpa scuttled over icy remnants of last high tide down embankment. A quiet, near wordless, wander.

I don't know how to pray words now that a non-dual and eternally-now sense of God takes root.

White circle ascends sky with prayerful acknowledgment of those dead in war, those frightened in life, and those who wonder about all of it.

Indulgences are not germane. Guarantees about forgiving sins are a less interesting pronouncement by the RC church. I'd prefer loud and inconsolable wailing over the absurdity of human thought and behavior concerning something like war.

I'll start. This. Now. Here.

Quietly.

For all my brothers and sisters hurt and dead.

A prayer.

A conversation with wordless grief.

Zazen is orange sun dripping from sitting in sea beyond Curtis Island.

Under the thin smoke of winter
The old temple is quiet.
After sundown,
All the visitors are gone.
On the west wind, three,
Four chimes the evening bell.
How can the old monk
Concentrate on zazen?
- Ma Chih-yuan (1260-1334

To Calais and Machias as sun goes about chores. To DownEast Correctional Facility tomorrow morning for meetingbrook conversation with inmates.

If you have the desire, do you also have the will? That's what O'a asked yesterday as we sat with Tommy in studio above shop. Is a market face of the hermitage still willing to be unveiled?

With enough pause to not appear facile -- 'Yes!'

Like the sun, we'll attempt to rise through the see to the vision that connects seer with what is seen.

I've long loved what-is, seen and unseen.

Presence is no corrective lens.

It is inner vision and outer sight.

With no separation.  

Captain Sullenberger landed his plane in the river three weeks ago. No one died. He doesn't smile when he tells the story on 60 Minutes. Nothing goofy. He just answers questions.

I came late to the dharma,
But each day, deepen my retreat.
Waiting for mountain monks,
I sweep my simple hut.
Then down from cloudy peaks
You come through knee-deep weeds.
We kneel on tatami, munching pine nuts.
We burn incense and study the Way.
Light the lamp at twilight;
A simple chime begins the night.
In every solitude, deep joy:
This life abides.
How can you think of returning?
A lifetime is empty like the Void.
- Wang Wei

Sullenberger did a good job. He flew safely. It was a good landing -- as river landings go.

Peculiar.

It could start a trend.

Green lobster boat, alongside, loans bilge pump to white lobster boat tied opposite on float.

Pure and fresh are the flowers with dew
Clear and bright is the singing of the birds;
Clouds are calm, waters are blue.
Who has written the True Word of no letters?
Lofty are the mountains, green are the trees,
Deep are the valleys, lucid are the streams;
The wind is soft, the moon is serene.
Calmly I read the True Word of no letters.
- Zenkei Shibayama

Tides run higher and lower than usual.

Will we continue to want a public face?

Consider this: there's no higher power or realm of spiritual helpers or anything other than something simpler to consider. And what's that?

Gathering simples, going home
White clouds flying
Mists melt black mountains
And this wandering mystic's
Wandered astray.
Black apes call and green birds cry
A magic crane goes before me,
Dancing, leads me
To my cave.
- Yun-K'an Tzu

Consider that our parents used to think someone else was in charge: church, job boss, government, the 'system.' And we -- what do we think?

We've come to understand that no one is in charge.

It's just us. If there's something to do, we have to do it.

With a kicker. We have to do it -- but without knowing what we have to do.

So, we just do it; we do the next thing to be done.

What makes us different from our parents? Not much. Just a small thing.

We are no longer afraid of the church, the boss, the government, or the system. Nope, no fear of any of them.

We now know it's us.

To fear ourselves.

Or love ourselves.

With a kicker. They're both the same thing.

How 'bout that?

Can't think of anything other.

Nothing seems to work. Not anything. Not me. Not any of it. Just sounds in the night.

Water clunks in abandoned lock under window. Phantom boats sidle through narrow rust-eaten doors rising and falling in nether time moving to slippery memory where long gone slips of marina backed up to Bayview street.

Across room, spirits of Findley's are noisier than usual at sink and counter visiting at edge of subtle world. It's the still hour. Everything is in itself. At edge of each other. Dimensions within and surrounding, intersecting and imagining no barriers, no difference. One world of earth concealing and unconcealing truth and untruth. Heidegger's ghost carries the origin of the work of art. Goes forward. Then reverses.

Night Rain

For no reason it rains,
Whispers of reality.
How lovely it sings,
Drop by drop.
Sitting and lying I listen
With emptied mind.
I don't need ears,
I don't need rain.
- Chin'gak (1178-1234)

I've become my own specter. I haunt the places I dwell. This respite from the never-ending finishing of kitchen out at the hermitage threatens to become permanent retreat with wandering memory. I ask fellow students: Where did we come from? What story do we settle on? Back before any knowing, where and who were we?

"Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you. The one no one talks of speaks the secret sound to himself, and he is the one who has made it all."
— Kabir

What is useful? So much of the useless abounds. Governing people in a time of political simony is useless. Usury becomes the national and international anthem. Wave that flagging misfortune! March on!  

What, then, shall we do? Tolstoy's ghost looks out window at Man-forgotten family losing home and hearth. Man has forgotten God. Man has forgotten Being. Moving from myth to decimal point, we have forgotten what it once meant to be alive.  Forgive all debts? Did Jesus say that? Or some revolutionary rising up from an immigrant refugee obscurity? People with guns will come to take you away from your bed and your breakfast unless you pay for them. Not only is there no free ride, we've made God into a financier, extracting interest and penalties on simple needs unmet.

In the night, desolate and dispirited, shells of former human beings crack open and fall to ground. Nor does the ground stop the falling. There is only the falling through. When shall we wake?

"The guest is inside you, and also inside me;
you know the sprout is hidden inside the seed.
We are all struggling; none of us has gone far.
Let your arrogance go, and look around inside.

The blue sky opens out farther and farther,
the daily sense of failure goes away,
the damage I have done to myself fades,
a million suns come forward with light,
when I sit firmly in that world.

I hear bells ringing that no one has shaken,
inside "love" there is more joy than we know of,
rain pours down, although the sky is clear of clouds,
there are whole rivers of light.
The universe is shot through in all parts by a single sort of love.
How hard it is to feel that joy in all our four bodies!

Those who hope to be reasonable about it fail.
The arrogance of reason has separated us from that love.
With the word "reason" you already feel miles away."
— Kabir (The Kabir book: Forty-four of the ecstatic poems of Kabir)

That's all we need, an ecstatic seer-poet!

That is, on second glance, all we need.

A seeing that surrounds itself.

With love!

Anyone?

There?

It's beyond me.

Forgetfulness

The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,

as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.

Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,

something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.

Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.

It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.

No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.

(Poem, Forgetfulness, by Billy Collins)

What is?

Not yet dawn. Water dark. No horizon. Lights from building across harbor waver on outgoing tide. Church steeple bell tolls hour. Prayer, if this be prayer, is mere presence. No words suffice. One candle. One stick incense. One stillness. Unseen choir chants soto voce their love; "Ama nesciri!"

You provide me a form;
I entrust you my Mind.
Though the body is filled
To the full by you,
The ten thousand things
Have become light.
Roaming in the universe,
In and out of mountain forests,
Why should I admire the beauty
Of red and purple robes?
I seek only that which
Frost and snow cannot harm.
- Han-Shan Te-Ch'ing

Outskirt of Skowhegan yesterday two old timers work to load antique John Deere onto flatbed. Rear right wheel frozen, bigger tractor sets plow rig against tire, other fella chains up come-along rocking inch by stubborn inch up ramps braced by lengths of beam. I step up onto metal trailer, offer help, am given gloves, and ratchet iron bar like some railroad hand switching tracks back an forth for sluggish train. Comes along, slowly, slowly. Shorten chain for last eight feet. Come to end. Done.

Reciprocation.

Around corner, green element leans to left, white dog looking out wondering why his walk has been delayed. Tractor with hard of hearing driver backs in. Chain attached to under-hook. Easy tug. Right front wheel lifts from snowy ditch. Much obliged!

The Rain Poured Down
My mother weeping
in the dark hallway, in the arms of a man,
not my father,
as I sat at the top of the stairs unnoticed—
my mother weeping and pleading for what I didn't know
then and can still only imagine—
for things to be somehow other than they were,
not knowing what I would change,
for, or to, or why,
only that my mother was weeping
in the arms of a man not me,
and the rain brought down the winter sky
and hid me in the walls that looked on,
indifferent to my mother's weeping,
or mine,
in the rain that brought down the dark afternoon.
(--Poem, "The Rain Poured Down", 2005 by Dan Gerber)

Maybe what we think is the point is not the point. Rather ways we get lost. Sorrows holding us close taking the form of what we feel we can name.

Light lengthens from behind islands in the bay. Covered sky. No name for what it drops.

One way to navigate the places where there be dragons is to go straight ahead. Dragons or salmonella or dread of the unknown is no inhibitant to one foot in front of another -- or one ratchet of a come-along, or one sorrow more or less along the way.

Thus says the Lord: ‘As the rain and the snow come down from the heavens and do not return without watering the earth, making it yield and giving growth to provide seed for the sower and bread for the eating, so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do.’     (--Isaiah 55:10-11)

Silver-tone chiaroscuro inner and outer harbor. Not knowing what is being done is no excuse for not allowing it to be done. We are entering a post-knowing age. Get used to it. There's no knowing what is most real -- only the presencing attention given us and given by us in its presence.

If a man who was rich enough in this world’s goods saw that one of his brothers was in need, but closed his heart to him, how could the love of God be living in him? My children, our love is not to be just words or mere talk, but something real and active. (-John 3:17-18)

Candle doesn't talk. Incense has burned itself through. Dawn has no words.

I pray for something for each of us -- something real. Something active.

Something out of hiding.

Seagulls circling with daylight.

May our throats be healthy with clear light blazing open sound!

Of the Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird in his poem, Wallace Stevens in the 9th way says:

IX.
When the blackbird flew out of sight, 
It marked the edge 
Of one of many circles.

It is time to begin the circle round of wondering and imagining where we will be in three months' time.

People ask. We don't know. Have hardly tried to imagine. On one level, we go nowhere. On another, it all ends. From middle ground, February will fasten us with cold.

Candlemas Day, Ground Hog Day, Imbolc, Presentation, Purification -- many coats for an early, short month.

The Lord is the sanctuary and the stumbling-stone and the rock that brings down the two Houses of Israel; a trap and a snare for the inhabitants of Jerusalem.
(-Isaiah 8:14)

The Middle East stumbles with vengeance and righteous vindication. No inclusive circles with explosive shells!

Robert Bolt -- in A Man for All Seasons, a play about Sir Thomas More, -- writes that God made angels for splendor, plants for their simplicity, and animals for their innocence. But:

"...man to serve him wittingly, in the tangle of his mind! If he suffers us to fall to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand our tackle as best we can... But it's God's part, not our own, to bring ourselves to that extremity! Our natural business lies in escaping!"     (p. 126, in A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt, 1954, film 1966)

Meetingbrook's concerns are small change and insignificant weight next to the collapsing consciousness that continues to assert "you are not my equal" and "we will defeat you" -- a mind that cannot fathom the integrity of God-life-with-us.

Meetingbrook is a circle nearing the edge of sight. Further and further irrelevance, nearer and nearer impertinence.

February's crowded symbology floats on a quiet harbor surface this morning. The Z-2 is not on its finger float, although the freeboard-losing smaller lobster boat has moved to tie up across from its absence.

Brigid be well in all of us this silver-white imagining day!

Encircling.

We've gotta love poetry.

It is tide for us.

Bright Sun after Heavy Snow
by Jane Kenyon

A ledge of ice slides from the eaves,
piercing the crusted drift. Astonishing
how even a little violence
eases the mind.

In this extreme state of light
everything seems flawed: the streaked
pane, the forced bulbs on the sill
that refuse to bloom...A wad of dust
rolls like a desert weed
over the drafty floor.

Again I recall a neighbor's
small affront — it rises in my mind
like the huge banks of snow along the road:
the plow, passing up and down all day,
pushes them higher and higher...

The shadow of smoke rising from the chimney
moves abruptly over the yard.
The clothesline rises in the wind. One
wooden pin is left, solitary as a finger;
it, too, rises and falls.
(--Poem, "Bright Sun after Heavy Snow" by Jane Kenyon, from The Boat of Quiet Hours. © Graywolf Press, 1986.)

Rising, falling, rising. Falling. In two poems by Dan Gerber read in prison, someone notices his use of 'stumble' in both. I am, these days, one continuous stumble. It fits nicely with 'bum.'

Like the Sun

Cut down being and nonbeing
The All enfolds.
A dot of Buddha nature-
It shines like the sun.
You may grasp it right away
But can't escape a stick.
How can you then sit idly
And have a moment to think?
- Chin gak (1178-1234)

Not a moment goes by but someone's thought shoulders you aside. Maybe that's it; 'you' are a fiction. Only a poem can set things straight.

We are all Begging to have God
by Basil the Great

It is natural to look for beauty and to love it, even though the idea of what is beautiful varies between one person and another.

Now, what is more marvelous than the divine beauty? What can you think of that is more likely to give pleasure than the magnificence of God? What desire could be more ardent, more irresistible than the thirst which God inspires in the soul when once it has been purified of every vice and cries out: 'I am sick with love.' [S. of S. 2:5]

The divine beauty is beyond description in words. We could compare its brilliance to the light of the morning star or the moon or the sun. But we should be as far from a true description as midday is from the dead of night.

This beauty is invisible to the eyes of the body; only the soul and the mind can perceive it. Every time it illumines the saints, it leaves in them a sting, a nostalgia so strong as to wring from the cry: 'Woe is me, that I am in exile still.' [cf. Ps. 120:5]

By our nature we human beings aspire to what is beautiful and love it. But what is beautiful is also good. God is good. Everyone looks for the good, therefore everyone looks for God.
(--Cited from: Spidlik, Thomas. Drinking from the Hidden Fountain : A Patristic Breviary: Ancient Wisdom for Today's World. Minneapolis: Cistercian Publications, Incorporated, 1993. Page 173).

It is beauty we desire. The meeting-place, as Muriel Rukeyser suggests.

In poetry, form and content, relation and function, reach and merge This is the one skill we have not used, reaching that makes a meeting-place.
Are we to teach this? All we can show to people is themselves; show them what passion they possess, and we will all have to come to the poetry. This is the knowledge of communication, and it is the fear of it which has cut us down.
Facing and communicating, that will be our life, in the world and in poetry.
Our lives may rest on this; and our lives are our images
(--Muriel Rukeyser, p.4o, in The Life of Poetry, Paris Press, 1996 c.1949)

Just imagine the meeting-place.

Mid-tide.

We've got to love our lives.

If "what is" is all that is, how is it we've not yet fully entered and engaged "what is"?

Pray for the well-being of each being entering and engaging "what is".

The One-we-call-God is the entering and engaging of "what is" -- Open Itself Origin.

The poet said:

Love
everyone you can. The list gets longer and shorter.
We're seldom better than weather. We're nearly as good
as a woman we met in passing once at Invergarry.
Don't be sorry, for him or for self. Love the last star
broken by storm. And love you. You hold it together.
(--from Poem, 'Villager' by Richard Hugo, in The Right Madness on Skye)

We hold it, all of it, as it comes, together.

Not one will be lost.

Happily each is found.

As one.

All.

Alone.

Together.

This, soon-to-dawn, morning.

Afghanistan.

Iraq.

Bush.

Silently a flower blooms,
In silence it falls away;
Yet here now, at this moment,
At this place,
The whole of the flower,
The whole of the world
Is blooming.
This is the talk of the flower,
The truth of the blossom;
The glory of life is fully shining here.
- Zenkei Shibayama

War.

War.

Happily gone.

It is time to sit still in a room, alone, and ponder.

"All of man's troubles come from his inability to sit alone, quietly, in a room, for any length of time." (-- Blaise Pascal)

This room, silent this morning following snow/ice storm, scent of Tibetan incense mingling with organic Echinacea tea, harbor open of ice.

In cold weather I always to go sleep early,
Not waiting for the sunlight to withdraw.
I never shut my cottage door,
Lest it keep the mountain monkeys out.
Falling leaves strike the window;
At my pillow it seems like raindrops.
Rising, I gaze at the western peaks;
The moon has set, the stars are twinkling.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)

I've sometimes thought of 'ego' as that which is opposing God. (I recall someone's 'elide God out' for 'ego'). We'd have to ask what God is in order to grasp the opposing of God.

These mornings I think of God as the Open, Itself, Origin.

We don't 'know' God. We approach the Open, as Ourselves, Anew. By this I mean that God is not 'something' -- nor are we. God, and thus we, are ever-being-revealed, where we are revealed, as we are revealed.

It scares me to contemplate this. I am not there, not anywhere, when God is with me. Always inchoate. Always nascent. Always alone. (All ways, all one.) Of course, a voice inserts, each of us is distinct, particular, and connected. And, yes, each has history -- as does the world. Still, God is what is taking place this moment; God is this moment speaking. Silence, curiously, is the language of God.

The Enemy Within
An interview with Archimandrite Dionysios

Interview

This article first appeared in What is Enlightenment Magazine, Issue 17, “What is Ego? Friend or Foe...” Spring–Summer 2000

What Is Enlightenment: What is the ego?

Archimandrite Dionysios: When Satan, who was the first and highest angel, looked away from God and turned his attention to himself, there we had the first seed of ego. He took his spiritual eyes from the view of the Holy Trinity, the view of the Lord, and he looked at himself and started to think about himself. And he said, “I want to put my throne in the highest place, and to be like Him.” That moment started the history, the reality and the existence of ego—which is not in fact a reality, but the refusal of reality. Ego is the flower that comes out from the death of love. When we kill love, the result is the ego.

WIE: What is the character of the ego? How does it manifest within a human being?

Dionysios: When we don’t trust. Ego is born when we don’t trust others. When we’re afraid of others, when we need guns against others, then we need to have an ego because we are in the wrong way of life. We think only of ourselves, and we see only our ego. But when we see each other, when we trust each other, there is no need for ego, no reason for ego, no possibility for ego.

WIE: So in the way you’re speaking about it then, ego is the insistence on our separation, our independence?

Dionysios: Yes, on our solitude. Our need to be alone, to have our own way of thinking that satisfies us and preserves our personality in the wrong way.

WIE: Putting ourselves first and foremost?

Dionysios: Yes. And Christ said, “The last is the first.” Because when you want to be the last and you choose the last seat, only then may you call the others friends of yours.

WIE: The ego, this sense of self-importance you’ve been speaking about, is often described in The Philokalia and other writings of the Christian mystics as the primary enemy with which the spiritual aspirant must wrestle in their quest for union with God. Why is the ego considered to be such a formidable adversary on the path?

Dionysios: It is such a powerful enemy because it is the enemy within us. We are enemies to ourselves, like Adam and Eve in paradise. Of course, the snake talked to Eve. But she could have avoided him. The snake said to her, “The Lord lied to you,” but if she would have trusted the Lord, she would not have started to talk to the snake. And Adam, too, lost his communication with the Lord and stayed with his ego. And the two egos worked together, Adam and Eve.

The real enemy is the ego. It is the enemy because it is against love. When I look at myself, I don’t love others. When I want to occupy for myself what is yours, I become the killer of my brother, like Cain killed Abel. When I want to satisfy myself, this satisfaction is gained through sacrificing the freedom of the other. Then my ego becomes my lord, my god, and there is no stronger temptation than this. Because to us, this ego may seem like a diamond. It has a shine like gold. But whatever is shining is not gold. The ego is just like a fire without light, a fire without warmth, a fire without life. It seems that it has many sides and many possibilities—but what is this possibility? What is ego? Only the means by which I protect myself as if I were in a battle, as if every other person is my enemy, and the only thing I care about is winning the victory.
( from The Enemy Within, An interview with Archimandrite Dionysios, Monk, Greek Orthodox, in What is Enlightenment Magazine (now EnlightenNext Magazine), Issue 17 / Spring–Summer 2000, "What Is Ego? Friend Or Foe...")
http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j34/dionysios.asp

Love of the beautiful/holy/good/exalted is what the word 'Philokalia' translates as.
We long for "What Is" beautiful/holy/good/exalted.

Sitting alone, breathing, not actively thinking nor grasping on to thoughts passing, everything is --and is in -- itself.

Itself, as in, not other than.

What.

God.

Is.

Doing .

Here.

Wind howls from Northeast. Snow blinds, frantic to alight. Cars and people fall into ditches on hills and personal valleys. I stay in shop all day, classes at prison and university canceled early.

It is hard to distinguish whether someone is truly mentally distressed or imitating a conservative talk show host. For that matter, imitating anyone speaking to the object of their perseveration.

It's all in a day's meetingbrook. What do we expect? We're each of us a little odd. Anyone denying their oddness is looking for a fight. There comes the blaming of another for what belongs in your home court.

A woman asked what psychotic actually meant, saying someone is dying and was said to be psychotic. Apart from 'sad,' I say something traditional.

If truth be told, I don't know what psychotic means. My guess is that it has to do with a man parking his car on the back of someone looking for the penny they dropped and becoming angry at the US Treasury for not insisting the Department of Agriculture demand a broader variety of penny candy at the corner shop that closed last year because the proprietor, whose sister is named Penny, had a heart attack at her brother Ralph's house who lived next door to the man from whom the parking man bought the car now parked on the back of the elderly Mr. Theodore who hated the idea of wasting money and had just finished a leisurely stroll returning from the Italian restaurant which opened last month, a remodeled space once the corner shop which closed last year. An 'Ow!' was heard as the man who'd parked his car stepped over the outstretched arm under his wheel, now annoyed to have his silent exodus broken by the sound.

REMOVING THE SPLINTER OF EGO
Understanding suffering is very important. The practice of meditation
is designed not to develop pleasure but to understand the truth of
suffering; and in order to understand the truth of suffering, one
also has to understand the truth of awareness. When true awareness
takes place, suffering does not exist. Through awareness, suffering
is somewhat changed in its perspective. It is not necessarily that
you do not suffer, but the haunting quality that fundamentally you
are in trouble is removed. It is like removing a splinter. It might
hurt, and you might still feel pain, but the basic cause of that
pain, the ego, has been removed.
(From Chapter Three, "The Power of Flickering Thoughts," in THE TRUTH OF SUFFERING AND THE PATH OF LIBERATION, edited by Judith Lief, based on talks at the Vajradhatu Seminars conducted by Chogyam Trungpa.)

It's a hard season for folks. Money is small. Cold is constricting. One's history steps out of the shadows and stands there like a ticket vendor to a circus moved out of town. Madness phones up and pretends to want to rent your house, saying you can have one room. Memory plays tricks. You remember things that weren't said. You try to recall names of lovers you've never kissed.

Having it Out with Melancholy
by Jane Kenyon

"If many remedies are prescribed for an illness, you may be certain that the illness has no cure."
(--A. P. CHEKHOV The Cherry Orchard)

1 FROM THE NURSERY

When I was born, you waited
behind a pile of linen in the nursery,
and when we were alone, you lay down
on top of me, pressing
the bile of desolation into every pore.

And from that day on
everything under the sun and moon
made me sad -- even the yellow
wooden beads that slid and spun
along a spindle on my crib.

You taught me to exist without gratitude.
You ruined my manners toward God:
"We're here simply to wait for death;
the pleasures of earth are overrated."

I only appeared to belong to my mother,
to live among blocks and cotton undershirts
with snaps; among red tin lunch boxes
and report cards in ugly brown slipcases.
I was already yours -- the anti-urge,
the mutilator of souls.

2 BOTTLES

Elavil, Ludiomil, Doxepin,
Norpramin, Prozac, Lithium, Xanax,
Wellbutrin, Parnate, Nardil, Zoloft.
The coated ones smell sweet or have
no smell; the powdery ones smell
like the chemistry lab at school
that made me hold my breath.

3 SUGGESTION FROM A FRIEND

You wouldn't be so depressed
if you really believed in God.

4 OFTEN

Often I go to bed as soon after dinner
as seems adult
(I mean I try to wait for dark)
in order to push away
from the massive pain in sleep's
frail wicker coracle.

5 ONCE THERE WAS LIGHT

Once, in my early thirties, I saw
that I was a speck of light in the great
river of light that undulates through time.

I was floating with the whole
human family. We were all colors -- those
who are living now, those who have died,
those who are not yet born. For a few

moments I floated, completely calm,
and I no longer hated having to exist.

Like a crow who smells hot blood
you came flying to pull me out
of the glowing stream.
"I'll hold you up. I never let my dear
ones drown!" After that, I wept for days.

6 IN AND OUT

The dog searches until he finds me
upstairs, lies down with a clatter
of elbows, puts his head on my foot.

Sometimes the sound of his breathing
saves my life -- in and out, in
and out; a pause, a long sigh. . . .

7 PARDON

A piece of burned meat
wears my clothes, speaks
in my voice, dispatches obligations
haltingly, or not at all.
It is tired of trying
to be stouthearted, tired
beyond measure.

We move on to the monoamine
oxidase inhibitors. Day and night
I feel as if I had drunk six cups
of coffee, but the pain stops
abruptly. With the wonder
and bitterness of someone pardoned
for a crime she did not commit
I come back to marriage and friends,
to pink fringed hollyhocks; come back
to my desk, books, and chair.

8 CREDO

Pharmaceutical wonders are at work
but I believe only in this moment
of well-being. Unholy ghost,
you are certain to come again.

Coarse, mean, you'll put your feet
on the coffee table, lean back,
and turn me into someone who can't
take the trouble to speak; someone
who can't sleep, or who does nothing
but sleep; can't read, or call
for an appointment for help.

There is nothing I can do
against your coming.
When I awake, I am still with thee.

9 WOOD THRUSH

High on Nardil and June light
I wake at four,
waiting greedily for the first
note of the wood thrush. Easeful air
presses through the screen
with the wild, complex song
of the bird, and I am overcome

by ordinary contentment.
What hurt me so terribly
all my life until this moment?
How I love the small, swiftly
beating heart of the bird
singing in the great maples;
its bright, unequivocal eye.
(--Poem, Having it Out with Melancholy, by Jane Kenyon)

Once, almost 40 years ago -- a long time ago -- I lived on Brook Avenue in Santa Cruz California. Then Hall Street. Now, the sobriquet meetingbrook is by another ocean another mountain town where sleet and ice threaten to distress covering boards and plate glass with pings and whooshes of wind maddened winter.

It's the feast of Thomas of Aquinas. He wrote:

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder. (--Saint Thomas Aquinas)

So much. So odd. So big?

John Updike died yesterday. I'd sent him one of my ten Christmas cards in 1966 to thank him for his writing. Someone asked me why? I liked the face in the artist's mirror. His reflection seemed recognizable.

The mirror glances as I pass. The unusual meets the ordinary without being introduced.

I wonder how it all turns out!

Muriel Rukeyser writes:"The fear that cuts off poetry is profound: it plunges us deep, far back to the edge of childhood." (p.15, in The Life of Poetry)

She says that in great poetry you feel a source speaking to another source. Poems invite you to feel. To respond. Poems invite a total response. 

The vagaries of life
though painful,
teach us not to cling
to this fleeting world.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

No clinging; but to feel what you feel, think what you think, be what you are. Yes! Then, drop it!

Snow storm approaches. Perhaps classes will be cancelled. I'll return to dream. Who was that visitor last night?

If the poem is Being written -- with -- no wonder -- we're frightened.

It is wearying to live.

Now whether withdrawn on a mountain,
or retired in a city, the essential
thing is the long maturation.
For this, it is good to keep
the examples of the old masters in mind,
or we will be pulled back into
the dust and delusion of the world.
- Torei (1721-1792)

It is time to rub eyes and wonder how it was these last eight years that fear paralyzed nearly all of us.

It was not about 9/11. It was about men with no conscience. It was about people believing the lie.

About something lost.

Fishing
by Kate Scott

Sam was a galunky kind of guy,
my cousin says. He walked like this.
He takes on a bow-legged swagger
that makes us laugh. And boy,
could he drink beer. He lifts his hand,
tipping imaginary cans in quick succession.
He talked real fast too. Back then we laughed,
asked what was the rush? Never slowed him any.
Girls loved him. He was such a big guy,
think they figured he must have a big heart.

My cousin slows a little in his walk,
tugs on his ear to remember more.

We hung out a lot and unless he was excited,
talking fast, he was real quiet, would just sit,
stare out to space like he was someplace else.
Maybe he was thinking about the girl he loved
who died one winter, fell through the ice
as she was skating towards him.
She was only twenty feet away, her arms out wide.
They say he was there all night,
smashed the ice in a hundred places to find her.
They pulled her out in the Spring.
I think when he talked so fast
he was trying to forget,
like the words would fill up the space she left.

My cousin stops in the road,
brushes imaginary hair from his eyes.

I lost touch for some time, years went by.
I didn't hear from Sam, neither of us
were much use at letter writing.
Then one summer I came home to visit,
bumped right into him in a store downtown.
He talked real slow, like he was a clock
that had wound down. He said he'd taken up fishing.
He said he didn't much care for fish
but when he flung the line out hard,
heard the whir as it spun out over the water,
saw the river winking and glinting at him,
he felt he could catch anything.
("Fishing" by Kate Scott, from Stitches. Peterloo Poets, 2003)

We can hardly speak of that time. The lost 8 years.

Not looking back, afraid what we might find.

To know the mind of God is to see the entire picture. We don't; therefore, we don't.

The little retreat is to hide
Among wooded hills;
The great retreat is to vanish
In the capital.
- Kanzan

There's a boat in Izola, Slovenia, named 'Tai Pan.' Were meetingbrook to purchase it, it's name would expand two letters both before the first word and after the second.

It would be called 'Jitai Panis.' ('Jitai' is Japanese for 'Itself.' 'Panis' is Latin for 'Bread.')

The name 'Jitai Panis' means 'Bread Itself,' or, 'Itself Bread.'

Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Itself.

The bread of life is God itself.

Lesson 025

I do not know what anything is for.
Purpose is meaning. Today's idea explains why nothing you see means anything. You do not know what it is for. Therefore, it is meaningless to you. Everything is for your own best interests. That is what it is for; that is its purpose; that is what it means. It is in recognizing this that your goals become unified. It is in recognizing this that what you see is given meaning.

You perceive the world and everything in it as meaningful in terms of ego goals. These goals have nothing to do with your own best interests, because the ego is not you. This false identification makes you incapable of understanding what anything is for. As a result, you are bound to misuse it. When you believe this, you will try to withdraw the goals you have assigned to the world, instead of attempting to reinforce them.

Another way of describing the goals you now perceive is to say that they are all concerned with "personal" interests. Since you have no personal interests, your goals are really concerned with nothing. In cherishing them, therefore, you have no goals at all. And thus you do not know what anything is for.

Before you can make any sense out of the exercises for today, one more thought is necessary. At the most superficial levels, you do recognize purpose. Yet purpose cannot be understood at these levels. For example, you do understand that a telephone is for the purpose of talking to someone who is not physically in your immediate vicinity. What you do not understand is what you want to reach him for. And it is this that makes your contact with him meaningful or not.

It is crucial to your learning to be willing to give up the goals you have established for everything. The recognition that they are meaningless, rather than "good" or "bad," is the only way to accomplish this. The idea for today is a step in this direction.
(from Lesson 25, The Course in Miracles)

I don't know what the boat is for. God knows. Nor do we have the money to purchase it. Someone does. Not only that, how could we expect anyone to assist in the purchase of the boat intended for service to God and the mysterious family of brothers and sisters everywhere?

I used to think it was absurd to want to serve.

I no longer think that.

I am absurd. Trying to serve.

Without thought.

Itself Bread. Bread Itself.

Either way, the word we hear is Servus!

Servus (Czech: Servus, Hungarian: Szervusz, Polish: Serwus, German: Servus, Romanian: Servus, Ukrainian: Cepeyc) is a salutation used in many parts of Central and Eastern Europe.

These words originates from the Latin word for servant or slave, servus. The phrase is an ellipsis of a Latin expression meaning, "I am your servant" or "at your service". (from Wikipedia)

We don't know the mind of God --

We are merely trying to be.

At your service.

Note: A lovely sunny day. Shop is open, 

However, there will not be a Sunday Evening Practice at the hermitage. Deadlines demand! 

Most think it's an opportunity. That we'll be vacating this location in April. A change.

I like bamboo as the symbol
of constancy and simplicity.
I built my house deep within a grove.
Strike the bamboo
with a piece of brick.
Perhaps the sound could
awaken a passing Zen monk.
(--Jakushitsu)

Some think it's the times. That it's time. For something big. Involving consciousness. Or the disaster before a shift.

I, for my part, feel it's January during a financial crisis, a cold night, a new administration following a criminal administration, and the collapse of false optimism lipsticked with bravado, bank accounts filled with deception.

I'm not sure consciousness is changing. I've a head cold. Everything is a twist top and chewable or fits into a teaspoon or is taken 4 times a day.

And, we're one day closer to closing these doors. With itchy eyes.

What if God is the Open?

– it is the Lord who speaks.
I will put my laws into their minds
and write them on their hearts.
Then I will be their God
and they shall be my people.
There will be no further need for neighbour to try to teach neighbour,
or brother to say to brother,
‘Learn to know the Lord.’
No, they will all know me,
the least no less than the greatest,
since I will forgive their iniquities
and never call their sins to mind.
(from Jeremiah 31: 33)

Would we continue to prefer the closed?

No.

As hermits in the open (hito) we prefer the open origin itself.

It's official. The certified letter stated that a man named Fred (one of the current owner/partners) is buying for himself the cape at the harbor we lease, wants to live upstairs, wants the downstairs too, and will convert the bookshop/bakery space into something yet to be determined. And so, at the end of April, when our lease expires, we will have to relinquish the premises after 13 lovely years.

Rain clears from the distant peaks
Dew glistens frostily.
Moonlight glazes the front of
My ivied hut among the pines.
How can I tell you how I am,
Right now?
A swollen brook gushes in the valley
Darkened by clouds.
- Daito (1282-1334)

Clearly something different will be emerging with meetingbrook.

Our original vision, boat and barn, might just find itself retrieved.

Anyone wish to buy us, or help us buy, the 44' Nauticat Schooner currently for sale in Slovenia?
It would be a dockside resource replacing the shop for hospitality, conversations, overnights, and retreat sails.

Tired.

Not-Self

Central to the Buddha's teaching is the doctrine of anatman: "not-self." This does not deny that the notion of an "I" works in the everyday world. In fact, we need a solid, stable ego to function in society. However, "I" is not real in an ultimate sense. It is a "name": a fictional construct that bears no correspondence to what is really the case. Because of this disjunction all kinds of problems ensue.

Once our minds have constructed the notion of "I," it becomes our central reference point. We attach to it and identify with it totally. We attempt to advance what appears to be its interests, to defend it against real or apparent threats and menaces. And we look for ego-affirmation at every turn: confirmation that we exist and are valued. The Gordian Knot of preoccupations arising from all this absorbs us exclusively, at times to the point of obsession. This is, however, a narrow and constricted way of being. Though we cannot see it when caught in the convolutions of ego, there is something in us that is larger and deeper: a wholly other way of being.
(--John Snelling, Elements of Buddhism)

Cold.

Note: 

The bookshop/bakery will be closed today, Wednesday. There will be no Evening Conversation.  We're off doing other work. We'll be back tomorrow, Thursday. 

We go back to our lives.

The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
(--from "Anthem" by Leonard Cohen)

Quiet re-emerges from its inner dwelling.

At clear dawn entering the ancient temple,
First sunlight shines high in the forest.
A bamboo path leads to a hidden spot,
A meditation chamber deep in the flowering trees.
The mountain light cheers the natures of the bird,
Reflections in pool void the hearts of men.
All nature’s sounds here grow silent,
All that remains are the notes of temple bells.
- Ch’ang Chien

Dog goes out. Pees. Comes in. Eats biscuit. Settles in under eave.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.
(--refrain, Anthem)

The work, and art, are at origin.

Note: The bookshop/bakery will be opening at 4:00pm today, and will have Tuesday Evening Conversation.

.....

As the festivities of Inauguration Day move toward noon swearing-in ceremony, there are a few thoughts that want to step out then get themselves out of the way.

Walking the golf course in Rockport this morning with Rokpa, sun glistening innumerable sparkling gems of snow-light nestled in fresh snowfall suggesting the incomprehensible vastness of space beyond galaxy, infinity beyond incalculable dizzying expanse, while earphones play Maine Public Broadcasting morning classical pieces -- "America the Beautiful" -- the following occurred to me.

Today is a beautiful day! America is a beautiful country. As the transition from one administration to another takes place the joy is palpable.

And yet, something must be acknowledged. The beauty of America is like the particular beauty of each person dwelling both herein and elsewhere. For the past 8 years the beautiful America feels like it has been in an abusive marriage, a domestic violent relationship, one where beatings, lies, infidelities to constituting promises, and turning out under constraining obedience to prostitute itself for the odd sense of revenge and ideological arrogance of fear-addicted powerful men.

That relationship comes to an end. The scars, tears, and ugly concessions that took place are about to be comforted, consoled, and mended. It is a time gone by that cannot be allowed to happen again. The beauty of individuals, like the beauty of a country -- whatever abuse they've suffered -- is not diminished by those who arrive seeing with wisdom and compassion.

This is a time for wisdom and compassion.

There. It has been said. And, for now, put on a back burner. But never to be forgotten, no matter how sincere the forgiveness -- it is not to be forgotten.

What joy there is in this day must be used to heal the individuals, herein and worldwide; heal this great land and country wherein we dwell.

Procedamus in pace! Let's go forward in peace!

Barack Obama becomes the 44th president of this country, Tuesday, 20Jan.2009. 

John O'Donohue's words prepare for it: 

For a Leader

May you have the grace and wisdom
To act kindly, learning
To distinguish between what is
Personal and what is not.

May you be hospitable to criticism.

May you never put yourself at the center of things.

May you act not from arrogance but out of service.

May you work on yourself,
Building up and refining the ways of your mind.

May those who work for you know
You see and respect them.

May you learn to cultivate the art of presence
In order to engage with those who meet you.

When someone fails or disappoints you
May the graciousness with which you engage
be their stairway to renewal and refinement.

May you treasure the gifts of the mind
Through reading and creative thinking
So that you continue as a servant of the frontier
Where the new will draw its enrichment from the old,
And you never become a functionary.

May you know the wisdom of deep listening,
The healing of wholesome words,
The encouragement of the appreciative gaze,
The decorum of held dignity,
The springtime edge of the bleak question.

May you have a mind that loves frontiers
So that you can evoke the bright fields
That lie beyond the view of the regular eye.

May you have good friends
to mirror your blind spots.

May leadership be for you
A true adventure of growth.
(--pp.151-152, Blessing, "For a Leader," by John O'Donohue, from To Bless The Space Between Us, c.2008)

It is a day for delight and gratitude.

And so it is and will be!

Please, God!

I asked God for nothing. I received nothing. I am grateful.

Some speak of ancestral emptiness
A nothing that is yet an infinity
Smallest hint of a germ of a blossom
Yet, the whole world subject to its call

Fish swim and animals leap with it
Men and women are fed and clothed by it
Strange, indeed, its transmutations
One breath swallowing up five colors
- Shih-shu (17th century)

We think we want something. We don't. What we really want is God. Nothing extraordinary.

You Must Be Present to Win --
There is a sign outside a casino in Las Vegas that says, "You must be present to win." The same is true in meditation. If we want to see the nature of our lives, we must actually be present, aware, awake. Developing samadhi [concentration] is much like polishing a lens. If we are looking to see the cells and workings of the body with a lens that has not been ground sufficiently, we will not see clearly. In order to penetrate the nature of the mind and body, we must collect and concentrate our resources and observe with a steady, silent mind. This is exactly what the Buddha did: he sat, concentrated his mind, and looked within. To become a yogi, an explorer of the heart and mind, we must develop this capacity as well.
(--Jack Kornfield, Seeking the Heart of Wisdom)

God was nothing I expected.

I looked around.

Emptiness.

Steady.

Silent.

No.

Mind.

Note: This lovely snow! Shop is open. But no practice at hermitage tonight. Stay home and snug!