What do Buddhism and Christianity have in common? They must change or die.

Buddha’s Satori

For six years sitting alone
Still as a snake
In a stalk of bamboo
With no family but the ice
On the snow mountain.
One night, seeing the empty sky
Fly into pieces, he shook
The morning star awake
And kept it in his eyes.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

What do families and traditions have in common? They must change or die.

I know, deprived of me,
God could not live a wink.
He must give up the ghost
if into naught I sink.
(A rhyme by the German mystic Angelus Silesius, 1624-1677, trans. by Paul Carus. c.1909)

What do you and I have in common with God?

Only God knows.

We must change. And die.

As God.

Is.

My truth.

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.......

Wandering between this person and that person, the mendicant bows with gratitude for this person and that person.

For everyone.

Buddha is concealed within the sentient being
If for one instant of thought we become impartial,
Then sentient beings are themselves Buddha.
In our mind itself a buddha exists,
Our own Buddha is the true Buddha.
If we do not have in ourselves the Buddha mind,
Then where are we to seek Buddha?
- Huineng

There was lobster, salads, cakes, poems, and lemon seltzer.

Their kindness.

Sweltering in the heat of the afternoon.

Our common celebration of birth.

We pin dedication notice, laminated and logo'd, six years later, on side of chapel/zendo. In honor of Janet, our original elder, on this ninth anniversary of her death. With grateful thanks to Jim and Paul six years after their generous gift of material, labor, and expertise.

It always seemed fitting -- Janet's death on her island on the feast of the Assumption of Mary.

The great Tao flows everywhere,
To the left and to the right.
All things depend upon it to exist,
And it does not abandon them.
To its accomplishments it lays no claim.
It loves and nourishes all things,
But does not lord it over them. (--Chuang tzu)

At table after morning practice Tom first and then Dean sang compositions and Lieders, first in French, then German -- to the delight of Erika, Saskia, and me. Quite by surprise after sitting and Lectio -- this spontaneous regaling.

This hermitage life feels just like the gift it is.

The Desire for Hermitage

Ah! To be all alone in a little cell
with nobody near me;
beloved that pilgrimage before the last pilgrimage to death.
Singing the passing hours to cloudy Heaven;
Feeding upon dry bread and water from the cold spring.
That will be an end to evil when I am alone
in a lovely little corner among tombs
far from the houses of the great.
Ah! To be all alone in a little cell, to be alone, all alone:
Alone I came into the world
alone I shall go from it.

"The Desire for Hermitage," taken from marginalia scribbled by medieval Irish monks in the corners of the manuscripts they were illuminating, translated by Seán Ó Faoláin.

We are simultaneously always and never alone.

This unbroken and unrepaired solitude is the practice of presence. The mind's identification with detail and drama is punctuated by mere seeing what is there as it is, without adornment.

Between Walls

the back wings
of the

hospital where
nothing

will grow lie
cinders

in which shine
the broken

pieces of a green
bottle
(Poem by William Carlos Williams)

A woman visiting her husband at Maine State Prison stopped by between morning and afternoon visits yesterday. A woman from Philadelphia visits this afternoon. The oven is on full tilt on this the hottest day in Maine this year.

We are in the body, as bodies, through the mystery of union of body, mind, and spirit.

She was pregnant, and in labour, crying aloud in the pangs of childbirth.
(--from Book of Revelations, 12)

Being in, as, and through this reality -- this not one, not two -- of matter/spirit, is a grand meditation that has befuddled many (if not all of us) throughout human existence.

I like the incarnational spirituality of wholeness -- where, as Williams writes. "nothing / will grow".

This meditation on nothingness and emptiness, kenosis and shunyata, is today's gift.

Mary...went...where?

Here I am.

Dwelling.

In, as, and through, the inquiry.

It's not too late.

"Honest conversation may be the most revolutionary act of our time."
(--from The Earth Charter, A New Economy and the Rise of Earth Community, by David Korten, at Earth Charter Leadership Gathering, Indianapolis June 19, 2009

Although we're slow to learn the skill, it's still possible.

Keep your heart clear and transparent
And you will never be bound.
A single disturbed thought, though,
Creates ten thousand distractions.
Let myriad things captivate you
And you'll go further and further astray.
How painful to see people
All wrapped up in themselves.
- Ryokan

Unwrap.

Speak honestly.

The revolution will be a joy.

When I'm dying, I'd like to be sure a conversation takes place about options. I'm not sure anyone will object. The public theater of exaggerated distortion is bad theater.

During the moment of illumination,
When I see the original face of mind,
A limitless compassion arises.
The greater the illumination,
The greater is the compassion.
The greater my compassion,
The deeper is the wisdom I feel.
- Garmaba

So much that passes for political discourse is really the personal fight for power and a financial payoff.

I prefer the eremitical life.

No power, no payoff, nothing personal.

Just morning, evening.

Sip water, eat potatoes.

The end is always near the beginning..

We hang a louvered door to the front room.

I worry about the American people.

Something disturbing is arising in their midst.

And they do not recognize it.

I don't. Do you?

Some say they have faith in God. Others say they know God. Still others say they feel God's presence.

Me? I'm happy to hear what all three say. It is that listening which is enough for me. To have faith, or know, or feel is not as interesting to me as is listening to the words and silence surrounding each one.

There’s a traditional story about a man imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit who attempts to dig his way to freedom with a spoon—rather like the character played by Tim Robbins in The Shawshank Redemption. After years of bone-wearying struggle, his hands calloused and bloody, he finally realizes the futility of his efforts and gives up. Tears of frustration and desperation streaming down his cheeks, he leans back against the door of his cell, only to discover that it’s been unlocked all along. As implausible as this story may seem, the point is clear—the prison that you imagine constrains you doesn’t really exist.
—Stephan Bodian, from Wake up Now (McGraw Hill), Tricycle Daily Dharma

So much of my life is futility. The dictionary says: The quality of having no useful result; uselessness. Lack of importance or purpose; frivolousness.

My life a futile act.

This realization does not upset.

Art as Flirtation and Surrender


In your light I learn how to love.

In your beauty, how to make poems.

You dance inside my chest,

where no one sees you,

but sometimes I do,

and that sight becomes this art.

(Excerpts from The Essential Rumi, translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, 1995.)

Seeing is enough. Not seeing is also enough. No one sees God.

But we can listen.

Practicing.

Futility.

Clare lived 27 years after the death of Francis. Once they were young together.

Orchid

Deep in the valley, a beauty hides:
Serene, peerless, incomparably sweet.
In the still shade of the bamboo thicket
It seems to sigh softly.
- Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831)

There's something unusual about hermits.

Francis loved Clare. Clare loved Francis.

They both loved poverty.

In 1215 Clare obtained permission to own nothing, as did Francis six years earlier. Only alms and nothing else would sustain them. Their intention was risky, a threat to established powers in the church, and was deemed a trifle insane.

They were unusual.

Intentional poverty for purposes of selfless compassion calls blindly to the unseen realm we once named heaven.

The real name of 'Lady Poverty' has never been known.

Clare and Francis were coy about their intimate realization.

They saw what we seem not able to see.

No complacencies. Merely Sunday morning.

We meet 3 dogs and their human companion at the turn of the first runway just up our path at the Snow Bowl. They run a little. We go on to the pond and fetch tennis ball and stick, returning by way of parking lot where Wallace and his human companion Jane are exiting their car. Rokpa and Wallace are good buddies. Rokie does the Border Collie crouch as they both sidle closer until like Sumo wrestlers they pound up against one another, run and tumble, pee and eat grass, smelling the remains of yesterday's tent catering now empty to the right of the chalet lodge.

They are, one surmises, happy to be with one another for this Sunday morning sunny time.

Dogen writes, “For the time being the highest peak, for the time being the deepest ocean; for the time being a crazy mind, for the time being a Buddha body; for the time being a Zen Master, for the time being an ordinary person; for the time being earth and sky… Since there is nothing but this moment, ‘for the time being’ is all the time there is.”

For seven days that week I spoke about this in as many ways as I could think of, silly and sometimes not silly, and for seven days 65 silent people listened and took Dogen’s words to heart.

We want enjoyment, we want to avoid pain and discomfort. But it is impossible that things will always work out, impossible to avoid pain and discomfort. So to be happy, with a happiness that doesn’t blow away with every wind, we need to be able to make use of what happens to us — all of it — whether we find ourselves at the top of a mountain or at the bottom of the sea.
(-- from Happy Days, The New York Times, August 7, 2009, 9:25 pm, For the Time Being, By Norman Fischer a senior Zen Buddhist priest and poet.)

Today I celebrate the sorrowful Feast of Nagasaki. In 1945 the second Atomic bomb dropped on Japan. It made the world a more frightening place for sane men and women. It began a spate of terror that has little promise of abatement. 9/11/2001 in New York City was only a small grandchild of that terror. There is a large extended family of terror-embedded offspring from the 1945 blasts that wander through time and being trying to remember why it is they feel driven to explode themselves reaking havoc, death, and destruction in their wake.

The parent originators and perpetrators of these terrifying and terrible ways of attacking the world with perceptions of fear and annihilation have long since retired from rationalizing and justifying and basking in adulation for their part in conceiving, creating, and cremating fellow men, women, and children. They have, as is said, taken their place in the pages of history. The scientists, the military, the president, and the populace all have settled into their own deaths and are little consulted in the conversation about their dangerous and demented grandchildren strapping explosives to their bodies, yelling or whispering demagogic threats of assassination, racism, and lynching in public town meetings, cable stations, and the podiums of congress.

We falsely accuse others of that which we are. These days "Hitler" and Nazism" and "Demagogue" are the epithets of right wing ideologues against their perceived enemies. A demagogue is a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power. These men and women, the grandchildren of atomic bomb ancestors, continue the delusion of separation, continue the rhetoric of division, continue the buildup of new platforms from which to launch contemporary versions of egoic fear and trembling that they are not, as they are wont to believe, the sole favored, privileged, and divinely appointed future of this planet.

Toward dawn I dozed off, and in my dream I found myself surrounded by a group of skeletons . . . . One skeleton came over to me and said:

Memories
Flee and
Are no more.
All are empty dreams
Devoid of meaning.

Violate the reality of things
And babble about
"God" and "the Buddha"
And you will never find
the true Way.
(--Ikkyu, 1400’s, from his poem "Skeletons")

Saskia and Rokpa come down from the mountain. It's a good day. We'll try Chase's Daily for brunch.

I love this life. And the world. I grow in deeper appreciation of my sisters and brothers. Even those grandparents who so desperately believed their perceptions of attack and destroy.

We are poor passing facts,
warned by that to give
each figure in the photograph
his living name.
(--from poem Epilogue by Robert Lowell)

My name is Bill. I am Nagasaki. I am America. I created the bomb. Flew it over Japan. Ordered the drop. And was killed there. So were you. So are you.

I tell you this because I do not want you to feel you have to continue my illusion. You do not have to blindly follow the conditioning imprinted by frightened ancestors and frightening figures selling delusional contemporary fear.

We are, for the time being, creators of the present. Imagine that!

Cease doing evil,
Learn and practice doing good,
Purify one's mind
This is the teaching of all the Awakened.
(from the Dhammapada, Verse 183, by the Buddha)

Begin here, now. From the rising of the sun to its setting. Let the name that is yours and mine, our brothers and sisters, earth and the whole of what is -- let it be praised and appreciated, respected and cherished. Take your finger off the button. Put it down. Look carefully beyond fear and attack. See What-Is there. Be the innocent child. Enter compassion!

Imagine

If only

We were love

With one

Another!

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My parents gave me life. God is that life.

Do the math and it doesn't add up.

Take everything away and that which remains is what is whole.

one's not half two. It's two are halves of one:
which halves reintegrating,shall occur
no death and any quantity;but than
all numerable mosts the actual more

minds ignorant of stern miraculous
this every truth-beware of heartless them
(given the scalpel,they dissect a kiss;
or,sold the reason,they undream a dream)

one is the song which fiends and angels sing:
all murdering lies by mortals told make two.
Let liars wilt,repaying life they're loaned;
we(by a gift called dying born)must grow

deep in dark least ourselves remembering
love only rides his year.
All lose,whole find
(Poem by e e cummings)

It is a rare joy.

To be.

Here.

First Dean. Then Paul. Followed by Jay. And John.

Friday morning spontaneous conversation with coffee and muffins. As education is closed this and next Friday in prison, we are recipients of unplanned lovely morning group at the hermitage.

Welcoming each.

As.

Christ is.

Welcome.

I might give up world affairs.

This could be the end of my interest in what happens in politics, governments, corporations, interest groups, spokespeople for any organization, preachers, reformers, the saved, the anxious to be enlightened, the guardians of public safety, the proponents of change, the protectors of the status quo, the righteous, the rebels, the polite, and the trouble-makers.

Overnight At a Mountain Monastery

Massed peaks pierce
The sky’s cold colors;
Here, the trail junctions
With the temple path.
Shooting stars pass
Into sparse-branched trees;
The moon travels one way,
Clouds the other.
Few people come
To this mountaintop;
Cranes do not flock
In the tall pines.
One Buddhist monk,
Eighty years old,
Has never heard
Of the world’s affairs.
- Chia Tao (779-843)

All of it. Finished.

Well then. There you are. Now then. Let's get started.

Don't Despair...

Joseph to his father in Canaan shall return, don't despair walk on;
and Jacob's hut will brighten with flowers, don't despair walk on.

Aching hearts heal in time, vanished hopes reappear,
the disparate mind will be pacified, don't despair walk on.

As the spring of life grows the newly green meadow,
roses will crown the sweet nightingale's song, don't despair walk on

If the world does not turn to your whims these few days,
cosmic cycles are preparing to change, don't despair walk on.

If desperation whispers you'll never know God,
it's the talk of hidden games in the veil, don't despair walk on.

O heart, when the vast flood slashes life to its roots,
Captain Noah waits to steer you ashore, don't despair walk on.

If you trek as a pilgrim through sands to Kaabeh
with thorns lodged deep in your soul shouting why, don't despair walk on

Though oases hide dangers and your destiny's far,
there's no pathway that goes on forever, don't despair walk on.

My trials and enemies face me on their own,
but mystery always backs up my stand, don't despair walk on.

Hafez, weakened by poverty, alone in the dark,
this night is your pathway into the light, don't despair walk on.

(From: 'The Spiritual Wisdom of Hafez', Haleh Pourafzal and Roger Montgomery)

Night as pathway; darkness as route.

I despair of the ways of the world. Both the arrogant and the altruistic drink of the same brew.

As the lyrics of the Tom Rush song say, "Tomorrow I'll be in some other sunrise" -- I expect to be gone from the illusions of self and other.

I'll be right here, of course.

Nothing will change.

Just don't ask my opinion of anything.

I'll have none.

Now is the Time

Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time for you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.

Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.
(--from 'The Gift - Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master', translations by Daniel Ladinsky)

Oh to disappear into what is completely apparent!

Visiting with Alden in Belfast this morning after church. We traverse the footbridge together.

A lovely summer's day!

Song of the Diamond Heart

The pine tree’s voice is always whispering,
Yet how many pause to listen?
For when the churning mind is still,
The Diamond Heart within
Reflects even the falling dusk that
Shrouds every eye and branch,
And hears, but listens not.

Walking, then, with Courage and Kindness,
Never ceasing to walk in Wonder,
We follow our ancient path.
For the Way of the sword is folded two;
Like the rose we have thorns,
And like the rose, we unfold.
- Jo Aoi Isshi

A single candle burns in the night.

For the many faces of Christ.

For the many lives taken in Hiroshima.

Only my condemnation injures me
Only my own forgiveness sets me free

Do not forget today that there can be no form of suffering that fails to hide an unforgiving thought. Nor can there be a form of pain forgiveness cannot heal.
Accept the one illusion which proclaims there is no condemnation in God's Son, and Heaven is remembered instantly; the world forgotten, all its weird beliefs forgotten with it, as the face of Christ appears unveiled at last in this one dream. This is the gift the Holy Spirit holds for you from God your Father. Let today be celebrated both on earth and in your holy home as well. Be kind to both, as you forgive the trespasses you thought them guilty of, and see your innocence shining upon you from the face of Christ.

Now is there silence all around the world Now is there stillness where before there was a frantic rush of thoughts that made no sense. Now is there tranquil light across the face of earth, made quiet in a dreamless sleep. And now the Word of God alone remains upon it. Only that can be perceived an instant longer. Then are symbols done, and everything you ever thought you made completely vanished from the mind that God forever knows to be His only Son.
(-- from Lesson 198, Only my condemnation injures me, ACIM)

When the dream ends and the river is crossed, illusions will only be illusions -- no longer deceiving us, but merely taken by truth to be seen as they are.

That day.

Will.

Awaken.

See through Jesus. To the other side. Of which there is none.

The sky is filled with ultimate truth;
Other and self are both forgotten.
Having a mind like iron,
Why care that my hair’s grey as frost?
A clear spring follows the valley far,
An old cottage lies deep in the clouds.
This is where I’m at peace,
Blissful delight without end.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)

I find I like sacred spaces. No matter what the religion or what the belief, it is the open profound space that engages me.

It is indeed good to be here, as you have said, Peter. It is good to be with Jesus and to remain here for ever. What greater happiness or higher honour could we have than to be with God, to be made like him and to live in his light?
(From a sermon on the transfiguration of the Lord by Anastasius of Sinai, bishop, Office of Readings)

I've heard the explanations. The reasons why the bomb had to be released on Hiroshima. They do not satisfy.

Don't tell me about God.

Instead show compassion.

Disuse the bombs.

God is defusing.

God is diffuse.

Moon nearly full.

Dew moist.

Excessive thinking
Weakens the will.
The more you know,
The more your mind
Is confused.
A confused mind gives
Rise to vexation.
The weakened will obstructs the Tao.
- Shih Wang Ming (6th century)

There is no self.

There, now you know.

Nothing to do but forget what you are not.

Day ends.

We are still.

Awake.

The Mountains in the Dawn

The moon is already hidden
Behind the western peak.
The sun is rising above the summit.
The frosty sky awaits
Dawn in cold silence.
One thousand mountains
Afar and ten thousand rocks near.
All enter into one eye.
- Jakushitsu (1290–1368)

Blink.

Now.

Open.

At Sunday Evening Practice there's talk about how to work with youth, adults, and families.

Here's a new approach: Practicing Now Treatment -- or, PNTx.

Mountain Dwelling

Things of the past are already gone
And things to be, Distant beyond imagining.
The Tao is just this moment,
These words:
Plum blossoms fallen,
Gardenia just opening.
- Ch'ing Kung (d. 1352)

Send me a request for Continuation Education Credits or In-Service Training, and we'll schedule a sit-down.

It is the practice of the ordinary, here and now, with simplicity and truth.

Any takers?

More than that is this.

Any givers?

First of August. A summer's day.

A pine fragrance
Fresh from meditation
Raise the curtain
Receive the evening's cool
Exquisite, nestled in green bamboo,
The moon, wordless
Crossing the eastern wall.
- Ts'an Liao Tzu (c. 1077)

Three women go for a sail. I go to dump with recyclables and yellow bag.

A drying day. It is August.

A new beginning.

No more need for measuring.

The Indian scholar says 'Maya' (the word for illusion in Sanskrit) means measurement.

We can look forward to a world without measure -- world without end.

Dense, soundless,
Falling through azure emptiness
Swirling clouds sing and
Dance in the soft breeze.
As the recluse hums a line
In praise of hidden places
Vagrant flakes drift in and
Stain his inkstone black.
- Tzu Lan (c 890)

We are a roomful of vagrant flakes.

There are so many people better than us. Ask them!

We have to be content with merely being here.

What are you? What is this?

This is what you are.

Letter to a Wild Monk

Other than the birds,
Who watches over you?
Lordly peaks, your neighbors.
White head held pillowed on a stone.
Grey robe ragged, but not soiled
Chestnuts pile up on your path.
Monkeys circle where you sit.
If you ever set up another Zendo,
I swear I'll be the one who sweeps the floors.
- Kuan Hsiu (832–912)

We don't want to be this. We want to be that. That is not the issue. This is the issue.

Then let the Son of God awaken from his sleep, and opening his holy eyes, return again to bless the world he made In error it began, but it will end in the reflection of his holiness. And he will sleep no more and dream of death. Then join with me today. Your glory is the light that saves the world. Do not withhold salvation longer. Look about the world, and see the suffering there. Is not your heart willing to bring your weary brothers [& sisters] rest?
They must await your own release They stay in chains till you are free. They cannot see the mercy of the world until you find it in yourself. They suffer pain until you have denied its hold on you. They die till you accept your own eternal life. You are the holy Son [Daughter] of God Himself. Remember this, and all the world is free. Remember this, and earth and Heaven are one.
(--from Lesson 191, A Course in Miracles)

The whole world stays in chains till you are free.

Remember this. Remember this.

This is what you are.

What is this?

What are you?

For hermitage update and events, visit:

http://sites.google.com/site/meetingbrookhermitage/

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

The fool, clown, and hobo. Ne'er do well, failure, and dreamer.

These templates are 1st cousin to stupidity. I love family!

Staying at Bamboo Lodge

An evening sitting under
The eaves of the pines;
At night sleeping in Bamboo Lodge;
The sky so clear you'd
Say it was due to wine
Meditation so deep,
Thought I'd gone home to the hills
But Clever can't beat Stupid
And Quick won't match
Quiet Untoiling-ness!
You just can't pave the Way
That's it, the Gate of Mystery!
- Po Chu-I (772–846)

For a moment I thought I might be respectable. The moment passes. Door to outside reopens. I step through.

A Friend’s Umbrella
by Lawrence Raab

Ralph Waldo Emerson, toward the end
of his life, found the names
of familiar objects escaping him.
He wanted to say something about a window,
or a table, or a book on a table.

But the word wasn't there,
although other words could still suggest
the shape of what he meant.
Then someone, his wife perhaps,

would understand: "Yes, window! I'm sorry,
is there a draft?" He'd nod.
She'd rise. Once a friend dropped by
to visit, shook out his umbrella
in the hall, remarked upon the rain.

Later the word umbrella
vanished and became
the thing that strangers take away.

Paper, pen, table, book:
was it possible for a man to think
without them? To know
that he was thinking? We remember
that we forget, he'd written once,
before he started to forget.

Three times he was told
that Longfellow had died.

Without the past, the present
lay around him like the sea.
Or like a ship, becalmed,
upon the sea. He smiled

to think he was the captain then,
gazing off into whiteness,
waiting for the wind to rise.
(--Poem, "A Friend's Umbrella" by Lawrence Raab, from The History of Forgetting. the Penguin Group, 2009.)

There's delight in having nothing.

To lose.

Becoming the thing that strangers take away.

What do you think you own?

Exactly; nothing.

You ask why I live
Alone in the mountain forest,
And I smile and am silent
Until even my soul grows quiet:
It lives in the other world,
One that no one owns.
The peach trees blossom.
The water continues to flow.
- Li Po (701–762)

We walk to pond with paddles. We glide through calm water on Hosmer Pond. We return. Nothing other than this.

Earlier in day, sitting zazen. Later, vespers.

Dog laps water from bowl.

A man with a gun is a hard man to not obey.

Even the Dalai Lama's laughter doesn't mute the arrogance of trigger and bullet.

We've a long road of compassionate courage to traverse.

See the moon's bright blaze of light,
A shining lamp, above the world
Full glistening and hanging in vast void.
That brilliant jewel,
Its brightness, through the mist.
Some people say it waxes, wanes
Their's may but mine remains
As steady as the Mani Pearl
This light knows neither day or night.
- Shih Te (c 730)

Although I'm not holy nor ambitious enough, I think about a job assisting people to surrender and transcend.

Only prayer, only the quiet gaze of mere attention, allows entry to the inner solitude of being-itself.

I felt a funeral in my brain,
And mourners, to and fro,
Kept treading, treading, till it seemed
That sense was breaking through.

And when they all were seated,
A service like a drum
Kept beating, beating, till I thought
My mind was going numb

And then I heard them lift a box,
And creak across my soul
With those same boots of lead, again.
Then space began to toll

As all the heavens were a bell,
And being, but an ear,
And I and Silence some strange Race
Wrecked, solitary, here.
(Poem by Emily Dickinson)

The Republicans still contend we have a foreigner for president.

I go numb with disappointment.

They are the Chinese to what once was Tibet.

I pray for the, I pray for our, Dalai Lama -- someone to remind us how to laugh.

I write to my senators, congress-people, and the president.

I support H.R. 676, the single-payer bill. Please help move our health care away from the pharmaceutical and insurance choke hold. Make health care real and effective for everyone, I appeal to your sense of fairness. Thanks,

I neither understand nor accept the reluctance of the American people to share equally the resources of health care with every one of our brothers and sisters in this country.

We can do better.

We will.

When the great Chinese Zen master Ta-mei was dying, his students asked him for a final helpful word. "When it comes, don't try to avoid it; when it goes, don't run after it," he said. Just then, a squirrel chattered on the roof. "There is only this, there is nothing else," said Ta-mei, and then he died.
Can we conceive of what this is? Can this be enough for us? Is there another reality more real or more wonderful than this? To know that there is only this is to, as Hui-neng put it, "see the original nature and not become confused."( - Francis Dojun Cook, How to Raise an Ox, Wisdom Publications, Tricycle, daily Dharma)

Today, God is the quiet fog through mountain branches.

I breathe this through and through.

Elisha fed the crowd. Jesus fed the crowd. It's a good narrative. The crowds were fed. There's no need to fear.

The more you talk and think about it,
The further astray you
Wander from the truth.
Stop talking and thinking,
And there is nothing you
Will not be able to know.
To return to the root
Is to find the meaning,
But to pursue appearances
Is to miss the source.
At the moment of inner enlightenment
There is a going beyond
Appearance and emptiness.
- Seng Ts'an (d. 606)

Going beyond is surrendering fear.

25. But the man who looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues to do this, not forgetting what he has heard, but doing it—he will be blessed in what he does.
(--from Letter of James)

We have heard, in silence, at night, going into dooryard with dog and cat, the light from one of a billion stars through tree branches.

maggie and milly and molly and may
by E. E. Cummings

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach(to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn't remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose(like a you or a me)
it's always ourselves we find in the sea

A necessary loss.

A surprising find.

We are fed up with metaphor.

It is time to fast.

An emptying God.

War continues to rage.

It's not enough to complain about the weather.

Stop it! (War, that is.)

Translating Sutras

We go on unwinding the woof
From the web of their meaning.
Words of the Sutras
Day by day leap forth.
Head-on we've chased the miracle
Of Dharma:
Here are no mere scholars
- Hui Yung (332- 414)

Prison today was three good conversations. About galaxies and gravity. About three chairs in a pod that foment gossip and negativity. About God and laziness.

Perhaps sitting meditation is akin to falling into a wormhole taking you everyplace at once.

Evening conversation begins Practicing the Power of Now. Refresher. "No-mind is consciousness without thought." That's what Tolle writes.

Good words! No mere!

No-name suffices.

As the moon slips from
Behind a cloud and shines,
So the master comes out
From behind ignorance and shines.
Swans rise and fly toward the sun.
What magic!
So do the pure conquer
The armies of illusion
And rise to fly.
- Buddha in the Dhammapada

No wonder we do not experience God.

With wonder, experience.

Unfortunately, we use names as crowbars prying apart the once whole.

This is called naming violence.

...Rwandan musician Jean Paul Samputo says: "Forgiveness is the most powerful unpopular weapon against violence that exists." (--in Christian Science Monitor, July 26, 2009, p.7)

Wander nameless with no-name truth, with no-name God.

The nameless whole is, in itself, sufficient.

What would you want to hear if you were dying?

"Thank you for your life!"

Little Pines
Poking up from the ground
Barely above my knees,
Already there's holiness
In their coiled roots.
Though harsh frost has
Whitened the hundred grasses,
Deep in the courtyard,
One grove of green!
In the late night
Long-legged spiders stir;
Crickets are calling
From the empty stairs.
A thousand years from now
Who will stroll among these trees,
Fashioning poems on their
Ancient dragon shapes?
- Ch'I chi (864-937)

The president wants a better approach to health care in the United States. We should have a fair and accessible system for all people.

Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek? She is asked why she is sorrowing so that her desire might be strengthened; for when she mentions whom she is seeking, her love is kindled all the more ardently.
Jesus says to her: Mary. Jesus is not recognised when he calls her “woman”; so he calls her by name, as though he were saying: Recognise me as I recognise you; for I do not know you as I know others; I know you as yourself.
(--From a homily on the Gospels by Gregory the Great, pope; Office of Readings, feast of Mary Magdalene)

To be known as oneself is a good place to start.

To be recognized.

Enough for life.

Good for death.

Perfect for what is beyond both.

Cutting limbs of trees. Dragging branches up to pit. Others prepare boat for launching.

When water is pure and sparkling clear,
Your see straight to the bottom
When your mind holds no concern,
No circumstance can turn you
And once your mind doesn't stray,
A kalpa has no changes.
From such awareness nothing hides.

- Han shan

When there's nothing to say, I try my best to keep silent.

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What is the better way to live?

As it is, it happens this 'what is' is the better way to live.

No doubt about it. Just don't-know 'what is' and continue on allowing it to live through you. Every instant giving birth to 'what is' taking place before us.

Do not pursue the past.
Do not lose yourself in the future.
The past no longer is.
The future has not yet come.
Looking deeply at life as it is
In the very here and now,
The practitioner dwells
In stability and freedom.
We must be diligent today.
To wait until tomorrow is too late.
Death comes unexpectedly.
How can we bargain with it?
The sage calls a person who knows
How to dwell in mindfulness
Night and day
"One who knows the better way to live."
- Bhaddekaratta Sutra

There were 14-15 at Sunday hospitality today. Grass mowed. Earlier at Jack and Kathy's a potluck of paragraphs from 15 around their table centered on The Course in Miracles. It was Lorin's and Jack's birthday. At hermitage later, Rick, also his birthday, stopped in.

Everything is being born even as we write and read these words. The wind courses through the land, through our words, through the night. As we sat in meditation in the cabin an enormous porcupine came up to the screen porch and caught our attention. Rokpa first, then the humans. It ambled on as we resettled back to our cushions.

Thomas Berry, in The Dream of the Earth, has said that most of us suffer from a kind of autism when it comes to communicating with anything other than our own kind. The Holy Wind has been stilled in our lives , and we live in a cultural atmosphere that does not confirm the mutuality of creation. Even when we recognize our kinship and intimacy with other forms of existence, we remain mute before them. Their language has been forgotten. We are enclosed in a psychocultural cocoon; the outer world no longer flows into our being. Those voices remain unheard, and we are unable to speak in response. The winds of communication with creation are dying. Yet Earth and language meet and metabolize in the zones of dream and visions, in story, poetry, song, and prayer, and in direct communication with untamed beings. These zones comprise the boundary lands where cultural constraints and social habits are overridden, where tribal folk, shamans, and children, the mad and inspired, are caught in the holy wind of creation.
(-- Joan Halifax, p.84, in her book The Fruitful Darkness, 1993)

Here is what I have to say. If I were to think about it, 'here' is the only thing I have to say.

The better way to live is transparently.

Walter Cronkite's signature sign-off, "And that's the way it is!" reminds us to face the way things are.

The way things are is what is taking place before us.

The holy wind of creation.

Sounding itself throughout.

Requesting our attention.

Tom, at mindfulness table of Saturday Morning Practice, says: "I am the entirety of the Holy Spirit."

Entirety. Then he added: "But I don't understand how it all works.

The humble admission of what he is; the unknowing continuance in a perplexing world.

Movement and stillness:
Both are part of the same principle,
Emotions of this dusty world
Are not as important as the Way,
So I endure this thin paper robe
Until the dawn bell,
While pomegranate leaves and mulberry
Branches dance in the north wind.
- Tesshu Tokusai (d.1366)

The paper thin robe is the sinuous fragility of the near-nothingness between discernible reality and irretrievable experience. Like a governmental black-op wherein chilling power toys with every opposing interest with lethal removal, the fabric of thin existence is no match for the powers vying for domination and those angling for redemption.

Linda sends words of Derrick Jensen:

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance. An Inconvenient Truth helped raise consciousness about global warming. But did you notice that all of the solutions presented had to do with personal consumption—changing light bulbs, inflating tires, driving half as much—and had nothing to do with shifting power away from corporations, or stopping the growth economy that is destroying the planet? Even if every person in the United States did everything the movie suggested, U.S. carbon emissions would fall by only 22 percent. Scientific consensus is that emissions must be reduced by at least 75 percent worldwide.
(--from UPPING THE STAKES, Forget Shorter Showers, Why personal change does not equal political change, BY DERRICK JENSEN, Published in the July/August 2009 issue of Orion magazine)

Something larger is happening. Larger, but still in the empirical realm. We're still on earth here. Let the powers of mythic eternal warfare of good and evil super-beings out of this discussion. Rather, think about the annoying observations of Derrick Jensen:

I want to be clear. I’m not saying we shouldn’t live simply. I live reasonably simply myself, but I don’t pretend that not buying much (or not driving much, or not having kids) is a powerful political act, or that it’s deeply revolutionary. It’s not. Personal change doesn’t equal social change.

So how, then, and especially with all the world at stake, have we come to accept these utterly insufficient responses? I think part of it is that we’re in a double bind. A double bind is where you’re given multiple options, but no matter what option you choose, you lose, and withdrawal is not an option. At this point, it should be pretty easy to recognize that every action involving the industrial economy is destructive (and we shouldn’t pretend that solar photovoltaics, for example, exempt us from this: they still require mining and transportation infrastructures at every point in the production processes; the same can be said for every other so-called green technology). So if we choose option one—if we avidly participate in the industrial economy—we may in the short term think we win because we may accumulate wealth, the marker of “success” in this culture. But we lose, because in doing so we give up our empathy, our animal humanity. And we really lose because industrial civilization is killing the planet, which means everyone loses. If we choose the “alternative” option of living more simply, thus causing less harm, but still not stopping the industrial economy from killing the planet, we may in the short term think we win because we get to feel pure, and we didn’t even have to give up all of our empathy (just enough to justify not stopping the horrors), but once again we really lose because industrial civilization is still killing the planet, which means everyone still loses. The third option, acting decisively to stop the industrial economy, is very scary for a number of reasons, including but not restricted to the fact that we’d lose some of the luxuries (like electricity) to which we’ve grown accustomed, and the fact that those in power might try to kill us if we seriously impede their ability to exploit the world—none of which alters the fact that it’s a better option than a dead planet. Any option is a better option than a dead planet. (Jensen, ibid) http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/4801

The man at table this morning has been thinking of the Holy Spirit. Little by little he has moved from being willing to be willing to invite the Holy Spirit into his life, through seeing that the Holy Spirit is already in his life, then this morning to realizing without understanding that he is the entirety of the Holy Spirit.

The rest of us were close to his ground zero radiating words.

Jensen quotes Kirkpatrick Sale: “The whole individualist what-you-can-do-to-save-the-earth guilt trip is a myth. We, as individuals, are not creating the crises, and we can’t solve them.”

In the scriptures Jeremiah (23:1-6) says that there are leaders and shepherds who do not care. The longing for the rest of us is deep and unnerving, albeit not understood and aphasic. Jeremiah says a day will come, perhaps soon, when we find our voices, where words become action, and the right thing is done, the wrong undone. Jeremiah writes in the final verse:

And this is the name he will be called:
The-Lord-our-integrity.’

Integrity.

Entirety.

We sipped coffee and tea, ate toast and fruit, and felt tears arise.

The bird hit glass door. Sat for over an hour on wood board. When we approached to set it in box for night, it flew away, unsteadily, to branch of tree.

Mountain temple rainy,
Dark and gloomy all day,
Plums still half yellow, half green;
On my lone mat,
Still and quiet,
Deep in meditation,
I don't let birds and blossoms
Into my garden gate.
- Betsugen Enshi (1294–1364)

Life is fragile and eternal. Only forms change. Emptiness remains throughout.

Sitting and chanting with Buddhist group in prison this morning, keeping time with wooden fish.

Nothing taken, nothing left!

The corpus on the cross is not merely Jesus. It is my putting me there, or the ego putting threatening truth up to ridicule and death, or our judging attack on another placed iconically on an instrument of torture.

We have to see through and go through the symbol to the resurrecting release of true Self from illusory self.

The dreary, hopeless thought that you can make attacks on others and escape yourself has nailed you to the cross. Perhaps it seemed to be salvation. Yet it merely stood for the belief the fear of God is real. And what is that but hell? Who could believe his Father is his deadly enemy, separate from him, and waiting to destroy his life and blot him from the universe, without the fear of hell upon his heart?
(--from Lesson 196, ACIM)

Reading about the history of A Course in Miracles, which has been the focus of Thursday Evening Conversations for over two years. Meetingbrook hosted the group in December 2006 led by Jack and Kathy. And still continues here at hermitage. The longer the group reads and listens to the text and one another, the more interesting the synthesis of the work seems to be.

During one such interchange with his friend Judith Skutch Whitson, Whitson describes calling Thetford during a moment of extremely high tension in her relationship with Jampolsky. In the phone conversation Whitson went on at length, describing what she perceived to be Jampolski’s many faults. Thetford listened intently until Whitson finally ran out of breath. He then quietly said, "Judy, the Course (ACIM) can be summed up in the question, 'Are you willing to see your brother sinless?' "
"No!" Whitson screamed.
"Well, dear," Thetford replied, "when you are, you will feel much better." And then he hung up!
(--Anecdotal accounts of Thetford's California life, about William Thetford, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Thetford worked in a collaborative venture with Dr. Helen Schucman in writing A Course In Miracles, ACIM, and also with its initial edits. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thetford#cite_ref-4

I'm fog this evening. Fog covers Bald Mountain. Nothing is seen, not anything.

If I were to turn around in this fog would I see anything?

What I've thought was there doesn't seem to be.

Allowing myself to be hung up on.

Disconnected. Not connected. Never separated. As innocent as the day brought into being.

Feeling.

Much.

Better?

Millionaires play baseball at all-star game in St. Louis. They have talent and are paid a lot of money.

Earlier I sat on porch of cabin reading about the Vedas and Upanishads.

Attain the mind of emptiness,
Preserve the utmost quiet:
As myriad things act in concert,
I therefore observe the return.
Things flourish,
Then each returns to its root.
Returning to the root is called stillness:
Stillness is called return to Life,
Return to Life is called the constant;
Knowing the constant is called enlightenment.
- Lao-tzu

At Tuesday Evening Conversation we read article about gossip and precept of right speech. Reticence is not the perfection of right speech. I'm reticent. It seems there's too much talk. I listen to the questions levied at nominee judge Sonia Sotomajor. Too many words tinged with snark. Read the precept!

Words are the creative brushstrokes of breath.

Breathe carefully.

When unkindness or indifference is what you hear, try not to mind.

No explanation stands in the way of kindness and attention.

Watching film, Pan's Labyrinth, (El Laberinto del Fauno, 2006), I am taken by the approximating narrative, the parallel worlds of temporal facticity and mythic fantastical.

Buddha's Satori

For six years sitting alone
Still as a snake
In a stalk of bamboo
With no family but the ice
On the snow mountain.
One night, seeing the empty sky
Fly into pieces, he shook
The morning star awake
And kept it in his eyes.
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

Who's to say what purpose or reason there is between what we think we know about our everyday existence and what is invisible to the eye, that which is beyond sensory encounter and conscious comprehension?

‘Anyone who prefers father or mother to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who prefers son or daughter to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.
‘Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me; and those who welcome me welcome the one who sent me.
(-- Matt 10:34 - 11:1)

Whoever sees you sees the father or mother. Whomever you see is seen by the mother or father. It is not our choice what we see. It is our choice how we see what is seen.

WHY LOG TRUCK DRIVERS RISE
EARLIER THAN STUDENTS OF ZEN

In the high seat, before dawn dark,
Polished hubs gleam
And the shiny diesel stack
Warms and flutters
Up the Tyler Road grade
To the logging in Poorman creek.
Thirty miles of dust.

There is no other life.
(Poem by Gary Snyder, from Turtle Island, 1974)

He's right. There is no other life. Just this.

And 'this' has ten thousand mothers and fathers.

Siddhartha sees the star. Jesus is seen through.

This is our body. This, our blood.

In this paper, I argue that the thought and behavior involved in drug dependence is associated with a certain pre-theoretic conception of the self that finds philosophical expression as a grossly simplified form of materialism. Addicts tend not to take mentality seriously: They do not understand themselves as minded beings capable of self-awareness and development through intentional action. Recognizing the practical implications of accepting this philosophically unconvincing view, I argue, encourages a modification of self-conception that is instrumental to the process of recovery from addiction. Using a combination of philosophical analysis and close reading of a trio of narratives that describe drug dependence and recovery, I pursue the possibility that rehabilitation may involve the clarification and alteration of self-conception in such a way that emphasizes autonomous agency and certain values that have not yet been embraced by twelve-step programs, namely, integration, apprehension, moderation, and self-discipline. The rich and substantial history of analytic–philosophical thought about the self is of immense practical value to people impacted by drug dependence and/or engaged in recovery from it; philosophy offers us a set of investigative tools, terms, and concepts that may help to map the different cognitive routes to successful self-rehabilitation. A philosophical consideration of the use of self-related words and ideas within the context of narratives of addiction and recovery may bear directly and significantly on the improvement of the lives of those persons who struggle to overcome drug dependence.

(-- Mitchell, Allison about his Taking Mentality Seriously: A Philosophical Inquiry Into the Language of Addiction and Recovery, in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology - Volume 13, Number 3, September 2006, pp. 211-222, The Johns Hopkins University Press.)

What we make of any 'this' is an approximate narrative.

What do we make of this our nearing story?

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

Practice makes perfect, they say. Don't believe them. Practice does nothing more than place you at the place you are at that moment.

Those who seek liberation for themselves alone cannot become fully enlightened. Though it may be said that one who is not already liberated cannot liberate others the very process of forgetting oneself to help others is itself liberating. Therefore those who seek to benefit themselves alone actually harm themselves by doing so, while those who help others also help themselves by doing so. -- Muso Kokushi (1275-1351)

We practice because there's nothing else to do.

How's it going?

Wording shifts.

Just like meetingbrook! There's a conversation between two points of view.

This is the conversation now.

And,

This is now the conversation.

At Saturday Morning Practice, after sitting, at Lectio, four of us worry the meaning of shaking the dust off your feet as "testimony against" as one translation of the scripture reading. Below is a different translation:

Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out in pairs giving them authority over the unclean spirits. And he instructed them to take nothing for the journey except a staff – no bread, no haversack, no coppers for their purses. They were to wear sandals but, he added, ‘Do not take a spare tunic.’ And he said to them, ‘If you enter a house anywhere, stay there until you leave the district. And if any place does not welcome you and people refuse to listen to you, as you walk away shake off the dust from under your feet as a sign to them.’ So they set off to preach repentance; and they cast out many devils, and anointed many sick people with oil and cured them. (--Mark 6:7-13)

I would translate it: If you are not welcomed or listened to, keep moving, don't let the dust of non-acceptance put you and keep you where you really are not. Be, rather, where you are. Always practice speaking truth as you see it in the moment. Listen to others as they attempt to speak their truth. Welcome the differences if they appear. Remember, we are dealing with mysteries and unknowable realities. Still, try your best to enter more closely to the proximity of what is true. You are not to harm or dismiss anyone's attempt to near truth.

Nevertheless, in the face of hostility or inhospitality, be kind, but make tracks. Don't take with you any hostile or inhospitable attitude. Shake it off. Leave it behind. Let them see that such an attitude need not continue. Be a sign of dropping off that mind and that body. Let go into the wholeness that welcomes everyone and everything, be the belonging that longs to reside in and with all beings. Such dwelling nears our true home.

Coffee and tea cups washed, fried egg and toast eaten, fruit cup and yogurt enjoyed, laughter and conversation about dogs, death, crop-circles, and Shaker boxes and Shaker step-stools -- we adjourn to work on cedar siding, washing bottom of Loon IV, and the sunniness of Saturday morning.

It is the feast of St. Benedict, father of western monasticism. We are grateful for him, his teaching, and example, and the men and women who follow his rule of life.

Since sky and earth are mindless,
They last forever.
What has mind has limits.
A person who has attained
The Path is like this too.
In the midst of no activity,
She carries out her activities,
Accepting all unfavorable
And favorable circumstances
With a compassionate heart.
- Yunmen (864-949)

So it is!

This is the conversation now.

This is now the conversation.

Now this is the conversation.

Oy gevalt!

The sentence arose at Friday Evening Conversation: "This is now the conversation."

If you want to freely live or die, go or stay, to take off or put on your clothes, then right now recognize the one who is listening to my discourse. That one is without form, without characteristics, without root, without source, and without any dwelling place, yet is brisk and very alive. As for all manifold responsive activities, the place where they are carried on is, in fact, no place. Therefore, when you look for that one, it retreats farther and farther, when you seek that, it turns more and more the other way: this is called the "Mystery."
- Lin-chi (d.866)

It's as good a new motto as anything:

This is

now

the conversation.

Everything is happening inside the whole. A wholly spirit.

The Inner History of a Day

No one knew the name of this day;
Born quietly from deepest night,
It hid its face in light,
Demanded nothing for itself,
Opened out to offer each of us
A field of brightness that traveled ahead,
Providing in time, ground to hold our footsteps
And the light of thought to show the way.

The mind of the day draws no attention;
It dwells within the silence with elegance
To create a space for all our words,
Drawing us to listen inward and outward.

We seldom notice how each day is a holy place
Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens,
Transforming our broken fragments
Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.

Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.

So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.
(-- from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings, by John O'Donohue)

Someone tonight said it's all a dream.

I wanted to know what's being left out of the sentence "It's all a dream."

Certainty often seems to leave something out.

Some say: "Let go and let God." Some: "Dropping off mind and body." Then others: "It's all been a misunderstanding."

Your self-partiality is at
the root of all your illusions.
There aren't any illusions
when you don’t have this
preference for yourself.
- Bankei (1622-1693)

Some say: "Wholeness." Some say: "Holy Spirit." Then others: "Don't ask!"

I ask.

If we let go of the partial, do we fall into the whole?

When time ends, is there only the infinite origin?

If there is not one concrete word or image expressed, is there anything actually being said?

Between Walls

the back wings
of the

hospital where
nothing

will grow lie
cinders

in which shine
the broken

pieces of a green
bottle
(Poem by William Carlos Williams)

Maybe the guy who likes math is right when he says (wishes?) all religions are collapsing and will disappear.

Only slivers of broken glass.

Don't walk barefooted, eh?

Just last week, three and a half years later, I learn a friend's son, Sean Thomas, died in Oregon on Nov. 23, 2005 at age 33 of heart attack. I knew him as a tyke, and as he grew.

I recall learning last year that Mary Christina died in Pennsylvania on Nov. 22, 2005 at age 49 of lung cancer. It was three years later I learned of her death. I knew her over two dozen years as friend and colleague.

These deaths, especially sudden hearing of them, even these years later, sneak up on me.

Death, especially being out of touch, surprises.

As long as you are subject
To a life bound by force of habit,
You are not free from the
Burden of the body.
- Kuei-Shan (771-854

I note the coincidence of their deaths, one calendar day apart. Just that. And I light a stick of incense for them.

A Basque proverb reminds us, “Mountains don’t need mountains, but humans need humans.” Our need for each other is a birthday present given to each newborn child, for keeps. As we embrace this greatest of gifts, we learn to move gracefully in a dance of kinship.
(--from Loneliness/Belonging, Br. David) http://www.gratefulness.org/t/belonging.htm,

I've not been much of a dancer. I don't just attend and sit off to the side, I don't attend.

Still, kinship.

Rain.

And yet we belong the way Ragged belongs to Bald and rain from the sky to the earth. The myth is awareness. Logic says: Out of sight, out of mind; Out of mind, no longer existing; Out of touch, nothing felt.

We might not feel it. Might not see it. Nor even know it.

But we belong.

To one another.

And to all of it.

It is our calling.

This life!

All at once.

Each morning is the first. Each evening the last.

8

The supreme good is like water,
which nourishes all things without trying to.
It is content with the low places that people disdain.
Thus it is like the Tao.

In dwelling, live close to the ground.
In thinking, keep to the simple.
In conflict, be fair and generous.
In governing, don't try to control.
In work, do what you enjoy.
In family life, be completely present.

When you are content to be simply yourself
and don't compare or compete,
everybody will respect you.
(--from Tao Te Ching, trans. Stephen Mitchell)

Between evening and morning is night.

It is night centers us.

Look again.

Re-spect.

David Whyte advocates radical simplicity. "Try to get back to the essential steps," he says in interview on New Dimensions.

Laundry blows in Sunday morning breeze and sun. Roger Federer and Andy Roddick hit tennis balls back and forth in All England Finals at Wimbledon.

Sky clouds up again.

Like the little stream
Making its way
Through the mossy crevices,
I, too, quietly
Turn clear and transparent.
- Hakuin (1686-1768)

With Saskia away there's nothing planned for hospitality today. Just laundry. Nothing resembling Kornfield's "After the Ecstasy, the Laundry." My gloss would be -- during the laundry, a bit of solitude.

WHAT TO REMEMBER WHEN WAKING

In that first
hardly noticed
moment
to which you wake,
coming back
to this life
from the other
more secret,
moveable
and frighteningly
honest
world
where everything
began,
there is a small
opening
into the new day
which closes
the moment
you begin
your plans.

What you can plan
is too small
for you to live.

What you can live
wholeheartedly
will make plans
enough
for the vitality
hidden in your sleep.

To be human
is to become visible
while carrying
what is hidden
as a gift to others.

To remember
the other world
in this world
is to live in your
true inheritance.

You are not
a troubled guest
on this earth,
you are not
an accident
amidst other accidents
you were invited
from another and greater
night
than the one
from which
you have just emerged.

Now, looking through
the slanting light
of the morning
window toward
the mountain
presence
of everything
that can be,
what urgency
calls you to your
one love? What shape
waits in the seed
of you to grow
and spread
its branches
against a future sky?

Is it waiting
in the fertile sea?
In the trees
beyond the house?
In the life
you can imagine
for yourself?
In the open
and lovely
white page
on the waiting desk?
(~ Poem by David Whyte, in The House of Belonging)

Becoming visible is difficult enough. Becoming transparent exceeds that task. Then, to just be the ordinary, manifesting itself in the everyday, is real practice.

A sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit
I acknowledge my transgression, says David. If I admit my fault, then you will pardon it. Let us never assume that if we live good lives we will be without sin; our lives should be praised only when we continue to beg for pardon. But men are hopeless creatures, and the less they concentrate on their own sins, the more interested they become in the sins of others. They seek to criticize, not to correct. Unable to excuse themselves, they are ready to accuse others. This was not the way that David showed us how to pray and make amends to God, when he said: I acknowledge my transgression, and my sin is ever before me. He did not concentrate on others’ sins; he turned his thoughts on himself. He did not merely stroke the surface, but he plunged inside and went deep down within himself. He did not spare himself, and therefore was not impudent in asking to be spared.
(From a sermon by Saint Augustine, bishop; in Office of Readings, 14th Sunday of the Year, Ordinary Time)

I'm no longer fond of sin-talk.

There's something else to see. Another way of speaking.

"Love is a fierce form of attention in which you see yourself," says David Whyte to Michael Toms referring to Pema Chodron's path. To see yourself, clearly and with compassion, is to see everyone else clearly and with compassion. Not to see in this way is to perpetuate separation, discord, war, and suffering.

To see we must become visible so as to become transparent, so as to be ordinary manifestation of the Itself of God.

That peace, that loving compassion, is a manifestation devoutly to be wished.

Until such time, it is a day of solitude, drying laundry, and cutting weeds grown wildly huge during the weeks of rain.

A spate of sunlight. An hour, then two, of it. It lengthens. I do laundry. I string lines from barn to boat to roof rack of car back to starboard side. I stand back and admire the shirts on hangers, everything else draped over tied line. The rarity of sun-drying in Maine this season!

Then, from over mountain, dark clouds. Storm approaches. All grows dark. The few hours of sunlight is gone. Again, as so often and without surcease, the sky opens. Tremendous downpour. For close to an hour. I apologize to my newly re-soaked clothing strung across the dooryard. They'll stay put there overnight. Think of it as camping out. The rain has continued for hours. It's what I get for having a mountain out back I can't see over.

And Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is only despised in his own country, among his own relations and in his own house’; and he could work no miracle there, though he cured a few sick people by laying his hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.
(--from Mark 6:1-6)

At Lectio in cabin this morning we consider that one who speaks truth is not easily welcomed. Truth is a funny guest. It threatens what we believe. Then we get angry. Attack the truth and the person conveying it. Just one more dishonored lout driven away.

Just don't seek from another
Or you'll be far estranged from self.
I now go on alone
Meeting it everywhere
It now is just what I am
I now am not it.
You must comprehend in this way
To merge with thusness.
- Dongshan Liangjie (807-869)

Maybe we drive truth away because it consorts with others. We want it for ourselves. Jealousy shoots the other then takes one's own life. A perfect murder suicide. Truth wanders away disconsolate.

A prophet speaks forth truth. There's no foretelling truth. Truth only exists in the present moment.

We open our eyes. We open our mouth.

We see what we are.

Saying.