Preface: What is the Landscape of Eucharist?

What is happening with the enactment of the Eucharist?
1. Is it the transubstantiation of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ?
2. Is it something else, something about you and me, something that has to be both remembered and longed for?

Could be #1.

Is #2.

What to remember? What is longed for?

If once there was only "one" without the dividing and fragmenting that came naturally with the development of consciousness and mind, then perhaps we are attempting to "get back to the garden" -- return to the one.

If, alternatively, we are coming to see that long perceived ordinary dualities of rational consciousness are no longer adequate to advance us into a desired realm of unity and wholeness, some different way of approaching what is longed for is needed.

At the Mass (the Eucharist) we are invited to consider numbers 1 & 2 as non-competing possibilities.

1. If transubstantiation is looked at from a non-dualistic eye, one substance and another substance are not two substances. One is, so to speak, the other. Thus, the historical person Jesus of Nazareth is bread and wine, is of the same being with the elements of sun and earth, wheat and grape, word and thought, as well as the underlying wholeness of the entire cosmos, seen and unseen, known and unknown, felt and unfelt.
2. If the collective longings of the human being-in-the-world, as well as all the feeling/conscious/existing additional beings also here in this phenomenal and epiphenomenal world, were to be extrapolated from the movements, behaviors, and seeming inclinations of each, we would observe the desire for light, warmth, security, preservation, continuance, permission to be, right connectives, sustenance and harmony.

Conclusion: Eucharist, which translates from the Greek as "grateful/gracious offer," is a practice of remembering and longing for what we are. What we are is non-separate wholeness which does not exclude anything and includes everything.

Perhaps the language of the Christian metaphor, if seen and understood in a particular way, indicates this:
A) sin is taken away -- meaning that lseparation, the perception of separation, and behaviors related to believing in separation, are no longer the sole or even primary operating condition of the mind;
B. we are forgiven the very natural mistake of trying to obtain something at the expense of another -- meaning that treating others as objects for our use, or unworthy of respect, or not in our "tribe," not our kind, not as good as, not true, not valuable enough to love, etc etc, is an unfortunate conditioning that we are not aware of, or if aware, have not actively attempted to overcome;
C) Innocence, not knowing, is our continuing way of being in this world. We do not know. Some believe or have faith and claim this as a knowing, and perhaps it is, for them. Still, we are always innocent in that we do not know what the whole reality of life, cosmos, and existence is. We do not have a clear and unambiguous grasp of what is meant by "God" -- while at the same time longing for, praying to, and taking comfort in, this God.
D) Finally, what we call Christ-Reality or Christ-Mind is the metaphor of wholeness, unconditional love, safe passage into the unknown, beloved presence, and here-for-us, here-with-us, even here-as-us in this particular manifestation of the entire realm of What-Is. We are continuously in the process of moving-through, looking-as, and acting-with this metaphor of God-With-Us which is the heart of the story.

Epilogue: The phrase "with us" or "with you" is one of the holiest phrases of our language. It is holy in that it resonates both the remembrance and longing associated with the gracefulness and gratefulness we are invited to offer and capable of offering one to another.

The landscape is the landscape.

Do you wish? To see what is there?

No wish. See what is there.

Leaves blow in wind tumbling Ragged Mountain.

Innocence is our better nature.

Pared down to its barest essence, wabi-sabi is the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfection and profundity in nature, of accepting the natural cycle of growth, decay, and death. It's simple, slow, and uncluttered-and it reveres authenticity above all. Wabi-sabi is flea markets, not warehouse stores; aged wood, not Pergo; rice paper, not glass. It celebrates cracks and crevices and all the other marks that time, weather, and loving use leave behind. It reminds us that we are all but transient beings on this planet-that our bodies as well as the material world around us are in the process of returning to the dust from which we came. Through wabi-sabi, we learn to embrace liver spots, rust, and frayed edges, and the march of time they represent http://nobleharbor.com/tea/chado/WhatIsWabi-Sabi.htm

When I am not innocent I try to forget what I know.

Becoming marked by time.

Used.

Well.

We like to be informed.

In autumn
Even though I may
See it again,
How can I sleep
With the moon this evening?
- Dogen (1200-1253)

That's because outside of form, in the formless, sleep is not something else we do -- rather, we are sleep.

There would not be a 'me' out-formed.

Keep me informed about what you see.

I don't have an outside chance of seeing myself.

We're all ok. No excuses. No explanations. No apologies. We're all ok.

Questions are good. Just don't expect answers. Just listen to the silence responding with breath and presence.

Happy Birthday Dad!

What to do about stories?

Story
Tell me the one
about the sick girl —
not terminally ill, just years in bed
with this mysterious fever —
who hires a man
to murder her — you know,
so the family is spared
the blight of a suicide —
and the man comes
in the night, a strong man,
and nothing is spoken
—he takes the pillow
to her face — tell me
how he is haunted the rest
of his life — did he
or didn't he
do the right thing — tell me
how he is forgiven,
and marries, and has
2 daughters, and is happy —
no, tell me she doesn't
die, but is cured and
gives her life to God,
and becomes a hand-holder for
men on death row —
tell me the one where the man
falls in love with the girl
and can't do it, or
the girl falls in love
with a dog and calls
the man to tell him
not to come, or
how each sees their pain
mirrored in the other's eyes —
tell me how everyone is already
forgiven every story
they ever told themselves
about living
or not living —
tell me, oh tell me
the one where love wins, again
and again and again.
(--Poem, "Story" by Sabine Miller, from Circumference of Mercy. © Mountains and Rivers Press, 2010.)

Tell them. Let them be heard.

They, too, are only passing through.

If the kingdom of heaven is between us, we'd best keep the gate open.

Imagine there's no heaven...elsewhere.

In the center of our being is a point of nothingness
which is untouched by sin and by illusion,

a point of pure truth,
a point or spark which belongs entirely to God,
which is never at our disposal,
from which God disposes of our lives,
which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind
or the brutalities of our own will.

This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty
is the pure glory of God in us.
[Merton says] It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven.
It is in everybody, and if we could see it
we would see these billions of points of light
coming together in the face and blaze of a sun
that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely.

I have no program for this seeing. [says Merton]
It is only given.
But the gate of heaven is everywhere.
                         (--by Thomas Merton, from Conjectures of Guilty Bystander, p.158)

Here or nowhere.

Here or now here.

I like this point of view!

Who is it lives our life while we are busy doing something else?

We have got to learn to pay attention.

Presence is the great revelation.

The words go: "Truly I say to you - Gather in my name I am with you." (Matt. 18: 19)

These words stay with me. All day.

The name of the ineffable is: "I am with you."

Prosit!

I love these rainy days.

Staying at my desk. Organizing things.

Beyond silence, not much.

Everyone.

Everything.

All at on(c)e!

Thank you!

Who?

There is a bother about Being.

“Now I am tempted to say that the right expression in language for the miracle of the existence of the world, though it is not any proposition in language, is the existence of language itself.”
-Ludwig Wittgenstein

We speak the world into Being as did our recollection of God speaking the world into Being.

If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life - and only then will I be free to become myself.
--Martin Heidegger

Think about becoming yourself.

Say it: I am and aim to be myself.

God knows these words.

Though, God seems silent these days.

Perhaps we only see what our imagination wants to see. If a man wishes to starve himself to death, he will see death slowly eat away his body.

I prefer life eating with my body.

Gathering firewood I enter mountain depths
Mountain depths rising creek beyond creek
Choked with the timbers of bridges in ruins.
Vines tumble low, tangled over cragged paths,
And at dusk, scarce people grow scarcer still.
Mountain wind sweeping through simple robes,
My chant steady, I shoulder a light bundle,
Watch smoke drift across open country home.
- Meng Hao-jan (689-74o)

Walking road after twilight by Aldemere Farm I imagine I am simply alive walking with death.

Raccoon tries it's hand on strapped barrels with bird feeders secured inside.

According to some calculation there are a mere 18 days to mutate consciousness and make the leap into something, let's say, more...present.

Don't stave yourself.

Eat!

Or, Don't starve yourself.

Stay intact.

The unborn formless brackets the born form. Here we are in form, and we will return to the formless.

Ma (間) is a Japanese word which can be roughly translated as "gap", "space", "pause" or "the space between two structural parts."[1][2][3][4] The spatial concept is experienced progressively through intervals of spatial designation. In Japanese, ma, the word for space, suggests interval. It is best described as a consciousness of place, not in the sense of an enclosed three-dimensional entity, but rather the simultaneous awareness of form and non-form deriving from an intensification of vision.
Ma is not something that is created by compositional elements; it is the thing that takes place in the imagination of the human who experiences these elements. Therefore ma can be defined as experiential place understood with emphasis on interval.[5]
(Wikipedia)

I will stop worrying about that which follows the born form.

It is divine emptiness.

Toward which I now fall asleep.

Guest arrives to stay in bookshed/retreat.

I row beyond Curtis Island this sunny very warm October day after morning meditation practice. In evening when bright moon illuminates road and snow bowl field I walk for an hour in the lingering warm moonlight beside Hosmer Pond. Then listen to Compline in cabin sitting in stillness as the Shema is recited on this holy day.

The world holds beauty and sorrow in wide embrace.

Climbing Green-Cliff Mountain

Taking a little food, a light walking-stick,
I wander up to my home in quiet mystery,
The path along streams winding far away
Onto ridgetops, no end to this wonder at
Slow waters silent in their frozen beauty
And bamboo glistening at heart with frost,
Cascades scattering a confusion of spray
And broad forests crowding distant cliffs.

Thinking it's moonrise I see in the west
And sunset I'm watching blaze in the east,
I hike on until dark, then linger out night
Sheltered away in deep expanses of shadow.

Immune to high importance: that's renown.
Walk humbly and it's all promise in beauty,
For in quiet mystery the way runs smooth,
Ascending remote heights beyond compare.

Utter tranquility, the distinction between
"Yes this" and "no that" lost, I embrace primal
Unity, thought and silence woven together,
That deep healing where we venture forth.
- Hsieh Ling-yun (385-433)

When we are quiet there is no one not visiting in attendance to our receptive hospitality. Maybe that explains why we shun silence.

Tonight, no shunning.

Every one is here.

As God is.

Here.

Listen!

The call to prayer.

Let's be at one. It is the day of at-one-ment.

It's objective and it's scientific.

You can call it God if you want, but you don’t have to. Quantum consciousness will do. Nonlocality, tangled hierarchy, and discontinuity: these signatures of quantum consciousness have been independently verified by leading researchers worldwide. This experimental data and its conclusions inform us that it is the mistaken materialist view that is at the center of most of our worlds problems today. To address these problems, we now have a science of spirituality that is fully verifiable and objective.
(--Amit Goswami, PhD, Quantum Physicist)

As a Jew, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Shinto, Buddhist, Pagan, Atheist, Agnostic, all the above/none of the above -- I greet the night, the day, and the handing off of one to the other with nothing lost, nothing gained. As it is -- all and each in each and all.

It's time to walk our talk.

More than just theory, quantum activism is the moral compass of quantum physics that helps us to actually transform our lives and society.

’So let’s walk our talk, and make brain circuits of positive emotions. We just do it. We practice. Let some of us be good, do good. Be with God some of the time, be in the ego some of the time, and let the dance generate creative acts of transformation. With this resolution, with this objective in mind, I invite you to become Quantum Activists.’
(--Amit Goswami, http://www.amitgoswami.org/)

Morning in prison talking the moral conundrums of honoring life. Afternoon with circle of 80/90 year old companions reading poetry and marvelling at the revelations and disguises of words.

I am so grateful.

More than that.

I've eaten too many cookies.

Ten years.

War.

Afghanistan.

Amidst a thousand clouds and ten
Thousand streams there lives
One ex-scholar.
By day wandering these green mountains;
At night coming home to sleep
Beneath a cliff.
Suddenly spring and fall have
Already passed by,
And no dust has piled up to disturb
This stillness.
Such happiness!
What do I depend on?
Here it's as tranquil as autumn river water.
- Han-shan

Let's stop choosing death and destruction. Let's choose poetry and creative spirit.

There's a deeper conflict we seldom attend to. A struggle within human beings, a longing for community, prayer, and common respect.

Not war.

Thanks Steve.
You were a really big deal.
Apple to the core.

Sitting at dawn in chapel/zendo in silence. Feast of Francis. Mass at OLGH. Back in cabin at dusk for office of readings and vespers. Candlelight.

Walking this afternoon after reading about consciousness for course in car in rain by Rockport Harbor, I feel I could fall right there. And I wonder: Am I ready? Sure. What else is there?

plato told
him:he couldn't 

believe it(jesus

told him;he
wouldn't believe
itlao

tsze
certainly told
him,and general
(yes

mam)
sherman;
and even
(believe it
or

not)you
told him:i told
him;we told him
(he didn't believe it,no

sir)it took
a nipponized bit of
the old sixth

avenue
el;in the top of his head:to tell

him

(-e. e. cummings)

There is, it seems, a tenuousness about.

We, the world, seem...uncertain.

 I heard the words from the gospel story said before communion as: "Only say the world and I shall be healed." Yes, I think, let's try that!

 

It's all an empty boat, oars dangling free,
but return goes on without end. The year
begins, and suddenly, in a moment’s glance,
midyear stars come back around, bright
sun and moon bringing all things to such abundance.
North woods lush, blossoming,
rain falls in season from hallowed depths.
Dawn opens. Summer breezes rise.
No one comes into this world without leaving soon.
It's our inner pattern, which never falters.
At home here in what lasts, I wait out life.
A bent arm my pillow, I keep empty whole.
Follow change through rough and smooth,
and life's never up or down.
If you can see how much height fills whatever you do,
why climb Hua or Sung, peaks of immortality?
- T'ao Ch’'en (365-427)

My daily prayer is: Thank you for bringing me here!

Then, T'ao Ch'en's words: "At home here in what lasts, I wait out life."

To all my Franciscan ancestors and companieros -- Buona fortuna!

Transitus.

Going through earth to God.

 

Chapter VIII
How Saint Francis, walking one day with brother Leo, explained to him what things are perfect joy.

One day in winter, as Saint Francis was going with Brother Leo from Perugia to Saint Mary of the Angels, and was suffering greatly from the cold, he called to Brother Leo, who was walking on before him, and said to him: "Brother Leo, if it were to please God that the Friars Minor should give, in all lands, a great example of holiness and edification, write down, and note carefully, that this would not be perfect joy." A little further on, Saint Francis called to him a second time: "O Brother Leo, if the Friars Minor were to make the lame to walk, if they should make straight the crooked, chase away demons, give sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, speech to the dumb, and, what is even a far greater work, if they should raise the dead after four days, write that this would not be perfect joy." Shortly after, he cried out again: "O Brother Leo, if the Friars Minor knew all languages; if they were versed in all science; if they could explain all Scripture; if they had the gift of prophecy, and could reveal, not only all future things, but likewise the secrets of all consciences and all souls, write that this would not be perfect joy." After proceeding a few steps farther, he cried out again with a loud voice: "O Brother Leo, thou little lamb of God! if the Friars Minor could speak with the tongues of angels; if they could explain the course of the stars; if they knew the virtues of all plants; if all the treasures of the earth were revealed to them; if they were acquainted with the various qualities of all birds, of all fish, of all animals, of men, of trees, of stones, of roots, and of waters - write that this would not be perfect joy." Shortly after, he cried out again: "O Brother Leo, if the Friars Minor had the gift of preaching so as to convert all infidels to the faith of Christ, write that this would not be perfect joy." Now when this manner of discourse had lasted for the space of two miles, Brother Leo wondered much within himself; and, questioning the saint, he said: "Father, I pray thee teach me wherein is perfect joy." Saint Francis answered: "If, when we shall arrive at Saint Mary of the Angels, all drenched with rain and trembling with cold, all covered with mud and exhausted from hunger; if, when we knock at the convent-gate, the porter should come angrily and ask us who we are; if, after we have told him, `We are two of the brethren', he should answer angrily, `What ye say is not the truth; ye are but two impostors going about to deceive the world, and take away the alms of the poor; begone I say'; if then he refuse to open to us, and leave us outside, exposed to the snow and rain, suffering from cold and hunger till nightfall - then, if we accept such injustice, such cruelty and such contempt with patience, without being ruffled and without murmuring, believing with humility and charity that the porter really knows us, and that it is God who maketh him to speak thus against us, write down, O Brother Leo, that this is perfect joy. And if we knock again, and the porter come out in anger to drive us away with oaths and blows, as if we were vile impostors, saying, `Begone, miserable robbers! to to the hospital, for here you shall neither eat nor sleep!' - and if we accept all this with patience, with joy, and with charity, O Brother Leo, write that this indeed is perfect joy. And if, urged by cold and hunger, we knock again, calling to the porter and entreating him with many tears to open to us and give us shelter, for the love of God, and if he come out more angry than before, exclaiming, `These are but importunate rascals, I will deal with them as they deserve'; and taking a knotted stick, he seize us by the hood, throwing us on the ground, rolling us in the snow, and shall beat and wound us with the knots in the stick - if we bear all these injuries with patience and joy, thinking of the sufferings of our Blessed Lord, which we would share out of love for him, write, O Brother Leo, that here, finally, is perfect joy. And now, brother, listen to the conclusion. Above all the graces and all the gifts of the Holy Spirit which Christ grants to his friends, is the grace of overcoming oneself, and accepting willingly, out of love for Christ, all suffering, injury, discomfort and contempt; for in all other gifts of God we cannot glory, seeing they proceed not from ourselves but from God, according to the words of the Apostle, `What hast thou that thou hast not received from God? and if thou hast received it, why dost thou glory as if thou hadst not received it?' But in the cross of tribulation and affliction we may glory, because, as the Apostle says again, `I will not glory save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.' Amen." 

To the praise and glory of Jesus Christ and his poor servant Francis. Amen. 

(--from Chapter VIII of the Fioretti, THE LITTLE FLOWERS OF SAINT FRANCIS OF ASSISI)

Mirroring the passage each makes with Christ through the realization of what is human, the realization of heaven through earth beyond suffering.

The requirement is love.

The gift is love.

As it is given.

So, it is received.

In perfect joy.

Maybe I do have one watching over me.

Angel of God,
my guardian dear,
to whom God's love commits me here,
ever this day,
be at my side
to light and guard,
to rule and guide. 

(catholic - prayer to the guardian angel)

Maybe becoming Christ mirroring the life of God in the world is the call of holiness.

Tonight I feel heavy with dampness and soaking rain.

But it is October.

Month of Francis.

A good man.

Therese today. And friends in prison move to new facility.

We had warm, wet weather all spring.
Now, white autumn is clear and cold.
Dew frozen, drifting mists gone,
Bottomless heavens open over this
Vast landscape of clarity,
And mountains stretch away,
Their towering peaks an unearthly
Treasure of distance.

These fragrant woodland chrysanthemums
Ablaze, green pines lining the clifftops:
Isn't this the immaculate heart of beauty,
This frost-deepened austerity?
Sipping wine, I think of recluse masters.
A century away, I nurture your secrets.
Your true nature eludes me here,
But taken by quiet,
I can linger this exquisite moon
Out to the end.

- T'ao Ch'ien (365-427)

October rains in.

I'm sure of nothing.

And there I remain.

Thank you, September!

The ways of proclaiming
The Mind all vary,
But the same heavenly truth
Can be seen
In each and every one.

- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

Good morning, October!

Sitting at Rockport Harbor reading students' papers, the tide comes in. New moon high, it sloshes against and between granite blocks across canal sluicing Goosefare runoff.

The mere fact of it!

Just outside car window.

Enormity of water, nature, and being-here!

Children of light and the day, says morning, faithful to our parents.

If you can see a thought as it arises
This awareness will at once destroy it.
Whatever state of mind should come,
Sweep it away, put it down.

Both good and evil states
Can be transformed by mind.
Sacred and profane appear
In accordance with thoughts.
- Han Shan Te Ch'ing (1546-1623)

"The living, the living give you thanks, as I do today." (--from Isaiah38)

I've been mistaken. I thought there was something other than love and truth. I've been wrong.

There is nothing other. Everything goes out from and returns to love. Everything originates and finds completion in truth.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind---
(Poem by Emily Dickinson)

If we are not what we think we are, what are we?

This is the truth: I am what I am.

As you are.

So we are.

Now this.

"God is with us." (Responsory to Ps.87, morning Eucharistic service)

God is.

With us.

What a lovely name!

Where are we?

Goose and gander. Actions have consequences. Do as we say not as we do. They hate our freedom (to do whatever we want to do). One bad turn deserves another.

Iran let's hikers go. That's good. Iran is imitating America's tactics. That's questionable.

Fattal began by recounting the horrible conditions of the prison in which they were held, including being kept virtually all day in a tiny cell alone and hearing other prisoners being beaten; he explained that, of everything that was done to them, "solitary confinement was the worst experience of all of our lives." Bauer then noted that they were imprisoned due solely to what he called the "32 years of mutual hostility between America and Iran," and said: "the irony is that [we] oppose U.S. policies towards Iran which perpetuate this hostility." After complaining that the two court sessions they attended were "total shams" and that "we'd been held in almost total isolation - stripped of our rights and freedoms," he explained:

In prison, every time we complained about our conditions, the guards would remind us of comparable conditions at Guantanamo Bay; they'd remind us of CIA prisons in other parts of the world; and conditions that Iranians and others experience in prisons in the U.S.

We do not believe that such human rights violation on the part of our government justify what has been done to us: not for a moment. However, we do believe that these actions on the part of the U.S. provide an excuse for other governments - including the government of Iran - to act in kind.

(--from, What media coverage omits about U.S. hikers released by Iran, by Glen Greenwald, Salon.com
MONDAY, SEP 26, 2011 10:27 ET)

The world is a dangerous place. What we once considered a good and moral thing -- telling the truth -- is now a very dangerous thing to do. Ask whistle blowers. Ask anyone in prison who tells what he sees. Ask the Mexican journalists murdered for writing stories about drug cartels. Ask political detainees anywhere.

My Christian friends like Jesus, that he stood up to those in power, that he was killed for their sins, and that they are saved in and by his blood. Perhaps what they do not understand is Jesus. He stood for what is right, personal, individual and communal, what is true and holy, immediate and real. He, (the Christian heretic might say), might not have been so interested in dying for anyone's sins. He wanted to show that life, the heavenly kingdom, was not some future time in some faraway place -- that it was right there right then as it is right here right now.

To understand Jesus, it has to be considered that he was born (came to earth), lived in the world (as not-other than the world), and went about doing good (teaching and healing), with engagement, kindness, and compassion, and presented a different, more mysterious point of view about heaven, God, and the true hidden nature of existence -- namely, the question: how do we come to see, understand, and dwell in the reality of God? He brought an unusual perspective. He saw something new and diaphanous when he looked at whomever and whatever was right in front of him. He was put to death because the powers that be, political and religious, considered him a dangerous antidote to the poison of control, security, and fear.

It is a counter-Christian stance to glory in the death of someone by attributing his death to a God-willed good thing that benefits you. But that's just my view of a monday in September.

Independent of material existence,
Which is ever an obstruction,
Do not cling to deluded thoughts.
These give birth to illusion.

Attentively contemplate this mind,
Empty, devoid of all objects.
If emotions should suddenly arise,
You will fall into confusion.
(- Han Shan Te Ch’'ng, 1546-1623)

Jesus came here to bring us here.

It was not a theater-piece of playacting intent on pleasing some producer-director. Not a performance after which, removing makeup and showering, he attends a post-play party shaking hands and sipping drinks. For the life of me I cannot relate to the triumphalism of evangelical murder -- the motif of sacrificial lamb or scape-goat carrying our sins to their deaths while we watch from a safe place and cheer them on.

What am I saying?

I'm saying that the language of God is God (as Rushdie put it) and that we are inadequate translators and interpreters. All our 'sacred scriptures' are a series of writings, like all writing, requiring discussion, debate, disagreement, conversation, and a humility that allows the open to remain open when we come to the realization that only God is God and we are not the managers of the One we call God.

To Be Elsewhere
BY HSIA YÜ, TRANSLATED FROM THE CHINESE BY KAREN AN-HWEI LEE

We met in a coastal village
spent a lovely night without leaving an address
going separate ways. Three years later
we meet again by coincidence.
The whole
three years spun a novel
we abandoned:
They fail to recognize themselves
as though meeting in another story
for an encounter.
One asks: Who are you, so cold and weary
The other says: I only know a thread is loose on my sweater
The more you pull it, the more it lengthens
until I completely vanish.
(Source: Poetry, June 2011).

I don't know who Jesus is in other people's minds. He disappears from viable view the more he is made some celebrity who, having been murdered in the movie is readying himself to have eternally tortured or summarily murdered those who don't like his performance or don't live up to some purity of creedal belief or excellence of behavior.

Is this why so many of Jesus' (so-called) followers are OK with torture? Is this why it is so easy to kill people in war or in abortion clinics (with scalpel or gun) or in death chambers of state prisons? If you believe your guy is the prince of slaughtered innocence for your benefit, it is a short walk over to the executioner's weapon to keep the world safe for the saved who now live in cahoots with those same people who killed Jesus.

I'm not buying it.

I'll take a pass.

I'll wait for the next bus.

In the meantime I meditate on the words of the early scribes, retranslated, who wrote: "The reality of God is between you."

You might have had it translated: The kingdom of God (or, heaven) is within you (or, among you, or, in your midst).

For the time being, I'm going to look around, look at each one of you -- look at every branch, stream, rock, bird, harbor seal, and sentient creature -- and contemplate the difficult and startling possibility that we've not seen it yet because:

The reality of God is between us.

And if (possibly) that is true, then where do we think we are when we ignore, insult, use mindlessly, harm, or kill the one -- that which is -- with and near us?

Let's take a hike and think about it.

Three hermits in same room at evening practice.

They go their own ways.

An empty room remains.

Still, silent, chairs.

In lower Manhattan the police are tired of democracy and act like tired bullies to protestors. It's understandable. Freedom to speak your mind is often met with a shove, an elbow, or mace. The police are ordinary people paid to protect wealth and property. They're only doing their job. In a capitalistic society that job requires strong measures against those who favor a more equitable system of shared resources.

But that's just one man's opinion. What's yours?

While everyone else
Is so busy striving,
The lone traveler
Is at ease by himself.
He's been living outside of convention
For a long time now;
In his pouch there is nothing at all.
When he walks,
He takes a cane for a companion;
When he talks,
He has the rocks for an audience.
If you ask him what his religion is,
When hungry it's a bowl of rice.
-- Wen-siang (1210-1280)

Maybe I'm just being cranky.

Maybe the police suspect that sudden overthrow of their benefits and livelihoods is being planned. It is, but by the people they're protecting, not by the protestors. Maybe the training they are receiving from homeland security and counter-terrorism experts needs a practice forum to iron out the wrinkles in their roughshod tactics. Or maybe it's only a few macho guys intent on re-establishing their manliness by macing women and dropping young men to the ground who speak to them.

We need to be protected from these protestors. Wall Street has to be able to run its course.

Downhill.

Into the gutter.

But the protestors have taken to the gutters and are stealing the space where the runoff needs to flow into the sewers.

So complicated, isn't it, today's financial outlook?

The times are a stretched and weary rubberband fraying at the edges.

There was the Arab Spring. Is this AIAWA? Autumn in America with Anger?

Sometimes it's hard to know.

The Niagara River

As though
the river were
a floor, we position
our table and chairs
upon it, eat, and
have conversation.
As it moves along,
we notice—as
calmly as though
dining room paintings
were being replaced—
the changing scenes
along the shore. We
do know, we do
know this is the
Niagara River, but
it is hard to remember
what that means.


(Poem by Kay Ryan)

And even when you seem to know, it's hard to realize what you think you know.

Except that conversation is what takes place between us.

I prefer to live in-between.

Preparing for morning's workshop in prison.

Theme:

Spirituality

as

Simplicity of Awareness

Seeing and Feeling

What is

Here Now

A Forum of Questions, Poems, and Conversations

Lifetime Portfolio Project

Maine State Prison

Fri, 23Sept.2011

Bill Halpin

Meetingbrook

Five Questions for us to face: (questions developed by some of the inmates)

1. What emotional issues exist for us that we need to recognize prior to release?
2. What does it take to face and realize the emotional damage incarceration has inflicted on us?
3. What are we willing to say about the emotional experience of shame and guilt over committing a serious criminal offense?
4. Is there a need for us to develop a more realistic appreciation or understanding of how emotional and overwhelming release will truly be?
5. What do we feel will be the emotional impact of living with the undeniable stigma of being an ex-offender?

Finally:

Villager

What's wrong will always be wrong. I've seen him lean

against the house hours and glare at the sea. His eyes say

no boat will come. His harsh throated seemingly

good natured mother bends her back to the soil

and there at least all grows well. When I speak with him

his eyes move away to the sea and I imagine

the red in his face from drink is also from

some ancient tribal shame. To him I'm wealthy.

When we talk I know how wealthy I am.

The police have him on file: petty theft.

I'm certain he steals to make up for the nothing he finds

every day in the sea, and to find money for drink.

Some days a woman picks him up, a sister I'm told,

takes him away and hours later delivers him back

passed out. Next morning again he's propped against

the house, the tide out in his eyes. I imagine

his sister, if that's who she is, knows oblivion

is what he must have often to survive.

I have much to tell him. And nothing. I'd start

with the sea. I'd say, there was another sea something

like this long ago, and another me. By the time

I got to the point he'd be looking away and be right.

No two hurts are the same, and most have compensations

too lovely to leave. At night, a photo glows alive

inside him when his mother's asleep and the cops

aren't watching. It lights up in the dark

whenever he looks hard and by dawn has burned out.

I almost forget: he'd do anything for you. Love him

for what you might have become

and love him for what you are, not that far

from him. We are never that far. 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.

(Poem by Richard Hugo, in The Right Madness on Skye)

Tonight I am executed.

The Lotus (padma) is a very important symbol in India and of Buddhism. In brief, it refers to the complete purification of body, speech and mind, and the blossoming of wholesome deeds in liberation. The lotus refers to many aspects of the path, as it grows from the mud (samsara), up through muddy water it appears clean on the surface (purification), and finally produces a beautiful flower (enlightenment). The white blossom represents purity, the stem stands for the practice of Buddhist teachings which raise the mind above the (mud of) worldly existence, and gives rise to purity of mind.
An open blossom signifies full enlightenment; a closed blossom signifies the potential for enlightenment.
http://viewonbuddhism.org/general_symbols_buddhism.html

I do not want to forget the words: "I am you!"

Rest safely, Mark MacPhail.

Rest safely, Troy Davis.

I like how Cynthia Bourgeault speaks about the Trinity. Father as formless love. Son as love in form. Holy Spirit as the energy of love.

Kin to form is emptiness, emptiness form -- and the movement of attentive awareness being the vitalizing force.

Home after four days.

The world is...

As you...

See it!

Be-live!

What I thought might have been a mis-spelling of 'believe' became its own word. It looked at me, daring me to consider it a mistake, and I relented. It had its own consciousness and wanted me to reach out connectively.

Be-live, and you will be safe. For what? Or, from what?

Saved from moribund mental conceptual cloaking thought which sees everything through concepts, images, categories, opinions, or abstracting absences.

Saved, I submit, for active, present, alive, immediate, aware, and intimate inter-being and exchange of conscious experience where you are and as you are.

A writer named Robert Thompson references Ewert Cousins in his writing:

This is why I say that properly understood, Christ is the Christian word for the divine pattern of connection. Christ is not a person but a power. Christ is not the object of faith but the divine power that makes faith possible.

Here is where Ewert Cousins becomes our teacher. Cousins says that we experience Christ whenever we have the experience of a Power that includes and at the same time transcends our personal identity. We experience the Divine pattern of connection, Cousins says, when we see the world as others see it.

Out of personal experience, Cousins writes about what it is like to pass over into the culture, the experience, the consciousness of especially those who are different. For some time Cousins lived among Lakota Indians in South Dakota. He writes of his experience of passing over into the consciousness of the Lakota Indians: “I remember the day, while I was talking to a group of Sioux, that I felt my consciousness, as it were, extend itself out of my body and passed over into their consciousness. From that moment I felt I could see things from their perspective and experience their values from within their world. Also I could look back at my own world and see its values in a clearer light–and its limitations! I became increasingly aware of human values that the Indians preserved and that we had lost: their love of the land, their organic harmony with nature, their sense of time as a flowing process…I perceived their awareness of Wakan tanka, or God, in nature and in their lives.”

For a brief moment, Ewert Cousins looked at the world through Lakota eyes. He saw the world not as a Roman Catholic white man but as the Lakota saw it. The experience changed Ewert Cousins perspective of himself. But more importantly he saw the world with new eyes. (--from, Christ of the 21st Century
Posted by Robert "Voluptuous" Thompson under Voluptuous Thinkers, 5June2008) http://avoluptuousgod.com/heretics/?p=119)

Anchoring conscious experience in shared exchange.

Shared.

Located nowhere but in the loving exchange of what is between everyhing and everything else.

When the Trappist monk with large hands says, "This is my body," I be-live him.

The formless is where we find ourselves.

Form is where we are looking.

Till now you seriously considered yourself to be the body and to have a form. That is the primal ignorance which is the root cause of all trouble.
- Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)

All help is the hand of God, which is, I suspect, the hand of one our brothers or sisters.

Form is what emptiness is.

There will be no final quiz.

There is only a take-home.

We find ourselves in this way.

In prison we talk about the curious notion that if you don't think evolutionally you are not ready for the next necessary change that we will encounter needing our engagement.

Even those wishing to stop at being saved by Jesus have to ponder what it is Jesus is moving toward in his very being.

Everything, everything is passing through everything else on it's way toward nothing else.

No more, nothing else, no other.

Have this with coffee and toast!

In the film "For My Father" it is the mothers who hold the space.

Perhaps someone will say: “Had she not known before that he would not die?” Undoubtedly. “Did she not expect him to rise again at once?” Surely. “And still she grieved over her crucified Son?” Intensely. Who are you and what is the source of your wisdom that you are more surprised at the compassion of Mary than at the passion of Mary’s Son? For if he could die in body, could she not die with him in spirit? He died in body through a love greater than anyone had known. She died in spirit through a love unlike any other since his.
(--from a sermon by St Bernard, Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows)

In the end it is fire that transforms lives -- whether the fire of love, or the fire of explosives.

In the end we are left looking toward each other, trying to measure the distance between us.

Sorrow brings us to gaze.

Henri Bergson wrote, "The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend."

When you are free and independent, you are not bound by anything, so you do not seek liberation. Consummating the process of Zen, you become unified. Then there are no mundane things outside of Buddhism, and there is no Buddhism outside of mundane things.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

Be prepared!

Mind is loosening its control.

I think we're heading for civil war.

I hope I don't have to get up off my cushion.

This matter (Zen) is like a great mass of fire: when you approach it your face is sure to be scorched. It is again like a sword about to be drawn; when it is once out of the scabbard, someone is sure to lose his life. The precious vajra sword is right here, and its purpose is to cut off the head.
- Tai-hui (1089-1163)

Fire approaches.

We're uncertain about fire. We don't want to be burned, yet we still have little understanding that fire doesn't burn fire.

Sunrise

You can
die for it --
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.
~ Mary Oliver ~ (New and Selected Poems, Volume I)

It gets, I suspect, harder to live.

I worry about my brothers and sisters.

The chapel/zendo is empty.

Again.

God is not anywhere.

God is everywhere.

Over and over!

And comes the 12th.

Rowing 7.08 kilometers in easy swells and light wind.

Rowing the bay in full moon. Night passage around two bell buoys.

Two hours, twenty minutes, twenty six seconds. Leaving coins for unseen mariners.

"No, I won't leave the world--I'll enter a lunatic asylum and see if the profundity of insanity reveals to me the riddles of life. Idiot, why didn't I do that long ago, why has it taken me so long to understand what it means when the Indians honour the insane, step aside for them? Yes, a lunatic asylum--don't you think I may end up there?"

(--Soren Kierkegaard)

One by one, days pass.

One by one, as do we.

Ten years.

Who can hear it?

It is all pervading, spotless beauty;
It is the self-existence and uncreated
Absolute
Then how can it even be a matter
Of discussion that the real Buddha
Has no mouth and preaches no dharma,
Or that real hearing requires no ears,
For who could hear it?
Ah, it is a jewel beyond all price.
- Huang-po (d. 850)

Who feels it?

There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.
-- Meister Eckhart

Who is willing to be still and silent in its presence?

Words derive their power from the original word.
-- Meister Eckhart

Will we see?

You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion. -- Meister Eckhart

Today, we remember, we watch, we are quiet

We feel.

Listening.

This is how we continue to live.

Naive innocence ends with 9/11.

The essential point in learning Zen is to make the roots deep and the stem firm. Twenty-four hours a day, be aware of where you are and what you do. When no thoughts have arisen and nothing at all is on your mind, you merge with the boundless and become wholly empty and still. Then your actions are not interrupted by doubt and hesitation. This is called the fundamental matter right at hand.

As soon as you produce any opinion or interpretation, and want to attain Zen and be a master, you have already fallen into psychological and material realms You have become trapped by ordinary senses and perceptions, by ideas of gain and loss, by ideas of right and wrong. Half drunk and half sober, you cannot manage effectively.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

If there is only God, then nothing exists beside God.

It is this nothing we remember.

"This", the mysterious one said a long time ago, "this is my body."

How do we see this reality?

Unknowingly.

Maybe the question isn't, "Where was God on 9/11?"

One instant is eternity;
When you see through this one instant,
You see through the one who sees.
- Wu-men (1183-1260)

Maybe the question is: "Who wants to know?"

On Prayer

You ask me how to pray to someone who is not.
All I know is that prayer constructs a velvet bridge
And walking it we are aloft, as on a springboard,
Above landscapes the color of ripe gold
Transformed by a magic stopping of the sun.
That bridge leads to the shore of Reversal
Where everything is just the opposite and the word 'is'
Unveils a meaning we hardly envisioned.
Notice: I say we; there, every one, separately,
Feels compassion for others entangled in the flesh
And knows that if there is no other shore
We will walk that aerial bridge all the same.

(Poem by Czeslaw Milosz)

Milosz has it in his poem.

Reverse 'is.'

Learn another language.

Mary, mother of Jesus, has a birthday.

The Lord God called to the man. ‘Where are you?’ he asked. ‘I heard the sound of you in the garden;’ he replied ‘I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid.’ ‘Who told you that you were naked?’ (-Genesis 3:9-20)

No one is 'naked'. Forget shame, blame, sin. Forget what we've been told.

Mary knows this.

She prays we learn this.

- - - - - ==== + + + + + ==== - - - - -

Looking forward is looking back.

Washington Post reporter Dana Priest's Frontline examination of "Top Secret America" looks at the way the US government has responded to 9/11. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/topsecretamerica/

It is an impressive and scary study.

The Way is arrived at by enlightenment. The first priority is to establish resolve-it is no small matter to step directly from the bondage of the ordinary person into transcendent experience of the realm of sages. It requires that your mind be firm as steel to cut off the flow of birth and death, accept your original real nature, not see anything at all as existing inside or outside yourself, so all actions and endeavors emerge from the fundamental.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

It is a different America.

Hard to recognize it.

Fear is looking forward.

Disappointment, backward.

It's that kind of night.

Do away with your
Throat and lips,
And let me hear
What you can say.
- Shih-tou (700-790)

Nope!

The film about Mike Judge, Saint of 9/11, was made in 2006. I watched it today. The Franciscan friar, AA member, chaplain to the fire department, resource to AIDS sufferers, homeless street people's friend, gay celibate, kind and good man, the first listed casualty of 9/11.

Mind has no color,
Is neither long nor short,
Doesn't appear or disappear;
It is free from both purity and impurity;
It was never born and can never die;
It is utterly serene.
This is the form of our
Original mind,
Which is also our original body.
- Hui-hai (8th cent)

Traditional simple piety in complicated times.

Today, it seems, the root faith of Catholic Christianity goes through re-translation and reconfiguration until the concepts of early times bear some resemblance to contemporary thinking.

Or, are we still trying to imagine how elements of matter and nature are able by attentive word and recollection to become what they originally are -- the very stuff, material and spiritual, of that which we call God, Christ, Holy Spirit -- the inspiration of Oneness and Truth into Being experienced as Love?

Religious mystical reality is not for the faint-hearted, the frightened, the subservient. Rather, it is the feeling soul of innocence seen through degraded experience that longs for the wholeness it knows to be its true self. In other words, it is life keeping on with itself, moving through every experience, until it sees nothing else but the luminous very instant within which it stands completely on its own while completely embraced by a Love that cannot be grasped or explained.

Let go of your worries
and be completely clear-hearted,
like the face of a mirror
that contains no images.
If you want a clear mirror,
behold yourself
and see the shameless truth,
which the mirror reflects.
If metal can be polished
to a mirror-like finish,
what polishing might the mirror
of the heart require?
Between the mirror and the heart
is this single difference:
the heart conceals secrets,
while the mirror does not.
(--Rumi, The Divani Shamsi Tabriz, XIII)

In 1945 Isidore O'Brien wrote the book Mirror of Christ: St. Francis of Assisi.

I'm sure Mychal Judge read it.

I did.

And will again.

It's work, sorting.

It is difficult to sort truth from lie. We proffer the one to provoke the other. The thought occurs: It might not matter any longer whether is it truth or lie you think you are offering.

What we think might not matter. That thought alone seems a little much.

Yuan wu's remedy seems too much:

Let go of all your previous imaginings, opinions, interpretations, worldly knowledge, intellectualism, egotism, and competitiveness; become like a dead tree, like cold ashes. When you reach the point where feelings are ended, views are gone, and your mind is clean and naked, you open up to Zen realization.

After that it is also necessary to develop consistency, keeping the mind pure and free from adulteration at all times. If there is the slightest fluctuation, there is no hope of transcending the world.

Cut through resolutely, and then your state will be peaceful. When you cannot be included in any stage, whether of sages or of ordinary people, then you are like a bird freed from its cage.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

Those who suggest to just become aware, then do the next thing there to do, offer a stark suggestion. But, aware of what?

ANY TIME

How long ago the day is
when at last I look at it
with the time it has taken
to be there still in it
now in the transparent light
with the flight in the voices
the beginning in the leaves
everything I remember
and before it before me
present at the speed of light
in the distance that I am
who keep reaching out to it
seeing all the time faster
where it has never stirred from
before there is anything
the darkness thinking the light
(Poem by W.S. Merwin)

We leave some place expecting to return. We follow a thought to tiredness of mind, then let it fall to the side. Something we cannot follow carrying baggage beckons us onward.

Thomas Merton wrote the following words on October 15, 1968 aboard a plane bound for Asia:

Joy. We left the ground--I with Christian mantras and a great sense of destiny, of being at last on my true way after years of waiting and wondering and fooling around. ... May I not come back without having settled the great affair. And found also the great compassion, mahakaruna… I am going home, to the home where I have never been in this body. (Asian Journal, pages 4-5).

He did not come back, at least not in the body he left with -- he died in Bangkok on Dec. 10.
The home "where I have never been in this body" might have been Asia, or, it could be wherever he is without his body (to so allude).

More Merton:

“If nothing that can be seen can either be God or represent Him to us as He is, then to find God we must pass beyond everything that can be seen and enter into darkness. Since nothing that can be heard is God, to find Him we must enter into silence.” (Thomas Merton in Seeds of Contemplation, p. 131)

“It is in deep solitude and silence that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brother and sister.” (Thomas Merton)

These days are solitary. So much of the outside -- politics, economy, business, media, opinion, processes of expression, and religious belief -- seems ubiquitous and uninteresting.

Finally, Merton:

Everything I think or do enters into the construction of a mandala. It is the balancing of experience over the void, not the censorship of experience. And no duality of experience—void. Experience is full because it is inexhaustible void. It is not mine. It is “uninterrupted exchange”. It is dance . . . . Word. Utterance and return. “Myself”. No-self. The self is merely a locus in which the dance of the universe is aware of itself as complete from beginning to end—and returning to the void. Gladly. Praising, giving thanks, with all beings. Christ light—spirit—grace—gift. (Bodhicitta). (p.68, Thomas Merton, The Asian Journal, New York: New Directions, 1973)

Raimon Panikkar builds on this:

Contemplation does not seek to understand rationally, nor is it an act of the imagination or a product of fantasy; it does not ignore or despise the life of matter, of the senses and of reason (for it is based on them), but transcends them; it is actual participation in the reality one contemplates, real sharing in the things one “sees,” dynamic identification with the truth one realizes. Contemplation is [thus] not merely an act of mind, but is “touch,” real existential contact, to use a metaphor not only precious to Plotinus in the Western tradition but also to the early Tamil bhakti poet-saints of South India. Contemplation, to further trace this line of thought, implies an “eating” of the object and also a “being eaten;” it discloses the absolute mutual transparency of subject and object. Seen another way, contemplation is the actual building of the temple of reality, wherein the onlooker is equally part and parcel of the whole construction. This may be the reason why “concentration,” i.e., the ontic crystallization of what is, the condensation of reality in the self above and beyond the mere psychological state, is in all traditions one of the most important features of the contemplative mood. It is a vision of totality through the discovery of the center within: as above, so below, as the ancient hermetic formula put it. Nothing is then more obvious than that contemplation does not exclusively depend on the will of Man or the “nature of things.” It requires a higher harmony as an integrating force. Contemplation is an ontological phenomenon.
(pp.27, 28, Raimon Panikkar, Invisible Harmony: Essays on Contemplation and Responsibility, Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1995)

I'm ready to be spat out, or, digested.

It is that kind of Labor Day!

Sorting.

What sort of oneness is it we contemplate?