tohu bohu: of, course

Is nothing sacred? Because if there is nothing, what does that make everything?  Is everything merely what we think it to be? What our hands form it into? What our imagination dances with? A disheveled mind uncertain what is underfoot? Whether what is underfoot is earth, emptiness, or elohim*? (* Elohim (אֱלֹהִים) is a grammatically singular or plural noun for “god” or “gods" in bothmodern and ancient Hebrew language.) (wikipedia) 

Tidy this thought up.

Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhak, known as RaSHI (1040-1105) . . . noticed, for example, that bereshit, the first word of the first chapter of Genesis, could mean ‘In the beginning of’, so the sentence should read: ‘In the beginning of God’s creation of heaven and earth, the earth was a formless void (tohu bohu).’ This implied that the raw materials of the earth were already in existence when God started his creative work, and that he simply brought order to tohu bohu.(p.133, in The Bible, A Biography, by Karen Armstrong)

I always found it interesting that the bible begins with phonic bear-shit (i.e. bereshit).

Being a slave to our concerns is like being in debt to them. When we're in debt, we have no real freedom in our hearts. The more we pay off our debts, the more lighthearted we'll feel. In the same way, if we can let go of our various worries and cares, peace will arise in our hearts. (—Ajaan Lee, “Sowing the Seeds of Freedom”)

Squirrels consider the new placement of bird feeder. Buddhist from half mile toward town walks up dooryard rutted drive to meditation cabin. Birds flutter past window through damp air.

I am as I tell myself I am. Yesterday’s reheated coffee and Thomas’ toasted muffin in upstairs retiro remove, morning cars at end of barnestown hill level off toward hosmer pond.

I tell myself I have no idea whether I am mournful sad or marvelously empty. All feels still within. For these days dress uniform is solitude and seclusion. The recluse is in the house.

Conversation            

           By AI             

                    for Robert Lowell 

We smile at each other 

and I lean back against the wicker couch.   

How does it feel to be dead? I say. 

You touch my knees with your blue fingers.   

And when you open your mouth, 

a ball of yellow light falls to the floor   

and burns a hole through it. 

Don’t tell me, I say. I don't want to hear.   

Did you ever, you start, 

wear a certain kind of silk dress 

and just by accident, 

so inconsequential you barely notice it,   

your fingers graze that dress 

and you hear the sound of a knife cutting paper,   

you see it too 

and you realize how that image 

is simply the extension of another image,   

that your own life 

is a chain of words 

that one day will snap. 

Words, you say, young girls in a circle, holding hands,   

and beginning to rise heavenward 

in their confirmation dresses, 

like white helium balloons, 

the wreaths of flowers on their heads spinning, 

and above all that, 

that’s where I’m floating,   

and that’s what it’s like 

only ten times clearer, 

ten times more horrible.   

Could anyone alive survive it?  

(Poem by Ai, “Conversation” from Vice: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1999)

Barbara’s ashes will be spread from the Angelique out in Penobscot Bay this morning. Pirate personnas will playact obsequy of obfuscating obviousness into obscurity. She remains the hoofer upon boards of deep disappearance.

panta rhei wondering about screens

“… I think it’s what Merton is saying about prayer, - whatever it is, anything in it that is an impurity, that is anything but the act itself, which is practically unnamable. And if it is what it should be, then the poetry is prayer, the acrobatic act is prayer. 

“Pure act, I think it’s a metaphysical concept starting with Aristotle and flowering in St. Thomas that God is pure act and that there is no POTENTIA in Him. But that almost everything else in the universe is IN POTENTIA, it’s on its way to being pure act, on its way to unity with God. But only God is pure act. And that made me think about a lot of things. One of them is that business of the purity of an acrobatic performance, of any performance, at the point where it becomes really pure, is at its closest to the divine and closest to that unity.” 

“Throwing everything away except the act itself, and I think at that point it also joins with the ideas of Zen, that everything is right here in this moment, and all those same things are being thrown away in what they describe as the Zen act. So if you were living in that kind of purity or call it action, it would be close to the kingdom of heaven.          (p. 437-438)

  (--from “When Prophecy Had A Voice”, interview between Robert Lax and Arthur Biddle; in beth cioffoletti’s blog “ louie, louie”)   

               http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/2014/05/spontaneity.html?  

               utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LouieLouie+%28louie%2C+louie%29, 

Skidder on mountain begins in earnest dismantling of towline stanchions and, (unfortunately), trees  in the way of recreational ambition.

Formless void -- the beginning of, the commencement of, what is of, this moment of -- no birth/no death.

Of.

Exactly.

As you.

See.

jamais plus la guerre

We honor, recall, and pray for

all dead and deadened

by war.

meetingbrook     stand and gassho*         keep mouth shut      war dead silence 5/26/14, 6:09

*Definition: Gassho is Japanese for “palms of the hands placed together.” The gesture is made as a greeting, in gratitude, or to make a request.In the most common form of gassho used in Japanese Zen, hands are pressed together, palm to palm in front of one's face. Fingers are straight. There should be about a fist's distance between one's nose and one's hands. Fingertips should be the same distance from the floor as one's nose. Elbows are held slightly away from the body.Holding the hands in front of the face signifies nonduality. It signifies that the giver and receiver of the bow are not two. Gassho often accompanies a bow. To bow, bend only at the waist, keeping the back straight. 
http://buddhism.about.com/od/buddhismglossaryg/g/Gasshodef.htm

In

"On that day you will realize that I am in my Father and you are in me and I in you." (--john 14:20, sixth sunday of easter)

In

In

In

hospitable to nothing.

There are times when everything goes flat. 

Nothing seems to reflect meaning or consequence.

Today that time visits.

Is welcomed. As it devastates.

the illusion of passing time

“What is the truth of all religions?” asked inmate at morning prison conversation.

"Respectful audience,” the woman said at evening hermitage conversation.

Suffering is moving through life this moment

We take Thursday Evening Conversation to Augusta.

With chicken soup.

And Bart Ehrman.

After walking breakwater in Rockland

Maybe it is a dream.

Just an experience of mind.

A passing phantasm.

Mere allusion.

This life.

Wu Wei

Twilight birds 

before dawn 

monastery

made of coming light

morning sound

Merely

Your color

This May afternoon

what shall I call you?

If Silence knew

its first name

It would be called 

at last "Now"

letters, we have letters

Grades submitted.

I wonder if the Almighty anguishes similarly.

Half our sand

In zendo 

hourglass

silence --

nothing moves

What, in the name of what is holy, is truth?

The war raging in America is between those who know what is certain and those who don't know what might be.

Both truth and lie associate with unpleasant companions.

But it is the lie that attracts most attention. Truth stays in the shadows.

If the mind congeals in one place and remains with one thing, it is like frozen water and is unable to be used freely: ice that can wash neither hands nor feet. When the mind is melted and is used like water, extending throughout the body, it can be sent wherever one wants to send it. This is the Right Mind.  

(—Takuan Soho, “The Right Mind and the Confused Mind)

Racism, sexism, elitism -- these lies are belief systems too powerful to overturn.

Watching the 2013 "Let the Fire Burn" on Independent Lens about Philadelphia 1985 confrontation with MOVE. Sorrowful. And discouraging.

Those that pray and meditate are residents of the unknown and uncertain.

Religions cannot abide those that pray and meditate.

They are dangerous.

The see what is wrong.

They see the lie of the war.

They long for truth to be felt and followed.

In the name of what is holy.

Had I known this sooner...

The future is god.

Who believes in god?

The earth is Christ.

It suffers for us; it suffers us.

God is the meaning of the future.

May

Ticks.

Ugh!

What is the sound of wholeness moving through reality?

At practice, we sit for 30 minutes, then read from What’s Next After Now, Post-Spirituality and the Creative Life, by Steven Harrison. The chapter “Surrender to What?”

This is the nature of dialog. It takes place when we’re talking with each other from a shared, open space. The language that comes out is infused with that totality. Dialog is not a debate. It’s not a philosophical discussion. And so it goes directly into our lives. Dialog means relationship, contact, and community. It means deep feeling with no escape. If dialog is anything, it is the expression of wholeness moving through reality, each of us engaged with the other.
The brilliance of wholeness is that it does innately express itself; it even expresses the inability to express. The expression may be silence. It may even be, on rare occasion, philosophical discussion. (pp.34-35)

He’s writing about quantum reality, life itself, infinite possibilities, unmanageable appearance.

Like being told that a young man with brain cancer, grandson of a practitioner friend, has little time left.

We leave a vigil candle lighted in the chapel/zendo.

In prison this morning, approaching Bible Literature as two questions:

• Have I got your attention yet?
• Are you listening?

Wholeness moving through reality.

The sound of it!

monday yurt spring

A hermitage

a place where silence and solitude

reside, at home, dwelling.

where things go when they fall

Sitting with Quakers

         Earlier

                 Spring finally

                          Life seeps out

                                      Birdsong

thirty years ago in a small movie theatre on Exchange Street Portland Maine

A woman I’d not met in a blue suit asked if I’d be watching the final two installments of the five night Berlin Alexanderplatz.

I said yes.

“Would you tell me about them when I get back from a business trip?”

I said yes.

I did. And did.

Thirty years ago today.

tell your friend if he’s died that he’s died

Shippee dies.

You’ve died.

“Really?” I hear him say.

Yeah, David, really.

“Perfect,” he says.

Eyebrows raised, he moves on.

Ha...fooled again

There is nothing outside.

Because.

There is no outside.

leaving room

Room empties. Semester final class at university; reams of papers to sort through. Close light.

I thought I’d die before completion of course.

For the Anniversary of My Death  

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day   

When the last fires will wave to me 

And the silence will set out 

Tireless traveler 

Like the beam of a lightless star  

Then I will no longer 

Find myself in life as in a strange garment 

Surprised at the earth 

And the love of one woman 

And the shamelessness of men 

As today writing after three days of rain 

Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease 

And bowing not knowing to what 

--Poem by W. S. Merwin, “For the Anniversary of My Death” from The Second Four Books of Poems (Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1993).

They leave one by one turning in self-assessment. Their presentations symbolize in obvious narrative sensitivity to one another’s voice. They are ethically attuned. Kant and Bentham are left to their deliberations; these students (as Nick said) have embodied the teaching therefore they’ve learned nothing. 

Heads up: it’s not the head that learns.

I arrive home with semi-annual vow: that’s it, no more teaching for me!

Quickly, I remind myself, read their papers, my anniversary approaches.

The surprising earth, a reverent bow, leaving room.

To listen is to be humbled

Batteries are recharged.

On wall, in socket, no light.

Maybe humanity will not destroy the earth and itself.

Especially not, upon reflection, Itself.

Long breath, short breath; feeling as unforgetting

Face silence with another silence.

Reflecting over and over mirror images of wordless, soundless love.

In water flowing downhill over stones in dark.

my darling nobody; my nobody darling

What does it mean to be dead?

It is to have given one-self for another's well-being.

Be dead in life; be alive in death!

Be Nobody's Darling 

Be nobody's darling; 

Be an outcast. 

Take the contradictions 

Of your life 

And wrap around 

You like a shawl, 

To parry stones 

To keep you warm. 

Watch the people succumb 

To madness 

With ample cheer;  

Let them look askance at you 

And you askance reply. 

Be an outcast;  

Be pleased to walk alone 

(Uncool)  

Or line the crowded

River beds 

With other impetuous 

Fools.  

On the bank 

Where thousands perished 

For brave hurt words 

They said.  

Be an outcast. 

Qualified to live 

Among your dead. 

Make a merry gathering 

But be nobody's darling;  

Be an outcast.  

Qualified to live Among your dead.

                   (--poem by Alice Walker)

Walking Ragged Snow Bowl in early morning. Sitting zazen in bookshed retreat while another practitioner sat in zendo. Reading Office of Readings, slowly, after.

No one dead; no one alive.

White dog on pallet outside door.

The sitters, one by one, leave their sitting.

One, by one, the curious experience of being (alive).

The odd monk's life -- following Isaac, Esau, and Jacob -- the undead deceptions of ongoing narrative.

Nobody knows -- the rubble -- we've seen.

The wind full of outer space

Is it easier for lovers? 

             Ah, they only manage 

                          by being together

to conceal each other's fate! 

           You still don't know? 

                     Throw armfuls of emptiness 

out to the spaces 

            that we breathe --  

                         maybe the birds 

Will sense 

               the expanded air 

                             flying more fervently.

(--from First Elegy, Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. David Young, 1976)

Thirty three years ago, Katherine gave herself to death.

"Pay your sacrifice of thanksgiving to God." (Ps. 50)

"Offer to God the sacrifice of praise." (Antiphonal 2, Office of Readings)

Qui tacet consentire!

Don't bother, I'll see myself out

One can only wonder if there is any chance to rein in the shadowy shenanigans of slippery power off to the side in this country.

Or maybe the nature of political life is deception and further deception.

It's hard to decide whether it is stupidity or sedition at play.

Beyond my pay grade. Which, by the way, is below poverty. Happily, for a mendicant.

Let go

The day runs

Out

Of minutes

Looks over edge

At tomorrow

Unpacking grip

Dirk

Died last night.

We learn.

A candle burns.

Invocation: Something there is that loves a door

         “Something there is that doesn't love a wall”                                                                                                                                                       (—from”Mending Wall,” by Robert Frost)

Graduation is a nice way of saying :

Let me show you the door —

we won’t see you around here anymore!

So let us call each other in

and let us pray

and let us say

what we are passing through —

Doors open and let us in

and doors close as we go out — 

doors, like hearts, see us through

today, in this place, with those around us

we are passing through

another door — another open space with two sides

what was before, and what will be more.

what was before, and what will be more!

so, here’s your hat

don’t be a doormat

look around, be where you’re at

and take the next step

enter this room, take a seat,

rest your feet, (isn’t this neat?)

here we are

our prayer is complete

(isn’t that sweet?) 

-- one more thing —

you, you, you are the door

you are what was before

and you are what will be more

that’s it — we arrive here

and your gift to us, the one you so lovingly share, 

is to let us in, 

where heart-is-open aware…

mind-is-clear aware…

and you a door-freely-standing...aware   

                       (wfh, for University College at Rockland, 3may2014 Commencement)

Physikos -- Pertaining to things of nature

Seven years ago this body -- not one particle of this body was what it is today. 

The curious disappearance of what I am as I remain who I am.

 φυσικός, ή, όν: Physikos: Natural, agreeable to nature.

What actually is resurrection of the body?

Take one small step out of April.

May I?

Yes you may.

Abnegatio

Now that the millionaires have scolded the billionaire about his jealousy and racial comments, all the professional athletes will cease doing what they do that would get them censured and scorned by the rest of us milling around with stoneless hands.

In memory of Giordano Bruno

The cosmos is our primary scripture.

Our hermeneutic is primitive.

Exegesis is our savior.

Octave; to where we dwell

Father is karma. Son is rebirth. Spirit is emptiness.

The whole of it, transformed in our phenomenological existence, is resurrection.

The work presented his critique of the key Buddhist theories of karma, rebirth, and emptiness. Then, remarkably using Buddhist philosophical language and phraseology, [Ippolito Desideri] argued for the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity and dealt with possible objections against this doctrine that might be raised from the Buddhist philosophical standpoint.
(--p.11, in Toward a True Kinship of Faiths, How the World’s Religions Can Come Together, by HH The Dalai Lama, 2010) 

In Christian tradition Father has long been associated with judgment, anger, or compassion. Son has been associated with incarnating, suffering, dying, and rebirthing. And Spirit has been associated with inspiration, awakening, non-separation, and wise being-in-the-world.

Taken as a whole, this narrative is one of resurrection -- a coming back to life after death, or, a coming back to life within life-itself. It is this notion that death is not confined to the cessation of biological life, but involves a transformation of all forms of life -- physical, psychological, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual -- into a new form of life as a new being in a heretofore unrealized realm of existence.

 This transformed realm is not someplace else. It is we who are, if you will, someone else. It is what has been called the realm of heaven, the sphere of engaged relationality wherein we see and connect with all things and every being in a happy, healthy, and holy manner.

This fits closely with Jesus’s words to the dying brigand in Luke: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” 5 Despite a long tradition of misreading, paradise is here, as in some other Jewish writing, not a final destination but the blissful garden, the parkland of rest and tranquillity, where the dead are refreshed as they await the dawn of the new day. 6 The main point of the sentence lies in the apparent contrast between the brigand’s request and Jesus’s reply: “Remember me,” he says, “when you come in your kingdom,” implying (whether ironically or not does not concern us here) that this will be at some far distant future. Jesus’s answer brings this future hope into the present, implying of course that with his death the kingdom is indeed coming even though it doesn’t look like what anyone had imagined: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” There will still, of course, be a future completion involving ultimate resurrection; Luke’s overall theological understanding leaves no doubt on that score. Jesus, after all, didn’t rise again “today,” that is, on Good Friday. Luke must have understood him to be referring to a state of being-in-paradise, which would be true, for him and for the man dying beside him, at once, that very day— in other words, prior to the resurrection. With Jesus, the future hope has come forward into the present. For those who die in faith, before that final reawakening, the central promise is of being “with Jesus” at once. “My desire is to depart,” wrote Paul, “and be with Christ, which is far better.” 7

Resurrection itself then appears as what the word always meant, whether (like the ancient pagans) people disbelieved it or whether (like many ancient Jews) they affirmed it. It wasn’t a way of talking about life after death. It was a way of talking about a new bodily life after whatever state of existence one might enter immediately upon death. It was, in other words, life after life after death.

(--Wright, N. T. (2009-04-24). Surprised by Hope (pp. 150-151). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. )

Some call the process a similar one to the death of the ego, or the stepping out of the small-self, or ceasing to cling to the particular perspectival preferences with which we are habituated.

Seven times down, eight times up.

Whether zen adept or just man/woman -- we fall to ground, long to arise, and struggle to see our way clear and through.

To where we dwell in peace.

Freedom.

Safety.

Happiness.

Our true home.

come apart, and rest awhile

 We might have to consider adding “monai” after “m.o.n.o.” --

Here we need to revisit a point we made earlier. What does Jesus mean when he declares that there are “many dwelling places” in his father’s house? 4 This has regularly been taken, not least when used in the context of bereavement, to mean that the dead (or at least dead Christians) will simply go to heaven permanently rather than being raised again subsequently to new bodily life. But the word for “dwelling places” here, monai, is regularly used in ancient Greek not for a final resting place but for a temporary halt on a journey that will take you somewhere else in the long run.
(--from, Wright, N. T. (2009-04-24). Surprised by Hope (p. 150). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.) 

Monastics of no other - dwelling places!

Would that make us mono-monaical instead of monomaniacal?

I’d prefer to stay right in this ever-here this ever-changing unpredictable and chaotic ephemera we call our earthly dwelling places with no otherness but clear and interconnected new forms of relational self.

It is Easter Saturday.

Heaven is no longer separate from earth -- not has it ever been.

None of us are any longer separate from God -- nor have we ever been.

Resurrect awareness and attention. Embody this new form of life...

Christ has.

Easter Friday

One more waking from sleep.

One more toasted English muffin.

Wind gusts

At window

A morning meditation.

"When it’s time to suffer, you should suffer; when it’s time to cry, you should cry. Cry completely. Cry until there are no more tears and then recognize in your exhaustion that you’re alive. The sun still rises and sets. The seasons come and go. Absolutely nothing remains the same and that includes suffering. When the suffering ends wisdom begins to raise the right questions." (—Seido Ray Ronci, “The Examined Life” -- in Tricycle)

For a brief while we are here.

"You practice the piano not in order to perform but for the sake of practicing the piano. With music, you don’t practice and then one day become a concert pianist. You are that. Practice is as much an expression of that as of practice itself." (—Philip Glass, “First Lesson, Best Lesson” -- in Tricycle)

and then...

In silence, everything is heard.

Say it again ... (haiku interrupted) ... but without words this time

1.

universe next door

is connected; no, more: it

Is inside (this) one

2.

resurrection is

not after this life; it is

Inside (as) this life

Silence, haiku

If Christ is risen

everything becomes itself --

Now -- no other sound

Easter Monday haiku

When life saw itself

It was as if a Christ saw

What is his to do

bitte noch einmal

“We just die into silence. Die to the past. Die to the future. Die to the breath. Completely let go. The silence reveals itself as refuge, as awareness that can be trusted, tenderly loving and resounding with the majesty and the mystery of the sacred.”
(--Adapted from “Living in the Light of Death” by Kathleen Dowling Singh)

Life after life after death (N.T. Wright's phrasing)

With sunrise.

Drying socks.

The rising ordinary.

Putting the plates on second shelf.

Every thing appears as it is.

not words

Poems are not words. 

Poems are where words go to die; 

then to resurrect into 

contemplation.

unworded silence, light wind touches bowing branches

"What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled." (--from An Ancient Homily for Holy Saturday)

Broken Open Haiku

Once coyotes yelped
through poem of
          Old Fox
          on Good Friday --

Now, barely able to
find words
          he offers stealth blood
          and water silence

(--for fr Robert, ocso, Good Friday 2014)

"For-you" is a new way to see life and bread

As the story is told, it is as if Jesus was asked, "What is this?" at table when he took bread and looked at them.

"This?" he responded. "This is for-you."

"For me?" one asked.

"No."

"For us?"

"No." Jesus answered. It is for-you."

They looked at him.

bread?

Yes.

Thank you!

Morning snow; nothing to see here

Maine midcoast, April 16, snow.

New York Times has investigative story of alleged rape and sexual assault by Heisman Trophy winning national champion quarterback at Florida State University in Dec. 2012.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/04/16/sports/errors-in-inquiry-on-rape-allegations-against-fsu-jamies-winston.html?hp&_r=0

Neither snow nor the privilege of athletes seem to go away.

Law enforcement and university officials know their place.

Shovels bury, they don't remove anything.

It's why we have blinds. 

Limiting our looking.

Intimately

To suffer is to enter what is real.

Numb is false.

Real is life.

So, we suffer.

and I sort of felt, for lack of a better word, everything

From India, about Amma, a perspective.

Excerpt:

Darshan is the intimate process of seeing and being seen by a deity. Hindus describe darshan not as the detached, passive sight of aesthetic observance but with the active transitive verbs of taking (in Hindi, darshan lena) and giving darshan (darshan dena). In modern usage, the term darshan signifies the moment when humans view the supernatural, whether through an icon of a deity (murti), a sacred site (tīrtha), or a living embodiment of the divine (avatār). Through darshan, the deity and the devotee engage in a mutual seeing in “a moment of dramatic spiritual interaction.”7 This interactive process symbolizes the “desire for fusion— for the subject/object dissolution of the ‘double sensation.’ ”8 As Isabelle Nabokov/Clark-Decès explains, “The act of darshan . . . also becomes a form of absorbing, so that any objectification of a supernatural is always a form of assimilation as well.”9 It is in such moments of Hindu devotional ritual that the individual both recognizes divinity and is recognized as divinity.10 In Hindu practice, it is through darshan that humanity gains the opportunity to experience the divine on earth. Ideally the darshan experience dissolves the individual ego into cosmic unity with divinity. When interpreted through the advaita vedantic theological ideal of nonduality, the moment of darshan between guru and devotee provides the opportunity for the dissolution of the individuated ego, the symbolic union with divinity, and the intense physical expression of metaphysical cosmic oneness that eradicates duality. Ideally, darshan transforms the individual through these temporary suspensions of the sense of self and individuated difference that incite the recognition of the ultimate similitude between the self and divinity. 

Through darshan, devotees not only see the image of the deity but infuse themselves within it in an active process of becoming. Devotees aim to absorb the gaze of the deity and in the process be transformed. As Lawrence Babb suggests, there is a parallel between the impulse be- hind eating blessed food (prasad), wherein “you become what you eat,” and the process of darshan, in which “you somehow become what you see.”11 Thus darshan should not be explained in terms of being merely an aesthetic experience—something that one passively witnesses—but, rather, as an agentive interaction—something in which one actively engages, a transformative and participatory process. A devotee of Mother Meera understands her unique method of silent visual darshan in highly active terms of transformation. She says, “Along with the gaze from Mother Meera’s eyes comes an infusion of light, light designed to heal wounds within the psyche and give a person sufficient power to move from the perspective of the personality to a divine perspective. . . . This is not one woman staring as the other stares back. Instead, one offers the gift of her soft, penetrative gaze, and the other offers the gift of acceptance.”12 In the Radhasoami tradition the compassionate gaze of the guru during darshan is believed to assist devotees in their spiritual de- velopment: “the drishṭi, the ‘seeing’ or ‘glance,’ of the guru aids the devotee in achieving deliverance.”13 Devotees of Sathya Sai Baba experience darshan as “a moment of ultimate self-transformation by which they are ‘captured’ spiritually and experience a ‘complete immersion in Sai Baba’s love.’ ”14 

Amma’s devotees relate similar experiences of the dissolution of indi- vidual boundaries, immersion in divine love, and cosmic awakenings. Shanti relayed a particularly powerful experience of her darshan during one Devī Bhāva night: “As we knelt in front of Amma, she put our heads together, cheek to cheek, and looked straight into our eyes, the right eye on me and the left eye on Caleb. I remember thinking, Oh no! here we go!!! I lost all track of where I was . . . there was no sense of time, the universe was swirling to life in her eye, and then I was in the universe and I sort of felt, for lack of a better word, everything that has ever been and every thing that will ever be in one second. She pulled back and it was over. I totally lost track of where I was for a second. But as soon as she disengaged I was back with no confusion.” Devotees long for the darshan experience because of the potential for this type of transformative experience, the possibility of experiencing a glimpse into the cosmic reality of the divine, and the efficacy of darshan for catalyzing spiritual awakening. 

(--from Chapter 1, A Darshan Embrace, Experiencing Authenticity and Feeling Witnessed, in  Reflections of Amma, Devotees in a Global Embrace, Amanda J. Lucia (Author) http://www.ucpress.edu/content/chapters/12560.ch01.pdf)

Broken open; gathering with-us

Two names arrive at table Sunday Evening Practice: Dirk and Kali.

The word hospice accompanies.

Gathering us into prayer.

With them.

Gott mit uns; Dasein mit uns.

Univocally holy; week

No one is doing something to us or for us. 

What is being done is being done with us.

Realization

If it is trust, you know it's not ego.

It might be you

"Many arrivals make us live," wrote Theodore Roethke.

No one thinks we are who we are.

Doing nothing is essential for thinking to occur. Many of the most important thoughts are unintentional—they can be neither solicited nor cajoled but have a rhythm of their own, creeping up, arriving, and leaving when we least expect them. It is important to cultivate the lassitude of mind that clears a place for the arrival of what cannot be anticipated. Idleness allows time for the mind to wander to places never before imagined and to return transformed. 

(—Mark C. Taylor, "Idleness Waiting Grace")

We become who we are by stepping into the unknown new and next moment as it presents itself. So, too, we are itself presented in the world.

There is no place to go. No place we have to get to. 

Arrive, that's it.

Wait for the question to arise. Someone will ask the question; it might be you, yourself, asking.

"Where are you?" 

And when you hear that question, do not attempt to answer it.

Wait a while.

Arrive without answer.

Look around.