the predicament

 After watching on Netflix A Life on Our Planet: My Witness Statement and a Vision for the Future (2020, I remain in awe of both the beauty and the predicament of nature, and an individual man’s witness commitment to the whole of it.

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet
Film poster
Genre	Nature documentary
Narrated by	David Attenborough
Composer(s)	Steven Price
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
Production
Executive producer(s)	Alastair Fothergill Keith Scholey Colin Butfield
Cinematography	Gavin Thurston
Editor(s)	Martin Elsbury
Running time	83 min
Production company(s)	Altitude Film Entertainment Netflix Silverback Films
Release
Original network	Netflix
Picture format	UHDTV 2160p
Original release	4 October 2020
Chronology
Preceded by	Life in Cold Blood

David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet is a 2020 British documentary film^[1] narrated by David Attenborough.^[2] The film acts as a "witness statement",^[3] through which Attenborough shares first-hand his concern for the current state of the planet due to humanity's impact on nature and his hopes for the future.^[4] It was released on Netflix on 4 October 2020.^[5]

 (—Wikipedia)

With someone like Sir David, now age 93, in the world, he, a treasure of experience, compassion, intelligence, and wisdom —  it makes someone like the lame duck occupant of the White House an even more curious player on the planet. 

The film is on Netflix.

Do yourself a favor.

Released on the feast of Francis of Assisi, probably not an unconsidered coincidence.

As for the gratuitous comparison of one great man with that other man, I am guilty of witnessing in one a loving gift of concern for life and wisdom on this planet, and the other, a terrible rift of self-indulgent crass uncaring narcissism tearing decency from its roots tossed on destructive fires of ignorance.

That being said, and comparisons the icky things they are, I am again reminded that it is the whole of nature and the whole of humanity that requires our compassionate wisdom.

Thank you, Sir David! Please stay longer.

Say thank you, Mr. Trump to those who’ve kept you standing...then...Please go away!

something from sunday evening practice

 Amid the noise of jubilation and the noise of grievance, there's a need for grace and compassion.

GRACE - Cultivating Compassion While Interacting with Others, talk by Roshi Joan Halifax, time 12:46

https://youtu.be/SWLmnHB4rLY

Such important words. 

what you and me can be

                 (a reconciling haiku)

There is no winning

Or losing — there is this, that

And no other — grace

might I have this dance with you

Half for, half against.

The stuff of democracy —

We’ll have to converse

there you go

saturday morning work meditation

A piece by Rumi:

This we have now
is not imagination.

This is not
grief or joy.

Not a judging state,
or an elation,
or sadness.

Those come
and go.

This is the presence
that doesn't.

It's dawn, Husam,
here in the splendor of coral,
inside the Friend, the simple truth
of what Hallaj said.

What else could human beings want?

When grapes turn to wine
they're wanting
this.

When the nightsky pours by,
it's really a crowd of beggars,
and they all want some of this!

This
that we are now
created the body, cell by cell,
like bees building a honeycomb.

The human body and the universe
grew from this, not this
from the universe and the human body.

(—from The Essential Rumi)

with all his works and all his pomps

 Yes, we do reject him, yes we do!

It’s a tragedy that it had to happen this way: so many people sick, thrown out of work by shutdowns, ruined by failed businesses and by failing governments, victims of all ages dead. People want to work again – but they need to be given new and better positions in a different kind of economy that’s the basis for a Green New Deal.

It was libertarian individualists and free market fundamentalists that got us into the climate crisis, and now a global public health crisis has exposed their impotence and the baseness of their ideas. Just as they ignored the warnings of the climate scientists, they now endanger their fellow citizens by refusing to listen to the experts in epidemiology.

Libertarian and faux populist leaders are aiming for a replay of the fiasco that followed the last big global upheaval, the financial crisis of 2008: bail out the big industries, and let ordinary taxpayers and ill-paid ‘necessary workers’ foot the bill. The richest 1 per cent are already profiting from the pandemic, and they desperately want to get the train of progress going again so that they can profit even more.6 Lockdowns preclude people from taking to the streets to protest such colossal injustice – but what if enough of us decline to reboard the train?

It’s time to resist ‘return to normal’, for the simple reason that our former ‘normal’ was on course to heat up the planet so much as to render it uninhabitable – or to make it so difficult to inhabit that only a fraction of the current world population would survive.7 The old normal was becoming lethal to the species, but the next normal needn’t be. The International Energy Agency has estimated that all the government restrictions in response to the pandemic could result in an 8 per cent drop in carbon emissions for 2020 – remarkably just what the United Nations Environment Programme says will be necessary every year for the next decade if we’re to prevent a temperature rise of over 1.5oC.8 That’s what we need, and we could manage it if we tried.

(—from Preface to How to Think About the Climate Crisis,  A Philosophical Guide to Saner Ways of Living, by Graham Parkes, c.2020)

Ego te baptizo 

to come

 Of course it is sad that the White House has little interest and no will to restrain or contain the coronavirus.

The current occupant should fold it up and head home.

There’s no sympathy, no fond feelings, for or from the man or his surrounding aides.

We are bereft of affiliatory affection.

It is a desolate realization and a troubling transition to come.

transition

Thank you, Donald Trump, for showing America that only you could lead the faithful few who would benefit from your interests.

Thank you, Joe Biden, for showing America that wide and common interests will be heard and respected under your leadership.

not one could I find

 In middle of night, when not much moves, prayer breathes..

You know how they taunt and deride me;

my oppressors are all before you.

Taunts have broken my heart;

I have reached the end of my strength.

I looked in vain for compassion,

for consolers; not one could I find.

(—from ps.69) 

Prayer is the end. 

Nothing follows it.

Without sound.

Breath itself.

longing for sanity and good sense

 It is coming down to crumbs and peanut shells.

Doom and gloom, grievance and accusation.

A nation longing for sanity and good sense waits under dripping water.

It is time to go to bed. Compline insinuates itself into prayerful mind.

add+ilucoto

What does it mean to be a writer, asks the philosopher of critical theory?

I wouldn’t know.

What I do know is what I propose for inmate students whose classes are suspended for six weeks due to coronavirus.

We will address the battleground and tension of learning while dispersed with ADD+ILUCOTO.

Auto/dyad didacticism + individual learning understanding conversation together.

A new code of learning for warriors of self/other inquiry.

societal collapse

Not difficult to be tired and anxious.

Less easy to cooperate in a collective action.

We vote then run back into our house.

100,000 new cases of Coronavirus today.

The tired and anxious are difficult to soothe.

I must admit, it is curious to still be alive.

the invisible root, passion for the possible

We need imagination: 

 In The Wake of Imagination, Richard Kearney shows that the concept of imagination has a complex genealogy in the Western tradition. In the Platonic corpus, imagination (eikasia) is nothing other than an imitation of the visible world, which is itself a mere shadow of the forms. Against Plato, Aristotle argued that “imagination [phantasia] is the process by which we say that an image [phantasma] is presented to us,” and that “the soul does not think without a mental image.” Imagination, in short, for Aristotle, was the passage between sense experience and reason. Nevertheless, Aristotle agreed with Plato that “imagination is mostly false,” and the Greeks, for the most part, used phantasma as a “reproductive rather than a productive activity . . . [an] imitation rather than origin” (WI, 12).

In a sense, the imaginatio of the Latin writers combines the meaning of the Greek phantasma with the negative connotations of the Hebrew yetzer. The latter term denotes a human creativity whose first use marked the fall of humanity into history. This creativity is a usurpation of the divine Yetzirah, and Adam and Eve’s eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge marked the beginning of time. By this action, humanity not only gained knowledge of good and evil but, just as important, also could remember the past and project itself into the future through its creative activity. The freedom of human beings, Kearney remarks, “to choose between good and evil, and to construct one’s story accordingly, is thus intimately related to the yetzer as a passion for the possible” (WI, 42).

(—from, p.18, Introduction: The Miracle of Imagining, by Peter Gratton and John Panteleimon Manoussakis, in TRAVERSING THE IMAGINARY, Richard Kearney and the Postmodern Challenge, c.2007)

And mourning:

In “On Stories and Mourning,” Paul Ricoeur argues that the notion of sorrow must be added to any discussion of narrative and action. Action, Ricoeur suggests, is coupled not just with narrative but also with “the work of mourning” elucidated in Freud’s essay “Mourning and Melancholia.” Ricoeur extends his meditation on mourning to the contemporary loss of authority in the political field, arguing that we must not “underestimate mourning” at the political level. Mourning, he argues, provides people with an ability to begin again “in such a way that we may overcome obsessive or compulsive repetition.” Marking the careful balance between memory and forgetting, Ricoeur notes that the “invisible root” of any community is the act of telling stories.. (Ibid, p.21)

 In the morning, when imagination and mourning look out over bare trees and November pall, the possibility of sidling closer to each other with radical and intimate affection, upholds the faint but felt realization a new story desires to issue from our deep longing and emerge as nascent origin — to be what we are coming to be.

what to do, now

Grinding coffee beans

English muffin in toaster

Tree in dooryard bare

morning after

 What do you think? 

              Me? 

I don’t know what to think.

                You?

Dawn light over east

of wondering listening, owl

 Whoo, whoo, whoo

middle of night

the cold air

carries question

from mountain

ego sum

 May all, 

living and dead, 

Rest In Peace!

final day

Vote and

Veto.

It’s time

to reverse

a mistake.

all souls, her soul, four years ago

For all that has been,  

                   Thank you.  

 

For all that is to come,  

 

                              Yes!  

 

(– Dag Hammarskjold)

who from their labors rest

all saints suffer fools

with patience forgiving what

idiots hold fast

save nothing, delight everything

Time is what some say 

it is a play without words

a vast blank telling

freedom at the very beginning

Where to begin? 

               

Forward

If any of you thinketh to be wise in this age, 

then let him be foolish, in order to be wise. 

For the wisdom of this world 

is foolishness before God... 

—1st Epistle To Corinthians

of Holy Apostle Paul [3: 18-19].

The title of this book demands an explanation. The philosophy of freedom does not signify here an investigation of the problem of freedom as one of the problems of philosophy, for freedom does not signify here an object. The philosophy of freedom means here -- the philosophy of the free, a philosophy, issuing forth from freedom, in contrast to a philosophy of slaves, to a philosophy, issuing forth from necessity, for freedom signifies the condition of the philosophising subject. A free philosophy is a philosophy religious, a philosophy intuitive, a philosophy of sons, rather than of step-sons. The path of this book issues forth from freedom at the very beginning, and does not arrive at freedom merely at the end. It is impossible to deduce freedom from anything, in it is possible to dwell only from the beginning. Divine truth also is impossible to deduce, it becomes manifest like a flash of lightning, wholly given within its revealing. This its firm and unwavering faith consists in this, that truth is given within mystical apperception, that it is impossible to act, impossible to be understood, without having under it a solid footing of the Divine, a Divine foundation, without having graced an assist, being thus instead forsaken and forlorn and sundered off from the universal soul, -- such defines the character of the exposition of this book. Within it there consciously transpires a method of issuing from, and not arriving at, of an issuing from that what is revealed, gleaned as an illuminating light, rather than of arriving at that which still remains unrevealed, unseen and immersed in darkness. This is the path traversed by all the mystic-thinkers...

  (—from, "The Philosophy of Freedom"  (Kl. № 5) 1st English Translation of Nikolas Berdyaev's 1911 book, "Философия свободы", translated by Fr. S. Janos, 2020) http://www.berdyaev.com/FiloSvoboda.jpg

It is our beginning that that many of us fear, not our end.

It is freedom we find frightening, not captivity.

Like the zen saying “seven times down, eight times up” we forget our origin.

Start here.

truth contains therein

 I hear the voice of nature measured with October yellow, mauve, burnt orange. Sitting at picnic table during walk through state park upper circle vacant camping sites. 

 “The sound of a voice* is the harbinger of the truth contained therein.”  

        *(Christian Wiman in Yale conversation with Marilynne Robinson 20feb2020 misremembering quote from George MacDonald’s 1868 England’s Antiphon about George Herbert's poetry in YouTube at 7:35 — MacDonald's word was ‘verse’ not ‘voice.’)

To reference presidential candidates in final days before election alongside beauty of the silence of god, companionship of co-monastic, pre-rain scent of wavering leaves nodding with our conversation— might seem unseemly.

But listen to their voices.

Hear the challenger’s pathos and compassion.

Hear the incumbent’s bathos and pusillanimity.

Both tone and timber, resonance and responsibility, sensitivity and scrupulosity for truth must be the audial authenticity and audacity for our wounded souls in this time in the place wherein we dwell on edge of teetering civilized concern and care for one another.

Signaling what approaches.

We, listening, with profound attentiveness.

Must we verse ourselves with the adverse and perverse before a true voice sounds through?

wu-shin

 The mind of America is antagonistically dualistic.

One to one combat. Eliminate the other.

Wu-shin, no-mind, is healing awakening.

It’s not too late — is it?

Don’t mind me.

using the etymology of silence

It has been a point of interest that language conceals as much as it reveals (cf. Heidegger). And it has been a long practice to manipulate language to present or represent thought in a way from which thought cannot protect itself.

We are victims of a monstrous irrationality

- which we call 'means of communication' -

but which in actual fact obstructs real communication.

A vast machine which processes 'events' and reduces them to gibberish

in which reality is a total loss."

(- Thomas Merton)

In our current political babble emanating from a desperately chicanerous incumbent there is a more than likely chance that meaning and truth are absent guests in the house of human communication.

 [Gottlob Frege, 1848-1925] presents us with a dilemma that lies at the heart of his lifelong attitude toward language. On the one hand, language is indispensable for us in order to get access to thought. On the other hand, language – because of its sensible character – obscures thought (which by itself is insensible). Thus, Frege saw himself forced to deal with language by way of a continuous struggle – fighting the distortions that are imposed on thought by language, and diagnosing as well as clarifying the misunderstandings that result from these distortions.

But why is language indispensable for thought, and why did Frege think that it is? These two questions are central for an understanding of the rise of philosophy of language in general, and of Frege’s engagement in philosophy of language in particular. They are important because, if it turns out that we cannot find a convincing reason for the indispensability of language for thought, then the struggle with language that Frege is talking about above would not seem necessary for philosophical inquiry: we could just circumvent the obstacle of language and access our concepts and thoughts directly. Historically, dealing with the second question in particular might give us some insight about the extent of Frege’s possible indebtedness, or lack thereof, to earlier conceptions of the relations between language and thought and language as such.

Thus, it would be worthwhile taking a closer look at the two traditional functions of language with regard to thought that Hobbes and Locke distinguished in the context of their respective epistemological reflections. These were: (a) the indispensable assistance of language to memory, or to the representation and recording of one’s own thoughts, and (b) its role as a necessary vehicle of the communication of one’s own thoughts to other people.

(—Internet Encyclopedia  of Philosophy)

The advertising and propaganda forces are in full gear and surrounding our houses breaking in doors and shouting warnings to drop to the floor and submit to their orders to not resist.

Speak now.

Using the etymology of silence, let your attentive emptiness dissolve the insubstantial foolishness of desperate charlatans.

MU!

Say nothing well.

Hear nothing with discerning heart.

“Let nothing disturb you,
Let nothing frighten you,
All things are passing away:
God never changes.
Patience obtains all things.
Whoever has God lacks nothing;
God alone suffices.”

― Santa Teresa de Jesús

May we be happily sufficed! 

no recourse to force or compulsion.

Man I know used to say he was an anarchist. I think of him now. Executive Branch a cartoon in a cheap newspaper. Supreme Court a work-crew of cultish guys and gals dismantling laws and propping a criminal demagogue. A senate of ambulance chasers suing citizenry for the remainder of their pocket change. A justice department chanting the mantras of a decadent guru who spoils everything he touches.

Anarchism, he’d say, looks good right now. 

Take it down, he’d say, ignore them, all of them, practice civil disobedience, laugh at them and go about your business, go on with your day. Let them devour one another, rob the treasury, launder money, defame everyone refusing to kowtow, stink up the place.

I wonder where he is these days. What he’d say now? 

Was his rhetoric a passing phase of anger and disappointment? Do we deserve the leaders we have? The court we have? The sadness that covers everything?

I’m not an anarchist.

I’m a zen buddhist.

I’m a contemplative christian.

I’m nobody and nothing.

I’m happy in my emptiness.

And if this country and its artificiality collapses in on itself? (As it certainly will.)

I will continue to practice through the desolation and debris until the nothing that is this country and the nothing that is me becomes the Nothing that is God, a disappearing love, and we disappearing into the coming-to-be waiting for someone, anyone, to wake up and greet another with compassion, loving kindness, and wisdom.

Nothing else exists but compassion, loving kindness, and wisdom.

Nothing else.

No recourse to force or compulsion.

Things as-it-is.

Itself.

Alone.

Where you are that.

Where each is that.

Where what is coming-to-be says: 

I am that

I am!

there is one thing

                 (haiku after Ji {Shih} / Ri {Li})*

 As woman reads from

Sandokai, flowers on desk 

transform light to words

* cf. Sekito Kisen’s Sandokai: The Identity of Relative and Absolute – Part 1

a nonagenarian sangha friend sends us a monday poem

won’t you celebrate with me

 

won’t you celebrate with me 

what i have shaped into 

a kind of life? i had no model. 

born in babylon 

both nonwhite and woman 

what did i see to be except myself? 

i made it up 

here on this bridge between 

starshine and clay 

my one hand holding tight 

my other hand; come celebrate 

with me that everyday 

something has tried to kill me 

and has failed.

 

 (—poem by Lucille Clifton, “won't you celebrate with me” from Book of Light.  © 1993)

be that

Don’t wear a mask. Die. This is how Republican politicians see things. A sad reality.

I disagree. Wear a mask. Live. Reject the angry hostility that hates you.

Stay home. Vote. Decide to love even those who don’t want any love. Stay hidden. Love without noise.

Nature, said Heraclitus, loves to hide. Be natural. Stay obscure. Be so transparent you are invisible.

That’s it. The source of existence is emptiness. Nothing precedes us and also follows closely. Be that.

they arise and they pass away

 Opening eyes, Monday morning, chill air through open windows. Sound of cars making way east south-east toward Hosmer Pond. 

We are meant to find joy. Each moment. Each breath. Each glance. 

Walking mountain with friends yesterday. He a friend for fifty seven years, we started together on college basketball team. We immersed Franciscan life for five years before New Year’s Eve 1969. We studied simplicity and classical languages along New York side of the Delaware River, contemplation in hills of northern New Jersey, philosophy near beach in New Hampshire, and philosophy/theology in nation's capital in Washington DC. We lived this pax et bonum between Kennedy assassinations. Brothers still, seldom in one another’s company.

The simplicity of it.

I think it is true of many of us that we don’t notice what a gift it is just to be alive. How could we not notice? Well, we sort of take it for granted. But this gift is not without its problems. One of these problems is actually the very thing that made me realize how awesome life is, what a gift it is and how much I appreciate it. That is the fact that life is evanescent, impermanent. It is precious because we can’t just take it for granted. When we realize this, we may wonder, “Well, if my life is a gift, how shall I use it, how shall I give it back, how shall I express my appreciation for it, or completely live this life which is wonderful and evanescent?”

In Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Suzuki Roshi tells the story of the four horses. One of the horses starts to run just seeing the shadow of the whip, before it even touches him. The next one starts to run just having the whip touch the hair of its skin. The third horse starts to run when it really feels the pain of the whip on its skin. And the fourth horse doesn’t really get going until it feels the whip in the marrow of its bones.

I came to practice the first time I almost died. The second time I almost died, I really came to recognize what a joy it is to be alive.

What is this whip? This whip is just that evanescence of life, just that teaching of impermanence. One of the Buddha’s most significant teachings is to hold up impermanence for us to see, but actually it is just how things are—anything, anytime, anywhere. There is a Pali chant which expresses this:

All things are impermanent
They arise and they pass away.
To live in harmony with this truth
Brings great happiness.

If you see how things are, “things as-it-is” as Suzuki-roshi used to say, you see that they arise and they pass away. The trick is to live in harmony with the way things actually are; our suffering comes from wanting things to be different than they are

(—from, This Life, Which is Wonderful and Evanescent,  BY BLANCHE HARTMAN| JANUARY 14, 2019, LION’S ROAR)

We take time to speak, the four of us, at brunch on porch warmed by sun going lower in October sky. Politics, spirituality, COVID, health, dogs, yogurt with fruit, eggs with cheese and bacon, bread with peanut butter and marmalade. 

Two cats circled feet. 

Senator King of Maine uses phrase “impropriety in real time” about the pushing through of Supreme Court nominee by republicans eight days before election. 

There is a cold pall over the nation. We do not have a sane intelligent president and the country will decide over the next few weeks whether unintelligent insanity is what is wanted going forward. 

Many are concerned. A woman at Sunday Evening Practice said she is frightened. 

There might be left-over coffee in kitchen.

I’ll go see.

nothing moves

“Get lost,” says the angry voice.

And we do not know where we are. 

”Be here,” says the compassionate one.

And we look around. We’re home.

“The healing is in the return … Not in not getting lost in the beginning.  (Sharon Salzburg)

Yes, we wander.

No, we are never not within our home and at origin.

This morning, light comes up over near hill. 

Clock on wall ticks.

not to love

Not to love is not to be in existence, not to be in humanity, not to be in god, not to be in creation.

How does it feel to be nowhere? There is no feeling. There’s only drugs, alcohol, mockery, and cynicism.

Not to love is not anywhere or anything any of us ... want.

don’t answer

 Friday Evening Conversation ends with talk about The Physics of Angels.

Questions about source, illusion of separation, ignoring that which is our soul of identity, and the darkness experienced in the unsupported belief in disconnection.

We are not other than the whole. When we attempt to cut and fragment, divide and sever, we hurt everything and everyone.

To love god is to love creation, humanity and existence.

To love existence is to love humanity, god, and creation.

To love humanity is to love creation, existence, and god, 

To love creation is to love existence, god, and humanity.

To love any one is to love each and all. 

Self is self and self is Self.

“Whole sight; or all the rest is desolation.” (John Fowles)

There is no other place to go — we’re already there.

And so, the question resounds: Where are you? 

Where are we?

Don’t answer.

Be the question!

Watch what is appearing and emerging through the inquiry.

See whole; and each manifests itself.

for no surprise

 Haiku             

               (for no November surprise)

As election nears

the choice is easy -- pick one

who loves and tells truth

last week, middle october

Haiku

          (after rowing season)

Two wooden oars bare-

ly touching sun-speckled wa-

ter, outer harbor 

not seeing what is around them

Bleary men debate

climate change  --  Earth burns outside

their blindness  --  pains all

ici

 When my father was born, I was born.

My gratitude, dad. With love. We were here.

off

 No class today, swab

Tests of inmates and staff — cars

Rush down Barnestown road

et nunc et semper

It is enough

To say nothing

When asked about something

is there

Love 

All 

There is

All

Love

Is there

it is not the time you think it is

 It calculates as twenty one years ago.

But eternal now means it is just happening in what we call the present.

Good night, dear sister, rest peacefully.

simply stumbling around

 2. Subtleties of Daily Life

One day Shih-t’ou said, “I’ve come to visit you. What have you been doing?” 

The Layman said, “If you’re asking what I do every day, there’s nothing to say about it.”
 

Shih-t’ou said, “What did you think you were doing before I asked you about it?”
 

The Layman made up a verse:

What I do every day

 Is nothing special:

I simply stumble around.

 What I do is not thought out, 

Where I go is unplanned.

 No matter who tries to leave their mark,

The hills and dales are not impressed.

 Collecting firewood and carrying water 


Are prayers that reach the gods.

 Shih-t'ou approved, saying, “So, are you going to wear black or white? * 

The Layman said, ''I will do whatever is best.”  

It came to pass that he never shaved his head to join the sangha.
...   ...   ... 
 

* Black robes were worn by monks, and white robes were worn by laypeople.  

(--from, The Sayings of Layman Pang, tr. by James Green)

all is possible

The old monk wrote poetry.

Can the Creator of all lure poetry out of a stone?

Or cause a stirring of Divine Love in a human heart?

All is possible for the Creator of all,

Who loves to manifest the impossible

In endless configurations. 

(—Thomas Keating, “Out of a Stone”)

And the rest of we elderly monastics think about reheating coffee and toasting English muffin spreading organic peanut butter and cherry preserves from France.

The non-dual heart/mind abandons the dueling heartless mind to it’s necessary demise and it’s disintegration/reintegration into selfsame oneness.

walking mountain, tending gravesite

 

nihilism and the american religion

 Perhaps we've been looking at the current American administration and the Corona Virus pandemic from too narrow a perspective.

It might need a philosophical analysis to register the import of the man and the virus.  

The reason why Nishitani, in his middle period, likened emptiness to the all- transcending empty sky is because he sought to understand emptiness in relation to the problem of how to overcome nihilism. Nihilism is not prior to religion. Rather it is an event in history that comes after the age of religion – one which, moreover, denies any possibility of gaining salvation through religion. It nullifies all the various philosophical endeavors (of which religion is the supreme example) that humans have engaged in to overcome the nihility confronting them. Nihilism was born from the midst of religion, and has the same sublime loftiness as religion. At the same time, it can be likened to a new virus that burst forth into the world, bearing the power to invalidate all previous religions and incapable of being cured by any religion. It is characterized by a complete negativity and self-enclosure (heisasei 閉 鎖性) that no human-centered religion preaching the quest for inner meaning can resolve. There is no way to deal with nihilism from the outside. 

(--in Nishitani’s Philosophy of Emptinessin “Emptiness and Immediacy” by Hase Shōtō)

The nihilism that has erupted from the highest office of American government cannot be overcome from the outside.

And those on the inside are, it seems, too smitten with the boons of ill-gotten gain to bite the hand that feeds them.

The perversity is staggering. 

The upcoming election looms.

There was a zoom gathering this morning on Men and Loss.

Grief resounds and will continue to for the next few weeks of uncertain outcome

morning desk

 

this limitless world

"But do not ask me where I am going, 

As I travel in this limitless world, 

Where every step I take is my home." 

     — Dōgen Zenji

final row readings and vespers rockport harbor

we must take the utmost care

Eagle Poem 

       (by Joy Harjo)

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can’t see, can’t hear;

Can’t know except in moments

Steadily growing, and in languages

That aren’t always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.

(--Joy Harjo, “Eagle Poem” from In Mad Love and War. Copyright © 1990 by Joy Harjo, in Poetry Foundation)

response to student in code of the warrior ethics class

[GM had been writing about 'dueling' in prison.]

Apart from some spelling and grammar bandaids needed, I really like this paper. It serves well as a  prompt for further conversation and deliberation. Nicely done!

Your focusing on dueling in the place wherein you dwell lifts the subject from dim historical intellectual ‘entertainment’ and plops it down into an intensively felt and lived environment. You represent your opinions well and you describe the everyday duel with the eye of a participant observer.

I want to retrieve your words: "When I said that human nature is naturally evil I truly meant it." They lead me to look again at ‘evil’ and its interpretation. Aside from the awfulness of the repercussions of evil, I ask myself an originary question — whence does it come? I’ve heard many of the mythic stories, the theological stories, and the speculative thinking about evil — but I am also interested in the philosophical origin of it. Here’s my current take: 

There is word in Sanskrit, Avidyā:

 Avidyā (अविद्या) is a Vedic Sanskrit word, and is a compound of "a" and "vidya", meaning "not vidya". The word vidya is derived from the Sanskrit root Vid, which means "to know, to perceive, to see, to understand".^[1] Therefore, avidya means to "not know, not perceive, not understand". The Vid*-related terms appears extensively in the Rigveda and other Vedas.^[1] Avidya is usually rendered as "ignorance" in English translations of ancient Indian texts, sometimes as "spiritual ignorance".^[7][8]

The word avidyā is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *weid-, meaning "to see" or "to know". It is a cognate of Latin vidēre (which would turn to "video") and English “wit". (Wikipedia)

And:

In the yogic sense, avidya means something that goes far beyond ordinary ignorance. Avidya is a fundamental blindness about reality. The core ignorance we call avidya isn't a lack of information, but the inability to experience your deep connection to others, to the source of being, and to your true Self.  (Yoga Journal)

So here’s the question for me — Are we by nature good or evil? Or, is there a permeating ignorance that covers, shields, and deflects our attention from what is core, caring, and connecting in the realm of being and existence?

This attention or awareness is what, in my opinion, philosophy and spirituality assists in uncovering and making present to us. I’d go further and say that, it seems to me, this attention or awareness once awakened does not look at some “thing” that is good or evil, as through good and evil were some object or objective state that exists in and of itself. Rather, when you or I begin to see through the permeating ignorance within and without ourselves, it is our ‘seeing’ itself that carries with it, in its very action or activity of seeing,  what we have come to call ‘good’ or ‘evil’.

In plain talk — we are plagued by ignorance.  

We experience it in people, in. institutions, in history, and, yes, in ourselves. Seeing, knowing, or understanding — all of which seem fundamental in the process of approaching what we call ‘love’ — these three activities seem to be in constant conflict with blind reactivity, cultivated erroneous opinion, and intentional misinterpretation of another’s actions or words.

So, is there evil? Yes, there are innumerable examples of unkindness, cruelty, and separating-out behavior. Is there good? Yes, there are innumerable examples of kindness, healing, and connecting behavior.

But, (in my opinion, for conversation’s sake) good and evil are not a ‘thing’ nor a ‘person’. They are activities of mind and body that either hold on to ignorance or break through it to seeing, knowing, understanding, and — a worthwhile wish — to loving connection with what is within and that which surrounds us.

Thanks for the prompt!

—bh, 13-14oct20

yes

Yes.

Try to say it.

Yes.

what (would have been) purpose of visit

A happy and grateful Thanksgiving to our Canadian neighbors.

So glad Celtic Colors is streaming from Cape Breton. 

Our car is still in dooryard.

the thought occurs

May she remain a good Catholic, good mother & wife, good scholar & judge, & a good person.

Unless she withdraws until after election, she will always be seen as Trump’s folly, McConnell’s lie, Graham’s cynicism, & Republican dishonesty. A painful brand!

Too bad. She seems nice.

thây

Thich Nhat Hanh is 94 today.

Good for him!

presentiating

As time collapses

Into Itself, God is not-

Yet here, umwelt now

umbrage, an annoyance of emptiness

Desire is not good nor bad, just unnecessary.

(Someone takes umbrage at these words. More must be said.)

We reach out our hand. There is, we think, something we desire to have.

We desire, we think, someone, something.

We are, I submit, not yet thinking.

‘Not yet’ is God’s name, is (let’s consider) what is God.

Why say this?

Because we are desire itself.

And there is nothing else. Nothing not what and who we are.

Our misapprehension is believing what we desire is other than us.

What we actually want is to be at peace with who and what we are.

That mind, the Christ mind, the Buddha mind, sees everything and everyone as-it-is.

Empty yourself.

See through desires until you see yourself, desire itself.

Originary vitality tension vibrantly arising up through all being all beings.

Empty of self, emptiness itself, whole and entire, as itself throughout creation.

Let it go.

Let it be.

Itself, no other, as it is.

Theodore Roethke’s final three lines of his poem The Manifestation are wonderful:

 What does what it should do needs nothing more. 

 The body moves, though slowly, toward desire . 

 We come to something without knowing why.

They are koan to me. 

What is equally wonderful is the whole poem:

The Manifestation

Many arrivals make us live: the tree becoming
Green, a bird tipping the topmost bough,
A seed pushing itself beyond itself,
The mole making its way through darkest ground,
The worm, intrepid scholar of the soil—
Do these analogies perplex? A sky with clouds,
The motion of the moon, and waves at play,
A sea-wind pausing in a summer tree.

What does what it should do needs nothing more.
The body moves, though slowly, toward desire.
We come to something without knowing why.

(—from The Far Field: Last Poems, by Theodore Roethke)

 Or maybe it is the final stanza of his poem In a Dark Time that asks for last say:

Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear. 
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind….

(—from In a Dark Time, poem by Theodore Roethke)

Free... 

The annoyance of what is not yet here.

no others

Cold air through morning open windows. 

 "Wherever there are others there is a self.

Wherever there are no others there can be no self."

     — Wei Wu Wei

There’s an election in early November. 

Grinding coffee beans in kitchen. 

God is realizing Itself in all things manifestly present.

Looking around. Can we see what is here?

nunc dimittis

Not to be anything, nor to be nothing,  only falling temperatures tonight.

"The moment we desire to be something, we are no longer free." — Zen proverb

Not to be free, nor to be unfree, only warm blankets after night prayer.

dog whistle

Did you ever think

in this country the terror

in plain sight -- his face

ceremony

Take all the day’s news

Put it in your heart, sit, breathe—

Brew tea, steep, sip, sigh

keeping mostly silent

anicca, anatta, shunyata

There is an empty

place within where nothing dwells --

visit and then leave

hosmer stillness

 

pax et bonum

For Francis

Everything went away

But Christ

Look no

Further

Than this

If you desire

All good and

Peace, look here

Write

This

Down (he told Leo)

Laughing at 

His own

Disappearance 

i’ll go with e.e.cummings

 

my mind is

by E. E. Cummings

my mind is
a big hunk of irrevocable nothing which touch and taste and smell
and hearing and sight keep hitting and chipping with sharp fatal
tools
in an agony of sensual chisels i perform squirms of chrome and ex
-ecute strides of cobalt
nevertheless i
feel that i cleverly am being altered that i slightly am becoming
something a little different, in fact
myself
Hereupon helpless i utter lilac shrieks and scarlet bellowings.

 (—Best Poems Encyclopedia)