for the next 200 years, where to look

How many have said: If you want justice, work for peace, eh? 

John Dear wrote in 2005:

 I’m 45, have been in the Jesuits almost 25 years now, went to college at Duke University, decided one day that I really did believe in God and that I wanted to give my whole life to God, and the next thing you know, I was entering the Jesuits. I’m still trying to figure out how that happened! Before I entered the Jesuits, I decided I better go see where Jesus lived, so I decided to make a walking pilgrimage through Israel, to see the physical lay of the land, only the day I left for Israel in June 1982, Israel invaded Lebanon and I found myself walking through a war zone.

By the end of my two month pilgrimage, I was camping around the Sea of Galilee, and visited the Church of the Beatitudes, where I read on the walls: “Blessed are the poor, the mournful, the meek, those who hunger and thirst for justice, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, those persecuted for the sake of justice, and love your enemies.” I was stunned. 

I walked out to the balcony, looking out over the Sea of Galilee, and asked out loud, “Are you trying to tell me something? Okay, I promise here and now to dedicate my life to the Sermon on the Mount, to promoting peace and justice, on one condition: if you give me a sign.” Just then, several Israeli jets fell from the sky breaking the sound barrier, setting off a series of sonic booms, coming right toward me. After they flew over me, I look backed up at heaven, and pledged to live out the Sermon on the Mount and never ask for a sign again! 

When I entered the Jesuits three weeks later, I was on fire with a desire to pursue the life of peace and justice. I started to study the writings of the great peacemakers, such as Gandhi, Dr. King, Dorothy Day, the Berrigans and from day one, Thomas Merton. Like you, I’ve been reading Merton ever since. I think I’ve read everything he’s published, and I’m amazed how he still speaks to me. In contrast to the culture, to the TV, to the President, even the whole world, Merton remains a voice of sanity and reason and faith and clarity and hope, and I can’t put him down. 

I don’t know if you heard what the great theologian David Tracy recently said when he was asked what the future of theology in the U.S. would look like. He answered spontaneously, “For the next 200 years, we’ll be trying to catch up with Merton.” 

(--Thomas Merton and the Wisdom of Nonviolence, June 5, 2005, John Dear ) 

Today is considered a holy day -- Passover, Good Friday, Ramadan.

My brothers and sisters of these traditions! Please consider the essence of your faith, and not the culture of your beliefs.

It is a good time to radically change.

To let the self created by anger and society fall away.

To become holy men and women walking through the sacred grounds of this earth -- in peace, with compassion, in trust, with forgiving hearts.

Hell, we've known.

Heaven, we long for.

Earth, is right here under our feet.

Look under your feet.

the other also

Christianity without Christ is our world today

But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.  ( Matt. 5:39)

 Religion without compassionate mysticism is political partisanship dressed in majestic costume.

to our perfectly calm and clear not-moving just-now mind

  From The Zen in Easter, for Good Friday Meditation

The Zen in Easter! April 2, 2021

In the Christian faith, Easter tells the story of resurrection. In meditation, or “Zen,” there is also resurrection. But it is not a resurrection of the fleshly body, or something called a “soul.” The Zen in Easter means waking up, from moment to moment, to our perfectly calm and clear not-moving just-now mind. Our before-thinking mind has no life, and has no death. It never appears or disappears; is not tainted or pure; does not increase or decrease. It has no name or form — and it certainly isn’t either Buddhist or Christian, or male or female. But if we only follow our thinking, entering the dead thoughts which appear and disappear, then we need only to “wake up” from this cycle of samsara, and return to our life, just as it is: we are already complete!  

That is the message, the experience of “resurrection” in Zen

Talk by Hyon Gak Sunim. (Time 22mins) 

https://blog.mirrorofzen.com/2021/04/02/the-zen-in-easter/

triduum

 The Canadian prelate phrased it well, over and over: “self-sacrifice.”

The sacrifice of self.

A painful crucifixion, letting self die.

The emptying of illusory otherness.

The arising of union/unity without the separation-self.

The invitation into a new way of being.

Undifferentiated wholeness celebrating each individuated and particular expression of divine/human/nature reality in new revelation of existence.

Whole sight.

all at once, the revelation

 He 

Offered

Himself

Nothing

Other

…   …   …

ἐφάπαξ (ephapax) 

ἀνενέγκας (anenenkas)

ἑαυτὸν (heauton)

            (See bottom of page, Hebrews7:27)

gut yom tov

 I used

To be

A christian

Now

I am

Not only that

But

Everything

Else

it’s not a hard calculation

 However you look

At it, they love guns more than

Their own school children

holy passover thursday

 In silence nothing

Left out, nothing called for, just

What is surrounding

this

You ask why I live
in the mountain forest,
I smile, and am silent,
and even deep within remain quiet:
the peach trees blossom,
the water flows.

Li T’ai-po (~701). Dailyzen

i am, i said, to no-one, there

A human being

Cannot imagine the end

Of being human—

Irretrievable the lost

Sense where no-one still resides

going by without saying anything

This night different

Sounds drip from eaves to porch roof —

A good night to pass

die sprache spricht

 Paul Celan knew very well that language constitutes creation, even creation in Judeo-Christian mythology, the creation of the world.

Go ahead, say it.

What world are we currently creating with our words?

Listen to what is being said, by whom, throughout the ether and cyberverse.

And weep.

arrive and transperse

Not I. 

Judas had it right.

History, not so much. 

“Surely you don’t mean me, Rabbi?”

Jesus answered, “You have said so.”

(Judas, Jesus in Matt.26:25, NIV)

Another translation:

“Not I, Rabbi, surely?”

“They are your own words,”answered Jesus. 

(same reference, but in Jerusalem Bible)

These words “not I” and “you don’t mean me,” give pause.

 The shorthand between Judas and Jesus captures a hidden inference.

Judas is not-me. Jesus is not-I.

Who then?

What are we to consider in these words?

Don’t know. Don’t conclude. Arrive, and, transperse.

Mourning dove inside 

Dawn presents itself, story —

Just outside window

the mistake is thinking you can follow (לְשׁוּם מָקוֹם — to nowhere)

Peter asked, "Lord, why can't I follow you now? (John 13:37)

[This next part was left out]

Jesus said to Peter: Because, my silly friend, “now” cannot be followed. It s like asking: Where can I go to be “here.”

Have I been with you these three years and still you do not grasp who I am?

I am no/w/here. That is not only my name, but who I am, where I am, what I am, and why I am.

The mistake is thinking you can follow.

Instead, become me. Become you.

You and me, double yo/u.

Me and you, double yo/u.

Now is going nowhere.

Here is now here.

Die to the mistake of thinking there is some other place some other time some other me some other you.

[And Jesus said to Peter: There’s no denying this. Rock on with this mind. Turn, turn, turn — see what is about you!]

four april sixty eight

 For fifty five years

Sitting in chapel hold-

ing Washington Post

Assassination of King

Where all dreams go to ripen

sic et non

Yes

No

Let me tell you why

Because yes affirms us, as we are, how and where we are, divine and human nature

Because no reveals us, stands on two feet, looks straight into eyes, Buddha and śūnyatā nature

Yes

No

Between them

Arms interlocked

Each Itself

fifty three years ago cross country in black chevrolet

Haiku

      (For MT)

Of course the broken,

Dust covers edges, we look — 

Just your name — a smile

            (wfh/3apr23)

first time, only time

 In prison this morning talk about repetition. 

What if we decide to eliminate the very notion of repetition from our minds?

The way repetition and addiction do-si-dos around each other.

"Do it again!" 

"Make it longer, stronger, higher, more intense!"

Psalm  

 

            BY PAUL CELAN

            TRANSLATED BY JOHN FELSTINER

 

No one kneads us again out of earth and clay,

no one incants our dust.

No one.

Blessèd art thou, No One.

In thy sight would

we bloom.

In thy

spite.

A Nothing

we were, are now, and ever

shall be, blooming:

the Nothing-, the

No-One's-Rose.

With

our pistil soul-bright,

our stamen heaven-waste,

our corona red

from the purpleword we sang

over, O over

the thorn. 

 

Paul Celan, "Psalm" from Selected Poems and Prose, translated by John Felstiner. Copyright © 2001 by John Felstiner. 

There is no repetition.

There is only the first time.

One time. Beginner's mind.

Just this. No repetition.

We've never celebrated another birthday. Nothing is ever done twice. The word "tradition" is obviated.

Each time is the first time.

Never before. Never after. And in-between? Emptiness.

Repeat after me: There is nothing to repeat.

What is this thorn? And why does it sting so sharply?

dead thoughts which appear and disappear

Bring into being.

Brought into being

genitum non factum

begotten, not made

                        (--from Latin, Credo)

What do you make of the story of Jesus arriving in celebratory glory five days before he was stripped, whipped, beaten, and put on a cross, suffering whatever fate and narrative two thousand years have produced?

Today, this:

In the Christian faith, Easter tells the story of resurrection. In meditation, or “Zen,” there is also resurrection. But it is not a resurrection of the fleshly body, or something called a “soul.” The Zen in Easter means waking up, from moment to moment, to our perfectly calm and clear not-moving just-now mind. Our before-thinking mind has no life, and has no death. It never appears or disappears; is not tainted or pure; does not increase or decrease. It has no name or form — and it certainly isn’t either Buddhist or Christian, or male or female. But if we only follow our thinking, entering the dead thoughts which appear and disappear, then we need only to “wake up” from this cycle of samsara, and return to our life, just as it is: we are already complete! 

That is the message, the experience of “resurrection” in Zen.      

(--from, The Zen in Easter, by Ven. Hyon Gak Sunim, ABBOT OF THE ZEN CENTER REGENSBURG, 2APRIL2021, Mirror of Zen Blog)

Is the "Christ" complete?

Are we?

Is the story complete?

Will we be beaten and broken?

Today, in the Western Christian Tradition, is Palm Sunday.

We arrive.

Await the coming horizon's approach.

Storytelling circling the drain of our curiosity into the ground of reserve anticipation.

The mulling meditation of mid-narrative attentiveness.

A perfect time to retreat.

as he observed the world around him

A wandering mind need not always stay at home to find clarity and expression. These things arise from observation and curiosity accompanying each step taken away and anon. 

Despite his success, Bashō grew dissatisfied and lonely. He began to practice Zen meditation, but itseems not to have calmed his mind.^[26] In the winter of 1682 his hut burned down, and shortly afterwards, in early 1683, his mother died. He then traveled to Yamura, to stay with a friend. In the winter of 1683 his disciples gave him a second hut in Edo, but his spirits did not improve. In 1684 his disciple Takarai Kikaku published a compilation of him and other poets, Shriveled Chestnuts (虚栗, Minashiguri).^[27] Later that year he left Edo on the first of four major wanderings.^[28]

Bashō traveled alone, off the beaten path, that is, on the Edo Five Routes, which in medieval Japan were regarded as immensely dangerous; and, at first Bashō expected to simply die in the middle of nowhere or be killed by bandits. However, as his trip progressed, his mood improved, and he became comfortable on the road. Bashō met many friends and grew to enjoy the changing scenery and the seasons.^[29] His poems took on a less introspective and more striking tone as he observed the world around him: 

馬をさへながむる雪の朝哉 uma wo sae / nagamuru yuki no / ashita kana

   even a horse / arrests my eyes—on this / snowy morrow [1684]  

 (--Matsuo Bashō, wikipedia)

It's not infrequent one's mind finds it difficult to stay at home. This is not a deficiency. Let it go. It will either disappear or it will meander among all its familiars seeking scents of interest along sides of road. 

It is long believed we have to control the mind. That might not be the preferred protocol for the poetic instinct. It wishes to be off leash. Going side to side. None of it is of any consequence.

The periodic comment to New York Times opinion piece, or Washington Post article, or Twitter post, other platform observation needing sardonic reply -- all of no consequence. A mere bagatelle, as the cheerful friar from 1970 Jolon California mission community would say. Nothing but spare notes and scattered crumbs that even the most undiscerning ears and unpicky beaks would leave unattended and unscavenged. 

But we do it anyway, uncaring as to whether, breadcrumbing the trail, there's anything left to retrace the way home.

Just dropped.

Left behind.

Thread without needle, repairing nothing, untied nor fastened.

Imagination walkabout.

Noting everything.

Nothing saved.

Not a thing to be esteemed nor redeemed.

Just there, where it is, nodded to, greeted in passing.

A transcendence with no destination, no ground from which to depart.

The landscape of not-yet. 

women’s ncaa

 Iowa Hawkeyes 

Beat South Carolina in

Final four — hoop hoop

won’t get fooled again . . . (don’t ask)

Do you know who I

Am — any idea — huh?

I am a great man,

Alone at the top, better

Than anyone else, ever

indication

The Florida man

has been "indicated" (he

said) indicating 

something, some mistake he made

that, surely, castes a dark spell

don’t talk, be quiet

 Justice is crippling

Even the sturdiest legs

Buckle under truth

what did he mean

Not yet

Ascending to the father

In the process of

Transformation 

What is

This

“Not yet”

no fooling the dead

 TC: "I wanted to double the number of locks on the doors." 

Murdered child: "Thanks, Mr Cruz." 

TC: "It's the Dems, kid." 

Murdered child: " Yeah, sure it is. Sure it is."

to grind the fable of my life down

 It is a Haibun, she says.  

Haibun (俳文?, literally, haikai writings) is a prosimetric literary form originating in Japan, combining prose and haiku.

A haibun may record a scene, or a special moment, in a highly descriptive and objective manner or may occupy a wholly fictional or dream-like space. The accompanying haiku may have a direct or subtle relationship with the prose and encompass or hint at the gist of what is recorded in the prose sections.

Traditional haibun typically took the form of a short description of a place, person or object, or a diary of a journey or other series of events in the poet's life.^[3]

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haibun

 And it is Thursday:

On Moving 

 

by Jane Huffman

Like butter, gone. I’m moving on, because it would be ludicrous to stay. It feels like a return (to sanity), although I’ve never been. (I’ve never lived a mile west of Illinois.) “I come home from the soaring,” Rilke wrote in The Inner Sky, which I take as imperative (omit the “I”): to ground, return to Earth, to grind the fable of my life down like orpiment into a yellow ash and tie my body to the floor. Rilke writes of God (“still roaring in my ears”) but God, for me (today) is fear. Goodbye to my deteriorating house. Delirium. I’m out the door. Stasis is a sieve through which I drag myself.  

 Literature feels / far away. Black bulls grazing / beyond a pale hill. 

(Copyright © 2023 by Jane Huffman. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on March 30, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.)

Both Haibun and Thursday, companions. 

from other side

 dozing on sun porch

sounds of squeaky wheel -- I search --

outside, birds in tree

you can't handle the truth

 standing guard on wall

comes enemy in the night

conscience acquired -- shoot

rebirth this way

 First breath of infant

Breathes in every last breath

The dead have left here

Their souls linger in corners

Taken in and lived in us

being is, non-being is not

 Good versus evil

Is not the equation — ask

About what “is not” —

“What is” is reality

What “is not” is our absence

if i am to be compelled to take part in it

This Danish existentialist would look at our guns and lethargy and not blanch. He'd loathe the cynicism and self-satisfaction of those receiving gun lobby pay-offs.

Maybe it's not existence which is so troublesome, but what the uninterested do with their uncaring insouciance.

Hegel emphasized universals; Kierkegaard argued for decision and commitment. Hegel sought an objective theory of knowledge upon which everyone could agree; Kierkegaard believed in the subjectivity of truth—meaning that truth is understood and experienced individually.

Existence, he believed, is actual, painful, and more important than "essence" or "idea." The authentic person wrestles with fundamental questions that cannot be answered rationally. As Kierkegaard once wrote, "My life has been brought to an impasse, I loathe existence…. Where am I? What is this thing called the world? What does this word mean? Who is it that has lured me into the thing and now leaves me there? Who am I? How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted, why not made acquainted with its manners and customs? … How did I obtain an interest in it? Is it not a voluntary concern? And if I am to be compelled to take part in it, where is the director? Whither shall I turn with my complaint?"

(--in, Søren Kierkegaard, Christian existentialist, in Christianity Today

Maybe Hegel is right -- continue to try for "an objective theory of knowledge upon which everyone could agree," rather than falling into a dread depression at the futility and shoulder-shrug impertinence of the ideologically cemented stony hearts selling nothing but hard-nosed dismissal to those in sorrow.

Their responses: Buy more guns. Shoot the bastards who try (successfully) to shoot through scopes of aimed grievance, then clean up the killing field. We've got this. Lock and load. Screw the idiots who try to curtail evil and its loud repeating reports.

Soren, the world is us.

I suspect we create us.

If you must complain, here I am.

Grab a coffee. Sit. You start. I'll listen. 

Then -- after having at it -- let's go kick some butt. 

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, you come too.

the thinking of cynics

 Guns, you would tell me,

do not kill people, shooters

perform that task. Right?  --

But such shallow assessment

does nothing for anyone

no less than

 Promo for Natalie Goldberg's "Haiku: The Leap" --

 “Haiku is about paying attention.” Natalie Goldberg offers a deep dive into the work of Tim Roberts who found haiku after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s at 49. His haiku in his new book Busted: Reflections of Police Life reveal that you can write haiku about anything. “One shot gun/Three of us walking/Doing the math.” Often, but not always, there is a leap in haiku, which “allows us to experience a little sensation of space.” Alan Ginsburg described this space as “no less than God.”  https://www.upaya.org/2023/03/goldberg-haiku-the-leap/

Intimation, not 

intimidation -- maybe

God's new home address

reçu

 Don’t look back, go on

There’s nothing to see back there

Go on, go on, go

corners to withdraw into, nooks to dwell in, and rooms to retreat to

When is a place a non-place? 

The distinction between place and non-place has occupied a critical role in both the philosophy of place and human geography for the last 20 years. In a distinction that stems from Marc Augé but is traceable to Edward Relph, “place” is thought as being relationally constructed, laden with meaning, and shaped by a broader history; home being emblematic of place. “Non-place,” on the other hand, is taken to mean places divested of meaning, homogenous, and largely interchangeable; airports, supermarkets, and pre-fabricated office complexes being examples.

Whilst this distinction has tended to be pervasive and influential in phenomenological accounts of place, critical analysis on the relation between place and non-place has been sparse. This paper aims to (1) develop an analysis of the distinction, ambiguities, and tensions between place and non-place. (2). To question and interrogate what kind of difference is involved in this distinction. (3). To address the role intersubjectivity and affectivity plays in the “sense of place.” 

 

Let us imagine ourselves nestled within the tranquility of a French villa. The place is a retreat, seemingly remote from the concerns and anxieties of the “real world” back home. Within its homely embrace, a series of windows overlooks a forest, enclosing the villa within a world of quiet intimacy. Here and there, we discover corners to withdraw into, nooks to dwell in, and rooms to retreat to. When opening the door on the world outside the villa, far from being confronted with a world hostile to that of the sanctuary, the surrounding forest and pathways toward the beach instead reinforce the peaceful sense of place. Indeed, it is a singular place, perched above the sea, with a distinct character, and quite unlike anywhere else. 

 

As the vacation draws to an end, as it must do, it will be necessary to leave the world of the villa in order to return home. A short drive takes us to the airport, where we are now waiting in line to check our luggage in. Unlike the space of the villa, which is characterised by alternating textures and divergent tones, the spatiality of the airport is both flat and homogenous. At no point is the fluorescent light broken up by the existence of shadows. The effect of this constancy is that the airport is deprived of depth. In objective terms, the distance between the villa and the airport is negligible.

In experiential terms, however, the villa feels distant and ungraspable. The adjustment we must undergo in the airport is full of resistance, as though our bodies were unprepared to let go of the atmosphere of the villa. As a result, we experience the airport as an oppressive place, at odds with the villa, and having no memorable or intrinsic qualities, other than being a place we must pass through in order to get home. 

(--from, Place and Non-place: A Phenomenological Perspective, Dylan Tripp, Academic.edu)

 I dwell in a place that shrinks to a single room. It serves as zendo, library, office, bedroom, barbell exercise space, clothes closet, laundry basket, shoe and socks hangout, back of door pants hangings, museum and art gallery wall, charging center for Apple devices, dog and cat sanctuary, bird watching station, nap resource, meditation altar, storage center, and finally, anchorite cell for idiorhythmic hobo mendicant ne'er-do-well. 

I know my place

Passing through

More and more . . .

It is less, and, less

are you not or are you by yourself

 No 

I’m

All 

Alone

Together

are you alone or are you not

 Yes

There’s

No

One 

Here

practice is having no home

If you ask, "Where is your temple, zendo, where is your church?"

The response might be, "Nowhere."

Each moment, now here. Each place your feet or butt touches, now here. Each prayer to the God of the universe, now here.

Having no home has been a wonderful practice. It’s probably not an accident that one of my favorite 20th-century Japanese Zen Masters is Homeless Kodo. He had no temple. What binds us is sitting together no matter where or how. In addition to sitting, our main practice over the years has been group work, a talking practice we do, where we have learned to be completely open with one another. One evening last year, instead of our talking practice, we sat together in my roof garden for about an hour in total silence watching an amazing sunset over the Hudson River. A few weeks ago on a very icy morning three of us who had managed to get to Sheila’s Riverdale house for zazenkai ended up drinking tea in silence at 6:30 a.m. Eventually, we were joined by others who had successfully braved the ice. We just stayed in the kitchen, where we all had a silent breakfast together. Then we went into the living room, and without making it a zendo, we turned a motley collection of chairs around to face the river to watch the ice floes pass by.

(--from, Sitting Nowhere Leaving No Traces, A meditator learns that the zendo is wherever you sit. By Roshi Nancy Mujo Baker MAR 24, 2023, Tricycle)

 Try this.

This is where we are.

Wherever you are.

This is where you are.

Where you are is where we are.

As is, everyone.

i promise myself to treat myself / and visit a nearby tower

 I know you want to

Tell me Jesus rose from death

I appreciate

Your enthusiasm — I’d

Rather watch cat watching dawn

impossible retrieval of lost connection

 In the dream a bus —

Stepping off onto street — he

Is looking for friend

In middle of city all 

Alone at intersections

cross as intersecting intimacy

 In prison this morning one man gives tutorial on NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming). 

Another is skeptical about any formal intervention. (Nor does he cotton to popes, priests, politicians, or police.)

We are talking about amenities, civil discourse, pleasantries, niceties, politeness, communications veering from hostility, belittlement, and confrontation.

One man is saying there's no justice in prison. If someone is jumped and beaten in his cell he doesn't go to the guards complaining of the matter. Then, in prison code, he'd be a "rat." Nor might he want to "throw the switch" and enter full retaliation response with whomever might align themselves and have his back.

Which ushers in new complications

It's a hard reality. One they understand. As a civilian I can hear it, sympathize with the plight.

One man says he'd just prayed with someone unnerved by such a recent experience. Prayer, he said, introduced to the man that, throughout his ordeal, he is not alone. Which prospect, however undiminishing of the lingering turmoil, puts a different perspective in view. One which he can hope to be true, however immanently unsatisfying, but ultimately, intriguing.

Conversant in morning circle shares excerpt of Life is Worth Living | Episode 7 | Loneliness | Fulton Sheen.

He is intrigued that he was led to bump into traumatized man, paused a minute, listened to him, then offered a prayer, then resumed his place in meetingbrook conversation to punctuate the topic at hand -- our loneliness in the desert of justice.

Each week a seminar on reality.

Each person a voice from the wilderness asking -- How alone am I?

We sit in a circle of loneliness together.

Accompanying one another.

As morning fades and evening approaches.

The sixth day.

even if you don’t understand, listen

 The dying don’t want to be entertained, they want to be accompanied.

the landscape, within/without, undivided

 If you find within

You what is without you, 

Do not fear, be glad

When boundaries fall away

Borders are crossed not knowing

no . . . one’s . . . breath

It is said that no one has ever seen God. 

When I recently asked a nurse's aide if I might go in and sit with a woman who'd just died in hospice an hour before, she said "But there's no one there." Family had left, funeral folks not yet arrived.

“If there is a God we must see Him, if there is a soul we must perceive it; otherwise it is better not to believe. It is better to be an outspoken atheist than a hypocrite.”

― Swami Vivekananda, Meditation And Its Method

We smiled at each other in the hallway and I went into her room. 

She was right, no one was there.

Since that moment I realized that "no one" is God.

I saw God in that room. I perceived that woman's soul in the room, her last breath floating somewhere around us.

Zen Buddhists will exclaim, "MU!" Contemplative Christians will say breath-spirit is holy and inspiring.

Our practice asks: 

What say you?

What see you?

What silence and stillness are you?

No

One

(sees) --

God’s

Breath

confiteor

 Forgive me, you know

How I have hurt you — take my

Sorrow with you — all

Of you, near and far — there is

No way I can follow you

found to be

One thing becoming-another. 

In the union of form and emptiness, our bodies and minds and the whole phenomenal world are not rejected but rather are found to be direct expressions of the sacred. 

– Aura Glaser, “Into the Demon’s Mouth”. Tricycle

 

How becoming you are! 

nothing doing what shunyata itself does

 Mind is not a thing

Nor is the real a thing — they

Are no-thing feeling

A pervasive awareness

Arising and passing through

just to make clear

I say this because the snow pushed up driveway is melting today as it should in spring before this coming Saturday night's 3-5" snowfall.

I know it's only Tuesday.

That God is in (its) heaven, and all is not (quite) well in the world.

But, some say, poets dig words out of mud and toss them into forms to harden into bricks for building a terrace to hold flowers that itch to show themselves when snow trickles off the mountain. 

 

whatever you have to say, leave 

 

the roots on, let them 

 

dangle 

 

And the dirt 

 

Just to make clear 

 

where they come from

 (-poem by Charles Olson) 

If you want to tell me anything about God, show me, like math in high school, the work done before the answer you've found. And what you've surrounded that answer with, whether safety deposit box or broken heart, whether gold plated door arches or tattered jacket with buttons missing.

Mud season has been early. Tire tracks indent weary stones sunk into ground. Pools of melted snow-water hang out by wood gate closed to the road. Mail delivery put into box by utility pole.

So many limbs down from last week's nor'easter. 

God is stillness and silence deep in earth and far in cosmos -- waiting for creatures, slowly emerging from soil, to feel their way into the Sound of Being Here.

Roots

and dirt

dangling

ただ 完全に一人*

 I have

No reason

To trust

God

I have

No reason

Not to trust

God

I have 

No

Reason . . .

Trust 

Is the

Only

God

(With

Nothing

Other)

* Just

Completely

Alone

jitai

 Self itself

No self

Itself

What else

Is 

There

Of

And

With

Itself

As

Within

Because of

Itself

as winter disembarks

Some remnant considerations

This: 

    "In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets. 

     (-Jonas Mekas) 

And: 

 “The danger of civilization, of course, is that you will piss away your life on nonsense.”   

(--from The Beast God Forgot to Invent)

(-Poet Jim Harrison) 

Then:

    “Society, in general, maintains such a vested interest in its cozy habits and solidified belief systems that it had rather die — or kill — than entertain change.”  

 

(-Tom Robbins) 

blank mirror

 Looking up at stars

With dog in dooryard by barn

Universe looks back

sad, but dangerous

 The mentally ill

Ranting from Florida warns

Us — be on alert

sometimes, darkness

all, this

 So much political turmoil

It seems up is down and in is out

Quantum physicists are laughing --

“They’re finally beginning to understand,” they say.

I no longer believe in dissembling

What is is what is, it is

Time to sit zazen

No time for dissembled reality

Thank you for your interest in (all) this

our non-local energy body, wandering freely

 Subtle reality, non-local presence, appear and disappear regularly. We, conditioned by social climates of facile dismissive attitudes, are oblivious of our very surround.

The book is The Physics of God: How the Deepest Theories of Science Explain Religion and How the Deepest Truths of Religion Explain Science, by Joseph Selbie and Amit Goswami. 

I walk the vacant snow bowl grounds listening. It remains lighter later. The dog and woman go off to toboggan area. There's one electric truck, a Rivian, alone at edge of mountain, its owner slaloms down slope after climbing up after hours. He says he's happy with it.

Sun jumps off top of Bald Mountain into lingering twilight after last week's clock change. Dirt clings to plowed snow at edges of parking area. Ice on pond is not to be trusted. We never were able to walk on ice to islands out in Hosmer Pond.

"The hidden truth of miracles, matter is the intelligent organization of energy." What we call the universe needs observation. The world is a magic show -- it is not what it seems to be. We bring things into existence, we listen things into existence, by our gaze things appear.

It feels that everything changes and is differently experienced once we have allowed stillness and silence to be our teachers, gurus, and zen masters.

God?

Yes -- In Itself -- 

throughout.

A worthy choice 

of Being 

for Being-there.

in prison he looked at me

 “I hear voices,” he 

said. Of course you do, I said,

Everything’s speaking

student in downeast correctional facility shares this today

One Foot in Eden

One foot in Eden still, I stand
And look across the other land.
The world’s great day is growing late,
Yet strange these fields that we have planted
So long with crops of love and hate.
Time’s handiworks by time are haunted,
And nothing now can separate
The corn and tares compactly grown.
The armorial weed in stillness bound
About the stalk; these are our own.
Evil and good stand thick around
In fields of charity and sin
Where we shall lead our harvest in.

Yet still from Eden springs the root
As clean as on the starting day.
Time takes the foliage and the fruit
And burns the archetypal leaf
To shapes of terror and of grief
Scattered along the winter way.
But famished field and blackened tree
Bear flowers in Eden never known.
Blossoms of grief and charity
Bloom in these darkened fields alone.
What had Eden ever to say
Of hope and faith and pity and love
Until was buried all its day
And memory found its treasure trove?
Strange blessings never in Paradise
Fall from these beclouded skies.

(-Poem by Edwin Muir)

elsewhere, ee cummings is quoted

 

“A poet is somebody who feels, and who expresses his feelings through words.

This may sound easy. It isn’t.

A lot of people think or believe or know they feel — but that’s thinking or believing or knowing; not feeling. And poetry is feeling — not knowing or believing or thinking.

Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself.

To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”

― E.E. Cummings, E. E. Cummings: A Miscellany Revised, goodreads 

fermata

Two deer in dooryard. Our mountain guests. Dawn. 

In the dream a Franciscan from the sixties a little wary and aloof of my continuing interest in some kind of continuance. In the dream the now dead zen master attends large gathering of meetingbrook meditation practice over a hundred participants. My body encoded strongly in zazen posture. 

In the dream everything is gathered in same place at same time. A photograph of group sitting on ground in circle in New Hampshire schoolyard — the glorious attraction of faces. Nothing is retrievable, nothing is lost.

“THE HEAVENS AND EARTH TALK. “The heavens

are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his

handiwork.” (Psalm19:1). The heavens tell of God’s glory. This

is metaphor, of course, but to the Psalmist, everything in creation

speaks of the glory of God. This is like the hymn: “This is my

Father's world, And to my listening ears, All nature sings, and

round me rings The music of the spheres.” The firmament

proclaims God’s handiwork and all nature sings and round me rings

the music of the spheres. Metaphor, yes. How better could it be

proclaimed?”

(—Excerpt From, Rabbouni:  Twelve Teaching Methods of Jesus, by John Zehring)

All these creatures tell tales of creation appearing and disappearing, singing and silencing, watching and averting eyes.

We are diffuse. We are encapsulated. We are silhouettes of semblance and spiritual sonority. We are the Gregorian chant of Lauds, a psalmody of awakening day scanning the orb floating amid billions and trillions of orbs in scanned surcease of sacred movement. A pause. A glance. 

A fermata . . .

Briefly holding

Then releasing

Sound of inner reverie.

hooked on necrotics

 Obsession with ex-

president is the new drug

overdosing us

thinking about what I am seeing

 Electricity

Out coming up to twenty

Four hours — quiet

let the great world spin

 He snores on rug by

shoes — I pick up novel I’ve

Been reading two years

long walks no longer mandatory

 Wet snow and heavy

Foot and a half, said plowman —

Shoveling concrete

Finally dog has learned to 

do his business in dooryard

six words, a world

 E.E. Cummings said it: “Not to completely feel is thinking.” (—in six non-lectures)

This, I feel, is true.

no distress no dismay

 Imagination,

Of course, begins everything — 

Tell me, who are you?

being, asked, the question

 I know why I am

Here — (You do?) — To answer “Yes!”

When asked “Are you here?”

imagine you are a poem

 Speak yourself, tell us

What you feel as you feel it —

Word becoming you

the religion of silent listening

 We listen to help

One find out what they are and

Who they are, saying

if you see me here, don’t be afraid, I am here with, and for, you

 Yes

To everything

Up and down, north and south

Left and right, east and west

May I be at their center

Where each crosses through each other

Fastened by freedom, safe and sound

Right where you’d expect to see

The One called Love

Pinned with kindness where all (do) pass

buffalo bob asks: hey kids, what time is it

 Some smart aleck said

“I know how to change time” and

poof — apple did job

four bells, light left behind

 Someone took hour

Astronomical dawn peers

Through bamboo shade, shrugs,

“I don’t know where it went, I

Was told to slow arrival”