Shut-up and go home?
It is almost time.
"A time comes when silence is betrayal." (Martin Luther King, quoting Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam statement of executive committee, 1967)
Jesus will have to wait for humanity this week.
In the earlier story he arrives amid rooting celebration with palms and cheering shouts. In the emerging story humanity is still swinging a club that bashes heads and bloodies the ground. There is no celebration today.
The groaning rivers of the ocean rise
The star vibrates quickly in its corona
And the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating
(-from poem, "The Poet's Obligation," by Pablo Neruda)
By week's end there will be a story of betrayal, death, and expectation through darkness of an arising that will stun listeners for centuries.
I have no plans to see the Gibson movie of the passion of the Christ -- instead I saw the frontline documentary on Rwanda, "the triumph of evil," about Hutu mass killings of Tutsis -- some 800,000 murders during 100 days in 1994 -- while the world did little or nothing.
I don't need to hiss at the story of Judas betraying Jesus -- I have the deception by lies and betrayal of lives by top administration executives who sent the United States to war, sent men and women to kill men and women, sent death and destruction after kissing its former puppet and sending him into a hole in the ground.
I don't need Hollywood films or Washington myths about the savior of the world reaping billions for celebrities, churches, and the culture of curios -- I have read about the obscene profits and payoffs given entertainment, corporations and influence peddlers which has taken the name of savior into the marketplace of murky religiosity and the ideology of spiritual pretence.
A hard cold rain
A forest of wind
Late at night
The lotus drips
Who knows the dream
That entrances the world
Is simply the luminous
Prajna mind
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)
I don't think the dream that entrances the world is the Prajna mind. I wish Han-shan were right. Instead, the dream seems to be less wise, the mind less clear.
I don't need the ritual remembrance of Passover or the Last Supper -- I have encountered scores of contemporary killings of innocent children, first-born revenge, molestation and sacrifice in the name of holiness.
I don't want to feel sorry for someone murdered two thousand years ago by people who had difficulty with his understanding of God -- there are too many millions of deaths these past nine decades by people who had difficulty with the words "mine" and "yours" and "ours."
A poem by Pablo Neruda:
To whoever is not listening to the sea this Friday morning
to whoever is cooped up in house or office, or factory or woman
Or street or mine or dry prison cell
To him I come and without speaking or looking
I arrive and open the door of his prison
And a vibration starts up vague and insistent
A long rumble of thunder adds itself to the weight of the planet
And the foam.
The groaning rivers of the ocean rise
The star vibrates quickly in its corona
And the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating
So drawn on by my destiny
I ceaselessly must listen to
And keep the seas lamenting in my consciousness
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
So that wherever those in prison may be
wherever they suffer the sentence of the autumn
I may be present with an errant wave
I may move in and out of windows
And hearing me my eyes may lift themselves
Asking how can I reach the sea
And I will pass to them saying nothing
The starry echoes of the wave
The breaking up of foam in quicksand
The rustling of salt withdrawing itself
The gray cry of seabirds on the coast
So through me freedom and the sea
will call to the shrouded heart.
( -- poem, "The Poet's Obligation," by Pablo Neruda)
The lament of the sea is a scripture not yet translated for us.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons [and daughters] of God, and our brothers [and sisters] wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men [and full women], and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
(-- from "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," a talk by Rev. Martin Luther King, 4 April 1967. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html)
Martin was assassinated one year later -- 4 April 1968. I remember him today.
If betrayal is our common flaw, we must speak it aloud in an attempt to recognize it for what it really is.
Betrayal is the act that tries to fix broken belief. It is the attempt to wrest broken belief from hands bloodied by sharp slicing shards of what was once held as true. Betrayal refuses to allow emerging forms of what is true to take shape, transfigure, die and resurrect, and finally be true to what is now -- what is this reality -- greeted with direct, open, and engaging compassion. What else is God?
The myth that belief is worth spilling blood for, that power retains power by pouring the blood of enemies, and that blood (as they say) is thicker than water -- is a mythos and a muthos, a story with silence that entrances us with the paradoxical silence-of-betrayal and betrayal-of-silence.
The house of Odysseus in Ithaka is an aggregate of spaces, some entirely public and others more intimate and inaccessible. The innermost recesses of the house are associated with Penelope's chastity, while the megaron is essentially a masculine space. Eurykleia is a boundary crosser; like nurses in later literature, and by virtue of her advanced years, she acts as a liaison between male and female spaces. Appropriately Eurykleia is often featured in the role of doorkeeper, guarding the provisions of the house, and locking away the female servants during the revenge. Cognate with this role is the concept of women's silence, for in the constellation of symbols associated with female chastity, symbols which include the interior domestic spaces, feminine silence is one of the most conspicuous. Eurykleia's importance is signified by her guardianship of various portals, while her loyalty and feminine excellence are signified by her silence. Telemachos exacts an oath of silence from Eurykleia at the door leading into the storeroom, one of the most important areas of the oikos, and traditionally guarded by women (2.349-360).
Eurykleia's allegiance to the male members of the household is again signified when she keeps the secret of Odysseus' identity. By contrast the twelve faithless maidservants, who divulge the secrets of the women's spaces (i.e. Penelope's unraveling) have concourse with men in the megaron and beyond, passing through the doors of the house into the suitors' beds.
Eurykleia's contribution to her master's triumph is to keep women silent and behind closed doors (e.g.19.16). This way of viewing Eurykleia's role helps us to define more precisely the difficult term apteros muthos, which appears to describe Eurykleia's reaction to a man's order in three out of its four occurrences; all four occurrences have something to do with doors. Building on Clark's discussion, I argue against Russo's conclusion that apteros muthos identifies the male speaker. I contend that the formula refers to the speechless responses of Eurykleia and Penelope, who understand the need for silence at sensitive moments in the plot.
{Works Cited:
Clark, Matthew "Was Telemachus Rude to His Mother? Odyssey 1.356-59" CPh 96.4 (2001) 335-354
Russo, Joseph, Fenandez-Galiano, Manuel, and Heubeck, Alfred A commentary on Homer's Odyssey v. III (Oxford UP, Oxford, 1992)
(http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:RorZJx2D09IJ:www.fp.ucalgary.ca/grst/conferences/Colloquium/fletcher-bstract.pdf+muthos+and+silence&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)}
"Oikos" in Greek means home.
"Muthos" in Greek means silence.
Is it time to go home and shut up? Or is it time to leave home and open one's mouth?
This week it is time to enter a hermitage full of the sound of what is being said with and without words.
The nursing thin place -- where silence words stillness, and stillness silences words.
Contemplating resurrection as incarnation.
Is this the absurd wisdom of an emerging story of "the same mind that was in Christ Jesus" (Philippians's 2:5)?
Is this emergence Prajna's mind? (The Jerusalem Bible, c.1966, phrased the line: "In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus...")
This time; this mind.
This open silence?
Friday, April 02, 2004
One view at a time.
Observe the empty monarch of mind;
Mysterious, subtle, unfathomable,
It has no shape or form,
Yet it has great spiritual power,
Able to extinguish a thousand troubles
And perfect ten thousand virtues.
Although its essence is empty,
It can provide guidance.
When you look at it,
It has no form; call it,
And it has a voice.
It acts as a great spiritual leader;
Mental discipline transmits scripture.
- Fu Shan-hui (487-659)
Many views listened to and looked at, one at a time. Each time there is a conversation.
Denis Saleh, a contemporary poet and author writes: "I have been hard at work now longer than I like to remember, on a novel set in Ancient Egypt. I found out how the pyramids were built: slowly. Almost anything can be done, it seems, if one proceeds slowly enough, but we moderns simply cannot grasp this." (p.104. in One Dharma, The Emerging Western Buddhism, by Joseph Goldstein, c.2002)
Patience asks slowness. Readiness emerges only after we arrive at and accept who and where we are.
A variety of scriptures join the well-known ones. Christianity, says Marcus Borg, has two types of expression -- earlier and emerging. Sayings of Jesus not well-known become more familiar with publication of the Gospel of Thomas.
Now what is typical about these sayings is that in each instance, these sayings want to say that if you want to understand what Jesus said, you have to recognize yourself. You have to know yourself, know who you are. It begins with a saying about the Kingdom of God, "if you seek the Kingdom of God in the sky then the birds will precede you. And if you seek it in the sea, then the fish will precede you, but the Kingdom is in you. And if you know yourself then you know the Kingdom of God." (The Kingdom of the Father, in fact, it always says in the gospel of Thomas. Normally the Kingdom of the Father, not the Kingdom of God.) "But if you don't know yourself, you live in poverty." And poverty is understood as the ignorance of a life in its physical existence. Knowledge is understood to be the knowledge of one's divine origin, of the fact that one has come from the Kingdom. That we are on this earth only in a sojourn....
(Helmut Koester: John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School; found in "From Jesus to Christ," Frontline, PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/thomas.html)
What frustrates and discourages most about our world these days resonates in the Dan Berrigan line, "Bodies belong where words are." False transmission of scripture is disincarnating. Words that are disembodied are as empty as the nothing that follows comments beginning with the words "conservative" or "liberal." We no longer speak with each other. Instead we pontificate from fixed positions aiming to sound right and strong.
We need bodies that resonate the origin of words.
We practice with one another the art of being alone with no other. Meetingbrook calls this m.o.n.o. (monastics of no other) -- meant to encourage the heart of prayer, namely, sojourning through the intimate thin place absent othering.
Each view in its own time.
Observe the empty monarch of mind;
Mysterious, subtle, unfathomable,
It has no shape or form,
Yet it has great spiritual power,
Able to extinguish a thousand troubles
And perfect ten thousand virtues.
Although its essence is empty,
It can provide guidance.
When you look at it,
It has no form; call it,
And it has a voice.
It acts as a great spiritual leader;
Mental discipline transmits scripture.
- Fu Shan-hui (487-659)
Many views listened to and looked at, one at a time. Each time there is a conversation.
Denis Saleh, a contemporary poet and author writes: "I have been hard at work now longer than I like to remember, on a novel set in Ancient Egypt. I found out how the pyramids were built: slowly. Almost anything can be done, it seems, if one proceeds slowly enough, but we moderns simply cannot grasp this." (p.104. in One Dharma, The Emerging Western Buddhism, by Joseph Goldstein, c.2002)
Patience asks slowness. Readiness emerges only after we arrive at and accept who and where we are.
A variety of scriptures join the well-known ones. Christianity, says Marcus Borg, has two types of expression -- earlier and emerging. Sayings of Jesus not well-known become more familiar with publication of the Gospel of Thomas.
Now what is typical about these sayings is that in each instance, these sayings want to say that if you want to understand what Jesus said, you have to recognize yourself. You have to know yourself, know who you are. It begins with a saying about the Kingdom of God, "if you seek the Kingdom of God in the sky then the birds will precede you. And if you seek it in the sea, then the fish will precede you, but the Kingdom is in you. And if you know yourself then you know the Kingdom of God." (The Kingdom of the Father, in fact, it always says in the gospel of Thomas. Normally the Kingdom of the Father, not the Kingdom of God.) "But if you don't know yourself, you live in poverty." And poverty is understood as the ignorance of a life in its physical existence. Knowledge is understood to be the knowledge of one's divine origin, of the fact that one has come from the Kingdom. That we are on this earth only in a sojourn....
(Helmut Koester: John H. Morison Professor of New Testament Studies and Winn Professor of Ecclesiastical History Harvard Divinity School; found in "From Jesus to Christ," Frontline, PBS, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/story/thomas.html)
What frustrates and discourages most about our world these days resonates in the Dan Berrigan line, "Bodies belong where words are." False transmission of scripture is disincarnating. Words that are disembodied are as empty as the nothing that follows comments beginning with the words "conservative" or "liberal." We no longer speak with each other. Instead we pontificate from fixed positions aiming to sound right and strong.
We need bodies that resonate the origin of words.
We practice with one another the art of being alone with no other. Meetingbrook calls this m.o.n.o. (monastics of no other) -- meant to encourage the heart of prayer, namely, sojourning through the intimate thin place absent othering.
Each view in its own time.
Thursday, April 01, 2004
Whose name?
It is hard not to be sickened by cruelty, terrorism, and arrogance.
A deep practice is needed to pass through anger and political obfuscation and arrive at a profound personal peace -- one that does not ignore either the world as it is or what might be called heaven as yet uninhabited.
The world as it is appears very unkind at times. Heaven as yet uninhabited seems very hidden.
Just by listening with your eyes
you can fold back on yourself and
merge into that primal
stream of awareness
like a river is swallowed by the
immensity of the ocean.
Only then will you know
the point to live from.
- Ji Aoi Isshi
Have we forgotten "the point to live from"?
Have we forgotten the silence needed to hear the soundless word of life itself pointing to the point we are to live from?
1 Does not Wisdom call, and Understanding raise her voice?
2 On the top of the heights along the road, at the crossroads she takes her stand;
3 By the gates at the approaches of the city, in the entryways she cries aloud:
4 "To you, O men, I call; my appeal is to the children of men.
5 You simple ones, gain resource, you fools, gain sense.
6 "Give heed! for noble things I speak; honesty opens my lips.
22 "The LORD begot me, the first-born of his ways, the forerunner of his prodigies of long ago;
23 From of old I was poured forth, at the first, before the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no fountains or springs of water;
25 Before the mountains were settled into place, before the hills, I was brought forth;
26 While as yet the earth and the fields were not made, nor the first clods of the world.
27 "When he established the heavens I was there, when he marked out the vault over the face of the deep;
28 When he made firm the skies above, when he fixed fast the foundations of the earth;
(- from Proverbs 8)
It is time to learn how to call things by their true names. Cruelty is cruelty, terrorism is terrorism, and arrogance is arrogance. It is no longer tolerable to spin and pretend false names change the false into the true. Nor can what is true be called false and thereby satisfy anyone with integrity.
Wisdom here has a pivotal role in the creation itself. But how? This passage suggests an answer in saying that God "set a compass on the face of the depth." This is more than a poetic utterance; it shows how consciousness creates a world around itself. This principle operates in us individually, in each moment, so you can catch a glimpse of it in ordinary cognition.
[Martin] Heidegger suggests that Heraclitus described this process of cognition as "picking out" and even used a term for it -- logos (from the Greek legein, "to gather" or "to pick out"). Logos is usually translated as "word." Although it has an enormous range of other meanings as well, it can accurately be described as the "word," because as consciousness goes through its experience and picks out some special feature of it -- an object, external or internal -- it instantly appends a name to it, a word. In this sense it is the "word" that brings the word into being. The ancient Hebrews made this fact the centerpiece of their worldview. They believed that the name for a thing was identical to the thing itself: as one Kabbalistic aphorism says, "God and his name are one."
(pp.139-40, in Inner Christianity, A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition, by Richard Smoley, c.2002)
We must be the one we are.
Lies make false two.
One is deeper truth.
And your name is?
It is hard not to be sickened by cruelty, terrorism, and arrogance.
A deep practice is needed to pass through anger and political obfuscation and arrive at a profound personal peace -- one that does not ignore either the world as it is or what might be called heaven as yet uninhabited.
The world as it is appears very unkind at times. Heaven as yet uninhabited seems very hidden.
Just by listening with your eyes
you can fold back on yourself and
merge into that primal
stream of awareness
like a river is swallowed by the
immensity of the ocean.
Only then will you know
the point to live from.
- Ji Aoi Isshi
Have we forgotten "the point to live from"?
Have we forgotten the silence needed to hear the soundless word of life itself pointing to the point we are to live from?
1 Does not Wisdom call, and Understanding raise her voice?
2 On the top of the heights along the road, at the crossroads she takes her stand;
3 By the gates at the approaches of the city, in the entryways she cries aloud:
4 "To you, O men, I call; my appeal is to the children of men.
5 You simple ones, gain resource, you fools, gain sense.
6 "Give heed! for noble things I speak; honesty opens my lips.
22 "The LORD begot me, the first-born of his ways, the forerunner of his prodigies of long ago;
23 From of old I was poured forth, at the first, before the earth.
24 When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no fountains or springs of water;
25 Before the mountains were settled into place, before the hills, I was brought forth;
26 While as yet the earth and the fields were not made, nor the first clods of the world.
27 "When he established the heavens I was there, when he marked out the vault over the face of the deep;
28 When he made firm the skies above, when he fixed fast the foundations of the earth;
(- from Proverbs 8)
It is time to learn how to call things by their true names. Cruelty is cruelty, terrorism is terrorism, and arrogance is arrogance. It is no longer tolerable to spin and pretend false names change the false into the true. Nor can what is true be called false and thereby satisfy anyone with integrity.
Wisdom here has a pivotal role in the creation itself. But how? This passage suggests an answer in saying that God "set a compass on the face of the depth." This is more than a poetic utterance; it shows how consciousness creates a world around itself. This principle operates in us individually, in each moment, so you can catch a glimpse of it in ordinary cognition.
[Martin] Heidegger suggests that Heraclitus described this process of cognition as "picking out" and even used a term for it -- logos (from the Greek legein, "to gather" or "to pick out"). Logos is usually translated as "word." Although it has an enormous range of other meanings as well, it can accurately be described as the "word," because as consciousness goes through its experience and picks out some special feature of it -- an object, external or internal -- it instantly appends a name to it, a word. In this sense it is the "word" that brings the word into being. The ancient Hebrews made this fact the centerpiece of their worldview. They believed that the name for a thing was identical to the thing itself: as one Kabbalistic aphorism says, "God and his name are one."
(pp.139-40, in Inner Christianity, A Guide to the Esoteric Tradition, by Richard Smoley, c.2002)
We must be the one we are.
Lies make false two.
One is deeper truth.
And your name is?
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Nine Americans killed today in Iraq. Five Soldiers, four civilians -- says the news.
How can we ever lose interest in life?
Spring has come again
And cherry trees bloom in the mountains.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)
The political situation in America and Iraq is unsettling and, it seems, unraveling.
Right or wrong, you are still telling a lie if you tell someone the opposite of what you know is the right answer to the question, and do so with the intention to deceive. (p.132, in Truth In Religion, the Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth, by Mortimer J. Adler)
The airwaves have been filled with excoriating charges and allegations of misrepresentation and deception. The politics of the powerful holding tightly to power is unattractive and demeaning. It is always a question of who dares tell the truth -- and who survives the telling.
What makes one's opinions of beliefs true or false? The answer parallels the answer to the question about the difference between truthful and untruthful speech. Just as truthful speech consists in the agreement between what you say and what you think, and untruthful speech consists in saying the opposite of what you think, so truth in what one thinks consists in the agreement between what one thinks and the way things really are. Conversely, falsity in what one thinks consists in the disagreement between what one thinks and the way things really are.
Aristotle summed this up in the following impeccable statement: To have truth in one's mind -- in what one thinks, believes, or opines -- consists in thinking that that which is, is, or that which is not, is not. Conversely, to have falsity in one's mind consists in thinking that that which is, is not, or that which is not, is. Thomas Aquinas said the same thing even more succinctly. He defined truth in the human intellect as the agreement or conformity of the mind with reality, and falsity as the opposite of that. (pp.132-133, Adler)
Clouds hang heavy. I wonder if it is me. No, says one of the two folks sitting by the fire, it's the pressure -- low and heavy.
Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality
with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the
form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on
a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the
name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and
every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father.
- Philippians 2:6-11
Who can grasp form, God, or equality? Who can grasp the change each is asked to embody as reality requests a new form, a new comprehension of what-is called God, a new appreciation of what it means to be of the same measure?
Underlying this definition of truth and falsity are two assumptions that Aristotle and Aquinas made , which in my judgment, are philosophically defensible and tenable.
The first is that there exists a reality that is independent of the human mind, to which the mind can either conform or fail to conform. In other words, what we think does not create or in any way affect what we are thinking about. It is what it is, whether we think about it or not and regardless of what we think about it.
The second assumption is that this independent reality is completely determinate. This is Aristotle's metaphysical principle of contradiction. Nothing can both be and not be at the same time. Anything which does exist cannot both have and not have a certain attitude at one and the same time.
( -p.133, Adler)
I recall a poem written forty years ago, the final lines I wrote then went something like:
Is truth to be discarded
when the mighty challenge the low?
Where does one go
To face a lie,
To shed one's skin?
The two men talk about aerial warfare as "Democracy Now" comes on the airwaves. Oddly enough, it is a show from two days ago that the local station airs.
"Good soup," one says, dunking bread. The other leaves -- he's heard it all before.
I go for a walk.
How can we ever lose interest in life?
Spring has come again
And cherry trees bloom in the mountains.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)
The political situation in America and Iraq is unsettling and, it seems, unraveling.
Right or wrong, you are still telling a lie if you tell someone the opposite of what you know is the right answer to the question, and do so with the intention to deceive. (p.132, in Truth In Religion, the Plurality of Religions and the Unity of Truth, by Mortimer J. Adler)
The airwaves have been filled with excoriating charges and allegations of misrepresentation and deception. The politics of the powerful holding tightly to power is unattractive and demeaning. It is always a question of who dares tell the truth -- and who survives the telling.
What makes one's opinions of beliefs true or false? The answer parallels the answer to the question about the difference between truthful and untruthful speech. Just as truthful speech consists in the agreement between what you say and what you think, and untruthful speech consists in saying the opposite of what you think, so truth in what one thinks consists in the agreement between what one thinks and the way things really are. Conversely, falsity in what one thinks consists in the disagreement between what one thinks and the way things really are.
Aristotle summed this up in the following impeccable statement: To have truth in one's mind -- in what one thinks, believes, or opines -- consists in thinking that that which is, is, or that which is not, is not. Conversely, to have falsity in one's mind consists in thinking that that which is, is not, or that which is not, is. Thomas Aquinas said the same thing even more succinctly. He defined truth in the human intellect as the agreement or conformity of the mind with reality, and falsity as the opposite of that. (pp.132-133, Adler)
Clouds hang heavy. I wonder if it is me. No, says one of the two folks sitting by the fire, it's the pressure -- low and heavy.
Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality
with God something to be grasped. Rather, he emptied himself, taking the
form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on
a cross. Because of this, God greatly exalted him and bestowed on him the
name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee
should bend, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and
every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father.
- Philippians 2:6-11
Who can grasp form, God, or equality? Who can grasp the change each is asked to embody as reality requests a new form, a new comprehension of what-is called God, a new appreciation of what it means to be of the same measure?
Underlying this definition of truth and falsity are two assumptions that Aristotle and Aquinas made , which in my judgment, are philosophically defensible and tenable.
The first is that there exists a reality that is independent of the human mind, to which the mind can either conform or fail to conform. In other words, what we think does not create or in any way affect what we are thinking about. It is what it is, whether we think about it or not and regardless of what we think about it.
The second assumption is that this independent reality is completely determinate. This is Aristotle's metaphysical principle of contradiction. Nothing can both be and not be at the same time. Anything which does exist cannot both have and not have a certain attitude at one and the same time.
( -p.133, Adler)
I recall a poem written forty years ago, the final lines I wrote then went something like:
Is truth to be discarded
when the mighty challenge the low?
Where does one go
To face a lie,
To shed one's skin?
The two men talk about aerial warfare as "Democracy Now" comes on the airwaves. Oddly enough, it is a show from two days ago that the local station airs.
"Good soup," one says, dunking bread. The other leaves -- he's heard it all before.
I go for a walk.
Sunday, March 28, 2004
Saskia's bread goes flop. "I waited too long," she says. "It's not fair," she concludes.
All along the trail of moss,
I followed your wooden shoeprints.
White clouds hung around your little island
Where spring grass hid your unlocked door.
I enjoyed the colors of pines after rain
And reached the river's source
Along the mountain trail.
Facing the stream and the flowers
I came inside a sense of Zen,
Yet cannot find the words.
- Liu Chang Ching (709-780)
After reading two of her poems last evening, Eva told us about a recent experience -- the sudden car-fire that screamed up around her once she turned off engine in a parking garage in Bangor. There was an instant, she said, when the thought "I'm dead" was equally engulfing. Next instant the Rumanian picnic was on the ground and she was outside and away from the blaze. The car was consumed. She tells the story, she says, over and over -- the trauma, she says, brushes bit by bit from her in each telling.
The first poem was an ode to 'Yellow.' The second, about her visit to a garden show. Next time she'll bring one of the fire.
Whenever learners or those beyond learning awaken the mind, for the first time they plant one buddha-nature. Working with the four elements and five clusters, if they practice sincerely they attain enlightenment. Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment. This is because the four elements and five clusters and plants, trees, fences and walls are fellow students; because they are of the same essence, because they are the same mind and the same life, because they are the same body and the same mechanism.-
(-- Dogen Zenji, Japanese Zen Buddhist Grand Master, 'Awakening the Unsurpassed Mind, #31,' Translated by Thomas Cleary, Rational Zen: The Mind of Dogen Zenji)
Tommy came in after Saturday Afternoon Tea and Literature, as did a couple from Dover-Foxcroft. A woman visiting from D.C. sat by remaining coals in fireplace talking with Saskia.
If trauma, as Ryan yesterday in prison put it, "shoots us into the landscape across the wilderness, stretched out," what is the recognizing and retrieval process of integration and re-integration that follows? The sudden experience that sends us places beyond preparedness or borders, the experience of any trauma -- whether soldier in battle, victim of crime, or shock mystical encounter -- is most often unsettling and displacing. And yet...
And yet, the unasked-for mutation of awareness which occurs affects us in several ways. We are thrown beyond the known, and we glimpse a relationality previously not contemplated. Hence, often, fear. There is a fear that shudders within us when we are asked to consider we are not just the contained image we cultivate about ourselves. We are a wider reality, one that invites us to look around and contemplate our very being with the question -- "Is this, too, who I am?"
Is this 'The fear of the Lord'? Is our ability and willingness to hold open the possibility of inclusive recognition -- is that awareness the regenerative mystery creating anew from those stretched and empty spaces between starting point and arrival-after-being-thrown, a displaced scattered body capable of refashioning and enfleshing a mystical body not excluding a thing, a place, or a person?
Dogen's "same essence, same mind, same life, same body, same mechanism?"
Francis' leper -- the one he kisses?
For behold, the kingdom of God is within you.- (Luke 17:21)
Are we within this awareness when we allow ourselves to reach though the expedient delusions we perform as habit -- and touch, embrace, and welcome home all that is there within us?
When we hear the phrase, "Wherever you go, there you are," are we willing to contemplate that what is there, what is anywhere, is who we are?
When we look there, we arrive here.
Well within.
Flopped bread is equally delicious!
All along the trail of moss,
I followed your wooden shoeprints.
White clouds hung around your little island
Where spring grass hid your unlocked door.
I enjoyed the colors of pines after rain
And reached the river's source
Along the mountain trail.
Facing the stream and the flowers
I came inside a sense of Zen,
Yet cannot find the words.
- Liu Chang Ching (709-780)
After reading two of her poems last evening, Eva told us about a recent experience -- the sudden car-fire that screamed up around her once she turned off engine in a parking garage in Bangor. There was an instant, she said, when the thought "I'm dead" was equally engulfing. Next instant the Rumanian picnic was on the ground and she was outside and away from the blaze. The car was consumed. She tells the story, she says, over and over -- the trauma, she says, brushes bit by bit from her in each telling.
The first poem was an ode to 'Yellow.' The second, about her visit to a garden show. Next time she'll bring one of the fire.
Whenever learners or those beyond learning awaken the mind, for the first time they plant one buddha-nature. Working with the four elements and five clusters, if they practice sincerely they attain enlightenment. Working with plants, trees, fences and walls, if they practice sincerely they will attain enlightenment. This is because the four elements and five clusters and plants, trees, fences and walls are fellow students; because they are of the same essence, because they are the same mind and the same life, because they are the same body and the same mechanism.-
(-- Dogen Zenji, Japanese Zen Buddhist Grand Master, 'Awakening the Unsurpassed Mind, #31,' Translated by Thomas Cleary, Rational Zen: The Mind of Dogen Zenji)
Tommy came in after Saturday Afternoon Tea and Literature, as did a couple from Dover-Foxcroft. A woman visiting from D.C. sat by remaining coals in fireplace talking with Saskia.
If trauma, as Ryan yesterday in prison put it, "shoots us into the landscape across the wilderness, stretched out," what is the recognizing and retrieval process of integration and re-integration that follows? The sudden experience that sends us places beyond preparedness or borders, the experience of any trauma -- whether soldier in battle, victim of crime, or shock mystical encounter -- is most often unsettling and displacing. And yet...
And yet, the unasked-for mutation of awareness which occurs affects us in several ways. We are thrown beyond the known, and we glimpse a relationality previously not contemplated. Hence, often, fear. There is a fear that shudders within us when we are asked to consider we are not just the contained image we cultivate about ourselves. We are a wider reality, one that invites us to look around and contemplate our very being with the question -- "Is this, too, who I am?"
Is this 'The fear of the Lord'? Is our ability and willingness to hold open the possibility of inclusive recognition -- is that awareness the regenerative mystery creating anew from those stretched and empty spaces between starting point and arrival-after-being-thrown, a displaced scattered body capable of refashioning and enfleshing a mystical body not excluding a thing, a place, or a person?
Dogen's "same essence, same mind, same life, same body, same mechanism?"
Francis' leper -- the one he kisses?
For behold, the kingdom of God is within you.- (Luke 17:21)
Are we within this awareness when we allow ourselves to reach though the expedient delusions we perform as habit -- and touch, embrace, and welcome home all that is there within us?
When we hear the phrase, "Wherever you go, there you are," are we willing to contemplate that what is there, what is anywhere, is who we are?
When we look there, we arrive here.
Well within.
Flopped bread is equally delicious!
Saturday, March 27, 2004
Arriving.
The young man nornally setting up the small room for his tutoring is not in his classroom where he helps prep GED with other inmates. Diane winces when asked, saying only he'll be in the supermax for a time -- a lengthy one. She doesn't say why and I don't ask -- simply the fact of his absence and the reorganization of the room we use for the day's conversation.
It is over four years we've been going into Maine State Prison, first in Thomaston, now in Warren, for Meetingbrook Conversations: The Practice of Listening and Thinking With Others. It's been seventeen years I've been in and out since first teaching a college course in the old prison in 1987/88.
Every other Friday, from 8:30am-10:45am three of us enter the maximum security prison in Warren, thread our way through metal detectors, long corridors, sliding steel heavily bolted doors, past guards and prisoners walking to visits or jobs. We traverse outdoor crossroads between minimum, maximum, & supermax housing units, past flagpole and up walkway to large building that quarters recreation, education, chaplainry, & substance abuse services. A few more secure doors are opened and we enter the place where conversations are held. Yesterday we landed in a rearranged classroom absent our sometime attendee -- the floor of the larger room with a few computers has just been mopped and is wet.
Silent Illumination
Silently and serenely,
One forgets all words;
Clearly and vividly,
It appears before you.
When one realizes it,
Time has no limits.
When experienced,
Your surroundings come to life.
Full of wonder is the pure illumination.
- Hung Chih Cheng Chueh (1092-1157)
Even in prison -- some would say, because of prison -- illumination comes to life. Years ago we speculated the connection between monastic life and prison life. Time, routine, alertness, and subtle fear pervade both. (Monks used to consider the 'fear of the Lord' as beginning wisdom; inmates experience fear more proximate and equally unexplainable.)
Sonny looked at his life over three years in independent classes for college credit and saw things out loud that had been hidden below silent anger. As least three of the contemporary participants tell of autobiographical writing they do -- as well as poetry, philosophical meditation, and correspondence that surpasses the "Hi, I'm fine, I need..." variety. Prison is no mere metaphor. Every time I exit prison I am aware what a gift it is to be able to visit and converse, and not to have to reside there.
We engage in Meetingbrook Conversations in Prison to broaden community. The conversations at shop and prison are a transmission of felt relationality between two aspects of one community -- whether we call it Meetingbrook community or Human community. Each person is where and who they are right now. Our longing is to engage in conversations that invite each participant, in or out, to listen and think with others -- to practice presence -- a practice that transcends our understanding of it.
Charlie, Ryan, Chris, Nancy, Saskia, Joe, and myself sat around the table Friday. We read from Lewis Thomas' Lives of a Cell, a weblog of mine, a reflection of Ryan's, William Barrett's Irrational Man, excerpts from a biker-writer from Maine, and selections from G.I. Gurdjieff's Views from the Real World, and Meetings with Remarkable Men.
Nancy said the Buddha emphasized "direct experience."
Direct experience of what?
Saskia said, "In nature there are no words, just to be with what is there."
Ryan spoke of the way some individuals experience trauma in their lives -- the feeling of being "Shot into the landscape across the wilderness, stretched out, followed by the need to draw their spirit back into its residing reality -- the here and now they are familiar with in place and time."
"When I look, what I see is..." -- said Chris wrestling with the question whether we are capable of seeing things in and of themselves, or only through our conditioning and conceptual categories. (Yet, his words suggest a more primal grasp, namely, "When I look, what I see...is.")
So, too, Ryan's words in a written piece he brought, "...only if my intention is, as is 'said,' 'right.'"
(His words are heard, "Only if my intention...is...'as is'-'said'... --right?")
The notion of unveiling "as-is, said" intrigues. Is it possible to experience things-as-they-are without the infiltrating conditioning of experience and idea determining the "as-is, said" to be other than what is said of itself?
There is a way, I think,
that it allows me to listen --
it's so different from the
way that old mind of mine
copes (and "makes up" things...)
It says not to pray like
I have... it's almost like
a 'freedom walk of prayer'
that creates and energizes itself...
little is the desire in
me to mess with this
beauty-goodness
yet the other thing --
the other half --
remains --
but it is -- well,
something else?
forget these notes
(--Ryan's reflection, "I would be remiss not to attempt notes --", 3/20/04)
We say goodbye. Shake hands. Depart one way and the other. Walk long portico. Pass through heavy doors. Collect driver's licenses and car keys. Step out to curved drive past sign "No weapons." The morning is exactly as it is.
I say to Nancy I had an insight into her "direct experience" comment.
"Tell me," she says.
I say direct experience is, "Bearing out through two rights one's reality." Later it seems a simpler looking at the meaning of the phrase might yield -- "Undergoing opening."
We let the dogs out of green car. They yawn, pee, meander, and return.
At end of curved entry-road we turn left.
Departing.
The young man nornally setting up the small room for his tutoring is not in his classroom where he helps prep GED with other inmates. Diane winces when asked, saying only he'll be in the supermax for a time -- a lengthy one. She doesn't say why and I don't ask -- simply the fact of his absence and the reorganization of the room we use for the day's conversation.
It is over four years we've been going into Maine State Prison, first in Thomaston, now in Warren, for Meetingbrook Conversations: The Practice of Listening and Thinking With Others. It's been seventeen years I've been in and out since first teaching a college course in the old prison in 1987/88.
Every other Friday, from 8:30am-10:45am three of us enter the maximum security prison in Warren, thread our way through metal detectors, long corridors, sliding steel heavily bolted doors, past guards and prisoners walking to visits or jobs. We traverse outdoor crossroads between minimum, maximum, & supermax housing units, past flagpole and up walkway to large building that quarters recreation, education, chaplainry, & substance abuse services. A few more secure doors are opened and we enter the place where conversations are held. Yesterday we landed in a rearranged classroom absent our sometime attendee -- the floor of the larger room with a few computers has just been mopped and is wet.
Silent Illumination
Silently and serenely,
One forgets all words;
Clearly and vividly,
It appears before you.
When one realizes it,
Time has no limits.
When experienced,
Your surroundings come to life.
Full of wonder is the pure illumination.
- Hung Chih Cheng Chueh (1092-1157)
Even in prison -- some would say, because of prison -- illumination comes to life. Years ago we speculated the connection between monastic life and prison life. Time, routine, alertness, and subtle fear pervade both. (Monks used to consider the 'fear of the Lord' as beginning wisdom; inmates experience fear more proximate and equally unexplainable.)
Sonny looked at his life over three years in independent classes for college credit and saw things out loud that had been hidden below silent anger. As least three of the contemporary participants tell of autobiographical writing they do -- as well as poetry, philosophical meditation, and correspondence that surpasses the "Hi, I'm fine, I need..." variety. Prison is no mere metaphor. Every time I exit prison I am aware what a gift it is to be able to visit and converse, and not to have to reside there.
We engage in Meetingbrook Conversations in Prison to broaden community. The conversations at shop and prison are a transmission of felt relationality between two aspects of one community -- whether we call it Meetingbrook community or Human community. Each person is where and who they are right now. Our longing is to engage in conversations that invite each participant, in or out, to listen and think with others -- to practice presence -- a practice that transcends our understanding of it.
Charlie, Ryan, Chris, Nancy, Saskia, Joe, and myself sat around the table Friday. We read from Lewis Thomas' Lives of a Cell, a weblog of mine, a reflection of Ryan's, William Barrett's Irrational Man, excerpts from a biker-writer from Maine, and selections from G.I. Gurdjieff's Views from the Real World, and Meetings with Remarkable Men.
Nancy said the Buddha emphasized "direct experience."
Direct experience of what?
Saskia said, "In nature there are no words, just to be with what is there."
Ryan spoke of the way some individuals experience trauma in their lives -- the feeling of being "Shot into the landscape across the wilderness, stretched out, followed by the need to draw their spirit back into its residing reality -- the here and now they are familiar with in place and time."
"When I look, what I see is..." -- said Chris wrestling with the question whether we are capable of seeing things in and of themselves, or only through our conditioning and conceptual categories. (Yet, his words suggest a more primal grasp, namely, "When I look, what I see...is.")
So, too, Ryan's words in a written piece he brought, "...only if my intention is, as is 'said,' 'right.'"
(His words are heard, "Only if my intention...is...'as is'-'said'... --right?")
The notion of unveiling "as-is, said" intrigues. Is it possible to experience things-as-they-are without the infiltrating conditioning of experience and idea determining the "as-is, said" to be other than what is said of itself?
There is a way, I think,
that it allows me to listen --
it's so different from the
way that old mind of mine
copes (and "makes up" things...)
It says not to pray like
I have... it's almost like
a 'freedom walk of prayer'
that creates and energizes itself...
little is the desire in
me to mess with this
beauty-goodness
yet the other thing --
the other half --
remains --
but it is -- well,
something else?
forget these notes
(--Ryan's reflection, "I would be remiss not to attempt notes --", 3/20/04)
We say goodbye. Shake hands. Depart one way and the other. Walk long portico. Pass through heavy doors. Collect driver's licenses and car keys. Step out to curved drive past sign "No weapons." The morning is exactly as it is.
I say to Nancy I had an insight into her "direct experience" comment.
"Tell me," she says.
I say direct experience is, "Bearing out through two rights one's reality." Later it seems a simpler looking at the meaning of the phrase might yield -- "Undergoing opening."
We let the dogs out of green car. They yawn, pee, meander, and return.
At end of curved entry-road we turn left.
Departing.
Friday, March 26, 2004
Note: Conversation in Prison this morning. Bookshop/Bakery closed today. No conversation this evening. Re-opening Saturday morning for 9:30am "The Many Faces of Death" conversation.
............
Thirty-two minutes walking entry road to Snow Bowl. Dogs carry then drop sticks, relieve themselves, figure the pattern of my back-and-forth clips road-to-parking-lot, and lay in wait for return.
Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
-- W. B. Yeats (quoted in Irrational Man, A Study in Existential Philosophy, by William Barrett)
Melting and mud -- the status of early spring morning under drizzle-sky hovering fog -- as if an unheard command is given that "Everything shall be wet and softening this watch!"
Shall we also rummage the heart today? To find -- what?
What work is common to us, however tucked away and undetected? Where do we start -- especially since the majority of us believe we are well-along (thank you) the path of our lives? Is it possible, even true, that we are ever and always at the beginning -- just at start -- of our lives?
"Stigmergy" is a new word, invented recently by Grasse to explain the nest-building behavior of termites, perhaps generalizable to other complex activities of social animals. The word is made of Greek roots meaning "to incite to work," and Grasse's intention was to indicate that it is the product of work itself that provides both the stimulus and instructions for further work.
Grasse needed his word in order to account for the ability of such tiny, blind, and relatively brainless animals to erect structures [the termite nests, which excepting perhaps a man-made city are the most formidable edifices in nature] of such vast size and internal complexity. Does each termite possess a fragment of blueprint, or is the whole design, arch by arch, encoded in his DNA? Or does the whole colony have, by virtue of the interconnections of so many small brains, the collective intellectual power of a huge contractor?
(pp.156-7, chapter "Living Language", in The Lives of a Cell, Notes of a Biology Watcher, by Lewis Thomas, c.1974)
Fragments? Or collective?
What is the configuration of power and creativity running through us as individual fragments or collective intelligence? And how do we interpose ourselves to inquire and share benefits of our inquiry and resources?
So many threads! So many faces, minds, hands, and hearts! How do we proceed? Where start?
It is easy to lose the thread (from ter, to rub, twist -- possibly also the root of termite). Are you there? (p.164, Thomas)
Am I?
Are you?
Can we be?
A start.
............
Thirty-two minutes walking entry road to Snow Bowl. Dogs carry then drop sticks, relieve themselves, figure the pattern of my back-and-forth clips road-to-parking-lot, and lay in wait for return.
Now that my ladder's gone,
I must lie down where all ladders start,
In the foul rag-and-bone shop of the heart.
-- W. B. Yeats (quoted in Irrational Man, A Study in Existential Philosophy, by William Barrett)
Melting and mud -- the status of early spring morning under drizzle-sky hovering fog -- as if an unheard command is given that "Everything shall be wet and softening this watch!"
Shall we also rummage the heart today? To find -- what?
What work is common to us, however tucked away and undetected? Where do we start -- especially since the majority of us believe we are well-along (thank you) the path of our lives? Is it possible, even true, that we are ever and always at the beginning -- just at start -- of our lives?
"Stigmergy" is a new word, invented recently by Grasse to explain the nest-building behavior of termites, perhaps generalizable to other complex activities of social animals. The word is made of Greek roots meaning "to incite to work," and Grasse's intention was to indicate that it is the product of work itself that provides both the stimulus and instructions for further work.
Grasse needed his word in order to account for the ability of such tiny, blind, and relatively brainless animals to erect structures [the termite nests, which excepting perhaps a man-made city are the most formidable edifices in nature] of such vast size and internal complexity. Does each termite possess a fragment of blueprint, or is the whole design, arch by arch, encoded in his DNA? Or does the whole colony have, by virtue of the interconnections of so many small brains, the collective intellectual power of a huge contractor?
(pp.156-7, chapter "Living Language", in The Lives of a Cell, Notes of a Biology Watcher, by Lewis Thomas, c.1974)
Fragments? Or collective?
What is the configuration of power and creativity running through us as individual fragments or collective intelligence? And how do we interpose ourselves to inquire and share benefits of our inquiry and resources?
So many threads! So many faces, minds, hands, and hearts! How do we proceed? Where start?
It is easy to lose the thread (from ter, to rub, twist -- possibly also the root of termite). Are you there? (p.164, Thomas)
Am I?
Are you?
Can we be?
A start.
Thursday, March 25, 2004
Note: We are closed today, Thursday. No conversation this evening.
....................
Muted morning.
Hillside is unmoving carpet of tired brown with patches of withdrawing white snow. Sky says rain soon in grey mutter cloud cover.
My mind is inclined to quiet;
Outside of things,
I lodge in the brush.
The sense of the mountains is best
When you reach their depths;
The source of the valley stream, distant,
Is naturally purified.
For the rest of my life,
All that's missing is death;
All thoughts and worries
Are settled already.
Recluses should leave no tracks;
People stop asking their names.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)
We leave no tracks when we remain where we are and simply be what we are.
Stillness doesn't mean no-motion. Stillness is movement within itself. It is not interested with articulated contrasts between where once we were and where now we are -- rather, mere presentation of one's reality without comment is sufficient for the moment. The 'moment' is its own revelation. Nothing need be added or articulated. The brown leaves on ascending Ragged Mountain are speaking -- they announce to the mountain and inhabitants the very reality of the moment.
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!"
(Luke 1:26 - 28 )
Today is the Feast of the Annunciation. Gabriel tells Mary she is the mother of God. (Not 'she will become' the mother, but that she is.) Mary says, "Let it be." And the Word that creates everything is itself in creation.
Itself in creation! The phrase could be the response made by every being to the question "Who or what are you?"
"Itself in creation!" -- is who I am, is what I am."
Brown leaves remain still moving within themselves outside kitchen window.
"Let it be," in today's idiom, means, "Drop it!" A leaf understands this, and responds faithfully to it.
Mary was who she was, as was Gabriel, as was Jesus.
(Janet says it is John's birthday today. We break fast into their presence.)
We greet John, full of grace, and see all-he-is with him.
Remarkable.
....................
Muted morning.
Hillside is unmoving carpet of tired brown with patches of withdrawing white snow. Sky says rain soon in grey mutter cloud cover.
My mind is inclined to quiet;
Outside of things,
I lodge in the brush.
The sense of the mountains is best
When you reach their depths;
The source of the valley stream, distant,
Is naturally purified.
For the rest of my life,
All that's missing is death;
All thoughts and worries
Are settled already.
Recluses should leave no tracks;
People stop asking their names.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)
We leave no tracks when we remain where we are and simply be what we are.
Stillness doesn't mean no-motion. Stillness is movement within itself. It is not interested with articulated contrasts between where once we were and where now we are -- rather, mere presentation of one's reality without comment is sufficient for the moment. The 'moment' is its own revelation. Nothing need be added or articulated. The brown leaves on ascending Ragged Mountain are speaking -- they announce to the mountain and inhabitants the very reality of the moment.
In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you!"
(Luke 1:26 - 28 )
Today is the Feast of the Annunciation. Gabriel tells Mary she is the mother of God. (Not 'she will become' the mother, but that she is.) Mary says, "Let it be." And the Word that creates everything is itself in creation.
Itself in creation! The phrase could be the response made by every being to the question "Who or what are you?"
"Itself in creation!" -- is who I am, is what I am."
Brown leaves remain still moving within themselves outside kitchen window.
"Let it be," in today's idiom, means, "Drop it!" A leaf understands this, and responds faithfully to it.
Mary was who she was, as was Gabriel, as was Jesus.
(Janet says it is John's birthday today. We break fast into their presence.)
We greet John, full of grace, and see all-he-is with him.
Remarkable.
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
Note: We are closed today, Wednesday. No Evening Conversation.
....................
Zen Catholic.
Susan's dog, Rougie, died a few weeks ago. We met her and Lucky, her Great White Pyrenees, at their van in parking lot of Grave's Market. Robert, Su.Sane, and Sandra arrive and join the sunny circle. Talk of birds and this and that. Cars arrive and depart as we talk. Elly waves hello. The sun is warm.
Mountain of Samadhi
This mountain has neither
ugly rocks nor clumsy trees.
It raises itself ten thousand feet
towards the cold heaven.
Even a stray cloud does not
cling around the mountain.
Only the moon showers its
pale light abundantly over the summit.
- Jakushitsu (1290–1368)
The mountain raises itself.
Bananas, yogurt, two half gallons of orange juice, two Cadbury chocolate bars, frozen pizza, some bakery goods, and Bangor Daily News. These came before parking lot conference and earlier Mass at Our Lady of Good Hope.
If God is, and God is the creator and inspiration of all life, we begin there. If God, alongside being the inner core sustaining breath of each thing in existence, is the origin and seed of God (or the Itself) realizing Itself in humankind, there is the belief of many that Jesus enjoyed a distinct and unique realization of what-is-in-Itself, namely, the reality of God as Itself.
At Mass this morning the thought that God, suffusing everything, emerges specifically and fully in the person of Jesus, is as feasible an understanding as the belief that Jesus, in his awakened understanding, saw that everything shared in the reality he shared.
Reception and sharing of bread and wine, the cleansing and sustaining function of water, the soothing and healing properties of anointing with oil, deep listening, loving community, dedication to holiness and service, the pervasive flowing through of the Sacred Spirit -- these enacting behaviors are universal and worthy of reflection.
In the Catholic tradition, the one most familiar to me, these elements are also known as: Eucharist, Baptism, Extreme Unction (or Sacrament of the Sick), Reconciliation (or Confession), Matrimony, Holy Orders, Confirmation.
Jesus, who has come to be called 'the Christ', is looked on by those calling themselves Christian as the focal point for beliefs encompassing the divinization of humankind and all creation, and the humanization of the divine mystery and source of all being. If, indeed, there were a being or reality (sometimes named 'what-is-called-God'), that being/reality would not (I would think) be separate from the being/reality of each and every one of us.
The breath, or voice, of God is that which creates, embodies, and sustains each and every particle, thing, and being (as far as we are capable of knowing) in existence.
Is there any end to this?
“Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself, and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man. Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.
“I can do nothing on my own authority; as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me”.
(John 5:17 - 30)
Having life in himself, or, life-in-itself, is (we might say) the gift of creation. The references to 'resurrection of life' and 'resurrection of judgment' have in common 'resurrection.'
To 'judge' -- (from 'jus' = right or law; and 'dicere' = decide or say) -- means, "to determine or pronounce after inquiry and deliberation" (per Webster’s 7th). Thus to judge is to think, to form an estimate of something.
It is an interesting consideration that is made in contemporary environments emphasizing meditation, contemplation, and consciousness -- namely, that 'life' and 'judgment' might be seen as two ways of experiencing our being. More precisely, to live life as a whole as an experience in itself is remarkably different than evaluating and analyzing fragments and situations that compartmentalize behavior and opinion.
What is the will of God? Some say love. Perhaps it is the longing to express and experience oneself -- the "itself" -- as ground and source of what is in existence. It is an interesting consideration to reflect on -- that "the will of him who sent me" means there is no separation of will, no fragmentation dividing 'my' will from 'the Father's' will. That what we call 'my' will as perceived separate from God's will is, in fact, a delusion -- albeit an expedient delusion. How we contemplate or even deliberate this inseparate possibility tells us a great deal about who we think we are in each other's life, how we go about living life, and (more emphatically), the manner with which we encounter or respond to conflict and hostility in the world.
On the radio, officials interview each other trying to piece together what is known and what is hidden about 9/11. If these men and women are not solely attempting to place blame on each other, then they are hoping to find a way to relieve the world of terrorism, and perhaps to find a way to relieve the world of narrow rule by the militarily powerful and financially wealthy to the exclusion, in breath and voice, of the weak and poor.
Zen, at root, means 'seeing.' Catholic, at root, means 'universal, whole.'
Seeing the whole.
Inestimable.
One's life.
....................
Zen Catholic.
Susan's dog, Rougie, died a few weeks ago. We met her and Lucky, her Great White Pyrenees, at their van in parking lot of Grave's Market. Robert, Su.Sane, and Sandra arrive and join the sunny circle. Talk of birds and this and that. Cars arrive and depart as we talk. Elly waves hello. The sun is warm.
Mountain of Samadhi
This mountain has neither
ugly rocks nor clumsy trees.
It raises itself ten thousand feet
towards the cold heaven.
Even a stray cloud does not
cling around the mountain.
Only the moon showers its
pale light abundantly over the summit.
- Jakushitsu (1290–1368)
The mountain raises itself.
Bananas, yogurt, two half gallons of orange juice, two Cadbury chocolate bars, frozen pizza, some bakery goods, and Bangor Daily News. These came before parking lot conference and earlier Mass at Our Lady of Good Hope.
If God is, and God is the creator and inspiration of all life, we begin there. If God, alongside being the inner core sustaining breath of each thing in existence, is the origin and seed of God (or the Itself) realizing Itself in humankind, there is the belief of many that Jesus enjoyed a distinct and unique realization of what-is-in-Itself, namely, the reality of God as Itself.
At Mass this morning the thought that God, suffusing everything, emerges specifically and fully in the person of Jesus, is as feasible an understanding as the belief that Jesus, in his awakened understanding, saw that everything shared in the reality he shared.
Reception and sharing of bread and wine, the cleansing and sustaining function of water, the soothing and healing properties of anointing with oil, deep listening, loving community, dedication to holiness and service, the pervasive flowing through of the Sacred Spirit -- these enacting behaviors are universal and worthy of reflection.
In the Catholic tradition, the one most familiar to me, these elements are also known as: Eucharist, Baptism, Extreme Unction (or Sacrament of the Sick), Reconciliation (or Confession), Matrimony, Holy Orders, Confirmation.
Jesus, who has come to be called 'the Christ', is looked on by those calling themselves Christian as the focal point for beliefs encompassing the divinization of humankind and all creation, and the humanization of the divine mystery and source of all being. If, indeed, there were a being or reality (sometimes named 'what-is-called-God'), that being/reality would not (I would think) be separate from the being/reality of each and every one of us.
The breath, or voice, of God is that which creates, embodies, and sustains each and every particle, thing, and being (as far as we are capable of knowing) in existence.
Is there any end to this?
“Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself, and has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of man. Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment.
“I can do nothing on my own authority; as I hear, I judge; and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me”.
(John 5:17 - 30)
Having life in himself, or, life-in-itself, is (we might say) the gift of creation. The references to 'resurrection of life' and 'resurrection of judgment' have in common 'resurrection.'
To 'judge' -- (from 'jus' = right or law; and 'dicere' = decide or say) -- means, "to determine or pronounce after inquiry and deliberation" (per Webster’s 7th). Thus to judge is to think, to form an estimate of something.
It is an interesting consideration that is made in contemporary environments emphasizing meditation, contemplation, and consciousness -- namely, that 'life' and 'judgment' might be seen as two ways of experiencing our being. More precisely, to live life as a whole as an experience in itself is remarkably different than evaluating and analyzing fragments and situations that compartmentalize behavior and opinion.
What is the will of God? Some say love. Perhaps it is the longing to express and experience oneself -- the "itself" -- as ground and source of what is in existence. It is an interesting consideration to reflect on -- that "the will of him who sent me" means there is no separation of will, no fragmentation dividing 'my' will from 'the Father's' will. That what we call 'my' will as perceived separate from God's will is, in fact, a delusion -- albeit an expedient delusion. How we contemplate or even deliberate this inseparate possibility tells us a great deal about who we think we are in each other's life, how we go about living life, and (more emphatically), the manner with which we encounter or respond to conflict and hostility in the world.
On the radio, officials interview each other trying to piece together what is known and what is hidden about 9/11. If these men and women are not solely attempting to place blame on each other, then they are hoping to find a way to relieve the world of terrorism, and perhaps to find a way to relieve the world of narrow rule by the militarily powerful and financially wealthy to the exclusion, in breath and voice, of the weak and poor.
Zen, at root, means 'seeing.' Catholic, at root, means 'universal, whole.'
Seeing the whole.
Inestimable.
One's life.
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Monday, March 22, 2004
Deep cold night.
Remembering walking dirt road alongside water and woods at Rockport harbor early morning. Deb is with her Golden up from golf course. We park in Vesper Hill space piled with recent snow. The dogs are happy to run. We are happy to walk.
Trampling the grass has made three paths.
Looking up at the clouds makes
Neighbors in the four directions;
There are birds to help with the
Sound of the singing, but there
Isn't anyone to ask about the
Words of the Dharma.
Today among these withered trees,
How many years make one spring?
- Han Shan (c 730)
Three paths criss-cross each other trying to catch scent. The four directions turn suddenly and ask us for a match. After week of weakness enclosed in mulling quiet we make way to Corner Shop for breakfast after long walk. An old and worn hull floats in cove at mooring sealing planks swell with salt wet.
One path is mountain solitude. Second is marketplace immersion. Third is amalgamating one place or the other -- to merge into a single body.
The name Han Shan means: Cold Cliff, Cold Mountain, or Cold Peak. Han Shan is known in Japan as "Kanzan." Han Shan was considered, when older, to be an eccentric Taoist, crazy saint, mountain ascetic mystic, and wise fool. He went many ways and back again the way fools do. There is no counting on a fool to show us the way -- there are too many variables for fools to be satisfied with only one.
At that time, Imperial Counselor Zhou Hai Men was lecturing on Yan Ming metaphysics. When he heard of my arrival, he called on me bringing a few dozen of his followers along. He began a discussion by referring to the saying: “One cannot realize the truth until one understands the condition of day and night.”
A Daoist elder who was sitting among them responded. “The condition is consciousness,” he said. “And day and night are waking and sleeping. The same consciousness that functions during our daylight actions, functions during the night in our dream actions.” The audience showed its approval.
Counselor Zhou then turned to me. “Venerable old Chan Master,” he said, “though everyone else seems to be satisfied with this interpretation, I am not. Please give us your opinion.”
“What is the source of the quotation?” I asked
“It is from The Book of Changes,” be answered, reciting a few additional sentences.
“These words are a wise man’s advice to men that they should transcend Samsara and get beyond birth and death,” I said.
The Counselor applauded. “Only this old master’s interpretation accords with the text. The meaning is now clear.” But his followers didn’t understand and asked for further explanation.
“Day and night are the illusion called birth and death,” the counselor explained. “Not until one is delivered from the conditions of this illusion, can one experience reality.”
(-- from "Purify Your Mind" -- The Fifty-first Year {1596-7}, by Han Shan)
Last evening Jory spoke the phrase "expedient delusion" and we smiled in recognition. We have ours. Each day.
The night is cold. Wood snuggles in woodstove
Purify Your Mind
Your True Nature is deep, like still, clear water in a lake.
If you allow the bottom to be stirred by love and hate,
Waves of passion will arise. What was clear will become murky.
With your vision obstructed, you will not notice
How your troubles are increasing.
If you look with desire upon people or things,
You throw mud into the clear water.
If you allow yourself to become another’s desire.
You are like oil poured on passion’s fire.
When the clamoring ego sinks to silence,
Burning hells will turn to ice.
Let your ego slip gently towards a muted death.
When the ego’s eyes are closed, in vain does harm appear.
This death does not come easy. Be on guard against old habits
That, haunting, come to quicken it. Be steadfast and endure.
Alertness brings awareness and awareness is a light that in a
Searing flash obliterates all traces of the ghost.
Let your True Nature shine forth in perfect clarity.
Rest easy in the pure, serene stillness of the One.
Alone, you are a sovereign. Yourself, a precious kingdom.
Reign with peace and harmony!
What external force can possibly invade?
(poem by Han Shan)
Those words 'steadfast,' 'endure,' and 'alertness' feel like crumpled wrappers from once enjoyed delicacies. Never finally discarded, these fallen-to-floor scrunched balls of mispronounced words become playthings of black and white cat ever trying to push them under rug away from sight.
Who to ask about the "Words of the Dharma" the crazy saint questions?
Ghost disrobing failure is not yet obliterated.
Midnight.
Remembering walking dirt road alongside water and woods at Rockport harbor early morning. Deb is with her Golden up from golf course. We park in Vesper Hill space piled with recent snow. The dogs are happy to run. We are happy to walk.
Trampling the grass has made three paths.
Looking up at the clouds makes
Neighbors in the four directions;
There are birds to help with the
Sound of the singing, but there
Isn't anyone to ask about the
Words of the Dharma.
Today among these withered trees,
How many years make one spring?
- Han Shan (c 730)
Three paths criss-cross each other trying to catch scent. The four directions turn suddenly and ask us for a match. After week of weakness enclosed in mulling quiet we make way to Corner Shop for breakfast after long walk. An old and worn hull floats in cove at mooring sealing planks swell with salt wet.
One path is mountain solitude. Second is marketplace immersion. Third is amalgamating one place or the other -- to merge into a single body.
The name Han Shan means: Cold Cliff, Cold Mountain, or Cold Peak. Han Shan is known in Japan as "Kanzan." Han Shan was considered, when older, to be an eccentric Taoist, crazy saint, mountain ascetic mystic, and wise fool. He went many ways and back again the way fools do. There is no counting on a fool to show us the way -- there are too many variables for fools to be satisfied with only one.
At that time, Imperial Counselor Zhou Hai Men was lecturing on Yan Ming metaphysics. When he heard of my arrival, he called on me bringing a few dozen of his followers along. He began a discussion by referring to the saying: “One cannot realize the truth until one understands the condition of day and night.”
A Daoist elder who was sitting among them responded. “The condition is consciousness,” he said. “And day and night are waking and sleeping. The same consciousness that functions during our daylight actions, functions during the night in our dream actions.” The audience showed its approval.
Counselor Zhou then turned to me. “Venerable old Chan Master,” he said, “though everyone else seems to be satisfied with this interpretation, I am not. Please give us your opinion.”
“What is the source of the quotation?” I asked
“It is from The Book of Changes,” be answered, reciting a few additional sentences.
“These words are a wise man’s advice to men that they should transcend Samsara and get beyond birth and death,” I said.
The Counselor applauded. “Only this old master’s interpretation accords with the text. The meaning is now clear.” But his followers didn’t understand and asked for further explanation.
“Day and night are the illusion called birth and death,” the counselor explained. “Not until one is delivered from the conditions of this illusion, can one experience reality.”
(-- from "Purify Your Mind" -- The Fifty-first Year {1596-7}, by Han Shan)
Last evening Jory spoke the phrase "expedient delusion" and we smiled in recognition. We have ours. Each day.
The night is cold. Wood snuggles in woodstove
Purify Your Mind
Your True Nature is deep, like still, clear water in a lake.
If you allow the bottom to be stirred by love and hate,
Waves of passion will arise. What was clear will become murky.
With your vision obstructed, you will not notice
How your troubles are increasing.
If you look with desire upon people or things,
You throw mud into the clear water.
If you allow yourself to become another’s desire.
You are like oil poured on passion’s fire.
When the clamoring ego sinks to silence,
Burning hells will turn to ice.
Let your ego slip gently towards a muted death.
When the ego’s eyes are closed, in vain does harm appear.
This death does not come easy. Be on guard against old habits
That, haunting, come to quicken it. Be steadfast and endure.
Alertness brings awareness and awareness is a light that in a
Searing flash obliterates all traces of the ghost.
Let your True Nature shine forth in perfect clarity.
Rest easy in the pure, serene stillness of the One.
Alone, you are a sovereign. Yourself, a precious kingdom.
Reign with peace and harmony!
What external force can possibly invade?
(poem by Han Shan)
Those words 'steadfast,' 'endure,' and 'alertness' feel like crumpled wrappers from once enjoyed delicacies. Never finally discarded, these fallen-to-floor scrunched balls of mispronounced words become playthings of black and white cat ever trying to push them under rug away from sight.
Who to ask about the "Words of the Dharma" the crazy saint questions?
Ghost disrobing failure is not yet obliterated.
Midnight.
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Note: We are closed today, Sunday.
.................
A few inches of new wet snow.
Gate after gate
Adorned with festal pine
Spring has come
To each and every house,
Garnishing all with new green.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)
Green? Not in Maine today. White.
Sun shines through.
Church, this Sunday, our warm kitchen. Michael Thoms speaks with Leonard Shlain in a New Dimensions radio interview on WERU broadcast from Orland Maine..
Women formulated the concept of a month, which in turn allowed them to make the connection between sex and pregnancy. Upon learning the majestic secret of time these ancestral females then gained the power to refuse sex when they were ovulating. Men were forced to confront women who possessed a mind of their own.
Women taught men about time and the men used this knowledge to become the planet’s most fearsome predator. Unfortunately, they also discovered that they were mortal. Men, then invented religions to soften the certainty of death. Subsequently, they belatedly grasped the function of sex. The possibility of achieving a kind of immortality through heirs drove men to construct patriarchal cultures whose purpose was to control women’s reproductive choices.
(Leonard Schlain, in Sex, Time, & Power)
We can now pass on information that is not contained in DNA. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water. Who would have imagined?
Who could have imagined God?
Let there always be quiet, dark churches in which people can take refuge....Houses of God filled with his silent presence. There, even when they do not know how to pray, at least they can be still and breathe easily.
(in New Seeds of Contemplation, by Thomas Merton)
Being still and breathing easy -- refuge. Whether it is snowflake, sunlight, silence, or what-is-called-God -- we stretch through symbols of the felt-relational and poise at the empty center -- the heart of prayer.
In dealing with symbolism one enters an area where reflection, synthesis, and contemplation are more important than investigation, analysis, and science. One cannot comprehend a symbol unless one is able to awaken, in one's own being, the spiritual resonances which respond to the symbol not only as sign but as 'sacrament' and 'presence'...The true symbol does not merely point to some hidden object. It contains in itself a structure which in some way makes us aware of the inner meaning of life and of reality itself...A true symbol points to the very heart of all being, not to an incident in the flow of becoming.
(in, Life and Loving, Merton)
Mu-ge comes in from barn. Eggs with sausage and cheese in pan on stove. Two tulips, one open one not yet, on table-desk under photograph of man praying grace over bread, soup, and book.
Every place, every day, is full of worship.
All is in God as God is in all.
Bancha tea!
.................
A few inches of new wet snow.
Gate after gate
Adorned with festal pine
Spring has come
To each and every house,
Garnishing all with new green.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)
Green? Not in Maine today. White.
Sun shines through.
Church, this Sunday, our warm kitchen. Michael Thoms speaks with Leonard Shlain in a New Dimensions radio interview on WERU broadcast from Orland Maine..
Women formulated the concept of a month, which in turn allowed them to make the connection between sex and pregnancy. Upon learning the majestic secret of time these ancestral females then gained the power to refuse sex when they were ovulating. Men were forced to confront women who possessed a mind of their own.
Women taught men about time and the men used this knowledge to become the planet’s most fearsome predator. Unfortunately, they also discovered that they were mortal. Men, then invented religions to soften the certainty of death. Subsequently, they belatedly grasped the function of sex. The possibility of achieving a kind of immortality through heirs drove men to construct patriarchal cultures whose purpose was to control women’s reproductive choices.
(Leonard Schlain, in Sex, Time, & Power)
We can now pass on information that is not contained in DNA. Hydrogen and oxygen combine to make water. Who would have imagined?
Who could have imagined God?
Let there always be quiet, dark churches in which people can take refuge....Houses of God filled with his silent presence. There, even when they do not know how to pray, at least they can be still and breathe easily.
(in New Seeds of Contemplation, by Thomas Merton)
Being still and breathing easy -- refuge. Whether it is snowflake, sunlight, silence, or what-is-called-God -- we stretch through symbols of the felt-relational and poise at the empty center -- the heart of prayer.
In dealing with symbolism one enters an area where reflection, synthesis, and contemplation are more important than investigation, analysis, and science. One cannot comprehend a symbol unless one is able to awaken, in one's own being, the spiritual resonances which respond to the symbol not only as sign but as 'sacrament' and 'presence'...The true symbol does not merely point to some hidden object. It contains in itself a structure which in some way makes us aware of the inner meaning of life and of reality itself...A true symbol points to the very heart of all being, not to an incident in the flow of becoming.
(in, Life and Loving, Merton)
Mu-ge comes in from barn. Eggs with sausage and cheese in pan on stove. Two tulips, one open one not yet, on table-desk under photograph of man praying grace over bread, soup, and book.
Every place, every day, is full of worship.
All is in God as God is in all.
Bancha tea!
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Note: We are closed today, Saturday. No conversations at shop.
.....................
The older brother is distraught.
He is agitated with doubt or mental conflict. If one has never left home, and is not certain they are at home, it is not easy to convince them they are truly welcome, or they'd be welcome back if they wandered away.
Deep green needles glow
against a cobalt sky.
They radiate something only
a few can sense.
Snow white peaks,
summits shrouded in clouds,
shine and echo...
shine and echo
through both sides of the skin line.
In all this lies some deep
implication, yet when I try to
say more, I become silent, mute.
- Ji Aoi Isshi
Morning sun melts dooryard snow into brown earth. Smoke from cabin chimney. The women and dogs sit. Wisp of smoke from kitchen chimney, like quiet murmur of aspiration, faintly acknowledged prayer muttered in mind at far edge of belief unsure it goes anywhere.
Brothers and sisters: Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old
things have passed away; behold, new things have come. And all this is
from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the
ministry of reconciliation, namely, God was reconciling the world to
himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and
entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for
Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of
Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who did
not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
(2 Corinthians 5:17-21)
We go about the morning, each their own way. I am irresolute. Like smoke urged by breeze north-northwest, once its breath emerges up length out from generative origin -- no longer knowing anything but dispersion, the scattering of values of a frequency distribution from an average -- I find this morning I am wood-smoke meeting sun-breeze proximate to bird-song. Showing itself, morning practice disorganizes -- breaks up, moves and scatters in different directions.
"As if God were appealing through us." As if God were making an earnest plea. As if we feel emitted the power of arousing a sympathetic response. As if an attraction arises for rehearing. As if something might be sensed through soundless sunlight, something not uttered aloud -- seeking to be worded and enfleshed again.
"My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.
But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and
has come to life again; he was lost and has been found."
(Luke 15:31-32)
The older brother's confusion is understandable. The father has not told him everything. The father has not explained water and fire, air and earth -- nor has he revealed at length what home is, nor the notions of here and there, arrive and depart, lost and found. There is a gap between this and that no amount of glue nor reassurance solidifies. Into that empty holding place we fall.
Scholars of symbol and consciousness say the going away is the coming back, the falling down is the lifting up, being born is dying, death is new life.
Today is the first day of spring. In morning stillness my solitude seeks no relief.
I glance at what Paul offers into view:
"Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old
things have passed away;
behold, new things have come.
And all this is from God...".
Shine and echo.
All this.
Is that.
.....................
The older brother is distraught.
He is agitated with doubt or mental conflict. If one has never left home, and is not certain they are at home, it is not easy to convince them they are truly welcome, or they'd be welcome back if they wandered away.
Deep green needles glow
against a cobalt sky.
They radiate something only
a few can sense.
Snow white peaks,
summits shrouded in clouds,
shine and echo...
shine and echo
through both sides of the skin line.
In all this lies some deep
implication, yet when I try to
say more, I become silent, mute.
- Ji Aoi Isshi
Morning sun melts dooryard snow into brown earth. Smoke from cabin chimney. The women and dogs sit. Wisp of smoke from kitchen chimney, like quiet murmur of aspiration, faintly acknowledged prayer muttered in mind at far edge of belief unsure it goes anywhere.
Brothers and sisters: Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old
things have passed away; behold, new things have come. And all this is
from God, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the
ministry of reconciliation, namely, God was reconciling the world to
himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and
entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. So we are ambassadors for
Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of
Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who did
not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.
(2 Corinthians 5:17-21)
We go about the morning, each their own way. I am irresolute. Like smoke urged by breeze north-northwest, once its breath emerges up length out from generative origin -- no longer knowing anything but dispersion, the scattering of values of a frequency distribution from an average -- I find this morning I am wood-smoke meeting sun-breeze proximate to bird-song. Showing itself, morning practice disorganizes -- breaks up, moves and scatters in different directions.
"As if God were appealing through us." As if God were making an earnest plea. As if we feel emitted the power of arousing a sympathetic response. As if an attraction arises for rehearing. As if something might be sensed through soundless sunlight, something not uttered aloud -- seeking to be worded and enfleshed again.
"My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.
But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and
has come to life again; he was lost and has been found."
(Luke 15:31-32)
The older brother's confusion is understandable. The father has not told him everything. The father has not explained water and fire, air and earth -- nor has he revealed at length what home is, nor the notions of here and there, arrive and depart, lost and found. There is a gap between this and that no amount of glue nor reassurance solidifies. Into that empty holding place we fall.
Scholars of symbol and consciousness say the going away is the coming back, the falling down is the lifting up, being born is dying, death is new life.
Today is the first day of spring. In morning stillness my solitude seeks no relief.
I glance at what Paul offers into view:
"Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old
things have passed away;
behold, new things have come.
And all this is from God...".
Shine and echo.
All this.
Is that.
Friday, March 19, 2004
Sawing firewood, I watch sawdust fall on snow.
Log gives itself to half.
Across driveway from kitchen chimney white smoke.
On Freedom Mountain
There are many white clouds
That accompany the moon
On Freedom Mountain
Sometimes pure winds and many
Good things come to report
That another mountain is even
More special.
Mindless, the white clouds
Spread over the great void
Of the sky.
They are like snowflakes on a
Red hot stove
They send rain to the four quarters
Without discriminating between
This or that.
Here all things are happy.
- T'aego (1301-1382)
It is feast of Joseph, saint and husband of Mary. Sister's anniversary of birth. One year since war on Iraq by American administration. We do work with numbers while keeping doors of shop closed. Mass this morning in Rockland. Vespers in cabin this evening.
We pray for all hurt and killed in Iraq. We mourn the destruction and look forward to the reformation of two countries in rekindled hope and replacement of wrong done with what is right.
Joseph, it is said, did what is right.
He rises up in the darkness, a light for the upright,
compassionate, generous, and just.
Happy the man who takes pity and lends, who directs his affairs with wisdom --
he will never be shaken.
-- from Psalm 111 (112)
Joseph, husband of Mary, in Catholic tradition is Protector of the Universal Church and Patron Saint of Fathers, Workers, and the Dying
Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.
Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit; and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to send her away quietly. But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and he will save his people to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son; and he called his name Jesus.
(- Matthew 1: 16, 18-21, 24a)
When we fail to protect truth, the innocent, or common decency, we fail to allow what is conceived of the Holy Spirit to come into our midst. It is a dangerous time and more dangerous practice to send away truth, innocence, or community wisdom. The consolation of community transcends the arrogance of power. It is a troubling set of revelations Americans are faced with -- misinformation and intentional deception about the war, medical benefits, corporate malfeasance, and matters pertaining to political ideology taking precedence over democratic and constitutional governance.
Hardly the meditation for the Feast of Joseph!
Joseph, rather, was a just man -- that's what Christian scripture said of him. He protected what was of the Holy Spirit, the gift of God through Mary in Jesus.
Joseph quietly prevailed.
Like sawdust mingling with snow on ground, we fall to earth our mother, invited to give ourselves in benefit to all who rise there-from.
Fire in woodstove warms.
Quietly.
Log gives itself to half.
Across driveway from kitchen chimney white smoke.
On Freedom Mountain
There are many white clouds
That accompany the moon
On Freedom Mountain
Sometimes pure winds and many
Good things come to report
That another mountain is even
More special.
Mindless, the white clouds
Spread over the great void
Of the sky.
They are like snowflakes on a
Red hot stove
They send rain to the four quarters
Without discriminating between
This or that.
Here all things are happy.
- T'aego (1301-1382)
It is feast of Joseph, saint and husband of Mary. Sister's anniversary of birth. One year since war on Iraq by American administration. We do work with numbers while keeping doors of shop closed. Mass this morning in Rockland. Vespers in cabin this evening.
We pray for all hurt and killed in Iraq. We mourn the destruction and look forward to the reformation of two countries in rekindled hope and replacement of wrong done with what is right.
Joseph, it is said, did what is right.
He rises up in the darkness, a light for the upright,
compassionate, generous, and just.
Happy the man who takes pity and lends, who directs his affairs with wisdom --
he will never be shaken.
-- from Psalm 111 (112)
Joseph, husband of Mary, in Catholic tradition is Protector of the Universal Church and Patron Saint of Fathers, Workers, and the Dying
Jacob was the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.
Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child of the Holy Spirit; and her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to send her away quietly. But as he considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying "Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit; she will bear a son, and he will save his people to fulfil what the Lord had spoken by the prophet. When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son; and he called his name Jesus.
(- Matthew 1: 16, 18-21, 24a)
When we fail to protect truth, the innocent, or common decency, we fail to allow what is conceived of the Holy Spirit to come into our midst. It is a dangerous time and more dangerous practice to send away truth, innocence, or community wisdom. The consolation of community transcends the arrogance of power. It is a troubling set of revelations Americans are faced with -- misinformation and intentional deception about the war, medical benefits, corporate malfeasance, and matters pertaining to political ideology taking precedence over democratic and constitutional governance.
Hardly the meditation for the Feast of Joseph!
Joseph, rather, was a just man -- that's what Christian scripture said of him. He protected what was of the Holy Spirit, the gift of God through Mary in Jesus.
Joseph quietly prevailed.
Like sawdust mingling with snow on ground, we fall to earth our mother, invited to give ourselves in benefit to all who rise there-from.
Fire in woodstove warms.
Quietly.
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Note: Closed today, Thursday. No evening conversation.
........................
One year ago we went to war. We invaded Iraq. Saddam Hussein is under arrest. We remain at war.
If you memorize slogans,
you are unable to make
subtle adaptations according
to the situation.
It is not that there is no
way to teach insight to learners,
but once you have learned a way,
it is essential that you get
it to work completely.
If you just stick to your
teacher's school and memorize slogans,
this is not enlightenment,
it is a part of intellectual knowledge.
- Fayan
One year later we have heard the slogans of war ad nauseam. These days we hear the slap-and-slight rhetoric, pre-mature election slurs-and-slander that threaten to sicken airwaves the next eight months. When truth is a commodity bought and sold the only voices we hear are salesmen pitching their wares.
Do not trust in princes to save you, they are only sons of men.
One day their breath will leave them, they will return to the ground; on that day perish all their plans.
-- from Psalm 145 (146)
Until we understand what "save" means, we are enslaved ears to men with money telling us what their handlers tell them will sway us to choose their brand of liberation.
Philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote:
To free really means to spare. The sparing itself consists not only in the fact that we do not harm the one whom we spare. Real sparing is something positive and takes place when we leave something beforehand in its own nature, when we return it specifically to its being, when we "free" it in the real sense of the word into a preserve of peace. To dwell, to be set at peace, means to remain at peace within the free sphere that safeguards each thing in its nature. The fundamental character of dwelling is this sparing and preserving. It pervades dwelling in its whole range. That range reveals itself to us as soon as we reflect that human being consists in dwelling and, indeed, dwelling in the sense of the stay of mortals on the earth.
But "on the earth" already means "under the sky." Both of these also mean, "remaining before the divinities" and include a "belonging to men's being with one another." By a primal oneness the four -- earth and sky, divinities and mortals -- belong together in one.
( from "Building Dwelling Thinking," by Martin Heidegger, in Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter, Harper Colophon Books, New York, 1971.)
We get lost in war. Fog shrouds rationale, intention, and motivation. War is its own monstrous and devouring act of destruction. Once released, war slaps aside its keepers and takes its own direction. It travels from town to town, continent to continent, and face to face -- and in its travels spreads unleashed hostility and deception on every side.
The sacraments of "save" and "free" are waiting to be administered -- they wait for truthful, wise, and humble hands. We look at our hands. We turn them this way and that. We close them, and we open them. We know they are alive as we are alive. We know they can effect death.
Mortals dwell in that they save the earth -- taking the word in the old sense still known to Lessing. Saving does not only snatch something from a danger. To save really means to set something free into its own presencing. To save the earth is more than to exploit it or even wear it out. Saving the earth does not master the earth and does not subjugate it, which is merely one step from spoliation. (Heidegger)
When we subjugate, we spoil. War spoils, and then takes the spoils of war back home. Spoliation, contact by contact, infects each and every place it reaches -- word-by-word, pretense-by-pretense -- plundering.
We are led to believe there is a choice:
-- Support the war and the troops or condemn both;
-- Love the political policies of current leaders or pursue traitorous dissenting opinions;
-- Live in terrified fear and readiness to retaliate or embrace cowardly appeasement by seeking peaceful resolution.
These are false choices framed by cynical thinking. Spoilt thought creates words to further disturb minds already inebriated and confused by war.
The Lord frees prisoners, he gives light to the blind, he raises the fallen.
The Lord loves the upright, cares for strangers, sustains orphans and widows; but the wicked he sends astray.
--from Psalm 145 (146)
Faith is sorely disheveled. So much has been sent astray. We don't know who or what to believe. Crisis unsettles our spirit.
On this anniversary, hermitage enfolds. Solitude and stillness, muted understanding below attentive listening, brittle prayer with sensitive skepticism -- these uncertainties encircle as silence seeps deeper within.
What the contemplative hermit nun wrote last week echoes, "I have a great distrust of words these days."
In this sad marking of war's year, I wonder -- how set something free into its own presencing?
How dwell this world safe and free?
Completely?
Lord?
........................
One year ago we went to war. We invaded Iraq. Saddam Hussein is under arrest. We remain at war.
If you memorize slogans,
you are unable to make
subtle adaptations according
to the situation.
It is not that there is no
way to teach insight to learners,
but once you have learned a way,
it is essential that you get
it to work completely.
If you just stick to your
teacher's school and memorize slogans,
this is not enlightenment,
it is a part of intellectual knowledge.
- Fayan
One year later we have heard the slogans of war ad nauseam. These days we hear the slap-and-slight rhetoric, pre-mature election slurs-and-slander that threaten to sicken airwaves the next eight months. When truth is a commodity bought and sold the only voices we hear are salesmen pitching their wares.
Do not trust in princes to save you, they are only sons of men.
One day their breath will leave them, they will return to the ground; on that day perish all their plans.
-- from Psalm 145 (146)
Until we understand what "save" means, we are enslaved ears to men with money telling us what their handlers tell them will sway us to choose their brand of liberation.
Philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote:
To free really means to spare. The sparing itself consists not only in the fact that we do not harm the one whom we spare. Real sparing is something positive and takes place when we leave something beforehand in its own nature, when we return it specifically to its being, when we "free" it in the real sense of the word into a preserve of peace. To dwell, to be set at peace, means to remain at peace within the free sphere that safeguards each thing in its nature. The fundamental character of dwelling is this sparing and preserving. It pervades dwelling in its whole range. That range reveals itself to us as soon as we reflect that human being consists in dwelling and, indeed, dwelling in the sense of the stay of mortals on the earth.
But "on the earth" already means "under the sky." Both of these also mean, "remaining before the divinities" and include a "belonging to men's being with one another." By a primal oneness the four -- earth and sky, divinities and mortals -- belong together in one.
( from "Building Dwelling Thinking," by Martin Heidegger, in Poetry, Language, Thought, translated by Albert Hofstadter, Harper Colophon Books, New York, 1971.)
We get lost in war. Fog shrouds rationale, intention, and motivation. War is its own monstrous and devouring act of destruction. Once released, war slaps aside its keepers and takes its own direction. It travels from town to town, continent to continent, and face to face -- and in its travels spreads unleashed hostility and deception on every side.
The sacraments of "save" and "free" are waiting to be administered -- they wait for truthful, wise, and humble hands. We look at our hands. We turn them this way and that. We close them, and we open them. We know they are alive as we are alive. We know they can effect death.
Mortals dwell in that they save the earth -- taking the word in the old sense still known to Lessing. Saving does not only snatch something from a danger. To save really means to set something free into its own presencing. To save the earth is more than to exploit it or even wear it out. Saving the earth does not master the earth and does not subjugate it, which is merely one step from spoliation. (Heidegger)
When we subjugate, we spoil. War spoils, and then takes the spoils of war back home. Spoliation, contact by contact, infects each and every place it reaches -- word-by-word, pretense-by-pretense -- plundering.
We are led to believe there is a choice:
-- Support the war and the troops or condemn both;
-- Love the political policies of current leaders or pursue traitorous dissenting opinions;
-- Live in terrified fear and readiness to retaliate or embrace cowardly appeasement by seeking peaceful resolution.
These are false choices framed by cynical thinking. Spoilt thought creates words to further disturb minds already inebriated and confused by war.
The Lord frees prisoners, he gives light to the blind, he raises the fallen.
The Lord loves the upright, cares for strangers, sustains orphans and widows; but the wicked he sends astray.
--from Psalm 145 (146)
Faith is sorely disheveled. So much has been sent astray. We don't know who or what to believe. Crisis unsettles our spirit.
On this anniversary, hermitage enfolds. Solitude and stillness, muted understanding below attentive listening, brittle prayer with sensitive skepticism -- these uncertainties encircle as silence seeps deeper within.
What the contemplative hermit nun wrote last week echoes, "I have a great distrust of words these days."
In this sad marking of war's year, I wonder -- how set something free into its own presencing?
How dwell this world safe and free?
Completely?
Lord?
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Note: Closed today, Wednesday. No evening conversation.
.....
Irish wear green while ground in Maine wears white following snow.
It is less and less desirable to leave home, I am content to listen to the words -- "The greatest revelation is stillness." (Lao-Tzu)
(These words are helpful now that Cesco takes to wrapping himself around rollers of chair under desk. One unmindful move and he will yelp,)
It is no longer a matter of telling about some practice or insight grasped with delight. If one is not it, words become mere list and sightseeing guide in tourist glossy magazine. There is too much of what is not here.
Now and then
You must long for the
Freedom of the deep woods
I, too, cherish
Such thoughts.
- Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831)
What is seen in silence, in deep woods, is the mere sight and nodded greeting of one another passing en route elsewhere.
Moses said to the Lord: "Show me thy glory". The Lord answered: "I will shew thee all good, and I will proclaim in the name of the Lord before thee: and I will have mercy on whom I will, and I will be merciful to whom it shall please me". And he added: "Thou canst not see my face: for man shall not see me, and live. Behold there is a place with me, and thou shalt stand upon the rock. And when my glory shall pass, I will set thee in a hole of the rock, and protect thee with my right hand till I pass. I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see me from behind; but my face thou canst not see".
(Exodus 33:7 - 34:35)
Heisenberg, if not Moses, understood -- that which looks cannot see what is not there, but here, and here, and here in the looking. "From behind" seems to be the vantage view of retrospect -- twin ocular conjecture looking through suppose and surmise.
What has been seen -- moving away -- is what we talk about. What is seeing -- undifferentiated presence -- is revealed in silence and stillness.
We speak so much, perhaps too much, because the rush-away impulse to tell where we've been is strong conditioning. Stillness and silence as a way of being in the moment seeing is unusual prayer.
M: The real enables the unreal to appear and causes it to disappear. The succession of transient moments creates the illusion of time, but the timeless reality of pure being is not in movement, for all movement requires a motionless background. It is itself the background. Once you have found it in yourself, you know that you had never lost that independent being, independent of all divisions and separations. But don't look for it in consciousness, you will not find it there. Don't look for it anywhere, for nothing contains it. On the contrary it contains everything and manifests everything. It is like the daylight that makes everything visible while itself remaining invisible.
Q: Sir, of what use to me is your telling me that reality cannot be found in consciousness? Where else am I to look for it? How do you apprehend it?
M: It is quite simple. I ask you what is the taste in your mouth, all you can do is say: It is neither sweet nor bitter, nor sour nor astringent; it is what remains when all these tastes are not. Similarly, when all distinctions and reactions are no more, what remains is reality, simple and solid.
(pp.409-410, in I Am That, Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, c.1973)
What remains when all else is gone?
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God
If you say, "Show me your God", I will say to you, "Show me what kind of person you are, and I will show you my God". Show me then whether the eyes of your mind can see, and the ears of your heart hear.
(From the book addressed to Autolycus by Saint Theophilus of Antioch, bishop) (Universalis.com)
Snow falls again through brighter light.
Two dogs snooze underfoot.
I greet my Irish family and ancestors.
They're gone here.
.....
Irish wear green while ground in Maine wears white following snow.
It is less and less desirable to leave home, I am content to listen to the words -- "The greatest revelation is stillness." (Lao-Tzu)
(These words are helpful now that Cesco takes to wrapping himself around rollers of chair under desk. One unmindful move and he will yelp,)
It is no longer a matter of telling about some practice or insight grasped with delight. If one is not it, words become mere list and sightseeing guide in tourist glossy magazine. There is too much of what is not here.
Now and then
You must long for the
Freedom of the deep woods
I, too, cherish
Such thoughts.
- Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831)
What is seen in silence, in deep woods, is the mere sight and nodded greeting of one another passing en route elsewhere.
Moses said to the Lord: "Show me thy glory". The Lord answered: "I will shew thee all good, and I will proclaim in the name of the Lord before thee: and I will have mercy on whom I will, and I will be merciful to whom it shall please me". And he added: "Thou canst not see my face: for man shall not see me, and live. Behold there is a place with me, and thou shalt stand upon the rock. And when my glory shall pass, I will set thee in a hole of the rock, and protect thee with my right hand till I pass. I will take away my hand, and thou shalt see me from behind; but my face thou canst not see".
(Exodus 33:7 - 34:35)
Heisenberg, if not Moses, understood -- that which looks cannot see what is not there, but here, and here, and here in the looking. "From behind" seems to be the vantage view of retrospect -- twin ocular conjecture looking through suppose and surmise.
What has been seen -- moving away -- is what we talk about. What is seeing -- undifferentiated presence -- is revealed in silence and stillness.
We speak so much, perhaps too much, because the rush-away impulse to tell where we've been is strong conditioning. Stillness and silence as a way of being in the moment seeing is unusual prayer.
M: The real enables the unreal to appear and causes it to disappear. The succession of transient moments creates the illusion of time, but the timeless reality of pure being is not in movement, for all movement requires a motionless background. It is itself the background. Once you have found it in yourself, you know that you had never lost that independent being, independent of all divisions and separations. But don't look for it in consciousness, you will not find it there. Don't look for it anywhere, for nothing contains it. On the contrary it contains everything and manifests everything. It is like the daylight that makes everything visible while itself remaining invisible.
Q: Sir, of what use to me is your telling me that reality cannot be found in consciousness? Where else am I to look for it? How do you apprehend it?
M: It is quite simple. I ask you what is the taste in your mouth, all you can do is say: It is neither sweet nor bitter, nor sour nor astringent; it is what remains when all these tastes are not. Similarly, when all distinctions and reactions are no more, what remains is reality, simple and solid.
(pp.409-410, in I Am That, Talks with Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, c.1973)
What remains when all else is gone?
Blessed are the clean of heart, for they will see God
If you say, "Show me your God", I will say to you, "Show me what kind of person you are, and I will show you my God". Show me then whether the eyes of your mind can see, and the ears of your heart hear.
(From the book addressed to Autolycus by Saint Theophilus of Antioch, bishop) (Universalis.com)
Snow falls again through brighter light.
Two dogs snooze underfoot.
I greet my Irish family and ancestors.
They're gone here.
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Note: Closed Tuesday and Wednesday. No evening conversations
....................
Snow.
Feeders full of seed.
If you want to be free,
Get to know your real self.
It has no form, no appearance,
No root, no basis, no abode,
But is lively and buoyant.
It responds with versatile facility,
But its function cannot be located.
Therefore when you look for it,
You become further from it;
When you seek it
You turn away from it all the more.
- Linji (d. 867)
Cat dismantles house.
No turning away.
....................
Snow.
Feeders full of seed.
If you want to be free,
Get to know your real self.
It has no form, no appearance,
No root, no basis, no abode,
But is lively and buoyant.
It responds with versatile facility,
But its function cannot be located.
Therefore when you look for it,
You become further from it;
When you seek it
You turn away from it all the more.
- Linji (d. 867)
Cat dismantles house.
No turning away.
Monday, March 15, 2004
It is a practice seeing.
Two brass candle tops and one glass cap three candles in chapel/zendo cabin. Glass atop single candle lighting MoGLIAD, (Mother and Child icon with words "Mother of God, Light In All Darkness.") Brass on two candles inserted in wrought iron wall mount retrieved from pile for dump across from my sister's house during vigil her final days.
The mute glow!
Following sitting at Sunday Evening Practice we chant Vespers/Evening Prayer. More than the words of psalms, more than the descending chant tones, is the fact of it. Stepping into the stream, becoming prayer tumbling innumerable furrows of faith, we join voices from our solitude longing to praise and ponder the Sacred One welling up from each and all.
Waking me up
To the spring that's come
Water trickles down
The valley, and long crag-bound ice
Now cracks open, slides free.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)
Two of us -- 40 minutes sitting, 7 minutes mindfully walking the small space, then chanting Vespers (a change in routine from Heart Sutra or Compline -- it's only us.) Extinguishing candles following bell-toll at end -- we bow, close door, don shoes, walk path to barn, retrieve lanterns en route, pass through mud room with its faint smell of last week's skunk, and are greeted by two dogs and cat in kitchen where soup simmers.
Holy is his name, and much to be feared.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
To those who fear him comes true understanding,
and his praise endures for ever and ever.
(-- from Vespers, Psalm 110 (111), Universalis.com)
At 4am I step over Cesco and accompany Mu-ge to kitchen. I thought it was 5. Now blue-gray light widens over dusting of snow fallen through night.
Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, to follow in his path.
He committed no sin, in his speech there was no deceit;
when they cursed him, he did not curse them;
when he suffered, he did not threaten retribution, but committed them to the one just judge.
He endured our sins in the sufferings of his body on the tree,
so that we would die to our sins and live for righteousness --
and by his bruises you have been healed.
(Sunday Vespers, Canticle 1 Peter 2)
We must allow all things to speak for themselves -- each thing to speak itself.
God is Itself speaking. We sound what is sounding through.
Breath, instrument and sound are not three things.
Comes dawn -- morning prayer from within everything raises seeing God.
Two brass candle tops and one glass cap three candles in chapel/zendo cabin. Glass atop single candle lighting MoGLIAD, (Mother and Child icon with words "Mother of God, Light In All Darkness.") Brass on two candles inserted in wrought iron wall mount retrieved from pile for dump across from my sister's house during vigil her final days.
The mute glow!
Following sitting at Sunday Evening Practice we chant Vespers/Evening Prayer. More than the words of psalms, more than the descending chant tones, is the fact of it. Stepping into the stream, becoming prayer tumbling innumerable furrows of faith, we join voices from our solitude longing to praise and ponder the Sacred One welling up from each and all.
Waking me up
To the spring that's come
Water trickles down
The valley, and long crag-bound ice
Now cracks open, slides free.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)
Two of us -- 40 minutes sitting, 7 minutes mindfully walking the small space, then chanting Vespers (a change in routine from Heart Sutra or Compline -- it's only us.) Extinguishing candles following bell-toll at end -- we bow, close door, don shoes, walk path to barn, retrieve lanterns en route, pass through mud room with its faint smell of last week's skunk, and are greeted by two dogs and cat in kitchen where soup simmers.
Holy is his name, and much to be feared.
The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.
To those who fear him comes true understanding,
and his praise endures for ever and ever.
(-- from Vespers, Psalm 110 (111), Universalis.com)
At 4am I step over Cesco and accompany Mu-ge to kitchen. I thought it was 5. Now blue-gray light widens over dusting of snow fallen through night.
Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, to follow in his path.
He committed no sin, in his speech there was no deceit;
when they cursed him, he did not curse them;
when he suffered, he did not threaten retribution, but committed them to the one just judge.
He endured our sins in the sufferings of his body on the tree,
so that we would die to our sins and live for righteousness --
and by his bruises you have been healed.
(Sunday Vespers, Canticle 1 Peter 2)
We must allow all things to speak for themselves -- each thing to speak itself.
God is Itself speaking. We sound what is sounding through.
Breath, instrument and sound are not three things.
Comes dawn -- morning prayer from within everything raises seeing God.
Sunday, March 14, 2004
Love is itself as no-other is itself.
Awareness makes this so.
When water is pure and sparkling clear
You see straight to the bottom
When your mind holds no concern
No circumstance can turn you
And once your mind doesn't stray
A kalpa has no changes
From such awareness nothing hides.
- Cold Mountain
The notion that "nothing hides" leads me to ask -- "Where does nothing hide?"
Nothing hides at the center of each place we look, each time we look for something. So many times we say when asked what we are looking for, --"Nothing."
Nothing is not something. Nothing is where something leaves off and we are left with merely what is there, with what is itself.
God is what is itself, no other. Love is awareness. Love is itself.
A sleepy-eyed grandam
Encounters herself in an old mirror.
Clearly she sees a face
But it doesn't resemble hers at all.
Too bad, with a muddled head,
She tries to recognize her reflection.
( -- Tozan Ryokai, 807-869)
The implication of Tozan's verse is that the grandlady does see her "self" in God, but the "self" she sees is not the true "Self." And the reason she does not see the true "Self" is that her head (or her mind) is "muddled," that is to say, too preoccupied with many things.
(p. 70, in The Contemplative Experience, erotic love and spiritual union, by Joseph Chu-Cong O.C.S.O.)
What then are we to do? What then are we to be?
In a time when institutions, both church and state, experience fore-shocks of deconstruction, nothing might help. If nations and churches are shaken and collapse, there will be nothing left to ponder.
What is nothing?
We like the word 'spirit.' We're uncomfortable with the word 'nothing.'
If we try not to be attached to words, the underlying reality they only point to remains as it is, not reliant on what it has been called. These words (forms) are also emptiness (no-thing). And emptiness is form. This underpinning experience of 'here/gone' or 'seen/unseen' is common to us.
Do we genuinely love life?
Is each one of us (herself, himself) itself?
Love is itself as no-other is itself.
I'll have to ponder this.
Awareness makes this so.
When water is pure and sparkling clear
You see straight to the bottom
When your mind holds no concern
No circumstance can turn you
And once your mind doesn't stray
A kalpa has no changes
From such awareness nothing hides.
- Cold Mountain
The notion that "nothing hides" leads me to ask -- "Where does nothing hide?"
Nothing hides at the center of each place we look, each time we look for something. So many times we say when asked what we are looking for, --"Nothing."
Nothing is not something. Nothing is where something leaves off and we are left with merely what is there, with what is itself.
God is what is itself, no other. Love is awareness. Love is itself.
A sleepy-eyed grandam
Encounters herself in an old mirror.
Clearly she sees a face
But it doesn't resemble hers at all.
Too bad, with a muddled head,
She tries to recognize her reflection.
( -- Tozan Ryokai, 807-869)
The implication of Tozan's verse is that the grandlady does see her "self" in God, but the "self" she sees is not the true "Self." And the reason she does not see the true "Self" is that her head (or her mind) is "muddled," that is to say, too preoccupied with many things.
(p. 70, in The Contemplative Experience, erotic love and spiritual union, by Joseph Chu-Cong O.C.S.O.)
What then are we to do? What then are we to be?
In a time when institutions, both church and state, experience fore-shocks of deconstruction, nothing might help. If nations and churches are shaken and collapse, there will be nothing left to ponder.
What is nothing?
We like the word 'spirit.' We're uncomfortable with the word 'nothing.'
If we try not to be attached to words, the underlying reality they only point to remains as it is, not reliant on what it has been called. These words (forms) are also emptiness (no-thing). And emptiness is form. This underpinning experience of 'here/gone' or 'seen/unseen' is common to us.
Do we genuinely love life?
Is each one of us (herself, himself) itself?
Love is itself as no-other is itself.
I'll have to ponder this.
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