Rain falls through silence splashing roof and earth.
The skies tell the story of the glory of God,
the firmament proclaims the work of his hands;
day pours out the news to day,
night passes to night the knowledge.
Not a speech, not a word,
not a voice goes unheard.
Their sound is spread throughout the earth,
their message to all the corners of the world.
(from Psalm 19)
Mere loveliness of Sunday Evening Practice. Cabin under rain. Deceased elder Janet's table in middle room during rain. Trungpa's story of Buddha's (as Delia called it) Christmas story. There are times when hermitage feels like what it is.
Song of T'aego Hermitage
I've lived in this hermitage
How long I don't know
Deep and secret and
Without obstructions
Heaven and earth meet
Like box and cover:
There's no turning toward
Or turning away.
I do not stay in the east, west,
South or north
The jewel tower and the jade palace
Do not stand opposite me.
I do not take guidelines from
Bodhidharma as a model
As the light shines freely through
Eighty four thousand gates
- T'aego (1301-1382)
Rain is guideline. In middle-night, at least, it is teacher. You see -- community is teacher, teacher is learning, and learning is community. It rains now. I recall other 3:30am's in Trappist guest chapel under rain-chant roof just before entoning voice began night office -- "O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare your praise." Invitation joining rain in plain-chant.
Atavistic
I wanted to walk without clothing
in the woods beside the creek,
and to come to the barn at night.
and sleep beside the horses, curled
in the smell and scratch of hay
with the bitch and pups.
The life of the house was flat,
filled with monotonous talking,
passing to and fro among the rooms,
and for what. My mother hated
animals, the way they ate the
food and dirtied the floor.
They were her enemies; she fought
their right to be there and
would have wiped them off the earth
if she could have. If a cat or a dog
came too close to the back door she
threw scalding water on it, and
was righteous in her anger, shouting
that they were not human and
didn't feel real pain.
If we must choose sides, I said
as a child, I take
the side of the animals.
(Poem: "Atavistic" by Irene McKinney from Vivid Companion. © Vandalia Press. )
at·a·vism n.
1. The reappearance of a characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence, usually caused by the chance recombination of genes.
2. An individual or a part that exhibits atavism. Also called throwback.
3. The return of a trait or recurrence of previous behavior after a period of absence.
[French atavisme, from Latin atavus, ancestor : atta, father + avus, grandfather; see awo- in Indo-European Roots.]
Mother Church sometimes sides with scalding water and not gentle healing rain. Thomas Cahill said on Meet the Press Sunday morning that Jesus communed with the divorced woman by the well in Gospel story, and did so with clarity and kindness. Why, he wondered, won't the Catholic Church do the same? It does not allow divorced people to receive communion -- to commune with Jesus.
Andrew Sullivan elsewhere warns that all this presentation of softer, kinder image of new pope will wear away and the former Joseph Ratzinger will throwback.
U.S. Prison Population Keeps Growing (From Times Wire Services)
Growing at a rate of about 900 inmates each week starting in mid-2003, by mid-2004 the nation's prisons and jails held 2.1 million people, or one in every 138 U.S. residents, the government reported.
By June 30, there were 48,000 more inmates, or 2.3%, more than the year before, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The total inmate population has hovered around 2 million for the last few years, reaching 2.1 million on June 30, 2002, and just below that mark a year later.
While the crime rate has fallen over the last decade, the number of people in prison and jail is outpacing the number of inmates released, the report said. (latimes.com)
During his five years in the SuperMax, Steve said, he wrote some children's books and his life story. The children's books are for his own kids. The cleaned up autobiography -- he's not sure who that's for. K.J. took his social studies test Friday. He said his brain hurt. Joe will get a rest for 30 days away from ordinary duties. He said he did something stupid. We thought it might be a good chance to do some writing for the course. Chris, Greg, and I reviewed material that said comma is called for before conjunction.
We take pause as we connect. The act of joining, of binding together -- One resulting from or embodying a union -- this is the invitation to commune. Communion curls in the smell and scratch of hay; encounters the purrs and yelps as they spontaneously occur.
The Rain
All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.
What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it
that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me
something other than this,
something not so insistent --
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.
Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be, for me, like rain,
the getting out
of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.
(Poem by Robert Creeley)
The rain remembers me. It falls. Cat stretches on my lap as words fall under rain -- as in dream where I am dancing with (who is it?) Nicole Kidman or my cousin Janet on gymnasium balcony of old grammar school. Diffidence surprised by grace.
Ah! Sound of first Mourning Dove!
Time has fallen to 5:07am.
The grace of it!
Faint light.
Sunday, April 24, 2005
Thirty years ago Marge inscribed Fowles' The Magus, "Is anything ever what it seems to be?"
Blessed the one who does not follow the counsels of the wicked... (Psalm 1)
With all the banter and bravado surrounding moral and political issues -- such as America's invasion of Iraq -- there is a remarkable inability on the part of the vast majority of us to accurately and insightfully "read" what is taking place. The current president of the United States, the current pope of the Catholic Church, and the newest "individual" in power, namely, the chief executive officers, the hollywood celebrities, the athletic superstars -- all combine to preach a unified gospel. That gospel is that power, wealth, control, and privilege are what really count in this world -- my will, my belief, my talent, my influence, and my exposure.
The gospel teaching of Jesus is scarcely followed by the church founded in his name. Nor are the words "created equal" or "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for all people -- followed faithfully by those entrusted with their care. Add other wise and insightful views such as those by thinkers, mystics, and creative artists and poets throughout history -- these, too, scarcely attended to. We witness a pattern of dull inattentiveness and claim it to be our special freedom -- not seeing it as our sorry fate.
It's the anniversary of the Easter Uprising, in Dublin (1916). A band of Irish nationalists, led by poet Patrick Pearse, occupied the General Post Office and declared Irish independence from Great Britain. The English executed 15 rebels, including Pearse, who promptly became a great Irish martyr.(in The Writer's Almanac, 24April)
Tara Is Grass
The world hath conquered, the wind hath scattered like dust
Alexander, Cæsar, and all that shared their sway:
Tara is grass, and behold how Troy lieth low --
And even the English, perchance their hour will come!
(Poem by Padraic Pearse)
Pretender greats and overbearing weighty celebrants of special election or remittance package -- all go to grass and will be given sod as their paycheck. As will we all. It's just that it is difficult to ignore the element of waste and suffering that follows upon false gospel.
Today I long for something more original. I'd rather we saw something worth sharing life and body.
Tara, Goddess of Peace and Protection
The goddess Tara is worshipped in many forms, but the best known are the peaceful, compassionate White Tara, the goddess Tara who protects and brings health, long life and peace, and the more dynamic Green Tara, who is the goddess Tara that brings fertility to the earth, overcomes obstacles, and saves us from physical and spiritual danger.
In Buddhist tradition, Tara is much greater than a goddess -- she is a female Buddha, an enlightened one was has attained the highest wisdom, capability and compassion. The goddess Tara is "one who can take human form and remain in oneness with the universe".
Best known in her Chinese and Hindu incarnations, a version of the Goddess Tara exists in virtually every culture. Indeed, it is said that the Goddess Tara will assume as many forms on earth as there are needs for by the people.
The Celts called their "Great Goddess" Tara. Her name is thought to be the root of the word Tor, which is a mound of earth or hillock imbued with spiritual energy or connection to the spirit world. In Native American legends, the Tara goddess is known by the "Star Woman".
The ancient goddess Tara in her many incarnations has many gifts to share with contemporary women.
Tara embodies the feminine strengths of great caring and compassion, the ability to endure stressful and even terrifying moments, the acts of creation, and the source of sustenance and protection.
(http://www.goddessgift.com/goddess-myths/goddess_tara.htm)
Maybe it's the full moon, or the damp raw rain in the middle of a depressing news cycle, but I'm ready to declare independence from the idea of nation and country, the idea of race and class, the idea of anyone telling how to become great and secure power and defeat enemies and eliminate threats to your way of acquisitional life.
Socrates, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Gandhi, Krishnamurti, and Robert Lax help with perspective.
And in the beginning was love.
Love made a sphere:
all things grew within it;
the sphere then encompassed
beginnings and endings,
beginning and end.
Love had a compass
whose whirling dance
traced out a sphere of love
in the void: in the center thereof
rose a fountain.
from Circus of the Sun, by Robert Lax)
When I forget sphere, compass, and center -- I forget love. It is a desolate forgetting.
It is during this desolation I attend words reminding what needs to be embodied, great caring and compassion, the ability to endure stressful and even terrifying moments, the acts of creation, and the source of sustenance and protection.
If these words are grass and earth, I miss the counsel of the old sod.
Blessed the one who does not follow the counsels of the wicked... (Psalm 1)
With all the banter and bravado surrounding moral and political issues -- such as America's invasion of Iraq -- there is a remarkable inability on the part of the vast majority of us to accurately and insightfully "read" what is taking place. The current president of the United States, the current pope of the Catholic Church, and the newest "individual" in power, namely, the chief executive officers, the hollywood celebrities, the athletic superstars -- all combine to preach a unified gospel. That gospel is that power, wealth, control, and privilege are what really count in this world -- my will, my belief, my talent, my influence, and my exposure.
The gospel teaching of Jesus is scarcely followed by the church founded in his name. Nor are the words "created equal" or "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for all people -- followed faithfully by those entrusted with their care. Add other wise and insightful views such as those by thinkers, mystics, and creative artists and poets throughout history -- these, too, scarcely attended to. We witness a pattern of dull inattentiveness and claim it to be our special freedom -- not seeing it as our sorry fate.
It's the anniversary of the Easter Uprising, in Dublin (1916). A band of Irish nationalists, led by poet Patrick Pearse, occupied the General Post Office and declared Irish independence from Great Britain. The English executed 15 rebels, including Pearse, who promptly became a great Irish martyr.(in The Writer's Almanac, 24April)
Tara Is Grass
The world hath conquered, the wind hath scattered like dust
Alexander, Cæsar, and all that shared their sway:
Tara is grass, and behold how Troy lieth low --
And even the English, perchance their hour will come!
(Poem by Padraic Pearse)
Pretender greats and overbearing weighty celebrants of special election or remittance package -- all go to grass and will be given sod as their paycheck. As will we all. It's just that it is difficult to ignore the element of waste and suffering that follows upon false gospel.
Today I long for something more original. I'd rather we saw something worth sharing life and body.
Tara, Goddess of Peace and Protection
The goddess Tara is worshipped in many forms, but the best known are the peaceful, compassionate White Tara, the goddess Tara who protects and brings health, long life and peace, and the more dynamic Green Tara, who is the goddess Tara that brings fertility to the earth, overcomes obstacles, and saves us from physical and spiritual danger.
In Buddhist tradition, Tara is much greater than a goddess -- she is a female Buddha, an enlightened one was has attained the highest wisdom, capability and compassion. The goddess Tara is "one who can take human form and remain in oneness with the universe".
Best known in her Chinese and Hindu incarnations, a version of the Goddess Tara exists in virtually every culture. Indeed, it is said that the Goddess Tara will assume as many forms on earth as there are needs for by the people.
The Celts called their "Great Goddess" Tara. Her name is thought to be the root of the word Tor, which is a mound of earth or hillock imbued with spiritual energy or connection to the spirit world. In Native American legends, the Tara goddess is known by the "Star Woman".
The ancient goddess Tara in her many incarnations has many gifts to share with contemporary women.
Tara embodies the feminine strengths of great caring and compassion, the ability to endure stressful and even terrifying moments, the acts of creation, and the source of sustenance and protection.
(http://www.goddessgift.com/goddess-myths/goddess_tara.htm)
Maybe it's the full moon, or the damp raw rain in the middle of a depressing news cycle, but I'm ready to declare independence from the idea of nation and country, the idea of race and class, the idea of anyone telling how to become great and secure power and defeat enemies and eliminate threats to your way of acquisitional life.
Socrates, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Gandhi, Krishnamurti, and Robert Lax help with perspective.
And in the beginning was love.
Love made a sphere:
all things grew within it;
the sphere then encompassed
beginnings and endings,
beginning and end.
Love had a compass
whose whirling dance
traced out a sphere of love
in the void: in the center thereof
rose a fountain.
from Circus of the Sun, by Robert Lax)
When I forget sphere, compass, and center -- I forget love. It is a desolate forgetting.
It is during this desolation I attend words reminding what needs to be embodied, great caring and compassion, the ability to endure stressful and even terrifying moments, the acts of creation, and the source of sustenance and protection.
If these words are grass and earth, I miss the counsel of the old sod.
Friday, April 22, 2005
Return home.
"The brothers usurped." That's what Will said after chapter one of Aurobindo's translation of the Bhagavad Gita begun tonight at the shop. Those that usurp are particularly odious.
Mind is the root of the myriad phenomena. All phenomena are born from mind. If you can completely comprehend mind, the myriad practices are complete. It is like a great tree: all the branches and flowers and fruits grow based on the root. The tree grows only if the root survives. If the root is cut, the tree is sure to die. If you cultivate the Path by comprehending mind, you save effort and success is easy. If you cultivate the Path without comprehending mind, then you waste effort and there is no benefit. Thus we know that all good and evil come from one's own mind. If you seek outside of mind, it is impossible.
- Bodhidharma
Morning teaching. Then conversation in afternoon. It was a long day at prison. In his article a man named Sparrow said that only when he is writing is he a writer. We are reminded that it is not a state of being in which we remain fixed; it is an engaged activity of participation that whiles our existence moment to moment changing.
Nostos
There was an apple tree in the yard --
this would have been
forty years ago -- behind,
only meadows. Drifts
off crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor's yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from tennis courts --
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.
(Poem: "Nostos," by Louise Glück, from Meadowlands (Harper Collins).
Arjuna fights because his home and resources have been usurped by those without regard.
The seduction is not to look. Or, if we happen to look, to explain away what we see.
I think David's complaint in his psalm is the complaint of someone ready to turn and smile at his adversity and its source.
Is it for the dead that you perform your wonders?
Will the ghosts rise up and proclaim you?
In the tomb, will they tell of your kindness?
Will they tell of your faithfulness in the place of the lost?
Will your wonders be known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the land of oblivion?
(from Psalm 88)
The final frame is fresh in our minds. We watch the character as he watches those questioning him, those waiting for a response.
"Yes," he answers.
"Yes they will."
Return home.
"The brothers usurped." That's what Will said after chapter one of Aurobindo's translation of the Bhagavad Gita begun tonight at the shop. Those that usurp are particularly odious.
Mind is the root of the myriad phenomena. All phenomena are born from mind. If you can completely comprehend mind, the myriad practices are complete. It is like a great tree: all the branches and flowers and fruits grow based on the root. The tree grows only if the root survives. If the root is cut, the tree is sure to die. If you cultivate the Path by comprehending mind, you save effort and success is easy. If you cultivate the Path without comprehending mind, then you waste effort and there is no benefit. Thus we know that all good and evil come from one's own mind. If you seek outside of mind, it is impossible.
- Bodhidharma
Morning teaching. Then conversation in afternoon. It was a long day at prison. In his article a man named Sparrow said that only when he is writing is he a writer. We are reminded that it is not a state of being in which we remain fixed; it is an engaged activity of participation that whiles our existence moment to moment changing.
Nostos
There was an apple tree in the yard --
this would have been
forty years ago -- behind,
only meadows. Drifts
off crocus in the damp grass.
I stood at that window:
late April. Spring
flowers in the neighbor's yard.
How many times, really, did the tree
flower on my birthday,
the exact day, not
before, not after? Substitution
of the immutable
for the shifting, the evolving.
Substitution of the image
for relentless earth. What
do I know of this place,
the role of the tree for decades
taken by a bonsai, voices
rising from tennis courts --
Fields. Smell of the tall grass, new cut.
As one expects of a lyric poet.
We look at the world once, in childhood.
The rest is memory.
(Poem: "Nostos," by Louise Glück, from Meadowlands (Harper Collins).
Arjuna fights because his home and resources have been usurped by those without regard.
The seduction is not to look. Or, if we happen to look, to explain away what we see.
I think David's complaint in his psalm is the complaint of someone ready to turn and smile at his adversity and its source.
Is it for the dead that you perform your wonders?
Will the ghosts rise up and proclaim you?
In the tomb, will they tell of your kindness?
Will they tell of your faithfulness in the place of the lost?
Will your wonders be known in the darkness,
or your righteousness in the land of oblivion?
(from Psalm 88)
The final frame is fresh in our minds. We watch the character as he watches those questioning him, those waiting for a response.
"Yes," he answers.
"Yes they will."
Return home.
Thursday, April 21, 2005
Can we travel through the negative? What dwells between what we call the negative and the positive?
Iraq remains a troubling place. The temptation is to run away or explain away the difficulty of the issue that has taken up residence within our hearts, minds, and country. Is there a way to dwell in peace with the horror of Iraq and our involvement in it?
With proliferation of words and sophistication of spin it becomes ever more difficult to discern simple truth. Simple truth, (if there is any), is on its own, as it is, transparent and self-revealing, present and pertinent here and now.
I notice car-bombs exploding in Iraq, military helicopter crashing and burning, 50 bodies of kidnapped Shiites pulled from Tigris River, assassination of political leader, death of human rights worker, attempt to kill prime minister, two US soldiers killed, four wounded in car bombing in the Al-Amil area of Baghdad.
The War News report for April 20 is somber:
Nineteen Iraqis soldiers shot to death in a soccer stadium in Haditha. One child and one adult killed, at least five wounded in car bomb attack aimed at a US patrol in the Amiriyah district of Baghdad. Eight wounded in car bombing near the Bilat police station in Baghdad?s Dora district. Three civilians wounded in a third car bombing in Baghdad. A driver working for the health ministry killed, another individual wounded in attack by gunmen in east Baghdad. One Turkish truck driver killed when his truck struck a mine near Shorjat. Two Iraqi soldiers killed, three insurgents captured in clashes near Dujail. One Iraqi soldier killed, another wounded by mortar fire near Duluiyah. Basra tribal leader assassinated in Zubair. A 50-strong group of guerillas unsuccessfully attempted to overrun one or more local police stations in Mosul on Monday.
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
It's not only war that is troubling. It's the disspiriting explanations and brushoffs made by those who say it is the price of democracy, the cost of freedom. It simply might be the result of ideological blindness, reactionary, self-serving, and power-wielding aggression by one country over another. You can't be sure which it is. You can, if you wish, trust your conscience if it is informed, as well as your heart, if not hardened by cynicism.
It is a long slog from ill-informed conscience and cynical heart to simple truth. I suspect the majority opinion is that there is no simple truth. Here's one: the pope, president, mailman, pet dog, Atlantic salmon, spider, black fly, and early spring ant -- will each die. In fact, as far as we know, every living thing will die. (Absent speculation about afterlife, what we are most conversant with is the duration between birth and death. "Life-Itself" might be the ever-present reality undergirding and transcending temporal existence -- nevertheless, everyone dies.)
Do not imagine that an integral being has the ambition of enlightening the unaware or raising worldly people to the divine realm. To her, there is no self and other, and hence no one to be raised; no heaven and hell, and hence no destination. Therefore her only concern is her own sincerity.
(# 27, from Hua Hu Ching, By Lao Tzu, Translated by Brian Walker)
Is one's own sincerity the only concern? It's an interesting thought. The Latin word "sincerus" means genuine. The genuine actually possesses the alleged or apparent attribute or character. It is questionable, even doubtful, that genuine sincerity is the driving motivation in those perpetrating the chaos in Iraq -- whether American government or insurgent rebels.
sincerity: n 1: an earnest and sincere feeling [syn: earnestness, seriousness] 2: the quality of being open and truthful; not deceitful or hypocritical; "his sincerity inspired belief"; "they demanded some proof of my sincerity" [ant: insincerity] 3: a quality of naturalness and simplicity; "the simple sincerity of folk songs" [syn: unassumingness] 4: the trait of being serious; "a lack of solemnity is not necessarily a lack of seriousness"- Robert Rice [syn: seriousness, earnestness, serious-mindedness] [ant: frivolity] (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sincerity)
A basic ingredient is lacking.
Reconciliation
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever
again, this soil'd world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin -- I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
(Poem: "Reconciliation," by Walt Whitman.)
Are we in danger of making "enemy" anyone not us? As individuals, is this true? As communities? Is it true of us as a nation?
Have we forgotten, or choose not to remember, who we are? In the sphere of Truth (with a capital "T") are we dificient thinkers, forgetting what Being, Life, Love, and Truth call to us to remember?
We have substituted false thinking, saying, they are enemy, they have what we want and we will take it from them, they are other, alien, ungodly, not freedom loving, anti-christs, un-american and thereby inferior, unimportant, and expendable. But more than this false reasoning is a subtext -- even the poor, the sick, the hard-luck folks, the racially religiously ethnically and economically deficient are those who are not white, Christian, Anglo-Saxon, and wealthy.
It is a dangerous opinion and a volatile cynicism that criss-crosses airwaves and jingoistic pages.
It is a troubling time. We are troubled.
A Christen theologian. Anselm of Canterbury, Archbishop, Doctor of the Church, 1033-1109 A.D. -- has his feast celebrated April 21.
He said, "I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand."
O Lord, through your Son you command us, no, you counsel us to ask, and you promise that you will hear us so that our joy may be complete. Lord, I am making the request that you urge us to make through your Wonder-Counsellor. Give me then what you promise to give through your Truth. You, O God, are faithful; grant that I may receive my request, so that my joy may be complete.
Meanwhile, let this hope of mine be in my thoughts and on my tongue; let my heart be filled with it, my voice speak of it; let my soul hunger for it, my body thirst for it, my whole being yearn for it, until I enter into the joy of the Lord, who is Three in One, blessed for ever. Amen.
(From the Proslogion by St Anselm, in Office of Readings)
He hoped for what is promised through Truth.
Do we remember? Do we have memory of the call that once echoed within us? Are we capable of dwelling in that call? Do we possess the courage to live in the midst -- in the middle place between running away and explaining away what is difficult and troubling?
The idea of the call, is, perhaps, Heidegger's most theological concept. He defines the call in Enowning* [*see below] as the "essential swaying of the truth of be-ing in the shape of the last god", a phrase which calls for careful exegesis. "Truth" for Heidegger is something which is always in a state of becoming. It is the "there" [Da] of Dasein: that which is, at once, closest to Dasein's own authentic being, but also furthest away and most difficult for us to grasp. "Truth never 'is' but rather holds sway". As such, it is neither something "out there" to be discovered, nor something "in here", created by subjective and arbitrary opinions, but rather the "midpoint" in a mutual mirroring of call and belonging. Truth is that kind of being which is most fitting to a being in its originary givenness. It is genuineness, "a creative strength for preserving what is given along with . . . creative strength for effecting what is given as a task". This last point touches upon Heidegger's views about how one way aspire to being truthful. Certainly not by the assertion of opinion or perspective. Certainly not by assuming the powers of a Cartesian subject, which makes itself the measure of all things. No. For Heidegger, truthfulness has more to do with the capacity for a "deep awe" in the face of the inscrutability of being. And this is not a comfortable thing at all. Because awe requires that we relinquish our onto-theological passions for objectification, possession and mastery. It requires a recognition that the truth of being actually withdraws from us in proportion to the force of our desire for mastery. Rather than the desire for mastery, Heidegger recommends an aptitude for contemplation: "We must give up the habit of wanting to secure this essential swaying of be-ing as representable for everyone at any time one chooses . . . Rather, we always achieve the uniqueness of the resonance . . . [in the] essential sway of stillness, the most finite and the most unique". In silence, says Heidegger, there is both a capacity to "listen" for the call of authentic being, and an appropriate reticence to name the content of that call with too much inflated certainty. And silence, he says, is "nearness to the last god". But who, or what, is this "last god?" And what has "god" to do with the call to truthfulness?
(from "Martin Heidegger: a theology yet to come," http://www.southcom.com.au/~gjd/heidegger.html)
No easy answers here -- not in the middle-place. The task is to become what Heidegger was pointing to -- to respond to the call of authentic being and become an authentic being.
God, truthfulness, and authentic being are not Three.
Life and death are not Two.
No country, belief, or ideology is the One.
What remains? Where, or to whom, do we belong? Is human dwelling that which dwells in the middle place between negative and positive? Is there room for hope?
Ask, sincerely.
..................
*The only marginal note by Heidegger to this piece in his hand written copy is to be found here and reads 'en-own-ment'. This marginal note says that the memory of being is to be thought out of en-own-ment. Human being belongs along with that which, as the crossing through of being+, calls forth existence, and that thinking which emerges out of existence, in the claim to an original, that is, originating (in distinction from beginning) proposal [Geheißes]. 'Belonging' as that which in appropriating projection turns being toward the essence of human being tells us what 'en-owning' [Ereignen] means. The primary meaning of enowning is, as can be gleaned from Beitrage zur Philosophie: human being conceived as the property [Eigentum] of being (50). Out of the appropriating turning toward of the truth of being+ as the fourfold, the being of human being is determined as 'belonging' to being+ so that human being becomes the being enowned of projection and covering uncovering. Being enowned [Ereignetsein] means: being determined as the 'property' of being. The enowning of turning toward and the being enowned of revealing-concealing have to be understood out of this primordial meaning.
(from TOPOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF NIHILISM, From the debate between Ernst Jünger and Martin Heidegger, by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Introduction: 'On the Line' -- "On: 'The Line'" http://www.onlineoriginals.com/showitem.asp?itemID=287&articleID=13)
Iraq remains a troubling place. The temptation is to run away or explain away the difficulty of the issue that has taken up residence within our hearts, minds, and country. Is there a way to dwell in peace with the horror of Iraq and our involvement in it?
With proliferation of words and sophistication of spin it becomes ever more difficult to discern simple truth. Simple truth, (if there is any), is on its own, as it is, transparent and self-revealing, present and pertinent here and now.
I notice car-bombs exploding in Iraq, military helicopter crashing and burning, 50 bodies of kidnapped Shiites pulled from Tigris River, assassination of political leader, death of human rights worker, attempt to kill prime minister, two US soldiers killed, four wounded in car bombing in the Al-Amil area of Baghdad.
The War News report for April 20 is somber:
Nineteen Iraqis soldiers shot to death in a soccer stadium in Haditha. One child and one adult killed, at least five wounded in car bomb attack aimed at a US patrol in the Amiriyah district of Baghdad. Eight wounded in car bombing near the Bilat police station in Baghdad?s Dora district. Three civilians wounded in a third car bombing in Baghdad. A driver working for the health ministry killed, another individual wounded in attack by gunmen in east Baghdad. One Turkish truck driver killed when his truck struck a mine near Shorjat. Two Iraqi soldiers killed, three insurgents captured in clashes near Dujail. One Iraqi soldier killed, another wounded by mortar fire near Duluiyah. Basra tribal leader assassinated in Zubair. A 50-strong group of guerillas unsuccessfully attempted to overrun one or more local police stations in Mosul on Monday.
http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
It's not only war that is troubling. It's the disspiriting explanations and brushoffs made by those who say it is the price of democracy, the cost of freedom. It simply might be the result of ideological blindness, reactionary, self-serving, and power-wielding aggression by one country over another. You can't be sure which it is. You can, if you wish, trust your conscience if it is informed, as well as your heart, if not hardened by cynicism.
It is a long slog from ill-informed conscience and cynical heart to simple truth. I suspect the majority opinion is that there is no simple truth. Here's one: the pope, president, mailman, pet dog, Atlantic salmon, spider, black fly, and early spring ant -- will each die. In fact, as far as we know, every living thing will die. (Absent speculation about afterlife, what we are most conversant with is the duration between birth and death. "Life-Itself" might be the ever-present reality undergirding and transcending temporal existence -- nevertheless, everyone dies.)
Do not imagine that an integral being has the ambition of enlightening the unaware or raising worldly people to the divine realm. To her, there is no self and other, and hence no one to be raised; no heaven and hell, and hence no destination. Therefore her only concern is her own sincerity.
(# 27, from Hua Hu Ching, By Lao Tzu, Translated by Brian Walker)
Is one's own sincerity the only concern? It's an interesting thought. The Latin word "sincerus" means genuine. The genuine actually possesses the alleged or apparent attribute or character. It is questionable, even doubtful, that genuine sincerity is the driving motivation in those perpetrating the chaos in Iraq -- whether American government or insurgent rebels.
sincerity: n 1: an earnest and sincere feeling [syn: earnestness, seriousness] 2: the quality of being open and truthful; not deceitful or hypocritical; "his sincerity inspired belief"; "they demanded some proof of my sincerity" [ant: insincerity] 3: a quality of naturalness and simplicity; "the simple sincerity of folk songs" [syn: unassumingness] 4: the trait of being serious; "a lack of solemnity is not necessarily a lack of seriousness"- Robert Rice [syn: seriousness, earnestness, serious-mindedness] [ant: frivolity] (http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=sincerity)
A basic ingredient is lacking.
Reconciliation
Word over all, beautiful as the sky,
Beautiful that war and all its deeds of carnage must in time be utterly lost,
That the hands of the sisters Death and Night incessantly softly wash again, and ever
again, this soil'd world;
For my enemy is dead, a man divine as myself is dead,
I look where he lies white-faced and still in the coffin -- I draw near,
Bend down and touch lightly with my lips the white face in the coffin.
(Poem: "Reconciliation," by Walt Whitman.)
Are we in danger of making "enemy" anyone not us? As individuals, is this true? As communities? Is it true of us as a nation?
Have we forgotten, or choose not to remember, who we are? In the sphere of Truth (with a capital "T") are we dificient thinkers, forgetting what Being, Life, Love, and Truth call to us to remember?
We have substituted false thinking, saying, they are enemy, they have what we want and we will take it from them, they are other, alien, ungodly, not freedom loving, anti-christs, un-american and thereby inferior, unimportant, and expendable. But more than this false reasoning is a subtext -- even the poor, the sick, the hard-luck folks, the racially religiously ethnically and economically deficient are those who are not white, Christian, Anglo-Saxon, and wealthy.
It is a dangerous opinion and a volatile cynicism that criss-crosses airwaves and jingoistic pages.
It is a troubling time. We are troubled.
A Christen theologian. Anselm of Canterbury, Archbishop, Doctor of the Church, 1033-1109 A.D. -- has his feast celebrated April 21.
He said, "I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand."
O Lord, through your Son you command us, no, you counsel us to ask, and you promise that you will hear us so that our joy may be complete. Lord, I am making the request that you urge us to make through your Wonder-Counsellor. Give me then what you promise to give through your Truth. You, O God, are faithful; grant that I may receive my request, so that my joy may be complete.
Meanwhile, let this hope of mine be in my thoughts and on my tongue; let my heart be filled with it, my voice speak of it; let my soul hunger for it, my body thirst for it, my whole being yearn for it, until I enter into the joy of the Lord, who is Three in One, blessed for ever. Amen.
(From the Proslogion by St Anselm, in Office of Readings)
He hoped for what is promised through Truth.
Do we remember? Do we have memory of the call that once echoed within us? Are we capable of dwelling in that call? Do we possess the courage to live in the midst -- in the middle place between running away and explaining away what is difficult and troubling?
The idea of the call, is, perhaps, Heidegger's most theological concept. He defines the call in Enowning* [*see below] as the "essential swaying of the truth of be-ing in the shape of the last god", a phrase which calls for careful exegesis. "Truth" for Heidegger is something which is always in a state of becoming. It is the "there" [Da] of Dasein: that which is, at once, closest to Dasein's own authentic being, but also furthest away and most difficult for us to grasp. "Truth never 'is' but rather holds sway". As such, it is neither something "out there" to be discovered, nor something "in here", created by subjective and arbitrary opinions, but rather the "midpoint" in a mutual mirroring of call and belonging. Truth is that kind of being which is most fitting to a being in its originary givenness. It is genuineness, "a creative strength for preserving what is given along with . . . creative strength for effecting what is given as a task". This last point touches upon Heidegger's views about how one way aspire to being truthful. Certainly not by the assertion of opinion or perspective. Certainly not by assuming the powers of a Cartesian subject, which makes itself the measure of all things. No. For Heidegger, truthfulness has more to do with the capacity for a "deep awe" in the face of the inscrutability of being. And this is not a comfortable thing at all. Because awe requires that we relinquish our onto-theological passions for objectification, possession and mastery. It requires a recognition that the truth of being actually withdraws from us in proportion to the force of our desire for mastery. Rather than the desire for mastery, Heidegger recommends an aptitude for contemplation: "We must give up the habit of wanting to secure this essential swaying of be-ing as representable for everyone at any time one chooses . . . Rather, we always achieve the uniqueness of the resonance . . . [in the] essential sway of stillness, the most finite and the most unique". In silence, says Heidegger, there is both a capacity to "listen" for the call of authentic being, and an appropriate reticence to name the content of that call with too much inflated certainty. And silence, he says, is "nearness to the last god". But who, or what, is this "last god?" And what has "god" to do with the call to truthfulness?
(from "Martin Heidegger: a theology yet to come," http://www.southcom.com.au/~gjd/heidegger.html)
No easy answers here -- not in the middle-place. The task is to become what Heidegger was pointing to -- to respond to the call of authentic being and become an authentic being.
God, truthfulness, and authentic being are not Three.
Life and death are not Two.
No country, belief, or ideology is the One.
What remains? Where, or to whom, do we belong? Is human dwelling that which dwells in the middle place between negative and positive? Is there room for hope?
Ask, sincerely.
..................
*The only marginal note by Heidegger to this piece in his hand written copy is to be found here and reads 'en-own-ment'. This marginal note says that the memory of being is to be thought out of en-own-ment. Human being belongs along with that which, as the crossing through of being+, calls forth existence, and that thinking which emerges out of existence, in the claim to an original, that is, originating (in distinction from beginning) proposal [Geheißes]. 'Belonging' as that which in appropriating projection turns being toward the essence of human being tells us what 'en-owning' [Ereignen] means. The primary meaning of enowning is, as can be gleaned from Beitrage zur Philosophie: human being conceived as the property [Eigentum] of being (50). Out of the appropriating turning toward of the truth of being+ as the fourfold, the being of human being is determined as 'belonging' to being+ so that human being becomes the being enowned of projection and covering uncovering. Being enowned [Ereignetsein] means: being determined as the 'property' of being. The enowning of turning toward and the being enowned of revealing-concealing have to be understood out of this primordial meaning.
(from TOPOLOGY AND TOPOGRAPHY OF NIHILISM, From the debate between Ernst Jünger and Martin Heidegger, by Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann, Introduction: 'On the Line' -- "On: 'The Line'" http://www.onlineoriginals.com/showitem.asp?itemID=287&articleID=13)
Wednesday, April 20, 2005
Nominees stall, or are laureated, or become pope. It is great sport to put names forward. Then we investigate.
As world takes measure of new pope, I wonder about everyday language and memory. As nominee for US/UN post hears his name bobbing downstream over rocks, I wonder whether patronage pockets are the only political option remaining. As the new poet laureate sits back in his chair surveying the universe through his pencil, I wonder whether my sub-atomic particles are wandering around Rome, DC, and Nebraska on their own and happy to be so dispersed.
At the Cancer Clinic
She is being helped toward the open door
that leads to the examining rooms
by two young women I take to be her sisters.
Each bends to the weight of an arm
and steps with the straight, tough bearing
of courage. At what must seem to be
a great distance, a nurse holds the door,
smiling and calling encouragement.
How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.
(Poem by Ted Kooser)
Particles in hospital practice slowing down. I pass rooms where compressed air, like lives exhaling their final few breaths, remind me that all the fuss about this and that will soon be over. The drama of holding on then letting go is never taken for granted. It is our theater. Mere glance is applause.
After Years
Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.
(Poem by Ted Kooser)
Carol's mom dies. The ride back and forth, for now, is done. Tea water steam rises into morning at kitchen table for the two minute recollection her busy life allows.
Flying at Night
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.
(Ted Kooser, Published in Flying at Night)
We manage a little system of our care.
In this system nominees for prayerful attention are articulated and passed on to the inner dwelling of life itself.
What I call "I" is a nominee attempting to appear in forms wherever particles that have passed through and passed on have temporarily come to be. What I mean by that is that the sub-atomic transfer of what we call "me" and "mine" is taking place every instant of this existence. We are everywhere we have ever been, everyone we have ever been near, and geometrically, exponentially visiting by proxy everyplace there is to be.
Carrie
"There's never an end to dust
and dusting," my aunt would say
as her rag, like a thunderhead,
scudded across the yellow oak
of her little house. There she lived
seventy years with a ball
of compulsion closed in her fist,
and an elbow that creaked and popped
like a branch in a storm. Now dust
is her hands and dust her heart.
There's never an end to it.
(Ted Kooser, from Sure Signs, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980)
Goethe wrote that, "Names are but noise and smoke / obscuring heavenly light." I like to think that "obscuring heavenly light" means that heavenly light obscures.
Readings of "obscure" include:
-- "So faintly perceptible as to lack clear delineation; indistinct."
-- "Not readily noticed or seen; inconspicuous;" or,
-- "Of undistinguished or humble station or reputation."
I know we like clear and distinct ideas with similar words seriatim. We're not fond of symbolic, metaphoric, or dusty references.
In fact, we prefer not to think of ourselves as dust.
That's the odd thing about nominees -- we share, dustily, the name and the presence of anyone or anything called into being.
As I am, that thou art.
Your name again?
As world takes measure of new pope, I wonder about everyday language and memory. As nominee for US/UN post hears his name bobbing downstream over rocks, I wonder whether patronage pockets are the only political option remaining. As the new poet laureate sits back in his chair surveying the universe through his pencil, I wonder whether my sub-atomic particles are wandering around Rome, DC, and Nebraska on their own and happy to be so dispersed.
At the Cancer Clinic
She is being helped toward the open door
that leads to the examining rooms
by two young women I take to be her sisters.
Each bends to the weight of an arm
and steps with the straight, tough bearing
of courage. At what must seem to be
a great distance, a nurse holds the door,
smiling and calling encouragement.
How patient she is in the crisp white sails
of her clothes. The sick woman
peers from under her funny knit cap
to watch each foot swing scuffing forward
and take its turn under her weight.
There is no restlessness or impatience
or anger anywhere in sight. Grace
fills the clean mold of this moment
and all the shuffling magazines grow still.
(Poem by Ted Kooser)
Particles in hospital practice slowing down. I pass rooms where compressed air, like lives exhaling their final few breaths, remind me that all the fuss about this and that will soon be over. The drama of holding on then letting go is never taken for granted. It is our theater. Mere glance is applause.
After Years
Today, from a distance, I saw you
walking away, and without a sound
the glittering face of a glacier
slid into the sea. An ancient oak
fell in the Cumberlands, holding only
a handful of leaves, and an old woman
scattering corn to her chickens looked up
for an instant. At the other side
of the galaxy, a star thirty-five times
the size of our own sun exploded
and vanished, leaving a small green spot
on the astronomer's retina
as he stood on the great open dome
of my heart with no one to tell.
(Poem by Ted Kooser)
Carol's mom dies. The ride back and forth, for now, is done. Tea water steam rises into morning at kitchen table for the two minute recollection her busy life allows.
Flying at Night
Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.
(Ted Kooser, Published in Flying at Night)
We manage a little system of our care.
In this system nominees for prayerful attention are articulated and passed on to the inner dwelling of life itself.
What I call "I" is a nominee attempting to appear in forms wherever particles that have passed through and passed on have temporarily come to be. What I mean by that is that the sub-atomic transfer of what we call "me" and "mine" is taking place every instant of this existence. We are everywhere we have ever been, everyone we have ever been near, and geometrically, exponentially visiting by proxy everyplace there is to be.
Carrie
"There's never an end to dust
and dusting," my aunt would say
as her rag, like a thunderhead,
scudded across the yellow oak
of her little house. There she lived
seventy years with a ball
of compulsion closed in her fist,
and an elbow that creaked and popped
like a branch in a storm. Now dust
is her hands and dust her heart.
There's never an end to it.
(Ted Kooser, from Sure Signs, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1980)
Goethe wrote that, "Names are but noise and smoke / obscuring heavenly light." I like to think that "obscuring heavenly light" means that heavenly light obscures.
Readings of "obscure" include:
-- "So faintly perceptible as to lack clear delineation; indistinct."
-- "Not readily noticed or seen; inconspicuous;" or,
-- "Of undistinguished or humble station or reputation."
I know we like clear and distinct ideas with similar words seriatim. We're not fond of symbolic, metaphoric, or dusty references.
In fact, we prefer not to think of ourselves as dust.
That's the odd thing about nominees -- we share, dustily, the name and the presence of anyone or anything called into being.
As I am, that thou art.
Your name again?
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
Benedict the 16th, or, in Rome, the XVI. Hans Kung says he should be given a chance. I like the irony.
Contemplative emptiness:
The moon suspended over
The village at midnight.
Suddenly, my soul is startled
By the howl of an ape.
Who could know that it would
Arouse me beyond my senses,
And bring me an inner vision from
Mount Sumeru?
- Kita Genki (1664-1698)
It doesn't matter what does it, but the fact of being startled is useful. What inner vision is brought? At Buddhist Conversation tonight I wish the new Pope well, a healthy productive reign.
It was the time when the feast of Dedication was being celebrated in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the Temple walking up and down in the Portico of Solomon. The Jews gathered round him and said, "How much longer are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly." Jesus replied:
"I have told you, but you do not believe.
The works I do in my Father's name are my witness;
but you do not believe,
because you are no sheep of mine.
The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice;
I know them and they follow me.
I give them eternal life;
they will never be lost
and no one will ever steal them from me.
The Father who gave them to me is greater than anyone,
and no one can steal from the Father.
The Father and I are one."
(John 10:22 - 30 )
I like that Jesus was walking back and forth, up and down the portico. Such repetition helps mindfulness. In that mindful state he adds, as afterthought, "The Father and I are one."
This pope will end the sanctioning of war. He will end the reign of abusive priests. He will end the falling away from the church. He will change his view that only the Catholic Church is that of Christ. He will preach that God is beyond any one faith -- and that we must relinquish snide separative superiority and embrace the spirit of truth in all its manifestations.
Am I too optimistic? No one can steal from the Father -- the Father gives it all away.
The Father has taken away Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and given instead Benedict XVI. (His street name will be Benny16.)
There is always an open space at the beginning of anything.
Into that space we send our fond hope and cheerful heart -- for a good start without fear and with courage.
Many of us bow in solitary silent respect.
May he live and reign in the Light of One!
Contemplative emptiness:
The moon suspended over
The village at midnight.
Suddenly, my soul is startled
By the howl of an ape.
Who could know that it would
Arouse me beyond my senses,
And bring me an inner vision from
Mount Sumeru?
- Kita Genki (1664-1698)
It doesn't matter what does it, but the fact of being startled is useful. What inner vision is brought? At Buddhist Conversation tonight I wish the new Pope well, a healthy productive reign.
It was the time when the feast of Dedication was being celebrated in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the Temple walking up and down in the Portico of Solomon. The Jews gathered round him and said, "How much longer are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly." Jesus replied:
"I have told you, but you do not believe.
The works I do in my Father's name are my witness;
but you do not believe,
because you are no sheep of mine.
The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice;
I know them and they follow me.
I give them eternal life;
they will never be lost
and no one will ever steal them from me.
The Father who gave them to me is greater than anyone,
and no one can steal from the Father.
The Father and I are one."
(John 10:22 - 30 )
I like that Jesus was walking back and forth, up and down the portico. Such repetition helps mindfulness. In that mindful state he adds, as afterthought, "The Father and I are one."
This pope will end the sanctioning of war. He will end the reign of abusive priests. He will end the falling away from the church. He will change his view that only the Catholic Church is that of Christ. He will preach that God is beyond any one faith -- and that we must relinquish snide separative superiority and embrace the spirit of truth in all its manifestations.
Am I too optimistic? No one can steal from the Father -- the Father gives it all away.
The Father has taken away Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger and given instead Benedict XVI. (His street name will be Benny16.)
There is always an open space at the beginning of anything.
Into that space we send our fond hope and cheerful heart -- for a good start without fear and with courage.
Many of us bow in solitary silent respect.
May he live and reign in the Light of One!
Monday, April 18, 2005
At origin.
From atop Midcoast Maine mountain we look out at Penobscot Bay, its islands, sunshine over water, tree, and hills. The credit bank is selling its vast holdings in the area, and we'd never been to their summit. So much money, so much power, so much remodeling of nature.
It is nearly always about money, isn't it? Who has it; who collects it; who spends it?
Who is the benevolent person, the one who gives all without counting or costing out?
Holding his stick, he points directly to a person,
Yet, originally without form, this portrait is not true,
His form cannot be seen as form,
His benevolence is merely his natural benevolence.
If, all of a sudden, you can understand this law,
Then your spirit can roam beyond this world.
- Mokuan (1676)
We've been thinking about hermitage. It is a queer notion to live the hermit's life in the open. Such a life entails each person being with one another as they are, with reverence, attention, and surrender.
RL: I do give a damn about what everybody thinks. Because I think we all should care about what all of us think. It's good to think of other people's feelings, and its good to check on what they're thinking about you too. The gift of seeing ourselves as other people see us is a gift.
PF: But doesn't this modify the way you are?
RL: Maybe so, but it doesn't give me a false persona. We're all part of one sea of consciousness, and I think that any tips we can get from each other on how we're moving along in it probably help us. We check with each other, and I suppose that if you really were too far from the sea of consciousness you might -- anyone might -- get pretty quirky and you might be glad if somebody reminded you to put your hat on when you should, or tie your shoe laces and things like that. If you're doing something offensive, you won't mind if somebody sets you right.
(p.202, ch.8, "A Hermit for Our Time: Robert Lax on Patmos" interviewed by Peter France in his book Hermits The Insights of Solitude, c.1996)
We're already brothers and sisters of nature, of our common humanity, of God. We'd grown accustomed to the metaphor calling us children of God. A new metaphor asks if we'd be willing to consider ourselves members of the family if we were brother and sister of God. We come from the same origin God comes from. That origin is ever-present. It is our origin too. It has no name. It cannot be known. It is mystery itself. It shares kinship with island and tree, sky and mountain, dogs and humans, breeze and silence. It is what is. Each and all of a piece, endlessly reminding each other that we are not to separate out what is not to be separated out. What is of a piece is original not-twoness.
Maine and Massachusetts took the day today.
In 1775 on this day, Paul Revere took the famous ride that was immortalized in poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. At the time, the British regulars wanted to arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams (who were in Lexington) and made what they thought were secret plans to capture the two men. Their plans were discovered, however, and Revere had made arrangements to signal the patriots by lighting two lanterns in Boston's North Church steeple if the British were coming by sea, and one if they were coming by land. Revere rode out on the night of April 18th to warn Hancock and Adams that the British were on their way. Longfellow immortalized the day with these lines:
From, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere:
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town tonight,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light -
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country fold to be up and to arm.
(http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/)
Hancock and Adams lived to other days. Those wishing to continue the movement of independence and keeping things flowing freely, prevail that day, and still do.
From the mountain top it is easy to see what approaches and recedes. Robert Creeley was able to say it:
A STEP
Things
come and go.
Then
let them.
(Poem by Robert Creeley, in Pieces, c1969)
Poet Jared Carter in an interview is quoted: As Robert Creeley says, "Nothing just happens. It depends on who comes along." (http://jaredcarter.com/archives/interviews/indi/)
We're just looking out.
Seeing who comes along.
Brother. Sister. Let them.
All of a sudden.
Set us right.
Originate.
From atop Midcoast Maine mountain we look out at Penobscot Bay, its islands, sunshine over water, tree, and hills. The credit bank is selling its vast holdings in the area, and we'd never been to their summit. So much money, so much power, so much remodeling of nature.
It is nearly always about money, isn't it? Who has it; who collects it; who spends it?
Who is the benevolent person, the one who gives all without counting or costing out?
Holding his stick, he points directly to a person,
Yet, originally without form, this portrait is not true,
His form cannot be seen as form,
His benevolence is merely his natural benevolence.
If, all of a sudden, you can understand this law,
Then your spirit can roam beyond this world.
- Mokuan (1676)
We've been thinking about hermitage. It is a queer notion to live the hermit's life in the open. Such a life entails each person being with one another as they are, with reverence, attention, and surrender.
RL: I do give a damn about what everybody thinks. Because I think we all should care about what all of us think. It's good to think of other people's feelings, and its good to check on what they're thinking about you too. The gift of seeing ourselves as other people see us is a gift.
PF: But doesn't this modify the way you are?
RL: Maybe so, but it doesn't give me a false persona. We're all part of one sea of consciousness, and I think that any tips we can get from each other on how we're moving along in it probably help us. We check with each other, and I suppose that if you really were too far from the sea of consciousness you might -- anyone might -- get pretty quirky and you might be glad if somebody reminded you to put your hat on when you should, or tie your shoe laces and things like that. If you're doing something offensive, you won't mind if somebody sets you right.
(p.202, ch.8, "A Hermit for Our Time: Robert Lax on Patmos" interviewed by Peter France in his book Hermits The Insights of Solitude, c.1996)
We're already brothers and sisters of nature, of our common humanity, of God. We'd grown accustomed to the metaphor calling us children of God. A new metaphor asks if we'd be willing to consider ourselves members of the family if we were brother and sister of God. We come from the same origin God comes from. That origin is ever-present. It is our origin too. It has no name. It cannot be known. It is mystery itself. It shares kinship with island and tree, sky and mountain, dogs and humans, breeze and silence. It is what is. Each and all of a piece, endlessly reminding each other that we are not to separate out what is not to be separated out. What is of a piece is original not-twoness.
Maine and Massachusetts took the day today.
In 1775 on this day, Paul Revere took the famous ride that was immortalized in poetry by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. At the time, the British regulars wanted to arrest John Hancock and Samuel Adams (who were in Lexington) and made what they thought were secret plans to capture the two men. Their plans were discovered, however, and Revere had made arrangements to signal the patriots by lighting two lanterns in Boston's North Church steeple if the British were coming by sea, and one if they were coming by land. Revere rode out on the night of April 18th to warn Hancock and Adams that the British were on their way. Longfellow immortalized the day with these lines:
From, The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere:
Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year.
He said to his friend, "If the British march
By land or sea from the town tonight,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light -
One if by land, and two if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country fold to be up and to arm.
(http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/)
Hancock and Adams lived to other days. Those wishing to continue the movement of independence and keeping things flowing freely, prevail that day, and still do.
From the mountain top it is easy to see what approaches and recedes. Robert Creeley was able to say it:
A STEP
Things
come and go.
Then
let them.
(Poem by Robert Creeley, in Pieces, c1969)
Poet Jared Carter in an interview is quoted: As Robert Creeley says, "Nothing just happens. It depends on who comes along." (http://jaredcarter.com/archives/interviews/indi/)
We're just looking out.
Seeing who comes along.
Brother. Sister. Let them.
All of a sudden.
Set us right.
Originate.
Sunday, April 17, 2005
Someone said we are made in the image of God. But God is no thing, therefore has no image.
What does that make us?
One who strives to make Truth their home
May at times be lonely.
Peer deeply into transcendent reality
And think about the body you will have
After this one is gone.
- Hung Ying-ming (~1596)
We sat in cabin, ate at table, now those once here are gone. There is something very basic, something elementary we are missing. Why do we have such difficulty with what is here and not here?
So Jesus spoke to them again:
"I tell you most solemnly,
I am the gate of the sheepfold.
All others who have come
are thieves and brigands;
but the sheep took no notice of them.
I am the gate.
Anyone who enters through me will be safe:
he will go freely in and out
and be sure of finding pasture..."
(from John 10)
At St. Bernard's this morning after Gospel reading I say to Saskia, "How lovely; Jesus is quoting from the Heart Sutra of Wisdom, saying he is the 'gate'."
The Sanskrit ending to the Heart Sutra is "gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha" -- "gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, awake, rejoice!" (Or, as another translation by The Engaged Zen Foundation has it, "gone, gone, gone beyond, gone beyond the idea of gone beyond the awakened state of mind.")
What does it mean to be gone?
Fix
The puzzled ones, the Americans, go through their lives
Buying what they are told to buy,
Pursuing their love affairs with the automobile,
Baseball and football, romance and beauty,
Enthusiastic as trained seals, going into debt, struggling --
True believers in liberty, and also security,
And of course sex -- cheating on each other
For the most part only a little, mostly avoiding violence
Except at a vast blue distance, as between bombsight and earth,
Or on the violent screen, which they adore.
Those who are not Americans think Americans are happy
Because they are so filthy rich, but not so.
They are mostly puzzled and at a loss
As if someone pulled the floor out from under them,
They'd like to believe in God, or something, and they do try.
You can see it in their white faces at the supermarket and the gas station
--Not the immigrant faces, they know what they want,
Not the blacks, whose faces are hurt and proud --
The white faces, lipsticked, shaven, we do try
To keep smiling, for when we're smiling, the whole world
Smiles with us, but we feel we've lost
That loving feeling. Clouds ride by above us,
Rivers flow, toilets work, traffic lights work, barring floods, fires
And earthquakes, houses and streets appear stable
So what is it, this moon-shaped blankness?
What the hell is it? America is perplexed.
We would fix it if we knew what was broken.
(Poem: "Fix" by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, from No Heaven. © University of Pittsburgh Press)
At Mass today the priest said the difference between sheep and cows is the difference between shepherd and cowboy. The shepherd leads by walking ahead of his sheep. The cowboy stays behind and drives the cows from the rear. I'm sure he didn't mean to suggest we have a cowboy pushing us to war in this country, but it sure was a reasonable application of his words.
We've had enough of cowboys pushing war. Our need is for something far more real and far more loving. We need one gone beyond the moon-shaped blankness engulfing this country these days.
If Jesus is what is gone beyond, are we willing to follow?
If this body, as Hung Ying-ming suggests, is gone, do we think about what body we will have when transcendent reality is upon us?
What has been broken might not be able to be fixed. We might have to drop off broken mind, drop off broken body, and make Truth our home.
Forget the cowboy.
Pray for shepherd.
What does that make us?
One who strives to make Truth their home
May at times be lonely.
Peer deeply into transcendent reality
And think about the body you will have
After this one is gone.
- Hung Ying-ming (~1596)
We sat in cabin, ate at table, now those once here are gone. There is something very basic, something elementary we are missing. Why do we have such difficulty with what is here and not here?
So Jesus spoke to them again:
"I tell you most solemnly,
I am the gate of the sheepfold.
All others who have come
are thieves and brigands;
but the sheep took no notice of them.
I am the gate.
Anyone who enters through me will be safe:
he will go freely in and out
and be sure of finding pasture..."
(from John 10)
At St. Bernard's this morning after Gospel reading I say to Saskia, "How lovely; Jesus is quoting from the Heart Sutra of Wisdom, saying he is the 'gate'."
The Sanskrit ending to the Heart Sutra is "gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha" -- "gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond, awake, rejoice!" (Or, as another translation by The Engaged Zen Foundation has it, "gone, gone, gone beyond, gone beyond the idea of gone beyond the awakened state of mind.")
What does it mean to be gone?
Fix
The puzzled ones, the Americans, go through their lives
Buying what they are told to buy,
Pursuing their love affairs with the automobile,
Baseball and football, romance and beauty,
Enthusiastic as trained seals, going into debt, struggling --
True believers in liberty, and also security,
And of course sex -- cheating on each other
For the most part only a little, mostly avoiding violence
Except at a vast blue distance, as between bombsight and earth,
Or on the violent screen, which they adore.
Those who are not Americans think Americans are happy
Because they are so filthy rich, but not so.
They are mostly puzzled and at a loss
As if someone pulled the floor out from under them,
They'd like to believe in God, or something, and they do try.
You can see it in their white faces at the supermarket and the gas station
--Not the immigrant faces, they know what they want,
Not the blacks, whose faces are hurt and proud --
The white faces, lipsticked, shaven, we do try
To keep smiling, for when we're smiling, the whole world
Smiles with us, but we feel we've lost
That loving feeling. Clouds ride by above us,
Rivers flow, toilets work, traffic lights work, barring floods, fires
And earthquakes, houses and streets appear stable
So what is it, this moon-shaped blankness?
What the hell is it? America is perplexed.
We would fix it if we knew what was broken.
(Poem: "Fix" by Alicia Suskin Ostriker, from No Heaven. © University of Pittsburgh Press)
At Mass today the priest said the difference between sheep and cows is the difference between shepherd and cowboy. The shepherd leads by walking ahead of his sheep. The cowboy stays behind and drives the cows from the rear. I'm sure he didn't mean to suggest we have a cowboy pushing us to war in this country, but it sure was a reasonable application of his words.
We've had enough of cowboys pushing war. Our need is for something far more real and far more loving. We need one gone beyond the moon-shaped blankness engulfing this country these days.
If Jesus is what is gone beyond, are we willing to follow?
If this body, as Hung Ying-ming suggests, is gone, do we think about what body we will have when transcendent reality is upon us?
What has been broken might not be able to be fixed. We might have to drop off broken mind, drop off broken body, and make Truth our home.
Forget the cowboy.
Pray for shepherd.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Everything is on loan. Even waking.
What is better than this? Uncountable white lights in night sky. Rising before dawn. Call of starlight to prayer. For a few minutes, the stillness of slowly turning earth, the animals greeting from their doze.
People cling to their worldly possessions and selfish passions so blindly as to sacrifice their own lives for them. They are like a child who tries to eat a little honey smeared on the edge of a knife. The amount is by no means sufficient to appease his appetite, but he runs the risk of wounding his tongue.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters
We cut tongue each time we try to slice away opposing views. Intelligent discourse engages differing views. The temptation to ridicule and dismiss is strong in contemporary culture. There is a creeping consensus that might is right and power is perfection. We need to be cautious when the urge to pontificate and prevail overcomes the need to investigate and reveal.
At Friday Evening Interreligious Dialogue Conversation we finish Rabbi David Aaron's book Seeing God, Ten Life-Changing Lessons of the Kabbalah He urged we be kind to each other, that we consider community, that Hashem is beyond any narrow conceptions we might try to impose.
These days corruption is considered the right of those who have taken power from the community to themselves. Cynicism is the residue left for those who feel they have no way to change the usurpation of power and will by leaders who have lost touch with those they represent.
When the life-giving Word of God dwelt in human flesh, he changed it
into that good thing which is distinctively his, namely, life; and by
being wholly united to the flesh in a way beyond our comprehension,
he gave it the life-giving power which he has by his very nature.
Therefore, the body of Christ gives life to those who receive it. Its
presence in mortal men expels death and drives away corruption because
it contains within itself in his entirety the Word who totally
abolishes corruption.
(From a commentary on the gospel of John by Saint Cyril of Alexandria,
Saturday of the 3rd week of Eastertide)
Spending time looking up to near and distant stars this morning puts me all day in a sober quiet. The pretense and hubris of those intent on corrupting and damaging the human spirit takes on particular malaise. The smug and arrogant hold simplicity and humility in contempt.
We try to practice an antidote of open conversation where difference is suffered and revelation encouraged. Last evening Tom, Lloyd, Saskia, Richard, Michael, Tina, Mike, Pia, Jayen, Maria and I listened to one another and Rabbi Aaron. At Saturday Afternoon Poetry, Tea, and Literature, Sara, Richard, Joanie, Saskia, Michael, Jayen, Lloyd, Alana, Garrett, and I read poems and pieces of stories after Sam and Susan, Myles, Jeff, and Cheryl, Hugh, Virginia, and Karl clear out before getting trapped by the circle.
Waiting for Icarus
He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm
He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don't cry
I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets,
a trashy lot
I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added : Women who love such are the
Worst of all
I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.
(Poem: "Waiting for Icarus" by Muriel Rukeyser, from The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser.)
Sometimes there are those who fly too far from common comfort and decent retrieval. It is insufficient to say, "That's their problem." It is our common responsibility to remind one another that life on earth is not a joust and duel. We are not here to play king of the mountain or last man standing, or "Screw them, we're the best."
We're not the best, none of us. We're who we are. We have to remind one another that the night is over when we see each other as brother and sister and not as someone to be bested.
Starlight; sunlight; moonlight; truelight.
When we wake.
What is better than this? Uncountable white lights in night sky. Rising before dawn. Call of starlight to prayer. For a few minutes, the stillness of slowly turning earth, the animals greeting from their doze.
People cling to their worldly possessions and selfish passions so blindly as to sacrifice their own lives for them. They are like a child who tries to eat a little honey smeared on the edge of a knife. The amount is by no means sufficient to appease his appetite, but he runs the risk of wounding his tongue.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters
We cut tongue each time we try to slice away opposing views. Intelligent discourse engages differing views. The temptation to ridicule and dismiss is strong in contemporary culture. There is a creeping consensus that might is right and power is perfection. We need to be cautious when the urge to pontificate and prevail overcomes the need to investigate and reveal.
At Friday Evening Interreligious Dialogue Conversation we finish Rabbi David Aaron's book Seeing God, Ten Life-Changing Lessons of the Kabbalah He urged we be kind to each other, that we consider community, that Hashem is beyond any narrow conceptions we might try to impose.
These days corruption is considered the right of those who have taken power from the community to themselves. Cynicism is the residue left for those who feel they have no way to change the usurpation of power and will by leaders who have lost touch with those they represent.
When the life-giving Word of God dwelt in human flesh, he changed it
into that good thing which is distinctively his, namely, life; and by
being wholly united to the flesh in a way beyond our comprehension,
he gave it the life-giving power which he has by his very nature.
Therefore, the body of Christ gives life to those who receive it. Its
presence in mortal men expels death and drives away corruption because
it contains within itself in his entirety the Word who totally
abolishes corruption.
(From a commentary on the gospel of John by Saint Cyril of Alexandria,
Saturday of the 3rd week of Eastertide)
Spending time looking up to near and distant stars this morning puts me all day in a sober quiet. The pretense and hubris of those intent on corrupting and damaging the human spirit takes on particular malaise. The smug and arrogant hold simplicity and humility in contempt.
We try to practice an antidote of open conversation where difference is suffered and revelation encouraged. Last evening Tom, Lloyd, Saskia, Richard, Michael, Tina, Mike, Pia, Jayen, Maria and I listened to one another and Rabbi Aaron. At Saturday Afternoon Poetry, Tea, and Literature, Sara, Richard, Joanie, Saskia, Michael, Jayen, Lloyd, Alana, Garrett, and I read poems and pieces of stories after Sam and Susan, Myles, Jeff, and Cheryl, Hugh, Virginia, and Karl clear out before getting trapped by the circle.
Waiting for Icarus
He said he would be back and we'd drink wine together
He said that everything would be better than before
He said we were on the edge of a new relation
He said he would never again cringe before his father
He said that he was going to invent full-time
He said he loved me that going into me
He said was going into the world and the sky
He said all the buckles were very firm
He said the wax was the best wax
He said Wait for me here on the beach
He said Just don't cry
I remember the gulls and the waves
I remember the islands going dark on the sea
I remember the girls laughing
I remember they said he only wanted to get away from me
I remember mother saying : Inventors are like poets,
a trashy lot
I remember she told me those who try out inventions are worse
I remember she added : Women who love such are the
Worst of all
I have been waiting all day, or perhaps longer.
I would have liked to try those wings myself.
It would have been better than this.
(Poem: "Waiting for Icarus" by Muriel Rukeyser, from The Collected Poems of Muriel Rukeyser.)
Sometimes there are those who fly too far from common comfort and decent retrieval. It is insufficient to say, "That's their problem." It is our common responsibility to remind one another that life on earth is not a joust and duel. We are not here to play king of the mountain or last man standing, or "Screw them, we're the best."
We're not the best, none of us. We're who we are. We have to remind one another that the night is over when we see each other as brother and sister and not as someone to be bested.
Starlight; sunlight; moonlight; truelight.
When we wake.
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Sliver moon disappears into morning blue; rounded sun climbs over Melvin Heights into winter zendo where sleep sits on cushions.
Only faint recollection of incense from walls and ceiling. Dogs stay upstairs. Cat stares past Buddha, empty cross draped with white, paschal candle, mother and child icon; he has movement-of-bird on his mind.
Moved by their selfish desires, people seek after fame and glory. But when they have acquired these, they are already stricken in years. If you hanker after worldly fame and practice not the Way, your labors are wrongfully applied and your energy is wasted. It is like burning a stick of incense. However much its pleasing odor is admired, the fire that consumes is steadily burning up the stick.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters
I calculated the number of years that have accrued to this body awkwardly seeking comfort on black cushion -- too many, too uncomfortable, too soon (some might think) to be my own cooling ash faintly sensed by snoozing sangha friends.
How long, LORD? Will you stay hidden forever? (Ps.89:47)
For many God is faint recollection of simpler apperception from more innocent times. I wonder if we ever grow comfortable with the notion of hidden God. When hidden, God could be anywhere. We want to locate God, interrogate and have God explain what we cannot understand about human behavior as well as pattern of stars in galaxies further away than a billion billion thoughts across. And yet, the hidden has a nearness to it. Hidden does not mean secret. Secret is when someone claims to own the hidden, and they don't.
Hidden is wide open. It is what we make art of, make music, poetry, make our way through the morning, afternoon, and evening. At night the hidden visits in dream. The hidden is what the artist lets out through hands given to the hidden to use.
Last evening Jayen said that "Nature is spirit made manifest." Tom, who brought article from Utne Reader by John O'Donohue, liked her words. Nature, whether of and in itself, or with modifiers Human, Divine -- is hidden within, yet manifest, coming to appearance, when invited, or when it feels like. Nature, mostly, is in and of itself. Nature looks as itself through each and every thing, through each and every being.
What You Cannot Remember, What You Cannot Know
-for Abigail
When you were two you used to say
I can do it all by myself, then when you were three
You had tantrums, essentially
Because you wanted to go back and be a baby like before,
And also to be a grownup.
It was perplexing,
It was a mini-rehearsal
For adolescence, which lurks inside your body
Now that you are almost nine,
Like a duplicate baby, an angel
Or alien, we don't know which,
Forceful and intelligent and weird,
Playing with the controls.
Fetal eyes blinking, non-negotiable demands
Like Coke bubbles overflowing a glass,
It strengthens and grows.
When you read it stares through your eyes,
It vibrates when you practice piano,
The cotton dresses hang in your closet
Like conspirators, wavering in its breeze.
We watch you turn inward, your hair
Falls over your face like a veil that hides whatever
You would rather others don't know,
You lean your head listening
For its keen highstrung melancholy voice.
Here comes the gypsy caravan,
Ding-a-ling, the icecream man,
Plenty of glee and woe up the road.
We would do anything for you,
Sweetie, but we can do nothing?
You have to do it all by yourself.
(Poem: "What You Cannot Remember, What You Cannot Know" by Alicia Suskin Astriker, from No Heaven. University of Pittsburgh Press.)
Recently I've read writings from folks relating the hurts of being human. I read each word with reverence. These are my sisters, and brothers. We gather each other in the words we use to tell where we have been, what we have experienced, what we now feel. This ceremony of appearance is not always done in common or in public. Appearance through one's nature is personal as poem and quiet as indentation before new paragraph relating "my own mythology" or "personal original pieces." The hidden longs to reveal and be revealed through watchful eyes or willing hands.
"Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute," Ramakrishna continued, "is like a shoreless ocean. In the ocean visible blocks of ice are formed here and there by intense cold. Similarly, under the cooling influence, so to speak, of the devotion [bhakti] of its worshippers, the Infinite transforms Itself into the finite and appears before the worshiper as God with form. That is to say, God reveals Himself to His devotees as an embodied Person, Again, as, on the rising of the sun, the ice in the ocean melts away, so, on the awakening of Knowledge [jnana], the embodied God melts back into the infinite and formless Brahman,,,, Therefore people compare the love of God to the cooling light of the moon, and knowledge to the burning rays of the sun.
(from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, trans with preface by Swami Nikhilananda, c1942, in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, metaphor as Myth and as Religion, p.69, by Joseph Campbell, c.1986)
We will be burned away. Whether by funeral pyre, cremation, supernova, or the incense stick of earthly life -- all will be burned through. We can practice this return of the manifest to the hidden by diligence and presence to what is here and what is passing. The hidden receives back what it has given -- with gentle watchfulness and comforting hands.
We have to do it by ourselves.
Still, and yet, and notwithstanding -- our solitariness is surrounded by infinite watchful eyes, gentle hands, and most of all, the hidden-forever-love that is with, through, and in our very being.
Call it what you will -- Brahman, Adonai, Buddha, Christ, Allah, Nature, Self, Mind -- it is done by itself.
Each one of us.
As itself.
Only faint recollection of incense from walls and ceiling. Dogs stay upstairs. Cat stares past Buddha, empty cross draped with white, paschal candle, mother and child icon; he has movement-of-bird on his mind.
Moved by their selfish desires, people seek after fame and glory. But when they have acquired these, they are already stricken in years. If you hanker after worldly fame and practice not the Way, your labors are wrongfully applied and your energy is wasted. It is like burning a stick of incense. However much its pleasing odor is admired, the fire that consumes is steadily burning up the stick.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters
I calculated the number of years that have accrued to this body awkwardly seeking comfort on black cushion -- too many, too uncomfortable, too soon (some might think) to be my own cooling ash faintly sensed by snoozing sangha friends.
How long, LORD? Will you stay hidden forever? (Ps.89:47)
For many God is faint recollection of simpler apperception from more innocent times. I wonder if we ever grow comfortable with the notion of hidden God. When hidden, God could be anywhere. We want to locate God, interrogate and have God explain what we cannot understand about human behavior as well as pattern of stars in galaxies further away than a billion billion thoughts across. And yet, the hidden has a nearness to it. Hidden does not mean secret. Secret is when someone claims to own the hidden, and they don't.
Hidden is wide open. It is what we make art of, make music, poetry, make our way through the morning, afternoon, and evening. At night the hidden visits in dream. The hidden is what the artist lets out through hands given to the hidden to use.
Last evening Jayen said that "Nature is spirit made manifest." Tom, who brought article from Utne Reader by John O'Donohue, liked her words. Nature, whether of and in itself, or with modifiers Human, Divine -- is hidden within, yet manifest, coming to appearance, when invited, or when it feels like. Nature, mostly, is in and of itself. Nature looks as itself through each and every thing, through each and every being.
What You Cannot Remember, What You Cannot Know
-for Abigail
When you were two you used to say
I can do it all by myself, then when you were three
You had tantrums, essentially
Because you wanted to go back and be a baby like before,
And also to be a grownup.
It was perplexing,
It was a mini-rehearsal
For adolescence, which lurks inside your body
Now that you are almost nine,
Like a duplicate baby, an angel
Or alien, we don't know which,
Forceful and intelligent and weird,
Playing with the controls.
Fetal eyes blinking, non-negotiable demands
Like Coke bubbles overflowing a glass,
It strengthens and grows.
When you read it stares through your eyes,
It vibrates when you practice piano,
The cotton dresses hang in your closet
Like conspirators, wavering in its breeze.
We watch you turn inward, your hair
Falls over your face like a veil that hides whatever
You would rather others don't know,
You lean your head listening
For its keen highstrung melancholy voice.
Here comes the gypsy caravan,
Ding-a-ling, the icecream man,
Plenty of glee and woe up the road.
We would do anything for you,
Sweetie, but we can do nothing?
You have to do it all by yourself.
(Poem: "What You Cannot Remember, What You Cannot Know" by Alicia Suskin Astriker, from No Heaven. University of Pittsburgh Press.)
Recently I've read writings from folks relating the hurts of being human. I read each word with reverence. These are my sisters, and brothers. We gather each other in the words we use to tell where we have been, what we have experienced, what we now feel. This ceremony of appearance is not always done in common or in public. Appearance through one's nature is personal as poem and quiet as indentation before new paragraph relating "my own mythology" or "personal original pieces." The hidden longs to reveal and be revealed through watchful eyes or willing hands.
"Brahman, Existence-Knowledge-Bliss Absolute," Ramakrishna continued, "is like a shoreless ocean. In the ocean visible blocks of ice are formed here and there by intense cold. Similarly, under the cooling influence, so to speak, of the devotion [bhakti] of its worshippers, the Infinite transforms Itself into the finite and appears before the worshiper as God with form. That is to say, God reveals Himself to His devotees as an embodied Person, Again, as, on the rising of the sun, the ice in the ocean melts away, so, on the awakening of Knowledge [jnana], the embodied God melts back into the infinite and formless Brahman,,,, Therefore people compare the love of God to the cooling light of the moon, and knowledge to the burning rays of the sun.
(from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, trans with preface by Swami Nikhilananda, c1942, in The Inner Reaches of Outer Space, metaphor as Myth and as Religion, p.69, by Joseph Campbell, c.1986)
We will be burned away. Whether by funeral pyre, cremation, supernova, or the incense stick of earthly life -- all will be burned through. We can practice this return of the manifest to the hidden by diligence and presence to what is here and what is passing. The hidden receives back what it has given -- with gentle watchfulness and comforting hands.
We have to do it by ourselves.
Still, and yet, and notwithstanding -- our solitariness is surrounded by infinite watchful eyes, gentle hands, and most of all, the hidden-forever-love that is with, through, and in our very being.
Call it what you will -- Brahman, Adonai, Buddha, Christ, Allah, Nature, Self, Mind -- it is done by itself.
Each one of us.
As itself.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Some say life is a dream. Some think it is a hologram -- that we are elsewhere; what happens here in real-time is projection of inner thought and emotion.
I can't say. I haven't awakened yet.
There have been 1,722 coalition troop deaths, 1,547 Americans, 87 Britons, eight Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 21 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 17 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 17 Ukrainians in the war in Iraq as of April 12, 2005. (Forces: U.S. & Coalition/Casualties, www.cnn.com)
And counting.
A leaf of a boat drifts across the
Endless expanse of water,
Lifting and dancing the oars
To a different melody now.
Clouds on the mountain,
Moon over the sea:
All tossed away;
This done, Zhuang Zhou's butterfly dream
Will last forever.
- Miaozong (1095-1170)
Life is full of fancy and distraction. In fact, some say, very few live real life in real time. Most drift off in memory or worry, anticipation or fantasy -- abandoning what actually is taking place in the here and now.
The great Taoist master Chuang Tzu once dreamt that he was a butterfly fluttering here and there. In the dream he had no awareness of his individuality as a person. He was only a butterfly. Suddenly, he awoke and found himself laying there, a person once again. But then he thought to himself, "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
(inspired by the ancient Chinese tale, 'Chuang Tzu's dream'...)
If Zhuang Zhou's (or Chuang Tzu's) dream is to last forever, will the nightmare of war also? Are we dreaming? Even with the hard steel pain of wound and illness, are we about to wake up and understand something thought and emotion have not yet revealed to us?
Thomas Friedman's column wonders why the United States has not experienced a homeland attack since 9/11:
To the extent that the Baathists and Jihadists have a coordinated strategy, their first priority, I think, is to defeat American forces in the heart of their world. Because if they can defeat America in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, it will have so much more resonance than setting off a car bomb in Las Vegas - especially now that 9/11 has set the terrorism bar so high in terms of effect.
If the Jihadists can defeat us in the heart of their world, and force us from Iraq, it will have a huge impact on the Arab street and shake every pro-American Arab regime. The Jihadists have always understood that Iraq is the ballgame. Iraq is the big one. Winning there is what really advances their agendas.
(from "The Calm Before the Storm?" By Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, April 13, 2005)
The thought occurs that it is a brilliant strategy to toss live bait out into the ferocity of devouring enemies rather than stay behind doors in fear of what might be approaching. Hence, administration rhetoric of "fight them there rather than here," is not so much a goal of defeating terrorism but of diverting terrorism. If true, it is a chilling dream. "Bait" (my word, not Friedman's) is hardly a word to be used about men and women called upon and responding to the call to protect America. Still, we have to decide whether the goal is defending, defeating, or diverting.
I don't know what to say about Chuang Tzu's dream. That would entail my knowing -- and I don't know. I don't know why we are at war. I don't know why those who murder, maim, and mystify one another do what they do. I don't know whether the label Christian, Muslim, Jew, Jihadist or Patriot makes any difference -- they employ the same behavior, only with varying sophistication of weapon.
I don't know why it matters that the aspiring candidate Cardinals of the Catholic Church attempt to declare the recently deceased Pope a saint-to-be by official proclamation. I don't know whether it matters that Republicans own the United States and the rest of us are aliens in this newly strange land. I don't know whether the skunk will return to the barn and the stink of unwanted presence will waft again. Or whether the putrid spray of rotten ideas and ugly war that turn us sick with disgust at the real time stench of death will morph into everlasting declaration of insouciance; and fragrance of memorial flowers becomes perennial gravesite smell; and the convoluted dream-like pronouncements everyone tries to desperately make up to justify what is happening becomes national mantra of partisan hermeneutic. I don't know
Perhaps the Monarch Butterflies are not dying from genetically modified crops.
Maybe we as a people are not dying because others "resent our freedom."
Possibly there is a dream -- a dream of justice, equality, and unity -- and this dream is one of which we are terrified.
Imaginably, all tossed away, we will never know -- but continue on in a dream of unawareness, pretending we are this person or that kind of country or maybe neither as it suits us.
I'll have none of it.
I'll stay a while with two things said by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
1. Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world... Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis.
2. Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)
I'd rather we synthesize and collaborate in real time in real life.
With duty. With love.
I can't say. I haven't awakened yet.
There have been 1,722 coalition troop deaths, 1,547 Americans, 87 Britons, eight Bulgarians, one Dane, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Hungarian, 21 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 17 Poles, one Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 17 Ukrainians in the war in Iraq as of April 12, 2005. (Forces: U.S. & Coalition/Casualties, www.cnn.com)
And counting.
A leaf of a boat drifts across the
Endless expanse of water,
Lifting and dancing the oars
To a different melody now.
Clouds on the mountain,
Moon over the sea:
All tossed away;
This done, Zhuang Zhou's butterfly dream
Will last forever.
- Miaozong (1095-1170)
Life is full of fancy and distraction. In fact, some say, very few live real life in real time. Most drift off in memory or worry, anticipation or fantasy -- abandoning what actually is taking place in the here and now.
The great Taoist master Chuang Tzu once dreamt that he was a butterfly fluttering here and there. In the dream he had no awareness of his individuality as a person. He was only a butterfly. Suddenly, he awoke and found himself laying there, a person once again. But then he thought to himself, "Was I before a man who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being a man?"
(inspired by the ancient Chinese tale, 'Chuang Tzu's dream'...)
If Zhuang Zhou's (or Chuang Tzu's) dream is to last forever, will the nightmare of war also? Are we dreaming? Even with the hard steel pain of wound and illness, are we about to wake up and understand something thought and emotion have not yet revealed to us?
Thomas Friedman's column wonders why the United States has not experienced a homeland attack since 9/11:
To the extent that the Baathists and Jihadists have a coordinated strategy, their first priority, I think, is to defeat American forces in the heart of their world. Because if they can defeat America in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world, it will have so much more resonance than setting off a car bomb in Las Vegas - especially now that 9/11 has set the terrorism bar so high in terms of effect.
If the Jihadists can defeat us in the heart of their world, and force us from Iraq, it will have a huge impact on the Arab street and shake every pro-American Arab regime. The Jihadists have always understood that Iraq is the ballgame. Iraq is the big one. Winning there is what really advances their agendas.
(from "The Calm Before the Storm?" By Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, April 13, 2005)
The thought occurs that it is a brilliant strategy to toss live bait out into the ferocity of devouring enemies rather than stay behind doors in fear of what might be approaching. Hence, administration rhetoric of "fight them there rather than here," is not so much a goal of defeating terrorism but of diverting terrorism. If true, it is a chilling dream. "Bait" (my word, not Friedman's) is hardly a word to be used about men and women called upon and responding to the call to protect America. Still, we have to decide whether the goal is defending, defeating, or diverting.
I don't know what to say about Chuang Tzu's dream. That would entail my knowing -- and I don't know. I don't know why we are at war. I don't know why those who murder, maim, and mystify one another do what they do. I don't know whether the label Christian, Muslim, Jew, Jihadist or Patriot makes any difference -- they employ the same behavior, only with varying sophistication of weapon.
I don't know why it matters that the aspiring candidate Cardinals of the Catholic Church attempt to declare the recently deceased Pope a saint-to-be by official proclamation. I don't know whether it matters that Republicans own the United States and the rest of us are aliens in this newly strange land. I don't know whether the skunk will return to the barn and the stink of unwanted presence will waft again. Or whether the putrid spray of rotten ideas and ugly war that turn us sick with disgust at the real time stench of death will morph into everlasting declaration of insouciance; and fragrance of memorial flowers becomes perennial gravesite smell; and the convoluted dream-like pronouncements everyone tries to desperately make up to justify what is happening becomes national mantra of partisan hermeneutic. I don't know
Perhaps the Monarch Butterflies are not dying from genetically modified crops.
Maybe we as a people are not dying because others "resent our freedom."
Possibly there is a dream -- a dream of justice, equality, and unity -- and this dream is one of which we are terrified.
Imaginably, all tossed away, we will never know -- but continue on in a dream of unawareness, pretending we are this person or that kind of country or maybe neither as it suits us.
I'll have none of it.
I'll stay a while with two things said by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
1. Love is the affinity which links and draws together the elements of the world... Love, in fact, is the agent of universal synthesis.
2. Our duty, as men and women, is to proceed as if limits to our ability did not exist. We are collaborators in creation.
(Pierre Teilhard de Chardin)
I'd rather we synthesize and collaborate in real time in real life.
With duty. With love.
Monday, April 11, 2005
Where was he going?
Those who are known
As Real People
Are united in essence
With the Way,
So they have endowments yet
Appear to have none;
They are full yet
Appear to be empty
They govern the inside,
Not the outside.
Clear and pure, utterly plain,
They do not contrive
Artificialities but return
To simplicity.
- Lao tzu
He's dead. At least what we call dead. And yet the writer says he's on the road to Emmaus. So, he's not dead. Or, what we call death isn't.
When they drew near to the village to which they were going, he made as if to go on; but they pressed him to stay with them. (from Luke 24)
Jesus on road and at table. The wonder of mythic writing is that it transcends yet includes magic thinking. And at a time when integral mind is a possibility more understood now than before, the story has a new twist.
And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; but he had vanished from their sight. (from Luke 24)
Where'd he go?
So much is made of Jesus' death and resurrection, appearances and ascension, and the anticipation on the part of his followers he will return again to end it all and sort out who should be rewarded and who punished -- you've got to be impressed at the story's staying power. Equally impressive is the way the storyteller has Jesus live, be killed, rising, showing up, disappearing, reappearing, going away, and biding time somewhere until history comes to abrupt halt.
Luke writes, "he had vanished from their sight." Just like that. Gone. The two guys look at each other, no doubt asking: Who was that? Where'd he go? The story doesn't say where he goes. We don't know where he's gone. We guess; we say "heaven," as though that pins it down. He's with the Father and the Holy Spirit, as if that explains anything but narrative construct.
Where are we going? Where have we gone? Are we waiting, like some bedtime rendition, for the story to be finished by the storyteller tucking us in for history?
He disappeared from sight.
With a mind no longer restricted to magical one-pointed now-you-see now-you-don't, a mind able to move beyond mythic interpretations that someone or something other will determine what's next, and with a mind ready to enter a new twist -- a new wholeness of appreciation -- we look at the words again.
"He made as if to go on"..."they recognized him." And they were left to themselves. Jesus leaves them to themselves. Like some odd last will and testament, he leaves them to themselves. Jesus does the same thing to them that the Buddha did to his companions. The Buddha's last words instructed his followers to work out their salvation with diligence, to be a light unto themselves, to stand on their own two feet.
Similarly, Jesus left his friends with words and bread. "Break them both," he seemed to tell them, "and find me there."
Jesus is not in sight. He is in the broken. He is in the empty space felt by hearts that long to be what they think they've lost. We're not lost. Hemingway is quoted as saying something like: The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. It's the word 'many' that gives pause. Not all. Many. Some, by inference, are not strong, do not mend strong. Is Jesus, simply, in the broken, no matter how they mend or do not mend?
Is there new behavior we need to learn in the presence of the broken? Do we, in addition to (or instead of) nodding to the triumphant splendor of other-worldly ecclesiastical magnificence, need (also learn) to bow deeply to the everyday faces and daily experiences of this-worldly existence?
Where'd he go? That's our meditation. No matter where throughout history some have decided to put Jesus, the question remains vital for us -- especially during this time when some call him back to punish and destroy, or hierarchy plan to vote for his successor in the church they've held tight to. Where we think Jesus is -- matters.
Where'd he go? Where is he?
The letters stretch out: N- o- w- h- e- r- e.
And you and I? No where? Now here?
Don't bother looking in the mirror; step into the mirror. Don't think there's someplace else to go to look for Jesus; let's look at each other wherever we are.
Break and share a piece of that bread?
Yes.
Let's be bread.
Thank you.
Let's.
Those who are known
As Real People
Are united in essence
With the Way,
So they have endowments yet
Appear to have none;
They are full yet
Appear to be empty
They govern the inside,
Not the outside.
Clear and pure, utterly plain,
They do not contrive
Artificialities but return
To simplicity.
- Lao tzu
He's dead. At least what we call dead. And yet the writer says he's on the road to Emmaus. So, he's not dead. Or, what we call death isn't.
When they drew near to the village to which they were going, he made as if to go on; but they pressed him to stay with them. (from Luke 24)
Jesus on road and at table. The wonder of mythic writing is that it transcends yet includes magic thinking. And at a time when integral mind is a possibility more understood now than before, the story has a new twist.
And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; but he had vanished from their sight. (from Luke 24)
Where'd he go?
So much is made of Jesus' death and resurrection, appearances and ascension, and the anticipation on the part of his followers he will return again to end it all and sort out who should be rewarded and who punished -- you've got to be impressed at the story's staying power. Equally impressive is the way the storyteller has Jesus live, be killed, rising, showing up, disappearing, reappearing, going away, and biding time somewhere until history comes to abrupt halt.
Luke writes, "he had vanished from their sight." Just like that. Gone. The two guys look at each other, no doubt asking: Who was that? Where'd he go? The story doesn't say where he goes. We don't know where he's gone. We guess; we say "heaven," as though that pins it down. He's with the Father and the Holy Spirit, as if that explains anything but narrative construct.
Where are we going? Where have we gone? Are we waiting, like some bedtime rendition, for the story to be finished by the storyteller tucking us in for history?
He disappeared from sight.
With a mind no longer restricted to magical one-pointed now-you-see now-you-don't, a mind able to move beyond mythic interpretations that someone or something other will determine what's next, and with a mind ready to enter a new twist -- a new wholeness of appreciation -- we look at the words again.
"He made as if to go on"..."they recognized him." And they were left to themselves. Jesus leaves them to themselves. Like some odd last will and testament, he leaves them to themselves. Jesus does the same thing to them that the Buddha did to his companions. The Buddha's last words instructed his followers to work out their salvation with diligence, to be a light unto themselves, to stand on their own two feet.
Similarly, Jesus left his friends with words and bread. "Break them both," he seemed to tell them, "and find me there."
Jesus is not in sight. He is in the broken. He is in the empty space felt by hearts that long to be what they think they've lost. We're not lost. Hemingway is quoted as saying something like: The world breaks everyone and afterwards many are strong at the broken places. It's the word 'many' that gives pause. Not all. Many. Some, by inference, are not strong, do not mend strong. Is Jesus, simply, in the broken, no matter how they mend or do not mend?
Is there new behavior we need to learn in the presence of the broken? Do we, in addition to (or instead of) nodding to the triumphant splendor of other-worldly ecclesiastical magnificence, need (also learn) to bow deeply to the everyday faces and daily experiences of this-worldly existence?
Where'd he go? That's our meditation. No matter where throughout history some have decided to put Jesus, the question remains vital for us -- especially during this time when some call him back to punish and destroy, or hierarchy plan to vote for his successor in the church they've held tight to. Where we think Jesus is -- matters.
Where'd he go? Where is he?
The letters stretch out: N- o- w- h- e- r- e.
And you and I? No where? Now here?
Don't bother looking in the mirror; step into the mirror. Don't think there's someplace else to go to look for Jesus; let's look at each other wherever we are.
Break and share a piece of that bread?
Yes.
Let's be bread.
Thank you.
Let's.
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Just so. There is corruption. There is secrecy. There's no real place to hide. Not even in the warm glow many feel following the funeral of the recent Pope.
Reading about Archbishop Paul Marcinkus who said, "You can't run a Church on Hail Marys." He's retired from Vatican Bank he ran for a while. He's in his eighties and lives in Arizona. He didn't run the church on Hail Marys. Same say his way was far more sinister and dark. I thought of him as I was thinking about Albino Luciano (Pope John Paul I) who lived as Pope only 33 days. Some say he was poisoned. Some say he knew too much about massive corruption in Vatican Bank. But that's just rumor. Truth has a way of hiding under cloak and diplomatic immunity of rumor. Marcinkus won't talk about anything having to do with his years in power at the Vatican. That's the thing about secrecy.
I ask a man by the harbor about how he lives with corruption and secrecy. "I try to stay in the open," he says.
You should each individually clarify your own mind, getting to the root without pursuing the branches. Just get to the root, and the branches come of themselves. If you want to get to the root, just get to know your mind. This mind is basically the root of all mundane and supramundane phenomena. As long as the mind does not become obsessed with all good and bad, you will realize that all things are basically just so.
- Ta-mei (ca.805)
Sometimes there's a desire to hide away. Then I remember that mind is where I am, where each is. I must look into and through this mind.
Heaven-Haven
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
(poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins)
I'm uncertain at times whether heaven is haven or if it is open confrontation with everything as it is -- where we meet both those who have shown us the true light of love and those who've shown us the darkness of deceptive power.
Hopkins's words for describing meaning are borrowed from the scholastic philosopher Duns Scotus and they complicate any theoretical understanding of meaning in the extreme, as they are not concepts with a positive, palpable content, but merely empty slots, 'deictic words' containing an indication or, figuratively speaking, a peg marking the place where individual, local, particular meanings can be hung in actual life. Hopkins coins the English word "thisness" for Scotus's "haecceitas", the impulse behind any individual and momentary materialization of essential existence. http://www.unibuc.ro/eBooks/lls/IoanaZirra-VictorianAge/11.htm
Annie says I'm grumpy today. "I'm always grumpy," I say. We decide that I'm in a foul mood today. That's the word. We settle on foul.
I'd prefer to be informed and aware of things -- however conflicting -- than be uninformed and asleep. This is a challenge to finding the "just so" mind -- where "thisness" is replete with every which way.
If we are to learn to stand authentically in the middle of contradiction -- just so -- we need to hear the fair and foul sides both. This, if we are to maturely settle into the center of things, the middle way. This center, or middle way -- as pointed to in Christian or Buddhist thought -- where we have to recognize the tilts and turmoil, the off-balanced and ill-fastened realities that suck us all from sacred rest in the heart of things.
"Haecceitas."
Libera nos!
Reading about Archbishop Paul Marcinkus who said, "You can't run a Church on Hail Marys." He's retired from Vatican Bank he ran for a while. He's in his eighties and lives in Arizona. He didn't run the church on Hail Marys. Same say his way was far more sinister and dark. I thought of him as I was thinking about Albino Luciano (Pope John Paul I) who lived as Pope only 33 days. Some say he was poisoned. Some say he knew too much about massive corruption in Vatican Bank. But that's just rumor. Truth has a way of hiding under cloak and diplomatic immunity of rumor. Marcinkus won't talk about anything having to do with his years in power at the Vatican. That's the thing about secrecy.
I ask a man by the harbor about how he lives with corruption and secrecy. "I try to stay in the open," he says.
You should each individually clarify your own mind, getting to the root without pursuing the branches. Just get to the root, and the branches come of themselves. If you want to get to the root, just get to know your mind. This mind is basically the root of all mundane and supramundane phenomena. As long as the mind does not become obsessed with all good and bad, you will realize that all things are basically just so.
- Ta-mei (ca.805)
Sometimes there's a desire to hide away. Then I remember that mind is where I am, where each is. I must look into and through this mind.
Heaven-Haven
I have desired to go
Where springs not fail,
To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail,
And a few lilies blow.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come,
Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,
And out of the swing of the sea.
(poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins)
I'm uncertain at times whether heaven is haven or if it is open confrontation with everything as it is -- where we meet both those who have shown us the true light of love and those who've shown us the darkness of deceptive power.
Hopkins's words for describing meaning are borrowed from the scholastic philosopher Duns Scotus and they complicate any theoretical understanding of meaning in the extreme, as they are not concepts with a positive, palpable content, but merely empty slots, 'deictic words' containing an indication or, figuratively speaking, a peg marking the place where individual, local, particular meanings can be hung in actual life. Hopkins coins the English word "thisness" for Scotus's "haecceitas", the impulse behind any individual and momentary materialization of essential existence. http://www.unibuc.ro/eBooks/lls/IoanaZirra-VictorianAge/11.htm
Annie says I'm grumpy today. "I'm always grumpy," I say. We decide that I'm in a foul mood today. That's the word. We settle on foul.
I'd prefer to be informed and aware of things -- however conflicting -- than be uninformed and asleep. This is a challenge to finding the "just so" mind -- where "thisness" is replete with every which way.
If we are to learn to stand authentically in the middle of contradiction -- just so -- we need to hear the fair and foul sides both. This, if we are to maturely settle into the center of things, the middle way. This center, or middle way -- as pointed to in Christian or Buddhist thought -- where we have to recognize the tilts and turmoil, the off-balanced and ill-fastened realities that suck us all from sacred rest in the heart of things.
"Haecceitas."
Libera nos!
Saturday, April 09, 2005
"No one gives a toss," says a woman interviewed in England. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall are wed. Hats and feathers stream into the blessing ceremony at St. George's Chapel, Windsor.
From burial crypt in Italy to wedding ceremony in England -- the cycle of news attends the goings on of prominence and population.
Beyond a door I made but don't close
I glimpse strange birds fly past.
For a piece of jade you can own a whole cliff,
But gold won't buy a lifetime of freedom.
The sound of icy falls on dawnlit snowy ridges
A mountain horizon through leafless autumn woods
Mist clears from ancient cedars and days last forever
Right and wrong don't enter the clouds.
- Stone House
At Ragged Mountain it is spring. Cesco and I walk to brook. A few patches of snow remain. They'll recede today. Water tumbles cold sault under broken branch and fallen trunk along incline of brook.
I open door and window of meditation cabin, light incense, bow to four directions, straighten blankets on zabutons. Woodchip path is finally without snow and ice. It seems safe to welcome new season. Beginnings, however constant and repetitive, allure.
The First Green of Spring
Out walking in the swamp picking cowslip, marsh marigold,
this sweet first green of spring. Now sautéed in a pan melting
to a deeper green than ever they were alive, this green, this life,
harbinger of things to come. Now we sit at the table munching
on this message from the dawn which says we and the world
are alive again today, and this is the world's birthday. And
even though we know we are growing old, we are dying, we
will never be young again, we also know we're still right here
now, today, and, my oh my! don't these greens taste good.
(Poem by David Budbill)
It is always the fact of things. The fact presents itself and we face the fact. Fact first. Only then does what comes next follow. Follows feeling, follows interpretation, follows meaning. These things follow; fact comes first.
Fact is, these two marry. Fact is, Pope dies. Fact is war in Iraq takes place. Fact is fact. What we do during or following fact is the drama of human life attempting to make sense of following flow from fact.
Roman communion buries its sovereign Papa. Anglican communion blesses its combining royalty. Empty cabin lets in sun morning chill sweetening air.
Tallyho! Let the fox go free; let hounds return home to snooze. Let's get on with life. These things that take place between birth and death are passing details with duration. It is Life Itself we must remember. Life, we imagine, which precedes birth and follows death.
We greet one another as we journey through this sacred place.
"This is our pilgrimage of life," intones the final prayer.
Going on, we well-wish one another, one-in-all!
From burial crypt in Italy to wedding ceremony in England -- the cycle of news attends the goings on of prominence and population.
Beyond a door I made but don't close
I glimpse strange birds fly past.
For a piece of jade you can own a whole cliff,
But gold won't buy a lifetime of freedom.
The sound of icy falls on dawnlit snowy ridges
A mountain horizon through leafless autumn woods
Mist clears from ancient cedars and days last forever
Right and wrong don't enter the clouds.
- Stone House
At Ragged Mountain it is spring. Cesco and I walk to brook. A few patches of snow remain. They'll recede today. Water tumbles cold sault under broken branch and fallen trunk along incline of brook.
I open door and window of meditation cabin, light incense, bow to four directions, straighten blankets on zabutons. Woodchip path is finally without snow and ice. It seems safe to welcome new season. Beginnings, however constant and repetitive, allure.
The First Green of Spring
Out walking in the swamp picking cowslip, marsh marigold,
this sweet first green of spring. Now sautéed in a pan melting
to a deeper green than ever they were alive, this green, this life,
harbinger of things to come. Now we sit at the table munching
on this message from the dawn which says we and the world
are alive again today, and this is the world's birthday. And
even though we know we are growing old, we are dying, we
will never be young again, we also know we're still right here
now, today, and, my oh my! don't these greens taste good.
(Poem by David Budbill)
It is always the fact of things. The fact presents itself and we face the fact. Fact first. Only then does what comes next follow. Follows feeling, follows interpretation, follows meaning. These things follow; fact comes first.
Fact is, these two marry. Fact is, Pope dies. Fact is war in Iraq takes place. Fact is fact. What we do during or following fact is the drama of human life attempting to make sense of following flow from fact.
Roman communion buries its sovereign Papa. Anglican communion blesses its combining royalty. Empty cabin lets in sun morning chill sweetening air.
Tallyho! Let the fox go free; let hounds return home to snooze. Let's get on with life. These things that take place between birth and death are passing details with duration. It is Life Itself we must remember. Life, we imagine, which precedes birth and follows death.
We greet one another as we journey through this sacred place.
"This is our pilgrimage of life," intones the final prayer.
Going on, we well-wish one another, one-in-all!
Friday, April 08, 2005
In Vatican City Pope is buried. Pomp in pageantry with liturgy in Latin. If prayer alone were price of ticket John Paul has passage paid for multiple trips to Father's house.
Few travel
The thousand li
To Heng-yang.
Far off, you follow
A lone cloud
Into blue mountain mists.
When spring grass covers the ground
With green, you'll come back
Through deep mountains
Where no road exists.
- Liu Chang-ch'ing (710-787)
We wish him well.
As he was being entombed and lowered in crypt we are in prison today giving talk to lifelong recovery group. The premise: Spirituality is conversation between solitude and community, conversation between Who am I? and Who are you?
Following that is class with Joe about the song of his life: wheel out of control, deep in a hole.
Finally with Ryan and Greg, schemas posted and erased about birth and death, life and love, eureka and involuntary control -- reading John Donne and Isaac Asimov.
While the ceremony of burial occupying princes of church and heads of state enacted in midst of magnificent architecture drifts into rerun, the ceremony of conversation behind razor wire and cement wall among men seeking their own way home disperses back to pod and cell.
Back at the shop, Joanie feels I need a hug because of the Pope's death and is undeterred. Lola asks if I was affected by the death of the Pope. I say no, not really. But that might not be the whole of it. He was a fine man. Maybe great. Calls for instant sainthood are made. But here in Maine, as a catholic who looks for more than ceremony and politics from the institutional representative of Christ, I watch for a more particular revelation to emerge from this celebration.
Christ incognito in hidden halls tucked far from ceremony or politics -- that's more desirable metaphor than the grand stage and magisterial eloquence that accompanies Papal office proclaiming reminder that its occupant is first among equals .
Closer to ground, Christians have a specific burden. The Logos of God, Center of Being, and Face of Christ will always necessarily have to be particular, present, and participatory in the ordinary occasion of life unfolding everywhere as it is and with everyone as they are. The everydayness of humility, service, hospitality, and long-suffering involved with attending one's own and other's unaware hurtful residency in dualistic judgmental elite and separating delusions of power, invincibility and control -- is a slog through muddy moments of why bother.
Each of us -- whether politician, pope, or prisoner -- is still confronted by Blake's words:
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.
( --William Blake 1757-1827)
Being in prison is spiritual practice. As with any practice there are days bother seems worth it, and others when bother says don't.
Today, practicing with what is becoming of John Paul and twenty five prison inmates, is no bother.
A snickers bar helps.
The faces nail it.
Few travel
The thousand li
To Heng-yang.
Far off, you follow
A lone cloud
Into blue mountain mists.
When spring grass covers the ground
With green, you'll come back
Through deep mountains
Where no road exists.
- Liu Chang-ch'ing (710-787)
We wish him well.
As he was being entombed and lowered in crypt we are in prison today giving talk to lifelong recovery group. The premise: Spirituality is conversation between solitude and community, conversation between Who am I? and Who are you?
Following that is class with Joe about the song of his life: wheel out of control, deep in a hole.
Finally with Ryan and Greg, schemas posted and erased about birth and death, life and love, eureka and involuntary control -- reading John Donne and Isaac Asimov.
While the ceremony of burial occupying princes of church and heads of state enacted in midst of magnificent architecture drifts into rerun, the ceremony of conversation behind razor wire and cement wall among men seeking their own way home disperses back to pod and cell.
Back at the shop, Joanie feels I need a hug because of the Pope's death and is undeterred. Lola asks if I was affected by the death of the Pope. I say no, not really. But that might not be the whole of it. He was a fine man. Maybe great. Calls for instant sainthood are made. But here in Maine, as a catholic who looks for more than ceremony and politics from the institutional representative of Christ, I watch for a more particular revelation to emerge from this celebration.
Christ incognito in hidden halls tucked far from ceremony or politics -- that's more desirable metaphor than the grand stage and magisterial eloquence that accompanies Papal office proclaiming reminder that its occupant is first among equals .
Closer to ground, Christians have a specific burden. The Logos of God, Center of Being, and Face of Christ will always necessarily have to be particular, present, and participatory in the ordinary occasion of life unfolding everywhere as it is and with everyone as they are. The everydayness of humility, service, hospitality, and long-suffering involved with attending one's own and other's unaware hurtful residency in dualistic judgmental elite and separating delusions of power, invincibility and control -- is a slog through muddy moments of why bother.
Each of us -- whether politician, pope, or prisoner -- is still confronted by Blake's words:
He who would do good to another must do it in Minute Particulars. General Good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized Particulars.
( --William Blake 1757-1827)
Being in prison is spiritual practice. As with any practice there are days bother seems worth it, and others when bother says don't.
Today, practicing with what is becoming of John Paul and twenty five prison inmates, is no bother.
A snickers bar helps.
The faces nail it.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Now that it is spring,
ants make their way to kitchen --
dishes slant in sink.
Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations -- there you'll find the essence of true art, religion, and science.
(- Santôka Taneda - tr. John Stevens)
Change your mind and change
everything present and past --
the whole world still here.
ants make their way to kitchen --
dishes slant in sink.
Real haiku is the soul of poetry. Anything that is not actually present in one's heart is not haiku. The moon glows, flowers bloom, insects cry, water flows. There is no place we cannot find flowers or think of the moon. This is the essence of haiku. Go beyond the restrictions of your era, forget about purpose or meaning, separate yourself from historical limitations -- there you'll find the essence of true art, religion, and science.
(- Santôka Taneda - tr. John Stevens)
Change your mind and change
everything present and past --
the whole world still here.
Wednesday, April 06, 2005
The retired psychologist said, "I am in love with solitude."
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is one who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
(-- Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Real solitude allows spiritual gift to be shared by everyone. That's how we know it is spiritual, not material, gift. Material gift is particular, localized, and finite. Spiritual gift is without barrier or boundary.
The elderly man is right about solitude.
Let it be over everything that breathes.
Love alone.
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great person is one who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
(-- Ralph Waldo Emerson)
Real solitude allows spiritual gift to be shared by everyone. That's how we know it is spiritual, not material, gift. Material gift is particular, localized, and finite. Spiritual gift is without barrier or boundary.
The elderly man is right about solitude.
Let it be over everything that breathes.
Love alone.
Tuesday, April 05, 2005
Monday, April 04, 2005
I find myself whispering his name.
Goethe wrote that: "Names are but Noise and Smoke, Obscuring Heavenly Light" (in Faust, I). Even so, heavenly light makes its own way through obscurity.
I've decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
(-- Martin Luther King Jr.)
It was 1968. I was studying philosophy in Washington DC when, on April 4th, Martin Luther King Jr. entered everywhere at once.
His doing so was too much for people. A tornado of grief, anger, and confusion swept DC and took away philosophy, replacing it, instead, with a susurrus of chaotic compassionate service.
No assassin really silences the sound of someone's truth-telling. No matter how surrounded and veiled with dissemblance, the center where truth dwells is an ever-present origin always coming to word.
You guard a spiritual thing: it isn't something you could make, and it isn't something you can describe. In this ground of ours, there is no Buddha, no nirvana, and no path to practice, no doctrine to actualize. The way is not within existence or nonexistence. What method would one then practice? This abundant light, wherever you are, in every situation, is itself the great way.
- Tan-hsia (739-824)
What was it happened? It wasn't that some conspirators, (or, if you wish, lone American-style gunman), were once again able to kill someone who threatened power with truth. It was the sudden quake of love released from containment that drove us crazy that week. This happens whenever form suddenly becomes emptiness. In 1968 it led us to reflect new brother and sisterhood. These 37 years his voice and words are what poetry would be if poem found itself reflected through every thing coming into its own.
Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you!
My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
Hear me out
for I too am concerned
and every man
who wants to die at peace in his bed
besides.
(from poem, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" by William Carlos Williams )
I think we move too quickly to reach for meaning -- in poems and in life. We might wish to consider staying with confusion and shocking unknowing fact -- the immediate experience moment after moment lays before us. It is in the immediacy of revealing reality that news presents itself to us -- not yet filtered and packaged for a more subdued, civilized consumption.
It is prior to rational and reasoned response that the raw experience of revelation enters our psyches. Mostly we receive what custodians of truth and love parcel out in mealy ration to subdued and processed receptacles we once remember calling mind, we once remember feeling as heart.
Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
(-- Martin Luther King Jr.)
April 4th is a poem whose meaning eludes. I am left with thoughts of service along with feelings of shudder and sorrow.
Asphodel, in Greek poetry and mythology, are the flowers of Hades and the dead, sacred to Persephone.
The world under this world, and the world just off another dimension alongside this world -- through which so much passes without explanation or understanding -- at times parts veil and shows us something of a depth of thought and feeling we can only blankly stare, experience ourselves nearing nothingness, nearly shrugging off body and mind, as if afloat and without any sense of who once we were.
I cannot love assassination. I cannot hate assassins.
A Birthday Poem
Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.
(Poem by Ted Kooser)
I stand in the empty center of thought and love and whisper his name.
Something great wells up and through spirit.
This time, and in this form -- "Martin!"
Goethe wrote that: "Names are but Noise and Smoke, Obscuring Heavenly Light" (in Faust, I). Even so, heavenly light makes its own way through obscurity.
I've decided to stick with love. Hate is too great a burden to bear.
(-- Martin Luther King Jr.)
It was 1968. I was studying philosophy in Washington DC when, on April 4th, Martin Luther King Jr. entered everywhere at once.
His doing so was too much for people. A tornado of grief, anger, and confusion swept DC and took away philosophy, replacing it, instead, with a susurrus of chaotic compassionate service.
No assassin really silences the sound of someone's truth-telling. No matter how surrounded and veiled with dissemblance, the center where truth dwells is an ever-present origin always coming to word.
You guard a spiritual thing: it isn't something you could make, and it isn't something you can describe. In this ground of ours, there is no Buddha, no nirvana, and no path to practice, no doctrine to actualize. The way is not within existence or nonexistence. What method would one then practice? This abundant light, wherever you are, in every situation, is itself the great way.
- Tan-hsia (739-824)
What was it happened? It wasn't that some conspirators, (or, if you wish, lone American-style gunman), were once again able to kill someone who threatened power with truth. It was the sudden quake of love released from containment that drove us crazy that week. This happens whenever form suddenly becomes emptiness. In 1968 it led us to reflect new brother and sisterhood. These 37 years his voice and words are what poetry would be if poem found itself reflected through every thing coming into its own.
Of asphodel, that greeny flower,
I come, my sweet,
to sing to you!
My heart rouses
thinking to bring you news
of something
that concerns you
and concerns many men. Look at
what passes for the new.
You will not find it there but in
despised poems.
It is difficult
to get the news from poems
yet men die miserably every day
for lack
of what is found there.
Hear me out
for I too am concerned
and every man
who wants to die at peace in his bed
besides.
(from poem, "Asphodel, That Greeny Flower" by William Carlos Williams )
I think we move too quickly to reach for meaning -- in poems and in life. We might wish to consider staying with confusion and shocking unknowing fact -- the immediate experience moment after moment lays before us. It is in the immediacy of revealing reality that news presents itself to us -- not yet filtered and packaged for a more subdued, civilized consumption.
It is prior to rational and reasoned response that the raw experience of revelation enters our psyches. Mostly we receive what custodians of truth and love parcel out in mealy ration to subdued and processed receptacles we once remember calling mind, we once remember feeling as heart.
Everybody can be great... because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.
(-- Martin Luther King Jr.)
April 4th is a poem whose meaning eludes. I am left with thoughts of service along with feelings of shudder and sorrow.
Asphodel, in Greek poetry and mythology, are the flowers of Hades and the dead, sacred to Persephone.
The world under this world, and the world just off another dimension alongside this world -- through which so much passes without explanation or understanding -- at times parts veil and shows us something of a depth of thought and feeling we can only blankly stare, experience ourselves nearing nothingness, nearly shrugging off body and mind, as if afloat and without any sense of who once we were.
I cannot love assassination. I cannot hate assassins.
A Birthday Poem
Just past dawn, the sun stands
with its heavy red head
in a black stanchion of trees,
waiting for someone to come
with his bucket
for the foamy white light,
and then a long day in the pasture.
I too spend my days grazing,
feasting on every green moment
till darkness calls,
and with the others
I walk away into the night,
swinging the little tin bell
of my name.
(Poem by Ted Kooser)
I stand in the empty center of thought and love and whisper his name.
Something great wells up and through spirit.
This time, and in this form -- "Martin!"
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Mu-ge misses in attempt to jump to top of desk. Falls to floor. He retires to bed to re-think his dignity.
In tune with the moon and clouds twenty years
To find myself old is hard
Crows wait for food at the ledge
A monk returns with an empty bowl
Others drag surf for clams and shrimp
I swing a hoe in the mountains
When solomon-seal's gone, there's pine pollen
And a square inch free of care.
- Stonehouse
The cat goes on his way. He leaves desktop the chaos it is. Fog slips down mountain after long rainfall. Water empties itself into crevice and valley. On cushions four sit silently; on rug three stretch their four legs in silent laydown. Seven sentient beings taking time to be still as fog looks in window..
A woman quotes Trungpa Rinpoche saying, "Enlightenment is ego's greatest disappointment."
Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa writes :
1.
I do not know who I am, what soul I have.
When I speak with sincerity, I do not know what sincerity I am speaking with. I am varyingly someone other than an "I" of whom I do not know if he exists (if he is those others).
I feel beliefs which I do not hold. I am ravished by passions I repudiate. My constant study of myself is constantly pointing out to me breaches of faith by my soul toward some character which perhaps I never had nor does it think I do have.
I feel multiple. I am like a room with innumerable fantastic mirrors that distort by false reflections one single pre-existing reality which is not there in any of them and is there in them all.
As the pantheist feels he is a tree[?] and even the blossom, I feel myself as different beings. I feel myself living alien lives, in me, incompletely, as though my soul shared in all human beings, incompletely, through a sum of non-"I"s synthesized in an afterthought "I."
2.
Be plural like the universe!
(from "Toward Explaining Heteronymy," in The Poet's Work, 29 Masters of 20th Century Poetry On The Origins And Practice Of Their Art, edited by Reginald Gibbons)
We are different beings. A new form of spiritual practice emerges with community as teacher, teacher as learner, and learner as community.
One recalls W.C. Williams writing, "A new world/ is only a new mind./ And the mind and the poem/ are all apiece." Olson valued immensely what he spoke of as "mindedness." I would take his sense of one's "second birth," that coming into the world as fact of oneself, to be the possibility inherent, "that we are only/ as we find out we are."
("On Charles Olson"--by Robert Creeley, January 2000)
We sit, we converse, we write to find out.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
(from poem "Ars Poetica?" by Czeslaw Milosz)
We are not singular.
We are plural.
Empty bowls.
Disappoint!
In tune with the moon and clouds twenty years
To find myself old is hard
Crows wait for food at the ledge
A monk returns with an empty bowl
Others drag surf for clams and shrimp
I swing a hoe in the mountains
When solomon-seal's gone, there's pine pollen
And a square inch free of care.
- Stonehouse
The cat goes on his way. He leaves desktop the chaos it is. Fog slips down mountain after long rainfall. Water empties itself into crevice and valley. On cushions four sit silently; on rug three stretch their four legs in silent laydown. Seven sentient beings taking time to be still as fog looks in window..
A woman quotes Trungpa Rinpoche saying, "Enlightenment is ego's greatest disappointment."
Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa writes :
1.
I do not know who I am, what soul I have.
When I speak with sincerity, I do not know what sincerity I am speaking with. I am varyingly someone other than an "I" of whom I do not know if he exists (if he is those others).
I feel beliefs which I do not hold. I am ravished by passions I repudiate. My constant study of myself is constantly pointing out to me breaches of faith by my soul toward some character which perhaps I never had nor does it think I do have.
I feel multiple. I am like a room with innumerable fantastic mirrors that distort by false reflections one single pre-existing reality which is not there in any of them and is there in them all.
As the pantheist feels he is a tree[?] and even the blossom, I feel myself as different beings. I feel myself living alien lives, in me, incompletely, as though my soul shared in all human beings, incompletely, through a sum of non-"I"s synthesized in an afterthought "I."
2.
Be plural like the universe!
(from "Toward Explaining Heteronymy," in The Poet's Work, 29 Masters of 20th Century Poetry On The Origins And Practice Of Their Art, edited by Reginald Gibbons)
We are different beings. A new form of spiritual practice emerges with community as teacher, teacher as learner, and learner as community.
One recalls W.C. Williams writing, "A new world/ is only a new mind./ And the mind and the poem/ are all apiece." Olson valued immensely what he spoke of as "mindedness." I would take his sense of one's "second birth," that coming into the world as fact of oneself, to be the possibility inherent, "that we are only/ as we find out we are."
("On Charles Olson"--by Robert Creeley, January 2000)
We sit, we converse, we write to find out.
The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.
(from poem "Ars Poetica?" by Czeslaw Milosz)
We are not singular.
We are plural.
Empty bowls.
Disappoint!
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