Hospitality welcomes everyone as themselves.
Who's there to fool?
Stay who, stay where, you are.

We become sick allowing ego to rule and control. (Ill, us, I, on). We grow ill when "I" is always on and dominating.

We live mostly in illusion. It isn't life or existence that is illusory. Many of us are full of illusion.

A single path upwards
The thousand sages
Do not assist me.
- Jiun Sonja (1718-1804)

Worst part is it's impossible to figure out for sure why anyone does anything.

Let's begin a new version of play -- (ludo, ludere, lusi, lusus = to play) -- wherein we play with and in the world, we play with and for one another, and we play lightened by the joy of playing through life.

To live in illusion is not to play well with others, to be dead serious instead of alively playful.

Let's be well.

And playful.

Within.

Ourselves.

If politicians lead by example, we are a people of put-downs. We are meant to mock and denigrate our opponents. We are to admit no mistake, to say nothing but talking points that repeat verbatim the same response to whatever question is asked, and, finally, if the modeling is effective, to encourage one another to slash and burn, destroy and eliminate anyone standing in our way. It's a strategy resembling 'take no prisoners' but is more like imprisoning everyone in disdain and dismissive dislike. Except, of course, the true believers who will sacrifice intelligent inquiry and settle for mindless prattle that has nothing at all to do with anything but creating an enemy and defeating that enemy. Whatever the political affiliation, these men and women serve something other than you and me, something a little bit below our dignity and honor.

It's an odd leadership and an odd way to lead.

There was a monk who asked the Master, “Does a person who has had sudden awakening still need to continue with cultivation?”
The Master said, “If one has true awakening and attains to the fundamental, then at that time that person knows for himself that cultivation and non cultivation are just dualistic opposites. Like now, though the initial inspiration is dependent on conditions, if within a single thought one awakens to one’s own reality, there are still certain habitual tendencies that have accumulated over numberless kalpas which cannot be purified in a single instant. That person should certainly be taught how to gradually remove the karmic tendencies and mental habits: this is cultivation. There is no other method of cultivation that need to be taught to that person.”
- Kuei-shan Ling-yu (771-853)

With our words we create the world and each other. How are we doing?

"The origin of language is in essence mysterious. And this means that language can only have arisen from the overpowering, the strange, and the terrible, through man’s departure into being. In this departure, language was being, embodied in the word: poetry. Language is the primordial poetry in which a people speaks being.”
(--Martin Heidegger, in An Introduction to Metaphysics)

If we wished to save the world, or enlighten every person, would we do it with our next words and our next words after them?

One does not discover the absurd without attempting to write a manual of happiness. "What! by such narrow ways--?" There is but one world, however. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth. They are inseparable. It would be a mistake to say that happiness necessarily springs from the absurd discovery. It happens as well that the feeling of the absurd springs from happiness. "I conclude that all is well," says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred. It echoes in the wild and limited universe of man. It teaches that all is not, has not been, exhausted. It drives out of this world a god who had come into it with dissatisfaction and a preference for futile sufferings. It makes of fate a human matter, which must be settled among men.
(--from The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus)

I am not happy unless you are.

Well...

Well?

Sometimes you don't care. It's easy to care and it's easy not to care. Caring is tidal. It's noticeable at either lift or bottom. It's a matter of whether caring is worth caring about.

Weary, I yearn for the forest and hills;
Against my will, ten years have I spent
In the world of men.
Burning incense, I take leave of the assembly,
Shunning worldly affairs, I depart.
The mist invites me and I know that it is time to rest.
Men of little talent are not guests fond of mountains.
Men of little virtue do not make companions for gathering leaves.
Should someone ask, “When will you come back?”
I would reply, “The white clouds and the green water
Are boundless and serene.
- Jiun Sonja (1718-1804)

So much is about suffering, the stranger, and service. Maybe they're the tree sisters of ethics. How well do we treat these sisters?

Life is difficult. Life is easy. If we choose either of these statements we are likely to write a story that will confirm the chosen statement.

We're here to live our lives, not live a story. Our lives are fraught with turns, joys, and disappointments.

We pray to see our way through.

Take care. Be care. Or don't

You'll be just fine.

Watched film "Recount." Thing about the past is it never changes. Although someone said when you change your mind, you change the world, past and present. Maybe the better man won and the world went to hell. Maybe the better man lost, and the world went to hell. Politics and elections are not about the best person leading. Politics is about winning. That's all.

When hungry, eat.
When cold, put on clothes
Even children three feet tall,
Are aware of these things.
The teaching beyond doctrine
Is transparently clear;
Why should you have your eyes open
And still act foolishly?
Someone asked me for one of my
Coarse comments,
So I wrote out the above gatha
As a response.
- Isshi Bunchu (1608-1645)

The waitress at breakfast in Belfast said she didn't care for any of them. It's all talk, she said.

It takes a powerful faith to posit the truth will out. And if the truth does out, it is spun and spun until dizzy and unrecognizable. Truth staggers away unsure and impertinent.

They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the town; and they took him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on, intending to throw him down the cliff, but he slipped through the crowd and walked away.
(--Luke 4: 30)

Jesus is nearly unrecognizable. People create image and caricature and wonder where the true man disappeared. They are left holding words no dictionary could breath life back into.

A peanut butter slather on rye toast with cherry preserves on top helps put things into perspective.

Clearly we are not going to throw anyone off a cliff.

What is to be true between us?

Questions being asked: Will the storm nix the Republican Convention? Whose baby is it in Alaska? Is the cross actually the between place, the unifying action that eliminates "other" and "opposite"?

This mind has from the very beginning been independent of birth and death. It is neither green nor yellow, without form and characteristics. It does not belong to either existence or nothingness, and it cannot be reckoned as either young or old. It is neither long nor short, neither large nor small. It transcends all limitations, words, and traces. It is just this very thing- if you stir a thought, you miss it. It is like empty space, without limits, beyond conceptualization. It is only this One Mind that is Buddha, and Buddha is not different from sentient beings.
- Huang-po (d. 850)

It's a tense time.

Political storm as well as hurricane storms mainland. Things will be upset. Change to occur.

About the cross: To die on the cross is to create no other.

Thirty six years ago this day the boy born in a river town hospital is today a fine man going camping without his tomato sauce but with fresh scones. He, too, thinks about the storm and the baby.

A new koan arises: Why did Jesus die on the cross? Because no one had to enter the reality of fractured humanity and remove the cult of the broken. "No one" was his true name. He did nothing other than place "itself" at center. God died for no other reason than to remove "other" from the equation.

Each is now itself.

At center we are free.

A lovely way to be!

A monastic presence asks us the question: "Are we willing to investigate what is going on between us?" It is a life of simplicity, compassion, and faithful engagement.

Who can live such a life in today's world?

Illusion and enlightenment depend on each other,
Principle and actuality are ultimately the same.
All day long, sutras without words,
Through the night, Zen without sitting.
Warblers sing in the willow grove by the river,
A village dog barks at the moon.
I have no one to share my feelings
So I just write what is in my heart.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)

A writer late evening buying books at shop said tonight that once you have a "self" and "other" you have capitalism.

"No other" is a different kind of communal compassion and economic sharing.

I want everyone to have health and care for that health.

In prison today we wondered whether public remorse was a stage play. Given a mask, the saying goes, a man will tell the truth. Given a stage, we say, a man will playact. It is near impossible to figure out whether a man is telling or feeling the truth or if he is running his lines.

Let us sit together on a mat of reeds
And watch the mountains
Turn purple in the sunset.
- Rai San’yo

Fireworks over Camden Harbor for Windjammer Weekend. Pizza on patio.

Individual conscience is the measure of character. Informed and clear, the individual conscience is inviolable. The work is to inform and clarify.

We get old.

So it is!

For a moment, consider how the heart of America has changed.

There is suffering in the world. One feels sorrow at the suffering. We try to help see one another through.

Talking about food won’t make you full,
Babbling about clothes won’t keep out the cold.
A bowl of rice is what fills the belly;
It takes a suit of clothing to make you warm.
And yet, without stopping to consider this,
You complain the Buddha is hard to find.
Turn your mind within! There he is!
Why look for him abroad?
--Han shan

Biden says his mother told him, "No one is better than you. Everyone is your equal. And you are the equal of everyone."

One plus one equals one.

I don't know if it matters who becomes president.

The duality lies only in the skill
Or clumsiness, the honesty or
Dishonesty, of the person.
The content of the practices may vary,
But what difference is there in the goal
That is reached?
- Hakuin (1685-1769)

Dirt is dirt. Sight is sight.

Can we see what is right?

Kitchen. Cat plays. Dog plays.

The middle way involves a willingness to accept either rebirth or no rebirth of consciousness in another life. But the problem of rebirth of craving is the most universal, as well as the most significant and most urgent, for it pertains to all times, regardless of whether it be this moment, this life, or future lives if there are to be future lives. If one has solved this problem and is freed from craving, then all other problems cease to be problems, for with respect to them he has ceased to crave.
- Dialogues of the Buddha

Not to want. Not to want to live. Not to want to die. Just not to want.

There is nothing else I can do;
I walk on and on.
(--Santoka Taneda, trans. John Stevens)

Visiting empty rooms where meetingbrook might want to or not want to move to.

Democrats feature Teddy and Michelle.

All we can do, until we can't, is to walk on, walk off, walk with.

For those born today, for those dead today, we pray.

Tom and Taneda practice their gate.

Gone walking.

One Vietnam vet got hot with another Vietnam vet out on the shop's patio while a third Vietnam vet inside grumbled that being a blowhard or even a POW in Hanoi during that war, while excruciating, was not exactly a rationale for deciding the presidential race. Pain as the reason for exacting and prolonging more pain seems counter-intuitive.

Inexplicably, and dangerously, the metaphor is enacted by a woman falling and banging her face on concrete ground. Everyone assembles to help her -- medical nurse from restaurant, ambulance EMTs, a flurry of first aid -- and she is transported, alert, asking how she got on the ground, a hurting time to follow, to emergency room and another length of recovery. Inside the shop a mixture of emotions -- concern for the woman's well-being alongside the veterans' grousing about how anybody who's been in combat can retain a bellicose bravado.

At least one person is silently praying for wounded woman and wounded warriors.

In the Liang Imperial Palace
He would not explain who he was,
But crossed the river
With sealed lips and piercing eyes
Until he arrive at
Complete tranquility:
A single flower,
Five petals together in the spring.
- Shin’etsu (1639-1696)

No wonder Iraq and Afghanistan are so ignored these days by Americans -- they're still fighting the Vietnam war, still blaming Democrats or generic anti-war sentiment for pulling out, and still stuck with the point of view that any acts committed in the name of democracy, no matter how heinous or criminal, get a free pass.

Afghan Leader Assails Airstrike He Says Killed 95
By CARLOTTA GALL
Published: August 23, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned on Saturday a coalition airstrike that he said killed up to 95 Afghans — including 50 children — in a village in western Afghanistan on Friday, and said his government would be announcing measures to prevent the loss of civilian life in the future.

Government officials who traveled to the village of Azizabad in Herat Province on Saturday said the death toll had risen to 95 from 76, making it one of the deadliest airstrikes on civilians in nearly seven years of war.

The American military said Saturday it was investigating the attack.

The Karzai government has expressed outrage over recent airstrikes that have led to civilian deaths, as popular support for the coalition presence in Afghanistan dwindles. The tension comes at a delicate time for the American-led coalition, which is facing a resurgent Taliban with a perceived shortage of troops, leading it to rely more on air power to battle militants.

Mr. Karzai also denounced the coalition after an airstrike on July 6 killed 27 people in a wedding party — most of them women and children, including the bride — in eastern Afghanistan.

War, the war-makers like to say, is sloppy. That's shorthand for an assumed permission to shoot and kill anyone proximate to a suspected mark or targeted asset. In war only enemy kills or destroyed targets count. A good soldier or fighting force is forgiven much in the name of a nice try, sorry for the mess, but it was for the good guys, and we are ok.

Pinning the tail on the terrorist is not as easy as we once thought. There's a lot to the narcissus myth.

In the tale told by Ovid, Echo, a nymph, falls in love with a vain youth named Narcissus, who was the son of the blue Nymph Leirope of Thespia. The river god Cephisus had once encircled Leirope with the windings of his streams, and thus trapping her, had raped ("seduced") the nymph. Concerned about the baby's welfare, Leirope went to consult the prophet Teiresias regarding her son's future. Teiresias told the nymph that Narcissus "would live to a ripe old age, as long as he never knew himself."

One day when Narcissus was out hunting stags, Echo stealthily followed the handsome youth through the woods, longing to address him but unable to speak first. When Narcissus finally heard footsteps and shouted "Who's there?", Echo answered "Who's there?" And so it went, until finally Echo showed herself and rushed to embrace the lovely youth. He pulled away from the nymph and vainly told her to leave him alone. Narcissus left Echo heartbroken and she spent the rest of her life in lonely glens, pining away for the love she never knew, until only her voice remained.

Eventually he became thirsty and went to drink from a stream. As he saw his reflection, he fell in love with it, not knowing that it was him. As he bent down to kiss it, it seemed to "run away" and he was heart broken. He grew thirstier but he wouldn't touch the water for fear of damaging his reflection, so he eventually died of thirst and self love, staring at his own reflection. The narcissus flower grew where he died. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narcissus_(mythology)

We are in danger of never knowing ourselves.

To a Terrorist

For the historical ache, the ache passed down
which finds its circumstance and becomes
the present ache, I offer this poem

without hope, knowing there's nothing,
not even revenge, which alleviates
a life like yours. I offer it as one

might offer his father's ashes
to the wind, a gesture
when there's nothing else to do.

Still, I must say to you:
I hate your good reasons.
I hate the hatefulness that makes you fall

in love with death, your own included.
Perhaps you're hating me now,
I who own my own house

and live in a country so muscular,
so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
only to mean well, and to protect.

Christ turned his singular cheek,
one man's holiness another's absurdity.
Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,

the surge. I'm just speaking out loud
to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse,
doomed to become mere words.

The first poet probably spoke to thunder
and, for a while, believed
thunder had an ear and a choice.
(--Poem: "To a Terrorist," by Stephen Dunn, from Between Angels, Norton).

There's no choice in war once war has begun its lumbering crushing roll over human life and human decency. War-makers, like wrecking balls, know only one thing.

Absurdity and holiness vie for our attention.

I cannot imagine any outcome of war other than devastation and revenge. War does not bring peace. Disgust with war and disillusionment with destruction are merely prelude to the proposition of peace.

Forget about Iraq and Afghanistan. Forget about patriotic words proclaiming victory and honor and noble causes. Forget about ever forgetting the insane experience of hateful war.

We're meant to remember the folly foisted on us by depraved minds during a deprived time.

We're meant to attend all of it -- the aftermath of one woman's unexplainable fall, one man's terrible torture, a foreign country's tenacious fight, and a home nation's bitter memories.

Healing begins contemporaneously with the immediate experience and realization of harm. It only remains painful suffering when recovery, understanding, and forgiveness are not practiced wholeheartedly. You would think that consolation and prolongation of healthful care and careful health would be the order of the day, every day.

A counter-intuitive proposition is one that does not seem likely to be true when assessed using intuition or gut feelings.

Scientifically discovered, objective truths are often called counter-intuitive when intuition, emotions, and other cognitive processes outside of deductive rationality interpret them to be wrong. However, the subjective nature of intuition limits the objectivity of what to call counter-intuitive because what is counter-intuitive for one may be intuitive for another.

Flawed understanding of a problem may lead to counter-productive behavior with undesirable outcomes.
(-- from Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counter-intuitive)

A face is a fragile thing. Face, in a different metaphor, is equally vulnerable. Our prayers and attention are given to the woman who recovers from this fall. So, too, to the men who try to adjust their minds to the experiences that have harmed their body and mind. Included in this prayer are those who do not completely comprehend how and why we fall, who throw themselves headlong into unaware and painful devastation, and consequently make bloody and terrified those nearby when they hit hard unyielding reality.

How is it any of us survives to another day?

The woman with gray hair with house in Castine knows Joe Biden. Their kids went to school together. She was happy to hear he was the VP choice for the Democrats. The resident Republican wore out his cynicism and went along with the good feeling of the folks from Delaware.

Seven Points of Practice

1. Study and practice the buddhadharma only for the sake of the buddhadharma, not for the sake of emotions or worldly ideas
2. Zazen is our truest and most venerable teacher
3. Zazen must work concretely in our daily lives as the two practices (vows and repentance), the three minds (magnaminous mind, nurturing mind, and joyful mind), and as the realization of the saying “Gaining is delusion, losing is enlightenment.”
4. Live by vow and root it deeply.
5. Realizing that development and backsliding are your responsibility alone, endeavor to practice and develop.
6. Sit silently for 10 years, then for ten years more, and then for another ten years.
7. Cooperate with one another, and aim to create a place where sincere practitioners can practice without trouble.
- Uchiyama Roshi (1975)

To live for God is to live in the open. The cloisters of a day gone by were ways of protection for a mind still separating the inner life from outer life. Solitude now must be found in the middle of one's life along the wandering footprint between mendicancy and madness. For the world is mad when it scapels itself in two, labels one half an enemy cancer, and tries to sew the projected errant half onto a judgment to be enshrined in defamy and hung as ideology alongside bathroom mirror for daily confirmation.

The vast lands of monasteries were an external attempt to define depth of soul with expanse of enclosure. No longer. Dualisms diminish. Our new need is as was the old one -- to explore the inner expanse as no other than ("not") anything the mind presents. What is, seen, is what is not -- that is, "no other than."

Not me. Not you. Not God. Not truth. Not love.

Our goal is to enquire, explore, experience and embrace all that is as no other than what it is as it is in itself.

God is absolute solitude in the midst of daily life. Collectedness and fusion -- not from any without, but the breakdown return to the unified whole from which there has never been a departure in fact, only in belief.

And humor. Dedication to holiness is not the same as preservation of sacred ground set off from the crowded byways of ordinary commerce. Our holy ground is under our feet. Let's look there. As you stand humbly and gratefully in your own footprint of no other, everything is invited to stand on their own.

From now on one's feet. Look under your feet!

Jesus told Peter he was right. (Peter, of course, that Mulla Nasruddin of the Christian scriptures, always has it right by flaw, unknowing, askew interpretation, and favored love.) In the reading for this sabbath: Yes, as Peter responded to Jesus' question, "You are the Christ!" The Christ is the son and daughter of the living God. Tell no one he or she is the Christ. Given our habits, we'd try to make ourselves very special, make others not as good, then conclude they are dispensable, not worth the ink we've written them off with in our mind.

1. "When I was in the desert," said Nasruddin one day, "I caused an entire tribe of horrible and bloodthirsty bedouins to run." "However did you do it?" "Easy. I just ran, and they ran after me."
   
   
2. A certain conqueror said to Nasruddin: "Mulla, all the great rulers of the past had honorific titles with the name of God in them: there was, for instance, God-Gifted, and God-Accepted, and so on. How about some such name for me?" "God Forbid," said Nasruddin.
   
   
3. "May the Will of Allah be done," a pious man was saying about something or the other. "It always is, in any case," said Mullah Nasruddin. "How can you prove that, Mullah?" asked the man. "Quite simply. If it wasn't always being done, then surely at some time or another my will would be done, wouldn't it?"

Christ is nothing special. We are nothing special. We are (each) a place of collation and recollection -- a practice of collectedness and fusion. If we bind, things are bound -- everywhere. If we loose, things are loosed -- everywhere. There is no action that can be restricted to just one place. What happens in one place happens everywhere.

Perhaps we have to not-know our place. To "no other than" our place. (Maybe "don't know" is shorthand for "do no t'other know.") I've long felt my existence to be as an exile in the land of not-knowing. Every word heard from the land of othering -- the contemporary world of "know othering" --is a stinging bite on this body of no-other.

Let each come to their own understanding of their true nature. The truth and power of the Dharma will prevail. The grace and inspiration of the Spirit of advocacy for one another will root and transform us.

We must pray for one another. We are unique. Not better than, nor worse than. Just unique.

Unique. And one.

And.

One.

Another.

Our monastery is the attention given to all of itself.

Searching for praise and honor
Keeps mankind restlessly moving,
But in the warm sun and peaceful wind,
Things renew themselves naturally.
Needing no human control,
The spring brightness is both pale and deep;
In the mountains of endless rest,
There is a single tranquil person.
(- Gesshu Soko 1618-1696)

There is a new monastic life being formed. Not a knock-off of traditional monastic life. But something new.

At the intersection between monastery and cafe, university and front porch -- at the place where intellectual, artistic, musical, and poetic cross paths with care for the elderly, the dying, the outsiders, and the stranger -- there is where the new form of enterprise/vocation takes shape.

The sea helps. Messing about in boats helps. Food and dogs and bicycles help.

A chapel and a zendo help. A large room with fireplace for conversation and collegiality helps. A disrobing of titles, accouterments, and pretensions help. A sense of simplicity coupled with a crying need of creativity helps.

Meetingbrook is asking the questions: What are we? What will we become?

If we listen to people until they grow tired of being listened to, then we have come to a learning beyond teaching.

Salve, Regina, Mater misericordiae,
vita, dulcedo, et spes nostra, salve.
ad te clamamus
exsules filii Evae,
ad te suspiramus, gementes et flentes
in hac lacrimarum valle.

Eia, ergo, advocata nostra, illos tuos
misericordes oculos ad nos converte;
et Iesum, benedictum fructum ventris tui,
nobis post hoc exsilium ostende.
O clemens, O pia, O dulcis Virgo Maria.

Translated:
Hail, holy Queen, Mother of Mercy,
our life, our sweetness and our hope.
To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve;
to thee do we send up our sighs,
mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.

Turn then, most gracious advocate,
thine eyes of mercy toward us;
and after this our exile,
show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Ma (ry)

The hymn/prayer goes on to say:

-- Pray for us O holy Mother of God,
-- that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ."

Perhaps it is the "promise" of Christ, the same promise each shares. Because each shares the promise of Christ. What we become is what we are. Christ-reality, like Buddha-nature, is our promise and our emerging realization.

The monastic life attends to this.

There's a line in the Course in Miracles: "Teach only love for that is what you are."

Good words.

Not to want is not an easy thing to want. Whatever you want fills you with want. What we want is what we get -- really or metaphorically. Remember if we don't learn about metaphor, (the woman filmmaker said), we go insane.

Zazen is the dharma of all the Buddhas. Non-Buddhists also practice zazen. However, they make the mistake of coloring it; their incorrect views are like thorns. Therefore, it cannot be the same as the zazen of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas. Sravakas and pratyeka Buddhas also do zazen, but they wish only to control their minds and seek to reach nirvana. This is not the same as the zazen of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas.
- Nagarjuna (150-250 CE)

I've gone a little insane. I can't accept the metaphor of disposable people. Nor can I accept the division of matter from spirit. And if Christ is translucence, I can't accept the metaphor of original sin passed down sperm through ovary and washed off with water. What I want is not the absence of want and suffering -- but the shared understanding of every being in the universe that "God is movement, not explanation." (Wiesel.) Movement disposes of no means to enact its essence. Movement merely moves.

No Matter, Never Mind

The Father is the Void
The Wife    Waves

Their child is Matter.

Matter makes it with his mother
And their child is Life,
          a daughter.

The Daughter is the Great Mother
Who, with her father/brother Matter
       as her lover,

Gives birth to the Mind.

                (-- Poem by Gary Snyder in Turtle Island)

There's not much hope of not losing my mind. Putting it up for adoption. Maybe it'll get good home. With a dog and cat. Books. French Vanilla yogurt. Some raspberry Kefir.

At mass today before epiclesis, all honor and glory is given to the father by the son (read, creation/humankind) in the unity of the Holy Spirit. I like the phrase "unity of the Holy Spirit."

With unity, consecration.

Without it, the world of everyday news.

It is convenient now as elections approach to announce a withdrawal date out of Iraq. Wind gone from sails, the administration has started the motor of appeasement with the American people. These people smile appreciatively at the tossed bone of one person one vote. Of course we make a difference.

What We Might Be, What We Are

If you were a scoop of vanilla
And I were the cone where you sat,
If you were a slowly pitched baseball
And I were the swing of a bat,

If you were a shiny new fishhook
And I were a bucket of worms,
If we were a pin and a pincushion,
We might be on intimate terms.

If you were a plate of spaghetti
And I were your piping-hot sauce,
We'd not even need to write letters
To put our affection across,

But you're just a piece of red ribbon
In the beard of a Balinese goat
And I'm a New Jersey mosquito.
I guess we'll stay slightly remote.
(--Poem "What We Might Be, What We Are" by X.J. Kennedy, from Exploding Gravy, Little, Brown, 2002.)

So much this administration has done I consider ludicrous and pernicious. They've been remarkably unfazed by the results of their fiasco. But, money was counted and pocketed from death and destruction. And that counts as success in an accountant's office.

Since my madness I don't count for anything. This situation has it's charm. The room empties when I arrive.

That's ok. I'm fond of emptiness. It's that place where everything is, only and exactly, what it is.

I read the Irish Times from a few days ago in Chase's Daily with coffee and strawberry pecan muffin. I looked into the help wanted ads.

The making of holiness is a lovely undertaking.

Hard-tellin', most times, who's got it.

How it comes.

Or where it goes.

Crazy, eh?

Waddya want?

Something's gotta change.

They are off the main road. They are at the edges. Many have fallen off the edges. Where are they? They are our brothers and sisters. They don't have much. Not much at all. They are us. Only, we don't know ourselves. We do not recognize our own faces. Nor that we have fallen off. Who even looks?

Ezekiel speaks today, saying: "No one bothers about them and no one looks for them."

Them? Ourselves.

The word of the Lord was addressed to me as follows: Son of man, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel; prophesy and say to them:
Shepherds, the Lord says this: Trouble for the shepherds of Israel who feed themselves! Shepherds ought to feed their flock, yet you have fed on milk, you have dressed yourselves in wool, you have sacrificed the fattest sheep, but failed to feed the flock. You have failed to make weak sheep strong, or to care for the sick ones, or bandage the wounded ones. You have failed to bring back strays or look for the lost. On the contrary, you have ruled them cruelly and violently. For lack of a shepherd they have scattered, to become the prey of any wild animal; they have scattered far. My flock is straying this way and that, on mountains and on high hills; my flock has been scattered all over the country; no one bothers about them and no one looks for them.
Well then, shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. As I live, I swear it–it is the Lord who speaks–since my flock has been looted and for lack of a shepherd is now the prey of any wild animal, since my shepherds have stopped bothering about my flock, since my shepherds feed themselves rather than my flock, in view of all this, shepherds, hear the word of the Lord. The Lord says this: I am going to call the shepherds to account. I am going to take my flock back from them and I shall not allow them to feed my flock. In this way the shepherds will stop feeding themselves. I shall rescue my sheep from their mouths; they will not prey on them any more.
For the Lord says this: I am going to look after my flock myself and keep all of it in view.
(--Ezekiel 34:1 - 11)

Our leaders have forgotten. Cases in point -- the people Katrina exposed as needing our attention. Men and women in prison. Those without medical insurance or medical care. Those used as fodder for capital gains in bogus wars. Those left on financial skid rows by street sharks and banking lenders whose lobbying have granted them permission to milk suckers dry and toss them away. Our leaders have forgotten what it means to be human, to be touched by compassion and empathy. To exist as one. To be alive. To care.

But war...war and armaments, defense spending, missile shields, private backwater black ops, movement against so-called insurgents abroad and in our domestic cities, against citizens who used to be able to protest, who now are put behind fence cages, harassed for criticizing, punished for wanting something resembling democracy, not fascism nor the tyranny of deception and lies of secret government where any dissent, any finger pointing to a naked emperor triggers bullying beatings and tasering pain -- 'of course,' their thinking goes, 'they must be intent on bringing down the government,' they are domestic terrorism threats, a mentality of frozen fear and phony patriotism prevails and postures, playing to the last bastion of Pharisaical piety -- the demography of demagoguery, the rapture-worthy and pure all packed and ready to disappear...these wars against invented and fabricated enemies are all the rage in the new playbook of cynicism and grab-your-own without mercy.

The shepherds are feeding themselves. The hell with the flock! Those immature and ordinary people! Let them wallow in pain, debt, and mistrust of each other. Nothing scarce about the resources of those who lead and lend, who take bribes and payoffs to keep the rabble in their subservient place. Today, physical, psychological, and spiritual hunger haunts and plagues the land. All we can think about is eliminating the enemy, warring against those who threaten our happiness -- when, in devastating fact, we've become oblivious that the enemy wanting to bring down our defenses, and those that threaten our happiness...are...us. We long to end the false options placed before us. We are like sleeping, hypnotized people who, deep within a residue of consciousness below the suggestions and puppeteering, sincerely desire to throw off the masters' voices and emerge from unconsciousness. The great lie has been that the enemy is out there. When in fact the ones telling us the enemy is out there are the real danger to our well being. Those who incessently tell us, "Prepare for war!" Those who command us to "look out" -- who switch the direction and call war peace and hate love and we they. We fight ourselves while the manipulators smirk and grin and take their profits.

Memorial Day

Because our sons adore their plastic missile launchers,
electronic space bazookas, neutron death-ray guns,
a decade down the pike it won't prove difficult
to trick them out in combat boots
&camouflage fatigues,
rouse them with a frenzy of parades, the heady
rhetoric of country, camaraderie & God,
the drum & bugle & the sudden
thunder of the cannon as they march
into Hell singing.
Which is the order of things.
Obedient to a fault, the people will do as they are told.
However dispirited by grief at the graves
of their fallen, the mother returns at last to her loom,
the father to his lathe,
& the inconsolable widow home to raise sons
ardent for the next imperial bloodbath;
Ilium. Thermopylae. Verdun. Pork Chop Hill.
(-Poem "Memorial Day" by Steve Kowit from The First Noble Truth. University of Tampa Press)

These days kids buy facsimile toy guns, point them at police, and are shot dead. Then we wonder.

If we stop the love affair with power, money, and death -- if we ever learn to pray and meditate -- will there be any hope for something true and authentic? For perfect presence, that is, being here in complete and whole realization?

Coming to presence truth and love --recognizing God in bread and wine, water and fruit; acknowledging the simple longing for belonging when listening and speaking with one another; in burying our dead with dignity; deliberately intending to consciously become human; take flesh and honor it; finally, to step out of the death-peddling facsimiles of compliance and complicity which foster addiction, rejection, and abuse. Are we still able to rise to new understanding of what love and truth really are? Are we ready to extricate the touted myth from historical narrative and see it as the liberating template of contemporary existence --namely, to consciously undergo the transfiguring suffering, death, and resurrection of one breaking through the seed of human life emerging through the facticity of human experience into the clear and transparent release of what that one really is?

Until the sons and daughters of men and women reveal and are revealed as God's breath in this world, we will have to endure the artificial respirators suspending the moribund as they pass quietly away.

Reveal and be revealed! Look into one another! See through yourself! Don't stop asking into what is true and loving!

Make noise!

Dance and find joy.

At last.

Again.

All that remains is the bow.

Just Bow

Putting my right and left hands together as one,
I bow.
Just bow to become one with Buddha and God.
Just bow to become one with everything I encounter.
Just bow to become one with all myriad things.
Just bow as life becomes life.
- Uchiyama Roshi’s death poem

I bow to grave markers as I walk through or drive past. To those with whom I am not at peace. To those with whom I am at rest. To strangers when their eyes are averted.

The world is a dangerous place.

We're all the stuff of enemies. We can hardly stand each other. Idiosyncrasies are painful splinters in soft flesh when we brush up against them.

The out-of-his-mind young man at 2:14am on Bayview street shouted unmercifully along its length about some girl and his displeasure with her. Has the booze, or substances, or mental distress worn away come morning light?

I wished him the company of angels in that vacant rage he walked down the street.

Us all.

The company of angels.

The moon came up over flag with sailboat. From orange to yellow to white.
No string on that balloon.

Don't Forget Where You Came From
It is helpful in learning to appreciate and develop your ability to change to think about how you have changed over time. You are not the same person you were ten years ago. How are you different? What were you like before? Would your present self and past self be friends if they met? What would they like and dislike about each other? How did you come to be the person you are now? Your ideals, thoughts, and opinions have changed; what has replaced the old ones and why? By reviewing the changes that have occurred, you can savor the growth and progress you have made, and appreciate the benefits the process of change has brought to your life.

When you notice how much you have changed and developed even without consciously trying, you can see how much you could grow if you made a real effort to change.
(-- Tarthang Tulku in Skillful Means)

Earlier, walking to Rockport Harbor. Walking back.

I'm here, but I've lost my way.

The little girl brought parsley sprig to elderly Frenchman's table. He said, "I blush." Later the little girl with blond hair brought him four small stones. He thanked her. After she left, the stones went back to ground. It was the interaction, not the content, that counted.

This wall gazing old barbarian monk
Has eyes that exceed the glow of the evening lamp;
His silence has never been challenged
His living dharma extends to the present day.
- Fugai Ekun (1568-1654)

Reading Panikkar at table. He says God is the "I" and each one of us is God's "thou."

We wonder whether our flirtation with ego is blasphemous. Only God is I. Ego is the fabrication of counterfeit God.

Real faith in God is egoless.

So little real faith.

No wonder we're in trouble.