Becoming oneself, one forgets self.

57.
A realm is governed by ordinary acts,
A battle is governed by extraordinary acts;
The world is governed by no acts at all.
And how do I know/
Act after act prohibits
Everything but poverty,
Weapon after weapon conquers
Everything but chaos,
Business after business provides
A craze of waste,
Law after law breeds
A multitude of thieves.
Therefore a sensible man says:
If I keep from meddling with people, they take care of themselves,
If I keep from commanding people, they behave themselves,
If I keep from preaching at people, they improve themselves,
If I keep from imposing on people, they become themselves.
(from The Way of Life according to LaoTzu, Translated by Witter Bynner)

If you were asked to prove you were human, what would you do? If asked to present your credentials as a member of a particular denomination, church, religion, or belief system – how would you display your integrity with that reality, without trying to convince someone you are indeed that reality? If someone stood in front of you asking you if you actually exist, if you were there as who you are, what might you possibly respond that would be of any worth to the questioner and the questioned?

It is most urgent that you seek real, true perception,
So you can be free in the world
And not confused by ordinary practitioners.
It is best to have no obsessions.
Just don’t be contrived.
Simply be normal.
You impulsively seek elsewhere,
Looking to others for your own hands and feet.
This is already mistaken.
- Linji (d. 867)

Recently someone wondered if my credentials to be who I am were good enough.

I wrote something in response that becomes for me a meditation.
In the Zen tradition there's a tricky phrase that goes, "Don't make two;
don't make one." The instant we think something is outside something else,
we make two. And when we try to fit it back in, we make one. So, the saying
"Don't make two; don't make one" suggests the suffering we create and
contribute to when, in our minds, we fail to grasp the original reality.

What is the original reality? And why is it that nothing can separate us
from it?

In our Christian tradition, the original reality is that nothing exists
apart from God, who/which, we say, is Love Itself. We say: God created the
world, and everything that is exists because of creation. Further, as
Catholic Christians, we hold the idea of the Trinity. The Trinity suggests
that the creator, creation itself, and the life-energy inspiring and
sustaining everything (what we call the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit) are distinct, involved, and inseparable from one-another.

In other words: God is love. We are in God. God is in us. And the Spirit of
Truth suffuses us, even if we think otherwise.

Many of us as Catholics look at the mystery of creation, incarnation, and
resurrection with a pious devotion that veils a cautious and skeptical mind.
The mystery involving Jesus’ saying, “I and the Father are one,” and then,
holding bread and wine, saying, “Take and eat, this is my body, this is my
blood,” is often far, far beyond our imagination and/or comprehension. The
Holy Spirit is, for many Catholics, something to do with charismatic and
evangelical expressions of prayer, or the episcopate’s kindly slap at
Confirmation, and less to do with the Spirit of Truth undergirding the very
ground of being.

Francis, I suspect, grasped the unity without trying to make it one. It is
my suspicion Francis saw everything and everyone in its original reality,
that is, in the light of God. Thus, when the crucifix at San Damiano was
experienced as saying, “Repair my church,” Francis grasped without thinking
the full spectrum of the experience.

Stone by stone, person by person, Christian by Muslim, Francis saw the light
of God illuminating each being. This “church,” this expression of love --
unconditional and nonjudgmental – needed again to be prepared (L.‘re-parare').
As John the Baptist, and Isaiah before him, cried out to us, “Prepare
the way of the Lord, Prepare the way for the Lord!”

Francis was not distracted by names, or categories, stipulations, or
anything suggesting that God was not in the particular being encountered in
his or our daily life. Open-minded Buddhists bow with reverence to Francis’
love, respect, and reverence for all beings, sentient or not. Perhaps this
is how we are to care for this world.

Everybody likes the stories of the wolf, the leper, and brother sun sister
moon. And yet, the ground of being that is the inspiration and sustenance of
those stories, the insight and stewardship that interpenetrate daily
responsive behavior following from dwelling in, and indwelling of, the
reality of God – -- is a story hard to hear, and harder yet to embody.

Thanks be that Jesus embodied so wonderfully the story. Thanks be that
Francis mirrored that embodiment so remarkably. As for the rest of us, it is
a joy that we have the story repeated so often to us. Again. And again.
Perhaps, soon, we’ll hear it, and hear it whole, and thereby embody it with
graceful and gracious humility. In a process of sacred realization, we’ll be
Franciscan, we’ll be Christian, and we’ll be “en famille Dieu.”
(from letter to D.L. from Camden, 28aug03)

It is the joy of questions to find their own answers.

"It's prison."

That's how he summed it up this morning. He lives there. I just visit for conversation.

The worthies of old all had
means of emancipating people.
What I teach people just requires
you not to take on the confusion of others.
If you need to act, then act,
without any further hesitation or doubt.
- Lin Chi (d 867?)

It was one of those situations where there were punches, then a hitting with blunt object, blood, teeth knocked out, the impulse to destroy the other, then -- by mutual convenience -- a tacit understanding to let it be, no charges or counter-charges. "Least said, soonest mended."

Prison.

We read Eckhart Tolle's first chapter in Stillness Speaks. It begins:

When you lose touch with inner stillness, you lose touch with yourself. When you lose touch with yourself, you lose yourself in the world.

Your innermost sense of self, of who you are, is inseparable from stillness. This is the I Am that is deeper than name and form.

Justin and Paco, Sonny and Joe, Jeremy and myself shared stillness in prison this morning.

Even with no escape, freedom is speaking with stillness.

At Camden Harbor tonight, Windjammer Weekend fireworks begin at 9pm.

Brad's here, Miles too, Sam, Sheila, Dori, Theresa, and the Victory Chimes three-master gather dockside with larger numbers milling near -- this array of celebration.

Pizza arrives.

Monica yesterday. Augustine today.

Last night Trungpa's comments about the "sore spot," the open vulnerability that allows in the germ of compassion.

Over the ages you have followed objects,
Never once turning back to look within.
Time slips away;
Months and years are wasted.
- Kuei-Shan (771-854)

Alaya is the abode of home, before "I" and "other" became separated in our minds.

My homeless spirit is months and years wandering town to town. Like avowed Indian in the words of The Sanyasin's First Day (a children's book by Ned Shank, 1999):
"It was the sanyasin's first day. He sat in the shade of a tree beside the busy road with his walking-stick, dressed in his brand new orange cloth. He had given away everything he owned to lead the holy life of a sanyasin, to do nothing but pray, and walk from town to town, begging for just enough rice to fill his bowl."

My courage is not so specific. I often ignore my heart. Thus, as Augustine said, it is restless. And remains restless until it rests in what is supreme, utmost, clear light reality, God.

Jesus said, “Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the householder had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready; for the Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect. (Gospel Matthew 24:42 - 51)

Thieves have taken from me everything I thought important -- dreams, hopes, plans, and understanding.

1, Thus says the LORD: The heavens are my throne, the earth is my footstool. What kind of house can you build for me; what is to be my resting place?
2, My hand made all these things when all of them came to be, says the LORD. This is the one whom I approve: the lowly and afflicted man who trembles at my word. (Isaiah, Chapter 66)

Mostly I shudder. Or is it shrug? What kind of house is this empty place where what I thought I was moves out and the space widens with unknowing?

The ground before I and other?

Holy ground?

Creation itself...

May all beings come to dwell in their true home!

Alaya is a Sanskrit word meaning "abode," or "basis," or "home," or "ground."

Every day priests minutely examine the Dharma
And endlessly chant complicated sutras.
Before doing that, though, they should learn
How to read the love letters
Sent by the wind and rain,
The snow and moon.
- Ikkyu (1394-1491)

'Himalaya,' means abode of snow.

The love letters sent to us, the love letters we sent to others, these are cricket song, breeze through leaves, and sun on windowsill.

We are at home when nothing comes between us and what is the ground of our being.

Where is home to you and me?

What is home…

The bookshop/bakery is closed today.

Though we’ve been dwelling together,
I don’t know his name:
Going along accepting the flow,
Just being thus,
Even the eminent sages since antiquity
Don’t know him.
How could the hasty ordinary type
Presume to understand?
- Shitou

He is solitude; she is silence. Today they separately obey the command of sanctuary.

If there is to be a sane world full of sane people, it must begin with cricket sound in August's exhalation.

When friends these days wonder whether we are disappearing, I can only listen to hear how far I am from cricket sound.

Today I am far away. Today I am at the outer echo of morning chant crickets sing in praise of outer edges.

Far off. Going adrift. Unable to recognize the faces and voices of the country once my home.

Ordinary.

Aslant.

Who can hear such silence?

The wholeness of life has, from of old,
Been made manifest in its parts;
Clarity has been made manifest in heaven,
Firmness in earth,
Purity in the spirit,
If rim and spoke and hub were not,
Where would be the chariot?
Who will prefer the jingle of jade pendants
If they once have heard the stone
Growing in a cliff?
- Lao Tzu

When desperate, eye sees and ear hears.

When distracted, jingle diverts attention.

I have forgotten so much for so long.

Breath prays looking without hope.

Crickets!

Some days, just looking at trees, or roots along hilly path, is all you can do.

I have come to profoundly dislike the path America's leaders walk.

It is time for change.

The heart and the cross in chapel/zendo are silent signs of this contemplative time.

Some days a heart broken by lies and deception, along with a cross on which hangs suffering worldwide community -- is a sight too hard to look at.

Some friends persist in senseless arrogance grousing slogans about freedom and patriotism.

Some friends bleed out and expire hope that some dark conspiracy has not numbed a naive country, a conspiracy of proportions unimagined seeping from what once was known as the People's House.

As for me, today, I can only look at trees. I look at roots along hilly path.

I disbelieve.

We are passing.

There is a point of correspondency
between two views which is
called the pivot of the Tao.
As soon as one finds this pivot,
she stands in the center of the
ring of thought where she can
respond without end to the changing views;
without end to those affirming,
and without end to those denying.
- Chuang Tzu

Just see what is passing...
...by(e).

David S., from Antigonish Nova Scotia, brings gift of 2nd calligraphy.

First one was Tibetan characters of male and female -- protectors of Sangha. This second one is open heart compassionate heart -- dripping of Bodhichitta.

We'll find frames. Something to hold for meditation Sangha and Bodhichitta. Tomorrow evening he'll lead Wednesday Evening Conversation with comments on Buddhist Meditation as Christian Practice.

Keep to unity without shifting.
With constant presence,
Whether active or still,
The student can see the Buddha nature clearly.
- Tao-hsin (580-651

Yesterday to Corner Shop for breakfast, to Rockland starting process for ID card for Jon. Get oil change. Then get Tibetan incense and holder from Bijou's shop on Main Street.

Barbara writes her father died on 4July. At Saturday retreat day a young man tells of his father's death when he was ten. At Saturday morning conversation man from New Bedford has to pass book unable to read after speaking about his father's last few days before death. So many fathers -- so many deaths!

Unity without shifting is constant nearness of all who’ve touched us, participated in our coming to birth in this existence, and departed back into the invisibility following death that each of us once emerged from at birth.

Constant presence is what accompanies and permeates what we call being-in-the-world.
All are right here. When we go elsewhere, there is where here is. Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, children and relatives from every direction -- all of these are near and aware of our veryness and passage-making through the hours and minutes of this passing-through mysterious world.

Buddha nature enlightens sangha, opens hearts with compassion, and makes prayer to rise like incense of a morning's meditation.

I drive Jon to Portland. He's off to Boston to ready for moving there. I am his father.

For now, in this Tuesday dimension, we travel in each other's sight.

Whether active or still, we practice this seeing.

With presence it becomes permeable.

Root unity, even through shifting.

Transparent.

Where go when there's no where to go?

Salt-water farm on North Harbour on Aspey Bay, Cape Breton? Or Inn, shop, and house in quiet town on Broad Cove in Lunenburg County Nova Scotia?
Bayview and Barnestown Camden?

Time is passing every moment;
How can you be complacent and waste it,
Seeing death is but a breath away?
- Kuei-Shan (771-854)

One breath away, one breath near.
Breath alone along the way.

It's the birthday of beat poet Lew Welch, born in Phoenix, Arizona (1926). He's the author of many collections of poetry, including Hermit Poems (1965) and At Times We're Almost Able To See (1965). He said, "Seeking perfect total enlightenment is like looking for a flashlight when all you need the flashlight for is to find your flashlight." (from The Writers Almanac, 16Aug, by Garrison Keillor)

Each place is now here.

Charlie and Sonny wondered warily if one were being diss'd by the other.

If I simply say what I see, without making it a dart at the other, then the other is invited to say what they see -- unpunctured.

Constantly be aware, without stopping.
When the aware mind is present,
It senses the formlessness of things.
Constantly see your body as empty and quiet,
Inside and outside communing in sameness.
Plunge the body into the realm of reality,
Where there has never been any obstruction.
- Tao-hsin (580-651)

Life in prison is testy. Like outside life in the world, only more so, everyone is doing time, and hardly anything said or seen is what it seems to be.

We were talking about the Christian feast of the Assumption of Mary -- reading Jean Guitton. Something about the obscure distance or mysterious space that occurs at death but before completion of movement to another dimension. Ryan wondered about standing in the river with Heraclitus. Charlie about the middle of extremes -- as when an immovable object is met with an unstoppable force. Michael said he gravitated to extremes. Sonny described at his near-death experience looking down and realizing he had no body -- but was there.

Where it went testy was the way Sonny and Dick sounded to Charlie and Ryan -- like they ...knew...and the others didn't. That's always a difficult presentation to sit through. Charlie balked. Sonny cut short. Vaughn was silent.

Saskia had the final word as trumpet sounded retreat to cell at end of rec and work period. She told of how we often hear everything through the conditioning we carry with us -- that she does -- gets defensive and reactive, and forgets that the other is just saying what and how they see what is there for them.

Conditioning is a volume knob on the sounds coming through our psyche.

Later Dick thought he might have said aloud what he 'd been thinking -- that his life is fact, like a book you read. The book has it there and down as it is. The reader takes it in, agrees or disagrees, sees or doesn't, tosses it away or keeps on going. That's how he talks his life.

Sometimes, we say, it feels testy.

It all seems testy these days.

We've got to say what we see.

The task is to take the testy and go on.

Go on, and go on, until we are gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond. Awake.

Awake from the nightmare of antagonism, through the dream of recombination, into the reality Assumption invites – One’s Body – undifferentiate, indistributive, and resolute.

Finally become Yes!

We are home.

Even so, we ask again and again, 'Where is home?"

My home is a cave, without a thing in it.
Pure and marvelously empty,
As bright and clear as the sun.
A dish of mountain vegetables is sufficient,
And a patched cloak is plenty of cover for me.
Let a thousand wizards show up to grant me any wish!
I already have the Supreme Buddha
In my possession!
- Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831)

Some 1400 miles whirlwind driving, winding through New Brunswick -- St Stephen and St. Andrews, through St. John and Moncton -- to Nova Scotia.
To Cape Breton Island. To Cape North. To a screened porch on North Harbour. Looking around. Wondering, "Is this retreat home?"

Vespers at St. Joseph's after crossing Mackenzie Mountain from Gampo Abbey. The openness of an unlocked church. Stained glass narrative of the sea through life, death, and resurrection.

When we arrive home we find there is no other place than home.

All there is -- is home.

Welcome home.

There.

Interview Questions for Buddhists in Maine:
(sent by Holly N. of Windhorse Project)



Do you consider yourself a Buddhist?

Yes – In the way I consider myself human and alive for now.



Have you formally taken refuge?

There are two of us – Saskia and I – that I here refer to.

Yes – We have pronounced the 3 Refuges aloud and in public hearing.



If yes, when and with whom?

After studying and practicing for nearly 30 years I spoke aloud the refuges in mid-nineties with Saskia in the presence of several people at Meetingbrook.

In addition, Saskia pronounced them at a retreat with monks of the Order of Interbeing.

So too, we have formulated and pronounced in public our own Meetingbrook promises. These are promises of Contemplation, Conversation, and Correspondence.



Is this person still one of your teachers? How often do you see them?

Thich Nhat Hanh is a wonderful teacher for us. We see him through his writings as well as those who trust him. We passed each other 20 years ago, bowed in silence, alone together in an alley between buildings at Smith College where he sat on steps in solitude before his talk. Not since.

In addition, each person we listen to or speak with is for us the person of the teacher, the Buddha. In our Christian monastic tradition and metaphor this would be similar to receiving each as Christ.


Do you have other teachers? Are they from different lineages?

Yes. Many teachers, many lineages.


Who are your favorite Buddhist teachers/authors?

Shunryu Suzuki, Thich Nhat Hanh, Denys Rackley, Jack Kornfield, Larry Rosenberg, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, D.T.Suzuki, Pema Chodron, Chogyam Trungpa, Joko Beck, Sokei An, Keiji Nishitani, Maseo Abe, Seung Sahn, Dalai Lama, Barbara Rhodes, Dogen Zenji, Bankai, Toni Packer, Ryokan, Basho, Ikkyu, Issa, Siddhartha Gautama, and many others.


Do you feel that mingling Buddhist traditions can strengthen practitioners or become an obstacle to serious practice?

Strengthen.

Would you recount your interest in Buddhism chronologically?

In 1966, while in a contemplative year of prayer and study with the Franciscans, I picked up and read the book “Beyond East and West,” by John Wu. That was my beginning. Thomas Merton was my bridge and D.T. Suzuki was the stepping-stone from the bridge. In 1974/75 I began attending retreats, public lectures, Dharma talks in the city. I sat zazen with Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn and associates in Cambridge, Providence, and New York. While caring for a friend after surgery in the mid-eighties I sat with Eido Roshi and experienced the Japanese tradition.

As a solitary I practiced zazen alone for 20 years following.

Two 10-day Buddhist/Christian retreats, in 1980 and 1990, led by a Catholic Carthusian monk, knit nicely the common silence of Buddhist Meditation Practice and Christian Contemplative Prayer. This monk, Denys Rackley, is someone to whom my gratitude continues to flow. He died in 1998 at age 76.

From 1990 we intentionally began to consider what emerges as Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage.

Now we silently sit and converse with practitioners from various traditions -- inter-religious and non-religious -- whoever longs to practice what is true and loving.

We practice between traditions, not only Buddhist, but also Christian. We consider ourselves Catholic/ Buddhists open to all authentic expressions of faith, knowledge, practice, & inquiry. (With regard to the “Buddhist/Catholic” designation, we find ourselves most often in the “/” – the slash/place, the between/connection place.)

Saskia’s introduction to Buddhism came in 1984. In 1990 her first 10 day retreat was done with Denys Rackley, (a Carthusian Monk) whose practice was Catholic /Vipassana. Her Buddhist/Christian practice continues as such.


Would you recount your interest in Buddhism geographically?

Every place I am. Every place there is. Every place we are.

Where do you live now?

Camden, Maine.


Are you part of a study group or a Sangha? How many people are in it?

We belong to Meetingbrook Hermitage with its bookshop/bakery.

There is a core group of several dozen people who, in lesser groups of 3 to 15 attend one or the other of the evening conversations at the bookshop. There are a few who attend once in a while the daily practice times held at the hermitage.

There is no fixed residential community aside from the two dogs, a cat, and us. There is no pledge of affiliation to Meetingbrook encouraged, nor any pledged affiliation with any other or outside organizations. We are independent. When our practice deepens, we'll fall into interdependence.

As in our initial description, so we remain -- “Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage intends to serve a loosely knit association of individuals who travel the meditative & contemplative road from dependence to independence to interdependence in their spiritual lives. Providing a forum and place for solitaries, hermits, seekers & contemplatives, the hermitage invites anyone interested in silence, simplicity, stillness, or times of solitude to deepen their spiritual life in their own locations, and, by day visits, writing, overnight stays, individual and group sitting, listening & learning -- to experience Meetingbrook.” {http://www.meetingbrook.org/about.htm}


Do you feel there are adequate resources for your practice here in Maine? Please explain.

Yes. Everywhere is Buddha-nature. Everyone is Buddha-nature. Practice is everywhere available.

We have only to open our eyes, ears, mouth, mind, and heart. When we engage with compassion each and every being, each and every situation – we are practicing.

There is much to practice!

It is, in my view, important to locate practice in the ordinary, everyday, non-scripted realities right in front of us – the ones life presents itself through, and in, and as.

It is lovely to have formal practice centers and retreats. It is equally lovely to realize that each one of us is the practice itself.

My prayer is that when we meet each other we come to see there is no other.

Practice, in this view, is the process of enlightening that prayer and experience with one another. From this emerge simplicity, integrity, and faithful engagement.

We’ll know we are practitioners when there is seen attentive presence, root silence, and faithful engagement.

…………..

Holly asks:
Please pass this survey onto to any Buddhists you know in Maine.

Please send it to holly@windhorseproject.org

Or the Windhorse Project, 226 Ludwig Road, Hope, Maine, 04847. Many thanks!
………….


Thanks Holly,

Bill Halpin & Saskia Huising

It can equally be said this birthday is the first and it is the last.

Heavy rain and fog -- this morning -- dawning.

The moon is a house
In which the mind is master.
Look very closely:
Only impermanence lasts.
This floating world, too, will pass.
- Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481)

Leaving shop last night, high tide just outside door of small cape on harbor, Jon asks if there is anything special about 59. "No," I answer. He nods. Says goodnight. I say, "I love you." Door closes. We rush off to Graves Market for chocolate with only a few minutes before 9pm closing.

Advice to a Girl

No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed;
Lay that on your heart,
My young angry dear;
This truth, this hard and precious stone,
Lay it on your hot cheek,
Let it hide your tear.
Hold it like a crystal
When you are alone
And gaze in the depths of the icy stone.
Long, look long and you will be blessed:
No one worth possessing
Can be quite possessed.
(Poem by Sara Teasdale from Mirror of the Heart, Macmillan).

The definition of the word possess, "to have as one's own property," must be seen through. We normally think ownership, as in materially, legally belonging to the occupying person and none other.

The "One" is all there is.

Property, "the sum total of items owned; possessions collectively," can be looked at as that which belongs to One, that which is near and dear to all.

When we see what is near, when we see through the eyes of what-is-called-God, we see all there is.

Our brothers and sisters in Islam Surah 112, Say: He is Allah, the one and only God the Eternal, the Absolute He begot none, nor was He begotten and there is none comparable to Him.
A commentator goes on to say: The Arabic term "Ahad" used here to refer to the unity of Allah.
The unity of Allah is such that there is no reality and no true and permanent existence except His. Moreover, every other being acquires what ever power it possessed from the effective power of Allah which rules over this world. Nothing else whatsoever plans anything for the world nor decides, for that matter, anything in it. (Commentary, Surah 112, Purity of Faith - al Ikhlas, http://www.youngmuslims.ca/online_library/tafsir/syed_qutb/Surah_112.htm)

Metaphysicians from earliest Greece say, Being is, non-Being is not.

Our brothers and sisters at their thresholds say Sh'ma, Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One.

Jesus said, The Father and I are one.

Siddhartha Gautama said at end of his life, "From now on, brothers and sisters, you are on your own."

What does it mean to be on one's own? What does it mean to be one with the Father? What does it mean to Be? What does it mean that nothing else is? What does it mean to hear One?

Perhaps it means, one and all, this Friday is our birth.

Can we see, can we possess, this?

"Long, look long and you will be blessed," said Sara.

Watch and pray,
first and last,
for – this -- blessing!
(wfh)

Love what is...our very own.

Questioning is a particular spiritual practice.

We engage what is presenting itself when we ask into it. By asking into, or questioning something, we expand the boundaries of our perceived proscribed self.

That self, when absorbed by a question into unknown possibilities of response, ceases to exist as a separate detached self. It never was separate, not for an instant. And yet, the felt experience of the vast majority of us is separate, detached distance from another or others.

Nor are there any others – not on the field of unity. True, on the field of utility, each is distinct, localized, and bearer of specific identification or drivers license number.

Here in a thatched hut
Hidden among mountain peaks,
With barely room for one,
I’m suddenly invaded
By wandering white clouds.
- Koho Kennichi

With gratitude to my mother and father, grandparents, ancestors and predecessors as far back as back can go – I acknowledge that somewhere in the procession of being a human being was born with the name I carry even until today.

Coming-into-being-seen!

Happy the day!

Gratefulness!

Is love itself what is grounding us as oneself?

Parthenogenesis [Greek = virgin birth], far from being an aberration, might be the mystery of love’s substance finding itself through oneself.

Only when we love the mother can we love the father.

Thereby loving oneself.

I face the 8th joyfully!

We're uncertain how surprised Jesus was when he experienced himself transfigured before the eyes of Peter, James, and John. It's good to have community or sangha around when something unusual happens to you,

To be aware when your mind is going astray
Is indeed a good thing.
Then you must focus your attention
And gather it in and not let
It run off anymore.
This is the meditation work of
Taking charge and preserving the mind
Of reverence.
If your mind does not know where it is,
And everything is vague and uncertain,
What kind of meditation is this?
- Hu Juren (1434-1484)

It is unusual to have dead people appear, to have your clothes turn dazzling, and to hear the voice of an unseen being announce you as someone to be listened to.

While he was praying, his face changed its appearance, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly two men were there talking with him. They were Moses and Elijah, who appeared in heavenly glory and talked with Jesus about the way in which he would soon fulfill God's purpose by dying in Jerusalem. Peter and his companions were sound asleep but they woke up and saw Jesus' glory and the two men who were standing with him. As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, 'Master, how good it is that we are here! We will make three tents, one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah.’ He did not really know what he was saying. While he was still speaking, a cloud appeared and covered them with its shadow, and the disciples were afraid as the cloud came over them. A voice said from the cloud, 'This is my Son whom I have chosen--listen to him!" (Luke 9:28-35, from the New Catholic Bible)

What could he have thought? Perhaps he was uncertain, "And everything is vague and uncertain, / What kind of meditation is this? "

Perhaps his mind did not know where it was.

With no mind, one must be right where one is.

In Hiroshima on this date 58 years ago -- a mindless slaughter. On Mount Tabor longer than that ago -- a command to listen.

Today I listen. Not three tents. Not one tent. No tents.

Only listen.

Says who?

Ask! Question without hope of answer.

A voice? Whose?

We're uncertain.

Good.

Lately, there's a curious moving about in mind and with feet.

Many are expressing a desire to change their way of living. Some say they want more simplicity. Some, community. Some want to change their lives by finding out and releasing who they really are. Others are wandering about on vacation, while still others meander vacant and confused.

In addition, an unusual number of people are interiorly packing and ridding the unnecessary for an exodus not yet fully understood.

To nurture this mind,
The most important work
In everyday activities
Is not to be overcome
By things.
- Wu Yubi (1391-1469)

Is the most important work to undergo what is -- here -- in heart and eye?

The Wild Geese

Horseback on Sunday morning,
harvest over, we taste persimmon
and wild grape, sharp sweet
of summer's end. In time's maze
over fall fields, we name names
that went west from here, names
that rest on graves. We open
a persimmon seed to find the tree
that stands in promise,
pale, in the seed's marrow.
Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear,
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye
clear. What we need is here.
(Poem by Wendell Berry from Collected Poems 1957-1982, North Point Press).

"Here" is a hard place to dwell. So many feel that life is elsewhere. I once did -- perhaps still do -- feel that the lives some of us live are separated from what we imagine to be Life Itself.

Surely, the terror and suffering inflicted daily around the world by war, famine, disease, and accidents have a feel of anomaly and exception about them. If so, what constitutes harmonious, peaceful, non-disastrous life in this world?

Dare we ask? Dare we listen for response?

He was found among the teachers, and we are told he was 'listening to them and asking them questions,' the thing that is most difficult of all in human conversation. What man can really listen to others and ask questions? But there are children who can, for they are not encumbered by prejudices, they go to the heart of the mystery. An intelligent child is a metaphysician: in the presence of the doctors of the Law, he is outside the Law, he is all spirit. That alone would have been enough to explain the 'quick understanding' that amazed them in his answers.
(pp. 41-42, from section The Independence of the Son, in The Blessed Virgin, by Jean Guitton, 1949)

Quick understanding eludes. In its place are bromide, spin, and obfuscation of spurious motivation.

We must ask. We must listen.

What must we do to see eternal life?

This question, here, is ancient and timely.

I am…listening.

Why is silence so vital?

Does language, when overused, fail to hold true to what is conveyed through it?

Meaning to get away from intellectualization
And avoid word traps,
I sailed across the sea to search for the
Transmission beyond the teachings;
Went on pilgrimages till my sandals broke
And found water in the clear stream,
The moon in the sky.
- Kakua (1143 - ?)

Today water falls from sky; moon hides under stone in stream.

Sylvia looked at two of us on Saturday and said: "You say 'I don't know anything,' and John says, 'We know everything.' -- which is true?"

She's right about what was said. I don't know anything. We know everything.

Ego is clueless. Sangha is wise.

Silence is vital. Silence reveals community.

Community is vital silence.

Right now, Buddhists sit at Molyneaux Yoga-barn. Quakers sit at Vesper Hill Children's Chapel, and various Christian denominations listen to scripture readings and remember the life of Jesus.

Sunday morning attentiveness!

Old cedars and ancient cypresses impale rosy mists,
Through huge boulders and hanging vines
A small path winds;
Even monkeys and cranes won’t
Come to a mountain this desolate.
Only the wind-borne cassia pods
That fill my thatched hut.
- Tesshu Tokusai (? – 1366)(dailyzen)

At hermitage, birds trill expanding silence with their sound, Saskia slices mushrooms and beans for soup (nicking thumb in process), and I read the scriptures of daily postings from newspapers and websites about secrets and mysteries of human behavior, incomprehensible political maneuvers, and the common experience we mostly all have to make sense of the odd goings-on in the world.

It occurred to me yesterday that I seldom say to individuals, "I'd love for you to be part of what we love to imagine as community dwelling in simplicity, peace, and service -- sweetness grounded in prayer, contemplation, and meditation."

This insight came when earlier in the day a woman left the shop and the feeling remaining was, "Are we being excluded? She doesn't seem to include us in speaking or thinking about things she knows we too are interested in." It had to do with co-housing exploration. About community. The sense of seclusion sometimes lingers like an echo in a large empty room.

There's the mirror!

Whatever we think about another must be thought about oneself. Whatever is said about another must be said about oneself.

Until it dissolves, my ego sees itself as organizing someone in solitary seclusion. It matters not at all that the majority of time is spent in the ready presence of others coming and going, sitting and seeking, conversing and reflecting. Still, the image is of someone in hermit solitude with: Only the wind-borne cassia pods / That fill my thatched hut.

I would love for many individuals to be part of what we love to imagine as community dwelling in simplicity, peace, and service -- sweetness grounded in prayer, contemplation, and meditation.

There. I've said it.

May I be forgiven my excluding ego.

It is, after all, Sunday.

All exclusions herewith exempt.

Right?

Now?

Yes!

We know little.

We suspect there’s much we don’t know.

But it's what we don't know we don't know that's most intriguing.

Not a clue. Not an inch closer to the far side of the edge of what we suspect is the limit of possible knowledge.

One minute of sitting, one inch of Buddha.
Like lightning all thoughts come and pass.
Just once look into your mind-depths:
Nothing else has ever been.
- Manzan (1649 – 1709)

We don't know what we are doing. We have no idea why we've made it to our 8th year at the harbor. No understanding why we sit in prison every other Friday having each time the best conversations that can be had.

Some embryo nourishes itself within the glimpse each emits toward the other around the table. No explaining. Mere re-presenting one in the other.

To conform one's will completely to the template of divine love is a spiritual practice that [Jacob] Boehme refers to as "putting on the body of Christ.
(p.39 in Love Is Stronger Than Death, The Mystical Union of Two Souls, by Cynthia Bourgeault)

Second body? Mystical body? Embodiment?

Who knows?

Surely some know?

No.

One.

Knows.