We come late to seeing clearly.
When you realize the unborn, uncreated, unconditioned, you are liberated from everything born, created, and conditioned.
- Buddha (c. 563- 483 BCE)
Maybe we each always only speak of and for ourselves. Still, it is good to listen to what is being said.
Who is saying this about me?
Yet here you are, trusting in delusive words, to no purpose! Steal, would you, murder, commit adultery, perjure yourselves, burn incense to Baal, follow alien gods that you do not know? -- and then come presenting yourselves in this Temple that bears my name, saying: Now we are safe -- safe to go on committing all these abominations! Do you take this Temple that bears my name for a robbers’ den? I, at any rate, am not blind -- it is the Lord who speaks.
(from Jeremiah 7)
Maybe there is a distinction to be made. Maybe the house of God is not the marketplace. Maybe it is fool's errand to hold open a house that even God absents.
In returning to oneself, do we find there what we lost there long ago?
I entered, then, and with the vision of my spirit, such as it was, I saw the incommutable light far above my spiritual ken and transcending my mind: not this common light which every carnal eye can see, nor any light of the same order; but greater, as though this common light were shining much more powerfully, far more brightly, and so extensively as to fill the universe. The light I saw was not the common light at all, but something different, utterly different, from all those things. Nor was it higher than my mind in the sense that oil floats on water or the sky is above the earth; it was exalted because this very light made me, and I was below it because by it I was made. Anyone who knows truth knows this light.
O eternal Truth, true Love, and beloved Eternity, you are my God, and for you I sigh day and night. As I first began to know you, you lifted me up and showed me that, while that which I might see exists indeed, I was not yet capable of seeing it. Your rays beamed intensely on me, beating back my feeble gaze, and I trembled with love and dread. I knew myself to be far away from you in a region of unlikeness, and I seemed to hear your voice from on high: “I am the food of the mature: grow, then, and you shall eat me. You will not change me into yourself like bodily food; but you will be changed into me”.
Late have I loved you, Beauty so ancient and so new, late have I loved you!
Lo, you were within,
but I outside, seeking there for you,
and upon the shapely things you have made
I rushed headlong – I, misshapen.
You were with me, but I was not with you.
They held me back far from you,
those things which would have no being,
were they not in you.
You called, shouted, broke through my deafness;
you flared, blazed, banished my blindness;
you lavished your fragrance, I gasped; and now I pant for you;
I tasted you, and now I hunger and thirst;
you touched me, and I burned for your peace.
(from The Confessions of Saint Augustine, bishop)
We're often late.
Actually, mostly late.
Returning, we find it is not about us.
You will be changed into us.
When, by returning, we bow gratefully.
And disappear.
Friday, August 27, 2004
What is now being revealed? Can we stand within and move through it?
Monica wanted her son to see clearly this revelation.
Because the day when she was to leave this life was drawing near – a day known to you, though we were ignorant of it – she and I happened to be alone, through (as I believe) the mysterious workings of your will. We stood leaning against a window which looked out on a garden within the house where we were staying, at Ostia on the Tiber; for there, far from the crowds, we were recruiting our strength after the long journey, in order to prepare ourselves for our voyage overseas. We were alone, conferring very intimately. Forgetting what lay in the past, and stretching out to what was ahead, we enquired between ourselves, in the light of present truth, into what you are and what the eternal life of the saints would be like, for Eye has not seen nor ear heard nor human heart conceived it. And yet, with the mouth of our hearts wide open we panted thirstily for the celestial streams of your fountain, the fount of life which is with you.
(from Office of Readings, Feast of St Monica, mother of Augustine, in The Confessions of St. Augustine, bishop)
Monica suddenly went ill, and died in short time. Augustine remained to live his time through. He had to stand within and move through the reality he finds before him. So do we.
Just be straightforward and do not cling to
Anything. Deluded people grasp the
Dharma and hold on to the samadhi of
Universality. They claim that the samadhi
Of universality consists of sitting
Motionless all the time without
Any uprise in the mind.
Such an interpretation makes the
Meditators inanimate and hinders
The realization of self-nature.
- Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra
What does it mean to ‘stand within and move through’ the reality before us?
The passage from 'concentration' to 'meditation' does not require the application of any new technique. Similarly, no supplementary yogic exercise is needed to realize samadhi, once the yogin has succeeded in 'concentrating' and 'meditating.' Samadhi, yogic 'enstasis,' is the final result of the crown of all the ascetic's spiritual efforts and exercises. The meanings of the term Samadhi are union, totality; absorption in, complete concentration of mind; conjunction. The usual translation is 'concentration,' but this embarks the risk of confusion with dharana. Hence we have preferred to translate it 'entasis,' 'stasis,' and conjunction.
(from SAMADHI, http://alexm.here.ru/mirrors/www.enteract.com/jwalz/Eliade/242.html)
How difficult is it for us to find ourselves completely involved and engaged in our lives -- an embodied incarnation -- mindfully attentive to being and doing, fully present in, with, and through one another?
The word 'enstasis' is one of the many words that Dooyeweerd uses that rely on the Indo-Greek root 'sta' or 'to stand.' (stasis, enstasis, dis-stasis, systasis, apostasis, standing in the truth; I have added epecstasis). See the Sanskrit stha.
Enstasis means a "standing within." It can be contrasted with dis-stasis (non-standing). It can also be contrasted with ecstasy or ec-stasis (a standing out of).
The word ‘enstasis’ is normally attributed to Mircea Eliade, who used the word in his 1954 book on yoga to describe yogic samadhi. He used this term in place of the word ‘ecstasy,’ which he said means ek-stasis, or a going out of oneself. Now what is really surprising is that Dooyeweerd uses this word in the WdW almost 20 years earlier.
But Eliade seems to be using the word 'enstasis' in a sense of "pure consciousness." Now whether or not Dooyeweerd would agree with this depends on what is meant by consciousness. Dooyeweerd does refer to a central kind of consciousness, and a cosmic consciousness. If Eliade is intending it in the sense of an inner reflection of the selfhood, then I believe that Dooyeweerd could agree. Dooyeweerd also contrasts enstasy to the ec-static absorption into temporal reality of creatures that do not have a supratemporal center (II, 415; NC II, 480).
But it seems to me that Eliade is using 'enstasy' in the sense of a static consciousness that is no longer related to any temporal duration or functions. If that is so, then Dooyeweerd's meaning is quite different. Dooyeweerd is opposed to any viewpoint that seeks a static reality. That is a metaphysical-Greek idea of supra-temporality, and not even the eternity of God should be regarded in that way (NC I, 31 ft.; not in WdW). To seek a state where we do not deal with temporality is to seek a disembodied state. Dooyeweerd rejects that kind of spiritualization.
Baader also opposes a static view of the supratemporal, and he also rejects any spiritualizing view that rejects embodiment. But Baader does speak of a "true stasis,"(Philosophische Schriften II, xxvii), and I believe that this is what Dooyeweerd means by "en-stasis." Baader emphasizes that our true situation is for there to be a relation between the Center and the periphery. Since we are embodied beings, we should experience a movement from our selfhood to the temporal, and also from the temporal to the supratemporal.
And I believe that this is what Dooyeweerd means by 'enstasis.' In naive experience, there is the recognition that we are both temporal and supratemporal beings. We are "fitted into" the temporal world along with other temporal creatures, and we experience the continuity of cosmic time. Naive thought does not set its logical function over-against any "opposite" and does not perform any inter-modal theoretical synthesis. It is operative in the full temporal reality in enstasis (II, 401; NC II, 468).
(Dr. J. Glenn Friesen, Studies relating to Herman Dooyeweerd,
http://www.members.shaw.ca/jgfriesen/Definitions/Enstasy.html)
The phrase ‘before us’ has several directions to contemplate. ‘Before us’ might mean that which preceded us. ‘Before us’ also means right under our feet. In addition it points to what is unfolding in front of us.
The prophet Jeremiah looked at what was before him. He told us:
I am in anguish! I writhe with pain!
Walls of my heart!
My heart is throbbing!
I cannot keep quiet,
for I have heard the trumpet call
and the cry of war.
Ruin on ruin is the news:
the whole land is laid waste,
my tents are suddenly destroyed,
in one moment all that sheltered me is gone.
How long must I see the standard
and hear the trumpet call?
“This is because my people are stupid,
they do not know me,
they are slow-witted children,
they have no understanding:
they are clever enough at doing wrong,
but do not know how to do right.”
I looked to the earth, to see a formless waste;
to the heavens, and their light had gone.
I looked to the mountains, to see them quaking
and all the heights astir.
I looked, to see no man at all,
the very birds of heaven had fled.
I looked, to see the wooded country a wilderness,
all its towns in ruins,
at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of his burning anger.
Yes, thus speaks the Lord,
“The whole land shall be laid waste,
I will make an end of it once for all;
at which the earth will go into mourning,
and the heavens above grow dark.
For I have spoken and will not change my mind,
I have decided and will not go back on it.”
(from Jeremiah 5)
At Thursday Evening Conversation there were difficult times wrestling with an emotional inquiry into ‘humility.’ Is part of the difficulty with humility that we are losing contact with earth? The Latin word is humus = ground, soil, land, or earth. So many want to control the earth. So many want to flee the earth. And, so many want to live in some disembodied un-earthly state where they will not be bothered by demands and /or pleasures of earthly existence.
We were bewildered with grief, but she looked keenly at us and said, “You are to bury your mother here”. I was silent, holding back my tears, but my brother said something about his hope that she would not die far from home but in her own country, for that would be a happier way. On hearing this she looked anxious and her eyes rebuked him for thinking so; then she turned her gaze from him to me and said, “What silly talk!” Shortly afterwards, addressing us both, she said, “Lay this body anywhere, and take no trouble over it. One thing only do I ask of you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be”. Having made her meaning clear to us with such words as she could muster, she fell silent, and the pain of the disease grew worse.
(Augustine about Monica, Confessions)
It is stark fact none of us seem likely to escape the disease that accompanies this existence. We grow inevitably dissatisfied with what is before us, and we inevitably will suffer through some specific disease and fall silent into death. At that time, whether we want to or not, we will come to earth.
What if we found ground, if we came to earth, before death? Would life and death lose their separateness in our mind? Would we lose our mind? Would a new way of being reveal itself? Just where, in fact, do we think heaven is? What kind of "thing" do we want heaven to be?
It is what takes place now and through this inevitable path practicing alert awareness that forms our consciousness and influences how we journey with others alongside whatever appears before us.
Hence, the invitation into samadhi and enstasis.
To travel well.
All of us.
Monica wanted her son to see clearly this revelation.
Because the day when she was to leave this life was drawing near – a day known to you, though we were ignorant of it – she and I happened to be alone, through (as I believe) the mysterious workings of your will. We stood leaning against a window which looked out on a garden within the house where we were staying, at Ostia on the Tiber; for there, far from the crowds, we were recruiting our strength after the long journey, in order to prepare ourselves for our voyage overseas. We were alone, conferring very intimately. Forgetting what lay in the past, and stretching out to what was ahead, we enquired between ourselves, in the light of present truth, into what you are and what the eternal life of the saints would be like, for Eye has not seen nor ear heard nor human heart conceived it. And yet, with the mouth of our hearts wide open we panted thirstily for the celestial streams of your fountain, the fount of life which is with you.
(from Office of Readings, Feast of St Monica, mother of Augustine, in The Confessions of St. Augustine, bishop)
Monica suddenly went ill, and died in short time. Augustine remained to live his time through. He had to stand within and move through the reality he finds before him. So do we.
Just be straightforward and do not cling to
Anything. Deluded people grasp the
Dharma and hold on to the samadhi of
Universality. They claim that the samadhi
Of universality consists of sitting
Motionless all the time without
Any uprise in the mind.
Such an interpretation makes the
Meditators inanimate and hinders
The realization of self-nature.
- Vimalakirti Nirdesa Sutra
What does it mean to ‘stand within and move through’ the reality before us?
The passage from 'concentration' to 'meditation' does not require the application of any new technique. Similarly, no supplementary yogic exercise is needed to realize samadhi, once the yogin has succeeded in 'concentrating' and 'meditating.' Samadhi, yogic 'enstasis,' is the final result of the crown of all the ascetic's spiritual efforts and exercises. The meanings of the term Samadhi are union, totality; absorption in, complete concentration of mind; conjunction. The usual translation is 'concentration,' but this embarks the risk of confusion with dharana. Hence we have preferred to translate it 'entasis,' 'stasis,' and conjunction.
(from SAMADHI, http://alexm.here.ru/mirrors/www.enteract.com/jwalz/Eliade/242.html)
How difficult is it for us to find ourselves completely involved and engaged in our lives -- an embodied incarnation -- mindfully attentive to being and doing, fully present in, with, and through one another?
The word 'enstasis' is one of the many words that Dooyeweerd uses that rely on the Indo-Greek root 'sta' or 'to stand.' (stasis, enstasis, dis-stasis, systasis, apostasis, standing in the truth; I have added epecstasis). See the Sanskrit stha.
Enstasis means a "standing within." It can be contrasted with dis-stasis (non-standing). It can also be contrasted with ecstasy or ec-stasis (a standing out of).
The word ‘enstasis’ is normally attributed to Mircea Eliade, who used the word in his 1954 book on yoga to describe yogic samadhi. He used this term in place of the word ‘ecstasy,’ which he said means ek-stasis, or a going out of oneself. Now what is really surprising is that Dooyeweerd uses this word in the WdW almost 20 years earlier.
But Eliade seems to be using the word 'enstasis' in a sense of "pure consciousness." Now whether or not Dooyeweerd would agree with this depends on what is meant by consciousness. Dooyeweerd does refer to a central kind of consciousness, and a cosmic consciousness. If Eliade is intending it in the sense of an inner reflection of the selfhood, then I believe that Dooyeweerd could agree. Dooyeweerd also contrasts enstasy to the ec-static absorption into temporal reality of creatures that do not have a supratemporal center (II, 415; NC II, 480).
But it seems to me that Eliade is using 'enstasy' in the sense of a static consciousness that is no longer related to any temporal duration or functions. If that is so, then Dooyeweerd's meaning is quite different. Dooyeweerd is opposed to any viewpoint that seeks a static reality. That is a metaphysical-Greek idea of supra-temporality, and not even the eternity of God should be regarded in that way (NC I, 31 ft.; not in WdW). To seek a state where we do not deal with temporality is to seek a disembodied state. Dooyeweerd rejects that kind of spiritualization.
Baader also opposes a static view of the supratemporal, and he also rejects any spiritualizing view that rejects embodiment. But Baader does speak of a "true stasis,"(Philosophische Schriften II, xxvii), and I believe that this is what Dooyeweerd means by "en-stasis." Baader emphasizes that our true situation is for there to be a relation between the Center and the periphery. Since we are embodied beings, we should experience a movement from our selfhood to the temporal, and also from the temporal to the supratemporal.
And I believe that this is what Dooyeweerd means by 'enstasis.' In naive experience, there is the recognition that we are both temporal and supratemporal beings. We are "fitted into" the temporal world along with other temporal creatures, and we experience the continuity of cosmic time. Naive thought does not set its logical function over-against any "opposite" and does not perform any inter-modal theoretical synthesis. It is operative in the full temporal reality in enstasis (II, 401; NC II, 468).
(Dr. J. Glenn Friesen, Studies relating to Herman Dooyeweerd,
http://www.members.shaw.ca/jgfriesen/Definitions/Enstasy.html)
The phrase ‘before us’ has several directions to contemplate. ‘Before us’ might mean that which preceded us. ‘Before us’ also means right under our feet. In addition it points to what is unfolding in front of us.
The prophet Jeremiah looked at what was before him. He told us:
I am in anguish! I writhe with pain!
Walls of my heart!
My heart is throbbing!
I cannot keep quiet,
for I have heard the trumpet call
and the cry of war.
Ruin on ruin is the news:
the whole land is laid waste,
my tents are suddenly destroyed,
in one moment all that sheltered me is gone.
How long must I see the standard
and hear the trumpet call?
“This is because my people are stupid,
they do not know me,
they are slow-witted children,
they have no understanding:
they are clever enough at doing wrong,
but do not know how to do right.”
I looked to the earth, to see a formless waste;
to the heavens, and their light had gone.
I looked to the mountains, to see them quaking
and all the heights astir.
I looked, to see no man at all,
the very birds of heaven had fled.
I looked, to see the wooded country a wilderness,
all its towns in ruins,
at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of his burning anger.
Yes, thus speaks the Lord,
“The whole land shall be laid waste,
I will make an end of it once for all;
at which the earth will go into mourning,
and the heavens above grow dark.
For I have spoken and will not change my mind,
I have decided and will not go back on it.”
(from Jeremiah 5)
At Thursday Evening Conversation there were difficult times wrestling with an emotional inquiry into ‘humility.’ Is part of the difficulty with humility that we are losing contact with earth? The Latin word is humus = ground, soil, land, or earth. So many want to control the earth. So many want to flee the earth. And, so many want to live in some disembodied un-earthly state where they will not be bothered by demands and /or pleasures of earthly existence.
We were bewildered with grief, but she looked keenly at us and said, “You are to bury your mother here”. I was silent, holding back my tears, but my brother said something about his hope that she would not die far from home but in her own country, for that would be a happier way. On hearing this she looked anxious and her eyes rebuked him for thinking so; then she turned her gaze from him to me and said, “What silly talk!” Shortly afterwards, addressing us both, she said, “Lay this body anywhere, and take no trouble over it. One thing only do I ask of you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be”. Having made her meaning clear to us with such words as she could muster, she fell silent, and the pain of the disease grew worse.
(Augustine about Monica, Confessions)
It is stark fact none of us seem likely to escape the disease that accompanies this existence. We grow inevitably dissatisfied with what is before us, and we inevitably will suffer through some specific disease and fall silent into death. At that time, whether we want to or not, we will come to earth.
What if we found ground, if we came to earth, before death? Would life and death lose their separateness in our mind? Would we lose our mind? Would a new way of being reveal itself? Just where, in fact, do we think heaven is? What kind of "thing" do we want heaven to be?
It is what takes place now and through this inevitable path practicing alert awareness that forms our consciousness and influences how we journey with others alongside whatever appears before us.
Hence, the invitation into samadhi and enstasis.
To travel well.
All of us.
Thursday, August 26, 2004
I don't believe in competition.
When you stop your compulsive mind, to reach the point where not a single thing is born, you pass through to freedom, no longer falling into feelings and now dwelling on concepts, transcending all completely. Then Zen is obvious everywhere in the world, with the totality of everything everywhere turning into its great function. Everything comes from your own heart. This is what one ancient called bringing out the family treasure.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)
What comes, goes.
Humility brings earth to the fore. Is acceptance and surrender to 'what is' the same as humility and forgiveness?
What remains at the end is heart-felt treasure.
Gratitude.
It is all gift.
Nothing else.
When you stop your compulsive mind, to reach the point where not a single thing is born, you pass through to freedom, no longer falling into feelings and now dwelling on concepts, transcending all completely. Then Zen is obvious everywhere in the world, with the totality of everything everywhere turning into its great function. Everything comes from your own heart. This is what one ancient called bringing out the family treasure.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)
What comes, goes.
Humility brings earth to the fore. Is acceptance and surrender to 'what is' the same as humility and forgiveness?
What remains at the end is heart-felt treasure.
Gratitude.
It is all gift.
Nothing else.
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Life is gift.
Life is not recompense, obligation, tit-for-tat, it is not owed us, nor is it something we deserve.
Sylvia asked, and I answered. The longing for community is not out of emotional need, nor neediness. Community is longed for the same way air and breath are longed for -- without it there is no life.
I am never not in communion with others. I am never not alone. These two sentences are not antithetical.
I think in the sixties he [Thomas Merton]went through some of the worst times I ever witnessed among my friends. Yet he kept a deep understanding of the vitality a human being draws from his brothers and sisters. I often think that in my order part of my responsibility is parallel to his own: to keep a strong appreciation of the community, especially when so many are tempted to give up.
There is something mysterious in the timing of people or in projects.
(-- Daniel Berrigan, pp. 148-9, in The Raft Is Not The Shore, co-authored by Thich Nhat Hanh, c.1975)
Is the time right to recognize and realize that what we are is community? And that what we are is alone? That these two views are not opposite?
We loosely talk of Self-realization, for lack of a better term. But how can one real-ize or make real that which alone is real? All we need to do is to give up our habit of regarding as real that which is unreal. All religious practices are meant solely to help us do this. When we stop regarding the unreal as real, then reality alone will remain, and we will be that.
- Ramana Marharshi (1879-1950)
We are what we long for because we are what we are.
We are alone with others. We are alone together. We are the intersection of everything that passes. We pass. We die. What happens after that? We're uncertain what to say. We'll have to see. Once we see, what is there to say?
Berrigan ends the Afterword addressing Nhat Hanh:
We are closer. Our eyes discern the shore, the gentle green lineaments of the Promise. Soon we shall be home.(p.153)
We're on our way.
Back home.
Life is not recompense, obligation, tit-for-tat, it is not owed us, nor is it something we deserve.
Sylvia asked, and I answered. The longing for community is not out of emotional need, nor neediness. Community is longed for the same way air and breath are longed for -- without it there is no life.
I am never not in communion with others. I am never not alone. These two sentences are not antithetical.
I think in the sixties he [Thomas Merton]went through some of the worst times I ever witnessed among my friends. Yet he kept a deep understanding of the vitality a human being draws from his brothers and sisters. I often think that in my order part of my responsibility is parallel to his own: to keep a strong appreciation of the community, especially when so many are tempted to give up.
There is something mysterious in the timing of people or in projects.
(-- Daniel Berrigan, pp. 148-9, in The Raft Is Not The Shore, co-authored by Thich Nhat Hanh, c.1975)
Is the time right to recognize and realize that what we are is community? And that what we are is alone? That these two views are not opposite?
We loosely talk of Self-realization, for lack of a better term. But how can one real-ize or make real that which alone is real? All we need to do is to give up our habit of regarding as real that which is unreal. All religious practices are meant solely to help us do this. When we stop regarding the unreal as real, then reality alone will remain, and we will be that.
- Ramana Marharshi (1879-1950)
We are what we long for because we are what we are.
We are alone with others. We are alone together. We are the intersection of everything that passes. We pass. We die. What happens after that? We're uncertain what to say. We'll have to see. Once we see, what is there to say?
Berrigan ends the Afterword addressing Nhat Hanh:
We are closer. Our eyes discern the shore, the gentle green lineaments of the Promise. Soon we shall be home.(p.153)
We're on our way.
Back home.
Monday, August 23, 2004
Consider investing in and supporting Meetingbrook
Something taking shape takes time.
Mu-ge walks down path from brook. It sings with flow from torrential rainfall two days gone. Sando and Cesco are stretched out on cabin floor. Sandalwood incense burns before altar. Saskia sails out Rockport Harbor. Sunny late afternoon. Breeze.
We've been talking about Cape Breton and Katy and Joe's property. A woman from Lincolnville wonders if some in the area will eat crow. Nancy comes in after loading and moving a half-cord of wood to her off-the-grid house. She likes what she hears of the property and is happy Buzz has said he’d be of assistance -- his firm consults with corporate businesses and nonprofits, and he has offered to help design Meetingbrook's intent to acquire and utilize the property in Cape Breton. (For years. between snacking on French pastry puffs and telling stories of commanding naval vessels on high seas, he's been watching and most likely waiting for us to ask for help.) Three couples mull how they might be part of the project. Visitors from away (Stamford and Saratoga Springs) animatedly expressed their desire to follow the process and stay in contact.
Locals, even the skeptical and dubious, have come to suspect there's something different about the conversation and the property. They listen with interest to the announcement I proclaim -- That I will not look at another property in Nova Scotia should this prospect fail to happen -- and they believe it to be a true statement. It seems so -- this one or none other. They wonder out loud – In Maine then?
We've not made an offer yet. We plan to soon, once things fall in line. We've communicated intent. There's a strong sense that what happens next is important. The time is ripe. Curiously, even should someone claim the property out from under us, what happens next is important. I trust the owners will understand our interest and follow our process. We move deeper.
Many here tell us they don't want to see us leave Maine. If our intent were simple -- just to move there -- we'd sell the house and the business and transplant. But other options are being considered, a bit more complex at first sight -- to retain hermitage and shop, and negotiate with interested members of the wider community to partner in establishing Meetingbrook Hermitage's Center for Skillful Means and Engaged Service. This creation would span Barnestown Road in Camden to the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton.
Meetingbrook is conceived as a Hermitage for prayer, meditation, and contemplation; a Schola for conversation and study; and a Center for eco-spirituality, community learning & service.
The vision includes serving as a contribution and resource for retreat and respite for individuals requiring a safe and reflective place because of illness, life re-evaluation, or personal time-out.
We also aspire to serve as an adventure based alternative and continuing education center for individuals needing to update professional certification or licensure in their work fields. Our offerings would include a balance of intellectual, spiritual, physical, and practice integration. This would be experienced in a setting intended to foster healthy equilibrium and flexibility of mind and spirit in personal life and work environment.
One further focus is end of life attention and safe navigation of that journey. There are far too few places that nurture and encourage conversation and reflection on the full expanse of personal life, relational life, near-death, nearing-death, and death. The Center at Meetingbrook will present an environment where ongoing attention is given to the open integration of heart and mind, practice and theory, silent contemplation and supportive conversation about our ways of living and dying. The solid principles of hospice, life affirming psychology, and death acknowledging concerns will be honored.
Our original creation of Meetingbrook Hermitage's Schola Gratiae et Contemplationis intends to be a place at the intersection of four distinct templates: monastery, library, university, and retreat house. A fifth addition to the crossing paths would be hospice lodge.
Anyone interested in supporting this intersection?
Anyone interested in investing his or her life, however you wish, to this crossing path?
Anyone interested in contributing donations of money, time, labor, or materials to this idiorhythmic rebuilding of human spirit/divine spirit?
Anyone interested in praying us into and through this vision?
Please.
Do.
Something taking shape takes time.
Mu-ge walks down path from brook. It sings with flow from torrential rainfall two days gone. Sando and Cesco are stretched out on cabin floor. Sandalwood incense burns before altar. Saskia sails out Rockport Harbor. Sunny late afternoon. Breeze.
We've been talking about Cape Breton and Katy and Joe's property. A woman from Lincolnville wonders if some in the area will eat crow. Nancy comes in after loading and moving a half-cord of wood to her off-the-grid house. She likes what she hears of the property and is happy Buzz has said he’d be of assistance -- his firm consults with corporate businesses and nonprofits, and he has offered to help design Meetingbrook's intent to acquire and utilize the property in Cape Breton. (For years. between snacking on French pastry puffs and telling stories of commanding naval vessels on high seas, he's been watching and most likely waiting for us to ask for help.) Three couples mull how they might be part of the project. Visitors from away (Stamford and Saratoga Springs) animatedly expressed their desire to follow the process and stay in contact.
Locals, even the skeptical and dubious, have come to suspect there's something different about the conversation and the property. They listen with interest to the announcement I proclaim -- That I will not look at another property in Nova Scotia should this prospect fail to happen -- and they believe it to be a true statement. It seems so -- this one or none other. They wonder out loud – In Maine then?
We've not made an offer yet. We plan to soon, once things fall in line. We've communicated intent. There's a strong sense that what happens next is important. The time is ripe. Curiously, even should someone claim the property out from under us, what happens next is important. I trust the owners will understand our interest and follow our process. We move deeper.
Many here tell us they don't want to see us leave Maine. If our intent were simple -- just to move there -- we'd sell the house and the business and transplant. But other options are being considered, a bit more complex at first sight -- to retain hermitage and shop, and negotiate with interested members of the wider community to partner in establishing Meetingbrook Hermitage's Center for Skillful Means and Engaged Service. This creation would span Barnestown Road in Camden to the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton.
Meetingbrook is conceived as a Hermitage for prayer, meditation, and contemplation; a Schola for conversation and study; and a Center for eco-spirituality, community learning & service.
The vision includes serving as a contribution and resource for retreat and respite for individuals requiring a safe and reflective place because of illness, life re-evaluation, or personal time-out.
We also aspire to serve as an adventure based alternative and continuing education center for individuals needing to update professional certification or licensure in their work fields. Our offerings would include a balance of intellectual, spiritual, physical, and practice integration. This would be experienced in a setting intended to foster healthy equilibrium and flexibility of mind and spirit in personal life and work environment.
One further focus is end of life attention and safe navigation of that journey. There are far too few places that nurture and encourage conversation and reflection on the full expanse of personal life, relational life, near-death, nearing-death, and death. The Center at Meetingbrook will present an environment where ongoing attention is given to the open integration of heart and mind, practice and theory, silent contemplation and supportive conversation about our ways of living and dying. The solid principles of hospice, life affirming psychology, and death acknowledging concerns will be honored.
Our original creation of Meetingbrook Hermitage's Schola Gratiae et Contemplationis intends to be a place at the intersection of four distinct templates: monastery, library, university, and retreat house. A fifth addition to the crossing paths would be hospice lodge.
Anyone interested in supporting this intersection?
Anyone interested in investing his or her life, however you wish, to this crossing path?
Anyone interested in contributing donations of money, time, labor, or materials to this idiorhythmic rebuilding of human spirit/divine spirit?
Anyone interested in praying us into and through this vision?
Please.
Do.
Sunday, August 22, 2004
Do we need a great philosophy?
I've been watching the ugly things said by operators for and supporters of George Bush about the war record and person of John Kerry. I've watched the sorrowful conduct of the unfortunate war in Iraq. I watch the rigid dismantling of any civil discourse or authentic conversation by our political leaders -- especially the two men seeking the top administrative position in the executive branch of American government.
I also watch many in town who wish to say anything critical about the President, Vice-President, or Attorney General, drop their voices, look around, and lean in -- as if being heard by anyone else would bring on them fearful consequences. To experience the nervous upset of these people, their fright and caution, is itself unnerving.
It reminds me of something I learned years ago. When I worked with adolescents in residential treatment centers, I noticed that other residents gave a wide berth to what they considered particularly disturbed individuals. It was easy to find out whom the others considered genuinely 'crazy' -- there was a reluctance and fear about saying anything about them or coming close to them. This dynamic, unfortunately, feels familiar. Instead of 'crazy' perhaps the signals sent out are: unquestioning certainty they are right and all others wrong; changing the meaning of words to fit their view of the world; and single minded repetitive phrases responding to inquiries asking light of thought and explanation be given as to why particular actions, decisions, and policies are put in place.
Charles Peguy said that when a person dies he or she does not die of a disease, but of all of life. Some die years before they are buried.
(p.1260, "Meditation for Spiritual Growth," in The Vatican II Weekday Missal, c.1975)
There is a fear of life that results in disease. There is a fear of death that results in making of life a thing to fear.
Why are so many frightened of this president and his associates? Is it because more and more people believe American leaders want fear, that these leaders do not share a common mind with the majority of people in this country and the world who long for honest peace, that these leaders wish to destroy whatever is not their idea of the way things should be?
A great philosophy is not one that passes final judgments and establishes ultimate truth. It is one that causes uneasiness and starts commotion.
(- Charles Peguy, 1873-1914, French poet and essayist)
We need a great philosophy because of the experience many relate. These people say what they see. They say that we are being bludgeoned by narrow ideology and self-serving arrogance by leaders of the current government of the United States. There is a palpable uneasiness and despondence.
We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see. (Peguy)
It is sad to see so many frightened and angry people. They feel torn apart by mean-spirited and virulent lack of kindness in matters of politics and patriotism. The teaching behavior of partisan aggression is a hard learning. As a model for how to make one's way in the world, it is difficult to imagine any parent or teacher thinking it appropriate as lesson for children and youth. Yet, it is becoming the norm inundating the population as a whole. How could we possibly disclaim that our way is not hostile dissembling of reputation and character, destruction of identified enemy, and winner take all?
Terrorism is terrorism by any other name. No matter what name is pinned on the behavior that blindsides and destroys the other for one's personal ideology and belief -- everyone recognizes the seeding of fear when it occurs. Can the harvesting of this misshapen and mutant crop be far away?
To love anyone, especially to love one's country, once entailed keeping a close eye on things, saying what you see, and offering help to correct what might be going wrong. These days, more and more people have come to feel that any critical comment might get you placed on a watch-list, detained for questioning, or beaten by militarized upholders of the peace.
Critical thinking and informed dissenting opinion become more and more rare. Public discourse these days seems to favor derisive putdown and shut-your-mouth scornful one-line slogans. We become discouraged by disdain and derision. What is needed is authentic, respectful, and responsive conversation.
The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful must take himself perpetually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable, renascent errors. (Charles Peguy)
We've forgotten an important consideration -- that we might be wrong. We deny we could be missing the mark. We posture and pose as know-it-all's who can cause a world of harm to anyone who thinks otherwise.
Who walks humbly anymore? Rather, swagger, strutting, and smirking are the runway fashion of the day.
Where is Church in all of this?
There are two sayings I like about the Church, from opposite poles. One is: “At the heart of Christianity is the sinner.” The poet Charles Peguy said that; he is thought to have become a Catholic just days before he was called up for the defense of France in 1914, and shot through the head on his first day in battle. Christianity came into being because of the sinner, for the sinner; everything begins there, returns there, works there. The other saying, by a French colleague of Peguy’s, a crotchety “prophet of the Absolute” named Leon Bloy (who once opened a novel with the line: “This place stinks of God!”), runs as follows: “The only tragedy in life is not to have been a saint.”
Between those two poles, pulled this way and that, each Christian struggles.
(Michael Novak, U.S. Ambassador, Theologian, and Author)
Is a 'saint' someone who sees something as it is, engages what is taking place with kindness and genuine assistance, and does it all in the open presence/name of the One God who is as is for all?
The idea that we are a Christian nation is becoming a sniggering back-story for a different strain of heresy, a heresy unlike those of the early days of the church. What does this heresy look like?
Call it the Heresy of Nominal Appropriation. The aim -- to Keep Christ Out of Christianity. The teaching is simple -- Say the name "Jesus" over and over, bait people to believe you are actually praying to and follow Jesus, then switch to adding your own narrow interpretation of how things are going to be instead of the Gospel mandate of love, forgiveness, and redemptive compassion. Steal the word "compassion," redefine it to mean your own brand of control and willfulness, and sell it in place of genuine compassion. Call dirty water clean. Name bad as good. Say that despotic rule is democracy. Call ordinary men and women suspects perpetrating evil. Change the rules and hold that some facts are merely not facts and lobby that lies are now more valuable than truth. Do not encourage the practice that looks into the hearts and minds of people for the purpose of discovering what good and trustworthiness reside there, but rather instill fear and mistrust, encourage suspicion and call for a patriotic duty to inform and betray one another in the name of freedom, in the name of God. Steal the name and believe you possess what the name signifies.
This heresy of Nominal Appropriation is theological and secular. Identity theft is the new crime against God and human beings.
It is, some would say, diabolical. (In Greek, 'dia'= twice, through, and 'bol'= to throw, toss). Hence, here, diabolical could mean being tossed twice through one word or name, second-guessing, double-dealing, turning upside-down, inverting meaning, changing truth, revising history, or, diverting attention.
Instead of propaganda or dogma, we need a great philosophy. Many among us once believed that the teaching words and kind acts of Jesus were fine signposts on the long path toward final understanding and generous behavior. These days there is a severe threat to that once held belief.
Is there a great philosophy to either retrieve or replace the original constructs of love, compassion, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice? Is the teaching of current secular government in this country strong enough to supplant, in name or in act, the philosophy formerly known as Christianity?
What would it be called? Is there even a name we might give it? Or have all names become vulnerable to exploitation and plundering?
MARGARETA. ... Do you believe in God?
FAUST. Sweet, who can dare
To say that he believes?
Ask anywhere -
A sage or priest - and you will see
The answer seems like mockery
Upon the asking.
MARGARETA. Then you don’t believe?
FAUST. Nay, darling girl, no need to misconceive.
For who can say that name
And claim
A very certain faith?
Or where is he with feeling
Of some revealing
Who dares to say it is a wraith?
He that’s upholding
All and enfolding,
Holds he not,
Folds he not
You, me, himself?
Towers not the vault of heaven above us?
Does not earth’s fabric bear us bravely up?
Do not the friendly eyes of timeless stars
Still gleam upon our sight?
Gaze we for nought in one another’s eyes?
Is not life teeming
Around the head and heart of you,
Weaving eternal mysteries
Seen and unseen, even at your side?
Oh, let them fill your heart, your generous heart,
And, when you lose your being in that bliss,
Give it what name you will -
Your joy, love, heart, your God.
For me, I have no name
To give it: feeling’s surely all.
Names are but noise and smoke,
Obscuring heavenly light.
(Dialogue in Faust I, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Without names, where would we look? Without names, how will we recognize one another?
Without beginning or ending, your original wisdom has been shining forever, like the sun. To know whether or not this is true, look inside your own mind.
(- Padmasambhava, 8th cent)
Look there.
Look here.
Carefully, approach a great philosophy.
Watch and pray.
I've been watching the ugly things said by operators for and supporters of George Bush about the war record and person of John Kerry. I've watched the sorrowful conduct of the unfortunate war in Iraq. I watch the rigid dismantling of any civil discourse or authentic conversation by our political leaders -- especially the two men seeking the top administrative position in the executive branch of American government.
I also watch many in town who wish to say anything critical about the President, Vice-President, or Attorney General, drop their voices, look around, and lean in -- as if being heard by anyone else would bring on them fearful consequences. To experience the nervous upset of these people, their fright and caution, is itself unnerving.
It reminds me of something I learned years ago. When I worked with adolescents in residential treatment centers, I noticed that other residents gave a wide berth to what they considered particularly disturbed individuals. It was easy to find out whom the others considered genuinely 'crazy' -- there was a reluctance and fear about saying anything about them or coming close to them. This dynamic, unfortunately, feels familiar. Instead of 'crazy' perhaps the signals sent out are: unquestioning certainty they are right and all others wrong; changing the meaning of words to fit their view of the world; and single minded repetitive phrases responding to inquiries asking light of thought and explanation be given as to why particular actions, decisions, and policies are put in place.
Charles Peguy said that when a person dies he or she does not die of a disease, but of all of life. Some die years before they are buried.
(p.1260, "Meditation for Spiritual Growth," in The Vatican II Weekday Missal, c.1975)
There is a fear of life that results in disease. There is a fear of death that results in making of life a thing to fear.
Why are so many frightened of this president and his associates? Is it because more and more people believe American leaders want fear, that these leaders do not share a common mind with the majority of people in this country and the world who long for honest peace, that these leaders wish to destroy whatever is not their idea of the way things should be?
A great philosophy is not one that passes final judgments and establishes ultimate truth. It is one that causes uneasiness and starts commotion.
(- Charles Peguy, 1873-1914, French poet and essayist)
We need a great philosophy because of the experience many relate. These people say what they see. They say that we are being bludgeoned by narrow ideology and self-serving arrogance by leaders of the current government of the United States. There is a palpable uneasiness and despondence.
We must always tell what we see. Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see. (Peguy)
It is sad to see so many frightened and angry people. They feel torn apart by mean-spirited and virulent lack of kindness in matters of politics and patriotism. The teaching behavior of partisan aggression is a hard learning. As a model for how to make one's way in the world, it is difficult to imagine any parent or teacher thinking it appropriate as lesson for children and youth. Yet, it is becoming the norm inundating the population as a whole. How could we possibly disclaim that our way is not hostile dissembling of reputation and character, destruction of identified enemy, and winner take all?
Terrorism is terrorism by any other name. No matter what name is pinned on the behavior that blindsides and destroys the other for one's personal ideology and belief -- everyone recognizes the seeding of fear when it occurs. Can the harvesting of this misshapen and mutant crop be far away?
To love anyone, especially to love one's country, once entailed keeping a close eye on things, saying what you see, and offering help to correct what might be going wrong. These days, more and more people have come to feel that any critical comment might get you placed on a watch-list, detained for questioning, or beaten by militarized upholders of the peace.
Critical thinking and informed dissenting opinion become more and more rare. Public discourse these days seems to favor derisive putdown and shut-your-mouth scornful one-line slogans. We become discouraged by disdain and derision. What is needed is authentic, respectful, and responsive conversation.
The honest man must be a perpetual renegade, the life of an honest man a perpetual infidelity. For the man who wishes to remain faithful must take himself perpetually unfaithful to all the continual, successive, indefatigable, renascent errors. (Charles Peguy)
We've forgotten an important consideration -- that we might be wrong. We deny we could be missing the mark. We posture and pose as know-it-all's who can cause a world of harm to anyone who thinks otherwise.
Who walks humbly anymore? Rather, swagger, strutting, and smirking are the runway fashion of the day.
Where is Church in all of this?
There are two sayings I like about the Church, from opposite poles. One is: “At the heart of Christianity is the sinner.” The poet Charles Peguy said that; he is thought to have become a Catholic just days before he was called up for the defense of France in 1914, and shot through the head on his first day in battle. Christianity came into being because of the sinner, for the sinner; everything begins there, returns there, works there. The other saying, by a French colleague of Peguy’s, a crotchety “prophet of the Absolute” named Leon Bloy (who once opened a novel with the line: “This place stinks of God!”), runs as follows: “The only tragedy in life is not to have been a saint.”
Between those two poles, pulled this way and that, each Christian struggles.
(Michael Novak, U.S. Ambassador, Theologian, and Author)
Is a 'saint' someone who sees something as it is, engages what is taking place with kindness and genuine assistance, and does it all in the open presence/name of the One God who is as is for all?
The idea that we are a Christian nation is becoming a sniggering back-story for a different strain of heresy, a heresy unlike those of the early days of the church. What does this heresy look like?
Call it the Heresy of Nominal Appropriation. The aim -- to Keep Christ Out of Christianity. The teaching is simple -- Say the name "Jesus" over and over, bait people to believe you are actually praying to and follow Jesus, then switch to adding your own narrow interpretation of how things are going to be instead of the Gospel mandate of love, forgiveness, and redemptive compassion. Steal the word "compassion," redefine it to mean your own brand of control and willfulness, and sell it in place of genuine compassion. Call dirty water clean. Name bad as good. Say that despotic rule is democracy. Call ordinary men and women suspects perpetrating evil. Change the rules and hold that some facts are merely not facts and lobby that lies are now more valuable than truth. Do not encourage the practice that looks into the hearts and minds of people for the purpose of discovering what good and trustworthiness reside there, but rather instill fear and mistrust, encourage suspicion and call for a patriotic duty to inform and betray one another in the name of freedom, in the name of God. Steal the name and believe you possess what the name signifies.
This heresy of Nominal Appropriation is theological and secular. Identity theft is the new crime against God and human beings.
It is, some would say, diabolical. (In Greek, 'dia'= twice, through, and 'bol'= to throw, toss). Hence, here, diabolical could mean being tossed twice through one word or name, second-guessing, double-dealing, turning upside-down, inverting meaning, changing truth, revising history, or, diverting attention.
Instead of propaganda or dogma, we need a great philosophy. Many among us once believed that the teaching words and kind acts of Jesus were fine signposts on the long path toward final understanding and generous behavior. These days there is a severe threat to that once held belief.
Is there a great philosophy to either retrieve or replace the original constructs of love, compassion, forgiveness, and self-sacrifice? Is the teaching of current secular government in this country strong enough to supplant, in name or in act, the philosophy formerly known as Christianity?
What would it be called? Is there even a name we might give it? Or have all names become vulnerable to exploitation and plundering?
MARGARETA. ... Do you believe in God?
FAUST. Sweet, who can dare
To say that he believes?
Ask anywhere -
A sage or priest - and you will see
The answer seems like mockery
Upon the asking.
MARGARETA. Then you don’t believe?
FAUST. Nay, darling girl, no need to misconceive.
For who can say that name
And claim
A very certain faith?
Or where is he with feeling
Of some revealing
Who dares to say it is a wraith?
He that’s upholding
All and enfolding,
Holds he not,
Folds he not
You, me, himself?
Towers not the vault of heaven above us?
Does not earth’s fabric bear us bravely up?
Do not the friendly eyes of timeless stars
Still gleam upon our sight?
Gaze we for nought in one another’s eyes?
Is not life teeming
Around the head and heart of you,
Weaving eternal mysteries
Seen and unseen, even at your side?
Oh, let them fill your heart, your generous heart,
And, when you lose your being in that bliss,
Give it what name you will -
Your joy, love, heart, your God.
For me, I have no name
To give it: feeling’s surely all.
Names are but noise and smoke,
Obscuring heavenly light.
(Dialogue in Faust I, by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
Without names, where would we look? Without names, how will we recognize one another?
Without beginning or ending, your original wisdom has been shining forever, like the sun. To know whether or not this is true, look inside your own mind.
(- Padmasambhava, 8th cent)
Look there.
Look here.
Carefully, approach a great philosophy.
Watch and pray.
Thursday, August 19, 2004
They stand in prayer and vigil outside a woman's house. She is undergoing a change in health. Some things are dropping away. Speech, movement, length of days.
She is facing what all standing outside will face. This is why so many faces turn toward her in her house. Vigil holds her gently with light in the space she now finds herself.
Your true nature is not lost in moments of delusion, nor is it gained at the moment of enlightenment. It was never born and can never die. It shines through the whole universe, filling emptiness, one with emptiness. It is without time or space, and has no passions, no people, and no buddhas; it contains not the smallest hairbreadth of anything that exists objectively; it depends on nothing and is attached to nothing. It is all-pervading, radiant beauty: absolute reality, self-existent and uncreated. How then can you doubt that the Buddha has no mouth to speak with and nothing to teach, or that the truth is learned without learning, for who is there to learn? It is a jewel beyond all price.
- Huang-po (d. 849)
For several years I sat vigil in hospice. I learned much of nothing through the night at bedside. Nor can I remember a more powerful gift than the grace to be with someone as they went within.
I told the woman in the house something a few years ago. I said we'd always share a bit of awkwardness. We have done that, a bit from an inconsequential exchange over a passing moment. I also find that awkwardness with what many say of God. It is an unimportant and fleeting moment that is anything other than vigil.
The exchange being made now crosses edges and borders and stands silent and open, maybe empty, at each courageous movement made toward the next breath, next glance, or next stillness.
I stand with you, here, awkwardly, in this your next step.
I greet you. With love.
As you are.
She is facing what all standing outside will face. This is why so many faces turn toward her in her house. Vigil holds her gently with light in the space she now finds herself.
Your true nature is not lost in moments of delusion, nor is it gained at the moment of enlightenment. It was never born and can never die. It shines through the whole universe, filling emptiness, one with emptiness. It is without time or space, and has no passions, no people, and no buddhas; it contains not the smallest hairbreadth of anything that exists objectively; it depends on nothing and is attached to nothing. It is all-pervading, radiant beauty: absolute reality, self-existent and uncreated. How then can you doubt that the Buddha has no mouth to speak with and nothing to teach, or that the truth is learned without learning, for who is there to learn? It is a jewel beyond all price.
- Huang-po (d. 849)
For several years I sat vigil in hospice. I learned much of nothing through the night at bedside. Nor can I remember a more powerful gift than the grace to be with someone as they went within.
I told the woman in the house something a few years ago. I said we'd always share a bit of awkwardness. We have done that, a bit from an inconsequential exchange over a passing moment. I also find that awkwardness with what many say of God. It is an unimportant and fleeting moment that is anything other than vigil.
The exchange being made now crosses edges and borders and stands silent and open, maybe empty, at each courageous movement made toward the next breath, next glance, or next stillness.
I stand with you, here, awkwardly, in this your next step.
I greet you. With love.
As you are.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
We begrudge generosity.
A family sat on patio sipping tea Tuesday. The man stood by the bakery case and spoke of his Chinese mother-in-law who accompanied the family to her birthplace small village in rural China. She was there long before Communism, when sharing with neighbor was polite and useful, not rule of law. “Did we live over the shop?” he asked. I said, “No, not yet.” He said he and his wife would like such an arrangement. He listened to the economic tightrope and juggling routine we employ – asking only donations for guests upstairs, coffee and tea by donation, grilled bratwurst by donation only -- hospitality without expectation.
What obstructs us from sharing everything we have with everyone – with no motive other than sharing goods benefits all?
Though they liberate their minds directly and develop to this state, they still are unwilling to dwell there. They sense the slightest thing as mountainous; anything that seems to cause obstruction they immediately push away.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)
This morning after morning practice in the cabin, a visit to church. The outside swarmed with workers pulling siding, stretching Tyvek, setting scaffolding, and doing other details that was a marvel to see – a dozen or so blending into a pattern or repair without knocking each other over. It was one of those crews donated by a parishioner to do fast and needed work like a rolling thunder cloud on a sultry summer’s afternoon. They fell quiet at 8am, when Mass began.
Inside the priest read the Gospel: Matthew 20:1 - 16
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the labourers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the market place; and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you’. So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing; and he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us’. He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too’. And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, ‘Call the labourers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first’. And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the householder, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat’. But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you, and go; I choose to give to this last as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last”.
I wondered if the final sentences had to do with the difficulty we have accepting our life as our own. Would a present day worker’s union allow the guy employed at the 11th hour to receive wages equal to the guys taken on at the first hour? Do we rebel against someone getting what we get – even as we want to get what someone else gets? Someone with millions of dollars receives the same rain and the same sun as does the man with nothing. Some woman with five homes in five states faces the threat of encroaching death, as does the woman calculating her food stamps while looking at her cupboard. Nature doesn’t distinguish.
My life, we think, is mine – for now. Is that the sum of it? Is that, conversely, the naught of it?
At 8:25am the priest exited the middle aisle out front doors to send off the attendees. The work began again. The crew re-appeared as though from another dimension, air-compressors started, ladders mounted, and choreographed ballet-dancers interweaving the staging.
“So the last will be first, and the first last”. The line could parallel the Heart Sutra – ‘First is first, last is last; no first, no last; first is last, last in first.’ It is like the line in the film Solaris when the man asks the woman, “And I alive, or dead?” She answers him, “There’s no need to think like that anymore.”
She goes on to say, “We’re together. Everything we’ve done is forgiven. Everything.”
So…will we have to wait a while longer to enter the baffling experience of life beyond expectations?
Allowing our own life to be what it is – completely drenched with generosity – with no counting the cost or measuring outcome?
Is this why we are angry with God and each other? Is this why we fear God and each other? Are we terrified about what we are?
Is it possible we are loving, generous, hospitable, enlightened, and compassionate beings -- and we are afraid of our true nature?
Unless we become, completely and generously, what we are – we will remain strangers and hostile combatants against God, each other, and ourselves.
How will we ever come to dwell in our true home? Happy? And, safe?
No pushing away.
Un-begrudge.
A family sat on patio sipping tea Tuesday. The man stood by the bakery case and spoke of his Chinese mother-in-law who accompanied the family to her birthplace small village in rural China. She was there long before Communism, when sharing with neighbor was polite and useful, not rule of law. “Did we live over the shop?” he asked. I said, “No, not yet.” He said he and his wife would like such an arrangement. He listened to the economic tightrope and juggling routine we employ – asking only donations for guests upstairs, coffee and tea by donation, grilled bratwurst by donation only -- hospitality without expectation.
What obstructs us from sharing everything we have with everyone – with no motive other than sharing goods benefits all?
Though they liberate their minds directly and develop to this state, they still are unwilling to dwell there. They sense the slightest thing as mountainous; anything that seems to cause obstruction they immediately push away.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)
This morning after morning practice in the cabin, a visit to church. The outside swarmed with workers pulling siding, stretching Tyvek, setting scaffolding, and doing other details that was a marvel to see – a dozen or so blending into a pattern or repair without knocking each other over. It was one of those crews donated by a parishioner to do fast and needed work like a rolling thunder cloud on a sultry summer’s afternoon. They fell quiet at 8am, when Mass began.
Inside the priest read the Gospel: Matthew 20:1 - 16
“For the kingdom of heaven is like a householder who went out early in the morning to hire labourers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the labourers for a denarius a day, he sent them into his vineyard. And going out about the third hour he saw others standing idle in the market place; and to them he said, ‘You go into the vineyard too, and whatever is right I will give you’. So they went. Going out again about the sixth hour and the ninth hour, he did the same. And about the eleventh hour he went out and found others standing; and he said to them, ‘Why do you stand here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us’. He said to them, ‘You go into the vineyard too’. And when evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his steward, ‘Call the labourers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last, up to the first’. And when those hired about the eleventh hour came, each of them received a denarius. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received a denarius. And on receiving it they grumbled at the householder, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat’. But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you, and go; I choose to give to this last as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?’ So the last will be first, and the first last”.
I wondered if the final sentences had to do with the difficulty we have accepting our life as our own. Would a present day worker’s union allow the guy employed at the 11th hour to receive wages equal to the guys taken on at the first hour? Do we rebel against someone getting what we get – even as we want to get what someone else gets? Someone with millions of dollars receives the same rain and the same sun as does the man with nothing. Some woman with five homes in five states faces the threat of encroaching death, as does the woman calculating her food stamps while looking at her cupboard. Nature doesn’t distinguish.
My life, we think, is mine – for now. Is that the sum of it? Is that, conversely, the naught of it?
At 8:25am the priest exited the middle aisle out front doors to send off the attendees. The work began again. The crew re-appeared as though from another dimension, air-compressors started, ladders mounted, and choreographed ballet-dancers interweaving the staging.
“So the last will be first, and the first last”. The line could parallel the Heart Sutra – ‘First is first, last is last; no first, no last; first is last, last in first.’ It is like the line in the film Solaris when the man asks the woman, “And I alive, or dead?” She answers him, “There’s no need to think like that anymore.”
She goes on to say, “We’re together. Everything we’ve done is forgiven. Everything.”
So…will we have to wait a while longer to enter the baffling experience of life beyond expectations?
Allowing our own life to be what it is – completely drenched with generosity – with no counting the cost or measuring outcome?
Is this why we are angry with God and each other? Is this why we fear God and each other? Are we terrified about what we are?
Is it possible we are loving, generous, hospitable, enlightened, and compassionate beings -- and we are afraid of our true nature?
Unless we become, completely and generously, what we are – we will remain strangers and hostile combatants against God, each other, and ourselves.
How will we ever come to dwell in our true home? Happy? And, safe?
No pushing away.
Un-begrudge.
Monday, August 16, 2004
I worry about Messer's Bush and Cheney the way I worry about unidirectional thought and emotion.
Zen is omnidirectional.
In those who attain Zen, mental machinations disappear,
vision and action are forgotten, and there are no
subjective views. Zen adepts just remain free, and are
imperceptible to anyone, either would-be supporters or
would-be antagonists. They walk on the bottom of the
deepest ocean, uncontaminated, with free minds, acting
normally, indistinguishable from the average person.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)
Learning to pray is learning to read. It requires learning to see the words as spoken from every direction at once.
This morning’s psalm gave me pause. Were the words pointing to and from “O Lord,” or about and for the reader? Words point to and from the speaker and reader at the same time.
Take the words from Psalm 90:
So we are destroyed in your anger,
struck with terror in your fury.
Our guilt lies open before you;
our secrets in the light of your face.
All our days pass away in your anger.
Our life is over like a sigh.
Our span is seventy years
or eighty for those who are strong.
And most of these are emptiness and pain.
They pass swiftly and we are gone.
Who understands the power of your anger
and fears the strength of your fury?
(from Psalm 90)
I felt it in the gait of the man leaving the chapel – 'Enough with this angry God who has us on pins and needles like some drunk terrorizing his family!'
Then the words shifted. This is not about God. This is about humankind. Like all naïve beliefs that are unidirectional, this writer throws onto ‘God’ what he sees around him, what he perhaps feels within him.
Days that pass away in anger, in blame, or in hostile behavior toward an object of anger, blame, or hostility, are days of delusion. We have fooled ourselves into believing ‘they’ are the cause of our anger. We engage in erroneous thinking when we set ourselves up as the targets of another’s hatred or hold others in contempt for their disagreement with our thinking.
Here is where I worry about Messer's Bush and Cheney in the same way I worry about our inability to read the Psalm with wisdom.
So we are destroyed in our anger,
struck with terror in our fury.
Our guilt lies open before us;
our secrets in the light of our face.
All our days pass away in our anger.
Our life is over like a sigh.
Our span is seventy years
or eighty for those who are strong.
And most of these are emptiness and pain.
They pass swiftly and we are gone.
Who understands the power of our anger
and fears the strength of our fury?
The psalm is not about anyone other. A more profound reading is required. It is a unidirectional mistake to make God other, make enemy other, make terrorist other, and make us other. That mistake pits us as unaware adversaries whose prime response is to defeat and eliminate the other. Every 'other' is enemy. This realization haunts Western politics, theology, and philosophy. This dualistic misreading is the history of millennia -- the scourge of illiterate violence committed in the name of God, country, flag, or narrow interest.
Is anger uni-directional? Would a willingness to dwell omni-directionally change anger into compassion?
To see something from every side, as well as from below, above, outside in and inside out -- is Zen seeing. Zen seeing is transparency. We see through, and are seen through, all at once.
We live in dangerous times. Some would want to convince us there is only one way to see things, usually their way. Anyone who sees things from a different perspective is considered disloyal and a threat. Anyone willing to engage the complexity of omnidirectionality is branded indecisive and untrustworthy.
Hence, I pray for Messer’s Bush and Cheney. Like the man who walked down the path this morning mulling God’s anger, these two servants of the people must come to a more honest and profound reading of themselves and the world.
Anger points fingers and weapons. Compassion surrounds with help and hope.
We all must begin anew.
To learn to read.
And.
Pray.
Zen is omnidirectional.
In those who attain Zen, mental machinations disappear,
vision and action are forgotten, and there are no
subjective views. Zen adepts just remain free, and are
imperceptible to anyone, either would-be supporters or
would-be antagonists. They walk on the bottom of the
deepest ocean, uncontaminated, with free minds, acting
normally, indistinguishable from the average person.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)
Learning to pray is learning to read. It requires learning to see the words as spoken from every direction at once.
This morning’s psalm gave me pause. Were the words pointing to and from “O Lord,” or about and for the reader? Words point to and from the speaker and reader at the same time.
Take the words from Psalm 90:
So we are destroyed in your anger,
struck with terror in your fury.
Our guilt lies open before you;
our secrets in the light of your face.
All our days pass away in your anger.
Our life is over like a sigh.
Our span is seventy years
or eighty for those who are strong.
And most of these are emptiness and pain.
They pass swiftly and we are gone.
Who understands the power of your anger
and fears the strength of your fury?
(from Psalm 90)
I felt it in the gait of the man leaving the chapel – 'Enough with this angry God who has us on pins and needles like some drunk terrorizing his family!'
Then the words shifted. This is not about God. This is about humankind. Like all naïve beliefs that are unidirectional, this writer throws onto ‘God’ what he sees around him, what he perhaps feels within him.
Days that pass away in anger, in blame, or in hostile behavior toward an object of anger, blame, or hostility, are days of delusion. We have fooled ourselves into believing ‘they’ are the cause of our anger. We engage in erroneous thinking when we set ourselves up as the targets of another’s hatred or hold others in contempt for their disagreement with our thinking.
Here is where I worry about Messer's Bush and Cheney in the same way I worry about our inability to read the Psalm with wisdom.
So we are destroyed in our anger,
struck with terror in our fury.
Our guilt lies open before us;
our secrets in the light of our face.
All our days pass away in our anger.
Our life is over like a sigh.
Our span is seventy years
or eighty for those who are strong.
And most of these are emptiness and pain.
They pass swiftly and we are gone.
Who understands the power of our anger
and fears the strength of our fury?
The psalm is not about anyone other. A more profound reading is required. It is a unidirectional mistake to make God other, make enemy other, make terrorist other, and make us other. That mistake pits us as unaware adversaries whose prime response is to defeat and eliminate the other. Every 'other' is enemy. This realization haunts Western politics, theology, and philosophy. This dualistic misreading is the history of millennia -- the scourge of illiterate violence committed in the name of God, country, flag, or narrow interest.
Is anger uni-directional? Would a willingness to dwell omni-directionally change anger into compassion?
To see something from every side, as well as from below, above, outside in and inside out -- is Zen seeing. Zen seeing is transparency. We see through, and are seen through, all at once.
We live in dangerous times. Some would want to convince us there is only one way to see things, usually their way. Anyone who sees things from a different perspective is considered disloyal and a threat. Anyone willing to engage the complexity of omnidirectionality is branded indecisive and untrustworthy.
Hence, I pray for Messer’s Bush and Cheney. Like the man who walked down the path this morning mulling God’s anger, these two servants of the people must come to a more honest and profound reading of themselves and the world.
Anger points fingers and weapons. Compassion surrounds with help and hope.
We all must begin anew.
To learn to read.
And.
Pray.
Sunday, August 15, 2004
We write to Cape Breton property owners and their agent saying we wish to purchase the mountain property in the valley, bordered by pond and river, sprinkled by brooks, between warm Northumberland Strait and salty Bras d’Or Lake.
The intent is serious. We wish to have a Meetingbrook Hermitage on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. It is now time to line up and step forward to commit to this project.
What will it entail? This is an excerpt sent to the owners:
It is obvious to us that the place would make a wonderful Meetingbrook Hermitage in Cape Breton. We have begun to resurrect plans we've been sketching out for several years. We're quietly optimistic this can happen. It would be a place of prayer, meditation, and retreat (Hermitage); a place of shared learning and study with a focus on ecological and spiritual interdependence (Schola); and a place of hospitality, creativity, and a community business, ultimately on the Cabot Trail footage -- (a Center for Skillful Means and Engaged Service) -- e.g. bookshop, bakery/cafe, and community resource.
The house and property are both simple and lovely. Large acreage. House only ten years old. Quiet, with a monastic feel to it. It would be a resource for local and visiting folk. A place of respite, reflection, and recollection.
It is time to welcome the Buddha and all the Buddha-hearts to reveal their innate wisdom about how to live in these difficult times.
It is also time to invite a plunge through the surface of our lives and find at center the Christ and all the Christ-minds to engage one another in service and hospitality.
When a buddha appears in the world
And expounds various teachings
According to people’s inclinations,
All of the teachings are expedients,
Just for the purpose of breaking through
Obsessions, doubts, intellectual interpretations,
And egocentric ideas.
If there were no such false consciousness
And false views, there would be no need
For buddhas to appear
And expound so many teachings.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)
At Lectio Divina yesterday morning we chanted and read the Heart Sutra. A fragment of it lighted up:
No ignorance and also no extinction of it,
and so forth until no old age and death
and also no extinction of them.
No suffering, no origination,
no stopping, no path, no cognition,
also no attainment with nothing to attain.
(from The Maha Prajna Paramita Hrdaya Sutra)
Each moment, each event, is of itself. We, with our minds, place everything in context – quantifying and locating, explaining and justifying. But, if we see each person, moment, or occurrence as in-and-of-itself, each is unique and distinct, not attached nor detached, yet completely with one another.
One of our tasks is learning how to dwell in the reality of all beings that sees, accepts, respects, and serves each person, place, and thing as if they were what they are – present and real beings: full of sangha strength, enlightenment, and compassion; mystically embodied incarnations in the community of God made human, God within creation.
This task takes skillful means and engaged service. It takes practice and study, meditation and prayer.
One of the most colorful and illuminating representations of skillful means in Mahayana Buddhism is the bodhisattva of compassion, called Avalokiteshvara in Sanskrit, Chenrezig in Tibetan, Kuan-yin in Chinese, Kwanseum in Korean, and Kannon or Kanzeon in Japanese. As the bodhisattva who hears and responds to the cries of the world, the great variety of iconographic forms of this bodhisattva exemplifies skillful means responding to diverse suffering beings. One of the most memorable of the numerous forms of this bodhisattva has a thousand arms and hands, many of the hands with implements such as flowers, vases of ambrosia, musical instruments, ropes, daggers, hatchets, and wish-fulfilling gems. Each of these tools may be useful in specific situations with different beings. In addition to multiple hands, some forms of the bodhisattva have eleven heads, to observe beings from different viewpoints and respond effectively with different guises.
The practice of skillful means reminds us to listen to others respectfully, honor their differences, and recognize that others may have different needs and benefit from different teachings and practices. Following the model of the bodhisattva of compassion, we must not self-righteously cling to any particular method. We can learn various useful approaches, and as we learn to trust and respond with whatever is at hand, our skillfulness can develop.
("An Introduction to Skillful Means" -Taigen Dan Leighton, http://www.mtsource.org/articles/skillful.htm)
It is August 15. We remember our early elder, Janet, who died on this day a few years ago.
The Feast of the Assumption is an important day in the Catholic religion. It is the principal feast of the Blessed Virgin, the mother of Jesus Christ. This feast commemorates two events - the departure of Mary from this life and the assumption of her body into heaven.
The Church's official doctrine of the Assumption says that at the end of her life on earth Mary was assumed, body and soul, into heaven.
Some mistakenly believe Mary "ascended" into heaven, which is incorrect. It was Jesus Christ who ascended into heaven, by his own power. But Mary was assumed or taken up into heaven by God.
Pope Pius Xll, in 1950, defined that Mary "after the completion of her earthly life...was assumed body and soul into the glory of Heaven." Her body wasn't allowed to corrupt nor was it allowed to remain in a tomb. http://www.holidays.net/dailys/holidays/assumption.htm
Fr. Andrew Greeley has written:
Story:
Once upon a time the Lord God went out on patrol of heaven just to make sure that it was still a city that worked. Everything was fine, the hedges trimmed, the grass cut, the fountains clean, the gold and silver and ivory polished, the mall neat (Of course they have a mall in heaven. Where else would they put the teenagers!). He stopped by to listen to the angel choirs sing and they were in great form. Then on one of the side streets he encountered people who had no business being in heaven, at all, at all. Some of them should have been serving a long sentence in purgatory, others would not get out until the day before the Last Judgement, still others would make it into heaven only on very special appeal. So he went out to complain to St. Peter. You've let me down again, he said and yourself with the keys of the kingdom of heaven. I have not said St. Peter. Well, how did they get in? I didn't let them in. Well, who did? You won't like it. I have a right to know how they got in. Well, I turned them down and didn't they go around to the back door and didn't your mother let them in!
(Theologically this story of course is nonsense. But as a story it reflects Mary's role as reflecting the maternal love of God).
(Andrew Greeley, August 15th, Feast of the Assumption of Mary (Lady Day in Harvest), http://www.agreeley.com/homilies99/aug1599.html)
We’re getting ready to make an offer.
Aware of uncertainty.
Yet, quietly confident.
We’ll try skillful means.
Meditatively.
In prayer.
To see.
The intent is serious. We wish to have a Meetingbrook Hermitage on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. It is now time to line up and step forward to commit to this project.
What will it entail? This is an excerpt sent to the owners:
It is obvious to us that the place would make a wonderful Meetingbrook Hermitage in Cape Breton. We have begun to resurrect plans we've been sketching out for several years. We're quietly optimistic this can happen. It would be a place of prayer, meditation, and retreat (Hermitage); a place of shared learning and study with a focus on ecological and spiritual interdependence (Schola); and a place of hospitality, creativity, and a community business, ultimately on the Cabot Trail footage -- (a Center for Skillful Means and Engaged Service) -- e.g. bookshop, bakery/cafe, and community resource.
The house and property are both simple and lovely. Large acreage. House only ten years old. Quiet, with a monastic feel to it. It would be a resource for local and visiting folk. A place of respite, reflection, and recollection.
It is time to welcome the Buddha and all the Buddha-hearts to reveal their innate wisdom about how to live in these difficult times.
It is also time to invite a plunge through the surface of our lives and find at center the Christ and all the Christ-minds to engage one another in service and hospitality.
When a buddha appears in the world
And expounds various teachings
According to people’s inclinations,
All of the teachings are expedients,
Just for the purpose of breaking through
Obsessions, doubts, intellectual interpretations,
And egocentric ideas.
If there were no such false consciousness
And false views, there would be no need
For buddhas to appear
And expound so many teachings.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)
At Lectio Divina yesterday morning we chanted and read the Heart Sutra. A fragment of it lighted up:
No ignorance and also no extinction of it,
and so forth until no old age and death
and also no extinction of them.
No suffering, no origination,
no stopping, no path, no cognition,
also no attainment with nothing to attain.
(from The Maha Prajna Paramita Hrdaya Sutra)
Each moment, each event, is of itself. We, with our minds, place everything in context – quantifying and locating, explaining and justifying. But, if we see each person, moment, or occurrence as in-and-of-itself, each is unique and distinct, not attached nor detached, yet completely with one another.
One of our tasks is learning how to dwell in the reality of all beings that sees, accepts, respects, and serves each person, place, and thing as if they were what they are – present and real beings: full of sangha strength, enlightenment, and compassion; mystically embodied incarnations in the community of God made human, God within creation.
This task takes skillful means and engaged service. It takes practice and study, meditation and prayer.
One of the most colorful and illuminating representations of skillful means in Mahayana Buddhism is the bodhisattva of compassion, called Avalokiteshvara in Sanskrit, Chenrezig in Tibetan, Kuan-yin in Chinese, Kwanseum in Korean, and Kannon or Kanzeon in Japanese. As the bodhisattva who hears and responds to the cries of the world, the great variety of iconographic forms of this bodhisattva exemplifies skillful means responding to diverse suffering beings. One of the most memorable of the numerous forms of this bodhisattva has a thousand arms and hands, many of the hands with implements such as flowers, vases of ambrosia, musical instruments, ropes, daggers, hatchets, and wish-fulfilling gems. Each of these tools may be useful in specific situations with different beings. In addition to multiple hands, some forms of the bodhisattva have eleven heads, to observe beings from different viewpoints and respond effectively with different guises.
The practice of skillful means reminds us to listen to others respectfully, honor their differences, and recognize that others may have different needs and benefit from different teachings and practices. Following the model of the bodhisattva of compassion, we must not self-righteously cling to any particular method. We can learn various useful approaches, and as we learn to trust and respond with whatever is at hand, our skillfulness can develop.
("An Introduction to Skillful Means" -Taigen Dan Leighton, http://www.mtsource.org/articles/skillful.htm)
It is August 15. We remember our early elder, Janet, who died on this day a few years ago.
The Feast of the Assumption is an important day in the Catholic religion. It is the principal feast of the Blessed Virgin, the mother of Jesus Christ. This feast commemorates two events - the departure of Mary from this life and the assumption of her body into heaven.
The Church's official doctrine of the Assumption says that at the end of her life on earth Mary was assumed, body and soul, into heaven.
Some mistakenly believe Mary "ascended" into heaven, which is incorrect. It was Jesus Christ who ascended into heaven, by his own power. But Mary was assumed or taken up into heaven by God.
Pope Pius Xll, in 1950, defined that Mary "after the completion of her earthly life...was assumed body and soul into the glory of Heaven." Her body wasn't allowed to corrupt nor was it allowed to remain in a tomb. http://www.holidays.net/dailys/holidays/assumption.htm
Fr. Andrew Greeley has written:
Story:
Once upon a time the Lord God went out on patrol of heaven just to make sure that it was still a city that worked. Everything was fine, the hedges trimmed, the grass cut, the fountains clean, the gold and silver and ivory polished, the mall neat (Of course they have a mall in heaven. Where else would they put the teenagers!). He stopped by to listen to the angel choirs sing and they were in great form. Then on one of the side streets he encountered people who had no business being in heaven, at all, at all. Some of them should have been serving a long sentence in purgatory, others would not get out until the day before the Last Judgement, still others would make it into heaven only on very special appeal. So he went out to complain to St. Peter. You've let me down again, he said and yourself with the keys of the kingdom of heaven. I have not said St. Peter. Well, how did they get in? I didn't let them in. Well, who did? You won't like it. I have a right to know how they got in. Well, I turned them down and didn't they go around to the back door and didn't your mother let them in!
(Theologically this story of course is nonsense. But as a story it reflects Mary's role as reflecting the maternal love of God).
(Andrew Greeley, August 15th, Feast of the Assumption of Mary (Lady Day in Harvest), http://www.agreeley.com/homilies99/aug1599.html)
We’re getting ready to make an offer.
Aware of uncertainty.
Yet, quietly confident.
We’ll try skillful means.
Meditatively.
In prayer.
To see.
Friday, August 13, 2004
Whatever we think of God, God is no doubt a simpler and stranger reality.
The composer wanted to talk about Cape Breton. So too the educator, and the film administrator. Others are just watching. Many are unsure what to think.
What does Maha mean?
Maha means great.
The capacity of the mind
Is broad and great, like space;
It has no boundaries;
It is neither square nor round
Neither great nor small;
Neither blue nor yellow;
Neither long nor short;
Neither anger nor joy;
Neither right nor wrong;
It has neither head nor tail.
All Buddha lands are like space.
The wondrous nature of all is
Fundamentally void and does
Not contain a single thing.
- Altar Sutra
We rise at 5:55am, sit for 40 minutes, walk for 10, chant or recite. Today tea and toast with man who brought Bolivian incense.
At conversation tonight reading about love and peace in Islam.
In the film Solaris there is a question as to what constitutes a human being, and the curious aspect of repetition.
If we are grounded in love, not a single thing can split or separate us.
Does the word 'element' really mean 'God out of mind'?
No mind sees God.
As it is.
The composer wanted to talk about Cape Breton. So too the educator, and the film administrator. Others are just watching. Many are unsure what to think.
What does Maha mean?
Maha means great.
The capacity of the mind
Is broad and great, like space;
It has no boundaries;
It is neither square nor round
Neither great nor small;
Neither blue nor yellow;
Neither long nor short;
Neither anger nor joy;
Neither right nor wrong;
It has neither head nor tail.
All Buddha lands are like space.
The wondrous nature of all is
Fundamentally void and does
Not contain a single thing.
- Altar Sutra
We rise at 5:55am, sit for 40 minutes, walk for 10, chant or recite. Today tea and toast with man who brought Bolivian incense.
At conversation tonight reading about love and peace in Islam.
In the film Solaris there is a question as to what constitutes a human being, and the curious aspect of repetition.
If we are grounded in love, not a single thing can split or separate us.
Does the word 'element' really mean 'God out of mind'?
No mind sees God.
As it is.
Thursday, August 12, 2004
Wandering Cape Breton was wonderful.
Dinner with Katy and Joe a feast of Italian cooking and generous hospitality.
As rivers flowing into the ocean find their final peace,
and their name and form disappear,
even so the wise become free from name and form
and enter into the radiance of the Supreme Spirit
who is greater than all greatness.
(Mundaka Upanishad 3.2.8)
When the right combination is found, tumblers tumble open.
The sound we hear right now is the sound of the open.
We taste, and see.
Sacred sensuous.
Dinner with Katy and Joe a feast of Italian cooking and generous hospitality.
As rivers flowing into the ocean find their final peace,
and their name and form disappear,
even so the wise become free from name and form
and enter into the radiance of the Supreme Spirit
who is greater than all greatness.
(Mundaka Upanishad 3.2.8)
When the right combination is found, tumblers tumble open.
The sound we hear right now is the sound of the open.
We taste, and see.
Sacred sensuous.
Saturday, August 07, 2004
To unsay oneself.
To allow the breeze to be the voice that flows through you. To be unpronouncing. To unanounce yourself.
In prison yesterday, Wendell spoke of passive awareness. Charlie, Craig, Jared, Joe, Ryan, Saskia and I listened.
French poet, Simone Weil (1909-1943) wrote, "Love is abdication. God is abdication". Abdication is the formal relinquishment of one's claims, rights, responsibilities and power.
Talk included Robert Nozick, Krishnamurti, John O'Donohue, Eckhart Tolle, Francis Thompson, and the Zen Master's dry shit on stick.
The truth is, had God not abdicated, there would be no hope for creation, if in fact there would have been a creation at all. None. Zero. There would have been no incarnation, no crucifixion and no resurrection. And there would be no new creation. There would only be hopelessness and despair in everything we do and say everywhere we turn. The cries of Ecclesiastes would be our cries. "Meaningless! Meaningless! . . . Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaning- less" (Ecclesiastes 1:2 NIV). Life would be filled with nothing but unrelenting emptiness, sorrow and woe. There would be no Romans 8:28. There would be no redemption. Praise God this is not the way is is.
"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified" (Romans 8:28-30 NIV).
It was for but a moment in time, but can we even begin to take hold of the gravity of God's abdication? Can we comprehend the astonishment of the angels at such a sacrifice? We can only humble ourselves and accept it by faith. Clearly, the abdication of God was an act of purest selflessness and, as it can only be with God, abdication demonstrates for us what brokenness looks like. We can only begin to take it in by the grace of God. And O the wonder of it all.
(from "The Brokenness of God, A Biblical Look at the Humility and Brokenness of God," by Anne Murchison, http://www.annemurchison.com/brokennessofgod.htm)
The words 'this' and 'here' and 'now' riveted attention. Even with, as Craig said, the life so many men lived in the prison. He was saddened by the plight of his brothers.
We remembered Thompson's words:
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home :
Rise, clasp My hand, and come !"
(from poem "The Hound of Heaven", by Francis Thompson, 1859 - 1907)
So we go.
On.
Being said.
To allow the breeze to be the voice that flows through you. To be unpronouncing. To unanounce yourself.
In prison yesterday, Wendell spoke of passive awareness. Charlie, Craig, Jared, Joe, Ryan, Saskia and I listened.
French poet, Simone Weil (1909-1943) wrote, "Love is abdication. God is abdication". Abdication is the formal relinquishment of one's claims, rights, responsibilities and power.
Talk included Robert Nozick, Krishnamurti, John O'Donohue, Eckhart Tolle, Francis Thompson, and the Zen Master's dry shit on stick.
The truth is, had God not abdicated, there would be no hope for creation, if in fact there would have been a creation at all. None. Zero. There would have been no incarnation, no crucifixion and no resurrection. And there would be no new creation. There would only be hopelessness and despair in everything we do and say everywhere we turn. The cries of Ecclesiastes would be our cries. "Meaningless! Meaningless! . . . Utterly meaningless! Everything is meaning- less" (Ecclesiastes 1:2 NIV). Life would be filled with nothing but unrelenting emptiness, sorrow and woe. There would be no Romans 8:28. There would be no redemption. Praise God this is not the way is is.
"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified" (Romans 8:28-30 NIV).
It was for but a moment in time, but can we even begin to take hold of the gravity of God's abdication? Can we comprehend the astonishment of the angels at such a sacrifice? We can only humble ourselves and accept it by faith. Clearly, the abdication of God was an act of purest selflessness and, as it can only be with God, abdication demonstrates for us what brokenness looks like. We can only begin to take it in by the grace of God. And O the wonder of it all.
(from "The Brokenness of God, A Biblical Look at the Humility and Brokenness of God," by Anne Murchison, http://www.annemurchison.com/brokennessofgod.htm)
The words 'this' and 'here' and 'now' riveted attention. Even with, as Craig said, the life so many men lived in the prison. He was saddened by the plight of his brothers.
We remembered Thompson's words:
All which I took from thee I did but take,
Not for thy harms,
But just that thou might'st seek it in My arms.
All which thy child's mistake
Fancies as lost, I have stored for thee at home :
Rise, clasp My hand, and come !"
(from poem "The Hound of Heaven", by Francis Thompson, 1859 - 1907)
So we go.
On.
Being said.
Friday, August 06, 2004
Jesus on Tabor studied Zen. On Golgotha he studied Zen.
In Hiroshima 59 years ago today, at 8:15am, one of the darkest days in world history, the world's first A-bomb attack took place. The bomb, dropped by a U.S. plane on August 6, 1945, caused the deaths of an estimated 80,000 people. Eighty thousand died right away; perhaps as many died from radiation or injuries. President Harry S Truman, announcing the news from the cruiser, Augusta, in the mid-Atlantic, said the device contained 20,000 tons of TNT and was more than 2,000 times more powerful than the largest bomb used to date. (from bbc.co.uk)
At that hour of 8:15am many Japanese people beginning their day studied Zen.
When your original reason
For studying Zen is not right,
You wind up having labored
Without accomplishment.
This is why ancients used
To urge people to study Zen
As if they were on the brink of death.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)
When Jesus was seen through at his Transfiguration, no one could figure what it meant.
Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, and when they wakened they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah” – not knowing what he said. As he said this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silence and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.
Luke 9:28 - 36
Of course they were afraid as they entered the cloud.
Listen! And keep silence.
If someone could tell what was seen at the Transfiguration, if someone could tell what was seen at Hiroshima, they would surely be deemed crazy.
Who can be seen through? Who can see through the actions and events of men and history and retain sanity, hope, or compassion?
Today is that day.
Becoming transparent.
We pray with, in, and through each one and all of us.
In Hiroshima 59 years ago today, at 8:15am, one of the darkest days in world history, the world's first A-bomb attack took place. The bomb, dropped by a U.S. plane on August 6, 1945, caused the deaths of an estimated 80,000 people. Eighty thousand died right away; perhaps as many died from radiation or injuries. President Harry S Truman, announcing the news from the cruiser, Augusta, in the mid-Atlantic, said the device contained 20,000 tons of TNT and was more than 2,000 times more powerful than the largest bomb used to date. (from bbc.co.uk)
At that hour of 8:15am many Japanese people beginning their day studied Zen.
When your original reason
For studying Zen is not right,
You wind up having labored
Without accomplishment.
This is why ancients used
To urge people to study Zen
As if they were on the brink of death.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)
When Jesus was seen through at his Transfiguration, no one could figure what it meant.
Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James, and went up on the mountain to pray. And as he was praying, the appearance of his countenance was altered, and his raiment became dazzling white. And behold, two men talked with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem. Now Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep, and when they wakened they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Peter said to Jesus, “Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah” – not knowing what he said. As he said this, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud, saying, “This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!” And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone. And they kept silence and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen.
Luke 9:28 - 36
Of course they were afraid as they entered the cloud.
Listen! And keep silence.
If someone could tell what was seen at the Transfiguration, if someone could tell what was seen at Hiroshima, they would surely be deemed crazy.
Who can be seen through? Who can see through the actions and events of men and history and retain sanity, hope, or compassion?
Today is that day.
Becoming transparent.
We pray with, in, and through each one and all of us.
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Eternal life is now.
It is no-time -- like the present.
Meanwhile, the priest takes the host and breaks it over the paten. He places a small piece in the chalice, saying quietly:
"May this mingling of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it."
(Breaking of the Bread, Communion Rite, Catholic Mass, Weekday Missal)
Bring now to us. That's what we pray.
Is 'now' the body of Christ?
Receive it!
It is no-time -- like the present.
Meanwhile, the priest takes the host and breaks it over the paten. He places a small piece in the chalice, saying quietly:
"May this mingling of the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ bring eternal life to us who receive it."
(Breaking of the Bread, Communion Rite, Catholic Mass, Weekday Missal)
Bring now to us. That's what we pray.
Is 'now' the body of Christ?
Receive it!
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Breathe.
Each and all of us.
It is not merely a matter of having a personal relationship with Jesus. Isn't it a matter of personifying Christ as well? Or, embodying enroute?
Is the divine energy of the Original Logos the very impulse that enlivens each and all of us toward realizing the true direction of our lives?
Jesus wondered aloud why God had not appeared to prevent his death, asking: "Why have you forsaken me?"
Night sitting
The hermit doesn’t sleep at night:
In love with the blue of the vacant moon.
The cool of the breeze
That rustles the trees
Rustles him too.
- Ching An (1841–1920)
There is no "me" in divinity. Divinity constitutes all of us. The kindness of God is allowing the dissolution of any idea, belief, or behavior which makes an "other" of each and all of us.
God is not to be seen face-to-face nor possessed as one might a person or a favored thing. God resides in the intimacy, engagement, and transparent compassion each extends to each and all of us long for in our lives.
No one was forsaken.
Separateness dissolved.
Christ arose in the wholeness.
Some bread? Wine? One another?
Converse. This is how what is lost is found.
Exhale. Inhale.
Each and all of us.
It is not merely a matter of having a personal relationship with Jesus. Isn't it a matter of personifying Christ as well? Or, embodying enroute?
Is the divine energy of the Original Logos the very impulse that enlivens each and all of us toward realizing the true direction of our lives?
Jesus wondered aloud why God had not appeared to prevent his death, asking: "Why have you forsaken me?"
Night sitting
The hermit doesn’t sleep at night:
In love with the blue of the vacant moon.
The cool of the breeze
That rustles the trees
Rustles him too.
- Ching An (1841–1920)
There is no "me" in divinity. Divinity constitutes all of us. The kindness of God is allowing the dissolution of any idea, belief, or behavior which makes an "other" of each and all of us.
God is not to be seen face-to-face nor possessed as one might a person or a favored thing. God resides in the intimacy, engagement, and transparent compassion each extends to each and all of us long for in our lives.
No one was forsaken.
Separateness dissolved.
Christ arose in the wholeness.
Some bread? Wine? One another?
Converse. This is how what is lost is found.
Exhale. Inhale.
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Soon, distinctions disappear.
By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.
(Prayer during preparation of the altar and the gifts)
Water in wine, one in the other, is symbol enough to throw us into the reality.
We touch one another, wish Peace of Christ, suspecting, pretending, actually enacting what we really are.
Walking forward. Small bow. Open hands. Host. Tilting cup. Sip.
Returning consecrated.
Sitting still.
Sitting.
Still.
By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.
(Prayer during preparation of the altar and the gifts)
Water in wine, one in the other, is symbol enough to throw us into the reality.
We touch one another, wish Peace of Christ, suspecting, pretending, actually enacting what we really are.
Walking forward. Small bow. Open hands. Host. Tilting cup. Sip.
Returning consecrated.
Sitting still.
Sitting.
Still.
Monday, August 02, 2004
Would moving to Cape Breton Island be same or different?
(It's a trick question. "Same" or "different," say Zen folk, exist only in the mind.) Moving to Cape Breton Island, to follow that way of seeing, would only be moving to Cape Breton Island. No more. No less. Just that.
Everything feels not quite "just that."
There’s a stream, and there’s bamboo,
There’s mulberry and hemp.
Mist-hidden, clouded hamlet,
A mild, tranquil place.
Just a few tilled acres.
Just a few tiled roofs.
How many lives would I
Have to live, to get that
Simple.
- Yuan Mei (1716–1798)
Still, we'd like to think everything is what it is, no matter what story we tell about it.
People may not know, for instance, that the Morning Star is the Evening Star and so their beliefs about and their reactions to what is in fact one and the same planet can be quite different according to the description under which it is considered.
(p.202, entry "Leibnitz Law" in A Dictionary of Philosophy, by Antony Flew, c.1979)
There are times it is painful to hear one more explanation, warning, narrative description, or apologia for things as they take place in the world. It is a curious time when even dire alerts about possible terrorist attacks are based on planning information begun four years ago, only recently discovered, and released at this time. It is all beyond understanding.
Leibnitz law is the principle that if one thing is identical with another then anything that is true of the one must also be true of the other.
The political parties, Democrat and Republican, seem identical. The names Bush and Kerry have become targets of abusive and negative statements. People seem to actually believe that by trashing one of them the other comes out smelling of roses. That's not the law.
In Contrast to Spinoza's view that there is only one substance, Leibnitz declares that there is an infinity of substances, created and maintained in existence by God. The world that these substances compose is the best possible, created by God precisely because it is the best possible world. Each substance is simple, that is without parts, and for this reason Leibnitz calls it a 'monad', a term that means 'unit' or 'unity'. A substance is also immaterial, and therefore may be called a soul.
(p.199, "Leibnitz", ibid)
The words 'unity' and 'soul' seem anachronisms in the fierce rhetoric of denunciation and denigration.
Some consider the upcoming election a bellwether. The man whose bell leads the sheep of the flock come election results that first Tuesday in November will poise us at open grazing field or precipice tumbling drop.
An alarming sentiment grows -- it augurs an end of trust in the electoral process. We enter an age of blasts and bombast. Decisions by fiat and proclamation will replace, some say, plebiscite and popular choice. Those who know best will decide what is right for this country. And those who know best trust in power and explosives, hostile aggression and preemptive retaliation for possible future hostilities. Sucker-punches and blind-side hits are the new ungentlemanly and indecorous strategies replacing conflict resolution and negotiation.
A mild, tranquil place?
To get that simple...
Which field?
What bell?
(It's a trick question. "Same" or "different," say Zen folk, exist only in the mind.) Moving to Cape Breton Island, to follow that way of seeing, would only be moving to Cape Breton Island. No more. No less. Just that.
Everything feels not quite "just that."
There’s a stream, and there’s bamboo,
There’s mulberry and hemp.
Mist-hidden, clouded hamlet,
A mild, tranquil place.
Just a few tilled acres.
Just a few tiled roofs.
How many lives would I
Have to live, to get that
Simple.
- Yuan Mei (1716–1798)
Still, we'd like to think everything is what it is, no matter what story we tell about it.
People may not know, for instance, that the Morning Star is the Evening Star and so their beliefs about and their reactions to what is in fact one and the same planet can be quite different according to the description under which it is considered.
(p.202, entry "Leibnitz Law" in A Dictionary of Philosophy, by Antony Flew, c.1979)
There are times it is painful to hear one more explanation, warning, narrative description, or apologia for things as they take place in the world. It is a curious time when even dire alerts about possible terrorist attacks are based on planning information begun four years ago, only recently discovered, and released at this time. It is all beyond understanding.
Leibnitz law is the principle that if one thing is identical with another then anything that is true of the one must also be true of the other.
The political parties, Democrat and Republican, seem identical. The names Bush and Kerry have become targets of abusive and negative statements. People seem to actually believe that by trashing one of them the other comes out smelling of roses. That's not the law.
In Contrast to Spinoza's view that there is only one substance, Leibnitz declares that there is an infinity of substances, created and maintained in existence by God. The world that these substances compose is the best possible, created by God precisely because it is the best possible world. Each substance is simple, that is without parts, and for this reason Leibnitz calls it a 'monad', a term that means 'unit' or 'unity'. A substance is also immaterial, and therefore may be called a soul.
(p.199, "Leibnitz", ibid)
The words 'unity' and 'soul' seem anachronisms in the fierce rhetoric of denunciation and denigration.
Some consider the upcoming election a bellwether. The man whose bell leads the sheep of the flock come election results that first Tuesday in November will poise us at open grazing field or precipice tumbling drop.
An alarming sentiment grows -- it augurs an end of trust in the electoral process. We enter an age of blasts and bombast. Decisions by fiat and proclamation will replace, some say, plebiscite and popular choice. Those who know best will decide what is right for this country. And those who know best trust in power and explosives, hostile aggression and preemptive retaliation for possible future hostilities. Sucker-punches and blind-side hits are the new ungentlemanly and indecorous strategies replacing conflict resolution and negotiation.
A mild, tranquil place?
To get that simple...
Which field?
What bell?
Sunday, August 01, 2004
Forget my pain, cause your pain.
Banks, financial center, lower Manhattan, will be hit. So say government spokesmen for terrorist warnings. They have specific and credible information that an attack is immanent. The director of homeland security also says even if a building or two are lost they will never disrupt the business of finance and economic strength the United States represents.
So, there. Sticks and stones may shatter our bones but wealth, our ground, will always charm us.
No one wants a terrorist attack. No one wanted the Spanish Inquisition. Attacks and inquisitions happen because whoever “no one” is, they get what they want.
Who would have expected that the
Self nature is fundamentally
Complete in itself?
Who would have expected that the
Self nature is fundamentally
Immutable?
Who would have expected that the
Self nature can create all things?
- Altar Sutra
I’ve begun to suspect that calling upon “God” is an act intending to defeat Self nature. When the republican or democratic politicians say “God bless you, and God bless America” they continually hypnotize listeners into a subtle state of misidentification, a sort of schizoid distance from their own Self nature. I don’t think they suspect they are divisive and disuniting – they think it's a time-proven strategy for getting them something they do not want the other to have. That might be power, wealth, or position – but the dynamic is the same: negate the other, become the one. So they think.
When they become ‘the one” or “number one” or “the only one” – there is a curious shift that occurs. As the “one” they become the “other.” “One” has to say “no” to every contender to their position, power, or wealth. They become their opposite. Their “no” attaches them to “the other.” It might be thus that for those claiming to be “the one,” God is made “the other.”
Is the opposite of “one” -- “the other?” Is the negation of “one”-- “two?”
The opposite of “one” is “no one.”
The curious shift that occurs is “one” cuts off “two,” “many” and “all of us,” by taking claim to “the one” and ignoring whatever is not “one” with them.
Disagreement goes, as does dissent. Others who do not fall into the camp of the one are believed to deserve the poverty or disempowerment occurring in their lives. Their lack of living wage, medical benefits, social assistance, or any real say in the choice, participation in matters of governance, and stance toward the rest of the world is dismissed and disinvited.
The ugliness of terrorism and the ugliness of ruthless response by war – both done in the name of causing pain to the other – is the remarkable insensitivity and unawareness on both parts for the pain each carries within.
The main question is “Do you own your pain?” As long as you do not own your pain – that is, integrate your pain into your way of being in the world – the danger exists that you will use the other to seek healing for yourself. When you speak to others about your pain without fully owning it, you expect something from them that they cannot give. As a result you will feel frustrated, and those you wanted to help will feel confused, disappointed, or even further burdened.
(p.72 in The Inner Voice of Love, A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom, by Henri J.M. Nouwen, c.1996)
When the man in prison said, “Spirituality is how we carry ourselves,” he spoke well. We shred spirituality by implying God will assist in any plot to terrorize or decimate any people.
Owning our own pain is not blaming or punishing anyone else for it.
Philosopher John Caputo, in the introduction to his book, said,
We have it from Aristotle himself that life is hard. There are many ways to miss the mark of virtue, he said, but only one way to hit it, and so the former is easy but the latter is difficult (Nic. Ethics 1106 b 28ff.).
(Opening line in Introduction, “Restoring Life to Its Original Difficulty,” in Radical Hermeneutics, Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project, by John D. Caputo, c.1987)
Buddha made it the first noble truth – There is suffering in life.
Jesus embodied it so as not to deny it, but to transform it.
And we – what do we do with the original difficulty of life?
(Off in distance, thunder. It travels closer. Dogs and cat make their way back into the house.)
Let’s come home.
Dwell true.
All of us.
Banks, financial center, lower Manhattan, will be hit. So say government spokesmen for terrorist warnings. They have specific and credible information that an attack is immanent. The director of homeland security also says even if a building or two are lost they will never disrupt the business of finance and economic strength the United States represents.
So, there. Sticks and stones may shatter our bones but wealth, our ground, will always charm us.
No one wants a terrorist attack. No one wanted the Spanish Inquisition. Attacks and inquisitions happen because whoever “no one” is, they get what they want.
Who would have expected that the
Self nature is fundamentally
Complete in itself?
Who would have expected that the
Self nature is fundamentally
Immutable?
Who would have expected that the
Self nature can create all things?
- Altar Sutra
I’ve begun to suspect that calling upon “God” is an act intending to defeat Self nature. When the republican or democratic politicians say “God bless you, and God bless America” they continually hypnotize listeners into a subtle state of misidentification, a sort of schizoid distance from their own Self nature. I don’t think they suspect they are divisive and disuniting – they think it's a time-proven strategy for getting them something they do not want the other to have. That might be power, wealth, or position – but the dynamic is the same: negate the other, become the one. So they think.
When they become ‘the one” or “number one” or “the only one” – there is a curious shift that occurs. As the “one” they become the “other.” “One” has to say “no” to every contender to their position, power, or wealth. They become their opposite. Their “no” attaches them to “the other.” It might be thus that for those claiming to be “the one,” God is made “the other.”
Is the opposite of “one” -- “the other?” Is the negation of “one”-- “two?”
The opposite of “one” is “no one.”
The curious shift that occurs is “one” cuts off “two,” “many” and “all of us,” by taking claim to “the one” and ignoring whatever is not “one” with them.
Disagreement goes, as does dissent. Others who do not fall into the camp of the one are believed to deserve the poverty or disempowerment occurring in their lives. Their lack of living wage, medical benefits, social assistance, or any real say in the choice, participation in matters of governance, and stance toward the rest of the world is dismissed and disinvited.
The ugliness of terrorism and the ugliness of ruthless response by war – both done in the name of causing pain to the other – is the remarkable insensitivity and unawareness on both parts for the pain each carries within.
The main question is “Do you own your pain?” As long as you do not own your pain – that is, integrate your pain into your way of being in the world – the danger exists that you will use the other to seek healing for yourself. When you speak to others about your pain without fully owning it, you expect something from them that they cannot give. As a result you will feel frustrated, and those you wanted to help will feel confused, disappointed, or even further burdened.
(p.72 in The Inner Voice of Love, A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom, by Henri J.M. Nouwen, c.1996)
When the man in prison said, “Spirituality is how we carry ourselves,” he spoke well. We shred spirituality by implying God will assist in any plot to terrorize or decimate any people.
Owning our own pain is not blaming or punishing anyone else for it.
Philosopher John Caputo, in the introduction to his book, said,
We have it from Aristotle himself that life is hard. There are many ways to miss the mark of virtue, he said, but only one way to hit it, and so the former is easy but the latter is difficult (Nic. Ethics 1106 b 28ff.).
(Opening line in Introduction, “Restoring Life to Its Original Difficulty,” in Radical Hermeneutics, Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project, by John D. Caputo, c.1987)
Buddha made it the first noble truth – There is suffering in life.
Jesus embodied it so as not to deny it, but to transform it.
And we – what do we do with the original difficulty of life?
(Off in distance, thunder. It travels closer. Dogs and cat make their way back into the house.)
Let’s come home.
Dwell true.
All of us.
Saturday, July 31, 2004
We are a country in the middle of a war.
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me." He replied to him, "Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?" Then he said to the crowd, "Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one's life does not consist of possessions." Then he told them a parable. "There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, 'What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?' And he said, 'This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, "Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!"' But God said to him, 'You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?' Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God."
(Luke 12:13-21)
Yes, there's a war in Iraq.
Bullets, bombs, and billions.
An inmate in Maine State Prison said on Friday that spirituality is how we carry ourselves.
What matters to God?
Carry this question!
Someone in the crowd said to Jesus, "Teacher, tell my brother to share the inheritance with me." He replied to him, "Friend, who appointed me as your judge and arbitrator?" Then he said to the crowd, "Take care to guard against all greed, for though one may be rich, one's life does not consist of possessions." Then he told them a parable. "There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, 'What shall I do, for I do not have space to store my harvest?' And he said, 'This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and I shall say to myself, "Now as for you, you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest, eat, drink, be merry!"' But God said to him, 'You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you; and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?' Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God."
(Luke 12:13-21)
Yes, there's a war in Iraq.
Bullets, bombs, and billions.
An inmate in Maine State Prison said on Friday that spirituality is how we carry ourselves.
What matters to God?
Carry this question!
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