Who's insane?

Protesters arrive in Washington. It is a noble effort to honestly believe there's a discourse capable of happening. I rather think there is lack of honest discourse.

Too many of us prefer the template of one opinion rather than that of one mind.

When most people hear
That the Buddhas transmit the
Teaching of the One Mind,
They suppose that there
Is something to be attained
Or realized apart from mind,
And they use mind to seek the teaching,
Not realizing that mind and
The object of their search are one.
Mind can’t be used to seek mind;
If it is, even after millions of eons
Have gone by, the search will still not be over.
- Huang-Po

Does "One Mind" suggest we see in all directions? Is there only one mind? Do we indeed already dwell within such a reality -- but do not recognize that reality?

We need a new way of thinking. If there is such a recognition of (what some call) holistic thinking, it would entail seeing all aspects at once. If such a capability belongs to us, there would need to occur a corresponding conversation about what is seen and where what is seen might be pointing us.

In Roman mythology, Janus was the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings. His most apparent remnant in modern culture is his namesake, the month of January. (Wikipedia)

We might come to see: War breeds war; Peace breeds peace; Hatred, hatred; Revenge, revenge; Wanting breeds want; Wishing breeds wishes. What we seem to currently lack is appreciative recognition of the value of looking in two (or more) directions at once -- a curiosity yielding a diverse yet singular vision.

Skunk Hour

(For Elizabeth Bishop)

Nautilus Island's hermit
heiress still lives through winter in her Spartan cottage;
her sheep still graze above the sea.
Her son's a bishop. Her farmer
is first selectman in our village;
she's in her dotage.

Thirsting for
the hierarchic privacy
of Queen Victoria's century,
she buys up all
the eyesores facing her shore,
and lets them fall.

The season's ill--
we've lost our summer millionaire,
who seemed to leap from an L. L. Bean
catalogue. His nine-knot yawl
was auctioned off to lobstermen.
A red fox stain covers Blue Hill.

And now our fairy
decorator brightens his shop for fall;
his fishnet's filled with orange cork,
orange, his cobbler's bench and awl;
there is no money in his work,
he'd rather marry.

One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull;
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats,
"Love, O careless Love. . . ." I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat. . . .
I myself am hell;
nobody's here --

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air--
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare.
(Poem by Robert Lowell, 1959)

Our mind's not right. We ourselves are hell. Nobody's here.

Declaring "I'm the decision maker," President Bush yesterday challenged congressional efforts to formally condemn his Iraq plan, while Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned that a proposed Senate resolution criticizing the deployment of additional troops would embolden the enemy.
"Any indication of flagging will in the United States gives encouragement to those folks," Gates told reporters at the Pentagon. "I'm sure that that's not the intent behind the resolutions, but I think it may be the effect."
(from article "Bush Defies Lawmakers To Solve Iraq," Gates Says Doubts Bolster Enemy
By Michael Abramowitz and Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post Staff Writers, Saturday, January 27, 2007; Page A01)

Navigating the streets and waters -- between Americans opposing the rhetoric, decisions, and actions of the Bush administration and Americans forwarding the strategy of surge, occupation, and indeterminate continuation of war -- is a navigation filled with warning scent of skunk and rotting bodies of fallen fellow beings. (This is, of course, rhetorical olfaction metaphor, but the unpleasant smell curls upper lip.)

A pervasive sense of insanity looms over everything said these days. I feel like a deranged orderly in day-room of psychiatric facility. Nothing I hear makes sense -- not from patients, nor from medical staff. The worse are those trained in labyrinthine diagnostic and statistical codification which, for them, neatly precludes any authentic communication, instead using substitute artificial clinical babel. Perhaps the first sign of insanity is the recognition you are among the insane. Hello, my name is Bill!

It is the feast day of St Angela Merici (1470 - 1540)
She was born in Desenziano, in Lombardy, in about 1470. She became a Franciscan tertiary and set up a school to instruct girls in Christanity and good works. In 1535 she founded the Ursulines, an order of nuns devoted to giving a Christian education to girls from poor families. She died in 1540. (Universalis)

Angela Merici is known now as the foundress of the Ursuline nuns - and so she was, but despite her own inclinations. In reality she was in advance of her own times. Her plan of religious women without distinctive habit, without solemn vows and enclosure, was directly contrary to prevailing notions at her period, and under the influence of St. Charles Borromeo at Milan and subsequent papal legislation (under St. Pius V) the Ursulines were obliged to adopt the canonical safeguards then required of all nuns.
Angela Merici died in Brescia on January 27th, 1540. (Courtesy of Catholic Information Network, CIN)

There are no longer any canonical safeguards. Nor are there any places to hide. All work now must be transparent and in the open. The Ursulines are in ordinary clothes. The Bush Administration is found to wear no clothes. The rest of us no longer know what we cloak and what we reveal. We look both ways before crossing and before opening our mouths. And when we open our mouths no sound comes out. We find we have nothing of note to say and no way to say it. People look at us -- mouths open -- and they laugh. That's what we do best -- laugh at one another. Sometimes the laughter sounds like screams of anguish; sometimes it looks like derision and mockery. Every once in a while the laughter is simple laughter -- over the absurdity and humor of our situations. A tinge of sorrow. A resignation. Leaving fools. Disappearance is a magician's deceptive switch -- taking up a different footing where he never left.

I protest.

Too much.

Methinks!

To model yourself after the way of the Buddhas is to model yourself after yourself. To model yourself after yourself is to forget yourself.
To forget yourself is to be authenticated by all things. To be authenticated by all things is to effect the molting of body-mind, both yours and others'. The distinguishing marks of enlightenment dissolve and [the molting of body-mind] causes the dissolving distinguishing marks of enlightenment to emerge continuously.
At first, when you seek the truth, you have distanced yourself from its domain. Finally, when the truth is correctly transmitted to you, you are immediately the primordial person.
(-- Dogen's statement on the self, from the Shobogenzo, from Chapter 7, Zen Action/Zen Person, Book by T. P. Kasulis; University of Hawaii Press, 1981)

Once you realize.

You are insane.

You are not.

Now that I am insane, I realize once I wasn't.

Brook is hard frozen.

A bodhisattva is an ordinary person who takes up a course in his or her life that moves in the direction of Buddha. You're a bodhisattva. I'm a bodhisattva; actually, anyone who directs their attention, their life, to practicing the way of life of a Buddha is a bodhisattva.
--Kosho Uchiyama, in Opening the Hand of Thought

Wood stove has moved from barn to shop.

True study of the Way
Does not rely on
Knowledge and genius
Or cleverness and brilliance.
It is an easy thing,
Just cultivate a
Keen and sincere desire
To seek the Way.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

If you know someone needing prayer, do not hesitate.

One may say of the epistemological assumption of "Thirteen Ways" what Nehamas says of Nietzsche's thought, that it is not skeptical since it "does not deny the reality of things"; it does not "doubt that the world exists." It doubts only "that the existence of the world requires the existence of a description that is true of it from every possible point of view, a description that would depict it in itself as it really is" (83-84). It is not the existence of the world of "Thirteen Ways" that is at issue, only the possibility of a definitive description of it that does not originate in the sensibility of the perceiver. And aphorism in early Stevens, as in Nietzsche, is a way of depicting the resulting multiplicity of senses without discrediting or trivializing any particular depiction.
Excerpted from a longer analysis in Early Stevens: The Nietzschean Intertext. Copyright 1992 by Duke UP. On "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" comments on Wallace Stevens poem, Modern American Poetry, http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/s_z/stevens/blackbird.htm

Cat stares between two bookcases. Battle-worn mouse finds respite.

I like Basho's words: “Nothing is worthy of writing down unless it is seen with fresh eyes.” (Basho, 1644–1694)

Not more, not less; but "un-less." Basho has given us "MU" in a word understandable. We are not less than the gods, nor are we less than any comparative predicative, whether subject or object. We are unless.

Lao-tze said to cultivate
Tranquility and detachment.
To be natural means not to force things.
When you act natural, you get what you need,
But to know what is natural,
You have to cultivate tranquility.
- Master Hsieh

"Nothing" is worth writing down. When it is written down, seen with fresh eyes, it is un-less, that particular mystery of being wherein what is taking place is doing so through our seeing and hearing, a seeing and hearing opened out to let pass through the source of all being made manifest in this small pericope of time, this elegant isomorphic place of our being-with one-another.

At the fishmongers
a salt-cured bream
with frozen-looking lips.
...
Autumn deepening
my neighbor
what does he do?
...
This inn
where prostitutes sleep too—
bush clover and the moon.

What poetry teaches—all poetry, not only those poems that come from Buddhist traditions—is the interconnection and inseparability of being. Intimacy and connection-made-by-words are poetry’s skeletal structure, its lungs, muscle, and nerves. Basho’s poems show this intimate perception of co-arising with a few deft strokes—there is no time in a haiku to spell out the nature of relationship, yet always relationship is present. On his deathbed, the poet wonders about his neighbor with still-living sympathy; in a fish store, he perceives the fish’s body as keenly and sensually as if it were his own—first the salt curls the reader’s lips, then the cold. In a life, as in an inn, one co-resides equally with every kind of person. Whether perceived with good-natured humor or a heart almost worn out past sorrow, “not one, not two” is the core flavor of Basho’s haiku, the dynamic of its insight and its transmission. In one teaching dialogue, Basho instructed, “The problem with most poems is that they are either subjective or objective.” “Don’t you mean too subjective or objective?” his student asked; the teacher clarified, simply, “No.”
(--from POETRY AS PATH: In the Spirit of Basho; Basho As Teacher, by Jane Hirshfield, who finds that only by losing oneself can one discover one’s true destination. In Tricycle, Spring 2002)

Unless is dwelling place of poetry. It is there the unseen act and unheard kindness inscribe night house with tender present. A woman with cold feet and cold hands finishes counting numbers and comes to bed after covering old dog with cloth asleep in front of cold fireplace.

“The invincible power of poetry has reduced me to the condition of a tattered beggar,” Basho wrote. A man of fragile health, prone to depression, Basho meant this statement literally. One haiku expresses gratitude for the gift of a pair of new straw sandals, with straps the color of blue iris, as he sets forth once more on a journey, and he noted that he was quite safe from robbers, as he carried with him nothing of value to anyone. Yet the statement speaks to his life also at another level: how the poet’s existence is a necessary opening to dependence, as well as to interdependence. “A disciple of the Buddha does not take what is not given,” says one of the ten prohibitory precepts. Basho’s haiku are the record of what the world placed in the open begging bowl of his perceptions. Had the poet’s mind been filled with an idea of self, an idea of world, there would have been no room for what he saw to find new life in his words.
(--ibidem)

We dwell in the same place as the source of all life seen with fresh eyes. It is no mystery that no one has ever seen God. God is that which is seeing through our eyes. There is nothing there to see -- only that which is being seen.

Nor do we listen to God -- (the crazed assertion of madmen and prophets.) We listen to what God is listening to -- (the crazed attention of mystics and scamps.)

We go about idly, looking and listening, as we are, as God is.

This is the very gift of very being -- the poem of still and silent presence.

It is seen with fresh eyes.

No?

Yes!

Unless.

If "here" is all there is, maybe there is no "there" there.

Some words (Creeley's?) hung on bookshop wall a while back, "Would dying be here? Never go anywhere you can't live." (My Robert Creeley books will disclose this someday.)

Perceive freshly as you enter
The world of continual emergence.
That rock-bottomed essence of your mind,
Is always still, but ever-emerging;
Always there, as if waiting to be noticed.
- Ji Aoi Isshi

At Lauds this morning a reminder that beneath words dwells that which words try to reveal.
Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I shall return. The Lord gave, the Lord has taken back. Blessed be the name of the Lord! we take happiness from God’s hand, must we not take sorrow too? (--Job 1:21 - 2:10)

Sun comes through cedar as snow nestles in crook facing north. Something has returned to hermitage. It might have my name on it. Several say welcome back. The giving and the taking away are to receive profound bow.

In a sense signification is to perception what the symbol is to the object symbolized. The symbol marks the inadequateness of what is given in consciousness with regard to the being it symbolizes. (Emmanuel Levinas, "Ethics and the Face," in Totality and Infinity)

Last night in the film "Cinema Paradiso" the character Toto returns to his hometown for the burial of his friend, the tearing down of old building, a recollection of lost youthful love and kindly mother who knew him well in his absence. We come to end with a recherche of what is left out of our lives for reasons that no longer matter.

The rivers will clap their hands,
and the mountains will exult at the presence of the Lord,
(--from Psalm 98)

Why anything happens is no longer interesting. That it happens is interesting.

If anything else is to be revealed, let it. If not, no matter.

Good health is simply the slowest way
a human being can die...
(--author unknown, from A Buddhist Guide to Death and Dying)

We prayed this morning for all once visible and connected to meetingbrook. We pray for all remaining visible for the time being, whether connected or not to meetingbrook. (Here is where no one is not connected.)

Let it go,
release,
and your life of a hundred years
vanishes.

Open your hands.

Walk around.

Innocence.

The swarm of words,
and little stories
are just to loosen you
from where you are stuck.

If you want to know
the one in the hermitage
who never dies,

you can’t avoid this skin-bag
right here.
(--from "Caoan-ko, Soanka: A Song About My Grass-Thatch Hut, by Shitou Xiqien (700-790); in All a Mistake: Poems of Soto Zen Masters, translated by Yasuda Joshu roshi and Anzan Hoshin roshi)

Here we are!

Let's go to God. (Dropping apostrophe 's): Let go to God.

Everything.

I know a man who is mostly negative about everything. He might be right about his opinions. I know a woman who is mostly positive about everything. She might be right about her opinions.

Everything means everything. Nothing left out.

I feel, like all modern Americans, no consciousness of sin and simply do not believe in it. All I know is that if God loves me only half as much as my mother does, he will not send me to Hell. That is a final fact of my inner consciousness, and for no religion could I deny its truth.
~ Lin Yutang

To let go is to pass through. (Granted, there are too many words about what is called 'God' -- still, one or two more might not break the camel's backing through the eye's needling view.)

'God' is that which is let go. If we let go of 'God', is God all that remains? Is the quote so many use really, "Let go and let God go"? It is a chilling prospect to us. The quote usually suggests that if we let go (drop our feeble efforts to control) then we let God (take control). But if we look again, might not the quote be suggesting that if we let go (of control) so too God is let go (of control). What then?

In simple terms, what does karma mean? It means that whatever we do, with our body, speech, or mind, will have a corresponding result. Each action, even the smallest, is pregnant with its consequences. It is said by the masters that even a little poison can cause death, and even a tiny seed can become a huge tree. And as Buddha said: "Do not overlook negative actions merely because they are small; however small a spark may be, it can burn down a haystack as big as a mountain." Similarly he said: "Do not overlook tiny good actions, thinking they are of no benefit; even tiny drops of water in the end will fill a huge vessel." Karma does not decay like external things, or ever become inoperative. It cannot be destroyed by time, fire, or water. Its power will never disappear, until it is ripened.
--Sogyal Rinpoche, in The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Faith in God is faith in God without apostrophe. Not God's control, nor God's punishment, not even God's love. These 'possessives' or 'possessions' of things or actions are not 'God's' as if separate from 'ours.'. God is God. Buddhists will not even allow 'self' to be spoken about as other than 'Buddha' or 'the Absolute.' One and one and one is not three. One is one. Another one is another one. Still another one is still another one.

Life and being are in themselves exactly what they are. Life is life. Being is being. God is god. Self is self. These are not four things.

And you are you. Not five.

Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset is well known for writing: "Yo soy yo y mi circunstancia" -- (I am I plus my circumstances).

In his "Ensayo de estetica a manera de prologo," Ortega asserts that nothing can be an object for consciousness -- present to the "I" --, unless it is changed into an image, concept, or an idea. Every object or action possesses an "I," claims Ortega, by the mere fact that it exists: "Todo, mirado desde dentro de simismo, es yo."
(--"Ortega y Gasset and the "Critics of Consciousness," David K. Herzberger, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer, 1976), pp. 455-460

The existence of God and the existence of "I" dwell in the same light. Let's allow light. To show itself.

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”
–Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

I have never met a person whose greatest need was anything other than real, unconditional love. You can find it in a simple act of kindness toward someone who needs help. There is no mistaking love. You feel it in your heart. It is the common fiber of life, the flame that heals our soul, energizes our spirit and supplies passion to our lives. It is our connection to God and to each other. –Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

This connection allows us to let go of everything outside. "Nexus" is the center of something. "Co-" is with. Thus, to "center with" is to be oneself with what is surrounding.

"The heavy air surrounds us as we walk out in the glistening snow." That's what Richard says from the bench in front of the fire. Michael eats a cookie. Dan has gone. So has Myles. Robin was in. Karl's gone home.

"Apostrophes are NOT used for possessive pronouns or for noun plurals, including acronyms." (Purdue Writing Lab Online)

Michael disagrees. Saskia arrives. Another Michael arrives.

Time for light to place attention on this circle. Time for Zen Gifts.

Crying out in anguish, deer in road is at its death. Nightfall between Hampden and Bangor.

When the moon
Of your mind becomes
Clouded over with confusion,
You are searching
Around for the light outside.
- Hozoin Gakuzengo Inye

If someone wishes to live in a monastery as they live in the world, it is best to mindfully bow when bowing, mindfully walk when walking, and mindfully clean cat's litter box when doing so. That, and an attitude of openness to the wonder of profound consternation surrounding the presence/absence of God in the midst of this existence.

Silence would help. But silence is rare. Living among real examples of authentic engaged spirituality in everyday experience would help. But awareness of these treasures among us is often dim and evanescent.

Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour

Light the first light of evening
In which we rest and, for small reason, think
The world imagined is the ultimate good.

This is, therefore, the intensest rendezvous.
It is in that thought that we collect ourselves,
Out of all the indifferences, into one thing:

Within a single thing, a single shawl
Wrapped tightly round us, since we are poor, a warmth,
A light, a power, the miraculous influence.

Here, now, we forget each other and ourselves.
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.

Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.

Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
(--Poem by Wallace Stevens)

Being a monk in the world means mindfully cooking sauerkraut in kitchen as dog eats from bowl on front room rug. It means holding everything in prayer while at same time feeling agnostic whether prayer is possible in this world of mayhem and distress. Or why believers in God imagine their God is invisible and in complete control of everything.

Nevertheless, the light outside leaps from millions of stars in black sky. (That was last night. Tonight, snow in eyes.) I do not, nor can not, turn on stars or snowflakes. What I can do is look up and see them. At the same time -- smelling smoke from kitchen chimney wood fire. As well, brief sorrow for deer by now off road and gone to God. Here, the good dog, after eating, lies with nose near zafu. Classical music from kitchen.

What I love about being here is the surprise of joy and sorrow.

A rendezvous within light. A wandering off in dark. Being called to kitchen eucharist.

The fact of it.

Standing at barn door with Cesco, before gathering firewood cut last night for kitchen stove, sun rises from behind oak tree, orange clear through brush branches on Sally's land.

[Earlier]

Zazen is walking to or away awareness. It is sitting with each activity, as it is, passing.

Cesco gets up, stiffly. Mu-ge had stretched and hit his nose. Cesco barks once. Cat runs from room. Dog limps out of room. I see this from where I sit on sofa in front room. My dream before coming down to meditation room was about something and someone in the past. But if the dream was at 4am this cold night, it must be now. Therefore I dream of something now that is complete, though not yet satisfactory. This is the nature of suffering -- the not yet satisfactory. If I attach to it and churn in its unresolved state, I perpetuate discomfort. If I look at it and see it as what it is -- unresolved and not satisfactory -- it is merely what it is.

And me? I am in the churning. I am making my way through this mental and emotional dissatisfaction as a small boat makes its way through choppy seas. One cannot control the tempest of the sea -- one can merely pass through the churning waters by steady and alert attention, bailing what has filled the bilge, and telling tale about the event that needs telling once calmer waters return. The hardest part of any turmoil is not telling tales that need not be told but nevertheless itch to be scratched. It is where art wrestles with loquacity, where poetry is confronted by reticence, where paucity walks off with taciturnity as light fades to credits. It is the three characters looking out from chairs side by side at end of film The Station Agent where they sit to this day in final frames of story.

For penetrating to the depths
Of one’s own true self-nature,
And for attaining a vitality
Valid on all occasions,
Nothing can surpass
Meditation in the midst of activity.
- Hakuin (1686-1769)

This is what I am right now. Cat, nose, breath, bark, exit, return, exit, absence, fullness, silence. The absolute nearness of emptiness within each coming and going.

Mr. Cogito and the Imagination

Mr. Cogito never trusted
tricks of the imagination

the piano at the top of the Alps
played false concerts for him

he didn't appreciate labyrinths
the Sphinx filled him with loathing

he lived in a house with no basement
without mirrors of dialectics

jungles of tangled images
were not his home

he would rarely soar
on the wings of metaphor
and then he fell like Icarus
into the embrace of the Great Mother

he adored tautologies
explanations
idem per idem

that a bird is a bird
slavery means slavery
a knife is a knife
death remains death

he loved
the flat horizon
a straight line
the gravity of the earth
(Poem by Zbigniew Herbert)

Zazen isn't difficult -- only sometimes impossible, that is, not capable of being accomplished. But it is also gently passible, that is, capable of feeling or suffering; sensitive. The two words -- "impossible" and "passible" -- encircle zazen. Then, like water finding opening for its passage, these words swirl within and continue on and through practitioner.

Let Him See Each Presently Arisen State
Let not a person revive the past or on the future build his hopes; for the past has been left behind and the future has not been reached. Instead with insight let him see each presently arisen state; let him know that and be sure of it, invincibly, unshakeably. Today the effort must be made; tomorrow Death may come, who knows? No bargain with Mortality can keep him and his hordes away. But one who dwells thus ardently, relentlessly, by day, by night--it is he, the Peaceful Sage has said, who has one fortunate attachment.
--Lomasakangiyabhaddekaratta Sutta, in The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha, trans. by Bhikkhu Bodhi; from Everyday Mind, edited by Jean Smith, a Tricycle book

I am going to die. Right now I continue to breathe. Who knows what happens after death. Right now I am trying to be alert to what is happening right now.

In a dharma talk entitled "The Happiness of Non-Clinging," Tejadhammo Bikkhu writes:

So in this beautiful verse, the Buddha says, Don’t cling to the past, don’t keep hoping for the future, because the past is gone, the future hasn’t yet arisen. He said, instead, with insight, by gathering our mindfulness together, our awareness together, let yourself see each presently arisen state. Each thing that arises within the heart and mind, each thing that comes into our awareness, let us see that. Know it and be sure of it, be clear about what it is, invincibly and unshakeably. There’s no room for uncertainty. You can see clearly what it is. Today you must make the effort, because tomorrow death may come. Who knows when death may come. He says this, the person who can dwell in this way has one fortunate attachment, one blessed clinging One blessed attachment is to remain in the present mindfully, with great awareness, with great satthi. This is the one fortunate attachment. Why? Because it will give rise to great pann± or prajna or wisdom and great compassion. If we can stay in that moment watching what is arising. The Buddha then goes on with his teaching. “How does a person revive the past”? How does a person do this? Well, he says “ He thinks to himself, I had such a material form in the past and he takes delight in that. He says I had such a feeling in the past and he takes delight in that. I had such a perception in the past and he takes delight in that and so on.” So you can see what the Buddha is saying.

Further on, continues:

So as we make an effort, as disciples of the Buddha, to cultivate non-clinging, getting rid of upadana, instead of being swept up and caught up in things we can take heart and strength and courage from the teachings of the Buddha. We can make an effort to see things in the seen merely what is seen, just what is there. In the heard, merely what is heard. We can be clear that form is not Me, is not I, is not Mine. Feeling is not I, is not Me, is not Mine. And we can try to follow the teaching of the heart sutra and realize for ourselves, form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is not other than emptiness, emptiness is not other than form. We can try to practice as the Buddha says, one fortunate attachment, that is the attachment to stay in the present moment in great awareness, knowing clearly what is arising, what is passing away. So if we can do this, then this is the end of dukha, this is the end of suffering and the arising of real happiness, real sukha.
I hope that everyone in this room tonight can have that experience. Of course we can all have it just for a moment. If we can practice for one little moment, and then one little moment, and one little moment and we can bring these one little moments together so that we can have longer moments of freedom from clinging. Every act of generosity, every act of dana, whether it’s dana in terms of goods, material things, money or objects, to another person, to another human being is an act of non-clinging if it is done purely with good intention Every act of dana that involves giving my time to somebody else is an act of non-clinging. So when you help someone, when you help them to do something very simple, this is non-clinging, if it’s done out of a pure heart. It doesn’t have to be a big thing.
(http://www.thanhsiang.org/eng/ezine/html/dharma/2004/The%20Happiness%20of%20Non-Clinging.pdf)

Mu-ge goes out through barn. Cesco stretches along Patriots mat in middle room. (Patriots and Colts play tonight in Indianapolis. Cesco warms the team insignia with his sleeping aging body. Not even Richard or Jonathan have such devotion to the preparation and well-being of the team!)

Dawn has broken through as I complete this writing at 6:42am, two hours after beginning. The cold, windy night gives way to cold, windy light. What changes is the seeing.

For now, this is sufficient. Possibly and impassibly, satisfactory.

Need a revolution? Today is teacher.

Look out. Look in. Look around. See the wind rushing through branches. See the questions mind holds up for you. See the man and woman pointing to something passing, the dream before waking this morning, the footsteps going up to post office, coffee shop, and corner bank. It is today. It has much to say.

Beyond the Self
The way we define and delimit the self is arbitrary. We can place it between our ears and have it looking out from our eyes, or we can widen it to include the air we breathe, or at other moments we can cast its boundaries farther to include the oxygen-giving trees and plankton, our external lungs, and beyond them the web of life in which they are sustained.
--Joanna Macy, World As Lover, World As Self

We've become accustomed to guru and preacher, professor and pundit -- all manner of expert and wannabe savants -- telling us the way it is, has been, will become. They are kind and generous souls. They intend to help. We listen to them with respect and necessary skepticism. Respect and skepticism are healthy friends.

In addition to time spent listening to these performers and entertainers, readers of news and spinners of meaning -- we also spend time attending to wordless revelation and soundless movements brushing across landscape of horizon and imagination. The world has often been described as product of mind, an idea held in common -- even though the vast majority of us are not aware that we are holding in common the idea of the world we hold. We need a new idea. The one we currently hold is not full of requisite respect and skepticism.

He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord. Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
--from Luke 1:1-4; 4:14-21

Luke quotes Jesus quoting Isaiah. The living word must be embodied each day by each person hearing truly the dizzying sound of spaciousness swirling in and through and out from one's own being-in-the-world.

So many in the world honor Jesus. They hold an idea of Jesus. This idea, also, needs greater respect and skepticism.

Jesus said: “Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” I think Jesus meant what he said. "Today" and "this" is "fulfilled in your hearing.” His was a concrete and immediate vision. It is not about him as one set apart, not about him out-of-time as judge and jury, nor is it about him as object of worship and frantic ideological militancy intent on narrow fit for limited number of worthies.

Salvation in Hebrew had to do with spaciousness.
In the Hebrew roots, the word means literally, "to be roomy." Salvation is spaciousness. And it is out of that sense of spaciousness that we find the related meanings of freedom and deliverance. The classic story for this sense of salvation is, of course, the exodus. The Israelites were saved from the oppression of Egypt and were brought into a new land -- a "broad" land; one where they would have the space to live in freedom. (--from "Saved From What?" Rev. Laura J. Collins, http://www.takomaparkpc.org/Sermon2003March9.html#back1, March 9, 2003, referencing (1) Geoffrey W. Bromiley. Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1985). pp. 1132ff.)

Today is spacious. So too is the Christ Reality spacious. Jesus pointed to both.

Christ. Today.

There's a revolution brewing in such understanding. This revolution would overthrow intentional ignorance and affectation of religiosity proffered as faith and loyalty. The revolution would let lay bare all that we have held as substitute and firewall to the constantly emerging reality of Christ today. So many for so long have boxed this living reality in lock-away vaults -- untouchable, ancient, and literal preservation -- fearing that if the original fire of sacred truth were to be felt by us, nothing would stand that was not the constant blaze of renewing, enlightening, realization of sacred spirit with us.

We'll have to carefully look to see what today this spirit longs to reveal.

“When we speak of education, we are proclaiming a revolution, one in which everything we know today will be transformed. I think of this revolution as the final revolution; not a revolution of violence but one from which violence is wholly excluded.” -- Dr. Maria Montessori

We need a revolution.

Dare we open to it?

We'll see.

We long for the original.

Great Art and Great Dharma
The artist's dilemma and the meditator's are, in a deep sense, equivalent. Both are repeatedly willing to confront an unknown and to risk a response that they cannot predict or control. Both are disciplined in skills that allow them to remain focused on their task and to express their response in a way that will illuminate the dilemma they share with others.
And both are liable to similar outcomes. The artist's work is prone to be derivative, a variation on the style of a great master or established school. The meditator's response might tend to be dogmatic, a variation on the words of a hallowed tradition or revered teacher. There is nothing wrong with such responses. But we recognize their secondary nature, their failure to reach the peaks of primary imaginative creation. Great Art and Great Dharma both give rise to something that has never quite been imagined before. Artist and meditator alike ultimately aspire to an original act.
--Stephen Batchelor, Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, Vol. IV, #2

There are so many paths away from the original, away from primary creation.

Contemplate the mind;
This king of emptiness
Is subtle and abstruse.
Without shape or form,
It has great spiritual power.
It can eliminate all calamities
And accomplish all merits.
Though its essence is empty,
It is the measure of dharmas.
- Master Fu (497-569)

The way of the original is empty stillness journey.

Where to?

Breeze blows.

Brook flows.

Wanting wants Itself.

An old friend stopped by last week "I'm looking for number five," he said while sipping coffee at bakery case. "Or maybe I'll join a monastery." I looked out window to harbour. He didn't tell me what he was looking for in a wife or a marriage. Nor did he say what a monastery would provide. This morning I speculate it doesn't really matter what we think we want. Wanting wants itself, and we don't know how that pericope fares under hermeneutic scrutiny.

Magnificent Peak

By its own nature
It towers above
The tangle of rivers
Don’t say it’s a lot of dirt
Piled high
Without end the mists of dawn,
The evening clouds
Draw their shadows across it
From the four directions
You can look up and see it
Green and steep and wild.
- Muso (1275-1351)

Itself, (née "Brahman" or "Lord" or "Adonai" or "God"), is green and steep and wild. This is why crazed men and women throughout the history of time have abandoned conventional sanity and surrendered to the profound longing maddening them. Some have gone to geographic wilderness, mountains and deserts. Some have given themselves to bodily ecstasies, sex and intoxicants of all manner. Some have enclosed themselves in ascetic inquiry, self-denial and mortification. Some prefer the emptying route of silence and mere gaze. And some have claimed "who gives a shit" and opted for power, wealth, and worldly rewards of their choices.

Wanting wants itself. We just don't know what-is-itself. That makes us endearing creatures intent on finding what Itself wants. [Writer's note: "Itself" with a capital "I" and "itself" with lower-case "i" both refer to unimaginable aseity within which we live and move and have our being. It is not only what we are but it is what "Is-Itself" is. Try not to fall into distinction here -- our true home is undifferentiated suchness. Keep up here.]

REPLY TO A FRIEND

In stubborn stupidity, I live on alone
befriended by trees and herbs.
Too lazy to learn right from wrong,
I laugh at myself, ignoring others.
Lifting my bony shanks, I cross the stream,
a sack in my hand, blessed by spring weather.
Living thus, I want for nothing,
at peace with all the world.
--Poem by Taigu Ryokan (1758-1831) (nicknamed Great Fool)

Tired wisps of morning snow, long fall inches from completion, pass window outside silent stillness of room.

It is a joy not-knowing what itself wants. So ignorant, each morning I greet Cesco, Mu-ge, and Saskia as each moves through the practice of ordinary tasks. Just now, coffee must be brewed. Just now, yogurt and Trappist Preserves dished into wheatina near kitchen wood stove. Just now, doing what is itself being done among us.

This -- if not anything else -- is morning prayer, morning practice, morning joy!

Monastics celebrate St Antony of the Desert. He is annoying. So was Jesus. Monastics are annoyed by Antony and Jesus.

St Antony, Abbot (251 - 356)
St Antony is the originator of the monastic life. He was born in Egypt: when his parents died, he listened to the words of the Gospel and gave all his belongings to the poor. He went out into the wilderness to begin a life of penitence, living in absolute poverty, praying, meditating, and supporting himself by manual work. He suffered many temptations, both physical and spiritual, but he overcame them. Disciples gathered round him, attracted by his wisdom, moderation, and holiness. He gave support to the victims of the persecutions of Diocletian, and helping St Athanasius in his fight against the Arians. He lived to be over a hundred years old, and died in 356.
The Gospels are full of wise sayings of Jesus that seem to be ignored, and one of the most poignant of these was in his meeting with that young man who asked over and over again, insistently, “What must I do to have eternal life?”. When, in the end, Jesus told him that if he wanted to be perfect he would have to sell all that he had and give the money to the poor, the young man went away, sorrowing; because he was very rich. What could be more of a waste than that? You tell someone what he has to do, and he is afraid to do it. And yet... 250 years later, St Antony hears the story, and does give away all that he has, and becomes the founder of monasticism. And then again, over 1,000 years later, St Francis of Assisi hears the story, and gives away his possessions (and some of his father’s) and revolutionises Christianity again.
Not all the words that we speak are forgotten, even though we cannot see their effects ourselves. Let us pray that those unknown effects may always be good ones.
http://www.universalis.com/

Monks and hermits, some say, should concentrate on prayer and God-related matters. It is felt by many that monastics should stay away from what goes on in the world -- especially in the halls of power, politics, and privilege. This point of view is a curious one, especially in the Buddhist and Christian traditions. Jesus, son of Mary and Joseph, was human. Siddhartha Gautama was human.

Spirituality is incarnational. Spirituality matters in this existence. However else our existence might be explained, we are the intermarriage of what we call matter and spirit, substance and energy, body and mind. It worries me when there is a tendency to surgically separate one from the other.

Whether you are going or staying
Sitting or lying down,
The whole world is your own self.
You must find out
Whether the mountains,
Rivers, grass, and forests
Exist in your own mind
Or exist outside it.
Analyze the ten thousand things,
And when you take
This to the limit,
You will come to the limitless;
When you search into it,
You come to the end of search,
Where thinking goes no
Further and distinctions vanish.
When you smash the citadel of doubt,
Then the Buddha is simply yourself.
- Daikaku (1213-1279)

And then:

And there was a man who came to him and asked, ‘Master, what good deed must I do to possess eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you ask me about what is good? There is one alone who is good. But if you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.’ He said, ‘Which?’ ‘These:’ Jesus replied ‘You must not kill. You must not commit adultery. You must not bring false witness. Honour your father and mother, and: you must love your neighbour as yourself.’ The young man said to him, ‘I have kept all these. What more do I need to do?’ Jesus said, ‘If you wish to be perfect, go and sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me’. But when the young man heard these words he went away sad, for he was a man of great wealth.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, ‘I tell you solemnly, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Yes, I tell you again, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.’ When the disciples heard this they were astonished. ‘Who can be saved, then?’ they said. Jesus gazed at them. ‘For men’ he told them ‘this is impossible; for God everything is possible.’ --Matthew 19:16 - 26

How did Jesus present God? John 10:30 says: "I and the Father are one." Jesus presented God by being exactly who he was. Realizing our true nature presents whole the true nature of Being Itself. Jesus presented the kingdom of heaven with his very being. Nor are we separate from this presentation.

What's in My Journal

Odd things, like a button drawer. Mean
Things, fishhooks, barbs in your hand.
But marbles too. A genius for being agreeable.
Junkyard crucifixes, voluptuous
discards. Space for knickknacks, and for
Alaska. Evidence to hang me, or to beatify.
Clues that lead nowhere, that never connected
anyway. Deliberate obfuscation, the kind
that takes genius. Chasms in character.
Loud omissions. Mornings that yawn above
a new grave. Pages you know exist
but you can't find them. Someone's terribly
inevitable life story, maybe mine.
(Poem: "What's in My Journal" by William Stafford, from Crossing Unmarked Snow.)

Jesus, Antony, Francis, you, and me. What is it being revealed here?

I despair the men and women who try to remake the planet in their image of power, politics, and privilege. Today and throughout history they make suffering their most important product. What is it they do not see nor understand?

No more new graves.

Open the earth.

See God in one another.

Stop praying to an illusion of thought.

(Odium is where we stop and turn to see where we've arrived that is not truly home. Jesus turned. We are so invited. If we're not turning home and returning home to the exact singular reality of Sacred Wholeness, we are lost in the world of preference and patronizing partitions.)

Give it all away. Come here, now, and follow what is under your feet!

Antony, pray with us!

Comes cold.

It will fall to zero tonight. Footsteps in snow will resound. We walk in and on, with and through our self.

God would not be so unjust as to forget all you have done, the love that you have for his name or the services you have done, and are still doing, for the saints. Our one desire is that every one of you should go on showing the same earnestness to the end, to the perfect fulfilment of our hopes, never growing careless, but imitating those who have the faith and the perseverance to inherit the promises.
When God made the promise to Abraham, he swore by his own self, since it was impossible for him to swear by anyone greater: 'I will shower blessings on you and give you many descendants.' (--Hebrews 6:10 - 20)

Those who favor quantification, who study theory of "tipping point" and "critical mass," busily prosyletize those of other opinions, wanting to increase numbers holding their opinions. Those who do not, do not.

What is the 'grace of the teacher' (Guru-kripa)?

• Questioner. What is Guru-kripa ? How does it lead to Self-realization?

• Maharshi: Guru is the Self.... Sometimes in his life a man becomes dissatisfied with it, and, not content with what he has, he seeks the satisfaction of his desires, through prayer to God etc. His mind is gradually purified until he longs to know God, more to obtain His Grace than to satisfy his worldly desires. Then, God's Grace begins to manifest. God takes the form of a Guru and appears to the devotee, teaches him the Truth and, moreover, purifies his mind by association. The devotee's mind gains strength and is then able to turn inward. By meditation it is further purified and it remains still without the least ripple. That calm Expanse is the Self.The Guru is both 'external' and 'internal'. From the 'exterior' He gives a push to the mind to turn inward; from the 'interior' He pulls the mind towards the Self and helps in the quieting of the mind. That is Guru-kripa. There is no difference between God, Guru and the Self.
(Excerpt from "The Spiritual Teachings of Ramana Maharshi" http://www.plotinus.com/advaita_questions.htm)

Cesco is tired from his years -- so says woman Saskia asks. She recommends herbal remedy for his aches and journey. He is an old soul. Yesterday, crossing second brook, he leaps halfway across onto boulder covered with snow. He struggles to get footing back and completes walk to pond as though nothing unusual took place. Today we'll drag new beams up for safer bridge.

• Q. Are you conscious of a Brotherhood of invisible Rishis ?
• M. If invisible, how can you see them ?
• Q. In consciousness.
• M. There is nothing external in Consciousness.
• Q. Can I realize them ?
• M. If you realize your own Reality, then that of the Rishis and Masters will become clear to you. There is only one Master, and that is the Self.
• Q. Is reincarnation true ?
• M. Reincarnation exists only so long as there is ignorance. There is really no reincarnation at all, either now or before. Nor will there be any hereafter. This is the truth.
• Q. Can a Yogi know his past lives ?
• M. Do you know the present life that you wish to know the past? Find the present, then the rest will follow. Even with our present limited knowledge, you suffer so much; why should you burden yourself with more knowledge? Is it to suffer more?
• Q Does Bhagavan use occult powers to make others realize the Self, or is the mere fact of Bhagavan's Realization enough for that?
• M. The Spiritual force of Self-realization is far more powerful than the use of all the occult powers. Inasmuch as there is no ego in the Sage, there are no 'others' for Him. What is the highest benefit that can be conferred on you? It is Happiness, and Happiness is born of Peace. Peace can reign only where there is no disturbance, and disturbance is due to thoughts that arise in the mind. When the mind itself is absent, there will be perfect Peace. Unless a person has annihilated the mind, he cannot gain Peace and be Happy. And unless he himself be Happy, he cannot bestow Happiness on 'others'. Since however there are no 'others' for the Sage who has no mind, the mere fact of His Self-realization is itself enough to make the 'others' Happy. (--Ramana Maharshi)

Chickadee hops branches in cedar tree. Red squirrel tilts feeder outside kitchen. Mu-ge's paw-prints make arc in snow out front door. Winter comes to Maine.

Elsewhere, in Sikh tradition, these words:

"The Palace of the Lord God is so beautiful. Within it, there are gems, rubies, pearls and flawless diamonds. A fortress of gold surrounds this Source of Nectar. How can I climb up to the Fortress without a ladder? By meditating on the Lord, through the Guru, I am blessed and exalted. The Guru is the Ladder, the Guru is the Boat, and the Guru is the Raft to take me to the Lord's Name. The Guru is the Boat to carry me across the world-ocean; the Guru is the Sacred Shrine of Pilgrimage, the Guru is the Holy River. If it pleases Him, I bathe in the Pool of Truth, and become radiant and pure."(Guru Nanak, Sri Rag, pg. 17)
The word "Guru" is a Sanskrit word meaning teacher, honoured person, religious person or saint. Sikhism though has a very specific definition of the word Guru. It means the descent of divine guidance to mankind provided through ten Enlightened Masters. This honour of being called a Sikh Guru applies only to the ten Gurus who founded the religion starting with Guru Nanak in 1469 and ending with Guru Gobind Singh in 1708; thereafter it refers to the Sikh Holy Scriptures the Guru Granth Sahib. The divine spirit was passed from one Guru to the next as "The light of a lamp which lights another does not abate. Similarly a spiritual leader and his disciple become equal, Nanak says the truth."
"They distinguish and separate one Guru from the other. And rare is the one who knows that they, indeed, were one. They who realised this in their hearts, attained Realisation of God." (Guru Gobind Singh, Dohira, Vachitra Natak)
--The Sikh Gurus, http://www.sikhs.org/10gurus.htm

So, we look for light in one another. Perhaps there's no need to do anything other than look and see light. Maybe our looking -- (with, in, and through one another) -- is the practice of God. (The light-practice of God!)

Perhaps realization of God is unknowing presentation of light.

(Go on...)

Perhaps God is a joy that cannot be conveyed -- but conveys itself.

Be still. Taste and see.

The I Am.

Itself.

(Warmth.)

There is silence. I remember silence. I have no experience of God. Still, there is silence.

Silence tells me nothing about God.

Do not search for the truth;
Only cease to cherish opinions.
If there is even a trace
Of this and that,
Of right and wrong,
The mind will be lost
In confusion.
Although all dualities
Come from the One
- Seng-Tsan (d.606)

Silence tells me nothing about God.

Nothing is Lost

Deep in our sub-conscious, we are told
Lie all our memories, lie all the notes
Of all the music we have ever heard
And all the phrases those we loved have spoken,
Sorrows and losses time has since consoled,
Family jokes, out-moded anecdotes
Each sentimental souvenir and token
Everything seen, experienced, each word
Addressed to us in infancy, before
Before we could even know or understand
The implications of our wonderland.
There they all are, the legendary lies
The birthday treats, the sights, the sounds, the tears
Forgotten debris of forgotten years
Waiting to be recalled, waiting to rise
Before our world dissolves before our eyes
Waiting for some small, intimate reminder,
A word, a tune, a known familiar scent
An echo from the past when, innocent
We looked upon the present with delight
And doubted not the future would be kinder
And never knew the loneliness of night.
(Poem: "Nothing is Lost" by Noel Coward)

Silence tells me nothing about God.

When young I would sit in silence. I would sit in churches. I'd sit along riverfronts in city where ocean opened. Sit on grassy hilltops where cloistered walls held silence within -- an urgent listening sitting with me. Listening. To, or with, what?

Silence tells me nothing about God.

At night, when sleep wandered halls where monks relinquish analysis and thought, silence found its way through room door. When visiting woman whose eyes belonged to silence at juncture times, silence went out from her eyes until empty coffee cups, untouched, cool, marked departures quietly.

Today, silence is snow. Cedar branches outside window behind altar hold white on green. Colored lights from season ended will stay through winter cold. A monastery of ordinariness does not distinguish that which ends from what begins with any certainty. This open cloister -- these watching eyes -- reveal no-time.

Today we remember Martin Luther King Jr. on his birthday.

This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote:"Each day the war goes on the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those of humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism."
~ (as quoted by Martin Luther King Jr., in "Beyond Vietnam" Address delivered to the Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam, at Riverside Church, 4 April 1967 New York City,)

Time seems to have dissolved between Vietnam and Iraq.

Wind rustles. Thin branch edges waver with direction while roots know movement has no destination. Duration entices; timelessness will not be tempted.

Silence tells me nothing about God.

I read scriptures with prophetic words. They promise terrible time followed by wonderful time, but only for those who are saved, who belong to phrases pronounced as the right phrases -- these will be brought in. There are so many left out in cold by believers.

I hear echoes of sounds from preachers that have been pronounced. Those that say: We speak for God; God speaks through us; Harken these words or be damned; These are the creeds that you must believe; Those are the tenets that will save you.

The echoes fade away. In the purring of the coon-cat no trace remains.

Silence tells me nothing about God.

Do you want to hear my opinion? I have none. Each one I've held sneaks out barn door and wanders up mountain to die.
Their graves are unmarked. I walk trails past where they must have gone to earth to burrow and be buried every day. One step. Another. One death. Another.

Each pilgrimage through these departures is gift. Gifts under trees. Seasonal Christmas trees brought indoors -- lives cut and dressed up -- have no such gifts under them. Outside, cedar tree holds silence touched with snow.

Silence tells me nothing about God.

Of which I cannot speak.

Snow and sleet.

To return to the root
Is to find the meaning,
To pursue appearances
Is to miss the source.
At the moment of inner enlightenment
There is a going beyond
Appearance and emptiness.
The changes that appear
To occur in the empty world
We call real only
Because of our ignorance.
- Seng-Ts’an (d.606)

Don't know; meet.

If God is movement and not explanation (as Elie Wiesel suggests), then God is moving through me in ways and intention I no longer try to understand. I merely accept the passage through. I am through with it.

I am defenceless utterly.
I slept, methinks, and woke,
And, slowly gazing, find me stripped in sleep.
(--from poem Hound Of Heaven, by Francis Thompson, 1859 - 1907)

If there was a mirror I would not recognize the reflection of what once was me looking back from an absurd looking absence. God has moved beyond me. What is left is no longer there.

We move shelves in bookshop. We open space. Last evening we read from Anam Cara by John O'Donohue. One to one, one at a time, the practice of presence, an act of wholeness.

The mind that is not always
caught up in details
is your only treasure.
Stop chasing details and become
still to feel it.
The mind that sees details clearly,
but is not caught up by them
is like a vast borderless mirror.
- Ji Aoi Isshi

Zen is borderless. Contemplation is boundaryless. Enter one to go beyond other.

Just because we love what we call God -- that doesn't mean anything. It is only what it is. In bare unconsoling experience, stark silence brings nothing with it.

Although she is alone, Wisdom can accomplish everything. She deploys her strength from one end of the earth to the other, ordering all things for good.
(--Wisdom 7:27 - 8:1)

We come here to be alone.

Pity Me Not

Pity me not because the light of day
At close of day no longer walks the sky;
Pity me not for beauties passed away
From field and thicket as the year goes by.
Pity me not the waning of the moon,
Or that the ebbing tide goes out to sea,
Or that a man's desire is hushed so soon,
And you no longer look with love on me.
This have I always known: Love is no more
Than the wide blossom which the wind assails,
Than the great tide that treads the shifting shore,
Strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales.
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
(Poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay)

When someone loves you they participate in making you lonely for God. Likewise, they contribute sculpting your appearance lovely for God. The clay bits curling to floor from shaping knife rejoice being made extraneous to what is being sculpted itself being readied for God.

Absence is what remains when we are loved and loving one another as God is.

(We typically think presence is the antidote to or opposite of absence -- but it's not. Absence is the fullness of no-other. We only prefer 'fullness of no-other' be called 'presence', which is what it is. The problem we experience with this preference is that we do not know how to navigate the experience of absence or emptiness when it comes -- and it indeed comes. We do not want the fullness named absence. We prefer the fullness named presence. And so, despondence, depression, and despair overcome us. It is useful to begin to consider the implications of dissecting wholeness. We might include in that consideration the wording: Embodying the dwelling-place of the Alone; Stepping aside to make room for Another. We might happily face the question: What remains when who we thought we were goes away? And happily consider as response: Who's asking?)

We face a trinity of unexplainable activity: move away; move into; move through. Without any relative notation, we are invited to be the original work, suffused with fingerprint of creating. We are at origin. Nothing there but this and only this one appearing before you. Attend this revelation, this sacrifice, this holy and unbegotten being with your name.

This is the blank mirror.

Look carefully. Emptying.

Be seen nowhere.

Shut up. Go home.

Silence.

Salvus.

Nothing.

As it is.

Now.

I see.

Without consciousness,
Time and space do not exist;
They appear within Consciousness
But have no reality of their own.
It is like a screen on which
All this is cast as pictures and move
As in a cinema show.
The Absolute Consciousness
Alone is our real nature.
- Ramana Maharshi

Jack led Thursday Evening Conversation on A Course in Miracles. In it -- Workbook Lesson 9: "I see nothing as it is now."

I love the intuition that words are not servants of thought. Words are themselves windows through which sheer reality looks. Words want to be seen through.

Do we?

1129

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant—
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind—
(Poem by Emily Dickinson)

"Here" is what has happened with language: war (and) love.

Between war and love is a window of words waiting for transparent viewing. Contrary to common opinion, seeing is not believing. Seeing is (merely, only, and wonderfully) seeing alone.

the great advantage of being alive
(instead of undying)is not so much
that mind no more can disprove than prove
what heart may feel and soul may touch
—the great(my darling)happens to be
that love are in we,that love are in we
(1st stanza of e.e.cummings poem, The Great Advantage Of Being Alive)

One of the great joys of being alive instead of undead, is poetry.

"...as far as I am concerned, poetry and every other art is and was and forever will be strictly and distinctively a question of individuality. If poetry were anything-like dropping an atom bomb-which anyone did, anyone could become a poet just by doing the necessary anything; whatever that necessary anything might or might not entail. But (as it happens) poetry is being, not doing. If you wish to follow, even at a distance, the poet's calling (and here, as always, I speak from my own totally biased and entirely personal point of view), you've got to come out of the measurable doing universe into the immeasurable house of being. I am quite aware that, wherever our so-called civilization has slithered, there's every reward and no punishment for unbeing. But if poetry is your goal, you've got to forget all about punishments and all about rewards and all about self-styled obligations and duties and responsibilities etcetera ad infinitum and remember one thing only: that it's you-nobody else-who determine your destiny and decide your fate. Nobody else can be alive for you; nor can you be alive for anybody else. Toms can be Dicks and Dicks can be Harrys, but none of them can ever be you. There's the artist's responsibility; and the most awful responsibility on earth. If you can take it, take it -and be. If you can't, cheer up and go about other peoples business and do (or undo) till you drop."
(--e.e.cummings, i: SIX NONLECTURES (1953), "i & their son: NONLECTURE TWO")

If poetry is being, written -- what dare we say about seeing (as it is)?

[l(a]

l(a

le
af
fa

ll

s)
one
l

iness
(--Poem by e.e.cummings)

As alone as this leaf, a January path in frozen woods, the silence.

a total stranger one black day

a total stranger one black day
knocked living the hell out of me--

who found forgiveness hard because
my(as it happened)self he was

-but now that fiend and i are such
immortal friends the other's each
(--Poem by e.e.cummings)

When we learn to live with what-is-self, all our other selves, (the ones we like to call not-really-me, or enemy) dissolve and disappear. We accomplish nothing more than the destruction of a fundamental illusion. Each sip from that cup of Chai tea makes of the other what is oneself. Sip coffee. Sip milk. Sip water. Sip juice. Sip the sound of another's voice. Sip the sight of another's presence. Sip and be saved from delusion by what is taken into one's self -- we are not anything other than the sipping. Sip away and slip away from whatever you think you are. You are not what you think you are. You are -- (emphatically, transparently, parenthetically) -- what you (alone) only are.

As the words reveal:

I see.

Now.

As it is.

Nothing.

This
(Alone) --
is our real nature --
with One
Another

(!) or is it (?)

(There is no-choice, so
choose now)
(Poem by w.f.halpin)

A day with dust discarding accumulated debris, liberating windows for daylight, and moving things about in our small space by harbor. It is disconcerting what we hold onto; discouraging why we do so. It is time to practice seeing through.

The true person is
Not anyone in particular;
But like the deep blue color
Of the limitless sky,
It is everyone,
Everywhere in the world.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

Reading Wayne Teasdale at Wednesday Laura Soul Friend Conversation at bookshop. A realm of quiet wandered between words and thoughts. Awareness, he wrote, is eternal, cosmic, and divine sensitivity. Patricia said that, when told by someone they thought they were too sensitive, she says,: Yes, exquisitely sensitive!
ex·qui·site Pronunciation (kskw-zt, k-skwzt)adj.
1. Characterized by intricate and beautiful design or execution: an exquisite chalice.
2. Of such beauty or delicacy as to arouse intense delight: an exquisite sunset. See Synonyms at delicate.
3. Excellent; flawless: plays the piano with exquisite technique.
4. Acutely perceptive or discriminating: "Blind dolphins have been known to survive in the wild, guided by exquisite acoustic images of their prey" Kenneth Browser.
5. Intense; keen: suffered exquisite pain.
6. Obsolete Ingeniously devised or thought out.
[Middle English exquisit, carefully chosen, from Latin exqustus, past participle of exqurere, to search out : ex-, ex- + quaerere, to seek.]
(The Free Dictionary)

Before dawn the waning moon, even in diminished curve of cycle, illuminates barnyard and kitchen roof. I don't doubt the presence of the Holy One -- it's just, at this time of personal spiritual darkness -- I see, feel, and think nothing of that presence. It is a time of one foot in front of another along a Via Negativa.

How desirable are all his works,
how dazzling to the eye!
They all live and last for ever,
whatever the circumstances all obey him.
All things go in pairs, by opposites,
and he has made nothing defective;
the one consolidates the excellence of the other,
who could ever be sated with gazing at his glory?

Pride of the heights, shining vault,
so, in a glorious spectacle, the sky appears.
The sun, as he emerges, proclaims at his rising,
‘A thing of wonder is the work of the Most High!’
At his zenith he parches the land,
who can withstand his blaze?
A man must blow a furnace to produce any heat,
the sun burns the mountains three times as much;
breathing out blasts of fire,
flashing his rays he dazzles the eyes.
Great is the Lord who made him,
and whose word speeds him on his course.

And then the moon, always punctual,
to mark the months and make division of time:
the moon it is that signals the feasts,
a luminary that wanes after her full.
The month derives its name from hers,
she waxes wonderfully in her phases,
banner of the hosts on high,
shining in the vault of heaven.
(--from Ecclesiasticus 42:15 - 43:13)

If even one person comes to see what no one else sees, there is opening for everyone. We must practice this understanding. What you see I am also given to see, whether I am yet ready to see it. Each journey into the realm of truth is gift for every person. We are not alone. We are profoundly connected and interconnected with one another. "Christ" is this shared revelation. So we live, now not "I," but Christ lives with/in us.

"Every one of us is a mystic. We may or may not realize it, we may not even like it. But whether we know it or not, whether we accept it or not, mystical experience is always there, inviting us on a journey of ultimate discovery. We have been given the gift of life in this perplexing world to become who we ultimately are: creatures of boundless love, caring compassion, and wisdom. Existence is a summons to the eternal journey of the sage - the sage we all are, if only we could see."
(--Brother Wayne Teasdale, in The Mystic Heart)

Have we been looking for God in all the substitute places instead of where the Divine One dwells?

The one Divine Presence is behind it all, in every age. This insight has significance for peace-making in Asia, the Pacific, really indeed everywhere, and it is very meaningful as a major resource for transformation as we embrace the monumental task of reshaping our global political and economic culture.

The elements of a universal spirituality, or mysticism include: (1) actualized moral capacity, (2) solidarity with the earth and all beings, (3) deep nonviolence, (4) humility of heart, (5) spiritual practice, (6) mature self-knowledge, (7) simplicity of life and lifestyle, (8) love in action--compassionate service, and (9) prophetic voice and action. All these aspects work together, and are essential to a fully formed and operative spiritual life in any part of the world.

[...A]n awakened contemplative, mystic, saint, or anyone aspiring to be so, understands the intrinsic interdependence of all beings, all sentient beings, and certainly all human persons. Such a one grasps inwardly, existentially, this ontological truth of the interconnectivity of all life. It leads one to a deep sense of solidarity with all beings, and especially with the earth itself, our mother, and the basis of our material, aesthetic, and even our spiritual life here in this world. This interdependence is the ontological condition of humankind, and further, the social, economic, and political interdependence exist because of the deeper interconnection of all beings. Each of the great world religions attests to the essential, ontological interdependence of all being. Hinduism speaks of non-duality, Buddhism of dependent arising, Christianity of the Mystical Body of Christ, all of which indicate a unitive holding of reality together. It is out of this ontological condition that the sense of solidarity emerges in the mystic’s vision of how he or she is related to everyone else.
(--from Spirituality as a Primary Resource in Promoting Peace, Unpublished manuscript by Wayne Teasdale), http://home.comcast.net/%7Ebrotherwayne/korea.htm

Patricia's Black Lab (Rumi) slobbered knees and wrists as usual as conversation went on at the shop. His tail thumped counter and bakery case as words "spirit" and "word" and "presence" settled like warm touches on his gentle back.

“The real revolution, the definitive revolution, is the spiritual awakening of humanity. The real revolution is one that goes to the radical core of human limitation and raises that up to transformation, to development. Unless that happens, the seeds of corruption are still going to be there — and the seeds of inequity, of exploitation, and of a selfish, greedy existence that neglects the welfare of the masses and of the planet.”
(—Brother Wayne Teasdale, in Transforming the Seeds of Corruption)

It is by the fruits of a person or a nation that we know them. Not by ideology; not by wealth or power; not by protestations of error or proclamation of any type. But by fruits. What are we actually doing to serve a suffering people in a troubling time?

We have to become what we really are. Become true. Become a person. See ourselves through and through. As One...Another!

"The true person is...everyone, everywhere in the world." Dogen reminds us to practice what is true to be enlightened by who and what we are. This is the revolution.

See this through.

We must not lose our ability to see, feel, and think.

A conservative friend cautioned against "hate, criticism, and condemnation." He's right about the warning. In today's environment of fear and delusion any statement telling what you see, feel, or think might easily be spun into threat or danger to those in power intent only on security of the nation and its interests.

It is now dangerous to see, feel, or think.

If you want to be free, get to know your real self.
It has no form, no appearance, no root,
No basis, no abode, but is lively and buoyant.
It responds with versatile facility, but its function
Cannot be located; when you look for it you become
Further from it. When you seek it
You turn away from it all the more.
- Rinzai ( d.867?)

There have always been times disagreement was necessary and argument vital. They are good activities of mind, heart, and soul. We need not fear such exchange. But if fear is the desired effect, then demonize dissent, mock intellectual evaluation, and punish differing perspectives. This is how people become disheartened and nations deteriorate as they slip into disintegration.

The waves of death flooded round me, the torrents of Belial tossed me about,
the cords of the underworld wound round me, death’s traps opened before me.
(--from Psalm 18)

It is an odd time of civilization. Fear flows from every direction: terrorists want to kill anybody interfering in their ideology; democracies want to kill anyone interfering with that notion of political rule; criminals want to kill those interfering with their crimes; capitalists want to kill (metaphorically and economically) their competitors; and powerful people want to kill any restrictions to their increasing power. We seem enamored with the idea and practice of killing.

Contemplation Of The Sword

Reason will not decide at last; the sword will decide.
The sword: an obsolete instrument of bronze or steel,
formerly used to kill men, but here
In the sense of a symbol. The sword: that is: the storms
and counter-storms of general destruction; killing
of men,
Destruction of all goods and materials; massacre, more or
less intentional, of children and women;
Destruction poured down from wings, the air made accomplice,
the innocent air
Perverted into assasin and poisoner.

The sword: that is: treachery and cowardice, incredible
baseness, incredible courage, loyalties, insanities.
The sword: weeping and despair, mass-enslavement,
mass-tourture, frustration of all hopes
That starred man's forhead. Tyranny for freedom, horror for
happiness, famine for bread, carrion for children.
Reason will not decide at last, the sword will decide.

Dear God, who are the whole splendor of things and the sacred
stars, but also the cruelty and greed, the treacheries
And vileness, insanities and filth and anguish: now that this
thing comes near us again I am finding it hard
To praise you with a whole heart.
I know what pain is, but pain can shine. I know what death is,
I have sometimes
Longed for it. But cruelty and slavery and degredation,
pestilence, filth, the pitifulness
Of men like hurt little birds and animals . . . if you were
only
Waves beating rock, the wind and the iron-cored earth,
With what a heart I could praise your beauty.
You will not repent, nor cancel life, nor free man from anguish
For many ages to come. You are the one that tortures himself to
discover himself: I am
One that watches you and discovers you, and praises you in little
parables, idyl or tragedy, beautiful
Intolerable God.
The sword: that is:
I have two sons whom I love. They are twins, they were born
in nineteen sixteen, which seemed to us a dark year
Of a great war, and they are now of the age
That war prefers. The first-born is like his mother, he is so
beautiful
That persons I hardly know have stopped me on the street to
speak of the grave beauty of the boy's face.
The second-born has strength for his beauty; when he strips
for swimming the hero shoulders and wrestler loins
Make him seem clothed. The sword: that is: loathsome disfigurements,
blindness, mutilation, locked lips of boys
Too proud to scream.
Reason will not decide at last: the sword will decide.
(Poem, Contemplation Of The Sword, by Robinson Jeffers)

We become desperate. Hopelessness, however, need not be destination -- it can be a place from which to begin new journey.

Perhaps we see peace where our leaders only see war.
Maybe we feel compassion and love where our leaders can only feel arrogant vengeance.
It's possible to think more intuitively about paths for humans dwelling together in this world, rather than think about strategies to dominate and subjugate those differing from us.

Let this be today's practice -- to see, feel, and think -- in the open.

"Don't do it!" some say, "Don't look, feel, or think -- it's too dangerous."

John O'Donohue said it clearly in Anam Cara: "Time is eternity living dangerously."

What we call "Christ" is template for this life.

What we call "Buddha" is awakening this journey.

See truth. Feel courage. Think lively.

It is a trek with lovely view, authentic feeling, and inspiring thought.

The annoying thing about zen is not knowing whether you want to smack the know-it-all in the head, or, whether the don't-know-at-all will be smacking you in the head. Either way is a headache.

The wisdom of Enlightenment is
Inherent in every one of us.
It is because of the delusion
Under which our mind works
That we fail to realize it ourselves,
And that we have to seek
The advice and the guidance of Enlightened ones.
- Hui-neng (638-713)

I prefer no-smacking. We, of course, should go out of our way to tumble one another with words and acrobatics along the lines of Tom Stoppard's "Rosencranz & Guildenstern are Dead" -- surprising and being surprised by the ability to say "yes" or "no" when saying so does so at the right time for so doing.

Often we take to our lives with shaking hands.

After Dinner

She's eaten dinner talking
back to the television, she's
had coffee and brandy, done
the dishes and drifted into
and out of sleep over a book
she found beside the couch. It's
time for bed, but she goes
instead to the front door, unlocks
it, and steps onto the porch.
Behind her she can hear only
the silence of the house. The lights
throw her shadow down the stairs
and onto the lawn, and she walks
carefully to meet it. Now she's
standing in the huge, whispering
arena of night, hearing her
own breath tearing out of her
like the cries of an animal.
She could keep going into
whatever the darkness brings,
she could find a presence there
her shaking hands could hold
instead of each other.
(Poem: "After Dinner" by Philip Levine, from A Walk With Thomas Jefferson.)

My prayer remains with individuals. Like the woman in the poem, like many men and women in the world, the longing to find presence in the dark arena of night is a longing we all know.

Better worlds (I suggest) are born, not made: and their birthdays are the birthdays of individuals. Let us pray always
for individuals; never for worlds.
--e.e. cummings

Let there be born to us individuals who better this world, this existence, this night moving to new light.

Consider the lilies of the field,
how they grow;
They toil not, neither do they spin;
And yet I say unto you,
that even Solomon in all his glory
was not arrayed like one of these.
(--Christ's words, Matt 6: 28-30)

No toil. No spin.

Just this.

Zen.