Rain throughout day as 350.org huddles indoors at Camden Snowbowl brief speeches and homemade treats as letters and petitions are signed and sent. Then the photograph. Soaking happily.

The great way of the buddhas is profound, wondrous, inconceivable; how could its practice be easy? Have you not seen how the ancients gave up their bodies and lives, abandoned their countries, cities, and families, looking upon them as shards of tile?

After that they passed eons living alone in the mountains and forests, bodies and minds like dead trees; only then did they unite with the way. Then they could use the mountains and rivers for words, raise the wind and rain for a tongue, and explain the great void, turning the incomparable wheel.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

To unite with the way is to let rain fall to ground.

How hard it that?

It is time to come to earth.

As rain through itself.

We are here for dialogue.

We speak through one another.

To that between us, spoken with heart open and mind open.

That is the spiritual life. That, the corporeal life. It is the whole of life lived in the middle.

Green waters and verdant mountains
are the places to walk in meditation;
by the streams or under the trees
are places to clear the mind.
Observe impermanence,
never forget it;
this urges on the will to seek enlightenment.
- Keizan Jokin (1264-1325)

Watching A Mighty Heart, the story by Mariane Pearl about her husband Daniel's kidnapping. And murder. And the process of unveiling.

This kind of violence is what occurs when we forget we are between one another in encounter and conversation. We are not objects to be spoken at. Not things to be used to settle unhappiness. We are not where we think we are, nor what we think we are.

What are we? And where are we?

Lean in. Between us, there is revealed something not heard before. Not seen before.

Just this: for this instant we are what is taking place between us.

We are not, nor is God, anywhere else but in this ever-present and ever-changing place emerging and disappearing between us.

Look there. And if you do not see it, look again.

Climate change. That's what the focus is on.

Good for the effort.

If you place your body in the realm
Of equanimity and noncontention,
And let your mind roam in the
Territory of evenness and nondisturbance,
And water them every day with
Fair words and fine deeds of sage worthies,
Then you are sure to progress.
- Wu Yubi (1391-1469)

It's something to think about.

And that's not nothing.

Gone nowhere.

Some days solitude takes you.

A saturation takes place. All the personalities and opinions! The jostling in politics. The positions held and trumpeted. The wearying of words intended to carpet a flawed floor.

9
Throw away holiness and wisdom,
and people will be a hundred times happier.
Throw away morality and justice,
and people will do the right thing.
Throw away industry and profit,
and there won't be any thieves.

If these three aren't enough,
just stay at the center of the circle
and let all things take their course.
(--ch 19, Tao Te Ching, by Lao-tzu, from a translation by Stephen Mitchell)

There are days when you don't care. When the ordinary expectations fizzle into ash.

Kathleen Norris in her 2008 book Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life, writes:

At its Greek root, the word acedia means the absence of care. The person afflicted by acedia refuses to care or is incapable of doing so. When life becomes too challenging and engagement with others too demanding, acedia offers a kind of spiritual morphine: you know the pain is there, yet can't rouse yourself to give a damn. That it hurts to care is borne out in etymology, for care derives from an Indo-European word meaning "to cry out," as in a lament. Caring is not passive, but an assertion that no matter how strained and messy our relationships can be, it is worth something to be present, with others, doing our small part. Care is also required for the daily routines that acedia would have us suppress or deny as meaningless repetition or too much bother.
(pp.3-4)

If care means 'to cry out,' and God is invocation, what is to be seen in an acedic lament? And what did the monk mean when he said to me: "Cheer up...things are only going to get worse!"?

A Buddhist Retreat Behind Broken-Mountain Temple

In the pure morning, near the old temple,
Where early sunlight points the tree-tops,
My path has wound, through a sheltered hollow
Of boughs and flowers, to a Buddhist retreat.
Here birds are alive with mountain-light,
And the mind touches peace in a pool,
And a thousand sounds are quieted
By the breathing of a temple-bell. - Ch'ang Chien

It seems everyone has a complaint. The left and the right, the orthodox and the heretics (hairesis, Greek for 'choice,' as in those with a different opinion), those in power and those without power.

Nowhere is there enough solitude.

Itself a poem. Itself as poem.

Amy Lowell wrote:

No one expects a man to make a chair without first learning how, but there is a popular impression that the poet is born, not made, and that his verses burst from his overflowing heart of themselves. As a matter of fact, the poet must learn his trade in the same manner, and with the same painstaking care, as the cabinet-maker. His heart may overflow with high thoughts and sparkling fancies, but if he cannot convey them to his reader by means of written word he has no claim to be considered a poet. A workman may be pardoned, therefore, for spending a few moments to explain and describe the technique of his trade. A work of beauty which cannot stand an intimate examination is a poor and jerry-built thing.

In the first place, I wish to state my firm belief that poetry should not try to teach, that it should exist simply because it is a created beauty, even if sometimes the beauty of a gothic grotesque. We do not ask the trees to teach us moral lessons, and only the Salvation Army feels it necessary to pin texts upon them. We know that these texts are ridiculous, but many of us do not yet see that to write an obvious moral all over a work of art, picture, statue, or poem, is not only ridiculous, but timid and vulgar. We distrust a beauty we only half understand, and rush in with our impertinent suggestions. How far are we from "admitting the Universe"! The Universe, which flings down its continents and seas, and leaves them without comment. Art is as much a function of the Universe as an Equinoctial gale, or the Law of Gravitation; and we insist upon considering it merely a little scroll-work, or no great importance unless it be studded with nails from which pretty and uplifting sentiments may be hung! (--from The Poet's Trade, by Amy Lowell, at Poets.org, http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/16037)

So it is today and yesterday both emit half understood beauty.

This jerry-built acausality.

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, was fascinated by what he termed the process of synchronicity - seemingly random events which have a personally significant meaning. For example, you may start to think of a friend whom you haven't seen for a long time, only to receive an unexpected phone call from that friend the same day. Or, you are looking unsuccessfully for the source of a quotation when, almost unthinkingly, you pick up a book from your library, open it randomly, and there it is ! These type of things happen quite often.

Jung termed this process 'synchronicity' and he said that it is an acausal principle in that there seems to be no cause-effect process at work. However, I believe that this process is still based on the law of cause and effect, but on a level which we are not perceptive enough to realise. Synchronicity takes place in the hidden depths of the psychic - that is, at the transpersonal and quantum levels of existence.

This said, there is indeed a level of Being which is truly acausal, untouched by the law of cause and effect. It does not, however, occur or arise in the world of matter-energy, nor on the level of mind and psyche, but in the realm of Pure Consciousness. In the extraordinary Yogic text called the 'Yoga Vashishta', written several thousand years ago, the story is told of the crow and the coconut.......

A crow alights on a coconut tree and at the very same moment, by chance, a ripe coconut falls. These two unrelated events seem to be related in time and space, though in fact there is no causal relation. A man sitting under the tree would think 'it is because of the crow that I am now eating this wonderfully ripe coconut.'

The meaning of this parable is profound. It does not apply to the daily life of 'sticks and stones', where cause and effect is quite evident. Nor does it refer to the mental and psychic levels where, though less evident, cause and effect still function. It alludes to the relationship between Purusha (Pure Consciousness) and Prakriti (Matter-Energy-Mind) and the 'Transcendental Point' (Skt. 'bindu') where these two principles 'touch' each other. This is acausal.

In the story, there seems to be a cause-effect relationship between the crow and the falling of the coconut, but this is only how it appears and is due to our lack of understanding. If we could see the wider picture, we would see that there is no relationship between the crow and the falling coconut. In the same way, there is no cause-effect relationship between Pure Consciousness and the world of form, matter, energy and mind. This is a paradox which defies our normal logic.

The Bhagawat Gita declares: "All this world is pervaded by Me (the acausal Consciousness) in My unmanifest aspect; all beings exist in Me, but I do not dwell in them." (verse 9:4)

By jumping beyond the world of cause and effect, we may be blessed with the Vision and Realisation of the Acausal. Yoga and deep Meditation allow us to plunge into this ineffable experience
(--from, From the Causal to Acausal, by Swami Nishchalananda Saraswati, http://www.mandalayoga.net/index-newsletter-en-causal.html)

Nothing to flout. Nothing to flaunt.

A mere nothingness.

Ramana Maharshi looks at silence with different eyes:

A visitor asked: `What is mouna (silence)?'
M.: Mouna is not closing the mouth. It is eternal speech.
D.: I do not understand.
M.: That state which transcends speech and thought is mouna.
D.: How to achieve it?
M.: Hold some concept firmly and trace it back. By such concentration silence results. When practice becomes natural it will end in silence.
Meditation without mental activity is silence. Subjugation of the mind is meditation. Deep meditation is eternal speech.

D.: How will worldly transaction go on if one observes silence?
M.: When women walk with water pots on their heads and chat with their companions they remain very careful, their thoughts concentrated on the loads on their heads. Similarly when a sage engages in activities, these do not disturb him because his mind abides in Brahman.
(20th July, 1936, Talk 231, from Talks with Sri Ramana Maharshi,
http://bhagavan-ramana.org/ramana_maharshi/books/tw/tw231.html

Some days you take solitude.

Going nowhere.

A single candle hangs in center of chapel zendo tonight.

On Going to see a Taoist Master

A dog barking and the sound of water;
Peach blossoms heavy with dew.
In these deep woods, deer can be seen;
At noon along the stream, I hear no bell.
Wild bamboo divides gray clouds;
Waterfalls hang from blue peaks.
No one knows where you've gone;
Disheartened, I lean against a second,
Now a third pine.
- Li Po

All things of the night remember in silence things of the day.

Only silence suffices these times.

Older Love

His wife has asthma
so he only smokes outdoors
or late at night with head
and shoulders well into
the fireplace, the mesquite and oak
heat bright against his face.
Does it replace the heat
that has wandered from love
back into the natural world?
But then the shadow passion casts
is much longer than passion,
stretching with effort from year to year.
Outside tonight hard wind and sleet
from three bald mountains,
and on the hearth before his face
the ashes we’ll all become,
soft as the back of a woman’s knee.
(-Poem by Jim Harrison)

That soft.

And as quiet.

Alan Watts called his book: Cloud-Hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal. The production editorial writeup says: 'Watts suggests a way of contemplative meditation in which we temporarily stop naming and classifying all that we experience, and simply feel it as it is."

A good pointer.

Seeking But Not Finding the Recluse

Under the pine
I ask the boy;
He says: "My Mistress is gone
To gather herbs.
I only know
She's in those mountains,
In those deep clouds,
But I don't know where."
- Chia Tao (http://www.dailyzen.com/)

Rain with snow. At table we read Chapter 2 of Tao Te Ching. How 'have' things and not feel you 'own' them? Do things without taking credit for their being done? Letting things come; letting things go?

Snow with rain.

This raw night
.
Following practice.

It will rain after midnight. In meditation cabin, warm stove. Single candle, all three of them. One on porch. Early darkness.

Joshu's Dog
A monk asked Joshu, a Chinese Zen master: `Has a dog Buddha-nature or not?'
Joshu answered: `Mu.' [Mu is the negative symbol in Chinese, meaning `No-thing' or `Nay'.] http://www.ibiblio.org/zen/gateless-gate/1.html

It might be there is an entirely distinct universe just the other side of thought. Where thought ends. Comes mere seeing.

Cherry blossoms filling the ground,
Sunset filling my eyes:
Blossoms vanished, spring old,
I feel the passing years.
When blossoms were at their finest
I neglected to call.
The blossoms did not betray me.
I betrayed the blossoms.
- Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672)

I have often betrayed the blossoms.

I must rely on their willingness to be overlooked by a distracted passing person.

I have not called.

No invocation, no knowing God.

I know now my mistake.

Surrender, Lola said, is allowing what comes at you in life to pass through.

We were at conversation after reading Tolle.

Evening mountains veiled in somber mist;
One path entering the wooded hill:
The monk has gone off locking his pine door.
From a bamboo pipe a lonely trickle of water flows.
- Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672)

There could be a better definition of surrender...

But, I don't know.

I know what to ask. Ask why nothing makes sense. Ask whether this world really, as some say, is illusion. Ask for an extra piece of cake. It doesn't hurt to ask.

Alone on my zazen mat
I forget the days as they pass
The wisteria has grown thick
Over the eaves of my hut
The subtle Way of Bodhidharma
I never give it a thought
Does anyone know the truth of Zen
Or what to ask about it?
- Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

Watch film "The Visitor." The hard currency of belonging yet not belonging.

Hammer my finger, strain my elbow. Just plain pain.

Here's the truth of zen: just show up and do what needs be done. No explanation. No goal. No hope of redemption or reward.

When tired, yawn. When sleeping, dream.

When awake, no dream.

Dreamless sleep; dreamless wakefulness.

There should be many questions about now!

There's a fetching line from the film tonight: ''Lust awakens the desire to possess,'' warns the old monk. ''And that awakens the intent to murder.' (From film, ''Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring'', written, directed, and edited by Kim Ki-Duk).

Skillful Desires

All phenomena, the Buddha once said, are rooted in desire. Everything we think, say, or do—every experience—comes from desire. Even we come from desire. We were reborn into this life because of our desire to be. Consciously or not, our desires keep redefining our sense of who we are. Desire is how we take our place in the causal matrix of space and time. The only thing not rooted in desire is nirvana, for it’s the end of all phenomena and lies even beyond the Buddha’s use of the word “all.” But the path that takes you to nirvana is rooted in desire—in skillful desires. The path to liberation pushes the limits of skillful desires to see how far they can go.
(- Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Tricycle Fall 2005)

The Bodhisattva of Compassion is lifted to the summit of attentive and consoling awareness of what is taking place in the world.

In our lives.

As we repeat foolishness.

Again. And again.

Karen Armstrong et al present the video History of God. It is quite a story. Does God change? Or is our consciousness deepening?

If God is completely other, does that mean we are no other? If God is, are we?

If you forget your feelings
about things of the world,
they become enlightening teachings.
If you get emotional
about enlightening teaching,
it becomes a worldly thing.
- Muso Kokushi (1275-1351)

Canada was one walk after one hike after another walk and another hike. Mountain and cliff, stone beach and soggy marsh, sloshing shoes and majestic Fundy sandstone.

We come back exhausted and delighted.

Perhaps God will be merciful with us.

As we are merciful with one another.

The specificity of ineffability.

We cross over that which flows beyond.

Coming back through long snow squall outside Calais along Airline Drive.

Mark the date: 13th October.

Driving through snow!

We're off to celebrate Thanksgiving with our Canadian neighbors. In Maine and the additional 49 states, Columbus Day is celebrated. Either way, we're pleased the US and Canada are taking a day to reflect on gratitude and neighborliness.

You must realize that what
is at stake here does not
reside in words and phrases:
it is like sparks from struck flint,
like the brilliance of flashing lightning.
However you mange to deal with this,
you cannot get around
losing your body and life.
- Yunmen (864-949)

We're pleased to have a country. We're pleased to have a neighboring country. Soon the borders we now so fervently protect will not be needed. We will lose the need to view ourselves so separately. Consequently -- this insight will ripple to neighborhood, states, countries, and ultimately every speck of awareness in the Cosmos. I suspect the Cosmos is waiting for us to catch up.

Until then, we visit. We build.

We bow to you in your journey.

Raimon Panikkar writes: "God is an invocation."

Saskia says, "God is being called into being. God is not a static being."

The two of them call out something evocative this morning.

God is called into being as that which is the longing for true being, a being-true beyond any wish or conception, still replete and complete with what is taking place in the fullness of Becoming Itself.

Watch film "Southbounders" (2005). About hiking the Appalachian Trail, Maine to Georgia.

Wang Wei picks up the trail thread:

Creeks and summits are brilliant at sunset.
I laze in a boat, my way in the wind's hands.
Watching wild landscapes I forget distance
and come to the water's edge.

Gazing at lovely far woods and clouds
I guess I've lost my way.
How could I know this lucid stream
would turn, leading me into mountains?

I abandon my boat, pick up a light staff
and come upon something wonderful,
four or five old monks in contemplation,
enjoying the shade of pines and cypresses.

Before the forest dawns they read Sanskrit.
The monks' nightly meditation quiets the peaks.
Here even shepherd boys know the Tao.
Woodcutters bring in world news.

They sleep at night in the woods
with incense, on mats clean as jade.
Their robes are steeped in valley fragrances;
the stone cliffs shine under a mountain moon.

I fear I will lose this refuge forever
so at daybreak I fix it in my mind.
People of Peach Tree Spring, goodbye.
I'll be back when flowers turn red.
- Wang Wei (699-759)

We work on roof of Book Shed/Library. Visitors stop by for tea. We talk about prison. Then back up to scaffold and impact drill.

Later I walk mountain as dusk draws down light on yellow leaves illuminating mud. Rokie's white coat flashes to and fro.

Nature is the great teacher. The only measurement is wind loosening leaves scattering dooryard and mountain trail.

To call out God is what humankind does with voice.

With silence is God there before any calling.

An invocation for each and all!

Watching flowers.

And leaves turn.

President Barack Obama will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Many are surprised. That's understandable. It's hard to comprehend what is nascent.

Peace is being-born. Mr Obama knows this.

And "this" is not an easy reality to understand.

When the mind is always as clear and bright
As ten suns shining together,
Detached from views and beyond feelings,
Cutting through ephemeral illusions
Of birth and death,
This is what is meant by the saying,
"Mind itself is Buddha."
- Yuanwu

We like Mr. Obama. He seems to be a decent man. And we wish him well. There are those who do not like him. They do not wish him well. But we do.

The clouds come and go,
providing a rest for all
the moon viewers
(-Haiku by Basho, 1644-1694)

Rain this Autumn night in Maine. The cat decides indoors. There are dangerous foes for Mu-ge in these mountain environs. He has to step carefully and quietly, looking over his shoulder.

There's a silver tarp on second floor of book shed being built.

Five of us worked well together today. Then Sylvia and Ed stopped by as O'a did too . We all had soup and bread, tea and coffee.

And peanut butter cookies.

..........

Earlier in the day, David wrote from Belfast about the ongoing hostilities in Afghanistan. He worries we are continuing a dangerous war. I write him:

In the film "Confession" (1999) one of the characters played by Ben Kingsley says, "It's not hard to do the right thing, it's hard to know what the right thing is." He goes on to say something like: But once you know what the right thing is, it's hard not to do it.

There's the expedient thing, the pragmatic thing, the political thing, and the popular thing; but what is the right thing to do?

There will not be any victory. There will be continuing deaths. The mind dithers and delays doing what is right.

What's right might be hidden just now in this question: There are ugly things in this world -- why do we think we are remotely capable of eliminating all that is ugly? The problem with the small mind is its belief that ugly and beautiful are opposites and one of them must be destroyed in order to conform to your version of the illusory opposites. Both the Taliban and the United States are stuck in that belief.

As the Zen Master says, "Put it down! Put it all down!" That belief is far too heavy, bloody, and cruel. 'Ugly' is what 'beautiful' is when it tries to destroy its illusory opposite.

Some suggest we hate ourselves in this illusion. We refuse to accept the whole of ourselves. Thus we try to destroy 'part' of ourselves. It is not a solution to call the ugly beautiful or the beautiful ugly -- for that only perpetuates the false dichotomy created by the judging mind. Rather, our task is to do something more radical, namely, to live compassionately with the whole of it -- not blaming and opposing, but acting in such a way that there is no other way but the way that is from the beginning 'itself,' 'whole,' and 'completely beyond' human reason. Some suggest that this means to 'Be kind!'

Pick up the rubble. Soothe the pain. Encourage peace. Teach truth. Bake eggs. Serve coffee. Learn to serve one another with a balanced mind. Walk the dog. Feed the cat. Love life. See death for what it is -- the unknown inevitability that transforms what we see. See love as trust in transformation.

As Thich Nhat Hanh might have written: I have blown up the Trade Towers, I have visited my grandmother, I have sipped tea and chewed peanut butter cookies, I have killed my brother, I have comforted a child who scraped his knee, I have done everything, I have done nothing, I am you, you are me. We are looking at this problem we have created. There are tears in our eyes.

I am ready to leave Afghanistan. I am leaving. I've left.

I look back.

I see.

It is a good time for the Nobel Laureate to bring to birth a new wisdom.

A vital time.

For all to see.

Doubt is cream in coffee. It lightens things. Cloaks the bitter.

Doubt slips into inquiry.

When you are deluded and full of doubt,
Even a thousand books of scripture
Are still not enough.
When you have realized understanding,
Even one word is already too much.
Zen is communicated personally,
Through mental recognition.
It is not handed on directly by written words.
- Fenyang

Inquiry asks into what is there.

Of course we are not apart from what is there.

It's just that we think we are.

God alone knows. The Way is nameless.

Therefore, know the nameless. And do nothing.

The Makita drill sends screws though wood during framing.

Not to make opposite of anything is not easy. What's easy is having no opposite. There you are!

An old man perches on White Mountain,
living among clouds and smoke and peaks.
Down below, Sanskrit prayer floods the valley.
It's raining. Petals cover the mountain.
The monk is concealed, his heart without desire,
but his name survives in his teachings.
Birds visit him, return speaking Buddhist law.
Guests depart with the habit of meditation.
All day I walk paths among the blue pines.
At twilight I seek lodging in a chamber
in the cave hidden deep in bamboos,
and hear waters plashing in the transparent dusk.
Sitting on my mat and pillow I am involved
in rose clouds of the sunset.
Am I merely a transient guest?
I will practice meditation until I cease.
- Wang Wei (699-759)

Thanks for visiting.

Don't come back.

Once here, there's nowhere to go.

Cease who?

The film 'Samsara" (2001, directed by Pan Nalin). A sensual and spiritual reminder just how difficult the turning-around is in the quest for enlightenment.

There are a few conundrums in the film which are left open to interpretation. One is the aphorism by the old monk, "Which is better? To satisfy one thousand desires or to conquer just one?" According to me, the one desire (for religions affirming transmigration and reincarnation, i.e. Samsara, the cycle of birth and death) is the sexual instinct, the desire which leads to further and further entanglements. Sex is the primary instinct, the central act in the propagation of life.

The second is the question and the answer written on the rock by the roadside. The question is: "How does one prevent a drop of water from drying up?" And the answer, on the back of the rock, is: "By throwing it into the sea." One possible interpretation of the analogy is: The drop of water is the individual soul. Its "drying up" is its death as a separate entity. The "sea" is the worldly life, in which it finds sustenance and mixes up with other selves.
(--from blog 'Remains of the Day,' http://harmanjit.blogspot.com/search?q=samsara)

We live in the world. This is where we work out our karma and salvation -- not in some crypt where the near-dead and really dead decompose their belief in a maze of desire.

If you memorize slogans, you are unable to make subtle adaptations according to the situation. It is not that there is no way to teach insight to learners, but once you have learned a way, it is essential that you get it to work completely. If you just stick to your teacher's school and memorize slogans, this is not enlightenment, it is a part of intellectual knowledge.
- Fayan

To work completely is to not second-guess.

My life has been lived waiting for the tossed coin to descend from the nadir of its upward flip. So much I've not done looking over my shoulder at something passing into dryness.

Maybe I won't get a sore throat.

Maybe I'll get to bed before three tonight.

Maybe the real meaning of a dizzy twirl is the falling to ground -- stopping for a while.

Sin isn't what it used to be. First of all, it doesn't arrive with pink and blue blankets. Secondly, it doesn't go away by nailing someone to a cross. Lastly, who benefits by the concept of sin?

How mysterious!
The lotus remains unstained
By its muddy roots,
Delivering shimmering
Bright jewels from common dew.
(- The Monk Henjo)

What is called 'sin' is the illusory belief in separate, isolated, and alienated existence -- the false claim that someone is better than another, that we're not equal, that our task is to subdue and dominate nature, women, animals, and those who fall into what we conveniently call 'sin.'

I'm having none of it. Not the concept. Not the belief. Not the organized congregations that pray for what is already our ground and true situation. God is not coming for us. God is emerging through the very inchoate being/reality we embody. God, if that word retains anything of the vibrance true being/reality originates, is coming through and with us.

That's just well-water talking.

'As. . . a dewdrop, a bubble, a cloud, a flash of lightning, view all created things.' Thus ends the Diamond Sutra, reminding us of irreducible impermanence. Sustainability cannot mean some kind of permanence. A waggish commentary says ‘Sustainability is a physical impossibility. But it is a very nice sentiment.’ The quest for permanence has always let us astray—whether in building stone castles, Great Walls, pyramids and tombs for pharaohs, great navies, giant cathedrals to ease us toward heaven, or cold war-scale weapons systems guaranteeing mutually assured destruction. We must live with change, like a bird on the wing, and doing so—let all the other beings live on too. Not permanence, but living in harmony with the Way.
(--Gary Snyder, Back on the Fire (Counterpoint, 2007), 70)

We persevere. We make sacrifices. We take what the tide brings in and make use of it. We thank the moon for its light.

We marvel at the fact of things. The Way of things. The Way of it all.

The quietness.

Without trying.

The stillness.

With ease.

Rokpa's 2nd birthday and St. Francis of Assisi feastday. The 6th anniversary of the dedication of the chapel/zendo.

(His birthday "cake" consisted of: triple-level ground turkey, graded carrot, graded celery, spelt-flower, garlic and parsley, cheddar cheese between layers. We had to fight off the humans. Although Sam had his own special version.)

A perfect rag-tag meetingbrook ceremony in cabin celebration feast of Francis. Dean sang, Gene and Margaret sang, Cheryl played harp and sang, Sam played harmonica, Saskia flute. O'a, Bill, Linda, Susan, and Tom there in the cabin, appreciating. Michael and Jayan, Hughie and Hugh held down the Wohnkuche. Max snoozed in car.

A soaring endlessly curving path,
every few miles we have to rest.
I look around for my friends.
They've vanished in the wooded hills.
Rain floods the pine trees
and flows hushed among the rocks.
There are silent words deep in hill water,
a long whistle over the summits.
When I look at South Mountain
the sun floats white through the mist.
A blue marsh is luminous and clear.
Green trees are heavy shadows, drifting.
When I am tired of being closed in,
suddenly I come upon a clearing,
and the mind is at peace.
- Wang Wei (699-759)

The simplicity of earth, nature, God, and humankind held and seen as one.

"Oh grant that I may feel you always in everything." (From song 'Mystery' Missa Gaia)

A good prayer!

A good day!

In his transitus, where did Francis go?

At Zen centers they say
There is a Way to be practiced
And a religious truth to be realized.
Tell me, what religious truth is realized,
What way is practiced?
In your present functioning, what do you lack?
What would you fix?
Younger newcomers, not understanding this,
Immediately believe these mesmerists and
Let them talk about things that tie people up.
- Linji (d. 867)

He is in the rain.

He is in these words.

He has found nature to be home.

A joy, if not perfect, at least complete.