Hundreds of miles away, fiftieth reunion of High School graduation. Not been to any. Here, wood stove burns glowing orange.

Tall pines chant in the wind,
Rain falls lightly at dusk.
East Cloister is half-shut,
West Cloister is locked.
I walked through mountains all day
Yet met no people;
The perfume of wild plum blossoms
Fills my sleeves.
The resident monk laughs at me
For being so enamored of pure scenes.
He dislikes the remoteness of mountains,
But he cannot leave.
Though I love the mountains,
I, too, laugh at myself.
Solitary withdrawal harms the spirit,
It would be hard to carry on.
How much nicer, on West lake,
To drink fine wine,
The scents of red apricots and green peaches
Filling the hair.

- Su Shi (1037-1101)

I am satisfied with jar of water.

Rowing around Curtis Island with Rokie in bow and Saskia in 2nd rowing station, we navigate chop and trough from southwest wind.

At morning Buddhist meditation practice we read after sitting then Heart Sutre the chapter by Shunryu Suzuki on Bluejay song in commentary on Sandokai.

My face hurts in the changing season.

Even so, everything is as it is.

And all's well.

Stephen and Ondrea Levine show presence with one another.

A person who has no body has a large body. He who has no mind has a large mind. With a large mind comes a wisdom that covers all myriad things. With a large body he can respond and react without end. So it is that someone who holds onto his body as his own loses this great responsiveness, and one who holds onto his mind as his own loses this great knowledge. That is why all the sutras and treatises teach that one must take leave of the body and mind and break free of all holding and attachment before entering into what is true and real.
- Taisho Tripitaka

In prison today conversation with a dozen men in two places.

That’s all, just conversation.

With fellow beings.

Ishiguro's film "Never Let Me Go" breaks ethical mind and sympathetic heart.

Winding back and forth
Among green trees
The golden shuttle
Of the oriole
Weaves silk
The color of spring.
A monk sits
Dozing…
Even the stones smile
- Kusan Sunim (1909-1983)

Pragmatists and Utilitarians exit here.

Existentialists sip coffee thoughtfully.

Each must tell of themselves.

Each of Itself.

Sluggish.

Go straight to the empty and free and vast, with no pondering what to think. The previous thought is already extinct, the following thought does not arise, the present thought is itself empty.
- T’aego

The weariness of traveling nowhere.

The United States Government threatens to shut down.

Something silly is going on.

Wu Mountain's person of the Way
Has a mind like water,
With eyes clear, so free from dust
There's none to sweep away.
That's why he can lodge powerful emotions
In marvelous phrases,
Using this leveling device,
To test old East Slope.
- Su Shi (1037-1101

I wonder if the folks on the right think that war, starvation, global weather crisis, poverty, health uncare, and diminishing work opportunities are second fiddle to their pet projects and personal morality priorities?

Here’s what I think: Some people are unwilling to come to earth and live here as human beings. They want to be designees of some idealized God-projected mandate. Some other people are unwilling to be at home on earth and are constantly trying to step-off into some wish-fulfilling heaven away from here. Neither of the two groups are to be trusted. They are not of earth.

The great myth of Christianity is that Jesus embodied God and came to earth by becoming human.

What is it that Christians do not understand?

As for the rest of us? Do we remember the words: “Thy will be done, on earth. As it is..."?

Let the will of Love be accomplished on earth!

Forget all the 'other' stuff.

Think no-other.

Friend...please

Arrive here

Where the rest of us are.

Guest makes delicious soup.

Hospice and Spirituality with new volunteers today.

UConn wins over Butler in NCAA final.

Heart is a quieter mind.

To be unstained in all environments is called no thought…If you stop thinking of myriad things, and cast aside all thoughts, as soon as one instant of thought is cut off, you will be reborn in another realm…The Dharma of no-thought means: even though you see all things, you do not attach to them, but, always keeping your own nature pure, cause the six thieves (the fields of the senses) to exist through the six gates. Even though you are in the midst of the six dusts, you do not stand apart from them, yet are not stained by them, and are free to come and go.
- The Platform Sutra

We're only here for a short time. Then, we pass through the unknown and might be here differently forever. Who knows?

We are in this world with one another.

What else is there to note?

Use two feet.

Stand up.

Enter this world.

Hospice is a mom-n-pop vocation. (That is: merely open mind - nears - presenting open presence)

Hospice practice involves your being ma & pa. (That is: merely alone & patiently aware.)

These acronyms are thoughts that visit during Quaker Meeting this morning, and at tea and toast afterward with help from a Friend.

Brother, I’ve seen some

BY KABIR

Brother, I’ve seen some
Astonishing sights:
A lion keeping watch
Over pasturing cows;
A mother delivered
After her son was;
A guru prostrated
Before his disciple;
Fish spawning
On treetops;
A cat carrying away
A dog;
A gunny-sack
Driving a bullock-cart;
A buffalo going out to graze,
Sitting on a horse;
A tree with its branches in the earth,
Its roots in the sky;
A tree with flowering roots.

This verse, says Kabir,
Is your key to the universe.
If you can figure it out.

TRANSLATED FROM THE HINDI BY ARVIND KRISHNA MEHROTRA
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poem.html?id=241222

Comment:

Many of the bhakti poets came from the bottom of the Hindu caste ladder. Among them you find a cobbler, a tailor, a barber, a boatman, a weaver. One, Janabai (see epigraph to “Chewing slowly”), was a maidservant. They wrote in the vernaculars (Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Marathi, Gujarati) rather than in Sanskrit, the language of the gods and the preserve of Brahmins. Occasionally, eschewing his abrupt debunking manner, Kabir speaks in riddles. These enigmatic poems (see “Brother I’ve seen some” and “How do you”) are called ulatbamsi or “poems in upside-down language,” in which the intention seems to be to force the reader (or listener) into new ways of thinking and seeing. They each end in a revelation, though exactly what has been revealed is open to question. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poemcomment.html?id=241222

I like being open to question.

As

Being

Open

Is,

As it is,

An ulatbamsi gift

There’s no place to go, there’s nothing to do; so, we continue going, we continue doing what we are doing.

Cold Mountain is all white clouds Quiet and free of dust A grassy spot makes a mountain home The bright moon its lone lamp A stone couch above a jade pool Tigers and deer for neighbors I love the joys of solitude Remaining a person beyond. - Han shan

Saturday Morning Buddhist Practice takes place in the Merton Bookshed Retreat while residue snow showers add to yesterday’s 8 inches of thick snow as, soon, sun comes burning white atop mountains surrounding meetingbrook. Spring agnostics!

These mountains, under where we are.

Which reminds me: Semper ubi sub ubi!

You’re welcome!

One more thing.

An article in the religion section of The Huffington Post entitled, "Excommunicated Priest Now Faces Expulsion” By Bruce Nolan, Religion News Service, opens with the following:

NEW ORLEANS -- The Rev. Roy Bourgeois, the Louisiana native and peace activist who was excommunicated three years ago for publicly supporting women's ordination, now faces expulsion from his religious order and from the priesthood.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/31/excommunicated-priest-now_n_843279.html

All these generations...

Before retiring, I have to post:

It is passing strange that the mythology of the Catholic Church holds that a woman, Mary, enfleshed the Word of God, giving birth to Jesus, and now the church says women are not worthy to proclaim in liturgical re-enactment the ongoing presence of the Christ among us?

Methinks the boys do protest too much.

We might be witnessing the demise of the Catholic Church as it envisions itself, what with their men's’ sexuality akimbo off-kilter, and their idealized stranglehold directing women’s sexual radiance to procreative functionalism.

Meanwhile, under the myopic episcopate radar, the ‘church’ is regenerating and resurrecting into a new phylum of celebration with women at forefront, and nothing the declining men’s club can do will change the transformation.

Have you ever seen such a fight for lifeboats in the chaotic rush to jump from the barque of Peter?

No worries, mates and mothers, the sea is grand place to begin again the healing and mutation of a new living, loving reality, the feminine Kirche, wide-armed with embrace, full of forgiveness for the idiotic notion of inchoate ’sin.’

Fr. Roy, you will find a welcome, certainly, among such a fearless folk!

I’ll keep my lighthouse lens turning sharp for signs of arriving rescue approaching this too-dried shore, waiting with tears welling for the changing on-shore breeze.

...

All these generations of patient, caring, and vibrant celebrants!

...

Missa ab initio, hic et huc et nunc. Veni, procedamus in aequanimitatis!

(i.e. The mass, is, from the beginning, this and here and now. Come-on, let’s move forward in calmness of mind, patience, tranquility, equanimity; goodwill, & favor!)

The snow was wet and heavy. Working on worker's comp numbers all day was slow and heavy. Now the tuna fish with cheese atop sits in toaster oven -- growing closer to each other each second.

The wind arises in the remotest corners of the world. It circulates through the hills and marshes, then wafts across embankments and roads, always expanding and permeating, until it finally flows against your windows, railings, and inner curtains, never to depart. When you lean back on your chair and observe it, is there not something to be learned from it? Its force comes from whatever it runs up against. It does not exert itself and so is never tired. Its shape comes from what it encounters. It does not take on its own shape and so is never exhausted. Try looking at it this way.
- Su Shi (1037-1101)

Neighbor Bob comes by to help get Husky Subaru generator started after we exhaust ourselves pulling cord. Tired fuel from a year ago. He sprays fluid into starting carburetor area, and Viola! -- it starts ...after four more tries. Then the power comes back on. We let the generator shrug off a winter's idleness for a while.

April comes white and heavy.

We are grateful.

Not for having missed both prison and nursing home, but for life itself.

Indeed, grateful!

There’s snow coming tonight.

Tenacity.

Immortality doesn't imply having more or being better, because you'd still need to be constantly keeping up. As humans we can only handle or be into so many things at once; increasing the span of our life does not increase our capacity for experiencing the present...(WHE, student in philosophy, URock, Maine)

Guest from Colorado attends Thursday Evening Conversation of A Course in Miracles. Good meeting. As usual.

Idly, I visited the high monks
Green mountain, white clouds
Next door crying children
On the other side a boisterous crowd.
The Five-Peaks touch the Milky Way
The cobalt sky is clear as water
True, they pointed my way home
Pool of lamplight beneath the moon.
- Shih Te (c. 730)

Deep deadline for Saskia of Worker’s Comp Audits. Nobody gets off free.

Snow doesn’t care that tomorrow is 1st of April.

Neither do I.

We walk up the mountain in afternoon sun. Ski season over. Runways ours.

Moved by their selfish desires, people seek after fame and glory. But when they have acquired these, they are already stricken in years. If you hanker after worldly fame and practice not the Way, your labors are wrongfully applied and your energy is wasted. It is like burning a stick of incense. However much its pleasing odor is admired, the fire that consumes is steadily burning up the stick.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

Way is beyond, behind, before you.

Movement, it is all movement.

Through and through.

Sacred music, sacred chant, just before sleep.

Puts the contentions of wars and bickering in perspective.

Compline completes. When the grand silence arrives there needs be no further colloquy. Ask the Holy Spirit to complete your day, your life, your mind.

And it is.

Done.

It's never tomorrow. It's always and only today.

Look up to heaven and down on earth, and they will remind you of their impermanency. Look about the world, and it will remind you of its impermanency. But when you gain spiritual enlightenment, you shall then find wisdom. The knowledge thus attained leads you to the Way. - Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

 Of course truth matters. Only, not in the obvious way. It matters in that it is what keeps individuals sane. Sane, while whole groups, nations, the entire world, cultivates the prospect that insanity is a reasonable way to live.

No, truth will never be proved. Not the way we'd like it to be. Instead, there is inference, reasonable probability, justifiable action, good will and good faith integrity that refuses to affirm what you know is not true.

Maybe that's it, that's the limit of human ability -- not to know and prove the truth, but to not be diverted into surrendering to what is not true.

A withholding of assent. A standing off to the side as propaganda and illusion barrel down the street. Often, standing alone there.

There is nothing to prove.

There is only a place to stand.

Solitude; now.

Solitariness moving the world.

Found.

Today.

Too many people have died in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is time for a greater vision than currently in play.

Cloudy mountains, fold on fold,
How many thousands of them?
Shady valley road runs deep,
All trace of people gone
Green torrents, pure clear flow,
No place more full of beauty;
Birds sing my own heart's harmony.
- Shih-Te (c. 730)

Most of life is opportunity to break out of our conditioning.

War is a condition of the mind that is horrendous and terrifying.

If we choose no war -- something new might occur.

The headline was simply stated, and it triggered in me a response that mirrored conversations yesterday and today about the church. The headline was: "Catholic bishop sets day of prayer and penance for abuse victims" By Judy Harrison, BDN Staff, Posted March 26, 2011, at 1:50 p.m. 


One of the prison conversations yesterday began with a discussion of the difference between the apophatic (Via Negativa) and the kataphatic (Via Affirmativa). (Yes, there are some serious conversations among inmates.) The conversation then seemed to gravitate to whether the harmful and unkind actions of the church over and through history were because of ignorance (trying unskillfully to protect people from destructive consequences following behavior) or, whether there was an element of evil intent to the murderous punishment inflicted on women and men running afoul the power structure. Personally, I wanted just to talk about the contemplative tradition and how it differed in the catholic and protestant traditions -- but the conversations just go where they want to go.

Something about the headline and the article -- along with this morning's conversation after morning practice with an Irish curmudgeon, begged the last two days' summary.

So I posted this response to the Bangor Daily article. It felt like it came from many men.

It feels as if the time for penance has past. It feels as if the time for the church has slipped away. It further feels as if the Bishop and his advisers think that such public acts of penance somehow clear the air and set things right -- in the same way that there's a belief that remunerative payoffs somehow square things out. They don't.

In 1964, Jean Anouilh's play "Becket ou l'honneur de Dieu" (Becket or The Honor of God) was made into a film, starring Peter O'Toole and Richard Burton. In the opening scene King Henry (O'Toole) was being publicly flogged for his part in the demise of Bishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket (Burton). It was a show within a show, good form, necessary price, done and left behind.

The show of contrition, I submit, is best done in private. Forgiveness is not a spectacle. Reconciliation is not a political play. 

I recall fondly the church of my youth. I've come to mistrust it, unfortunately, as one might mistrust a long history of inconsiderate behavior, arrogance, deprecation of women, hoarding of gracious humility, and failure to embrace expansive and inclusive communion with all who long to experience the Christ of cosmic and sacramental presence. How the church can try to make of Christ a private club with rigid membership requirements -- eludes me.

I've long ago accepted and thought I'd forgiven the church it's flaws. The more difficult part is comprehending the continuing hubris of its administrators their perpetuating a rubric of "sin" and "not worthy" to our brothers and sisters who are outsiders, gay, divorced, open to birth control, or experienced the distress of abortion.  

Say it as often as you will -- neither the Catholic Church, the Protestant denominations, nor any other group claiming to represent Christ -- none of these, no one, can separate us from the love of God, the touch of Christ, the indwelling Holy Spirit, or the inner heart of each human being. It is that love, and that love alone, that will bring to peace all those excluded or abused, as well as those who exclude or abuse -- not, I hold, not payoff money or public shows of penance or any other public relations gambit.

Rather, invite people in to the heart of divine love, share the Eucharist, step out of posturing separations, and live ordinary lives of compassion and kindness, mercy and acceptance. Then, and only then, will we know that the church is not dead. And if it has slipped away, let's see to it that the proper obsequies are observed for something, someone, once loved.

These men were like lovers who'd lost their love yet have to speak of what had gone. Part anger, part wistfulness, a dash of disappointment, a clarity of irretrievable departure. I sat alone in the middle of the prison pod while a lock-in ran its course and the cells were open once again -- whatever the cause of the increased security having passed. I thought of the irony. Where else could the fierce conclusions of recognized aggression and lamentable recollection look out and see patterns of behavior in another institution known so well in their youth?

My doctrine is to think the thought that is unthinkable, to practice the deed that is non-doing, to speak the speech that is inexpressible, and to be trained in the discipline that is beyond discipline. 

Those who understand this are near; those who are confused are far. The Way is beyond words and expressions, is bound by nothing earthly. Lose sight of it to an inch, or miss it for a moment and we are away from it forevermore.    (--Sutra of Forty Two Chapters, Dailyzen.com)

The Irishman was cutting wood by the woodpile to frame the upstairs wall for bathroom. He noticed the sign I clamped to the meetingbrook sign at foot of driveway. He read it, "Quaker Meeting, Sundays 9AM-10AM, All Welcome" -- then he added, "Shhh, don't say a word!"  

Mary!
Yes?
(Isn't that just like her?)

If you want to learn the Principles,  Don't study fine bound books. 

The True Pearl's in a hemp sack

The Buddha nature rests in huts. 

Many grasp the sack

But few open it. 

-Shih Te (c. 730) 

We might as well open the sack. 

Try humanity.

Earth, flesh, ordinariness, unknowing.

Forgive yourself. You never accepted that Jesus was human.

Try not to be so focused on God -- everyone is that.

But human? Now there's a revelation!

We'll have to try it sometime.

Thanks, Mary!

Hard to imagine darkness gone forever.

Seeing the Way is like going into a dark room with a torch; the darkness instantly departs, while the light alone remains. When the Way is attained and the truth is seen, ignorance vanishes and enlightenment abides forever.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

I'd have thought light shines in and through darkness. That enlightenment was just this seeing through. And nothing, not darkness nor light, is excluded from the equation.

Each has a function.

God is what is taking place here and now.

We are one when with one another.

In this way, we are happy.

I can't help but continually wonder whether Mary will again say, 'Yes.'

Will Way and Truth find body once more?

The Governor of Maine will dismantle a mosaic. Moses he's not.

Maine Governor Paul LePage has ordered state workers to remove from the state labor department a 36-foot mural depicting the state’s labor history. Among other things the mural illustrates the 1937 shoe mill strike in Auburn and Lewiston. It also features the iconic “Rosie the Riveter,” who in real life worked at the Bath Iron Works. One panel shows my predecessor at the U.S. Department of Labor, Frances Perkins, who was buried in Newcastle, Maine.

The LePage Administration is also renaming conference rooms that had carried the names of historic leaders of American labor, as well as former Secretary Perkins.

The Governor’s spokesman explains that the mural and the conference-room names were “not in keeping with the department’s pro-business goals.”

Are we still in America?
(by Robert Reich, http://robertreich.org/post/4050985028)

It's an odd war to wage against history, labor, and the people who hold down jobs. It is the season in America of the Republican Governors.

I see people chanting a sutra
Who depend on its words for their ability to speak
Their mouths move but their hearts do not
Their hearts and mouths oppose each other
Yet the heart's true nature is without conflict
So don't get all tangled up in the words
Learn to know your own bodily self
Don't look for something else to take its place
Then you'll become the boss of your mouth
Knowing full well there's no inside or out.
- Han Shan (730)

I suppose the long view, if taken, will temper reaction. Or, maybe, it's possible, that there is something wrong with the working class, wage earners, and people who are not , well, Republicans. Time will tell. Even odd behavior by prominent people cannot withstand the test of time.

Nobody's perfect.

James Finley answers an interviewer's question about Thomas Merton:

Merton said somewhere that he learned to laugh at the very idea of perfection. This is one of the deepest points in his writings. We tend to think of there being some kind of arrival point beyond our foolishness, where we will no longer be susceptible to being just one more foolish human trying to get through another day. But Merton invites us to discover there is a profound level of our human weakness that we never get beyond. He once said, “The most real thing in your life is something you do not know and do not need to, because God loves you. It is in letting the acceptance of our weakness be our teacher that we discover the depths of God’s tender mercies.”
I say in the Merton talks I give that your issue could be having a temper, and your last act on this earth could be throwing a bedpan before you die. So from the standpoint of the ego’s quest for perfection, it’s a discouraging thought. But that’s the whole point: the mystery of our union with God is not reducible to ethical, moral, or behavioral terms. It’s not reducible to any terms at all. It’s the ultimate irrelevancy of all things less or other than the absolute love of God for us as precious in our brokenness. Some of the Christian mystics speak of the gift of tears. By this they mean the tears that flow sometimes literally, sometimes as an interior sense of quiet joy and amazement in realizing that one is infinitely loved — without foundations for that love within one’s having earned it — and then walking in that divine love, living by it day by day.
(--from interview, Gary W. Moon, Christian Meditation: Experiencing the Presence of God, A Conversation with James Finley, http://contemplativeway.org/interviews/interviews.html)

What our cranky brothers and sisters need is a good bath, a good walk, and a good laugh.

Have you heard the knock-knock joke about the interrupting cow?

Mu!

Snow through the night.

The best statements were by those there. The worst by those trying to capitalize or curry favor following it.

Derek Brogan of Engine 5 said in his personal account, one of more than five hundred oral histories the fire department amassed of firefighters who were at the scene on 9/11: "We didn't have a chance to do anything." James Murphy put it this way in his report: "We were just victims too. Basically the only difference between us and the victims is we had flashlights."
(--pg. 66 in The Terror Dream, Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America, by Susan Faludi, c. 2007)

No one can explain mystery for you. No one can say "God" and think he owns what he has spoken. We need more humility.

War again. Just like that. Another president orders death and destruction in the name of national security. A specific and narrow interpretation of national interest not to impede some people according to our chosen timetable from harming their people, especially when oil interests coincide with awakened geo-petroleum-humanitarian concern. We might not be so interested in democracy as in securing resources for our national interests. The US is wealthy and powerful, there are others out there interfering with our fantasy-ordained global bishopric, and we have the duty to preserve our corner of the kingdom of heaven.

God is curious about how it is who it is claim to know God. God says: "I am Insecure and Completely Accessible. I am without knowing how or who. I am that I am with you." God begins to wonder and worry that death and destruction are the only predicates humankind can think of placing after God's name. "I sent word that I have no predicate," God muses. "And now I have been made a grammar of death and destruction. What are they making of me?"

Those who have strong passions are never able to perceive the Way. It is like stirring up clear water with your hands; you may come wishing to find a reflection of your face, but you'll never see clearly in disturbed waters. A mind troubled and vexed with the passions is never able to see the Way.   (Sutra of Forty Two Chapters)

We have got to stop. Take a breath. And reconsider how we live. I don't think death and destruction constitute a meaningful sentence. They are existence with erroneous modifiers.

Here in Maine, at least this morning, God has no predicate. God is no predicate. God is without sentence. Rather, God is the silence before thought, during action, after word. God is, in the vernacular of contemporary expression, as in the lexicon of mystics throughout historical inquiry, "Way Itself."

God Is Way Itself!

Life is mystery. As God is. You are too. As am I.

Everything is surprise...like snow.

 How do we turn to God? Look around. See what is taking place. Don't turn away.

This is the way it is.

Let's face it.

God is with us.

Just don't try to make something out of God.