What, in the name of what is holy, is truth?

The war raging in America is between those who know what is certain and those who don't know what might be.

Both truth and lie associate with unpleasant companions.

But it is the lie that attracts most attention. Truth stays in the shadows.

If the mind congeals in one place and remains with one thing, it is like frozen water and is unable to be used freely: ice that can wash neither hands nor feet. When the mind is melted and is used like water, extending throughout the body, it can be sent wherever one wants to send it. This is the Right Mind.  

(—Takuan Soho, “The Right Mind and the Confused Mind)

Racism, sexism, elitism -- these lies are belief systems too powerful to overturn.

Watching the 2013 "Let the Fire Burn" on Independent Lens about Philadelphia 1985 confrontation with MOVE. Sorrowful. And discouraging.

Those that pray and meditate are residents of the unknown and uncertain.

Religions cannot abide those that pray and meditate.

They are dangerous.

The see what is wrong.

They see the lie of the war.

They long for truth to be felt and followed.

In the name of what is holy.

Had I known this sooner...

The future is god.

Who believes in god?

The earth is Christ.

It suffers for us; it suffers us.

God is the meaning of the future.

May

Ticks.

Ugh!

What is the sound of wholeness moving through reality?

At practice, we sit for 30 minutes, then read from What’s Next After Now, Post-Spirituality and the Creative Life, by Steven Harrison. The chapter “Surrender to What?”

This is the nature of dialog. It takes place when we’re talking with each other from a shared, open space. The language that comes out is infused with that totality. Dialog is not a debate. It’s not a philosophical discussion. And so it goes directly into our lives. Dialog means relationship, contact, and community. It means deep feeling with no escape. If dialog is anything, it is the expression of wholeness moving through reality, each of us engaged with the other.
The brilliance of wholeness is that it does innately express itself; it even expresses the inability to express. The expression may be silence. It may even be, on rare occasion, philosophical discussion. (pp.34-35)

He’s writing about quantum reality, life itself, infinite possibilities, unmanageable appearance.

Like being told that a young man with brain cancer, grandson of a practitioner friend, has little time left.

We leave a vigil candle lighted in the chapel/zendo.

In prison this morning, approaching Bible Literature as two questions:

• Have I got your attention yet?
• Are you listening?

Wholeness moving through reality.

The sound of it!

monday yurt spring

A hermitage

a place where silence and solitude

reside, at home, dwelling.

where things go when they fall

Sitting with Quakers

         Earlier

                 Spring finally

                          Life seeps out

                                      Birdsong

thirty years ago in a small movie theatre on Exchange Street Portland Maine

A woman I’d not met in a blue suit asked if I’d be watching the final two installments of the five night Berlin Alexanderplatz.

I said yes.

“Would you tell me about them when I get back from a business trip?”

I said yes.

I did. And did.

Thirty years ago today.

tell your friend if he’s died that he’s died

Shippee dies.

You’ve died.

“Really?” I hear him say.

Yeah, David, really.

“Perfect,” he says.

Eyebrows raised, he moves on.

Ha...fooled again

There is nothing outside.

Because.

There is no outside.

leaving room

Room empties. Semester final class at university; reams of papers to sort through. Close light.

I thought I’d die before completion of course.

For the Anniversary of My Death  

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day   

When the last fires will wave to me 

And the silence will set out 

Tireless traveler 

Like the beam of a lightless star  

Then I will no longer 

Find myself in life as in a strange garment 

Surprised at the earth 

And the love of one woman 

And the shamelessness of men 

As today writing after three days of rain 

Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease 

And bowing not knowing to what 

--Poem by W. S. Merwin, “For the Anniversary of My Death” from The Second Four Books of Poems (Port Townsend, Washington: Copper Canyon Press, 1993).

They leave one by one turning in self-assessment. Their presentations symbolize in obvious narrative sensitivity to one another’s voice. They are ethically attuned. Kant and Bentham are left to their deliberations; these students (as Nick said) have embodied the teaching therefore they’ve learned nothing. 

Heads up: it’s not the head that learns.

I arrive home with semi-annual vow: that’s it, no more teaching for me!

Quickly, I remind myself, read their papers, my anniversary approaches.

The surprising earth, a reverent bow, leaving room.

To listen is to be humbled

Batteries are recharged.

On wall, in socket, no light.

Maybe humanity will not destroy the earth and itself.

Especially not, upon reflection, Itself.

Long breath, short breath; feeling as unforgetting

Face silence with another silence.

Reflecting over and over mirror images of wordless, soundless love.

In water flowing downhill over stones in dark.

my darling nobody; my nobody darling

What does it mean to be dead?

It is to have given one-self for another's well-being.

Be dead in life; be alive in death!

Be Nobody's Darling 

Be nobody's darling; 

Be an outcast. 

Take the contradictions 

Of your life 

And wrap around 

You like a shawl, 

To parry stones 

To keep you warm. 

Watch the people succumb 

To madness 

With ample cheer;  

Let them look askance at you 

And you askance reply. 

Be an outcast;  

Be pleased to walk alone 

(Uncool)  

Or line the crowded

River beds 

With other impetuous 

Fools.  

On the bank 

Where thousands perished 

For brave hurt words 

They said.  

Be an outcast. 

Qualified to live 

Among your dead. 

Make a merry gathering 

But be nobody's darling;  

Be an outcast.  

Qualified to live Among your dead.

                   (--poem by Alice Walker)

Walking Ragged Snow Bowl in early morning. Sitting zazen in bookshed retreat while another practitioner sat in zendo. Reading Office of Readings, slowly, after.

No one dead; no one alive.

White dog on pallet outside door.

The sitters, one by one, leave their sitting.

One, by one, the curious experience of being (alive).

The odd monk's life -- following Isaac, Esau, and Jacob -- the undead deceptions of ongoing narrative.

Nobody knows -- the rubble -- we've seen.

The wind full of outer space

Is it easier for lovers? 

             Ah, they only manage 

                          by being together

to conceal each other's fate! 

           You still don't know? 

                     Throw armfuls of emptiness 

out to the spaces 

            that we breathe --  

                         maybe the birds 

Will sense 

               the expanded air 

                             flying more fervently.

(--from First Elegy, Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. David Young, 1976)

Thirty three years ago, Katherine gave herself to death.

"Pay your sacrifice of thanksgiving to God." (Ps. 50)

"Offer to God the sacrifice of praise." (Antiphonal 2, Office of Readings)

Qui tacet consentire!

Don't bother, I'll see myself out

One can only wonder if there is any chance to rein in the shadowy shenanigans of slippery power off to the side in this country.

Or maybe the nature of political life is deception and further deception.

It's hard to decide whether it is stupidity or sedition at play.

Beyond my pay grade. Which, by the way, is below poverty. Happily, for a mendicant.

Let go

The day runs

Out

Of minutes

Looks over edge

At tomorrow

Unpacking grip

Dirk

Died last night.

We learn.

A candle burns.

Invocation: Something there is that loves a door

         “Something there is that doesn't love a wall”                                                                                                                                                       (—from”Mending Wall,” by Robert Frost)

Graduation is a nice way of saying :

Let me show you the door —

we won’t see you around here anymore!

So let us call each other in

and let us pray

and let us say

what we are passing through —

Doors open and let us in

and doors close as we go out — 

doors, like hearts, see us through

today, in this place, with those around us

we are passing through

another door — another open space with two sides

what was before, and what will be more.

what was before, and what will be more!

so, here’s your hat

don’t be a doormat

look around, be where you’re at

and take the next step

enter this room, take a seat,

rest your feet, (isn’t this neat?)

here we are

our prayer is complete

(isn’t that sweet?) 

-- one more thing —

you, you, you are the door

you are what was before

and you are what will be more

that’s it — we arrive here

and your gift to us, the one you so lovingly share, 

is to let us in, 

where heart-is-open aware…

mind-is-clear aware…

and you a door-freely-standing...aware   

                       (wfh, for University College at Rockland, 3may2014 Commencement)

Physikos -- Pertaining to things of nature

Seven years ago this body -- not one particle of this body was what it is today. 

The curious disappearance of what I am as I remain who I am.

 φυσικός, ή, όν: Physikos: Natural, agreeable to nature.

What actually is resurrection of the body?

Take one small step out of April.

May I?

Yes you may.