saturday sitting sessihin solitary touching heart mind

We sat and breathed together four hours

Meditation retreat in hospice room

Walking meditation, silent chanting

Fingering beads, spine straight,

Looking at my life his life my life

Our life, her life, my missing the point

Bowing, touching hand, wishing well

And yes all will be just as well is

Saying goodnight to nurse telling

Woman just died as we each will

writing poem for poetry, tea, and thee

Old song, old test

I’d say, forgiving

The way she laughed 

About the chocolate chip

Cookie she’d just eaten

Or when I said I’d gained

Some weight, she looked

At me with cheerful disregard

Saying we don’t have to change that.

If I could keep her laughing

Everything would be alright

Checking boxes, no, nothing’s

Changed, I’m fine, thank you

Now that four years ago

I no longer have blond hair

We walk to end of counter

Can I read, with glasses, top line

V h t w (hesitate) p a

Another slide: q k s o g

Good, she says, returning to 

Our spot, # 132 above us

She used to walk 8 miles a day

When I tell her I walk 2. She’d 

Donated an organ to her son.

The walking was necessary.

I said good for both of them

As we went again to corner booth

She looked at me, looked at screen

Said this was you in 2011, want to

Leave that picture? Her colleague

Waiting behind her looked at me

Looked at screen, shook her head

When I said I didn’t look much different

We all smiled at one another. 

There was nothing left to say

It was just one of those things

I’ll get by as long as I have you

wfh/

19july19

broken shells on ground, skitterish birds, red squirrels, chipmunks

“The price of human suffering is very very high. I don't know what we're going to do." (hospice nurse, from, Stopping for Death, The Nurses of Wells Hospice, documentary, Kanopy)

nothing to say

one of those lookups

yesterday their anniversary

he holds a coffee cup

sharing prefix/suffix brook

evil

Here’s what Wikipedia says of evil:

One of the five paintings of Extermination of Evil portrays Sendan Kendatsuba, one of the eight guardians of Buddhist law, banishing evil.

Evil, in a general sense, is the opposite or absence of good. It can be an extremely broad concept, though in everyday usage is often used more narrowly to denote profound wickedness. It is generally seen as taking multiple possible forms, such as the form of personal moral evil commonly associated with the word, or impersonal natural evil (as in the case of natural disasters or illnesses), and in religious thought, the form of the demonic or supernatural/eternal.^[1]

Evil can denote profound immorality,^[2] but typically not without some basis in the understanding of the human condition, where strife and suffering (cf. Hinduism) are the true roots of evil. In certain religious contexts, evil has been described as a supernatural force.^[2] Definitions of evil vary, as does the analysis of its motives.^[3] Elements that are commonly associated with personal forms of evil involve unbalanced behavior involving anger, revenge, fear, hatred, psychological trauma, expediency, selfishness, ignorance, destruction or neglect.^[4]

Evil is sometimes perceived as the dualistic antagonistic binary opposite to good,^[5] in which good should prevail and evil should be defeated.^[6] In cultures with Buddhist spiritual influence, both good and evil are perceived as part of an antagonistic duality that itself must be overcome through achieving Nirvana.^[6] The philosophical questions regarding good and evil are subsumed into three major areas of study:^[7] Meta-ethics concerning the nature of good and evil, Normative ethics concerning how we ought to behave, and Applied ethics concerning particular moral issues. While the term is applied to events and conditions without agency, the forms of evil addressed in this article presume an evildoer or doers.

Some religions and philosophies deny evil's existence and usefulness in describing people.

Etymology

The modern English word evil (Old English yfel) and its cognates such as the German Übel and Dutcheuvel are widely considered to come from a Proto-Germanic reconstructed form of *ubilaz, comparable to the Hittite huwapp- ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European form *wap- and suffixed zero-grade form *up-elo-. Other later Germanic forms include Middle English evel, ifel, ufel, Old Frisian evel(adjective and noun), Old Saxon ubil, Old High German ubil, and Gothic ubils.

The root meaning of the word is of obscure origin though shown^[8] to be akin to modern German Das Übel (although evil is normally translated as Das Böse) with the basic idea of transgressing.^[9

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil

Follow the link for a much more comprehensive treatment of evil in Wikipedia.

learn, face to face, something true and loving

Remembering Eric Garner. (d. 17july2014)
Remembering Freddie Gray.
Remembering Michael Brown.
Remembering Sandra Bland.
Remembering Tamir Rice.
Remembering Philando Castile.
Remembering Samuel DuBose.
Remembering Terence Crutcher.
Remembering Sylville K. Smith.
Remembering Walter Scott
And all those I can't remember or don't know.

Kevin: Oh, I don't want to do it. I'm a very emotional person when it comes, like, stuff like this. And crying is, like, hard not to do. 

Dave: Well, somebody got to cry for us all, you know. 

Kevin: Yeah, man. I think that's what I do a lot of the time. 

Dave: You crying for everybody? 

Kevin: I think I cry for, you know, everybody. Yeah. 

Dave: Thank you.

(from documentary, Copwatch, directed by Camilla Hall, 2017, on Kanopy) 

We note and have gratitude for:

Ramsey Orta
Kevin Moore
David Whitt
Jacob Crawford

We start out not even looking at one another. Then we watch one another. Soon, we fervently trust, we will see one another -- and learn, face to face, something true and loving.

...   ...   ...

(For background, cf Fearing For His Life, The Cost of Recording Police Brutality in The Verge, 13mar2019, by Chloé Cooper Jones) 

is, indeed, wrong

For many of us, outrage and incomprehension have run their course with this president. 

A new calculus emerges. Perhaps all that Trump says is wrong with America is, indeed, wrong.

Just because the messenger is thoroughly distasteful and reprehensible it doesn't mean that the message isn't true.

Trump is possibly right -- America is a dark and hateful place.

That, and the need to mistrust every agency currently operating in the government, along with the need to give credence only to proprietary corporate interests, becomes a dizzying and depressing prospect.

Thank God, some say,  Trump has arrived!

s l i p

Sitting silence, no one is saying anything. 

In this silence, all are gathered listening as presence with one another. 

We are between one another. 

An inter-presence. 

Can you feel it?

Silent listening inter-presence.

Yes?

Yes!

Unless you are the president of the United States.

Then "no" is the operative word.

No Blacks. No Puerto Ricans. No Palestinians. No Somalis.

Only white men.

Women, some women, are ok as long as they compliment white men.

It is 2019. The president tells four women to go back to the countries they came from.

Go back to Massachusetts. Go back to Michigan. Go back to Minnesota. Go back to New York City.

He doesn't mean country. He means go back to wherever it is that people of color, that women of color should hide themselves and not interfere with their white betters; those who bet that fear of difference will motivate votes for the man in the White House; those who delude themselves that because of their white skin color they are better than others.

Something has broken right in front of our eyes.

Is broken.

Its time to sweep up the broken pieces and place them in the dustbin.

Take then to the dump.

And drive out of that place of refuse, take a left turn, and return too affirmation.

Accepting what is coming to be.

A community of people attempting to become human.

Face to face.

Attending.

Silent listening inter-presence.

Grüß Gott...

some think it is an eternal battle

Yes, racist, misogynist, and cynical, he is that.

But that's not what will bring him down. What will finally toss him on the heap of disgrace is his failure to love the people he serves, failure to love his wider family, failure to love anything but his own mirror image and narrow understanding of his self.

Not only is he not great, his idea of America is small and pinched.

While his Christian backers have abandoned their original Christ for a pusillanimous president antithetical to all Christ-taught values, we are exhausted by the cynical efforts to raise Trump to the status of untouchable sovereign embodying the opposite of love.

Some think it is an eternal battle, exemplified and being waged in our time. 

Will love prevail over hate? Will unifying good find its way through divisive evil? Will the heart of America heal and rebound from the attack it is suffering? 

you don't say

Ordinary mind is the Buddha.

Zen is the everyday.

Is that why there are so few zen buddhists?

and the world needs to figure out when that is

Hospice nurse says, “ I do all my peopling here. When I’m at home I need my alone time.”

She says it for me.

Two of them banter. One says to other, “You don’t need alone time, you like to be with people.”

“No,” the other says, “I get peopled out too, and I need my alone time, and the world needs to figure out when that is.”

constituted by my relations

 Interconnection.

To approach these issues, something must be said about the fourth principle, anatman, the doctrine of no-self. The recognition that there is no self is a key step on the path to enlightenment, but people are often confused about what this means. One way to clarify this is to note the implications of the notion of interconnectedness. Since everything is what it is by virtue of its relations to other things, this means that I as an individual am constituted by my relations to other people, institutions, places, actions, etc. There is no self-grounding inner core of the individual. Our lives are entirely dependent processes. 

Since my life is a function of relationships with others, the only way I can make my life better (not worrying for the moment about what counts as better) is by making everyone else’s life better. That is to say, the only motive I could have for trying to make the lives of others worse is the notion that I could thereby make my life better in some way, but pratityasamutpada makes this impossible. This notion is reflected in the game: It cannot be good to win in Go because it is not bad to lose. This is because the aim of achieving greater understanding is often more effectively facilitated by losing than by winning. 

(From, The Game of Go, Can a board game teach the principles of impermanence, interdependence, compassion, and no-self? By William S. Cobb, in Tricycle, SPRING 1999 

Who am I?

Snoozing cat on plank above kitchen. Another snoozing cat on red fire-rug in front of seasonally out-of-work wood stove.

Empty yoghurt container next to black thermos on brown bookcase.

Who are you?

slip

Silent listening inter-presence.

wooden dinghy rowing skiff

drenching rain, catspaw

this Friday morning  by barn —

dark blue bottom paint

from the rising of the sun to its setting

Benedict

Ora et labora

Monasticism

Feastday

and there she remained

Phrases we hear: religion without churches; spirituality without religion; Christ without Christianity. There is a longing for integrity-in-itself without the caprice of political or organized surround — that which immediately compromises and trivializes the original inspiration.

The origin of religious feeling is a profound connection and interconnection that skirts the commonly held belief that we are separate and alienated from one another, the earth, cosmos, and God.

I trust a return to integral religious identity as interbeing expressions of unfathomable reality-truth is upon us. What it will be called, what shape it takes, what direction it points is not yet clear.

Nevertheless, as an article in Huffpost Highline titled behold, the millennial nuns augurs, there is a deepening of the heart and mind toward something beyond name, or design, or roadmap — maybe more of an aphasiac or mystical emergence of what one thinker called “The Ever-Present Origin.”  By any other name, what we have taken to calling “God among us.”

Traditional philosophical metaphysics tries to grasp this as Being, Nature, Truth, Essence, Becoming.

I’m good with this attempt to word. I’m better with this urge to engage. I’m best when I admit I don’t know, can’t imagine, and continue to put one foot in front of the other.

Mostly, and here is where I currently land, I suspect there is no other, only a non-dual whole wherein everything is reflection of everything else, and “we” are life’s longing for itself with mysterious intimacy and profound urgency.

Tolstoy quotes the gospel saying “do not resist evil.” Perhaps this is meant to suggest we do not resist the separating impulse, the inclination to miss the point, the frustrating temptation to make things better — all of which pull us from our frantic restless searching. Rather, in our uncertainty, it might benefit us to stumble toward le point vierge.

Forthwith, as my aunt Ronnie used to say when her stories ran out of steam, “And there she remained*.”

...   ...   ...

* remain | rəˈmān | 
verb [no object] continue to exist, especially after other similar or related people or things have ceased to exist: a cloister is all that remains of the monastery. • stay in the place that one has been occupying: her husband remained at the beach condo. • [with complement] continue to possess a particular quality or fulfill a particular role: he had remained alert the whole time. • be left over after others or other parts have been completed, used, or dealt with: several years remain in the transition period. 

imperceptibly imbibed

Tolstoy, in What I Believe, writes that it was the words "Do not resist evil" that stopped him and turned around his thinking and life.

Never return evil, but enter life eternal by returning loving and kind example.

Hard task -- and impossible, without grace.

And what is grace?

That which is --

always --

present

sam and susan's dory, 9july19, camden harbor

dreary such when so

Perhaps we have not understood the Incarnation. Popular rendering is that God became man.

What if the Incarnation points to the event, begun but nowhere near completion, wherein everything coheres and matures in each particular appearance. God becoming creation, God becoming human, God becoming itself -- these formulations express the movement of wholeness through individual manifestations whose interior urge turns to significant attraction, an emergence through dichotomy toward synchronous presence-appearance. In other words, that which is becomes completely that which is. 

Phenomenology should not and cannot decide a priori (i.e., prior to my relation  with the Other and with the World) how to classify phenomena -- as if it were an old librarian shelving books under the right call number. This chiasmus becomes the cross on which religion and secularism would have to sacrifice their logic. Religion law, and ethics can, in the proper circumstances, play a crucial role in pointing us toward the eschaton of the Incarnation, but they are never more than ladders that must be left behind in time. 

(--p.33, Toward a Fourth Reduction? by John Panteleimon Manoussakis, chapter in After God, Richard Kearney and the Religious Turn in Continental Philosophy, 2006)

It is not surprising that we are fairly stupid.

What is surprising is that we have not (yet) eradicated ourselves from this planet.

The obtuseness and impertinence of our egoistic preening is beyond any comprehension. That, and the financial rewards accrued to pomposity, celebrity, and outrageous memes of notoriety are breathtaking.

Emily Dickinson helps in this:

I'm Nobody! Who are you? (260)

I'm Nobody! Who are you? 

Are you—Nobody—Too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Don't tell! they'd advertise—you know!

How dreary—to be—Somebody!

How public—like a Frog—

To tell one's name—the livelong June—

To an admiring Bog! 

 ( Emily Dickinson - 1830-1886  )

 Just because such is so, it doesn't mean there our minds should go.