It does seem funny
that such a man
will be president
…again
Boléro
BY KEITH LEONARD From the kitchen, I catch the neighbor cross the street to switch off my car’s interior lights. He returns to his house without announcing the favor. For the last three years, a friend has woken early and walked the beach, combing for bottle caps and frayed fishing line. She mentions this only casually at lunch, after I’ve asked what she did that morning. Care has a quiet soundtrack: the sycamore’s rustling leaves, your nails tracing my shoulder blades. A melody that repeats—a bit like Ravel’s Boléro. When it was first performed, a woman shouted, Rubbish! from the balcony. She called Ravel a madman. I think I understand. I wish I didn’t. I’ve been taught that art must have conflict, that reason must meet resistance.
Source: Poetry (December 2023) (for audio)
When I was involved with agencies of "care" I'd blithely say that "Care is being-with in everydayness."
I taught staff in agencies caring for the profoundly mentally disabled, those abandoned and neglected, those requiring alternative or special education, or those dependent and abused. We'd wrestle with "care" -- other-care, self-care, Care-itself. We'd use poetry, theater, psychology, philosophy, social science, and personality preferences.
Leonard is right. Always conflict. Always resistance.
In prison yesterday one of the men, while reading about mind and rationality, gaps in time and breath, put down the text and wondered whether those with Down Syndrome had anything to do with, what he called, (I think) "originary brain" in contrast to rational brain. He wondered if the sweetness and affection so often displayed on the part of a Down syndrome person was the consequence of some original state of wisdom that hides behind-below-beyond our typical exercise of knowledge, reason, logic, and calculation.
A compelling
meditation:
non-resistance,
conflict-less
being-with
one an-other
as care
just might
be
sounding through
these days
my heart
tells me
make no
long-range
plans
not out
of lack
of affection
but shortness
of time
remaining
so I walk Enso
to spinnaker
he meets 'Dutch'
they play as I
talk to couple
off mountain run
one step at
a time
two stops for
brook sipping
back down
passed yurt
meditation
cabin
book shed
into barn
perking coffee
English muffin
two cats
too early
for noon treat
the silent room
bird feeder filled
yellow finch
cross is empty
grave is empty
this empty mind
cannot compute
room is empty
words are empty
history is emptying
itself into narcissism
where a smiling fool
cashes in and out
meanwhile, emptiness
slays such nothingness
In prison today, we read Beyond Time, (Finding the gaps between past, present, and future) by His Eminence the Seventh Dzogchen Rinpoche
In it, this:
This gap may seem like a small seed of something greater, but it is very powerful. In that moment, you no longer believe your dualistic perceptions and gain a fleeting glimpse of an incredible peace that is beyond language. Clarity gives you that experience. From time to time, you will have spontaneous experiences of spaciousness and peace, but these spontaneous experiences happen only when you are resting in the gap, and there is no reason or purpose to them. That is Dzogchen practice. That is the experience of buddhanature. When your thoughts dissolve in that moment, wisdom can arise.
We have wisdom already, but we need the space to recognize it. The mind and wisdom always go together. We can take the example of smoke and fire to understand how this works. You know there is a fire when you can say, “I see smoke over there.” If there is smoke, there must be fire. In the same way, if there is a mind, there must be wisdom. There is no mind without wisdom. That’s very necessary to understand. Smoke comes from fire; fire never comes from smoke. Similarly, the mind comes from wisdom. That’s how it is.
You have wisdom within you, but it can’t lead if you don’t concentrate the mind. Only ignorance will lead you. You need to minimize the thoughts and stress in your mind so that it becomes very clear, like a cloudless sky. When the mind is free of thoughts, it has a lot of space and peace. That is how wisdom and concentration go together. Wisdom is there, but if you don’t concentrate, wisdom will not be able to lead you. Your meditation is perfect when wisdom can lead. When mind is leading you, you are a sentient being. When mind is resting, you are a buddha. You experience that moment of resting in the gap. That moment is enlightenment.
(--in Tricycle, Winter 2024)
Timeless time.
"Still" time.
Just sitting around a table.
In conversation.
(for J.E.)
his hands on boats
but his mind
went two places
at same time
the rowing lady
writes to say
he died last week
in ICU
heart, she thought --
how he'd stretch out
on wooden bench
by fireplace in shop
his demons lean by
scupper, lines arrayed
on deck, he wends,
sliding them overboard
When I pray, and I do, to whom or what do I pray?
Let’s say, God.
And what is this “God” ?
I’m not sure.
“God” might be Being. God might be Life. God might be the very Inward Reality of each Millimeter of this Cosmos wherein I dwell.
That from which I will (often enough) try to step out and aside from, from time to time.
Of course, you might ask, where can you possibly go?
Перешагни, transgresser, überschreiten (i.e. transgress, step over). The attempt to egress the Reality wherein we live and breathe and have our being.
But, you might ask, how is that possible and still remain in existence?
Now…now…you are praying.
…
Psalm 50 | |
Miserére mei, Deus, * secúndum magnam misericórdiam tuam; Et secúndum multitúdinem miseratiónum tuárum, * dele iniquitátem meam. Amplius lava me ab iniquitáte mea: * et a peccáto meo munda me; Quóniam iniquitátem meam ego cognósco: * et peccátum meum contra me est semper. Tibi soli peccávi, et malum coram te feci: * ut iustificéris in sermónibus tuis, et vincas cum iudicáris. |
Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy,And according to the extent of your goodness blot out my transgressions.Wash me more and more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.For I acknowledge my trespasses, and my sin is ever before me.
The thing about prayer is the unknowing it engenders. To engender is to cause to come into existence. A procreation of nescience. This absence of knowing, this unknowing, is the beginning of contemplation. Contemplation is the residing with what-is coming into existence.
Some might see this as radical acceptance.
|
We spoke about Spinoza at Friday Evening Conversation.
Someone was curious about his idea of God.
Spinoza argued that whatever exists is in God. The divine being is not some distant force, but all around us. Nothing in nature is separate from Him: not people, animals or inanimate objects. Today, the view that God is synonymous with nature is called “pantheism,” and this term is often retrospectively applied to Spinoza. Whatever the label, the view was—and still is—portrayed as a denial of God’s transcendent power. Spinoza was accused of denying the ontological difference between God and His creations, thereby trivialising the creator.
Lambert van Velthuysen, the governor of Utrecht during the philosopher’s lifetime, wrote that “to avoid being faulted for superstition,” Spinoza had “cast off all religion.” “I don’t think I am deviating far from the truth, or doing the author any injustice, if I denounce him for using covert and counterfeit arguments to teach pure atheism,” he wrote of the Theologico-Political Treatise. More recently, Steven Nadler, an acclaimed Spinoza expert, has argued that “God is nothing distinct from nature itself” for the 17th-century thinker. Carlisle sees the Catholic philosopher Charles Taylor as offering a broadly similar reading.
But, in fact, these characterisations are awry. Spinoza’s philosophy does not trivialise God in the slightest. It is true that in his conception God is intimately bound up with nature. But just because God is not separate from the world that does not mean He is identical to it. Actually, He is distinct, because there is a relationship of dependence that travels only one way: we are constitutionally dependent on God, but God is not dependent on us, argues Spinoza.
For Spinoza, everything we are, and indeed the continued existence of all things, is a manifestation of God’s power. Carlisle uses the term “being-in-God” to describe this aspect of Spinoza’s thought: the way we are created by—and conceived through—God.
(From, Spinoza’s God: Einstein believed in it, but what was it?! By Alex Dean)
We seem to want to make God something other than God might actually be.
This concerned Spinoza.
As we too, today, are concerned.