the perennial invitation

 Full bright moon through trees

Shines on best and worst of us —

Light finds its way through

do you think eighty is old

Once out of our mind

We will be the earth, this rock

Four billion years old

something not clearly heard

 Two by Merton, helping to clarify:

"The language used by Zen is therefore in some sense an antilanguage, and the “logic” of Zen is a radical reversal of philosophical logic. The human dilemma of communication is that we cannot communicate ordinarily without words and signs, but even ordinary experience tends to be falsified by our habits of verbalization and rationalization. The convenient tools of language enable us to decide beforehand what we think things mean, and tempt us all too easily to see things only in a way that fits our logical preconceptions and our verbal formulas. Instead of seeing things and facts as they are we see them as reflections and verifications of the sentences we have previously made up in our minds. We quickly forget how to simply see things and substitute our words and our formulas for the things themselves, manipulating facts so that we see only what conveniently fits our prejudices. Zen uses language against itself to blast out these preconceptions and to destroy the specious “reality” in our minds so that we can see directly. Zen is saying, as Wittgenstein said, “Don’t think: Look!”"

(-Thomas Merton, Zen and the Birds of Appetite, pp. 48-49)

And:

"You have made us together, you have made us one and many, you have placed me here in the midst as witness, as awareness, and as joy. Here I am. In me the world is present and you are present. I am a link in the chain of light and of presence. You have made me a kind of center, but a center that is nowhere. And yet I am 'here,' ... 'here' under these trees, not others. The prayers of your friends and my own prayers have somehow been answered, and I am here ... My being here is a response you have asked of me, to something I have not clearly heard. But I have responded, and I am content ...." (--Thomas Merton, Conjectures of A Guilty Bystander)

Content, yes, to look.

And be what I am looking at.

around eight minutes before

After a while, it feels silly, what I don’t know or can’t conceptualize in such a way that I could say,“Yeah, I understand that.”

Standing near midnight down by wood gate at end of driveway at Barnestown Rd, I look up over Bald Mountain at night sky at what I’m told are stars, other suns, billions of miles away as Ensō stands and stares at hedge off to the side mulling his doggy mulls.

 However you slice it, 13.8 billion years is very old indeed. By  comparison, the sun and the solar system formed around 4.6 billion years ago, life on Earth emerged 4 billion ago, our planet’s first  multicellular organisms 1.7 billion years ago and modern animals 550 million years (or, 0.55 billion years) ago, while the first modern humans (the species Homo sapiens) didn’t walk the planet until just  200,000 years ago – that’s just 0.0002 billion years back, or around a hundred-thousandth of the age of the universe.  

 

Put another way, if the history of the universe could be condensed into a year, with the Big Bang taking place just after midnight on 1 January, and the present day corresponding to midnight on 31 December, then humans arose around eight minutes before the end of the year. Modern science all happened in the last 1.4 seconds. All the timescales that we’re familiar with from everyday experience are utterly dwarfed next to the gargantuan age of our cosmos. 

(—in, The Beginning and End of Everything: From The Big Bang to the End of the Universe, by Paul Parsons, 2018)

 But, then again, I cannot comprehend the neuroscience of my brain synapses and electrical pulsations between hemispheres of my brain. I don’t know what and how the universe is, nor do I know what and how I am here or anywhere.

My zen studies suggest none of that is a problem. That the “don’t know mind” is a good one to have. And yet, that curiosity and inquiry are healthy activities to nurture.

I do my traveling from inside. Having become a reclusive and stationary abgrund-wanderer, watching concentric circles at pond on windless morning ruffle reflections of sky into wavering abyss deep below surface.

I think: here I am!

I feel that I am here — disheveled and uncertain— but here, cool air pushing through window, sunlight (8.5 minutes away from its source) on wavering branches tenuously holding pale green, orange, and red leaves.

And there is coffee to be made.

Walk to be taken.

Crossword and wordle to be figured.

Amazement that this pericope of consciousness is still able to gaze out into the existent cosmos, through the wohnküche, out barn door at patient rowboat still roped to bookshed ridgepole.

For now.

the heart of a heartless world

We seem to want joyful outcomes but not difficult journeys. We think something is wrong when things are difficult. Why, we ask, should I suffer? Why should anyone?

 Reading Caputo:

The cross is not magic. It does 

not magically dispel the course of evil, or stop glob- 

al warming, or alter the laws of thermodynamics. 

The cross is an event in which the difficulty is not 

dispelled but disclosed, not extinguished but ex- 

posed, not crossed out but made visible. The cos- 

mos at large shares the same fate as the body of 

Jesus. What mortal hand has framed the fearful 

symmetry of the crucified body of Jesus, of the 

crucified body of the cosmos, of the crucified body 

of God? The body of Jesus is a figure of both a 

human and a cosmic outcome, an icon through 

which we could catch sight, sub contraria specie, of 

the glory of God and of the world rising up from the 

difficulty. 

The difficulty is that the truth is bittersweet and 

the glory transient. Life goes hand in hand with 

death, a deeper joy with suffering and mortality. 

Only when we come face-to-face with the difficulty, 

without illusion, without compromise, without call- 

ing a good thing bad, is it possible to affirm the 

genuine glory of the world—and to do so uncondi- 

tionally, with nothing up our sleeve. I have had a 

lifelong love of mystical theology but not of the 

Neoplatonic metaphysics that back it up. At the 

heart of the dark night explored here is the Deus ab- 

sconditus who unnerved Luther himself, where both 

reason and revelation are crucified. Instructed by a 

world that as far as we can understand exists “with- 

out why,” the difficult lesson of the cross is to learn 

to live “without why.” Love is an expenditure made 

without the expectation of a return, without support 

or guarantees. Love is the heart of a heartless world, 

the difficult glory of a crucified world. 

(from, Cross and Cosmos, A Theology of Difficult Glory, by John Caputo, 2019) 

In prison today reading an excerpt from Indigenous Americans: Spirituality and Ecos, by Jack D. Forbes in Daedalus (Fall 2001), we wondered whether there is consciousness in a rock.

You might as well ask if there is consciousness in yourself.

The (proposed and nascent) law of interrelational complementarity requires a “yes” to both considerations. 

To suffer is to consequence the ignorance or denial of the realization of interrelational complementarity.

The cross is the harsh symbol of putting to death the erroneously held belief that we are separate from and not incorporated with all that is in Being.

The narration that Jesus died on such a cross is an act of love incarnating consciousness with anatta (no separate self) thus “saving” us from ignorant and harmful belief and action punishing all “anothers” as “others.”

We can, as perhaps Jesus did, come down from the cross of ruptured humanity and fragmented creation/nature so as to dwell wholly and holy in the world.

It is, after all, October. Nearing the time of the thin place.

Where wholeness and holiness reside inter-dimensionally.

Heartfully conscious of one-another.

the most dangerous person to this country

 This upcoming election should not be this close.

“He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country…a fascist to the core.” 

This is how former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer and the primary military advisor to the president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council, described former president Donald Trump to veteran journalist Bob Woodward. Trump appointed Milley to that position.  (—in Letters from an American, by Heather Cox Richardson, Oct.13, 2014)

Yet it is.

And that is beyond worrisome. 

would we were in cape breton once again

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving!

Happy Celtic Colours!

Cheers,

https://celtic-colours.com/

https://www.youtube.com/live/ao8bbdv2mgE?si=57Q43iNEZ2rzwpYu

all is tender and mild

At times, a surprising clarity.

“I think a poem, when it works, is an action of the mind captured on a page,” said Anne Carson to Will Aitken in her Art of Poetry interview, which was published in issue no. 171 of the Review. “It is a movement of yourself through a thought, through an activity of thinking, so by the time you get to the end you’re different than you were at the beginning and you feel that difference.”  (--from Anne Carson, The Art of Poetry, Interviewed by Will Aitken, issue 171, Fall 2004)

Watching season one episode ending of "House" -- he is playing piano, a meditative rendition of "Silent Night."

It occurs to me that current spiritual/meditative inquiry and scholarship looks to silence/stillness as foundational to an essential concretion of urgrund reality in human experience.

I look up lyrics and get a semiotic glimpse of word/reality so often blurred by unreflective familiarity.

Silent 

Holy night

 

Calm and bright 

All is

 

Tender and mild

The peace of

 

Heavenly

Sleep

Sometimes there is a call inviting a descent into the interior of logos where resides the energy of origin re-constituting itself (Itself) in constantly new creation and meaning.

Perhaps a transcendence beyond our religious encasements of the emergent birth of what is our referent experience.

It represents a gratitude of attention.

Something worth paying.

about 4.3 billion years ago

That’s a long time.

The Earth is thought to be about 4.54 billion years old. Along with other planets, the Earth was born in the early days of the Solar System, which first started forming about 4.6 billion years ago.

By about 4.3 billion years ago, the Earth's surface had cooled enough for water vapor in the atmosphere to condense on the surface, leading to the formation of oceans. Volcanic activity, which was more widespread at the time, released gasses that shaped the early atmosphere. Life emerged around 3.5 to 4 billion years ago in the form of simple, single-celled organisms.

The Earth has probably been as we know it today — with recognizable continents, oceans, a hospitable climate, and diverse life — for the past few hundred million years. But it continues to evolve through its own gradual tectonic and volcanic activity, and through the more rapid effects of climate change.

https://www.planetary.org/articles/how-old-is-the-earth

There’s a lot to dig up. 

A lot. 

when cars are in repair shop

spend less

on cars

don't go

anywhere

such an expense

automobiles

stay home

read books

walk,

take naps

noble peace prize 2024

Seems right. 

The two American atomic bombs that were dropped over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 killed approximately 120 000 people. A comparable number died later of burn and radiation injuries. It is estimated that 650 000 people survived the attacks. These survivors are known as Hibakusha in Japanese. 

The fate of the survivors was long concealed and ignored. In 1956, local Hibakusha associations along with victims of nuclear weapons tests in the Pacific formed The Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations, shortened in Japanese to Nihon Hidankyo. This grassroots movement soon became the largest and most widely representative Hibakusha organisation in Japan.

Nihon Hidankyo has two main objectives. The first is to promote the social and economic rights of all Hibakusha, including those living outside Japan. The second is to ensure that no one ever again is subjected to the catastrophe that befell the Hibakusha.

Through personal witness statements, Nihon Hidankyo has carried out extensive educational work on the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of the use of nuclear weapons. Hence the motto “No more Hibakusha”.   

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2024/nihon-hidankyo/facts/

Is right.

And nuclear weapons are savage and inhuman.

Jamais plus! 

p.t.barnum know how often they were born

Woodward put out an interview with Trump from the 1980’s.

Give the real estate hustler turned politician credit for finding the deficiencies in the American system of politics and exploiting them for his own benefit. 

Used to see this in street corner hustlers in Brooklyn growing up. Savvy and menacing. "Suckers," they'd say.

I'd cross the street. Same as I do now with this guy.

renaissance

Yuval points out that there is no longer any private moments, what with social media, AI, gotcha agents, or vile companions. https://youtu.be/7r5lw3jPrUk?si=xvG0FIypgJkiru-Z

Gordhamer tells of a teacher suggesting the reason for meditation is “to know your own mind…for the sake of all sentient beings.”

Excuse me for a little while. 

I’m going down into silence and stillness.

See you there.

non è vero — rupturing reality — the false

 Let’s give it a name,

This new practice of untruth —

Let’s call it non è vero

“It isn’t true” — it is not —

Like non-Being, it is not

as a fool lives does this fool

 Happy doing zilch

Reading and writing, days drip

Into each other

Joy of being nobody

With nothing to say or do

walking thirty years, murrah building

 Backhoe scratches soil

Walking snow bowl parking lot

Oklahoma bomb

peace is cheap, requiring the disuse of technologies of violence

If we lack the moral or spiritual impetus to embrace and insist on peace, is there not someone who might convince us that peace has an economic value it would be foolish to ignore?

War, of course, is very profitable. 

If one is not convinced of the inevitability of war or of war as a necessary and acceptable solution or of victory as a final good, then one may notice that the only real winners of these industrial wars are the war industries. One may notice that in the background of these wars of national defense are people for whom a war is a part of business, the payoff of an economy in many ways violent even should there be no war. And then one may begin to suspect that peace may be so little a matter of political interest because there is no money in it. War clearly is good for such an economy as ours, but who is investing in peace? Peace is in many ways a bargain for mere people and other creatures and the earth they inhabit. But peace is cheap. It requires the disuse of technologies of violence, of which the misuse is preferred by the people who count. 

 

Should we not ask if war imposes any cost upon the war industries, or upon any industry to which war is profitable? In time of war mere people are expected to put their lives at risk. This is taken for granted; it is normal. But in recent years I have been asking people who ought to know, including an army general with whom I spoke at some length, if during a war it were not normal, as a part of patriotism, for the great corporations of national defense to reduce their charges for weapons and other products sold to the government. Not one of my witnesses so far has ever heard of such a sacrifice. No, war is the business of businesses immune to the penalties paid to war by citizenship. To further baffle us there is the international arms trade, which conducts itself according to the rules merely of business in the interest merely of business.

(--Wendell Berry, Against killing children, https://www.christiancentury.org/features/against-killing-children) 

If we are only able to calculate worth by material possessions and monetary accretion, surely some genius could reconfigure our economic monopoly on value and worth into some new humane and divine ledger of meaning and purpose, imagination and compassionate being that insists on life and beauty, joy and well-being as a new currency of existence.

what-is taking place between us

 it might be simple

that which is between us is 

god -- step out, be home

on learning where god is

Then Doris brought up

Martin Buber's "I-Thou" -- ah --

it is the nuptial,

God is in-between, middle

process/presence in/through us 

when border collie/st bernard dog teaches

 In his dream long barks

He never barks when awake —

There it is — our grace

Wake up, wake up, look around

Silence, stillness, these fierce acts

rewriting the bible

 Speak for yourself, don’t

Pretend you’re God condemning 

Everyone — own it

Your smallness, dislike, anger —

Be yourself, not biblical

our destruction of children

Here's how Wendell Berry begins his article:  

Soon enough, and somewhat to my surprise, I have become an aged man. For many years I have been an advocate for the good and goods in which I have invested my heart. I am a patriot but not a nationalist. Since the Vietnam years, I have opposed our wars of national adventure, and I have opposed the extractive industrialism that passes with us for a national economy. I have opposed the dominant attitudes and technologies by which we are destroying, and have too nearly destroyed, the economic landscapes of our country, our country itself, our land. The different manifestations of our destructiveness are all parts of one thing: a global corporate economy concentrated upon the effort to turn to profit everything that can be subdued to its methods. Whatever cannot be made directly profitable—the lives and needs of children, let us say—it ignores and thus draws into the vortex of its destruction.

And so, as a “late” essay, I want to address a problem, in fact a disaster, that I have not heretofore said enough about: our destruction of children. We of the United States of America have now grown accustomed to the killing of children. We still regard it as sensational, with a remnant revulsion; it is often a “news item.” But sensation wears out fast. The roving eyes of the media hesitate a due moment over the current sensation and hurry on to the next. Perhaps experts may devote an article or column to the matter, but they also must hurry on, for disasters continue to happen, child killing is only one of them, and all must be given their moment in the schedule of sensations.

(--from, Against killing children, by Wendell Berry, in The Christian Century, October 2024)

Here's me, as happy he's still writing as I am disturbed about that which he writes. 

the laying down of being

 He said we are mind with a body.

“Nothing determines me from outside, not because nothing acts upon me, but, on the contrary, because I am from the start outside myself and open to the world. The phenomenological world is not the bringing to explicit expression of a pre-existing being, but the laying down of being.” (—Maurice Merleau-Ponty)

I am outside, being looked upon.

I am being, looking in at who I am becoming.

If you see me, anywhere, do say hello.

I’m likely to look past you, but do greet anyway. 

enter the house pappagallo

I listen to Speaker of the House being interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC this recent Sunday.

He had trouble saying anything about what he actually heard.

A nation of school kids and impressionable adults have scarce models for accurate or critical thinking. 

Instead, only, like Speaker Johnson, a pappagallo without substance or ability to speak on his own.

The mantra of his master: Repeat after me!

the need to choose well

 What could love possibly say to the callous and untrue assertions of Donald Trump, his family, and his running mate Vance, that the democrats are responsible for the assassination attempts against him and that they, the democrats, are still trying to murder him.

Dangerous and deranged.

His demolition words.

And all anyone can do is note it, repeat it, say how terrible such perseverations and lies are to the psyche of the nation.

It doesn’t only elicit anger and disappointment at the fundamental depravity of an attempt to promulgate violence and civil war, it evokes deep sorrow at the attempt and the belief that lies and blatant duplicity have any legitimate cogency in a civil society.

I reject such rhetoric.

It is not good versus evil.

It is the longing for truth versus the lust for lies.

We must choose well.

seeing nothing other than itself

 When the inner and

The outer no longer see

Anything other

Than Itself in the mirror

It is said God will appear

francis & enso, during octive

 

the dog who felt with grace his departing sea mistress

Enso watching his beloved house-companion row off to sailboat.

wary but non-wiser

There is a suave surgical misanthropy to Vance that contrasts with Trump's vulgar mocking alley slashings.

is death our turning outer into inner

 of course every

life is precious -- mirror of

the invisible

the outer of the inner

insistence and existence

attention is prayer

Rainy morning thumps

Pouring drops on plastic roof —

Sun porch forgets name

It doesn’t matter

Where or what you say —

Attention is prayer

retell it in words and in touch

 At prison this morning, with good conversation and great delight: 

Saint Francis and the Sow

BY GALWAY KINNELL

 

The bud

stands for all things,

even for those things that don’t flower,

for everything flowers, from within, of self-blessing;   

though sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on its brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing;   

as Saint Francis

put his hand on the creased forehead

of the sow, and told her in words and in touch   

blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow   

began remembering all down her thick length,   

from the earthen snout all the way

through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail,   

from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine   

down through the great broken heart

to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering   

from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and blowing beneath them:

the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

 

(— Galway Kinnell, “Saint Francis and the Sow” from Three Books. Copyright © 2002 by Galway Kinnell).

chapel/zendo, dogen&francis hermitage

 

canticle of the sun, on francis of assisi day

From Wikipedia:

Canticle of the Sun

This article is about the song composed by Saint Francis of Assisi. For the composition by Sofia Gubaidulina, see The Canticle of the Sun (Gubaidulina).

The Canticle of the Sun, also known as Canticle of the Creatures and Laudes Creaturarum (Praise of the Creatures), is a religious song composed by Saint Francis of Assisi. It was written in an Umbrian dialect of Italian but has since been translated into many languages. It is believed to be the first work of literature written in the Italian language with a known author.^[1]

Overview

The Canticle of the Sun in its praise of God thanks Him for such creations as "Brother Fire" and "Sister Water". It is an affirmation of Francis' personal theology as he often referred to animals as brothers and sisters to Mankind, rejected material accumulation and sensual comforts in favor of "Lady Poverty".

Saint Francis is said to have composed most of the canticle in late 1224 while recovering from an illness at San Damiano, in a small cottage that had been built for him by Saint Clare and other women of her Order of Poor Ladies. According to tradition, the first time it was sung in its entirety was by Francis and Brothers Angelo and Leo, two of his original companions, on Francis' deathbed, the final verse praising "Sister Death" having been added only a few minutes before.

A legend which emphasizes the topos of "brightness" says he did not physically write the Canticle, because of his blindness from an eye disease; but he dictated it and he did it looking at Nature through the eye of the mind. Father Eric Doyle wrote: "Though physically blind, he was able to see more clearly than ever with the inner eye of his mind. With unparalleled clarity he perceived the basic unity of all creation and his own place as a friar in the midst of God's creatures. His unqualified love of all creatures, great and small, had grown into unity in his own heart. He was so open to reality that it found a place to be at home in his heart and he was at home everywhere and anywhere. He was a centre of communion with all creatures".^[2]

The Canticle of the Sun is first mentioned in the Vita Prima of Thomas of Celano in 1228.

Text and translation

Original text in Umbrian dialect:

Altissimu, omnipotente bon Signore,
Tue so le laude, la gloria e l'honore et onne benedictione.

Ad Te solo, Altissimo, se konfano,
et nullu homo ène dignu te mentouare.

Laudato sie, mi Signore cum tucte le Tue creature,
spetialmente messor lo frate Sole,
lo qual è iorno, et allumini noi per lui.
Et ellu è bellu e radiante cum grande splendore:
de Te, Altissimo, porta significatione.

Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora Luna e le stelle:
in celu l'ài formate clarite et pretiose et belle.

Laudato si, mi Signore, per frate Uento
et per aere et nubilo et sereno et onne tempo,
per lo quale, a le Tue creature dài sustentamento.

Laudato si, mi Signore, per sor'Acqua,
la quale è multo utile et humile et pretiosa et casta.

Laudato si, mi Signore, per frate Focu,
per lo quale ennallumini la nocte:
ed ello è bello et iucundo et robustoso et forte.

Laudato si, mi Signore, per sora nostra matre Terra,
la quale ne sustenta et gouerna,
et produce diuersi fructi con coloriti fior et herba.

Laudato si, mi Signore, per quelli ke perdonano per lo Tuo amore
et sostengono infirmitate et tribulatione.

Beati quelli ke 'l sosterranno in pace,
ka da Te, Altissimo, sirano incoronati.

Laudato si mi Signore, per sora nostra Morte corporale,
da la quale nullu homo uiuente pò skappare:
guai a quelli ke morrano ne le peccata mortali;
beati quelli ke trouarà ne le Tue sanctissime uoluntati,
ka la morte secunda no 'l farrà male.

Laudate et benedicete mi Signore et rengratiate
e seruiteli cum grande humilitate.

Notes: so=sono, si=sii (be!), mi=mio, ka=perché, u and v are both written as u, sirano=saranno

English Translation:

Most High, all powerful, good Lord,
Yours are the praises, the glory, the honour, and all blessing.

To You alone, Most High, do they belong,
and no man is worthy to mention Your name.

Be praised, my Lord, through all your creatures,
especially Sir Brother Sun,
who brings the day; and you give light through him.
And he is beautiful and radiant in all his splendour!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars,
in heaven you formed them clear and precious and beautiful.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene,
and every kind of weather through which you give sustenance to Your creatures.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Water,
which is very useful and humble and precious and chaste.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
through whom you light the night and he is beautiful
and playful and robust and strong.

Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Mother Earth,
who sustains us and governs us and who produces
varied fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.

Praised be You, my Lord, through those who give pardon for Your love,
and bear infirmity and tribulation.

Blessed are those who endure in peace
for by You, Most High, they shall be crowned.

Praised be You, my Lord, through our Sister Bodily Death,
from whom no living man can escape.
Woe to those who die in mortal sin.
Blessed are those who will find Your most holy will,
for the second death shall do them no harm.

Praise and bless my Lord, and give Him thanks and serve Him with great humility.^[3]

--wikipedia

groundlessness and nullity

 "...into the groundlessness and nullity of inauthentic everydayness..." (re. downward plunge, in Section 38, "Fallen and Thrownness" -- Fragment of Being and Time.

Oh that Heidegger!

Spielen und Wahrheit (play and truth) on a Thursday afternoon.

and with your spirit

 I read

and write

and nap

will walk

watch crime drama

eat cashews

medical providers

know octogenarians

are curiously idiorhythmic 

smile

and think ... my work

is done here

where has all veracity gone; gone to graveyards

There is no debate in a post-truth time. There is only preening, pontificating, and pretending.

The conceit is there is a level playing field for co-equal thoughtful and subtle participants.

Fact is that Trump and Vance cannot lose in the sodden ground-ruled mechanics of the current 'debate' format. 

They lie and posture while their opponents are left to parry, flail, and vainly attempt to reach up from the quicksand of sullen untruth.