if i didn't care

 i didn't know i had left

until i discovered

i was gone

the dark of that pit of hell

The juxtaposition always amazes. Feast of Transfiguration; Feast of Hiroshima, 6August.

The shining through transparence of peculiar atoms and photons and something beyond credulity.

Aghast, the imponderable revelation of two things beyond understanding.

Let Us Be Midwives! An untold story of the atomic bombing

                    --by Sadako Kurihara, translated by Richard Minear

 

Night in the basement of a concrete structure now in ruins.

Victims of the atomic bomb jammed the room;

It was dark—not even a single candle.

The smell of fresh blood, the stench of death,

The closeness of sweaty people, the moans.

From out of all that, lo and behold, a voice:

"The baby’s coming!"

In that hellish basement,

At that very moment, a young woman had gone into labour.

In the dark, without a single match, what to do?

People forgot their own pains, worried about her.

And then: "I'm a midwife. I’ll help with the birth."

The speaker, seriously injured herself, had been moaning only moments before.

And so new life was born in the dark of that pit of hell.

And so the midwife died before dawn, still bathed in blood.

Let us be midwives!

Let us be midwives!

Even if we lay down our own lives to do so.

 

Sadako Kurihara (1913 – 2005) was a poet, writer and peace activist who survived the Hiroshima bombing. “Let Us Be Midwives” was based on her experience in a shelter in the aftermath of the bombing. (In reality, the midwife survived and was later able to meet the child she had delivered.) Translator Richard Minear is professor emeritus at UMass Amherst.​

The baby's coming!

The midwife dies.

Equipoise and equinimity. 

One in the advent of light.

The other in throes of darkness.

The perfectly balancing scale.

There are sins, they say, too big for forgiveness, no matter the fabricated narratives of justification. The bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are such sins.

America, the midwife of breaching peace, is slowly, surely dying eighty one years later still insisting that murdering innocent people advances our prosperity, wealth, and unassailable power.

The poet had the midwife die. That was poetic license. True or not, the poem, without footnote, is the truer fact.

America knows you can't kill violence, calculated casualties of war and deception, nor cynical narratives that praise the American way.

War is our religious ritual during which the high minister grabs money, praises God, and rubes his followers for his good luck.

Οὔτις μῆτις

There’s a long tradition being no one. 

Those incapable of it, become someone.

Then there are those who become someone special.

They’re the ones to avoid.

In the original Odyssey, Polyphemos talks to Odysseus and his men, and Odysseus tricks him by offering him a skin of fine Ismarian wine. Polyphemos, who has never tasted alcohol, drinks the wine and loves it. He asks Odysseus’s name, and Odysseus replies that his name is Οὔτις (Oútis), which means “No One.”

This pseudonym is doubly meaningful. First, it symbolically represents the fact the Odysseus, who is separated from his home and family, is alienated from his old identity. The second half of the epic, in which Odysseus gradually reunites with the members of his household and the symbols of his identity, represents him regaining the identity that he has lost.

Second, the name “No One” represents Odysseus’s signature trait, which is his cunning, because another word for “No One” in Ancient Greek is μήτις (mḗtis), which is homophonous with the word μῆτις (mêtis), meaning “cunning.” Thus, Odysseus has, in effect, told the Kyklops that his name is both “No One” and “Cunning.”

(--from Tales of Times Forgotten, Making the Distant Past Relevant to the Present Day, An Ancient Historian’s Breakdown of Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Odyssey’, by Spencer McDaniel)

Put the two Greek words together (Οὔτις μῆτις) and you get “No One Cunning").

A curious yet intriguing identity, a singular way to be.

It’s not something you strive to attain.

It’s what you are.

Without effort.

Or intrigue.

turning of a page

 I suppose it was inevitable

the downslide into narrow cavern

sidestepping along cave entrance

damp ceiling slick stone musty smell

it’s not that there’s nowhere to go

it’s where you find yourself, a cusp

the turning of a page, where once you read

now you scan Greek poetry for dactyls 

an ancient mythic race portending meaning

but offering only shadowy glimpse of ogres

framed by crevace slant of light, unclimbable

escape, wedged in wet incubation of dark promise 

delaying coin

 Mitch is waiting

For Donald

Before paying Charon 

after coffee the smack-down

 Most christian politicians

Don’t want Jesus to come back

Their Donald is their savior

There have been heresies before

But this “corruption and evil are holy”

Is begging God to wake up and smack down

incubation

 This dark time

While stuck in dark

Dark covers readiness

You just have to wait

each time

 Disagree with me

Tell me I’m wrong

You might be right

You probably are

The great gift of colloquy 

Demands scrutiny

A candle and incense 

belief gone, now only

Suspension of judgment

Things and acts only themselves

The entire universe within me

Without me, everything is itself

Everyone is the Genesis story

Everyone the Virgin birth

Everyone Judas’ choice

Everyone an ambiguous resurrection

Go ahead, ply your opinions

Tell me I’m wrong, you’re right

You’re right I’m wrong

“What’s wrong will always be wrong”

(Wrote Richard Hugo)

But what’s right

Is each time

Created new

now i'm invited

 Poems and nuns and ancient times. And the curious statement about karma.

Worldly people who do not understand me

Call me by my worldly name of Old Zhou.

You invite me to a seven-day religious feast,

But the feast of meditation knows no end.               --Huixu (431-499)

Our morning dooryard sit underway. 

Yesterday morning, in torrential rain, I sat in green chair with raincoat and black umbrella in an act of odd continuation of some unexplainable new ritual of idiorrhythmic import, some karmic justification of some previous practice beyond memory.

Attention turns to poet nun.

It appears that there is only one extant nun’s poem that predates the Benxing poems. Interestingly, it also one of the earliest recorded Buddhist death-verses, preserved in the Biqiuni zhuan. In the entry for the nun Huixu 慧緒 (431–499), it is said that when she was sixty-nine she attended a vegetarian feast in her honor, and though she was in good health and spirits she noted that it was a fine occasion to say farewell.37 After brushing the following poem for her royal hostess, she took her leave and died a month later.

世人或不知 People in the world who don’t know

呼我作老周 call me “old Zhou!”

忽請作七日 Now I’m invited to a seven-day [feast],

禪齋不得休 but the feast of dhyāna never ends.38

Both Huixu’s poem and the Benxing poems sound the familiar theme of the evanescence of worldly pleasures. Huixu’s poem, written by a fifth-century nun whose life was punctuated by the effects of regime change, pokes fun at the random nature of worldly disrespect and worldly honor in a jaunty manner. The Benxing poems, written by or for a nun lamented by a bevy of peers with the resources to leave a lasting memorial, are elaborately morose. Let us take a closer look at the rich legacy of doom and gloom that supported the founding and maintenance of the Bao shan site. 

 

Eschatological pessimism was part of the spirit of the Bao shan founder Lingyu’s sixth-century era. During Lingyu’s lifetime there were intermittent civil wars following the break-up of the Northern Wei, the Buddhist persecution (574–577) by Emperor Wu of the Northern Zhou, the spectacular Buddhist efflorescence under the Northern Qi, and the wars preceding reunification under the Sui. Lingyu’s Dilun (TenStages) exegetical tradition was centered in the capital of Ye during the short-lived Eastern Wei and Northern Qi dynasties, where there was widespread belief that the power of the teachings of Śākyamuni Buddha were spent and the Dharma had entered its final stage (moshi 末世 or mofa 末法).39

(—from © T’ang Studies Society 2009 

t’ang studies, No. 27, 2009, 40–65

The Literary Lives of Nuns: Poems

Inscribed on a Memorial Niche for the

Tang Nun Benxing

by Wendi Adamek

Stanford Humanities Center, USA 

 

Fifteen hundred and twenty six (1526) years ago, regime change and eschatological pessimism, and yet, and yet, the positing of meditation (dhyāna) as balm and antidote.

In addition, on page 46, this:

In Buddhism, the female body is considered to be the karmic result of past evil deeds manifesting in the particular hardships women endure, namely, leaving her own family to be married, menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and the obligation to wait on a man.12 Sengshun’s extreme practices could be understood in this context; women practitioners were assumed to have more karmic residue to clean up, and therefore they had to work twice as hard.13 Though the vocations of all the women memorialized at Lanfeng shan are likely to have been viewed in this light by themselves as well as others, in the other memorials we see different facets of practice emerge. (ibid) 

 

This mythological and morphological observation is intriguing.

As is the historical dance done with real and phantasmic sisters who’ve 

crisscrossed my life and held my affection and love.

 

All the invitations, demurrals, and wind-hovering winging along 

funnels of lift and turns bringing me there then and here now.

Who are we?

Really? 

with-drawal

 having fallen away

tumbling ass over teapot

there seems no end to falling

there is an odd belief

that almighty god sent his son

to suffer and die on a cross

it's a curious story, very curious --

If you want my opinion I don't have one

religion has packed its bag and left

God backs out of cosmos

real estate holdings crumble

Pipes leak, musty basements

That’s the way it is with falling

No telling where you’ll land

Or whether you will

Once I would sit in back of a church

Observing the nothing happening

Emanating out red flickering candle

squandering my existence

Will is lost

Such a mistake

The longing for power

gone

 Nap

Sinking into 

Nothing else

it's how things are

 bad guys rob banks

rob people, hurt others

there's always, they say, 

a choice, you know --

May you, may I 

choose well, be well

every image and form / can never wither

Reading about Charlie Kirk murder.

Is anything ever what it seems to be?

Ever?

Something has existed

Before heaven and earth;

Shapeless and silent

In its origin,

Yet the master of

Every image and form

Can never wither

With the passing of time.

(--Bankei, 1622-1693)

Some say every event, thought, action, word is preserved in some collected accumulation of akashic record there for all time encompassing all space everywhere for everything. It is all preserved.

And will be sorted out.

Perhaps.

Some call this belief God, a particular judgment, a general judgment, a reckoning of justice, a response of love that will either raise or lower the actors involved with every act.

I don’t know.

Chipmunk runs across gravel driveway.

Ensō takes in the morning doing dooryard zazen with semaphore ears. 

Justice is a good idea.

Bald Mountain across road silently concurs. 

night

 The mosquito

Didn’t know

What hit him

meaning remains a circle / beyond the possibility of understanding

"Attune to our bodies rather than using them as tools,” reads the person in the other chair. It is from the book Luminous Darkness by Deborah Eden Tull. 

We dwell so often, it seems to me, as fragmented and separated bodies and beings. We forget that there is only one being within which everyone and everything is isomorphically wholed.

Pain, joy, sorrow, calm.

The moon and the paper are the same white

The pupil of the eye and the ink, both black.

This mysterious meaning remains a circle,

Beyond the possibility of understanding.

(—-Sokuhi 1616-1671)

Each experiences and feels it all. But we do not understand. 

The ego cries “me, me, me!”

No.

We are the whole of it reaching into the soul of the whole.

4:44am

Up for hour.

Inform prison not ready

To return for meetingbrook

Friday conversations

Bare light on silver stovepipe

Rising from wohnküche

As monks chant prime from France 

Cold chamomile tea tries to satisfy

and i will sing a lullaby

Provolone cheese and tuna fish

A slice of quiche —

Evening meal

In a time of diminishing taste

My mind quiets

Between emptiness and dementia

As photons of consciousness

Bump and ping and scatter off

you shall then find wisdom

 I’d like to find some wisdom. 

If it leads to the “Way” that’d be good.

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)

I can wait.

I like the idea that ‘good' is within our reach.

And that ‘the Way’ beckons those longing for it.

That it is worthwhile, uplifting, and consoling.

adjutórium meum inténde

 Middle of night reading

Has it always been this way?

Cool breeze over feet

Cool breeze over head —

O breeze, come to our assistance!

small

 Dr. Anthony Fauci is a good and honorable man.

The republican senators led by Rand Paul on his committee are less so.

They embarrass themselves. They embarrass us.

dearth of education

vulgar petty and vindictive

the leader teaches children

how to avoid virtue and grace 

no guest or host as such

Reading Michael Connelly novels. The step by step of the legal comings and goings of courtrooms, attorneys, intrigues, secrets, evidence, assorted crimes, the ennui, the innuendo, the shenanigans, the bare fabric of truth, the sometimes cynicism of justice.

Then this from Ch’iu Wei (8th c):

On the mountain top one thatched hut,

Thirty li from roads.

Knock on the door: no disciple to answer;

Look in: only a table for tea. 

 

The firewood cart is covered;

Have you gone fishing in the autumn stream?

I look among the pools, but miss you;

I try but fail to pay you my respects.

Grass shines in the fresh rain; 

 

Pines murmur at evening windows.

Here at this moment a harmony,

Profound and unrivaled.

The self completely cleansed, 

 

The heart, the ear.

Although there is no guest or host as such,

I’m able to intuit your pure thought.

Purpose fulfilled, I head back down the mountain.

No need now to wait for you.

    --Ch’iu Wei (8th c)

Qiu Wei (traditional Chinese: 邱為; simplified Chinese: 邱为; pinyin: Qiū Wéi, 694–789?^[1] was a Chinese poet during the Tang dynasty, with one of his poems being included in the famous anthology Three Hundred Tang Poems.

Qiu Wei's poetic career coincided with the major flourishing of the Tang poetry styles; within which, he was grouped in with the Fields and Gardens Poets Group (田园诗派), along with such poets as Meng Haoran, Wang Wei, Chang Jian, and Pei Di. He had one poem collected in Three Hundred Tang Poems; which is a five-character old-style (Gushi)^[2] of Classical Chinese poetry form, translated by Witter Bynner as "AFTER MISSING THE RECLUSE ON THE WESTERN MOUNTAIN”.  (wikipedia)

There are signs and remnants everywhere. People arrive, stay for days, I do not see them. Like a wraith occupying a different dimension I remain out of view. I breathe, nap, and read. I practice an upside-down overlay of shikantaza and zazen. A spate of incense, a flicker of candle. I occupy my cell. 

Even so I am barely in that place. Dreams take me away. An assortment of sleep-dreams bring different people into different scenarios without any intention or plan. These short films of otherly-pre-conscious awareness sets me always elsewhere wondering how to get back home.

Wherever that is.

I take pills and sip tea.

Steam rises from cup.

Cellophane from cinnamon streusel coffeecake wavers in breeze from open window, falls to rug.

I no longer have any thought of the day, nor of tomorrow. 

I want to leave a note: 

No need to wait for me, go on your own!

night yard

 Misty rain

Mountain draws close

Into itself

you don’t have to believe in god, search yourself

 I’ve been thinking

 of the universe

I’ve been thinking

Of this my body

Not two things

Grace itself

this one this one this one

 My breath

Is uncertain

Lungs are welcoming

I count to eight

With each series

In breathing out

My reclusion

Will soon

Have stone unrolled

The strange commerce

My fellow air-breathers

Will wander by(e)

seule

 As a hermit

I remain alone

Nothing personal

Just solitude

your eyes look for faith

Bach again:

 'Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben',

So it sounds.

But what would faith look like?

a thousand changes and myriad transformations

It's an old assignment.

Philippians 2:12  -- "Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling,"   NIV

To 'obey' is "to submit to the authority of" something or someone. 

It's as though "fear and trembling" is a mandated condition of human life.  Is fear and trembling the authority in life? Has it always been so?

 When you look closely, 

you see that people of the present 

are none other than people of old,

and the functions of the present

are none other than the functions of the past;

even going through a thousand changes

and myriad transformations,

here it is just necessary

for you to recognize it first hand

before you can attain it.

                    (--Foyan, 1067-1120)

We seem to fear both the known and the unknown. Studying my German phrases in school I remember 

Habt keine Angst -- have no fear. Or, Fürchte dich nicht -- do not be afraid, (perhaps for classical friends here as composed by Bach.) 

Jesus did say "fear not" or "do not be afraid many times in the gospels.

Who, then, is our teacher? Which teaching compels us?

Foyan Qingyuan (1067–1120) was an important master of Chan Buddhism in the Yangqi branch of the Linji School.^[1] He was a student of Wuzu Fayan (d. 1104), and was known as one of the "three Buddhas of East Mountain" (the mountain whose famous former resident had been the 5th Chan patriarch Hongren), along with his dharma brothers, Yuanwu Keqin and Taiping Huiqin (1059–1117).^[2]

Foyan emphasized independence and autonomy in his teachings. According to Cleary, Foyan "made no attempt to recruit disciples," wishing instead for people to be able to stand on their own feet.^[3] For example, Foyan said, "What do you go to a 'Zen center' for? You should make a living on your own, and not listen to what others say."^[4] He was critical of over-dependence on teachers, as can be seen in the following story, told by Foyan thus: 

The second ancestor of Zen used to give talks wherever he happened to be, and all who heard him attained true awareness. He didn't establish any slogans or talk about causes and effects of practice and realization.
In his time there was a certain meditation teacher who sent a top disciple to listen in on the Zen ancestor. The disciple never came back. The meditation teacher was furious, and took the occasion of a congress to upbraid his former disciple for disloyalty.
The former disciple said, "My perception was originally true, but it was distorted by a teacher."
Later someone asked a Zen master, "Where is my power of perception?" The Zen master said, "It is not obtained from a teacher."
This is the way to attain Zen. An ancient said, "The Way is always with people, but people themselves chase after things."^{[5]. (wikipedia)}

I ask AI : What is acceptance of reality? This response:

Acceptance of reality is the complete acknowledgment of present facts without judgment, denial, or resistance. It means stopping the internal fight against things you cannot change. It is a core concept taught in Dialectical Behavior Therapy to help people reduce emotional suffering. [1, 2, 3]

What Acceptance Is

• Seeing the truth: Acknowledging what is happening right now, exactly as it is.
• Stopping the fight: Letting go of the anger and frustration of wishing things were different.
• Saving energy: Freeing up your mental energy so you can focus on things you actually can control. [1, 2, 3]

What Acceptance Is Not

• Not approval: You do not have to like, agree with, or support a bad situation.
• Not giving up: It does not mean you are weak or that you will never try to improve things. 

• Not surrender: You can accept where you are today while still planning to make changes for tomorrow.[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

Nietzsche wrote about Amor fati -- loving one's fate, rather than just tolerating or resenting it.

It is reasonable to want not to live in fear and trembling of stupidity or evil, not to want to encounter those that perpetrate stupidity or evil, or have to endure those who believe stupidity and evil are desirable ways of governing and ruling.

But reasonable is often an odd ask and a questionable expectation.

And here we are!

The people of old, here now.

Afraid?

Trembling?

Bah!

I've never been a good student. No master would have me. I am always finding myself sent away.

What is the correct teaching?

Go ahead, recognize it first hand!

Habt keine Angst!