stepping back

What is it that comes? What is it that goes?

Who is it that comes? Who is it that goes? 

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)

I pass myself on the road every day. While walking edge of roadbed , many cars speed past. They are going someplace. I’m not going anywhere. They know this; thus they do not hit me as they pass. 

I visit myself in prison. We speak of this and that -- old growth trees, dog training, E.M..Cioran, Peter Wohlleben.

I sell me coffee milk and muffins. I exit doors that pull open as I approach. I walk shopping-carte to corral.

I will settle something for you right now: the ultimate rule is to see your own mind clearly. An ancient said, "The mind does not know itself, the mind does not see itself." So how can you see it clearly? Mind does not see mind; to get it, you must not see it as mind. 

Do you want to understand? Just discern the things perceived; you cannot see the mind itself. 

All that is necessary is that there be no perceiver or perceived when you perceive [no separation of perceiver and perceived], no thinker or thought when you think [no separation of thinker and thought]. Buddhism is very easy. Just let go, then step back and look. 

(--from, Sermons by Chinese Zen Master Fo-yen Ching-yuan (1067-1120): (excerpts),  Thomas Cleary, "Instant Zen: Waking Up in the Present". North Atlantic Books, Berkeley, 1994 )

These days I sit and look. In chapel/zendo yesterday mouse-droppings and dust on floor. Lighted candles and burning incense by cross and buddha. Branches outside windows flower green. The seat I sit in is empty. Bordercollie/St.Bernard mix (Ensō) on floor hears pickup drive in. He looks at me. 

His meditation is quietly fulsome.

It is June.

calling to mind today

 in chapel/zendo

remembering the dead

their names

sitting in silence

A single deer

Back by brook

testing the reality

It’s not hard to understand the Trinity or circuminsessional interpenetration. The trick is wanting to.

If we become curious as to who we are in relation to anything and everything else in the world, we might find our curiosity is circumincessionally interpenetrating. We are looking into what is looking into us.

[Keiji] Nishitani develops his own view of the interpenetration of all things in the Section VI of the “Standpoint of Sunyata,” as an elaboration on his characterisation of the mode of being of the “middle.” He writes: “That beings one and all are gathered into one, while each one remains absolutely unique in its ‘being', points to a relationship in which all things are master and servant to one another. We may call this relationship, which is only possible on the field of sunyata, ‘circuminsessional’” (RN 148).

Nishitani explains: “To say that a certain thing is situated in a position of servant to every other thing means that it lies at the ground of all other things, that it is a constitutive element in the being of every other thing, making it be what it is and thus to be situated in a position of autonomy as master of itself. It assumes a position at the home-ground of every other thing as that of a retainer upholding his lord” (RN 148).

Nishitani further defines “circuminsessional interpenetration” in the following terms: “All things that are in the world are linked together, one way or the other. Not a single thing comes into being without some relationship to every other thing … On [an] … essential level, a system of circuminsession has to be seen here … In this system each thing is itself in not being itself, and is not itself in being itself … To say that a thing is not itself means that, while continuing to be itself, it is in the home-ground of everything else. Figuratively speaking, its roots reach across into the ground of all other things and help to hold them up and keep them standing. It serves as a constitutive element of their being so that they can be what they are, and thus provides an ingredient of their being. That a thing is itself means that all other things, while continuing to be themselves, are in the home-ground of that thing; that precisely when a thing is on its own home-ground everything else is there too; that the roots of every other thing spread across into its home-ground” (RN 149).      https://buddhism-thewayofemptiness.blog.nomagic.uk/circuminsessional-interpenetration/

I like Keiji Nishitani, Kitarō Nishida, and Hajime Tanabe. I mentored a university independent study (UMA) with a student at MSP a while back. Now a student at UMA has submitted her 38 page final project from a course in East Asian Philosophy begun in 2012 and interrupted by a difficult illness. 

We have looked at the stance that "each thing is itself in not being itself, and is not itself in being itself …”. 

We have pondered what it suggests to be “through, with, and in” unity as all moving through one and the other distinctly and uniquely.

These days, it seems, my teaching days are over. It’s hard to imagine undertaking the tasks of teaching again. I prefer sitting in this chair, going to two prisons each week for open-topic conversations, and three evening zoom conversation/practices a week. Otherwise, I withdraw into a mild reclusively that takes naps, sips coffee-milk, makes seltzer, and unwraps small cinnamon coffee cakes pretending to be what some call a meal.

I am, nonetheless, not outside anything. The within-ness of interpenetrating presence awareness situates residence “in, with, and through” that which is, was, and will be.

Each time the intuition of death passes through my body/mind I quietly say my goodbyes into a plethora of useless shrugs, closing eyes, napping, and (so far, at least) waking up to surroundings of unwashed dishes and grass needing mowing. 

And I hear again:

That a thing is itself means that all other things, while continuing to be themselves, are in the home-ground of that thing; that precisely when a thing is on its own home-ground everything else is there too; that the roots of every other thing spread across into its home-ground.

自体

Jitai

Itself 

It is enough to reflect on some lines of the poet:

She says, “I am content when wakened birds,

Before they fly, test the reality

Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;

But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields

Return no more, where, then, is paradise?”

(--from poem “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens)

how long and how far does prayer extend

 Saicho, twelve hundred years ago,  made a request:

Oh Buddhas

Of unexcelled complete enlightenment,

Bestow your invisible aid

Upon this hut I open

On the mountain top.

--Saicho (767-822)

And, as well, for those of us at bottom of mountain these years later.

The invisibility of enlightenment!

feeling it

 any day now

any hour now

perhaps 

in a minute

I shall be

released

trouble? what trouble? (jeremiah johnson)

 In prison this morning we look at E.M.Cioran (1911-1995):

“Meditate but one hour upon the selfs nonexistence and you will feel yourself to be another man.” said a priest of the Japanese Kusha sea to a Western visitor.

Without having frequented the Buddhist monasteries, how many times have I not lingered over the world’s unreality, and hence my own? I have not become another man for that, no, but there certainly has remained with me the feeling that my identity is entirely illusory, and that by losing it I have lost nothing, except something, except everything.

…

Instead of clinging to the fact of being born, as good sense bids, I take the risk, I turn back, I retrogress increasingly toward some unknown beginning, I move from origin to origin. Some day, perhaps, I shall manage to reach origin itself, in order to rest there, or be wrecked.

 …

X insults me. I am about to hit him. Thinking it over, I refrain.

Who am I? which is my real self: the self of the retort or that of the refraining? My first reaction is always energetic; the second one, flabby.

What is known as “wisdom” is ultimately only a perpetual “thinking it over,” i.e., non-action as first impulse.

…

If attachment is an evil, we must look for its cause in the scandal of birth, for to be born is to be attached. Detachment then should apply itself to getting rid of the traces of this scandal, the most serious and intolerable of all.

…

Amid anxiety and distress, sudden calm at the thought of the foetus one has been.

…

At this precise moment, no reproach proceeding from men or gods can affect me: I have as good a conscience as if I had never existed.

…

It is a mistake to believe in a direct relation between suffering reverses and being dead set against birth. Such opposition has deeper, more distant roots, and would occur even if one had only the shadow of a grievance against existence. In fact it is never more virulent than in cases of extreme good fortune.

…

Thracians and Bogomils—I cannot forget that I have haunted the same whereabouts as they, nor that the former wept over the newborn and the latter, in order to justify God, held Satan responsible for the infamy of Creation.

…

During the long nights in the caves, how many Hamlets must have

murmured their endless monologues—for it is likely that the apogee of metaphysical torment is to be located well before that universal insipidity which followed the advent of Philosophy.

…

The obsession with birth proceeds from an exacerbation of memory, from an omnipresence of the past, as well as from a craving for the impasse, for the first impasse. —No openness, hence no joy from the past but solely from the present, and from a future emancipated from time.

…

For years, in fact for life, to have meditated only on your last moments, only to discover, when at last you approach them, that it was of no use, that the thought of death helps in everything save in dying!

…

It is our discomforts which provoke, which create consciousness; their task accomplished, they weaken and disappear one after the other.

Consciousness however remains and survives them, without recalling what it owes to them, without even ever having known. Hence it continually proclaims its autonomy, its sovereignty, even when it loathes itself and would do away with itself.

…

According to the Rule of Saint Benedict, if a monk became proud of or merely satisfied with the task he was performing, he was to forsake it then and there.

One danger not dreaded by the man who has lived in the thirst for unsatisfaction, in an orgy of remorse and disgust.

…

If it is true that God dislikes taking sides, I should feel no awkwardness in His presence, so pleased would I be to imitate Him, to be like Him, in everything, “without opinion.”

…

To get up in the morning, wash and then wait for some unforeseen variety of dread or depression.

I would give the whole universe and all of Shakespeare for a grain of

ataraxy.

Nietzsche’s great luck—to have ended as he did: in euphoria!

…

Endlessly to refer to a world where nothing yet stooped to occurrence, where you anticipated consciousness without desiring it, where, wallowing in the virtual, you rejoiced in the null plenitude of a self anterior to selfhood….

Not to have been born, merely musing on that—what happiness, what freedom, what space!

…

(—from The Trouble with Being Born, by E.M.Cioran, 1973)

oremus pro invicem

Yes,

Let’s 

ὁδός, αλήθεια, ζωή -- (way, truth, life)

Perhaps contemplation is Way, conversation is Truth, and correspondence is Life 

ὁδός, αλήθεια,  ζωή.

 True contact between beings is established only by mute presence, by

apparent non-communication, by that mysterious and wordless exchange

which resembles inward prayer.

                                                        ...

                

Rare are the days when, projected into post-history, I fail to witness the

gods’ hilarity at leaving behind the human episode.

What we need is an alternate vision, when that of the Last Judgment no

longer satisfies anyone.

(-from The Trouble with Being Born, by E.M.Cioran, 1973)     

AI, when asked about philosophy and Trinity:

From a philosophical perspective, the Trinity moves beyond a religious belief and becomes a framework for solving a classic metaphysical puzzle: the problem of the One and the Many—how a single, unchanging ultimate reality can contain diversity, relationship, and change without breaking apart. [1, 2]

Philosophers use several distinct frameworks to make sense of this "three-in-one" concept. [1, 2]

1. Relational Ontology (Being as Relationship)

In traditional Western philosophy (like Aristotle's), things exist first as independent substances, and relationships come second. The Trinity flips this upside down. [1, 2, 3, 4]

• Essence is Relationship: God's very existence is the relationship between the Father, Son, and Spirit.
• Perichoresis (Mutual Indwelling): Philosophers use this Greek term to describe a dynamic, eternal dance where each person penetrates and dwells within the others.
• The Lesson: Ultimate reality is not a lonely, isolated object, but an active, loving community. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

2. The Solution to Absolute Unity

Absolute monism (the belief that ultimate reality is a single, blank "One") struggles to explain how a diverse universe could ever come from it.

• Self-Consciousness: Philosophers like G.W.F. Hegel argued that for a mind to be conscious, it needs an object to think about.
• The Triadic Process: For God to know Himself, He must project Himself (the Son) and then unite with that projection through love or spirit (the Holy Spirit). [1, 2]
• The Lesson: A perfect being must have internal diversity to have mind, love, and consciousness without needing to create a universe to find them.

3. Social vs. Latin Philosophical Models

Philosophers generally divide into two schools of thought when modeling the Trinity logically: [1]

• The Social Model: Compares the Trinity to three distinct human minds (like Peter, James, and John) who are so perfectly united in will, purpose, and love that they act as a single agent. (Focuses on the Many). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
• The Latin/Psychological Model: Pioneered by St. Augustine, this views the Trinity as a single mind with three distinct faculties: Memory, Understanding, and Will. (Focuses on the One). [1, 2, 3]

4. Process Philosophy

Modern process philosophers view reality not as static "stuff," but as a series of events and developments.[1, 2, 3]

• They view the Trinity as a model for how the universe itself works.
• It represents the ultimate cycle of Origin (the source), Expression (the physical manifestation), and Unification (the shared experience). [1, 2]

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In my root Christian tradition, today is Trinity Sunday.

Attending Origin.

Engaging Expression.

Practicing Unification.

 

Contemplation.

Conversation.

Correspondance

Presence (Purusha/Prakriti)

Logos (Discourse/Order/Knowledge

Shunyata (Emptiness/Voidness/Vacuity)

You

Me

Us

 

Finally, this poem:

The Manifestation 

                    by Theodore Roethke   

 

Many arrivals make us live: the tree becoming

Green, a bird tipping the topmost bough,

A seed pushing itself beyond itself,

The mole making its way through darkest ground,

The worm, intrepid scholar of the soil—

Do these analogies perplex? A sky with clouds,

The motion of the moon, and waves at play,

A sea-wind pausing in a summer tree.

What does what it should do needs nothing more.

The body moves, though slowly, toward desire.

We come to something without knowing why.

ratio

 If god

Then goodness

If cruelty

Then what

dyscalculia

It is a word I'd not heard before.  

The word dyscalculia has Greek and Latin roots: dys (the Greek part) means badly and calculia (the Latin part) comes from calculare: making calculations, so dyscalculia is ‘badly calculating’ or having trouble with making calculations. This is similar to the term ‘dyslexia’ that can be translated as ‘badly reading.’

Dyscalculia is a specific learning disability with an impairment in mathematics, which can affect calculations, problem solving, or both. It impacts all sorts of numerical tasks and it is inborn, meaning you are born with it. Although there is not yet a generally accepted definition of dyscalculia, the DSM-5 mentions difficulties with number sense, memorization of basic math facts, and accurate and fluent calculation. An estimated 4-7% of students have dyscalculia, so a teacher can expect to have one or two students with this per class.

https://ldaamerica.org/what-is-dyscalculia/ 

We hear the phrase often when someone is urging a group of people to recognize the obvious: "Do the math!” 

As I wonder what it is about the American citizenry that seems not to see the obvious about the Trump administration, I'm wondering if it isn’t dyscalculia.

Faith in him does not add up. Belief in his cabinet to administer fair, just, and sensible solutions to real needs and problems does not add up.

Not learning from experience that cruelty, narrow right-wing ideology, along with racist, sexist, plutocratic prejudice -- does not add up.

A plutocrat is an extremely wealthy individual who wields significant political power and societal influence. Derived from the Greek word ploutos (wealth) and kratos (rule), the term applies both to the financial elite themselves and to those who utilize their fortunes to shape government policy and public discourse. (AI) 

American dyscalculia is, for me, the new explanation of how we are where we are with the populace and their leaders in this country.

It takes the pressure off the conclusion so many make that the American people are stupid and their leaders are morally and mortally corrupt. 

extirper l'amérique de sa direction obséquieuse et odieuse *

This:

The United States officially withdrew its membership from the World Health Organization (WHO) on January 22, 2026, ending decades of participation. [1, 2]   (AI)

And this:

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID), historically the lead foreign aid agency for the U.S. government, was dismantled by the Trump administration. The administration placed thousands of employees on administrative leave globally and officially transferred its remaining functions to the State Department. [1, 2, 3, 4]   (AI)

Then this:

The Bundibugyo virus was first identified in 2007 after a mysterious illness broke out in the Bundibugyo District in Uganda, which borders Congo. In 2012, another such outbreak was identified in Congo.

Fatality rates during the last two outbreaks of this form of Ebola have ranged from 30 percent to 50 percent of those infected, according to the W.H.O.

There has not been much research done on this species of virus, according to Dr. Jean-Jacques Muyembe, who leads Congo’s national institute of biomedical research and has been a pioneer in Ebola research and treatment. Speaking at a briefing on Tuesday, Dr. Muyembe suggested that vaccine candidates would probably be proposed in the coming days.

(-from What to Know About the Ebola Outbreak, NYTimes, 17/30may2026

It is hard to calculate why, of a sudden, the impulse to cease being helpful and of service comes upon a few men with enormous power in America.

The president seems to have shifted monies and wealth into his own hands and the hands of a few elite co-conspirators.

If you pray, pray for those in Africa being ravaged by this virus.

If your energies permit, work to extricate America from its obsequious and obnoxious leadership. *

magnificenza maga-nanamous

 the future of america

is the future of human race

slowly, knowledge will exceed

capacity of carbon-based units

going to silicon-based units

replicating themselves, no longer

in need of what preceeded them --

transcending intelligence and reserve

like the breakthrough from ethics

justice and morality of this republican

cynosure shaving off all encumbrance

bypassing law, rules and customs

for self-aggrandizement and ugliness --

america has opted for ghoulish caricature

as singular AI is molded in this image

and a species gives way to robotics

where the antiquated plea of “have

a heart” is replaced with “what’s the

profit margin” and damned be empathy,

that weakness, sickness, and stupidity --

our future will be made in such an image

of greed, cruelty, and pompous brag

a mistaken genetics injected into dna

that splits cellular mitosis into grotesque 

and savage identity serving only 

those who serve themselves with cynicism--

I donate my obsolete dna to the clay of earth

to be buried there with spring rain & unanswered

phone messages not left on answering machine, as

bots and algorithms crisscross cyberspace --

the future will not be difficult, there will be no

future with post-human replicas in unmeasured 

time, in unoccupied space no longer bought and

sold by banks and lawyers signed and sealed.

The dying pretend they will miss their life

but they are pretending. Their life is gone,

erased and forgotten even as they attempt

to memorialize what they think they remember --

there’s nothing behind us, nothing ahead of us,

it all belongs now to the tech and data keepers

packaging and repackaging the details of every

life every business every conversation reconstructed

into simulations and opportunity and lucrativity 

for the few having replaced the many beyond time

This is what we choose. This is our maga-nanamous

 magnificence. This is our ignorance and our shame.

And if, by long shot chance, there be an apocalyptic

accounting, I wager love will know what to do with us

sounding dawn

 Mourning dove

This

Morning love

bottom line

 none know real origin story

so we take our pick

we don't know

we imagine our preference

I don't think anyone put us here

nor will departure matter much

torn stub

 If tonight

I die, thank you

For the ride

gut, καλός, bien, iyi, kahle, bonus, bene, טוֹב

 If Good is God

then these days

it becomes difficult

to believe in Good

the simulation hypothesis

 In case you didn't have enough to think about, here's what Dustin Crummett (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Chair of Late Antique and Arabic Philosophy), has been thinking about what Nick Bostrum, (Professor, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University), has been thinking about:

Bostrom’s argument goes roughly like this. Let a‘post-human’ civilization be one which has achieved as much technological development as is consistent with our current understanding of the laws of nature. Suppose people in such a civilization decided, perhaps for research or entertainment purposes, to run ‘ancestor simulations’, i.e. computer simulations of people in much more primitive societies. By considering the physical limits on how powerful computers can get, it can be shown that it would be trivially easy for post-humans to run very, very many ancestor simulations in a short period of time. Assume that sufficiently detailed simulations of people would themselves be people, with mental states just like ours. If the post-humans run enough ancestor simulations, it would follow that the vast majority of people with experiences relevantly like ours– i.e. experiences as of living in a technologically primitive society– are living in a computer simulation. But if we think this, we should conclude that we are probably living in such a simulation, too. Accordingly, assuming that simulated people could be conscious, one of three possibilities is true:  

 

          1. At most a tiny proportion of civilizations reach a post-human level of technological development (or, if they do, they don’t last long once that happens). All of them either go extinct first or have their techno-logical development arrested in some other way.  

 

          2. People in post-human civilizations have little interest in running ancestor simulations, and so run few of them, or none at all. They are therefore likely to be very different from us, since many of us would be interested in running ancestor simulations, if we easily could.  

  

          3. The number of simulated observers with experiences relevantly like ours substantially exceeds the number of similar, unsimulated observers. By a fairly weak version of the principle of indifference (but see Weatherson (2003) and Bostrom (2005), we should conclude that we’re probably in a simulation. 

 

Accordingly, unless you’re pretty sure that at least one of (1), (2), or the claim that simulated consciousness is impossible is true, you’re committed to thinking there’s a real chance that you’re in a simulation. 

 

Further, even if simulated consciousness is impossible, Barry Dainton (forthcoming,) notes that we could be inhabiting an artificial environment without being computer programs ourselves. We might, as in The Matrix, have biological brains which are hooked up through some kind of neural interface to a computer which is feeding us sensory data. Or we might, as in The Truman Show, be in an actual physical environment, but one which was artifcially created– perhaps by an advanced civilization with matter-manipulation technologies of some sort. (Perhaps our environment is even radically miniaturized, to make it easier to build and run.) Throughout, I will be thinking primarily of Bostrom-style simulations, partly because I see no problem with a simulated person being conscious and partly because I think the argument for the claim that there is actually a high probability (rather than merely a possibility) of our living in a simulation is most compelling for a simulation of the sort Bostrom describes. But it is important to keep in mind that the other types are also options. 

 

Obviously, all this is controversial. My view is that Bostrom’s argument at least shows that the simulation hypothesis is not crazy, so that it is interesting to ask what implications taking it seriously might have.  

 

    (in The real advantages of the simulation solution to the problem of natural evil,  by Dustin Crummett, Religious Studies (2021)

Having talked obliquely in conversations about The Simulation Argument in the past year and waved my hand in dismissive lack of comprehension as it made its way through prison conversations, today I looked at it.

I don't know what to think.

But I'm looking.