Zen
Walks
once
they say
there was
nothing
out from
which suddenly
came
something
whence and
hence
we
arrive
out of
matter's
watery
religio
(conscientiousness)
this appearance
is mythos some
call Christos*
useful
this creatura
essere
promulgating 'this'
which is
what and who
we are
soul surrounding space
... ... ...
*The spelling of the Greek name Χρήστος suggests a derivation from the word χρηστός, which in earlier forms of the language principally meant "useful",[6][7] and in modern Greek means "ethical, righteous, good, just, upright, virtuous". (wikipedia)
I don't want anything else.
Just this.
If you wish to bring the two matters of birth and death to conclusion and pass directly beyond the Triple-world, you must penetrate the koan “This very mind is Buddha.”
Tell me: What is its principle? How is it that this very mind is Buddha? And “this very mind” just what is it like?
Investigate it coming. Investigate it going. Investigate it thoroughly and exhaustively. All you have to do is keep this koan constantly in your thoughts.
Daito (1282-1334) dz
There are days
Numbers numb
Mind
I try to help
But read wrong
Column
Where
At end
Nothing adds up
A Times review:
ONE WAY BACK: A Memoir | By Christine Blasey Ford
A swirling gulf between truth and news.
capitulate
to life
join the stream
recapitulate
with love
you are what flows
no opposite
no enemy
beyond self
resound
return
to Source
If you want
to know my name
pronounce your name
If you’ve forgotten
your name
my name means nothing
Everything speaks.
Everything tells you about itself.
If you listen. If you hear.
Abandoned Farmhouse
BY TED KOOSER
He was a big man, says the size of his shoes
on a pile of broken dishes by the house;
a tall man too, says the length of the bed
in an upstairs room; and a good, God-fearing man,
says the Bible with a broken back
on the floor below the window, dusty with sun;
but not a man for farming, say the fields
cluttered with boulders and the leaky barn.
A woman lived with him, says the bedroom wall
papered with lilacs and the kitchen shelves
covered with oilcloth, and they had a child,
says the sandbox made from a tractor tire.
Money was scarce, say the jars of plum preserves
and canned tomatoes sealed in the cellar hole.
And the winters cold, say the rags in the window frames.
It was lonely here, says the narrow country road.
Something went wrong, says the empty house
in the weed-choked yard. Stones in the fields
say he was not a farmer; the still-sealed jars
in the cellar say she left in a nervous haste.
And the child? Its toys are strewn in the yard
like branches after a storm—a rubber cow,
a rusty tractor with a broken plow,
a doll in overalls. Something went wrong, they say.
—Ted Kooser, "Abandoned Farmhouse" from Sure Signs: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 1980 by Ted Kooser.
Can you hear it?
Each thing speaks.
Coming off mountain, stopping in yurt to assure it has not been abandoned.
“I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.” — Terence
Cf. "Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto", or "I am human, and I think nothing human is alien to me."[2] This appeared in his play Heauton Timorumenos.[3]
Publius Terentius Afer (/təˈrɛnʃiəs, -ʃəs/; c. 195/185 – c. 159? BC), better known in English as Terence (/ˈtɛrəns/), was an African Roman playwright during the Roman Republic.
--wikipedia
Every step on brown winter-pressed flattened leaves along trodden path is prayer for what has passed, is passing, will pass.
I am mindful we are sometimes asked to pray for someone — and we do.
It is human to so remember.
Some call it post-modernism.
Cut in thirds, split in half,
How can truth be expressed?
Can one see beyond white clouds
With the naked eye?
The monks still have not come
Back from Mt. Kukkuapada.
The leaves of the sutra
Merely stir a sad wind.
Daito (1282-1334) dz
Daito's "sad wind" captures the scent along roadways from either landfill town dump or the new and pungent cannabis facilities that have me looking for the dead skunk on side of road.
Wikipedia fleshes it out:
Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourse[1][2] characterized by skepticism towards elements of the Enlightenment worldview. It questions the "grand narratives" of modernity, rejects the certainty of knowledge and stable meaning, and acknowledges the influence of ideology in maintaining political power.[3][4] The idea of objective claims is dismissed as naïve realism,[5] emphasizing the conditional nature of knowledge.[4] Postmodernism embraces self-referentiality, epistemological relativism, moral relativism, pluralism, irony, irreverence, and eclecticism.[4] It opposes the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identity, hierarchy, and categorization.[6][7]
Emerging in the mid-twentieth century as a reaction against modernism,[8][9][10] postmodernism has permeated various disciplines[11] and is linked to critical theory, deconstruction, and post-structuralism.[4]
Critics argue that postmodernism promotes obscurantism, abandons Enlightenment rationalism and scientific rigor, and contributes little to analytical or empirical knowledge.[12]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism
Justin E.H. Smith in his book Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason, 2019, writes about the difference between the liar and the bullshitter. The liar knows the truth and seeks to conceal it. The bullshitter doesn't care a whit about truth or lies, only wanting to advance his/her own interests. (Not his exact words.)
In his book, On Bullshit, Harry G. Frankfurt, 2005, helps us understand the difference:
...Frankfurt proceeds by exploring how bullshit and the related concept of humbug are distinct from lying. He argues that bullshitters misrepresent themselves to their audience not as liars do, that is, by deliberately making false claims about what is true. In fact, bullshit need not be untrue at all.
Rather, bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner’s capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are. (Princeton University Press)
Chris, at Tuesday Evening Conversation, brought up "wisdom." There was talk of The Book of Job, there was a slide into talking about "truth" (which Tina corrected), and a variety of insightful comments by Doris, Asha, and Saskia that deepened our uncertainty.
I recalled the last line of the Serenity Prayer which (for the evening) gave me an anchor to root my bobbing in the rough-wind tide: "...and wisdom to know the difference." Hence, head above water, wisdom for me (at the time) was the rising and falling ability to know the difference between this and that, the false and the true, bullshit and no-shit.
In this post-modern age there are a lot of folks peddling bullshit, so much so that they make lying seem like a quaint virtue.
In my cell/room, a wall:
don't ask me
about
truth or wisdom
I don't
know the
difference
No one lives there
Not for last three years
But porch light is on
And side stairs light
They took away mail box
roadside and work shed
shall engines repaired
tinkered spark plugs
Owner doesn’t sell
doesn’t rent it out but
paints and repairs has it
mowed and plowed
I walk past on walks
Say hi to emptiness
Lights on for what
lights are on for
through night
throughout
I know why there’s so much wrong in the world. The failure to want to become human. Instead so much lust to be rich or powerful, somebody at the expense of somebody else.
Now I’d like to collect my reward for figuring that out.
I’ll take it in nickels and dimes.
Compassion and caring are not that expensive.
I have a change purse.
Miracles are not what we think.
A miracle is that we think.
What do you think?
(Take your time.
World awaits.)
Tous les débuts sont difficiles.
It’s easier to live on the off-side of the clock. No phone calls, emails, texts. No bumping into anyone in the kitchen.
Stepping to barn door, thin layer of snow on ground. Sound of rain on roof. No cats. No dog.
Growing up I was a night person.
Staying at a monastery, night office was most intimate.
Now, a different version.
It could be called unsleeping prayer — but that’s a stretch,
Maybe call it breath-in-the-dark.
People used to think God wandered through the night.
I think that night, the solitude of night, is that wherein God has disappeared.
A worthy place within which to dissolve and devolve.*
Reading book Irrationality: A History of the Dark Side of Reason, by Justin E. H. Smith.
You'd think it would be off-putting. On the contrary, I find it encouraging. Anytime something appears to capture what is actually taking place, I affirm its willingness to walk beside me for a suitable duration.
So far, good company.
Maybe we should just shut up.
The Meaning Of Existence
Everything except language
knows the meaning of existence.
Trees, planets, rivers, time
know nothing else. They express it
moment by moment as the universe.
Even this fool of a body
lives it in part, and would
have full dignity within it
but for the ignorant freedom
of my talking mind.
(--poem by Les Murray)
cf. https://mikefinnsfiction.com/2021/03/16/some-thoughts-on-the-meaning-of-existence-by-les-
murray/#:~:text=Everything%20except%20language%20knows%20the,freedom%20of%20my%20talking%20mind.
Or, perhaps, more modestly, attend with no-mind, watchful.
What do you think?
Aristotle's description of God's activity as νόησις νοήσεως, a "thinking of thinking," in chapters 7 and 9 of Metaphysics 12 raises some of the most significant and challenging questions in philosophy.
(in, Aristotle on God As Thought Thinking Itself, by Thomas De Koninck
Review of Metaphysics 47 (3):471-515 (1994) Jstor
Two thousand three hundred forty six years gone, Heidegger thought that we are still not thinking.
God seems still beyond us.
God help us!
In this simulation of the universe —
Mountain home walking,
You don’t step on dust,
Seldom meet anyone;
Who’s ashamed to be poor?
Tired? Then rest.
What do you need a mat for?
Forget about the form
And the shadow will disappear.
Gensei (1623-1668) dz
—there is nothing moving.
Go there.
Inflated globe hangs
from ceiling
pinned
coffee bean fifty
pound empty burlap
Asobagri, 100%
Certified organic
It is my reminder
(As is everything)
Of Sanyassin
Moving through
Mind/Body space
A desolation row
Such a large ocean
Such an immense
Cosmos —
If you want to know
Who you are
And what this is
(Oh -- There’s the sun!)
Ninety three million
Miles away — right
There at window bamboo
Shade, right here on
Back of hand —
Empty pathos
This cold room
silencio
y
soledad
“The only thing that can save the world from complete moral collapse is a spiritual revolution.” (—opening line, Prologue, The Ascent to Truth, by Thomas Merton, 1951)
Seems so.
In prison this morning we read from the Chandogya Upanishad, 8.7-12.
It was an in and out morning, some able to stay briefly, others late due to late meds, others for other appointments, some for long haul. Eight of us wondering about self, soul, spirit, breath.
Someone introduced (what he called) preconceived semantics. (He referred to S.I. Hayakawa.) Another wandered our attention to the semantics of individual letters of the alphabet by Laurel Airica and related a piece to illustrate.
The word semantics originated from the Ancient Greek adjective semantikos, meaning 'relating to signs', which is a derivative of sēmeion, the noun for 'sign' (--wikipedia).
Sometimes words don’t convey.
Meaning remains remote.
We have a way to go.
Living a spiritual life
a meditative life
a contemplative
is no longer in
monastery, convent
or some such place
not in temple, zendo
mosque, hermitage or
parish church group
where, then, is it
It is in the solitude
of uncertainty
that place where
emptiness is no
mystical comfort
where the next breath
is a long shot, a pause
at end of exhalation
No talk of God
no certificates, thanks
or rounds of applause
A saint is deep within
silence and soliloquey
where what once was
God
is now where absence
goes to pray
not knowing
anything (yes)
all too well
It feels
Awkward
That
America’s
Greatest danger
Is the man
Wanting to be
It’s president —
And it is,
Awkward
It was a hard time.
On March 7, 1965, the marchers set out. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate brigadier general, Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and U.S. senator who stood against Black rights, state troopers and other law enforcement officers met the unarmed marchers with billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas. They fractured John Lewis’s skull and beat Amelia Boynton unconscious. A newspaper photograph of the 54-year-old Boynton, seemingly dead in the arms of another marcher, illustrated the depravity of those determined to stop Black voting.
(—in Letters from an American, by Heather Cox Richardson, 6mar24)
It is a hard time.
dog snoozes
cat naps
sun slants
in glass door
red squirrel
under feeder
will not
stop looking
for what
feeds it
for unbroken
sustenance
Oh, if we only had wit …
I am such that I do not know right and wrong and cannot distinguish false and true;
I lack even small love and small compassion,
And yet, for fame and profit, enjoy teaching others.
(—quote by Shinran, the founder of the Jodo Shinshu school of Pure Land Buddhism. Tricycle)
…and the wisdom to see humor in the absurd, and absurdity in those of us who do not see how absurd we are!
A time
Will come
When truth
Will matter
Until then
Comfort one
Another —
We live
Within
Lies
No outer
Resemblance
Let’s say I’ve only a passing interest in primary politics.
But, hey, how do you like them Vermonters!
Good time in prison
Yesterday talking about
The present
Which is not
Something, not
Here nor there
The present is
What we are
Moving through
It’s not
A thing not
A place
The present
Is what we are
Moving through
Duality is daunted,
Singularity
Decimated
Only the
Present will
Save us, and
The present
Is what we are
Moving through
upsy-daisy
let me
lift you
child --
no need
for fear
we adults
are here
to spare
you dark
shivers of
ill-intent
come let’s
get ice-cream
and play
with puppy
who looks
to us
for
some
joy
If there's ill-will, there's a wayward skill.
There is, perhaps, a larger story behind the majority’s musings on future congressional actions. Its decision to go beyond what was required to decide a specific question and suggest the boundaries of future legislation pushed it from judicial review into the realm of lawmaking.
For years now, Republicans, especially Republican senators who have turned the previously rarely-used filibuster into a common tool, have stopped Congress from making laws and have instead thrown decision-making to the courts.
Two days ago, in Slate, legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern noted that when Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was Senate majority leader, he “realized you don’t need to win elections to enact Republican policy. You don’t need to change hearts and minds. You don’t need to push ballot initiatives or win over the views of the people. All you have to do is stack the courts. You only need 51 votes in the Senate to stack the courts with far-right partisan activists…[a]nd they will enact Republican policies under the guise of judicial review, policies that could never pass through the democratic process. And those policies will be bulletproof, because they will be called ‘law.’”
(--Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, 4mar24),
Let's applaud the creativeness of duplicity.
Let's fight then for a better concept of reciprocity.
Let's call dis-maneuvering what it is, disheartening.
Count on the Center for Action and Contemplation, every time:
After almost fifty years of being a Franciscan Sister, I learned that beauty for Franciscan theologians and philosophers is the ultimate and most intimate knowing of God, another name for God, the name for God. Saint Bonaventure and Blessed John Duns Scotus teach that the beauty and diversity of creation nourish us through suffering and loss. When we’ve run out of purpose, when memories of war sicken us, when Earth is attacked with unparalleled savagery for coal, gas, oil, timber, and profit, when poverty runs rampant and extreme wealth for very few soars, when friends betray us, and everyone we love lives far away … then, still beauty endures, and helps us make it through. Like God…. [2]
I sense now that soul knows itself and its life within the great compassionate Mystery we strive to name. Soul stirs, rises, grows toward and within the unnameable silence and beauty of God, a mothering watery God, a rain beyond Catholic, beyond any specific religion or creed, a rain that soothes us in suffering and challenges complacency. Soul flowers in this rain of the worlds, of meteor showers, of the cosmos. [3]
(—from “The Stones Cry Out” by Marya Grathwohl)
Count on it.
Con-
Versation
Where a
Con
Talks
To himself
Whole
World
Occupies his
Echo
Over and
Over, new
Gospel for
Tired
Christians, a
Caberet
Stale smoke
Phantom
Carasal
Head fog
Until what
Is seen
Isn’t
There, what
Is there
Isn’t
Seen —
Staring
Becomes
Our bedside
Vigiling
Desperate
Lunacy like
Shriven
Communicants
Believing each
Bite chews his
Defeating
Sneer
Over and
Over
Again
Falling away
It is falling
Away
Watching
Arms fall
Away
Feet going
One by
One
There’s no
Recognizing
Myself
Shattered
Mirror in
Pieces
Only sound
Breathing
Itself