seagulls, channel buoy, at sunrise

 Nos da esperanza

     (it gives us hope)

                        

always the sunrise

with someone seeing the light

may you float well there

                (for Suse, her chaplaincy graduation)

me, ow

 Cat in window

Looks past Buddha

At Dawn

And it

Dawns

On me

Nothing that

I do equals cat

Equals buddha

Only if i see 

What i see can i

Realize this

before bed

 Cut grass 

Fragrance 

As night cools

quiesence

As if on a Saturday afternoon at Rockport Harbor some raindrops. Two women on wharf take photos and point to this and that in their violet tops and sneakers.

All those buddhas 82 years ago landing on Normandy beaches. So many killed immediately.

A quiescence. 

Buddha is like empty space,
free of comings and goings.
He manifests in response to conditions
and yet does not abide anywhere.

Thus, the nature of the sage
in the world is that of utter quiescence
and empty non being.
He is free of clinging and contentiousness,
leads, yet never initiates;
responds but only when moved to do so by another.

She is like an echo
sounding in a deep valley
or an image reflecting
in a clear mirror.
Encountering a sage,
you do not know from where they come.
Following a sage,
you do not know where they might go.       --Chao lun (378-414) 

Sages who have come and gone. Their lives perfect. 

We think of them today.

Echoes in our hearts and minds.

whether your destiny is glory or disgrace

In prison this morning, after one of the men talked about Kashmir Shaivism, we read and conversed about these Jami poems:

Jami (1414 - 1492 ce)  (Nur al-Din 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Ahmad al-Jami) commonly called the last great classical poet of Persia, saint and mystic, composed numerous lyrics and idylls, as well as many works in prose.  His Salaman and Absal is an allegory of profane and sacred love.  Some of his other works include Haft Awrang, Tuhfat al-Ahrar, Layla wa -Majnun, Fatihat al-Shabab, Lawa'ih, al-Durrah al-Fakhirah.  

https://wahiduddin.net/sufi/sufi_poetry.htm

~~

Who is man? 

        The reflection of the Eternal Light.

What is the world? 

        A wave on the Everlasting Sea.

 

How could the reflection be cut off from the Light? 

 

How could the wave be separate from the Sea?

 

Know that this reflection and this wave are that very Light and Sea.

     -- Jami, Diwan, tr by W.C. Chittick

~~

     Hidden behind the veil of mystery, Beauty is eternally free from the slightest stain of imperfection.  From the atoms of the world, He created a multitude of mirrors; into each one of them He cast the image of His Face; to the awakened eye, anything that appears beautiful is only a reflection of that Face.

    Now that you have seen the reflection, hurry to its Source; in that primordial Light the reflection vanishes completely.  Do not linger far from that primal Source; when the reflection fades, you will be lost in darkness.  The reflection is as transient as the smile of a rose; if you want permanence, turn towards the Source; if you want fidelity, look to the Mine of faithfulness.  Why tear your soul apart over something here one moment and gone the next? 

      --Jami, translation by Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut - 'Perfume of the Desert' 

~~

Whether your destiny is glory or disgrace,

Purify yourself of hatred and love of self.

Polish your mirror; and that sublime Beauty

From the regions of mystery

Will flame out in your heart

As it did for the saints and prophets.

Then, with your heart on fire with that Splendor, 

The secret of the Beloved will no longer be hidden. 

     -- Jami, translation by Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut - 'Perfume of the Desert' 

It refreshes, these topics, these words. 

1968, 1963, 2026

 ticks

crawling everywhere

pants leg

forearm

back

of neck

this anniversary

of RFK shooting 

untrustworthy narratives

of his and JFK murders

corpus christi -- iterum incipe, iterum fini, o tu manifestans creatio!

breeze rustles green new growth

comes through window across my face

the only scripture I need is creation

the only liturgy the patterns of nature

if you say christ is dead is risen I say

his body his blood is earth is air is water

Iterum incipe, iterum fini, o tu manifestans creatio!

Begin again, end again, O Manifesting Creation!

benedite mihi, amici, quia defeci

 When I was a boy I learned about truth, fidelity, and courage. 

I have never really followed up that education by being truthful, faithful, or courageous. 

An ignominy hard to escape. 

A confession for which I will have to seek reconciliation, a sacrament of admission, contrition, and forgiveness.

Where will this happen?

How will this happen?

To whom do I address this abnegation?

I look around -- trees, sky, grasses, birds.

I bow my head.

Supplicating the ground, mountain, ocean, lake and pond.

Benedite mihi, amici, quia defeci. (Bless me, friends, because I have failed.)

ukraine’s moment of daily silence

Щоденне вшанування пам'яті загиблих в Україні

(daily commemoration of the dead in Ukraine)

https://www.nytimes.com/video/world/europe/100000010925753/ukraines-daily-moment-of-silence.html?smid=url-share

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. Border-collie/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.