At after-party
Someone said
Nice speech
I was lying
He said
That doesn’t matter
Truth doesn’t matter
Only you matter
I am lying
He said
That’s ok
We only care about
Power, not truth
These fools
Believe my lies
That’s what makes
You great, makes
US great, your lies
I guess I am great
Look at my face
(--from poem “Cape Breton” by Elizabeth Bishop)
i'd rather be
doing what
I am
doing
reading introduction
to Words In Air: The
Complete Correspondence
Between Elizabeth Bishop
and Robert Lowell -- an
intelligent and creative
engagement, rather than
listen to the blathers and
blithers of that fellow who
sometimes sleeps in White
House with white nationalist
dreams and perfect
accomplishments -- may we
not wander in to skunk hours
and armadillo meanderings full
of self inflation and flatulence
Perhaps I am dead.
I'm no angel unsure whence I move among the living or the dead.
It seems strange to see so much injustice while flittering off to nap through night or day as the gyroscope of slumber and falling into it after arising out of it teeters on edge of room where my tutors, two cats and dog, practice flawlessly their temperaments of nod and doze, turn and absent their waking duties.
Although I suspect I'll know I'm actually dead when, with mouth open no sound emerges, or when fingers move along spectral keyboard no letters appear anywhere. Those clues might instruct me of my incommunicative status and untransmittable intuitions out beyond the desire to do so.
Voices, voices. Hear, O my heart, as only
saints have heard; heard till the giant-call
lifted them off the ground; yet they went impossibly
on with their kneeling, in undistracted attention:
so inherently hearers. Not that you could endure
the voice of God—far from it. But hark to the suspiration,
the uninterrupted news that grows out of silence.
Rustling towards you now from those youthfully-dead.
Whenever you entered a church in Rome or in Naples
were you not always being quietly addressed by their fate?
Or else an inscription sublimely imposed itself on you,
as, lately, the tablet in Santa Maria Formosa.
What they require of me? I must gently remove the appearance
of suffered injustice, that hinders
a little, at times, their purely-proceeding spirits.
True, it is strange to inhabit the earth no longer,
to use no longer customs scarcely acquired,
not to interpret roses, and other things
that promise so much, in terms of human future;
to be no longer all that one used to be
in endlessly anxious hands, and to lay aside
even one’s proper name like a broken toy.
Strange, not to go on wishing one’s wishes. Strange,
to see all that was once relation so loosely fluttering
hither and thither in space. And it’s hard, being dead,
and full of retrieving before one begins to espy
a trace of eternity.—Yes, but all of the living
make the mistake of drawing to sharp distinctions.
Angels, (they say) are often unable to tell
whether they move among the living or the dead. the eternal
torrent whirls all the ages through either realm
for ever, and sounds above their voices in both.
--from The First Elegy, in The Duino Elegies, by Rainer Maria Rilke, (1912-1923), (translated from German by J.B. Leishman and Stephen Spender)
We become a people of whispers and susurrent sibilance hissing our unhappiness with the dominant political culture stomping roughshod over decency, human feeling, and nascent longing for justice.
Bullies bellow and belch out their disdain for weak nobodies with little wealth, hispanic accents, browned skin, and little access to competing power. These arrogant politicos simply do not care for the citizens and longing-to-be-citizens living outside their gates of power and influence.
Of course I am dead.
If I were alive I'd do something with meaning and substance to turn the indifference and disdain into caring and helpful assistance. But I seem to be floating in some anachronistic simulation of indecipherable spiritual realm where prayer, meditation, contemplation and intellectual life effectively could influence the bare material, mechanistic, digital, and (these days) mostly mendacious realms of pernicious power greed.
Rilke says it:
Strange, not to go on wishing one’s wishes. Strange,
to see all that was once relation so loosely fluttering
hither and thither in space. (op cit)
At least it seemed to me, perhaps in my fugue incomprehension, "that all was once relation," that there was some sort of mystical body that enigmatically held all of conscious and pre-conscious life together in an indecipherable trinitarian unity -- the flowing life of what we casually called "God" coursing through everything, no matter how confusing and distracting the behavior of so many could be.
Bob Dylan's line applies:
"But I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now." (--from "My Back Pages", 1964)
Joan Baez's words apply even more:
Now you're telling me
You're not nostalgic
Then give me another word for it
You who are so good with words
And at keeping things vague
'Cause I need some of that vagueness now
It's all come back too clearly
Yes, I loved you dearly
And if you're offering me diamonds and rust
I've already paid
(-- final verse, "Diamonds and Rust" 1975, by Joan Baez)
When I open my eyes, I look around and am uncertain what temporal space I occupy. I can recall the younger man rapt in the attraction of participating with the whole gathering of community intent on manifesting an Ekklesia:
ekklesia: (or ecclesia) is a Greek term, translated as "church," referring to an assembly or congregation of people "called out" for a specific purpose. Rooted in ek ("out of") and kaleo ("to call"), it describes a gathered, purposeful community rather than a physical building. Biblically, it signifies people called by God to be his body.
(--Ekklesia, AI search)
I'm not sure of that.
I'll take a bit of a think before I let you know what I actually think.
He went to cabin
To meet his lover
The Mexican drug-
lord, stepped into
Death, this is how
Much we know of love
buddha sits and watches
Jesus hangs and watches
what they see, I’m sure,
disappoints
but they watch all the same
buddha asks Jesus if he sees
what he sees --“yes”
buddha gets up from cushion
Jesus comes down from cross
un abbraccio,
they are men of honor
they will turn what they see into
something filled with joy and
justice -- they know how to do
that -- they feel reality from within,
and this feeling -- a quiet delight
changing the exterior chaos into
inner peace -- the knowledge of
something worth watching for
worth seeing through
In Assisi, nytimes writes, they are displaying the bones of Francis.
Ok. Something to do.
My response:
We named our hermitage after Francis and a Japanese zen master contemporary of his. Francis was an intense mirror of Christ.
Still, I can imagine Dogen Zenji looking across time at the relics of Il Poverello and saying “Drop the bones, the mind and body, and enjoy a fig and mineral water with the poor surrounding you!”
Ciao Francisco, sei bellissimo!
Shema, Tawhid, Kenosis, Shunyata, Absolete Nihility, Integral Consciousness.
The words we try to look through.
One instant is eternity;
When you see through this one instant,
You see through the one who sees.
—Wu-men (1183-1260)
We become that-which-is when we surrender and abandon out small self so as to-be-seen-through by That-Which-Is-To-Be the Great Unself perennially gazing Creation as the One True Reality it is everlastingly becoming.
Look,
I would not
Say this
If I
Did not
Think it
True
Right there
in transparent yellow prayer flag
ascent from hades
getting the hell out of there
Yes. We have
No integrity
In White House
None in department
of justice, homeland
Security, commerce.
Treasury, national
Intelligence, hhs,
Anywhere he touches —
We are bereft
Legs crushed
Under rubble
Spirits deeply
Wounded, minds
Shattered glass —
But not defeated
Stunned, but
Not defeated —
Someone nears
Will head-butt
Smug face, cuff
Hands behind back
Frog-walk through
Debris of lies
A broken yet brave
Revival of decency
Erasing smirk and snarl —
Why not believe in
Such an outcome
Taking back the flag
The trust in truth
Unlocking front doors —
Mourning in America
I’ve taken up
broom strolling
given up
doom scrolling
happy to sweep
away absurd people
to praise what appears
to extoll lingering grace
Disregulation
Brrrr
Quick
Hold me
Stop me
From shaking
(Thanks Mandy)
We need to
Close ambiguous
Grief (thanks
Brianna)
We need
To learn
To breathe
Again
Yes, so much
Insanity —
It’s their
Depraved
Abnormality
Not yours —
Get free
Hashem (Hebrew: הַשֵּׁם haššēm, literally "the name"; often abbreviated to ה׳ [h′]) is a title used in Judaism to refer to God. -Wikipedia
Dementia
Nothing going on
I’ve forgotten
Your name
That makes sense
Late for introductions
Let me just give you
What I don’t have
Your name
Fully pronounced
If there is only God
what is it we experience
that seems so not God?
These men and women
so seemingly not God
seem to run the world
But if there is only God
what are we experiencing --
the not God -- if not evil
(profoundly immoral and
wicked) -- those living
illusory, self-obsessed lives;
this time of lent and ramadan
the invitation of One and One
Alone -- losing what-is-not
for
what-is-
good
Tawhid,[a][b] literally "to unite" or "to make one"[2], refers to the principle of monotheism in Islam.[3] It is the religion's central and single most important concept, upon which a Muslim's entire religious adherence rests. It unequivocally holds that God is indivisibly one (ahad) and single (wahid).[4][5]
Tawhid constitutes the foremost article of the Muslim profession of submission.[6] The first part of the Islamic declaration of faith (shahada) is the declaration of belief in the oneness of God.[4] To attribute divinity to anything or anyone else, is considered shirk, which is an unpardonable sin unless repented afterwards, according to the Qur'an.[7][8] Muslims believe that the entirety of the Islamic teaching rests on the principle of tawhid.[9]
From an Islamic standpoint, there is an uncompromising nondualism at the heart of the Islamic beliefs (aqida) that is seen as distinguishing Islam from other major religions.[10]
The Quran teaches the existence of a single and absolute truth that transcends the world, a unique, independent and indivisible being that is independent of all of creation.[11]God, according to Islam, is a universal God, rather than a local, tribal or parochial one and is an absolute that integrates all affirmative values.[7]
Islamic intellectual history can be understood as a gradual unfolding of the manner in which successive generations of believers have understood the meaning and implications of professing tawhid. Islamic scholars have different approaches toward understanding it. Islamic scholastic theology, jurisprudence, philosophy, Sufism, and even the Islamic understanding of natural sciences to some degree, all seek to explain at some level the principle of tawhid.[12]
Chapter 112 of the Qur'an, titled al-Ikhlas, reads:
Etymology
The word 'tawhid' (توحيد), which means "He asserted, or declared, God to be one", is derived from the Arabic root 'wahhada' (واحدة), which means "to unite" or "to make one".[2][13] This term signifies the belief in absolute oneness and uniqueness of God.[14] This reflects the struggle of monotheism against polytheism.[15][16]
It must be the hovering spirit of Ramadan come visiting.
Elsewise. . .
My mouth hurts. I look forward to its not hurting.
On the other hand, it’s only pain.
Fresh air through open window pleases.
making an ash of myself
burning down old edifice
you ask if God cares
about renunciation
I say I don’t think so
God is non-attachment
nothing there
to hang anything on
everything has fallen away
if anything other than
our projections were ever
attached to God -- no, you
can’t care for what is not there
only for what is
wood stove ashes of trees gone by
from bowl to finger to forehead
some words improvised
the touch, recollection
former formal times liturgical
now impromptu passing touch
all the mountain trees standing
in snow, glad, in sun, letting go
into glad beings hiking with ski poles
dog burying face, staring, listening
this rejection of belief, claim, course
of action, right, title, contract, obligation
all gone to ash
gone to momento mori
this flagrant non-attachment
ground scattered with pale gray ash
remembering to forget it all
one instant through another
I bow
At tree
With cross
Four-leggeds
Cemetery by
Brook bridge
Poke brass bell
Butterflying from
Branch, liturgy
Under snow under
Ground, they are
Imagination’s nave
Once they crossed
Double waters up
To spinnaker's Ragged
Climb, mountain
Backyard, the joy
Companioning hikes
Broken bench
Broken plastic chairs —
Unbroken “Peace” aloft
Listening to Will Durant writing about Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) while walking island path up toward spinnaker on lovely snow-deep Ragged Mountain this afternoon with Enso the good dog.
Croce came to philosophy from historical and literary studies; and it was natural that his philosophic interest should be deeply colored by the problems of criticism and esthetics. His greatest book is his Esthetic (1902). He prefers art to metaphysics and to science: the sciences give us utility but the arts give us beauty; the sciences take us away from the individual and the actual, into a world of increasingly mathematical abstractions, until (as in Einstein) they issue in momentous conclusions of no practical importance; but art takes us directly to the particular person and the unique fact, to the philosophical universal intuited in the form of the concrete individual. “Knowledge has two forms: it is either intuitive knowledge or logical knowledge; knowledge obtained through the imagination or knowledge obtained through the intellect; knowledge of the individual or knowledge of the universal; of individual things or of the relations between them; it is the production either of images or of concepts.” The origin of art, therefore, lies in the power of forming images. “Art is ruled uniquely by the imagination, Images are its only wealth. It does not classify objects, it does not pronounce them real or imaginary, does not qualify them, does not define them; it feels and presents them—nothing more.” Because imagination precedes thought, and is necessary to it, the artistic, or image-forming activity of the mind is prior to the logical, concept-forming, activity. Man is an artist as soon as he imagines, and long before he reasons.
Croce prefers art to metaphysics and to science: the sciences give us utility but the arts give us beauty. The origin of art lies in the power of forming images and not concepts. The image-forming activity of the mind is prior to the logical, concept-forming, activity.
The great artists understood the matter so. “One paints not with the hands but with the brain,” said Michelangelo; and Leonardo wrote: “The minds of men of lofty genius are most active in invention when they are doing the least external work.” Everybody knows the story told of da Vinci, that when he was painting the “Last Supper,” he sorely displeased the Abbot who had ordered the work, by sitting motionless for days before an untouched canvas; and revenged himself for the importunate Abbot’s persistent query—When would he begin to work?—by using the gentleman as an unconscious model for the figure of Judas.
(-- from Chapter X Section 2.3 from the book THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT. The contents are from the 1933 reprint)
Seems right -- to feel and present.
No rational argument. No calculated or conditioned elaboration of a point of view intended to overwhelm someone’s conclusions to correspond with your slant of persuasion.
Rather, to feel and present.
To intuit the whole of one’s life and past while navigating the moments and molecules of a quietly passing geography of now.
We are artists until we think we should be something else, do something else to justify our existence in the eyes of mechanical pragmatic witnesses. And then we grow old. A nostalgia for the person we always were overwhelms us. Maybe resentment. Perhaps blame. A spate of what could have been.
Forget about it!
Feel now.
Present now.
You are the blank page, the empty canvas, the mute flute, the silent spacious vista, the deep inner space, the cavernous dance floor.
Go ahead...there’s nothing more to think about.
in prison yesterday
wondering if Jesus
has any juice in
world today
man thinks yes
calls it ‘within christianity’
no regalia, ritual, title --
just the feel of faith inside
looking out at the unfeeling
structures and politics
those wanting to use the christ
for their portfolio, their resumé
he feels what he says, makes no
big claims, no triumphal BS
scratches his service dog-in-training
with her mohawk ridge on head
in library federal holiday Monday
talking as respecting conversationalists
as our lives pass one another
pausing in fond inquiry together
Jackson, Duvall, Jurgensen
these deaths
civil rights leader, actor,
quarterback
Jesse, Robert,
Sonny
close their eyes
rest their eyes
no longer needing
to see what we see
If we don’t thinkIt doesn’t matter
Others just look at youMindless
I cannot find
A world to dwell in
The hard cold respiteDripping each disappearance
I find myself absurd
Whatever you think,
No need to think well of me
No one cares
Excepting one who cares
Whatever their name
I breathe in
I breathe out
Absurdly
Gordon Lightfoot’s first verse could be about dementia, the ghosting mind.
If you could read my mind, love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie
'Bout a ghost from a wishin' well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
You know that ghost is me
And I will never be set free
As long as I'm a ghost, you can't see
(—from If You Could Read My Mind, Song by Gordon Lightfoot ‧ 1970)
As we disappear.
Mind staying inside itself.
Hauntingly.
do you want to know who I am?
yes, who are you?
I don’t know.
oh, well, then . . .
do you still want to know who I am?
no, no longer.
good, then that’s settled.
on second thought, who are you?
I am, I am, (oh dear) I don’t know . . .
right! thank you! thank you!
just because they
are hateful
doesn’t change
loving care
it does make
love
something
to practice
so, do so --
practice love
hate doesn’t know
what to do
with
love
Some bird calls
Two and two and two
As our sun-star clings
To icicle off eaves
Non-local 93 million
Miles and inches
Outside morning window
Behind bamboo shade
While riding road through
Shudder breeze climbing sluice
Up toward Hope this Sunday
Between Ragged and Bald
When I sat
With the dying
It occurred to me
How little it mattered
What anybody
Thought
So I didn’t —
Think
Just sat
Empty-minded
As one would
Watch finch
At feeder
Drop seed shell
And sometimes
Seed itself
We talked about non-local consciousness at Friday evening conversation. About Tonglen, taking in and sending out. About participation in freeing and releasing what is stuck and unknowingly captive within ignorance.
What does shuchi mean in Sanskrit?
Meaning of Shuchi
The name comes from the Sanskrit word (शुचि) means - "clean; pure; white; shining; radiant; innocent; holy" 1. (from Wisdom Library)
We wondered how, in a world of interpenetrative inter-being, one can remain free and non-attached while assisting the carrying out of liberating release in the presence of a suffering being.
What wisdom is necessary?
7. Practicing Wisdom – Shuchi’e
The seventh quality is to embody the wisdom of liberation from one’s attachments --shuchi’e. Realization based on hearing the teaching of buddhadharma and contemplating and practicing it is wisdom.
The Buddha said, “Monks, if you have wisdom, you will never become greedy. You must constantly reflect on yourself and never allow the loss of wisdom. That is how you will be liberated through dharma. One who does not act like that cannot be said to be a person of the Way. Nor can such a person be called a lay follower either. There is no name for one who does not carry out wisdom.
“True wisdom, like a strong and durable boat, will ferry you and others across the sea of sickness, old age, and death. It is like a brilliant lamp that lights up ignorance and darkness. It is medicinal for all who are sick and infirm. It is like cutting down the tree of ignorance, hatred, and cravings with a sharp ax.
“For this reason, it is important to increase even more the wisdom derived from hearing the dharma, contemplating deeply and carrying out true actions. If there is one who embodies wisdom, though he or she is only human and sees with a human eye, that person is one who can see. This is called wisdom.”
—fromThe Eight Qualities of a Great Person – Part 2, Dogen (1200-1253) https://www.dailyzen.com/journal/
Typically we are familiar with two things, attachment and divisiveness. If we are to find wisdom, would we find the middle way between attachment and divisiveness? That middle way wherein the true self moves between all things, neither clinging to nor rejecting what arises and falls away? That movement and manifestation, stillness and dissolution wherein all is all in one, and one is one in all?
The fact that the self is always living and dying gives it a peculiar ontological status. In traditional Buddhist terminology, it neither is nor is not. In Whiteheadian terminology, it becomes, but "never really is" (PR 82). One way to capture this ontological status is to speak of the self as a "process," both in Whitehead’s sense of concrescence (coming-into-being) and transition (the perishing of immediacy). The self, then, is not a being in the sense of being a static fact, nor is it mere nothingness. It is pure subjective becoming, pure process, that is perpetually perishing in the midst of its becoming. The key to Zen Buddhism lies not in escaping this process, but rather in living it fully. Ultimately, of course, one has no choice except to live the process fully, for the process is one’s own life. What happens in Zen enlightenment, however, is that this perpetual process of living and dying -- the everyday mind -- becomes the lived point of departure for all activity in the world. The enlightened Buddhist discovers that she need not cling to the past or the future, because she is always here-and-now. And she discovers that she cannot cling to her life; she can only live it fully, because she is constantly changing. (--from, Zen and the Self, by Jay B. McDaniel, in Religion Online)
Saturday quiets.
Lights are off at Snow Bowl.
Machines are parked. Lifts are still. Skiers gone home.
I read about how a woman's life was saved at the toboggan championships last week. Two teenage EMTs assisted others in CPR, paddling, and transporting a woman who had a “syncopal episode” (a loss of consciousness). It was their first EMS response after receiving their licenses.
There.
There.
Yes, there.
The delight in reading about Basho in Blyth by DeMott.
I found the first book of R. H. Blyth’s four volume set, Haiku, (originally published between 1949-1952) in a used book store on St. Mark’s Place. If haiku seems no more pertinent to you than, say, heraldry—one more subject about which even an informed person “need not be ashamed to know nothing”[1]—you may be mollified to hear I had an excuse to check Eastern Culture since I was Christmas shopping for a nephew who’s on his way to Japan this spring. The book’s cover—“Oriental brown simple rough peasant cloth”—got me to open “the Blyth Haiku bibles” (pace Allen Ginsberg, Allen Ginsberg). I fell in…
“Plop!”
To quote the last line of “the most famous haiku” with frog-and-pond as translated by Blyth—scholar-gypsy who brought the East to Beats and Salinger (see J.D.’s bow to Blyth in “Seymour, An Introduction”: “…haiku, but senryu, too…can be read with special satisfaction when R. H. Blyth was on them. Blyth is sometimes perilous, naturally, since he’s a highhanded old poem himself, but he’s also sublime.”) Blyth’s scholarship began to come through to Americans in the post-WWII era—when Japan’s crown-prince was another of his tutees and Blyth helped draft Hirohito’s “Declaration of Humanity.”[2] (He prompted the Emperor to refuse divinity and come out as a mortal though not a Christer as General MacArthur—Japan’s “Supreme Public Administrator”—wished.)
Blyth grew up poor in England, the son of a railway clerk. An outlier from the outset, he was a scholarship boy who loved animals, adopted vegetarianism, and did time as a conscientious objector during World War I. He headed East with his first wife in 1924 after graduating from London University, where he’d been recruited to take a job as a professor of English Language and Literature in Korea. He moved on to Japan in 1939 (with his second wife, a Japanese woman he met in Seoul after his first marriage failed). Interned during the war as an enemy alien, he still managed to begin publishing books in English with a Japanese firm, The Hokuseido Press (who remained his publishers through the Sixties). He ended up working with Japanese and American authorities to help ease the transition to peace after 1945.
Let’s skip out of history and let “Mr. Time-less”—to borrow an honorific bestowed on Blyth by a Zen master.[3]—plump for “plop” in Bashô’s famous haiku, which has also been rendered as “A deep resonance” though Blyth skips over that translation even as he tells why other one-word shots won’t do…
The old pond/A frog jumps in—/Plop!
Against this translation it may be urged that “plop” is an un-poetical, rather humorous word. To this I would answer, “Read it over slowly, about a dozen times, and this association will disappear largely.” Further, it may be said the expression “plop” is utterly different in sound from “mizu no oto.” This is not quite correct. The English “sound of water” is too gentle, suggesting a running stream or brook. The Japanese word “oto” has an onomatopoeic value much nearer to “plop.” Other translations are wide of the mark. “Splash” sounds as if Bashô himself has fallen in. Yone Noguchi’s “List, the water sound,” shows Bashô in graceful pose with finger in air. “Plash,” by Henderson, is also a misuse of words. Anyway, it is lucky for Bashô that he was born a Japanese, because probably not even he could have said it in English. Now we come to the meaning. An English author writes as follows:
“Some scholars maintain that this haiku about the frog is a perfect philosophical comment on the littleness of human life in comparison with the infinite. Such poems are hints, suggestions, rather than full expressions of an idea.”
No haiku is a philosophical comment. Human life is not little: it is not to be compared with the infinite, whatever that is. Haiku are not hints; they suggest nothing whatever.[4]. https://www.firstofthemonth.org/on-the-road-with-r-h-blyth/
Poets are the ministers and zen masters of intimation and intimacy.
I'd rather be confused by poetry than assured by rhetoric or prose.
It cheers that life is so confusing, that opinion and certitude trip over lumps in rug, bang hip on corner of island in kitchen before hitting head on unforgiving floor.
When I fall I want to fall in love.
It is, after all, Valentine's Day.
Some reference has to be made to flowers.
When I'm knocked unconscious I'd prefer not to see relatives and former acquaintances hovering nearby waiting to greet me into some reunion not worth the time it takes to say near-death or reincarnation.
Enough, (say it), said.