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
Today outside your prison I stand
Sunday, February 15, 2026
prolixity, 864 thousand mile diameter in frozen slice of water
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
second-hand sweeping ‘round
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
Saturday, February 14, 2026
there
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.
hints, suggestions, rather than full expressions
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.
politics 2026
give me your wallet!
whoa...are you robbing me?
hand me your watch!
no, I won’t.
vote for me!
sure, what’s your name?
(that was easy)
(phew, narrowly escaped)
mountain feels him coming
Headlights down road
Turn into snow bowl
Early arrival, this monk
Will straddle metal into snowcat
Start ascent up steel grouser cleats
To intimate cab with lighted levers
Such good snow this season
Downhill ski runs crisscross
Swooshing joy for the fearless
It is enough for me to live next
Door to this mountain abbey ashram
A non-skier, I walk to toboggan run
Last week’s national championships
Bonfires on frozen pond/lake, 40 mph
Rumbling runs down wood shute
This Jiyuu (自由, じゆう) finishes first coffee
Turns key in starter, begins solitary
Climb aslant ascent leaving loving ridges
His night office
Horarium of the heart making way
For those coming after
Friday, February 13, 2026
late am i learning you
Bewith
All these years
The translation of
Dominus vobiscom
Is really
“May One bewith you”
Of course it is
This way of being
Bewithed and
Bewithing
divide-d'end
man in prison today
convincing me this
good president exposes
corruption -- not only
his own but that of all
the traders and traitors
in congress and the court --
the quiet revelation that
public office is a goldmine
picked and panned by clever
law-evaders pretending to be
looking out for constituents
(he rubbed his tired eyes
Speaks of son also inside
this patrimony of sadness)
I listen to him, he knows
how it is done, how they
manipulate, going to cash
while pointing fingers
thumbs picking
pockets of saps and suckers
sweeping his simile into bin
He wondered
What it’s like
To be his toaster
Concluding
He couldn’t
(There you are)
Not me,
I am my toaster
Consciousness be damned
Give me bread
Lower that lever
Burn, baby, burn
Peanut butter
Strawberry jam
Cup of coffee
You see, consciousness
Has nothing to do
With you
It resides
As crumbs appearing
On cutting board
Just there
The way words are meant
To be, brushed, away
Thursday, February 12, 2026
called physiologoi in antiquity, (greek: φυσιολόγοι)
I first heard the phrase reading psychiatrist Karl Stern who wrote, "All being is nuptial." It was in his book "The Flight from Woman", 1965.
Today, these references. First by Nicolai Berdyaev (1874-1948):
“The freedom implicit in the exercise of knowledge receives its illumination from the Logos. But it is also related to Eros. To pursue knowledge without any consciousness of love, merely to seek power, is a form of demonism. It may therefore be affirmed that knowledge is essentially cosmogonic. It should consider reality carefully and examine it conscientiously; for moral pathos is the true inspiration and urge for our quest for truth. The subjective freedom thus generated by the Logos transfigures reality. The nature of knowledge is conjugal; it is both male and female, it is the conjunction of these two principles, the impregnation of the feminine element by virile meaning.” ~ Solitude and Society
“The theological doctrine that God created man for His own glory and praise is degrading to man, and degrading to God also…. God as personality does not desire a man over whom He can rule, and who ought to praise Him, but man as personality who answers His call and with whom communion of love is possible.” ~ Slavery and Freedom
“Consciousness which exteriorizes and alienates is always slavish consciousness. God the Master, man the slave; the church the master, man the slave; the family the master, man the slave; Nature the master, man the slave; object the master, man-subject the slave. The source of slavery is always objectification, that is to say exteriorization, alienation.” ~ Slavery and Freedom
“Man can be a slave to public opinion, a slave to custom, to morals, to judgments and opinions which are imposed by society. It is difficult to overestimate the violence which is perpetrated by the press in our time. The average man of our day holds the opinions and forms the judgments of the newspaper which he reads every morning: it exercises psychological compulsion upon him. And in view of the falsehood and venality of the press, the effects are very terrible as seen in the enslavement of man and his deprivation of freedom of conscience and judgment.” ~ Slavery and Freedom
“Men not only need the state and cannot do without the services it renders, but they are seduced by it, they are taken captive by the state, they connect their dreams of sovereignty with it. And there lies the chief evil and a source of human slavery.” ~ Slavery and Freedom
Then by Marguerite Porete (1250-1310):
Marguerite Porete, though she wrote around 700 years ago, has a completely different way of looking at the nuptial metaphor. In The Mirror of Simple Souls she draws a picture of a love relationship between the Soul and God that is completely mutual in both self-giving and satisfaction. In this work Porete creates a dialogue between the soul and a host of characters such as Lady Love, Reason, The Supreme Lady of Peace, and The Spouse of the Soul. In the middle of this dialogue, the Soul comes to Lady Love in utter despondency. She has thought that the love between herself and the Divine was without “Lordship” but has found that she has nothing and the Divine has all. This creates an imbalance in the relationship and the Soul is heartbroken to think that she has nothing to offer to the one she loves.
Lady Love immediately reassures her that she herself is enough and that her lover is wholly satisfied with exactly what she has to give. In fact, the Divine is happy to give all of Godself in return for the soul’s gift of self. This is a totally different relationship from that which we see in the theology of recent popes and other theologians. In this relationship there are no set roles of “giver” or “receiver,” rather both have their turn in giving and receiving. This is a relationship that allows Marguerite to write of the soul,
“She swims and flows in joy, without feeling any joy, for she dwells in Joy and Joy dwells in her. She is Joy itself…”
https://www.womensordination.org/blog/2020/03/07/a-mutual-nuptial/
We wonder about the soul.
We try to suss what union or unity means in our everyday meander through both solitude and communality. What are the borders? Are we separate? What intercourse or spontaneous generation emerges into itself-reality, what the rational intellect can only interpret as a dualistic cause and effect.
Active in the 6th and 5th centuries BCE, early Greek philosophers, called physiologoi in antiquity (Greek: φυσιολόγοι; in English, physical or natural philosophers), attempted to give natural explanations of phenomena that had previously been ascribed to the agency of the gods.[8] The physiologoi sought the material principle or arche (Greek: ἀρχή) of things, emphasizing the rational unity of the external world and rejecting theological or mythological explanations.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spontaneous_generation
Are we, as some suggest, mired in illusion fabricated by an anachronistic archaic consciousness that thrives on notions of division and separation? Or as a man in prison conversation said on Monday "We're addicted to divisiveness."
Can we imagine (like Berdyaev) a seeming interspersion, an advaitic non-twoness emerging as itself, not measurable as distinct or divided, but a fluidic swirling appearance of hardly recognizable reality?
In other words (my mother's favorite phrase) the appearance of non-appearance in its true nature, one and the same, within-itself/without-itself, of a piece, might we say, as peace?
Can we say we will never be at peace with the mind that drags us behind it?
Rather, to dwell within mind-itself is to abandon leading or following, resolving to dwell in what leather-worker philosopher from Ellsworth expressed as the true meaning of "anarchist?"
I wonder if he'd have agreed (annoyingly dying a few years ago) with the AI description:
Being an anarchist means believing in a society without rulers, hierarchies, or coercive authority, advocating instead for voluntary cooperation, mutual aid, and individual freedom, often through dismantling the state, capitalism, and other oppressive structures, though specific methods and focus (individual vs. collective) vary. It's a political philosophy opposing all forms of domination, envisioning a self-organized society based on free association and consensus.(--search, anarchist)
Nuptiality. Essentially and existentially -- two-become-one. Or, perhaps, one-not-become-two.
Of course wording wears its awkwardness.
Men and women, men and men, women and women, God and humanity, creation and creator, this and that, you and me.
What is there to see? And if wholeness is the sole reality, is there any seeing at all?
Perhaps that's the terror of death for many of us.
No seeing.
Nothing other to see.
Just Being-Within.
As Itself.
Whole and impartial.
¿la verdad realmente libera?
Lying isn’t new
Truth is difficult
If you want the truth
Embrace the difficult
can of beings
Withdrawing into
Silent solitude
The hobo fool
Finds odd comfort
Just this side
Of emptiness
absence of justice
Listening to attorney general
I cannot find any decency
Any willingness to serve
Anyone not her pal
Wednesday, February 11, 2026
tell everyone just to remember their names
Poem by William Stafford:
A Message from the Wanderer
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