Monday, March 18, 2024

off cushion

Zen

Walks

Sunday, March 17, 2024

creatura essere

 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)

実体 (jittai)

In the night

Everything

Is itself


Not 

Something

Else


This is why

We pray at

Night

keep this koan constantly

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

Nothing else.

Just this.

from somewhere, this

 I'll

always


be

here


for 

you

Saturday, March 16, 2024

as years jig by

Irish

I am


memory 

of which


fades some

but, still


Irish 

I am

pi forever, pie tonight

There are days

Numbers numb

Mind


I try to help

But read wrong 

Column


Where

At end

Nothing adds up

surfing metaphor

A Times review:


 ONE WAY BACK: A Memoir | By Christine Blasey Ford


A swirling gulf between truth and news.

e voilà, moi aussi

Who are

We

Speaking with

fuente, procedencia

capitulate

to life

join the stream


recapitulate 

with love

you are what flows


no opposite

no enemy

beyond self


resound

return

to Source

Friday, March 15, 2024

namen sind nur lärm und rauch

 If you want

to know my name 

pronounce your name


If you’ve forgotten

your name

my name means nothing

Thursday, March 14, 2024

and the leaky barn

 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.

homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto

 Coming off mountain, stopping in yurt to assure it has not been abandoned.


Mountain absorbs tired snow as winter prepares to pass off its stay.


We move on and into the turnabout nature dances.

The author I listen to quotes the playwright Terence:

“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.

night gatha haiku prayer

 May God be Here Now 

And True —Be With Each Being

As Way Moving Through 

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

hey hey lookie here

Winter looks

Askance


Night air through

Open window


Even brown

Blanket covers itself

difference with distinction

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-referentialityepistemological relativismmoral relativismpluralismirony, irreverence, and eclecticism.[4] It opposes the "universal validity" of binary oppositions, stable identityhierarchy, 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 theorydeconstruction, 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:


Up the mountain, run-off from recent rains:


I let go opening at Trappist monastery for retreat some 234 miles away.

What I might be looking for, or, what I am looking for, is a lot closer than someone else's monastery, than some other place I used to go to experience succor.

Turns out where I dwell is a place of collation and recollection.

As is where you are.

It's a difference with distinction.

I love the difference.

the wisdom (to know and not to know) the difference

don't ask me 

about

truth or wisdom


I don't 

know the 

difference

Tuesday, March 12, 2024

not me, but others

 I suspect

In ten years


We’ll look back

On 2024 election


And

(laugh) (cry)

as night resides

 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 

Monday, March 11, 2024

monday morning

 in prison today

good conversation

the eight of us

and one sweet dog

monday evening

walking cold
vacant snow bowl

stiff wind
season ended

grey
sky

mountain 
abandoned

listening to
Irrationality

this time
we live

Sunday, March 10, 2024

thank you, thank you

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.

qui es-tu; pensée

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.

μεταβιβάζω*

 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.*

time

 And here I thought it was 3:15AM.

Saturday, March 09, 2024

we are the irrational animal

 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.

have full dignity within it

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.

νόησις νοήσεως

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! 

who needs a mat

 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. 

silencio y soledad de arpillera

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 

soledad

Friday, March 08, 2024

the letter ‘s’

“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.

Thursday, March 07, 2024

us

President Biden gave 

SOTU speech tonight.

Good for US

where absence goes to pray

 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

awk, causing uneasy embarrassment

 It feels

Awkward


That

America’s


Greatest danger

Is the man


Wanting to be

It’s president —


And it is,

Awkward

billy clubs, bullwhips, and tear gas

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.

Wednesday, March 06, 2024

they're selling selling postcards of the hanging

there's

nothing


to say

so


don't

see


for

yourself

morning, wohnküche, sensei(s)

 dog snoozes

cat naps


sun slants

in glass door


red squirrel 

under feeder


will not

stop looking


for what

feeds it


for unbroken

sustenance 

and yet

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!

not this, not this

 A time

Will come


When truth

Will matter


Until then

Comfort one


Another —

We live


Within

Lies


No outer

Resemblance

Tuesday, March 05, 2024

a single light in a dark alley

Let’s say I’ve only a passing interest in primary politics.

But, hey, how do you like them Vermonters!

say again

 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

the argument to let be

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

you don’t need to win elections

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.

the stones will cry out

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. 

gespräch

 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

decreating decreation

 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