se situer entre... tout au long de...(to be between throughout)

T’aego is right.

He guesses, or sees, what many of us long for.

A faith.

That what is there is there.

No matter how dull our minds.

No matter how clouded our perception.

No matter how dusking our hope.

There is something bright and clear,

without falsity, without biases,

tranquil and unmoving,

possessed of vast consciousness,

fundamentally without birth, death and discrimination,

without names and forms and words.

It engulfs space and covers

all of heaven and earth,

all of form and sound,

and is equipped to function.

T’aego (1301-1382)

Taego Bou painting from the 19th century

Taego Bou (Korean: 태고보우; Hanja: 太古普愚, 23 October 1301 – 27 January 1383), alternatively romanized as Taego Bowoo or Taego Bowu, was a Korean Seon master who lived in Goryeo, was the cofounder of the Jogye Order with Jinul, and is credited as the founder of the modern Taego Order.

--wikipedia

When Zen Master Seung Sahn (called by his students Dae Soen Sa Nim, or "Great Honored Zen Teacher”) came to America from Korea in 1972, I sat with him in Manhattan and in Providence. I was not a formal student, only interested. (Inter-esse -- to be between)

Jesuit priest, poet, and peace-advocate Daniel Berrigan used the word “interesting” as a revelation to me as I walked beside him in Norristown PA (1981) during one of his court trials. He would say the word there and elsewhere as if it were a holy word.

Seung Sahn and Daniel Berrigan were interesting to me.

Something that is taking place between what you consider “me” and that which just might be the "sacred non-self.”

That holy place holding together an entropic material/spiritual universe which is perennially flying off from itself into diverse and disordered realms of the unknown.

Between order and disorder, between this and that, between heaven and hell, we are “interesting.”

Are we, as “interesting,” that which unknowingly finds ourselves placed between the centrifugal and the centripetal as necessary beings, (compare “Christs”) as that which holds-to-itself in a time of rampant self-annihilation and elimination?

To be “interesting” is to be “between” that which is whole and that which is whole, That is, that which is wholly unknown and that which is wholly known. 

To exist as itself.

Throughout.

Is this what is meant by the practice of nearing God?

Is this what a true practitioner of a holy path is doing?

Placing one’s-self between what-is there and what-is-not here?

Being absurdly willing to stand in the place of unknowing between the completely unknown and the wholly known?

To be there with dignity and forbearance, with vulnerability and trust, with humility and good humor?

Throughout.

Unafraid to see and learn truth; unafraid to experience and notate untruth?

To be between throughout.

Interesting.

at bedtime

Saint-Saëns: Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix ∙ Gautier Capuçon ∙ Thierry Escaich

The delight of it!

hard tellin’ . . . right in my ear . . . I just can't stop listening

 No thinking about this --

just feeling it!

https://bsky.app/profile/catdamama.bsky.social/post/3mqavmlwaok2f

don’t mind me, feel me

I’ve not done psychedelics. My mind is altered by common perception. However wrongly interpreted, that which we consider real is commonly perceived, discussed and argued about, without the hallucinogenics of personalized alteration specific to a particular experience.

We do have difficulty interpreting the so-called known world.

Such as, is the Senator from Kentucky dead or alive? Also, is the twice elected president of the country an insanely demented sociopath?

We seem, as a country, for the moment, to disagree on the answers given to the questions.

It’s not that our consciousness is aberrant. More, that our psychical interpretation of our perception of reality is disconnected from a true reception of data and signals emanating from the source of our inquiry.

Would the whole country be moribund if the United States Senator were in a vegetative state being kept alive for political advantage?

Would the whole country be insane if there were a willing unwillingness to accept the reality that the chief executive was hopelessly psychically and spiritually incapable of squaring the needs of the country with his personal aggrandized obsession with wealth and chicanery grifting for his family?

I’ve long liked the idea of truth and justice. Somehow the third phrase “and the American way” has become detached from from our superman comical idealization. The American way seems to have become graft, grift, and garrulous pomposity. The so-called “little man” is smaller and less significant than ever.

No psychedelic is going to rectify the corruptible. No gummy or cannabis will right the wrong we experience. No Budweiser or Pinot Noir will make wrong right.

Some spiritual traditions signal that the world is made from and consists of mere consciousness. “Mind” is the matter with the universe and all of creation.  

The task that we seem to find so difficult is how to move through mind into clear awareness of what-is true in-itself, unreliant on our perceptions and interpretations. 

It’s why we’re so ambivalent about God.

Is God that-which-is-in-itself? 

I remember reading Susan Sontag in 1966:

Against Interpretation (often published as Against Interpretation and Other Essays) is a 1966 collection of essays by Susan Sontag. It includes some of Sontag's best-known works, including "Notes on 'Camp'", "On Style" and the eponymous essay "Against Interpretation." In the latter, Sontag argues that the new approach to criticism and aesthetics neglects the sensuous impact and novelty of art, instead fitting works into predetermined intellectual interpretations and emphasis on the "content" or "meaning" of a work. The book was a finalist for the Arts and Letters category of the National Book Award.^[1]      wikipedia

The sensuous, the descriptive, the sensitive -- these help reveal what we are, experiencing.

Placing us in the presence of what-is revealing itself.

flower duet

This rare disappearance.

I find myself nowhere to be found.

Go on! I am making no sound 

Living deep in the mountains

I’ve grown fond of the

Solitary sound of the pines;

On days the wind does not blow

How lonely it is!

--Rengetsu (1791-1875)

 Ōtagaki Rengetsu (大田垣 蓮月; 10 February 1791 – 10 December 1875) was a Buddhist nun who is widely regarded to have been one of the greatest Japanese poets of the 19th century. She was also a skilled potter and painter and expert calligrapher. (wikipedia)

 After marriages and children, after becoming a nun, she lived in tiny huts and moved around quite a lot.

“Flower Duet” by Esther Abrami plays its sweetness.

face drawn in sand

It’s not a matter of being right, it’s a matter of the right’s might being all that matters.

 No wonder Foucault’s name pops up wherever you look. Whenever one group feels threatened or oppressed by another, he can be recruited as vindication, justifying suspicion and resistance. Even his interest toward the end of his life in neoliberalism — an economic philosophy predicated on minimal interference from government regulators — can be understood in these terms: Keep the state out of the market.

Would he have been dismayed that the skepticism of power he promoted is today associated with so much political rancor and division? At the very least, we can bet he would have appreciated this irony: The philosopher who warned against power’s dominating force has himself become dominant.

He might also have insisted that his would not be the last word. With his past-is-future approach to history, Foucault understood that no power is forever. In what feels like another eerie nod to our present and its growing army of ever-smarter A.I. machines, he predicted that the reign of human beings at the center of power and knowledge was destined to end — erased, as he put it in a haunting image, “like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.”

 (—in “From A.I. to the Deep State, Michel Foucault Foresaw It All,” by Emily Eakin, NYTIMES, 10july26)

I say it again: It’s not a matter of being right, it’s a matter of the right’s might being all that matters.

Is human knowledge being reduced to rightwing billionaire kleptocratic oligarchy for the benefit of “the betters” among us?

I’m thinking of learning how to pray.

Not that prayer will do any good — rather, that I might learn what and where good is.

is the situation what-is always taking place

LOVE

(down 

to my soul:

                         assume your nature as yourself 

                         for the love of God

                                                             not even good enough

    

 Stories 

                 only

                            the possibility

                                                             of discrete  

                                                                                   men 

There is no intelligence 

the equal of
the situation

There are only

                                  two ways:

                                  create the situation

                                                                     (and this is love)

                                  or avoid it.

                                                         This also can be

Love.

(—Poem by Charles Olson)

shame

 ICE murders 

another innocent man

It matters

These murders

pause before responding

 he asked why

wouldn’t everyone

want to be one

with God

he was sitting

on a horse

talking about God

in a ring corral

never mind mitch, am I alive

 comically cloistered

one breath after one shallow breath

afternoon slides by as I watch

not a game, merely a shame

 We don’t want him assassinated.

We’d like him removed from office.

Changing a pitcher who is wild and erratic

For the good of everybody

Before he really hurts those he opposes 

And those he thinks are with him.

Where is the manager?

Where are those who own the team?

Where the ambulance?

breithlá sona duit mamaí

If you had not been born

I'd have not been born --

breithlá sona duit mamaí!

happy birthday, mom!

accommodating

 Shallow breaths

Small movements

Buddha in window

The filled world

perspective

Spot on.

Randy Feltface.  https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1befT4fvVk/

Then:

Zen Master Seung Sahn taught that there are only two kinds of people: those who will die soon, and those who will die later. He used this phrase to remind people that the future is uncertain. He wanted students to "wake up" to the present moment instead of wasting time. [1, 2] 

 

Zen Master Seung Sahn often said "soon dead" to help his students remember that life is short. This wry wake-up call was his way of reminding people to stop wasting time on silly worries. He wanted people to focus fully on the present moment. [1, 2] 

(AI)

introspection

I am easily deceived.  

 How does one study Ch’an?

One has to awaken suddenly and directly have no mind; only then can you be joyful and at peace. If you do not awaken, then all you will be doing is mouthing a few phrases about emptiness, nonbeing, and quoting a few of the ancients talking about nonbeing. 

 

In a mistaken fashion on the basis of this you will say: “I have obtained rest.” I want to ask you, can you succeed in resting or not? That is using the mind to make the mind not exist. 

 

If you use the mind to make the mind not exist, the mind exists all the more. How can you then make it not exist? The ancient sages scoffed at this as the heresy of falling into emptiness.

--Ta-hui

It’s time to give up the study of zen. Time to look out window between mountains and not think.

Time to let silence be silence without betokening anything.

Dahui Zonggao (1089–10 August 1163) (Chinese: 大慧宗杲; Wade–Giles: Ta-hui Tsung-kao; Japanese: Daie Sōkō; Vietnamese: Đại Huệ Tông Cảo) was a 12th-century Chinese Chan (Zen) master. Dahui was a student of Yuanwu Keqin (Wade–Giles: Yuan-wu K'o-ch'in; Japanese: Engo Kokugon) (1063–1135) and was the 12th generation of the Linji school of Chan Buddhism. He was the dominant figure of the Linji school during the Song dynasty.^[1]

Dahui introduced the practice of kan huatou, or "inspecting the critical phrase," of a kōan story. This method was called the "Chan of gongan (kōan) introspection" (看話禪 Kanhua Chan).^[2]

Dahui was a vigorous critic of what he called the "heretical Chan of silent illumination" (默照邪禪 Mozhao Xie Chan) of the Caodong school (Wade–Giles: Ts'ao-tung; Japanese: Sōtō). (wikipedia)

I look out the window, I look into the green leaves shielding the road busy with passing cars. 

I am uncertain as to what I see.

But I’m looking into it.

hopeless

Who talks like this?   

President Trump kicked off the second day of the NATO summit in Turkey on Wednesday by restating his “need” to control Greenland, blasting European allies as “hopeless” and threatening countries that did not support the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. 

 

The president called Spaniards “hopeless, bad people” and said he was cutting off trade with the country — even though the European Union’s 27 nations negotiate trade jointly. He mentioned France, Germany, Italy and Britain by name for not joining the war in Iran. He cast doubt on a temporary cease-fire aimed at ending the conflict and referred to Iran’s leaders as “evil, sick people” and “cancer.’’ 

 

“You know what you do?” he said. “You got to cut out cancer early.” 

 

-- NYT, 8july26, https://www.nytimes.com/live/2026/07/08/world/nato-summit-turkey-trump-ukraine 

Awkward and unskillful speech unwins the day. 

ways to climb the mountain

On days when I don’t feel so good, reminders come of, let’s say, difficult times running through body and mind that point out what wasn’t right.

The body remembers and the mind forgets what needs to be remembered and forgotten. 

 Many indeed are

The ways to climb

The mountain,

But it is the same moon

That we see over the peak.

        

          --Ikkyu (1394-1481)

I once taught a Philosophy of Work course with someone in an upstart small boatbuilding college located on a quiet harbor in Maine. Today is the anniversary of his death in 2020. We’d become estranged for over ten years. Then we met one day by chance in a Belfast bakery, standing in the middle of the busy swirl, talking for a goodly amount of time. He’d had serious heart sickness, nearly died twice, but was of good cheer among the good smells of passing croissants and coffee.

There are still things of his he stored in the Southwest loft of the barn. 

Perhaps illness and dissatisfaction are the body’s way of processing all the things befalling it over years passing through this unrelenting and indecipherable life.

My body is doing some serious recounting these days. Further in, that anomalous “self/soul” permeating the body feels weary and irresolute.

And in the larger body -- Mitch McConnell, they say, is brain dead in Kentucky. Graham Platner, Senate candidate in Maine, faces another sexual abuse accusation and withdrawal. Donald Trump continues as, what many say, a corrupt and ignorant version of occupant of highest office in the land. Maga-republicans are odd and curious non-leadership politicians who have carjacked the country and refuse to drive anywhere.

My body tells me all this.

It wants to go back to bed.

Ikkyu is right. 

We’re all on this mountain,

We see the moon.

We stumble over roots and branches in our dizziness, we fall, and sometimes don’t want to get up, our faces flat on the ground.

I have several Sumi-e (墨絵) works from this person’s hand hanging in the house.

His work is thoughtful. He was ok!

The body is happy to note his scrolls and to remember.

One-such is Jijimugé (事事無碍). 

Jijimugé (事事無碍) is a Japanese Buddhist term. It translates to the "unhindered mutual interpenetration of all things and events." It means everything in the universe is connected. Every event and object flows into all other things without any blocks or limits. 

--AI search

Between one thing/event and another thing/event there is no barrier. 

Right there, on my wall.

all I need to know

 Water

Fire

 Earth

Air

The Classical Elements

Rooted in ancient Greek philosophy by thinkers like Empedocles and Aristotle, this model was used for centuries to describe the physical universe: [1]

• Earth: Represents solidity, stability, and the foundation of matter.
• Water: Symbolizes fluidity, emotion, and adaptability.
• Air: Represents breath, movement, intellect, and communication.
• Fire: Associated with energy, light, passion, and transformation. [1, 2]( AI)

tan enloquecedor

 It's maddening 

Sexual predation

so rampant

Maddening

So many

suffer

so maddening

so maddening

so maddening

pourquoi pas

 Once I wanted

To be

A monk

Now

I can’t

Remember why

Not

Wanting

Anything else

Than what I am

A monk

With no why

no need for a search party

 Truth is an honorable destination

I think the leadership

In Washington is lost

what being alive is like

Reading poet Joanne Kyger book of poems, As Ever. 

Could not find online poem in book, "12.29 & 30 (Pan as the Son of Penelope)" by Joanne Kyger, and too long to type. But came across this:

 Night Palace 

 

"The best thing about the past

                                                is that it's over" 

                                 when you die.

                you wake up

 from the dream

                                                   that's your life.

 

Then you grow up

                         and get to be post human

                      in a past      that keeps happening 

                 ahead of you

(--Poem by Joanne Kyger, OCTOBER 2003

Learned she was married to Gary Snyder from 1960-65 and wrote alongside the Beats (Ginsburg, Creeley, Kerouac, Whelan).

This from a literary magazine:

In person, Kyger offers wide-ranging and inspired conversation. Through years of practice of poetry and Zen, as well as attending the manners and courtesies of village life in Bolinas, she has managed to compress in pragmatic fashion questions or statements that clear the air in an instant. “I don’t care what someone ‘knows’ or ‘feels,’” she said to me once in conversation about poetry, “I want to know what’s happening.” I repeat this because it impressed me deeply, and because it reveals much that is true of the new narrative forms that came out of the 1960s and ‘70s in and around Bolinas. Particularly, the statement draws attention to Kyger’s own careful, perceptive nature, and her uses of poetry. She exemplifies a faith in the life-long process of self-relation, trusting in the poem and its instantaneous recognition in the projective field articulated by Charles Olson. Unlike Olson, however, she focuses on events and happenings, moving herself out of the way as a kind of recording instrument. Philip Whalen, from whom she learned much too, created a similar ethos of detachment in his work. His finished poems, however, are more like seamless, well-crafted collages from notebooks. They are full of humor and detached observations of diverse physical and creative environments inter-textually stitched to delight and tease readers with exemplary wisdom and bardic aplomb. Kyger’s work by contrast is personally intimate, faithful to specific moments in time and attendant to the many spirits or moods of landscape. The real difference, perhaps, is the frame of attention, and the spirits guiding it. Whalen’s genius for quotation and for extending the context of the poem contrasts starkly with Kyger’s bright and socially centered attention to the immediate context of composition, as it is known through her words rather than through the quotes of others.

^

Her attention to place makes her an intimate observer of every day life in her beloved Bolinas. Her engagement with organic life processes is mirrored by the visual construction of her poems on the page, where lines often are set out into the space of the page rather than stacked along the left-hand margin. In this sense visually she is close to Pound and Williams, using the page as a kind of painting or glyph for the ease and pleasure of the eye. “I saw the page as some kind of tapestry and voice glyph,” she said in a 1997 interview,[12] echoing concerns for the poem that have been with her from her first book, The Tapestry and the Web. “When you move your line to the right, the lesser the impact of the line, the voice. The whole movement and rhythm on the page give us instruction as to voice and phrasing and import of what’s going on.” These concerns for her own creative environments reveal an openness to phenomena, an openness that withholds judgment in order to experience the moment through several perspectives. She is adamant too in stressing that anything can become part of a person’s poetic practice. “Your dreams are important,” she said, “your humorous life is important, your cooking life is important, your friendships, the dialogues you assume, the news that comes from within, the news that comes from out there. There’s such a wide variety of ‘things’ that go on. It’s important not to get stuck on any one of these as being the ‘I’ that writes. Being able to report, as it were, from all these areas of life and see that they’re equally ‘valid’ and ‘important.’ Nothing is more or less important than anything else. An egalitarian sense of what it’s like to be a human. What being alive is like.

—from  Joanne Kyger and the Narrative of Every Day, by Dale Smith, Jacket Magazine, October 2007

 http://jacketmagazine.com/34/kyger-by-smith.shtml