It is not, as some ancients and the Confucians taught, that you sweep away ordinary feelings and bring into existence some holy understanding. When ordinariness and holiness exist no more, how is that? An octagonal grindstone is turning in empty space, a diamond pestle grinds to dust the iron mountain.Bells at end of Salve Regina.
- Daikaku (1213-1279)
The reverential mind can let things be and celebrate a person's presence or a thing's beauty without wanting something from them.We've decided the reason there is so much recidivism among released prisoners is because the monastic experience had while incarcerated isn't supported back in the world. Harsh distraction and indifferent hustles tear away the dissolved self experienced in solitude and introspection -- replacing it with a fortified false self that tries to juggle disturbed values and desperate loneliness -- only to drop, and lose the act.
(--from p.77, section "The Ascetical Presence: The Wisdom to Subtract from the Feast" in chapter on "Presence" in John O'Donohue's Eternal Echoes, c.1999)
* 9. It is a discourse that inevitably completes itself again in a new silence.There are times when giving up seems the only option.
A God who would be completely transcendent -- in addition to the fact that it would be contradictory to hope to speak about such a God -- would be a superfluous, if not perverse hypothesis. A completely transcendent God would deny divine immanence at the same time that it would destroy human transcendence. The divine mystery is ineffable and no discourse can describe it.
(-- from NINE WAYS NOT TO TALK ABOUT GOD, by Raimon Panikkar, in CrossCurrents, http://www.crosscurrents.org/panikkar.htm)
Inside the sacred fenceA woman donates a whole bunch of classical music cds that belonged to her father. She says, "The more someone is lost from God, the more they need to acquire material goods." It is a sentence for me to ponder. I would think that the pathway music leads along was the footing of divine traverse.
Before which I bow
There must be a pond
Filled with clear water;
As my mind-moon becomes bright
I see its shadow reflected in the water.
- Daito Kokushi
PastoralThis nation is having a difficult time remembering that what you make of yourself does not exclude what you make of others.
When I was younger
it was plain to me
I must make something of myself.
Older now
I walk back streets
admiring the houses
of the very poor:
roof out of line with sides
the yards cluttered
with old chicken wire, ashes,
furniture gone wrong;
the fences and outhouses
built of barrel staves
and parts of boxes, all,
if I am fortunate,
smeared a bluish green
that properly weathered
pleases me best of all colors.
No one
will believe this
of vast import to the nation.
(Poem: "Pastoral" by William Carlos Williams, from The Collected Poems of W.C. Williams. New Directions, 1991.)
Whether you are going or staying or sitting or lying down, the whole world is your own self. You must find out whether the mountains, rivers, grass, and forests exist in your own mind or exist outside it. Analyze the ten thousand things, dissect them minutely, and when you take this to the limit you will come to the limitless. When you search into it you come to the end of search, where thinking goes no further and distinctions vanish. When you smash the citadel of doubt, then the Buddha is simply yourself.It's an odd practice to take someone else's word for things. "He said," or, She said" are often exercises in miscommunication; they are most often prey to the demon of misinterpretation. Leave someone else's word where it belongs -- it belongs in and to that person. "Go and find your own word," is what a kind teacher would say.
- Daikaku (1213-1279)
St Thomas the ApostleLearning to see for yourself, like learning to see yourself, begins a long, lonely, yet lovely journey up the path of search, through thickets of dark despair, across deserts of empty promises and expectations, until you cross the sudden river of profound doubt, and step into the wide open expanse and gracious hospitality of vanished distinctions.
The apostle Thomas is famous for doubting the resurrection of Jesus when his fellow apostles told him about it; but if he is the sceptical apostle, he is also the believing apostle, for having seen and touched a risen man, he made the immediate leap of faith and so became the first apostle to call Jesus God.
(--Tuesday 3 July 2007, Saint Thomas, Apostle, Feast. http://www.universalis.com/)
The true heart of all human beings is the lover of what is. That's why we cannot escape any part of ourselves. This is not because we are a disaster, but because we are conscious and we are coming back for all of ourselves in this birth. No matter how confused we are, we will come back for every part of ourselves that has been left out of the game. This is the birth of real compassion and love. For too long, it has been said by spiritual traditions that you have to slay so much to get to love. But this is a myth. The truth is that it is love that really liberates.To be mindful means, ultimately, to be what you are doing -- every primary instant, and each second of existence. This being of incarnated and eternal presence is one of love.
(- Adyashanti, from Emptiness Dancing)
At night, deep in the mountains,Mr George Bush has commuted the prison sentence time of Mr. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. This new declaration voids all laws for the Executive White House.
I sit in meditation.
The affairs of the world
Never reach here;
Everything is quiet and empty,
All the incense has
Been swallowed up
By the endless night.
My robe has become a garment of dew.
Unable to sleep I
Walk out into the woods
Suddenly, above the highest peak,
The full moon appears.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)
To be resolute in the way meansWhen we joked with Tom the mailman on Saturday about how there was no good business reason we should have lasted 11 years and be beginning our 12th, he said : "Well here it's all about people and relationships, isn't it?"
from the beginning never to
lose sight of it, whether in a
place of calm or in a place of strife;
to not cling to quiet places nor
shun places where there is disturbance.
- Daikaku (1213-1279)
Another to whom he said, ‘Follow me’, replied, ‘Let me go and bury my father first’. But he answered, ‘Leave the dead to bury their dead; your duty is to go and spread the news of the kingdom of God’.That news is people and relationships.
(--Luke 9:51 - 62)