Angels, they say, there are angels everywhere. Can't see them. Can't hear them. Although there are those say they feel them.

Beyond me.

Written at the dwelling of a recluse

Even though you have a brushwood door,
It hasn't been shut for a long time;
A few clouds, a few trees
Have been your only companions.
Still I suspect if you stay longer,
People will learn of this spot;
We'll see you moving
Higher on the mountain.
- Chia Tao (779-843)

Astronomers estimate there are between 200 - 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. That's our galaxy. One of many. How many?

...[I]n 1999 the Hubble Space Telescope estimated that there were 125 billion galaxies in the universe, and recently with the new camera HST has observed 3,000 visible galaxies, which is twice as much as they observed before with the old camera. We're emphasizing "visible" because observations with radio telescopes, infrared cameras, x-ray cameras, etc. would detect other galaxies that are not detected by Hubble. As observations keep on going and astronomers explore more of our universe, the number of galaxies detected will increase. (-- NASA, http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/021127a.html)

Do the math.

There's a lot of room out there.

Where do angels fear to tread?

Surely a recluse would go even there.

Sitting zazen in prison this morning. I invite bell three times. Then we talk about mice and bats.

A person who has no body has a large body. He who has no mind has a large mind. With a large mind comes a wisdom that covers all myriad things. With a large body he can respond and react without end. So it is that someone who holds onto his body as his own loses this great responsiveness, and one who holds onto his body as his own loses this great knowledge.

That is why all the sutras and treatises teach that one must take leave of the body and mind and break free of all holding and attachment before entering into what is true and real. It is like how a goldsmith must smelt ore to obtain gold before he can fashion it into implements for use.

If you have a body, you have bodily impediments. And if you have bodily impediments, your dharma body is obscured by your outer shell. If you have a heart, you have impediments of the heart. And if you have impediments of the heart, your true wisdom will be obscured by your thinking and apprehensions.
(- Yanshou, Dailyzen.com)

I'm never sure what anyone means when they say the body is unreal, is an illusion. Except for the larger body eliminating the smaller body, big mind dissolving small mind.

We wonder when it will be that fractured knowledge will give way to whole sight.

Joseph spoke in prison today of the profound and the base in humankind. How we must live with and account for, allow and transcend both in order to continue living in this existence.

There is no perfect offering.

We offer what we have to offer.

Full of promise -- yet equally full of joy, deceit, courage, and absurdity.

All of it.

The whole of it.

Equally distributed -- one day a good day, one day a bad day.

Either way -- the day itself stretching out before us.

Before dawn in peapod as light breaks and pastel sky through morning mist fills channel to east.

I burned incense, swept the earth,
And waited for a poem to come
Then I laughed, and climbed the mountain,
Leaning on my staff.
How I'd love to be a master
Of the blue sky's art:
See how many sprigs of snow-white cloud
Has been brushed in so far today?
- Yuan Me (1716-1798)

If the body is in the mind, and there is only mind, and mind is the sight of god, then there is nothing outside this sight.

And we are in the mind of god.

Seeing itself as it is.

Look around.

What are you seeing?

Thank you September.

Welcome October!

Being and belonging.

Cold Rain

Soon it will turn to snow.
It beckons the chill, not blossoms
A pattering drizzle that matches
The traveler's grief.
Heard by all alike,
Rain dripping from the eaves,
But to him who sorrows a
Sound that breaks the heart.

- Ryusen Reisai (d. 1365)

Of God. Of God. Of God.

Three archangels.

Let's move beyond opposites.

Becoming unitary. Like love. Or truth.

Even subjecting God itself.

“Through allowing, you become what you are; vast, spacious. You become whole. You are not a fragment anymore, which is how the ego perceives itself. Your true nature emerges, which is one with the nature of God”
- p.184, in A New Earth, by Eckhart Tolle

There's no cure for war or duality.

There's only the inner reality of everything.

Go there.

God is no object of love.

God is loving through everything.

Oars from Nova Scotia. Rain tonight.

One puts hold on the other.

Keep close to home. Home, of course, is everywhere we are. It is luminous and trustworthy.

We just have to arrive there where we've never left. And see it clear and through.

The week before he had been troubled, and was working hard to live or die "correctly." Then he'd made a shift, like the one we have to make over and over again in zazen: knowing something, then having what we know fall apart, and tumbling into ourselves, finding that we've tumbled into a luminous and trustworthy moment. And then knowing arises again, and there's the tumbling, and the trusting.
(-- from Will You Sit With Me, by Bonnie Myotai Treace, p.161, in The Art of Just Sitting, essential writings on the practice of shikantaza, edited by John Daido Loori, c.2002)

Sounds like a good plan.

Don't know.

Tumble.

Trust.

Not to us, not to us.

Is the holy given.

But in your presence.

Is great beauty.

Always holy in us to us.

Psalm 103 (104)

God saw all that he had made, and indeed it was very good. Alleluia.
How many are your works, O Lord!
You have made all things in your wisdom,
and the earth is full of your creatures.
The sea is broad and immense:
sea-creatures swim there, both small and large,
too many to count.
Ships sail across it;
Leviathan lives there, the monster;
you made him to play with.

All of them look to you
to give them their food when they need it.
You give it to them, and they gather;
you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
But turn away, and they are dismayed;
take away their breath, and they die,
once more they will turn into dust.
You will send forth your breath, they will come to life;
you will renew the face of the earth.

Glory be to the Lord, for ever;
let the Lord rejoice in his works.
He turns his gaze to the earth, and it trembles;
he touches the mountains, and they smoke.
I will sing to the Lord all my life;
as long as I exist, I will sing songs to God.
May my praises be pleasing to him;
truly I will delight in the Lord.

Let sinners perish from the earth,
let the wicked vanish from existence.
Bless the Lord, my soul!
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.

At first light, in meditation cabin, on black cushion, with single paschal candle under wooden cross, as breeze runs around mountain, with silence deepening itself, when clouds shroud turning of moon through leaves, morning breaks as does this heart and mind, with reverence.

Leaving unclosed my door
Of black pine, I go to bed
For the night awash
In plum scent and light
From the moon
- Tonna (1289-1372)

Day old coffee is good enough.

This day is good enough.

You and I are good.

It is enough.