So full the moon
final night of winter
lighting living and dead
new new new this seeing now

I'm happy with the everyday way
Like the mist and vines in these rockstrewn ravines
This wilderness is so free and vast
My old friends, the white clouds, drift idly off
There is a road, but it doesn't reach the world
Mindless, who can be disturbed by thoughts
At night I sit alone on a stone bed
While the round moon climbs
The face of Cold Mountain
- Han Shan (c 730)

now now now

seeing this new

You do what you do.

If that is playing the pipes, guitar, double base, fiddle, or flute -- you might be an Irish band.

If you sit and gaze at nothing, you might be a zen monk or waiting for a ferry boat.

Those who are pure in heart and single in purpose are able to understand the most supreme Way. It is like polishing a mirror, which becomes bright when the dust is removed. Remove your passions, and have no hankering, and all will be revealed to you.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

Inch by foot the snow disappears. Creepy. Where is it going?

This world might not be the real world.

I've no other idea.

To live united is to live untied.

One is undoing what is not itself.

Irish is as Irish undoes.

After long weeks, rowing around Curtis Island in glorious afternoon sunshine.

Each is born in anarchy, Willow wrote.

Each is home until we wander away from home.

If you endeavor to embrace the Way through much learning, the Way will not be understood. If you observe the Way with simplicity of heart, great indeed is this Way.

- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

Until we recall we’ve wandered away.

And turn.

To be the home we are.

Goodbye to oil. To the heyday of petroleum joyride. Goodbye to absurd beliefs in limitless progress. And goodbye to society and culture that bet on consumption and won the bet and has to learn the terrible price of it's victory.

Despite the obstacles,
I pursued the great monk
The misty mountains a million layers high
He pointed to the road back home
One round moon, lantern of the sky.
- Han Shan (c 730)

Turn back to the earth, beg it's forgiveness, ask it to allow you back into it's grace.

The reason to meditate is this: Nothing happens by itself. And we are immediately and intimately free in this realization.

Pray for such peace for the whole family!

Conversation is the liturgy of revelation.

We speak in the world.

And the world is made according to the words we say it to be.

God help us speak and move toward God.

We are not judged by God;

we are nudged

toward what is

no-self

realizing what God is

to be as we

become what we are

created to be --

that which is

of God.

Thinking back to the events of September 11, 2001 it is a marvel the narrative accepted by so many has not been upended.

I cannot resolve the day, the months, and years later.

In the green creek spring water is clear
At Cold Mountain, the moon's corona is white.
Silence your understanding and,
The spirit of itself is enlightened.
View all things as the Void and,
This world is even more still
- Han Shan (c. 730)

Just that -- just the improbability of it all.

Like trying to explain and understand the narrative depicting God in scripture.

I prefer the silent unknown of a conversation with the outer edge of the ineffably incomprehensible.