Breathing

Maybe today
Seeing clearly
Will come to see
Nothing other
Only Itself --
No inside
No outside
No yes
No no
Just this
Now here

Nowhere

What is outside is inside. Inside is outside. Everything is between.

Moving through itself.

We should cultivate Buddhahood
Within our own nature and should
Not seek it outside the body.
If deluded, the self-nature is a living being.
If enlightened, the self-nature is a Buddha.
Kindness and compassion are
Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva.
Joy and indifference or renunciation are
Mahasthamaprapta Bodhisattva.
The ability to purify self is
Sakyamuni Buddha.
Impartiality and straightforwardness
Are Amitabha Buddha.
- Altar Sutra

It doesn't matter if you disappear tomorrow. What matters is you are here now.

With no disturbance. No barriers.

Going nowhere.

Quiet of morning. Erik Satie and Debussey. Dog sleeps by wood stove. New York Times digital whispers world.

I don't have an opinion about those who say the end of the world is upon us. Of course fragility. And uncertainty.

Meditation cabin stands ready with pause and practice nearing.

No obstruction. With nothing to obstruct. Even that must go.

Though they liberate their minds directly and develop to this state, they still are unwilling to dwell there. They sense the slightest thing as mountainous; anything that seems to cause obstruction they immediately push away.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

A student writes a brilliant essay. It begins to travel. Good for her. She's on to something.

Mu-ge, our version of no barrier, arrives on the bed. The long haired coon cat has one paw on my right foot.

No one knows anything. We only pretend to understand. It's our best quality -- theater.

The voidness of the universe
Is capable of containing all
Things of various forms and shapes,
Such as the sun, moon, stars,
Mountains, rivers, the great earth,
Springs, streams, mountain torrents,
Plants, trees and woods,
Good and bad people,
Good and bad things,
Heavens and hells,
All the great oceans.
All these are in the void.
The voidness of worldly people
Is also like it.
- Altar Sutra

In prison this morning. A conversation about Kant, Kierkegaard, and Aristotle on friendship. Charlie, Doug, Saskia and I. We have much to think about.

And so we think in the open with one another.

Except that they lose track of things and eat too many ice cream sandwiches.

In those who attain Zen, mental machinations disappear, vision and action are forgotten, and there are no subjective views. Zen adepts just remain free, and are imperceptible to anyone, either would-be supporters or would-be antagonists. They walk on the bottom of the deepest ocean, uncontaminated, with free minds, acting normally, indistinguishable from the average person.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

I think it is odd that we do not assassinate the ocean after it has committed tsunami destruction. Nor do we hang from a gallows a tornado after crashing wide swaths to smithereens. And rivers walk free even after they destroy whole towns. What an outrage!

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
In Prison Reform, Money Trumps Civil Rights
By MICHELLE ALEXANDER
Published: May 14, 2011

Columbus, Ohio

THE legal scholar Derrick A. Bell foresaw that mass incarceration, like earlier systems of racial control, would continue to exist as long as it served the perceived interests of white elites.

Thirty years of civil rights litigation and advocacy have failed to slow the pace of a racially biased drug war or to prevent the emergence of a penal system of astonishing size. Yet a few short years of tight state budgets have inspired former “get tough” true believers to suddenly denounce the costs of imprisonment. “We’re wasting tax dollars on prisons,” they say. “It’s time to shift course.”http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/15/opinion/15alexander.html?_r=1

No one reprimands a rainy day for slippery conditions causing cars to crash.

I'd like to get to the bottom of this discrepancy.

Are only some varieties of violence OK?

We've got to start using our human measuring stick on nature.

That'll get things rolling.