Thunderstorms roll between mountains. We cover Jootje, Anna's double ender, on wood garden timbers in front of Merton bookshed/retreat on shore for scraping, panting, and pine tar/linseed oiling.

Seeing into Nothingness
This is the true seeing,
The eternal seeing
- Shen-hui (8th cent)

The world as we know it is the result of the minds of men who've fashioned it in their ideas and preferences. This same world can be refashioned in a clearer, kinder image with a little more awareness and self-emptying.

Let's consider that God, or that which we call God, is still unborn in this world. Yes, in the Christian metaphor, Jesus realized God-nature and embodied what is called Christ-consciousness. But what if his realization was only the inaugural of the potential of the process of allowing To Be that which we long for, namely, the Source, Oneness, Interconnectedness, & Stillness (SOIS) of each to each, all to all, now and forever?

SOIS, in French, is the present subjunctive of the verb Etre, to be. We suggest, require, and request that which is to be God in our midst.

Use the present subjunctive in statements that express a suggestion, requirement, or request.
-- LB Brief by Jane E. Aaron (Longman: 2002); The Brief Holt Handbook (3rd ed.) by Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell (Harcourt: 2001).

There is, it is said, no time with God. God, soi-disant, is not the egoic creation of man. God, soi-meme en-soi, is oneself Itself.

To be oneself itself is the longing, I submit, of every being in existence.

One hears the words: "Although I'm old, I feel young"; (French: Bien que je sois vieux, je me sens jeune.)

In effect, although we are neither young or old, we call ourselves these things in this manner because it is the way of this world to cast everything in quantitative distinction.

We love to think about God. We would like God to come to be the way of the world, namely, source, oneness, interconnected, & still.

There are two deserts -- that of God and that of man. This is where we wander. Is this all we are to hope for? Is there something else we might see?

AIR

Naturally it is night.
Under the overturned lute with its
One string I am going my way
Which has a strange sound.

This way the dust, that way the dust.
I listen to both sides
But I keep right on.
I remember the leaves sitting in judgment
And then winter.

I remember the rain with its bundle of roads.
The rain taking all its roads.
Nowhere.

Young as I am, old as I am,

I forget tomorrow, the blind man.
I forget the life among the buried windows.
The eyes in the curtains.
The wall
Growing through the immortelles.
I forget silence
The owner of the smile.

This must be what I wanted to be doing,
Walking at night between the two deserts,
Singing.

(Poem by W. S. Merwin )

Let our singing be the chant of creation.

Just this!

Pay attention!

When I close my eyes, sleep comes easily.

Oneself as others.

What I call perfection of seeing
Is not seeing others
But oneself
- Chuang-tzu (3rd cent BC)

Because there is no others.

Only oneself.

Just.

As is.

Said.

Once I thought I was part of the whole.

Says the Tao Te Ching: “Once the Whole is divided, the parts need names.”

What can Man’s consciousness “say” about the Whole before putting names to it? Is the Whole a formal concept or has it a reality of its own? Even if it were a mere formal concept, its (conceptual) formality would equally belong to the Whole.

Having realized that consciousness of the Whole is both consciousness of the Whole (not of its parts) and the Whole’s consciousness (for there is nothing “outside” the Whole), consciousness is directed toward itself, that is, to introspection, interiority -- as Lao Tzu, the Upanishads, Aristotle, Augustine, and so many others remind us. They do not mean intimacy and solipsism, as it is sometimes interpreted. On the contrary, they mean the attempt to overcome the distraction of the parts to get in touch with the Whole.

In vedic parlance, the Whole is brahman, and the questioner in the Self, atman. Unless and until we have discarded ahamkara , egoism, we cannot even begin to philosophize. Philosophy is not hunting for entities and their links or causes in the critically polished field of consciousness. Philosophy is the opening of our purified conscious being to the self-disclosure of reality -- and this finds an obstacle in our ego. Without mumuksutva (ardent aspiration for liberating truth) philosophy is not possible. The culmination of this process is when the atman realizes atman-brahman.
Says Bhartrhari: “The attainment of Brahman is nothing more than loosing the knot [granthi] of the ego-sense in the form of ‘me’ and ‘mine.’”
(-pp.26-27 in The Rhythm of Being, The Gifford Lectures, by Raimon Panikkar)

Now I suspect I am the whole in individual form.

Which, of course, is emptiness.

Letting it go.

Moving on.

"Blessed To Be A Witness"

Corcovado parted the sky
And through the darkness
On us he shined
Crucified in stone
Still his blood is my own
Glory behold all my eyes have seen
Have seen

I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed to be a witness

Some have flown away
And can't be with us here today
Like the hills of my home
Some have crumbled and now are gone
Gather around for today won't come again
Won't come again

I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed to be a witness

So much sorrow and pain
Still I will not live in vain
Like good questions never asked
Is wisdom wasted on the past
Only by the grace of God go I
Go I

I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed to be a witness

I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed
I am blessed to be a witness

(Lyrics by BEN HARPER)

The line was meant to get a laugh. It went: “What you see is what you get.”

Don’t be afraid to look.

Two friends in prison study friendship with two friends not in prison.

Till now you seriously considered yourself to be the body and to have a form. That is the primal ignorance which is the root cause of all trouble.
- Ramana Maharshi (1879-1950)

The laughter you hear is the direct result of looking at what disagreements arise with Derrida, Montaigne, Aristotle, Kant, and Cicero.

Don't get me wrong, we like what they have to say -- that's why the argument.

Its a thing we have about keeping them ads honest as we'd like to be telling the truth of what we try to understand.

About.

And with.

One another.

When we are through, will we turn out the lights?

Following the talk, Adyashanti answered questions from the audience. A woman sitting near us, whose hands had fidgeted in her lap through most of the evening, took the microphone and said she was feeling a tremendous sadness because she feared that she’d never have an awakening experience. Adyashanti asked what her deepest spiritual yearning was. The woman answered, “I want to know God.”
Adyashanti asked the woman, whose name was Nancy, momentarily to stop her search for God and go in search of Nancy instead. “Where is Nancy?” he asked. “What is Nancy? If I ask you where is your hand, where is your foot, you can answer. But if I ask where is Nancy, where is she? She pretends to be the center of this whole life, but where is she? Is this Nancy anything more than a thought?”
“No,” she said.
Adyashanti described the tendency of the human mind to believe in a limited notion of “me,” a separate self at the core of our being. But when we go in search of that “me,” we discover something deeper and more vast. “What is looking through your eyes right now?” he asked the woman.
After a pause she answered, “It feels like life.”
“OK,” he said. “Let’s go with that. It’s life peering through your eyes. So what is life? Is life male or female? When is life’s birthday? Does it have an age?”
“No,” she responded.
“So, at the very center of this thing called ‘you’ is nothing but life,” he said. “It’s not Nancy; it’s life that’s peering through. Now, just for fun, let’s remove the word life. I like the word life. It’s very unspiritual. But since you’re in search of God, what if we replace the word life with God? Isn’t God life, the essence of all existence?”
“Yes,” the woman answered.
“God is peering through right now,” said Adyashanti. “In this moment.”
The woman seemed profoundly moved. “Whoa,” she said, her eyes widening.
“Hang with that for a while,” Adyashanti told her as she quietly took her seat and the next questioner approached the microphone. I noticed that Nancy’s hands had stopped fidgeting and were folded together peacefully in her lap.
— Luc Saunders--in Who Hears This Sound? On Waking Up From The Dream Of “Me” by LUC SAUNDERS and SY SAFRANSKY
http://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/384/who_hears_this_sound

Perhaps when through, there is no need for lights either on or off.

Standing or sitting, they say, just do either -- only, without wobbling.

Through matter, spirit.

Through body, soul.

Through Jesus, Christ.

Through small self, cosmic consciousness.

Spirituality means awareness beyond the limits of self.

The body does not know how to discourse or to listen to a discourse. This which is unmistakably perceivable right where you are, absolutely identifiable yet without form, this is what listens to the discourse. - Rinzai (d.867)

That, and the Dallas Mavericks defeat Miami Heat.

A good feast day.

A satisfying conclusion.

Gone beyond.

No limit