The formless is where we find ourselves.

Form is where we are looking.

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)

All help is the hand of God, which is, I suspect, the hand of one our brothers or sisters.

Form is what emptiness is.

There will be no final quiz.

There is only a take-home.

We find ourselves in this way.

In prison we talk about the curious notion that if you don't think evolutionally you are not ready for the next necessary change that we will encounter needing our engagement.

Even those wishing to stop at being saved by Jesus have to ponder what it is Jesus is moving toward in his very being.

Everything, everything is passing through everything else on it's way toward nothing else.

No more, nothing else, no other.

Have this with coffee and toast!

In the film "For My Father" it is the mothers who hold the space.

Perhaps someone will say: “Had she not known before that he would not die?” Undoubtedly. “Did she not expect him to rise again at once?” Surely. “And still she grieved over her crucified Son?” Intensely. Who are you and what is the source of your wisdom that you are more surprised at the compassion of Mary than at the passion of Mary’s Son? For if he could die in body, could she not die with him in spirit? He died in body through a love greater than anyone had known. She died in spirit through a love unlike any other since his.
(--from a sermon by St Bernard, Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows)

In the end it is fire that transforms lives -- whether the fire of love, or the fire of explosives.

In the end we are left looking toward each other, trying to measure the distance between us.

Sorrow brings us to gaze.

Henri Bergson wrote, "The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend."

When you are free and independent, you are not bound by anything, so you do not seek liberation. Consummating the process of Zen, you become unified. Then there are no mundane things outside of Buddhism, and there is no Buddhism outside of mundane things.
- Yuan wu (1063-1135)

Be prepared!

Mind is loosening its control.

I think we're heading for civil war.

I hope I don't have to get up off my cushion.

This matter (Zen) is like a great mass of fire: when you approach it your face is sure to be scorched. It is again like a sword about to be drawn; when it is once out of the scabbard, someone is sure to lose his life. The precious vajra sword is right here, and its purpose is to cut off the head.
- Tai-hui (1089-1163)

Fire approaches.

We're uncertain about fire. We don't want to be burned, yet we still have little understanding that fire doesn't burn fire.

Sunrise

You can
die for it --
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.
~ Mary Oliver ~ (New and Selected Poems, Volume I)

It gets, I suspect, harder to live.

I worry about my brothers and sisters.

The chapel/zendo is empty.

Again.

God is not anywhere.

God is everywhere.

Over and over!

And comes the 12th.

Rowing 7.08 kilometers in easy swells and light wind.

Rowing the bay in full moon. Night passage around two bell buoys.

Two hours, twenty minutes, twenty six seconds. Leaving coins for unseen mariners.

"No, I won't leave the world--I'll enter a lunatic asylum and see if the profundity of insanity reveals to me the riddles of life. Idiot, why didn't I do that long ago, why has it taken me so long to understand what it means when the Indians honour the insane, step aside for them? Yes, a lunatic asylum--don't you think I may end up there?"

(--Soren Kierkegaard)

One by one, days pass.

One by one, as do we.

Ten years.

Who can hear it?

It is all pervading, spotless beauty;
It is the self-existence and uncreated
Absolute
Then how can it even be a matter
Of discussion that the real Buddha
Has no mouth and preaches no dharma,
Or that real hearing requires no ears,
For who could hear it?
Ah, it is a jewel beyond all price.
- Huang-po (d. 850)

Who feels it?

There exists only the present instant... a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.
-- Meister Eckhart

Who is willing to be still and silent in its presence?

Words derive their power from the original word.
-- Meister Eckhart

Will we see?

You may call God love, you may call God goodness. But the best name for God is compassion. -- Meister Eckhart

Today, we remember, we watch, we are quiet

We feel.

Listening.

This is how we continue to live.