For this we call; for this we are called

"God means movement, not explanation."(Elie Wiesel)

Movement through illusion.

Outside, with full moon, Barred Owl asks and asks its question.

Use it and less it

Zazen in prison this morning. Former PTSD Marine and I speak of the residual horror of his duty-related killings hand to hand. Five of us read some ACIM sections. Two of the men are studying it inside.

Afternoon with the elderly poetry folk navigating words across the ocean of forgetfulness. Carver, Chaucer, Binet, Oliver, Greg Lamb, Guest.

Evening, David Abram and Edmund Husserl.

What a useless life!

I love it!

One by one, passing, bye

Retreat. Briefly. Cabin porch. Day after. Twenty two students of East Asian Philosophy crowded into meditation space.

Waking from sleep,
I can hear the dew in the trees.
I open my door
Overlooking the garden.
The winter moon
Clears the eastern cliffs;
Water murmurs
Through roots of bamboo.
The mountain stream's
Beyond my hearing,
But a mountain bird cries once,
And then again.
Leaning in the doorway,
I follow night through to dawn.
What words can I summon
For such mystery and peace?
- Liu Tzung-yuan (773-819)

Now, gone. Empty space. Time to tidy.

Polly dies. Mary dies. Christopher dies. I remember them in their transition. I wish them well.


 Up path from chapel/zendo, beyond felled tree, prayer flags behind sprig green.

Nothing. But, gratitude.

question answers

Learning practice. Final class of semester at hermitage.

We get through.

make not-me yourself

Poetry points to what is beyond itself.

To those who claim there is nothing beyond God, I suggest that nothing is the point of poetry.

The real way circulates everywhere;
how could it require practice or enlightenment?
The essential teaching is fully available;
how could effort be necessary?
Furthermore, the entire mirror is free of dust;
why take steps to polish it?
Nothing is separate from this very place;
why journey away?
- Dogen 1227

God is where nothing goes.

Encircling God with what is itself nothing other than itself.

With this, I have nothing to say about God.

Which is exactly what cannot be...said.

breathing time

Things go still.

Yellow finch jump branch to branch looking for seed. Moved feeder last week. These must have been out of town.

Listen to the secret sound, the real sound, which is inside you. The one no one talks of speaks the secret sound to himself, and he is the one who has made it all.”
― Kabir

Bishops pick on nuns. They are too "feminist" for the men in the church. These men have one hand on the light switch as the backs of thinking people exit their building. It will cut down on the electric bill if no lights are needed.

There's nothing left to do but continue, quietly, breathing. The men of the Supreme Court, the men in Congress, the candidates for high office, the executives in state government all have turned to perverse and pathetic positions at this time of hypocrisy and haute disdain. Things slide to the right at dizzying slant. The right-wing want to weaken the established government. Gun-folk want to re-write justice to be spelled "I've got the power." Some take curious solace that a mythic catastrophe will overwhelm everything this 2012 calendar year.

I'm not so sure. I think it is meanness. The three poisons -- greed, anger, and delusion -- rush through bloodstream and eat into veins on way to brain before corrupting heart. It is a hard time.

Men stuff round ball through round hoop and make millions of dollars making millions scream with elation. Other men swing wood stick against white ball and make millions of dollars running around three white bags. Other men hit small disc with curved sticks into a net splaying ice chips under steel blades to the roar of thousands watching. I'm not sure. I think it is an odd time.

“... What is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.”
― Kabir

I've no insight.

The yellow finch finds feeder. Leaves. Comes chickadee. Goes.

As I do.

And you.

In this our breathing time.

"In the end we shall have had enough of cynicism and skepticism and humbug and we shall want to live more musically."
--Vincent Van Gogh

Things still...go.

In the morning, joy; new sprig near fallen oak

What does it mean to say, "The Lord has risen from the dead?" Have you? Is being dead not some end time when blood does not pulse nor breath cycle through this body?

Maybe not. Death might be that condition of being which is neither here nor aware of being not here. There is an insanity which mimics life by pretending to know and love. In fact, the mimesis is artifice and simulacrum .

What is real suffers with what is also real. Kitsch theology predicated on false fear and arbitrary obedience has no resemblance to true reverence and willing service. God is not in the pocket of any sect, denomination, religion, or philosophy.

God is cooing with mourning doves and watching with turkey buzzards. God is swimming with elvers and setting nets with fishermen. God is new sprig growing near fallen oak and rushing water alongside decrepit remnant of cable bridge gone from brook span. In brief, God is what is seen when the vision of God visits the relational eye of the yearning seeker of God -- wherever that is.

Who shall climb the mountain
Of the Lord?

O gates, lift high your heads,
Grow higher ancient doors...  

(-from Psalm 23 {24})

I have loved you and I have loved God as best I can. Awkwardly. Hesitantly. Disappointingly.

If all there is -- is love, then you have loved me and loved God as best you could at the time presenting itself.

No mistake, this is what we have to live with -- a Wabi-Sabi realization of impermanence, imperfection, and incompleteness.

What wonderful resurrecting allowance!

Wider and deeper and higher those doors through which we pass relieved of illusion and constraint, traveling with the fortifications of nothing other than what is passing through with us.

"What-Is" passing through.

With us.

Let's go.

We are meant to go.