If Christ met Krishna...

What would they talk about?

Let's suggest an alternate question: If you met yourself, how would the greeting sound?

There is only one sound in the cosmos.

Do you hear it?

The shipwrecked, said Jose Ortega y Gasset, listen to them!

Rilke's Fourth Duino Elegy for conversation tonight, completing a two week reading and reflecting.

Who’ll show a child just as it is? Who’ll place it within its constellation, with the measure
of distance in its hand? Who’ll make its death
from grey bread, that grows hard,—or leave it there, within the round mouth, like the choking core
of a sweet apple? . . . . . . Minds of murderers are easily divined. But this, though: death,
the whole of death,—even before life’s begun, to hold it all so gently, and be good:
this is beyond description!
(--final lines, translated from German by J.B. Leishman and Stephen Spender)

Refusing the bitter, metaphor of Jesus refusing the gall on the cross, preferring to receive the offer of the pure event.

Nothing added; nothing taken away.

As fire listens with us to dusk and darkness under sky on earth with each other.

“The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from those fantastic “ideas” [about his own character and identity] and looks life in the face, realizes that everything in it is problematic, and feels himself lost. And this is the simple truth – that to live is to feel oneself lost - he who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look round for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked.”

(--Jose Ortega y Gasset, from, The Revolt of the Masses)

Seeing from every side.

From within.

Everything.

Perfectly; as it is!

What is the sound of one bicycling monk returning to the road?

Click, click, click...

...gate gate pāragate pārasaṃgate bodhi svāhā!

Thank you, 감사합니다 (kamsahamnida), Daeung Sunim, for gracing us with your visit!

Itself; changing

Soup and send off.

We are all going to suffer our losses. How we deal with these losses is what makes all the difference. For it is not what happens to us that determines our character, our experience, our karma, and our destiny, but how we relate to what happens.
- Lama Surya Das, "Practicing With Loss"

It's about impermanence.

Change itself.

Does a dog have Buddha-Nature, or...

...the nature to play stick-throw with visiting Buddhist monk? 

Rokpa and Cody play with Daeung Sunim after morning sitting in chapel/zendo. They sat in silence with us, claims Rokie, now the pay-off ... run, play, run!

The morning is quiet with remembrance of another September 11. We listen to the resonance of calls from place to place. The calls ask: Are you listening?

One monk makes his pilgrimage of soul through the souls of others he meets bicycling through countries, provinces, states, and other more subtle borders.

I like the phrase, "to connect with awareness." Perhaps it is suggesting that it is not 'awareness' we are aiming for, but "connect with." Beyond that, this "connect-with" might actually be what awareness is.

Thus, connect-with is awareness.

Completely (ok, even partially) connecting-with is the practice of awareness.

Awareness might not be awareness of something or someone. Rather, awareness is being-connected, whether or not we are aware of it.

On the mountain top one thatched hut, Thirty li from roads.  Knock on the door: no disciple to answer;  Look in: only a table for tea.  The firewood cart is covered;  Have you gone fishing in the autumn stream?  I look among the pools, but miss you;  I try but fail to pay you my respects.  Grass shines in the fresh rain;  Pines murmur at evening windows.  Here at this moment a harmony,  Profound and unrivaled;  The self completely cleansed,  The heart, the ear.  Although there is no guest or host as such,  I'm able to intuit your pure thought.  Purpose fulfilled, I head back down the mountain.  No need now to wait for you.  

--Ch’iu Wei (8th c)

We greet the greeting of the calls, the visiting monk, the September sun and breeze, and all the lovely eyes and feet visiting along this mountain!

Resting

Korean Buddhist bicycling monk sleeps in Morning Call Yurt this chill night with down comforters.

We go for volunteer training in southern Maine prison tonight.

Advaita teacher said at library this noon: "Meditation is allowing what is to be without resistance."

Staying awake all the way home on dark roads is great gift.

Bicycle, after over five thousand miles, (so far), rests in barn.

Thou shalt remain; nameless

There's nothing out there anymore.
It's all in the middle of no place between two things not there.

Still, the chicken soup is tasty. Fresh bread also. Bishop's cake of a piece.

It is curious, this sense of the momentous as merely a momentary mirage. And yet, gratefulness. For all of it. The pathetic. And the privileged.

To be here with it.

As it takes place.

As who we are.