Wait up, there's someone lingering behind and beyond and bewith.

The ashes went into the sea. Heart Sutra chanted. Bell Chant rung.

Light and Bodhisattva service, respect and gratitude as the formless woman's remains went below waves.

Saskia, Jory, and Mark step off Schooner Heron before the rain poured down.

Faith is trust in your experience

The Buddha touched the earth. The earth was his witness when illusions were dispelled and his mind shown through with clear light.

Mara, the tempter, was silenced with earth's eloquent affirming agreement -- this Buddha is indeed free.

At prison today Sonny said if we hadn't done the three year independent study together after his near-death experience 20+ years ago, he would today most likely be in a mental institution. Rokie was leaning against his legs.

Some days feel just right.

Today has been one of them.

Rokpa born on St Francis Day

Five years ago

Giovanni Francesco d'Assisi - Va Bene!

Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) thought that ignorance was tightening around knowledge, compressing and shrinking the sphere of knowledge with wide and suffocating squeeze.

He wasn't pessimistic about this. He thought it was the expected contraction which will lead to an extraordinary expansion effecting a shift toward supra-mental insight and truth building upon clarity and truth.

But, the interim closing-in and choking intentional ignorance is daunting. From presidential kabuki debate to prevarication system-wide in institutional solipsism spreading in corporate structures, we are looking to the metaphorical falling sky with cringing worry aliens have dropped into a no longer recognizable horizon.

I could look away. Or look within. Let me think about it.

A Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock  

The houses are haunted 

By white night-gowns. 

None are green, 

Or purple with green rings, 

Or green with yellow rings, 

Or yellow with blue rings. 

None of them are strange, 

With socks of lace 

And beaded ceintures. 

People are not going 

To dream of baboons and periwinkles. 

Only, here and there, an old sailor, 

Drunk and asleep in his boots, 

Catches Tigers

In red weather.  

(--Poem by Wallace Stevens)

There's the word, 'ceinture' -- a reminiscence of sacerdotal vesting when as an altar boy I would hold out braided rope for priest to cinch liturgical vestment costume to perform ritual of death and resurrection, the distribution of sustaining sacrament in bewildering metaphorical solemnity.

Priest after priest backed away from vesting table over decades of disappointment and disillusionment. Ceintures hung from hooks in closets long after anointed hands ceased reaching in to garb the girth of a distracted church whose hosts and wine began to stale in autumn pale.

But there is always Francis. 

Open-doored and earthen-hued, Francis, like Siddhartha Gautama, touched the earth, tasted lack, and called us back.

Back to what? (This revelation might help my hurting back.)

Back to Being. Being here. As earth. Is here. As it is. Heaven as earth.

With as much kindness as befits.

The great miracle is to walk the earth.

With all that is...

accompanying. For now.

Until,  no...

More...

seeker of truth 

follow no path
all paths lead where 

truth is here 

(Poem by e.e.cummings)

Would you throw your vote if you knew it wouldn't be counted?

Do you take this man to be your democrat-chosen candidate?
Some do.

Do you take this other man to be your republican-chosen candidate?
Some do.

Where are the green, libertarian, or justice candidates?
They are excluded.

I now pronounce this debate to be too narrow and too stylized.

You may now kiss off the pretended theatre piece simulating open democracy.

Don't bother with the rings. They're already in bed with each other.

Alone with my own sound

Bard Owl repeatedly asks his question in dark mountain wood.

I translate it according to my diffuse misunderstanding.

"Who speaks for you?"

Everything, Mr. Owl, and everyone.

But I am very often not able to hear, deaf with inattentive inanity.

Hence I prattle idiocy left to myself.

And cannot bear what I hear.

I don't want to think it's too late; do you?

I've been thinking about 9/11.

About thermite, controlled demolition, and whether the American people are worthy and capable of hearing the hitherto unexplained causes of the devastating destruction occurring that day.

I think we are. Worthy and capable. Some disagree. It is a mindset. Fixed? Or, growth?

Look at your mind. I will mine. Let's see what we are capable of seeing.

Truth, it is said, can be terribly unsettling. A startling awakening.

Untruth, it is said, can put us into a deep and untroubled sleep.

Today, I have been chloroform saturated, falling into soporific incredulity.

I'd rather be properly informed, being elevated into clear and unadulterated transparency.

Science, engineering, physics, chemistry, and reasonable hypotheses and evidence lead to consequential though unproven conclusions.

I'll start there.

Architects and Engineers, 9/11 Explosive Evidence, Experts Speak Out
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=YW6mJOqRDI4&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DYW6mJOqRDI4

Ignorance: Some days the broken breaks your heart

Avidya.

6,572 U.S. service members have died in Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom    http://apps.washingtonpost.com/national/fallen/

 Avidya.

At least 132,000 civilians have died from 10 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a new study by Brown university. And that’s a conservative estimate. http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/06/afghanistan-iraq-wars-killed-132000-civilians-report-says/

Avidya

Avidya is like a deeply rooted tree with four thick branches. The first branch is called asmita, or Ego. This is the part of us that seeks its own interests. It considers itself better than others, is bruised when it does not get its own way, and generally causes us to identify with this earthly body and the life it is living. It has no wider perspective than that. 

The second branch is called raga and is best translated as Desire or Attachment. This is the part that constantly wants what it does not have. It desires what it does not really need and seeks to accumulate merely for the sake of it. It makes us unsatisfied and causes us to continually compare ourselves unfavorably with others. If we are wealthy, we are unhappy because somebody else is wealthier still. And so on.... 

The third branch is called dvesa or Refusal. This is like the recoil response. Whatever negative experiences we have had in life make us afraid of repeating them again in case the same result occurs. It can make us reject people, situations and possibilities that just might cause us pain again. In one person, it may be the fear of forming relationships with the opposite sex. In another, it may be a fear of public speaking as a result of negative childhood experiences.

The fourth and last branch on the tree of Avidya is called abhinivesa or Fear. These are specifically fears that are not caused by previous experience. For example, we may fear change, or growing old, or that we may lose everything we worked so hard to earn. In other words, things we may never have experienced before.

Avidya, in all its subtle forms, works within us constantly to root us in our habitual ways and make improvement difficult or impossible. The more we indulge Avidya, the stronger it becomes. Eventually, we feel that we are no longer the doer of these things; they simply happen to us. A person can attract one disastrous relationship after another, or continually experience uncontrollable rage under certain stimuli and feel that it is nothing directly to do with them. It is just bad luck. The person fails to see that there is only one person responsible for everything that happens!

 http://www.adishakti.org/_/avidya.htm

Ignorance, Avidya, is the cause of suffering and pain.