Deaccession

A Trappist monk I met 15 years ago died last week. A kind man.

Thanks, brother Benedict!

Just that. Nothing else.

Deaccessed.

Taking; leave

In the dream there is goodbye saying. End of year, end of term, ending itself.

Saying, some say, goodbye, is never; easy.

Seeing Through Self
When we question ego-mind directly, it is exposed for what it is: the absence of everything we believe it to be. We can actually see through this seemingly solid ego-mind, or self. But what are we left with then? We are left with an open, intelligent awareness, unfettered by a self to cherish or protect. This is the primordial wisdom mind of all beings. Relaxing into this discovery is true meditation—and true meditation brings ultimate realization and freedom from suffering.
-- Dzigar Kongtrül Rinpoche, "Searching for Self" (Tricycle)

Needlework on Hungarian pillow by Saskia's mom. This room; her breath, stitched.

What would you say goes, what stays, in leaving?

The sweetness. The aching heart. The footprints of animal in frigid snow, an open field in central Maine, words of lad from northern Vermont telling temperature and his surprised fondness for his place right now in his life.

Moving chair in dream doesn't bring closer. A stage set in moving picture.

If you ask me, I would answer this: never go anywhere, there is no leaving, then, follow it with, yes, moving through dream as dream fades into placing wood on red ash in brown Waterford stove.

Love, only love, allows this.

Allow this.

With. Yes, with...

Love.

Resting through winter

Q: How are you?
A: I see.

William Blake said, "As a man is, so he sees."

And so: How are you?

Through words to source

Uncommunity breeds separatist anger.

I'd rather we cared for one another.

Holiness rather than sacred structure.

Cold sitting; warm (enough) experience

The zen of D.T. Suzuki is in the fire.

Empirically speaking, our existence.

Explicated.

This is not a test

All we can do is become aware that all we can do is not much.

Reading Vanity Fair article from August 2006, "9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes," by Michael Bronner,
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/08/norad200608.

It's not much. But we do what we can.

The stories some tell afterwards. . . . Well, that's another story.

New and unforeseeable

Carrying wood in from barn five a.m. the thought occurs: if Panikkar is right and cosmotheandric spirituality is our new awareness, then I am walking god through barn, carrying god to woodstove, and placing god on glowing embers in still warm enamel box. If this is so, the wind whipping flags hanging from buildings, the pinpoint white of distant stars in frigid sky, and futile labors of basement furnace all are the shared revelations of one god seen from the perspective of one sharing god with all that is.

Remembering Martin Luther King, Jr.

If the teachings of Shakyamuni Buddha are about anything, they are about a profound understanding of identity and the broadest possible meaning of liberty—teachings that sooner or later had to appeal to a people for whom suffering and loss were their daily bread.  (--from Charles Johnson, "A Sangha by Another Name")

 What usefulness is such an awareness of the inseparability of all Being? Would such an identity change how this mind-fragmented world has splintered wholeness into shards of dangerous brokenness?

Dialogue is important for Panikkar but not purely mechanical or informative dialogue but rather what he calls “dialogical dialogue” which leads to recognizing difference but also to what we have in common, which in the end produces mutual fecondation. Dialogue is not a luxury for mankind, it is something absolutely necessary and inter-religious dialogue plays an important role. By this Panikkar does not mean an abstract theoretical dialogue, a dialogue about beliefs, he means a deep-reaching human dialogue in which one seeks the collaboration of the other for mutual realization since wisdom consists in being able to listen. Religion is not an experiment for him, it is an experience, an experience of life through which one is part of the cosmic adventure, with neither worry nor anxiety. This, for example, leads him to put forward the notion of “identity”. He was once asked during an interview: “Where do you find your identity?” His answer was:” By losing it rather than looking for it: by not wanting to hold onto an identity which has not yet been fulfilled and therefore is impossible to find in the past because it would only be a copy of something old. Life is a risk; adventure is radical innovation; creation comes about day after day, it is something absolutely new and unforeseeable”.(--from, Laudatio of Raimon Panikkar Alemany during the solemn academic ceremony of his investiture as Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Girona. Presented by Prof. Josep-Maria Terricabras, sponsor of the new Doctor. http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/laudatio.html)

I must, then, be content that "something absolutely new and unforeseeable" is entering from barn to Wohnkuche then slipping back to this writing space as early cars come down Barnestown road from Hope.

There are, I suspect, many ways to praise god and pray with god for peace and light and requisite warmth for all beings creaturely splayed and displayed throughout earth and cosmos. 

The faint blowing air from antiquated registers and workman gas furnace is one example of honest labor seeking to alleviate discomfort and chill. 

In hospital yesterday morning visiting patients, I stand in the field of unknowing with them. We punctuate time for those moments -- an identity unforeseen, surprising, new, and creating itself.

Martin Luthor King said he only wished to do God's will.

As it is.

In heaven

And on earth.

Throughout all.

Of Being.

In the wind

Space is not nothing. It is curved and fabric'd and full of emptiness.

Not unlike ourselves.

It does make you wonder. Even a little bit. About what we are.

WIND ADVISORY
Now - Sunday, Jan 20, 7:00pm...WIND ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 9 AM THIS MORNING TO 7 PM EST THIS EVENING...THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN GRAY HAS ISSUED A WIND ADVISORY... WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 9 AM THIS MORNING TO 7 PM EST THIS EVENING.* WINDS...SOUTHWEST 20 TO 30 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 55 MPH.* TIMING...MID MORNING THROUGH EARLY EVENING.* IMPACTS...DOWNED TREES AND OR POWER LINES.PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...A WIND ADVISORY MEANS STRONG WINDS OF 31 TO 39 MPH OR GUSTS OF 46 TO 57 MPH CAN LEAD TO DAMAGE DUE TO DOWNED TREE LIMBS AND SCATTERED POWER OUTAGES.

Perhaps we are gusts of wind on unsettled days. Or, maybe, breathless stillness at times of deep settled peace. We might even be intakes of breath between phrases of song that have chosen us to form their ephemeral melodies of an evening's enchantment. There's no predicting nor controlling where we, a passing instant of earth breathing itself as gift with no guarantee of another to follow, will find ourselves after next exhalation.

Abandoning Futile Endeavors 

To look for total satisfaction in oneself is a futile endeavor. Since everything changes from moment to moment, where can self and where can satisfaction be found? Yet these are two things that the whole world is looking for and it sounds quite reasonable, doesn’t it? But since these are impossible to find, everybody is unhappy. Not necessarily because of tragedies, poverty, sickness, or death: simply because of unfilled desire. Everybody is looking for something that isn’t available.
- Ayya Khema, “No Satisfaction

Wind and wonder have myriad names. Yours. Mine. God's.

Marvel is that we find pause to reflect on the transient puff of movement we are in a vast and near completely incomprehensible cosmic magniverse.

I hear cats' running feet along floor above. I hear myself in the settled stillness of this pre-dawn darkness. I hear your silence glancing from your eyes on these words in your thoughts within your breath asking a question voice will not speak.

The wind, it is said, blows where it wills. Freely, some say.

There is a phrase used when someone has escaped their confinement and are unaccounted for.

"In the wind."

We are, "In the wind."

Yes! That's it.

Look for each, look fo each one of us, passing through, out of sight, merely heard and faintly felt.

Not unlike that last fleeting forgetting imagined breeze we wondered about thinking itself a thought suspecting itself a visit in a dream itself a wisp going by itself recalling nothing itself passing...

Gone...as it will...go!