Night

Dark writes own story

It's one that's hard to see.

Take me, home

I doubt it.

Regarding Doubt
We feel that if we have doubts, it means that we are denying the teachings and that we should really have unquestioning faith. Now in certain religions, unquestioning faith is considered a desirable quality. But in the Buddha-dharma, this is not necessarily so. Referring to the dharma, the Buddha said, 'ehi passiko,' which means 'come and see,' or 'come and investigate,' not 'come and believe.'
- Ani Tenzin Palmo, “Necessary Doubt"

I am at home in doubt.

It is a variant homelessness.

Śhruti (Sanskrit: श्रुति)

Reading Spira in prison.

Zen sitting with white border collie 

following blue handball 

around room. 

One by one men 

stop by to consult MU 

with black spot 

on middle of back.

Thunder

As Nisargardatta says, high tides of suffering are coming along.

Right there, in dooryard, tide splashes against barn roof.

Nagasaki bombing washes onto cut grass along stone-pressed tire ruts up from road between two mountains in midcoast Maine.

Thunder is reverberation of 68 years rolling sorrow across Pacific cutting through trenched america painted red on one side blue on another its face blanched white with unknowing certainty having no kinship with wisdom.

Fear bombs.

Only love diffuses fear, it's wire and detonator, shrapnel and blast -- only love.

 The unfortunates wander in numb shock. The unstable rage against their own names. The demented point finger at own noses with blade readied to slice.

Big dog barks at sound of rain carrying distant thunder.

This one breath I take is exhalation of one person 68 years seeing blinding flash and saying "Itadakimasu."

As do we all.

Inventory, taken

The 8th comes and goes.

Day from night back into night.

We can and do pray that our stupidity does not sink a rudderless country in an uncharted sea.

More positively, these land masses are still above water.

That's something . . . Right?

Expect nothing

Two ways of getting through any situation in life:

1. Ask, "What is this?" And, "Why might someone be doing this?"
2. Take nothing personally. It's seldom, rarely, about you.

But then, this comes from a contemplative hermit.

What would you expect?

Two sayings

each, one

Murder is murder, no matter how we try to soft-soap it.

Today is a day to consider notions of rebound, karma, and chickens coming home to roost.

We might also wish to reconsider as a "Christian nation" just what "Christ" might signify.

August 6 marks 68 years since the United States committed what is arguably the single gravest act of terrorism that the world has ever known. Terrorism means the deliberate targeting of innocent civilians, and targeted they were, with the cutely named “Little Boy” atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima at a location and time of day when, as the Strategic Bombing Survey commissioned by President Harry Truman conceded, “nearly all the school children ... were at work in the open,” a perfect opportunity for mass incineration. 

"That fateful summer, 8:15," the mayor of Hiroshima recalled at a memorial service in 2007, "the roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast—silence—hell on earth. The eyes of young girls watching the parachute were melted. Their faces became giant charred blisters. The skin of people seeking help dangled from their fingernails. ... Others died when their eyeballs and internal organs burst from their bodies. Hiroshima was a hell where those who somehow survived envied the dead. Within the year, 140,000 had died.” 

(--from The Nation, A Statement of Peace, or an Epitaph, by Robert Scheer) August 6, 2013 http://www.thenation.com/article/175620/statement-peace-or-epitaph#axzz2bDMJyO4j

No justification, no explanation. Al Qaeda, no doubt, has their particular rationalization of 9/11.

"Chain Reaction," by Paul Conrad, Santa Monica CA

Instead, let there be sorrow and outrage that someone with means and opportunity could plan and execute such mass murder in the name of "this is good for us and our side."

And here we might think about Christ, this being the feast of Transfiguration.

What are we doing to the "son of man?"

"Son of Man" has been a debated phrase in Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

In the Koine Greek of the New Testament, "the son of man" invariably used as "ὁ υἱὸς τοὺ ἀνθρώπου", which might be rendered more literally "the son of the human being". The singular Hebrew expression "son of man" (בן–אדם i.e. ben-'adam) also appears over a hundred times in theHebrew Bible.^[2] In thirty two cases the phrase appears in intermediate plural form "sons of men", i.e. human beings.^[2]The expression "the Son of man" appears 81 times in the Koine Greek of the four Gospels: thirty times in Matthew, 14 times in Mark, twenty five times in Luke and 12 times in John.^[8][1] However, the use of the definite article in "the Son of man" is novel, and before its use in the Canonical gospels, there are no records of its use in any of the surviving Greek documents of antiquity.^[1]Geza Vermes has stated that "the son of man" in the New Testament is unrelated to Hebrew Bible usages. Vermes begins with the observation that there is no example of "the" son of man in Hebrew sources and suggests that the term originates in Aramaic — ברנש - bar nash/bar nasha.^[3]He concludes that in these sources "Son of man" is a regular expression for man in general and often serves as an indefinite pronoun and in none of the extant texts does "son of man" figure as a title.^[3]The occurrences of Son of man in the Synoptic gospels are generally categorized into three groups: those that refer to his "coming" (as an exaltation), those that refer to "suffering" and those that refer to "now at work", i.e. referring to the earthly life.^[8][4][9]The presentation of Son of man in the Gospel of John is somewhat different from the Synoptics and in John 1:51 he is presented as contact with God through "angelic instrumentality", in John 6:26 and 6:53 he provides life through his death and in John 5:27 he holds the power to judge men.^[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Son_of_man_(Christianity)

What if the "Christ" that so many argue about and teach were to be reconsidered as this family of sentient beings occupying the earth?

Does this consideration change the way we look at one another? Humans, animals, plant, insects, fish, and birds?

Is Christ the saving aspect of life on earth?

Does Christ suffer, die, and resurrect every day in the suffering, dying, and continuing on of all beings?

And is murder always and only murder when we decide and decimate fellow beings out of fear, fanaticism, or fabrication of hierarchy?

Today, 6th August, is one of those days we need to hold holy. A terrible thing happened 68 years ago. No explanation, no justification, no rationalization can suffice to ameliorate the sacrilege committed and the blaspheme following.

Candle burns all day at hermitage.

That we might return to our senses.

Learn to see.

Each...one.

Eve of destruction

Always a meditation that crosses mythology with ugly military decision -- Hiroshima devastation, and feast of transfiguration in catholic calendar.

August 6 intersects these two things.

I will wake in morning wondering at the meaning of such corresponding processes.

A deep sadness.

An unbelief.

Reveals.

The going in is the coming out: the perpendicular wormhole absentspace/time

Dead people visit in dreams. Aunt Claire hugs me in kitchen. I am surprised at this. Usually it was her daughter I was looking to see around touching lips to cheek arriving with verve. The unusual hug in the dream is hieroglyph of semiotic sphere my consciousness does not yet intuit.

Denis B. also visits. My old administrator at the children's home. He is making coffee. He has come from the first dream where he tried to close windows in his car as rain poured. In this dream there is a clock and radio with long stringy wires I am trying to get work. It is an indoor/outdoor space with small lawn and kitchen counter where toast and coffee darken.

A woman wearing a blue Burka smiles in the first dream. It could be anyone but it seems to be someone I know and I wonder why the garb.

The dead and the deranged pass through my memory without recourse. I have been similarly deranged and moribund in unconscious and unkind deportment. In the dream I am naive accompaniment to ordinary occasions.

In prison Friday Armin gave wonderfully articulate elucidation of singularity, black holes, string theory, and perception. Saskia was with Rokie who was playing soccer with inmates in gym moving basketball length of floor like Pele across field in World Cup. 

The existence we move through is a combination and compilation of dimensional possibilities broken into partialized probabilities not unlike the situational selves we proffer in circumstances arising and dissolving as aggregates in Buddhist philosophy. There might not be a solid distinctive self. 

The five aggregates: matter or form (Rupa); feeling or sensation (Vedana); perception (Samjna); mental formation or volition (Samskara); consciousness (Vijnana).

What is true view?

Let me see . . .

What about coffee, or tea?

I have no argument with God.

     THE ARGUMENT
                    By Jane Kenyon

On the way to the village store   

I drive through a down-draft   

from the neighbor’s chimney.   

Woodsmoke tumbles from the eaves   

backlit by sun, reminding me

of the fire and sulfur of Grandmother’s   

vengeful God, the one who disapproves

of jeans and shorts for girls,

dancing, strong waters, and adultery.

A moment later the smoke enters

the car, although the windows are tight,   

insinuating that I might, like Judas,

and the foolish virgins, and the rich

young man, have been made for unquenchable   

fire. God will need something to burn

if the fire is to be unquenchable.

“All things work together for the good   

for those who love God,” she said

to comfort me at Uncle Hazen’s funeral,   

where Father held me up to see

the maroon gladiolus that trembled

as we approached the bier, the elaborate   

shirred satin, brass fittings, anything,

oh, anything but Uncle’s squelched   

and made-up face.

“No! NO! How is it good to be dead?”

I cried afterward, wild-eyed and flushed.   

“God’s ways are not our ways,”

she said then out of pity

and the wish to forestall the argument.

           (Poem by Jane Kenyon, “The Argument” from Collected Poems. © 2005)

Nor do I know the good of being dead. 

Will there be peanut butter or rye bread toast?

gingham and lace

That mourning dove finishing its morning meditative chant moves off into quiet elsewhere.

In churches up and down coast they come to praise Jesus.

In this room having witnessed invisible panoply departure of suppliant calling into silence I also withdraw.

Sunday devotional idiorhythmy.

In the dream walking through various lifetimes without restriction to any.

This empty form forming emptiness into images and story enough for now.

Suddenly dove picks up recitative . . .