to see or not to be

If mind is malfunctioning, you devolve into deficient cynical extremist opportunism extolling fear of the nonexistent.

Warn those who are rich in this world’s goods that they are not to look down on other people; and not to set their hopes on money, which is untrustworthy, but on God who, out of his riches, gives us all that we need for our happiness. Tell them that they are to do good, and be rich in good works, to be generous and willing to share – this is the way they can save up a good capital sum for the future if they want to make sure of the only life that is real.
(1Timothy 6:11-21, first reading, Office of Readings, Saturday, week 27)

If mind is clear and healthy, you become gracious and generous appreciator of things that actually sensibly exist.

Pasture gate is left open

The cow has slipped its bell.

The bell withholds its sound.

When, unbeknownst, clarity

Sometimes the pieces fit the puzzle.

Othertimes the pieces are the puzzle.

pre-amble-edge

 Where does dream go?

93 million miles sunlight travels through water bottle to edge of bookcase, edge of bed, spine edge of prison conversation writing book, where it stops to rest.

In dining room of hermitage sunlight kisses plants edging empty table.

Sunlight visits chapel/zendo where candle-fire holds place for morning prayer edging into day.

Mt. Battie, (me batty), Camden, Maine

Archaic.

Magical.

Mythic.

Mental.

Integral.

Rock, ground, tree, water, sky.

I'm just sitting here

Watching the world go round...

And you

Sunrise, surprise

Green spot of light off to side.

A contemplative's passing gaze.

Μάρθα Μάρθα, μεριμνᾷς καὶ θορυβάζῃ περὶ πολλά, ὀλίγων δέ ἐστιν χρεία ἡ ἑνὸς· Μαριὰμ γὰρ τὴν ἀγαθὴν μερίδα ἐξελέξατο ἥτις οὐκ ἀφαιρεθήσεται αὐτῆς.
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her.”(--from Gospel, Luke 10:38-42)

Take nothing.

No -- take it all.

What is this "only one thing"?

Is that, too, gone?

with a view

The deficient mental structure of consciousness divides everything, evaluates the divided against an artificial benchmark, judges, then sentences the object of its deconstructed assessment to a consequence established by the analytic mind functioning as sifter, sorter, and separator.

Welcome to the 20th and 21st centuries! Two world wars, terrorism, prison-laden societies, national security states, coups, assassinations, uncompromising fundamentalism, moral rectitude, religious fanaticism, political stalemate, and domestic nihilism.

Be ready to leave those places.

They are dead ends.

Step out.

Spacious Mind 

Noticing the space around people and things provides a different way of looking at them, and developing this spacious view is a way of opening oneself. When one has a spacious mind, there is room for everything. When one has a narrow mind, there is room for only a few things.                

 (- Ajahn Sumedho, “Noticing Space,” Tricycle)

Do not ice space.

Rather, do notice space.

Step in.

Change the world by changing your view of it.

What you see is, indeed, what you get.

Unlock window of perception.

Look out.

See things.

Clearly!

keeping silence real

Bruno (1030-1101) was a solitary.

Solitaries consider everything in the world to be alone/itself.

Real holiness doesn’t feel like holiness; it just feels like you’re dying. It feels like you’re losing it. And you are! Every time you love someone, you have agreed for a part of you to die. You will soon be asked to let go of some part of your false self, which you foolishly thought was permanent, important, and essential! 

You know God is doing this in you and with you when you can somehow smile and trust that what you lost was something you did not need anyway. In fact, it got in the way of what was real. 

Many of us were taught to say no without the deep joy of yes. We were trained to put up with all  the “dying” and just take it on the chin. Saying no to the self does not necessarily please God or please anybody. There is too much resentment and self-pity involved. When God, by love and freedom, can create a joyous yes inside of you—so much so that you can absorb the usual noes—then it is God’s full work. 

(Richard Rohr, OFM, director of the Center for Action and Contemplation)

To be alone/itself is to choose what is real over that which is not.

What is not? (Did you think I would say: "What is not 'real'.") 

re·al
adjective\ˈrē(-ə)l\: actually existing or happening : not imaginary
: not fake, false, or artificial
: important and deserving to be regarded or treated in a serious way
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/real

We need to continually explore the sensible and concrete. It is tempting to revert to the abstract, speculative, and ideological. There, things are certain and non-debatable. "It's my speculation, there's nothing you can do about it." 

And if I am not what I am?

“If I am not what you say I am, then you are not who you think you are.” (James Baldwin)

If I am not what I am it doesn't matter what you think.

But if you think not at all about me, am I, then, real as I am?

The same can be said of the society wherein we live. It is an odd, abstract, and amorphous notion in the minds of too many folks, a notion that is becoming unfeeling and unconscious -- two attributions too often worn as a badge of achievement.

It is my belief that the writer, the free-lance author, should be and must be a critic of the society in which he lives. It is easy enough, and always profitable, to rail away at national enemies beyond the sea, at foreign powers beyond our borders who question the prevailing order. But the moral duty of the free writer is to begin his work at home; to be a critic of his own community, his own country, his own culture. If the writer is unwilling to fill this part, then the writer should abandon pretense and find another line of work: become a shoe repairman, a brain surgeon, a janitor, a cowboy, a nuclear physicist, a bus driver.   (Edward Abbey, 1927-1989)

Today there are Carthusians because Bruno inspired the life.

They keep, mostly, silence.

They give away, you might say, noise and dissonant ideas about life and God that are not worth living.

  A traditional representation of the Saint Bruno Chapel, which marks the location of the original hermitage founded in 1084 and destroyed in 1132 by an avalanche. Carthusians have always favored secluded high mountain valleys for their hermitages.                    http://transfiguration.chartreux.org/Bruno-Bonitas.htm 

Solitaries keep silence real by keeping real silence.

You sense such a reality.

Charles Bukowski poem "Dinosauria, We," meet Cormac McCarthy's novel "The Road"

Bukowski:

Dinosauria, We

born like this
into this
as the chalk faces smile
as Mrs. Death laughs
as the elevators break
as political landscapes dissolve
as the supermarket bag boy holds a college degree
as the oily fish spit out their oily prey
as the sun is masked

we are
born like this
into this
into these carefully mad wars
into the sight of broken factory windows of emptiness
into bars where people no longer speak to each other
into fist fights that end as shootings and knifings

born into this
into hospitals which are so expensive that it’s cheaper to die
into lawyers who charge so much it’s cheaper to plead guilty
into a country where the jails are full and the madhouses closed
into a place where the masses elevate fools into rich heroes

born into this
walking and living through this
dying because of this
muted because of this
castrated
debauched
disinherited
because of this
fooled by this
used by this
pissed on by this
made crazy and sick by this
made violent
made inhuman
by this

the heart is blackened
the fingers reach for the throat
the gun
the knife
the bomb
the fingers reach toward an unresponsive god

the fingers reach for the bottle
the pill
the powder

we are born into this sorrowful deadliness
we are born into a government 60 years in debt
that soon will be unable to even pay the interest on that debt
and the banks will burn
money will be useless
there will be open and unpunished murder in the streets
it will be guns and roving mobs
land will be useless
food will become a diminishing return
nuclear power will be taken over by the many
explosions will continually shake the earth
radiated robot men will stalk each other
the rich and the chosen will watch from space platforms

Dante’s Inferno will be made to look like a children’s playground
the sun will not be seen and it will always be night
trees will die
all vegetation will die
radiated men will eat the flesh of radiated men
the sea will be poisoned
the lakes and rivers will vanish
rain will be the new gold

the rotting bodies of men will stink in the dark wind

the last few survivors will be overtaken by new and hideous diseases
and the space platforms will be destroyed by attrition
the petering out of supplies
the natural effect of general decay

and there will be the most beautiful silence never heard

born out of that.

The sun still hidden there
awaiting the next chapter.

         (Poem, "Dinosauria, We" by Charles Bukowski)

McCarthy:

“Listen to me, he said, when your dreams are of some world that never was or some world that never will be, and you're happy again, then you'll have given up. Do you understand? And you can't give up, I won't let you.” 

                       (Cormac McCarthy, from, The Road)