Saturday, May 03, 2014

Let go


The day runs
Out
Of minutes

Looks over edge
At tomorrow
Unpacking grip

Friday, May 02, 2014

Dirk


Died last night.

We learn.

A candle burns.

Invocation: Something there is that loves a door

         “Something there is that doesn't love a wall”                                                                                                                                                       (—from”Mending Wall,” by Robert Frost)
Graduation is a nice way of saying :
Let me show you the door —
we won’t see you around here anymore!

So let us call each other in
and let us pray
and let us say

what we are passing through —

Doors open and let us in
and doors close as we go out — 
doors, like hearts, see us through

today, in this place, with those around us
we are passing through
another door — another open space with two sides

what was before, and what will be more.
what was before, and what will be more!

so, here’s your hat
don’t be a doormat
look around, be where you’re at

and take the next step
enter this room, take a seat,
rest your feet, (isn’t this neat?)

here we are
our prayer is complete
(isn’t that sweet?) 

-- one more thing —
you, you, you are the door
you are what was before
and you are what will be more

that’s it — we arrive here
and your gift to us, the one you so lovingly share, 
is to let us in, 

where heart-is-open aware…
mind-is-clear aware…
and you a door-freely-standing...aware   

                       (wfh, for University College at Rockland, 3may2014 Commencement)

Thursday, May 01, 2014

Physikos -- Pertaining to things of nature


Seven years ago this body -- not one particle of this body was what it is today. 

The curious disappearance of what I am as I remain who I am.

 φυσικός, ή, όν: Physikos: Natural, agreeable to nature.

What actually is resurrection of the body?



Take one small step out of April.


May I?

Yes you may.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Abnegatio


Now that the millionaires have scolded the billionaire about his jealousy and racial comments, all the professional athletes will cease doing what they do that would get them censured and scorned by the rest of us milling around with stoneless hands.

Monday, April 28, 2014

In memory of Giordano Bruno


The cosmos is our primary scripture.

Our hermeneutic is primitive.

Exegesis is our savior.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Octave; to where we dwell


Father is karma. Son is rebirth. Spirit is emptiness.

The whole of it, transformed in our phenomenological existence, is resurrection.
The work presented his critique of the key Buddhist theories of karma, rebirth, and emptiness. Then, remarkably using Buddhist philosophical language and phraseology, [Ippolito Desideri] argued for the Christian doctrine of the Holy Trinity and dealt with possible objections against this doctrine that might be raised from the Buddhist philosophical standpoint.
(--p.11, in Toward a True Kinship of Faiths, How the World’s Religions Can Come Together, by HH The Dalai Lama, 2010) 
In Christian tradition Father has long been associated with judgment, anger, or compassion. Son has been associated with incarnating, suffering, dying, and rebirthing. And Spirit has been associated with inspiration, awakening, non-separation, and wise being-in-the-world.

Taken as a whole, this narrative is one of resurrection -- a coming back to life after death, or, a coming back to life within life-itself. It is this notion that death is not confined to the cessation of biological life, but involves a transformation of all forms of life -- physical, psychological, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual -- into a new form of life as a new being in a heretofore unrealized realm of existence.

 This transformed realm is not someplace else. It is we who are, if you will, someone else. It is what has been called the realm of heaven, the sphere of engaged relationality wherein we see and connect with all things and every being in a happy, healthy, and holy manner.
This fits closely with Jesus’s words to the dying brigand in Luke: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” 5 Despite a long tradition of misreading, paradise is here, as in some other Jewish writing, not a final destination but the blissful garden, the parkland of rest and tranquillity, where the dead are refreshed as they await the dawn of the new day. 6 The main point of the sentence lies in the apparent contrast between the brigand’s request and Jesus’s reply: “Remember me,” he says, “when you come in your kingdom,” implying (whether ironically or not does not concern us here) that this will be at some far distant future. Jesus’s answer brings this future hope into the present, implying of course that with his death the kingdom is indeed coming even though it doesn’t look like what anyone had imagined: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” There will still, of course, be a future completion involving ultimate resurrection; Luke’s overall theological understanding leaves no doubt on that score. Jesus, after all, didn’t rise again “today,” that is, on Good Friday. Luke must have understood him to be referring to a state of being-in-paradise, which would be true, for him and for the man dying beside him, at once, that very day— in other words, prior to the resurrection. With Jesus, the future hope has come forward into the present. For those who die in faith, before that final reawakening, the central promise is of being “with Jesus” at once. “My desire is to depart,” wrote Paul, “and be with Christ, which is far better.” 7
Resurrection itself then appears as what the word always meant, whether (like the ancient pagans) people disbelieved it or whether (like many ancient Jews) they affirmed it. It wasn’t a way of talking about life after death. It was a way of talking about a new bodily life after whatever state of existence one might enter immediately upon death. It was, in other words, life after life after death.
(--Wright, N. T. (2009-04-24). Surprised by Hope (pp. 150-151). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition. )
Some call the process a similar one to the death of the ego, or the stepping out of the small-self, or ceasing to cling to the particular perspectival preferences with which we are habituated.


Seven times down, eight times up.

Whether zen adept or just man/woman -- we fall to ground, long to arise, and struggle to see our way clear and through.

To where we dwell in peace.

Freedom.

Safety.

Happiness.

Our true home.