any day -- now -- will be released

I would like to thank law enforcement for their attempts in history to preserve law and protect people. It saddens me that there has been a drift toward militarization and partisan violence by police throughout nation.

Pulled by our own attachments, we are always chasing phantoms. Terrified, we run away from monsters created from our own aversions. So long as perception is distorted, we are unable to see the true nature of what is in front of us nothing but an ever-changing collection of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and thoughts or concepts. 

(--Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, “Like a Mirage”)

I also wish to thank the Armed Forces for their part in protecting the nation and preserving freedoms at home and abroad.
It saddens that you have been used to further the ends of select groups and particular and peculiar ideologies over time.

If you start concentrating the mind on stillness, You will merely produce an unreal stillness. What does the word "meditation" mean? In this school it means no barriers, no obstacles; It is beyond all objective situations Whether good or bad. The word "sitting" means Not to stir up thoughts in the mind. -- Hui-neng (d.713) Finally, thank you to those you’ve chosen to be public servants in Senate or House or Supreme Court -- following the intent to guide and assure fairness and justice for all peoples. It saddens that greed, ignorance, and narrow minded pettiness has made the workings of these bodies ludicrous and lopsided, with little real debate toward real and meaningful inclusive change.

Gaston Bachelard writes:
In poetry, wonder is coupled with the joy of speech… The poetic image is in no way comparable, as with the mode of the common metaphor, to a valve which would open up to release pent-up instincts. The poetic image sheds light on consciousness in such a way that it is pointless to look for subconscious antecedents of the image… Poetry is one of the destinies of speech. In trying to sharpen the awareness of language at the level of poems, we get the impression that we are touching the man whose speech is new in that it is not limited to expressing ideas or sensations, but tries to have a future. One would say that poetic image, in its newness, opens a future to language.
(--Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962)  in his 1960 treatise The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos published in English seven years after his death)

Perhaps we will soon learn to speak.  Speak creative realization of inherant worth. Arising spirit of cooperative compassion.
It gives joy to imagine what would occur if we ever began to think.

Began to feel.

Began to begin the movement to being human.

how there is out there

There wasn’t enough room.

So he opened the door.

Stepping outside --

The sky.

setting out in rain; coming back to where we've never left

Planes fall from sky. It is, they say, war.

Soon there will be no need for planes or war.

Real devotion only arises when you have a glimpse of emptiness, some glimpse of the nature of mind. Once you have some very precise insight as to how emptiness helps to alleviate suffering, then devotion is based on a real, embodied experience.  (--Kyabgön Phakchok Rinpoche, "Keys to Happiness")

There will be nowhere to go because everyone will be there already.

Not in imagination, really there. We will come to embody physicality. 

Touch the ground. Breath the sky. See distance in locality. Remember things as yet unhappened. Forgive things that never happened.

We are lovers like that, and besides, it was never a question of being right or wrong.

It is, however, all right, all along, for each and all.

For each is all in each.

and with (you are) spirit

Let's see if I have this right -- if I don't do the thinking, where does the thinking come from?

Are you going to tell me that no one is doing the thinking? That things just "feel" themselves into our minds and then we become conduit for expression of what is felt into words?

Ha!

Next you'll be telling me that the stories we tell ourselves about our lives are illusory fabrications and silly excuses for something not yet known.

You'll have to forgive me -- I have little patience for the false -- mine or yours.

We are each situation.

Each circumstance.

The unfolding present.

That's why the successful pretend and control and puff themselves with power, money, and position.

Meanwhile, we fools, feeling the world into existence with eager emergence, are surrounded by what is coming to be actually coming to be beyond our understanding.

Listen!

That silence?

Is prayer...

Coming to be, through us.

hunger for seeing; naked infinite love

Bodhidharma (6th c.CE) was looking for a non-deluded person. 

Ikkyu obliged.

	The Haiku and Poems of Ikkyu Sojun/Ikkyuu Soojun (1394-1481)
A melancholy autumn wind  Blows through the world;  The pampas grass waves,  As we drift to the moor,  Drift to the sea. What can be done  With the mind of a man  That should be clear  But though he is dressed up in a monk’s robe,  Just lets life pass him by? Why do people  Lavish decorations  On this set of bones  Destined to disappear  Without a trace? No one really knows  The nature of birth  Nor the true dwelling place.  We return to the source  And turn to dust. Many paths lead from the foot of the mountain,  But at the peak  We all gaze at the  Single bright moon. If at the end of our journey  There is no final  Resting place,  Then we need not fear  Losing our Way. No beginning,  No end.  Our mind  is born and dies:  The emptiness of emptiness! Rain, hail, snow and ice:  All are different,  But when they fall  They become the same water  As the valley stream. The ways of proclaiming  The Mind vary,  But the same heavenly truth  Can be seen  In each and every one. Cover your path  With the fallen pine needles  So no one will be able  To locate your  True dwelling place. As Ikkyu does not think of his body As if it were his body, He lives in the same place, Whether it is town or country. This world  Is but  A fleeting dream  So why by alarmed  At its evanescence? The vagaries of life,  Though painful  Teach us  Not to cling  To this floating world. If you break open the cherry tree, Where are the flowers? But in the spring time, see how they bloom! To write something and leave it behind us, It is but a dream. When we awake we know There is not even anyone to read it. Look at the cherry blossoms! Their color and scent fall with them, Are gone forever, Yet mindless The spring comes again. why is it all so beautiful this fake dream this craziness why?		this ink painting of wind  blowing through pines who hears it? oh yes things exist like the echo when you yell at the foot of a huge mountain sin like a madman until you can't do anything else no room for any more fuck flattery success money all I do is lie back and suck my thumb one long pure beautiful road of pain and the beauty of death and no pain mirror facing mirror nowhere else sick of it whatever it's called sick of the names I dedicate every pore to what's here a well nobody dug filled with no water ripples and a shapeless weightless man drinks oh green green willow wonderfully red flower but I know the colors are not there the mind is exactly this tree that grass without thought or feeling both disappear not two not one either and the unpainted breeze in the ink painting feels cool Ikkyu this body isn't yours I say to myself wherever I am I'm there nature's a killer I won't sing to it I hold my breath and listen to the dead singing under the grass suddenly nothing but grief so I put on my father's old ripped raincoat when I was forty-seven everybody came to see me so I walked out forever my monk friend has a weird endearing habit he weaves sandals and leaves them secretly by the roadside even before trees rocks I was nothing when I'm dead nowhere I'll be nothing no nothing only those wintry crows bright black in the sun if there's nowhere to rest at the end how can I get lost along the way? that stone Buddha deserves all the birdshit it gets I wave my skinny arms like a tall flower in the wind no words sitting alone night in my hut eyes closed hands open wisps of an unknown face the wise know nothing at all well maybe one song melons eggplants rice rivers the sky I offer them to you on this holiday go down on your silly knees pray for what? tomorrow is yesterday I found my sparrow Sonrin dead one morning and buried him just as gently as I would my own daughter I hate it I know it's nothing but I  suck out the world's sweet juicy plum you stand inside me naked infinite love the dawn bell rips my dreaming heart When it blows, The mountain wind is boisterous, But when it blows not, It simply blows not. Dimly for thirty years; Faintly for thirty years, - Dinly and faintly for sixty years: At my death, I pass my faeces and offer them to Brahma.
a comprehensive list of Ikkyu publications, links and resources is available here

 The German shepherd gentle large goofy dog who lives with us could teach Ikkyu a thing or two about leaving faeces right in the middle of hiking trails.

 I'll go rowing now, then, later, pay a man $1400 dollars to poke and prod my mouth with needle and scraper and drill. 

I don't know.

“A human being is part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.”

— Albert Einstein

I happen on website for Eternea:

The Seven Cornerstone Postulates

These postulates are predicated on contemporary research findings from frontier science in its investigatation of spiritually transformative experiences and non-local manifestations of consciousness, as well as the timeless wisdom from the core pillar teachings of the world's greatest spiritual teachers and major religions.

Indicators of Eternea's Success

Eternea's ongoing research efforts are intended to test, challenge and potentially reinforce the validity of these seven cornerstone postulates. To the extent Eternea succeeds in establishing the veracity of these postulates through the research efforts of frontier science, Eternea will be further empowered to inspire people all over the world to accept them as personal truths or convictions, which in turn would then lead to major changes in individual perceptions of reality, hence values, attitudes and behavior. The degree to which Eternea succeeds in in efforts to educate humanity about these postulates and accept them as true should result in a direct decrease in the following:

• War and violence
• Hunger and malnutrition
• Poverty and despair
• Illiteracy and ignorance
• Environmental degradation
• Gender and racial inequality
• Human and animal abuse
• Religious conflict and divisiveness
• Political oppression
• Greed and exploitation of others
• Substance abuse and addiction
• Suicide & clinical depression

 

(--from, Eternea, The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, http://www.eternea.org/Postulates.aspx

A friend, Nadim, is on hunger strike in prison. I wish him nourishment and soul-satisfaction in his resolve. 

He and Ikkyu could converse about their bodies and minds and naked infinite love.

yes, do enter here

The inmate suggested we read D.G Leahy. We will.

We will learn more about thinking.

Maybe we do not yet think. Perhaps things think us.

CONSECRATED 

All has been consecrated. 

The creatures in the forest know this, 

The earth does, the seas do, the clouds know 

as does the heart full of 

love. 

Strange a priest would rob us of this 

knowledge 

and then empower himself 

with the ability 

to make holy what 

already was 

(--Poem by St Catherine of Siena, from ‘Love Poems From God’ by Daniel Ladinsky. )

What I love about holiness is the suggestion we are not holy. Rather, what is holy finds its way through us with our permission.

We have so many tutors. 

come apart and rest awhile

Big dog comes into room and lies down.

Something about down the hall some red and green lights spooking him around his mistress.

Fear is one more thing to let go.