don't ask

Monsanto owns Blackwater?

Stop

There's something about the culture of exclusion and elimination. Take the south. Take racism and intransigent pretense of superiority on the part of white people. Take legislators with their code phrases, voter suppression, and gerrymandering doubletalking democratic values but enacting closet supremacy laws.

The murders in South Carolina yesterday are not a surprise "crazy" act, but a logical outcome of a century and a half effort to preserve and reinstate legalized slavery by harassing, imprisoning and disenfranchising black people.

The insanity has been institutionalized. It votes. It preens and struts to the tune of patriotic reels proclaiming us uber allies.

There is no sin to forgive by a forgiving Jesus, no criminal act for good legal minds to punish.  There is only perverted consciousness and deluded ideas carried by whole geographies of distracted people intent on punishing northern spoilsports for taking away a very lucrative slave economy. The new ruling class, bankers and corporate boards, now take their tax free profits and sweatshops off shore in the name of acting like real Americans. Just follow the wars and jump on equally lucrative reconstruction.

But I digress. What I really mean to say is -- stop!

Stop!

Just stop!

The stupidity, abandoned character, and inane "more guns" mantra coupled with "it's the black man in the White House's fault" spread an excruciatingly painful ignorance far and wide from the rotting core of an unembarrassable nation.

Das Erinnern

Viel, viel sind meiner Tage 
Durch Sünd entweiht gesunken hinab. 
O großer Richter, frage 
Nicht wie, o lasse ihr Grab 
Erbarmende Vergessenheit 
Lass, Vater der Barmherzigkeit, 
Das Blut des Sohns es decken. 

Ach wenig sind der Tage 
Mit Frömmigkeit gekrönt entflohn, 
Sie sinds, mein Engel, trage 
Sie vor des Ewigen Thron, 
Lass schimmern die geringe Zahl, 
Dass einsten mich des Richters Wahl 
Zu seinen Frommen zähle.

Friedrich Hölderlin

what is, being said, in our surround

My stomach just said something. Right there, next to Ruth Ozeki's novel "A Tale For The Time Being," it spoke a phrase. 

I don't expect the human species to be here for a very long time. At least, not me. One of these mornings this bed will be empty. "Was that his bed?" Someone will answer, "Yes, it was." And that will be that.

Thoughts come and go. Feelings come and go. Allow yourself to experience the transient nature of thoughts and feelings, welcoming everything that arises as Just this, not me, not mine.
(--- Sandra Weinberg, "Eating and the Wheel of Life")

Until then, there is just this morning. Squirrel on bird feeder. Chickadee chanting in green-leaf branch. Gray mottle cat on folded blanket at foot of bed in other room.

What you learn going in and out of prison is why not residing in prison is such a good idea. Arbitrary and ambivalent exercising of authority and power -- a practice mimicked at every juncture of interaction within the walls. Stay out of crime and prison. Unless, going in and out of prison, a shared equivalence of experience evokes Buddhist sympathetic joy or Christian corporal mercy that turns you inside out.

We are, each of us, where we are.

Sacred syllables waiting to be pronounced. 

Holy utterance waiting to be heard.

hebdomadarian silence

walking mountain

listening vespers

falling asleep

practice by seeing

Listening to talk today, (Just This: Integration and Harmonious Communion) delivered 24May2015,  http://www.ancientdragon.org/dharma/audio/adzg_podcast.rss   the speaker refers to phrasing used in 2002 talk citing Dogen’s words about enlightenment and delusion. I’ve highlighted the two phrases in the 2002 talk.

I want to talk today about enlightenment. Usually in my tradition, in Suzuki Roshi's lineage, we don't talk so much about enlightenment, because it's kind of a dangerous word. You might imagine that there is such a thing as enlightenment. But enlightenment is not a thing, but perhaps rather a verb. Dogen says in Genjokoan that deluded people have delusions about enlightenment. So having heard this word you probably all have such delusions. This is very natural that we would have delusions about some wonderful realm of enlightenment that exists someplace else. We hear this word enlightenment and think there's something we need to get, that we need to get higher, or that we need to be somebody other than who we are. And when you realize you are thinking that, this is actually an enlightened thought, because enlightened people are enlightened about their delusions, as Dogen says. So when you are sitting and aware of your restlessness, or fidgeting, or sleepiness, or wanting to be somebody or someplace else than where you are on your cushion, that is this basic delusion, and that is what we need to be enlightened about. We practice by seeing the ways in which we think we are not where enlightenment is.

(-- from Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, Talk: Enlightenment Day, by Taigen Dan Leighton, Mt. Source Sangha, Bolinas - December 12, 2002)  http://www.ancientdragon.org/dharma/dharma_talks/enlightenment_day

There it is: “deluded people have delusions about enlightenment”; "enlightened people are enlightened about their delusions".

I’ll sit with this. 

Leading in; leading out

After recent conversations, Dunn’s poem arrives.

ALL THAT WE HAVE

               To John Jay Osborn, Jr.

It’s on ordinary days, isn't it,

   when they happen,

those silent slippages.

a man mowing the lawn, a woman

   reading a magazine,

each thinking it can’t go on like this,

then the raking, the turning

   of a page.

The art of letting pass

what must not be spoken, the art

   of tirade, explosion,

are the martial arts, and we,

their poor practitioners, are never

  more than appearances.

At night in bed the day visits us,

happily or otherwise. In the morning

   the words good morning

have a history of tones; pray to say them

evenly. It’s so easy, those moments

   when affection is what

the hand and voice naturally coordinate.

But it’s that little invisible cloud

   in the livingroom, 

floating like boredom, it’s the odor

of disappointment mixing with

   kitchen smells,

which ask of us all that we have.

The man coming in now

   to the woman.

The woman going out to the man.

                         (—Poem by Stephen Dunn) 

Mr Dunn has been listening.

We can take his lead.

round 22:22

I've been looking at my brothers and sisters.

An odd bunch.

I'm thinking to stop looking.

Will the oddness stop?

Spirits and souls of the just, bless the Lord -- Sunday morning Hermitage walking willing