together mind

There's not much interest in Christ as "King."

What if we ended the liturgical year with Christ Samadhi?

white stars in blue-black sky; walking to bookshed, starting zendo heatstove fire

From Tricycle:

The Theater of Reflection

A Tibetan lama invites us to the theater of emptiness.

Dzigar Kongtrül Rinpoche

When we’re watching a movie in the theatre, we can relax and enjoy the show because we know it’s an illusion. This magical display that we’re watching is the result of a projector, film, light, screen, and our own perceptions coming together. In separate momentary flashes of color, shapes, and sound, they create an illusion of continuity, which we perceive as characters, scenery, movement, and language. What we call “reality” works much the same way. Our ability to know, our sense perceptions, the seeds of our past karma, and the phenomenal world all come together to create life’s “show.” All of these elements share a dynamic relationship, which keeps things moving and interesting. This is known as interdependence.

When we look around us, we can see that nothing exists in isolation, which is another way of saying that everything is interdependent. Everything depends upon an infinite number of causes and conditions to come into being, arise, and fall away moment by moment. Because they are interdependent, things don’t possess a true existence of their own. For instance, how could we separate a flower from the many causes and conditions that produce it—water, soil, sun, air, seed, and so forth? Can we find a flower that exists independently from these causes and conditions? Everything is so intricately connected, it is hard to point to where one thing starts and another ends. This is what is meant by the illusory or empty nature of phenomena.

The outer world in all its variety and our inner world of thoughts and emotions are not as they seem. All phenomena appear to exist objectively, but their true mode of existence is like a dream: apparent yet insubstantial. The experience of emptiness is not found outside of the world of ordinary appearance, as many people mistakenly assume. In truth, we experience emptiness when the mind is free of grasping at appearance.

Seeing the emptiness of the phenomenal world relieves us of the heavy notion of things being solid or intrinsic. When we understand that nothing exists independently, everything that does arise seems more dreamlike and less threatening. This brings a deep sense of relaxation, and we feel less need to control our mind and circumstances. Because the nature of everything is emptiness, it is possible to view our life the way we would view a movie. We can relax and enjoy the show.

From It’s Up to You, © 2005 by Dzigar Kongtrül Rinpoche. Reprinted with permission of Shambhala Publications, Inc. http://www.tricycle.com/insights/theater-reflection

...

Someone asks question. In early morning, this response:

Worthy question: "Where is the moral compass of emptiness?"

Someone is shot -- attend their wound. Someone dies -- grieve the loss. Compass needle points to engaging presence. Points away from judging emotion and absenting concepts formulating separative isolation.

We sorrow together the acts of vengeful delusion and ideological scalpels.

Nunc, altare cosmos

introibo ad altare Dei

ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam

Real spirituality is suffering

No beginning-- only origin.

No end -- just return to origin.

a pause

Between Going And Coming 

                             - Poem by Octavio Paz

Between going and staying
the day wavers,
in love with its own transparency.
The circular afternoon is now a bay
where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,
all is near and can’t be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,
rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats
the same unchanging syllable of blood.

The light turns the indifferent wall
into a ghostly theater of reflections.

I find myself in the middle of an eye,
watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters. Motionless,
I stay and go: I am a pause. 

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/between-going-and-coming/

Out of shadows

In prison a stoic cried when he presented his paper on prisoners in Plato's cave.

It surprised him.

And everyone else at the academic symposium.

The majorly of whom also cried with him.

It was that kind of intelligent gathering. 

Deans cried.

A university president cried.

Some profound learning took place.

Sound sight

Quote:

Dalai Lama: Humans Created Terrorism, So Stop Praying To God For A Solution,  

   This is a problem created by mankind, the Dalai Lama said, and God's not going to fix it,    by Michael McLaughlin,  Reporter, The Huffington Post

Prayer alone will not be enough to stem terrorist attacks like the shootings and bombings last week that devastated Paris and shocked the world, the Dalai Lama said. 

The Buddhist spiritual leader from Tibet said in an interview with German media outlet Deutsche Welle on Monday that terrorism is a problem caused by humans and, thus, must be fixed by mankind without God's intervention. 

"People want to lead peaceful lives. The terrorists are short-sighted, and this is one of the causes of rampant suicide bombings. We cannot solve this problem only through prayers," the Dalai Lama said as part of a response to a question about how he viewed the attacks. 

"I am a Buddhist and I believe in praying. But humans have created this problem, and now we are asking God to solve it," the Nobel Peace Prize winner said. "It is illogical. God would say, solve it yourself because you created it in the first place."http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dalai-lama-terrorism_564b8975e4b045bf3df16e75?cps=gravity_5059_-1421997628689322297

war and veterans

“...there are thousands of US vets that are homeless displaced and can't find a job due to the struggles of coming back,"(MB)

...

It is often pointed out that it takes a very, very, long time for some veterans to “come back." 

They have gone to, and become. a different world.

--bh

summary

All is well. 

Even when it isn’t.

It is.

November divertissement

Radical love?

Radical love is letting go and falling through wholeness with profound trust.

Letting go of ego partiality.

Falling and falling through wholeness.

Trusting there is nowhere to hit in this formless falling from opinion and preference, through and through, spirit-ready and mind-free, affirming that All is Well, not-knowing, only trusting,

The excruciating transformation of the temporary you into what has always been you.

Est-ce que tu ne vois pas que tout ce que tu fais, tout ce que tu penses, les autres le copient.

S'il vous plait, respondez aussi precisement que possible: solitaire ou solidaire?

Camus nous inviter à penser.

Do you love me?

Ok.

Ok?

(Comes light through eastern window. No other words find way through this.)

No other way finds words through this.