examination of conscience

Zazen

Moving stacking wood

Imagining history

Compassion changes everything

What do you think

See.

Poems are the last thing we want to hear.

I Know a Man

BY ROBERT CREELEY

    As I sd to my
    friend, because I am   
    always talking,—John, I 

sd, which was not his   

name, the darkness sur- 

rounds us, what 

can we do against 

it, or else, shall we & 

why not, buy a goddamn big car, 

drive, he sd, for   

christ’s sake, look   

out where yr going.

(--Robert Creeley, “I Know a Man” from Selected Poems of Robert Creeley. Copyright © 1991 by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted with the permission of the University of California Press,) www.ucpress.edu.

The teisho of it!

what do we learn in school today

It is Thursday. Rokie walks mountain with sticks and human companion. After silent sitting this morning, planing door, pulling in some firewood, the day goes its own way. Vermont checks in. We settle tiff over nytimes with laughter.

the real self
At the heart of Merton’s spirituality is his between our real and false selves. Our false selves are the identities we cultivate in order to function in society with pride and self-possession; our real selves are a deep religious mystery, known entirely only to God. The world cultivates the false self, ignores the real one, and therein lies the great irony of human existence: the more we make of ourselves, the less we actually exist. 

(--Robert Inchausti, in louie, louie,) https://www.blogger.com/profile/09300116274007165612.

Disappear and finally exist. Paradox of mistaken identity resolved when one becomes identityless.

We change what we observe.

We become religiously observant and all relationality changes.

“Quantum information is like the information in a dream,” explained Charles Bennett, a quantum information scientist at IBM Research, in a recent talk at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. “In describing it, you change you memory of it.” This may not sound like a desirable quality in a computer, but in combination with entanglement, it can be exploited to dramatically speed up certain types of calculations and to send perfectly secure encrypted messages. As Steve Girvin, a theoretical physicist at Yale University, points out, it can also be used to generate genuinely random numbers suitable for encryption keys. Quantum cryptography is already being used commercially for some bank transfers and other highly secure transmissions. “This second quantum revolution—the revolution of information—is a complete surprise,” says Girvin. “It took decades to come to grips with the weirdness and realize that the information of quantum mechanical systems is different than the information content of classical systems, and being uncertain about something can actually be good instead of bad. 

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/physics/2014/04/is-information-fundamental/. QUANTUM PHYSICS 25APR Is Information Fundamental?By Kate Becker on Fri, 25 Apr 2014

I'm so sorry we have learned nothing from war.

I grieve the pain and suffering we contribute by means of war.

I appreciate the pause thanksgiving gives.

I'm pleased we are a school of contemplation and gratefulness.

in the beginning was the word; at origin is the hermaneutic

Read.

The literal. The ethical. The symbolic. The mystical. 

The allegorical. The analogically. The anagogical.

The facticity. The mythopoetic. The apophatic.

The composition. The decomposition. The deconstruction. 

The love of wording and being-worded!

We continue to learn how to read.

Différance -- voila!   https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Différance

sobriety and contemplation.

I'm late, but Orrie Jirele in 2013. He was point guard, I was center. It was 1963.

Also, Brian Flynn in 2014. He was 25% of Hall Street duplex and 33.3% of San Antonio Mission experiment from here east, It was 1970-71.

They died, I learned yesterday. I'm late. And there is a wistful sadness accompanies. It is 2015.

I look at full moon and wish them well, as I do Janet who died this week and John whose grief is consuming after 50 years of marriage. 

It's a good night for sobriety and contemplation.

Noon

I learn from John that Janet died on the 22nd.

A new context for St. Cecilia's Mass by Gounod.

Coast Guard fleet at rest.

Eight bells.

this one? this one? this...

One of these breaths will be the final one.

Just a curiosity, is all.

I'll keep a watch for it.

And disappear with it.

Beaver moon through kitchen window

Just sitting here waiting for woodstove fire to catch.

Must be how God feels waiting for humanity to wake up.

empty now and pick up what is remaining

Truth.

As in, tell me the...

Is an idea whose time and illusion has gone by.

What now?

See it different, eh?

Truth is where we arrive when we show up with awareness in the midst of all the confusing and oblique misdirections, intentional miscalculations, hidden motivations and secret shenanigans the human mind obscurates in its attempt to manipulate and control what arises in this existence.

Truth is aware arrival at this moment this place open.

This.

Open.

Awareness.

Arriving.

(How?)

Empty. . .

. . .

Picking up

What is

Remaining

practicing under sound of rain

At morning practice yesterday, looking out window, I notice leaves, branches, uphill rising of mountain, scattered red cedar sticks. I realize these things have no opinion, no intention to dominate, put others in their place, get back at anyone, make others pay for acts done, no interest in treachery, greed, anger, delusion, or excommunication, no desire to control, assassinate, invade, exterminate or keep refugees from finding safe respite.

When rain falls, only rain falling.

When sitting on cushion, only breathing in breathing out, as quiet and still as rain is, falling through itself.

[Marcus] Aurelius, translated here by Gregory Hays, considers how befriending this eternal interplay of life and death can inform and ennoble our existential priorities: 

Just that you do the right thing. The rest doesn’t matter. 

Cold or warm.
Tired or well-rested.
Despised or honored.
Dying … or busy with other assignments.
Because dying, too, is one of our assignments in life. There as well: “to do what needs doing.” 

In another meditation, he revisits the question of our inescapable impermanence: 

Some things are rushing into existence, others out of it. Some of what now exists is already gone. Change and flux constantly remake the world, just as the incessant progression of time remakes eternity. 

We find ourselves in a river. Which of the things around us should we value when none of them can offer a firm foothold? 

Like an attachment to a sparrow: we glimpse it and it’s gone. 

And life itself: like the decoction of blood, the drawing in of air. We expel the power of breathing we drew in at birth (just yesterday or the day before), breathing it out like the air we exhale at each moment.

The only thing that isn’t worthless: to live this life out truthfully and rightly. And be patient with those who don’t.  

(--from Brainpickings, by  Maria Popova)  http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward/show?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=3cb38aa6f1

At evening practice last night, two women, distinctly, at table, cried. They smiled, strangers, a shared response over mushroom soup and burning candles.

They felt, they say, a homecoming gratitude, flowing tears, an embrace of intimacy and safe respite.

So, we practice, with nothing in mind but practicing.

Under sound of rain on roof.

sandlot

In the dream I am playing third base. No glove. I can barely get throws off. What am I doing there? A practice grounder goes through my legs. The shortstop is agile, smooth, and makes strong throws.

And yet I word this dream. As if some revelation were at hand.

Some saving grace.

None arrives.

A weariness.

Everything from Nothing

Science is unable to tell us what or who caused the universe to begin. But some believe it clearly points to a Creator. “British theorist, Edward Milne, wrote a mathematical treatise on relativity which concluded by saying, ‘As to the first cause of the Universe, in the context of expansion, that is left for the reader to insert, but our picture is incomplete without Him.’” [6]

Another British scientist, Edmund Whittaker attributed the beginning of our universe to “Divine will constituting Nature from nothingness.” [7]

Many scientists were struck by the parallel of a one-time creation event from nothing with the biblical creation account in Genesis 1:1. [8] Prior to this discovery, many scientists regarded the biblical account of creation from nothing as unscientific.

Although he called himself an agnostic, Jastrow was compelled by the evidence to admit, “Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world.” [9]

Another agnostic, George Smoot, the Nobel Prize winning scientist in charge of the COBE experiment, also admits to the parallel. “There is no doubt that a parallel exists between the big bang as an event and the Christian notion of creation from nothing.”[10]

Scientists who used to scoff at the Bible as a book of fairy tales, are now admitting that the biblical concept of creation from nothing has been right all along.

Cosmologists, who specialize in the study of the universe and its origins, soon realized that a chance cosmic explosion could never bring about life any more than a nuclear bomb would—unless it was precisely engineered to do so. And that meant a designer must have planned it. They began using words like, “Super-intellect,” “Creator,” and even “Supreme Being” to describe this designer. http://y-jesus.com/more/scc-science-christianity-compatible/3/

in prison Friday Doug said  the creator, out of nothingness, brought about two, who, unsatisfied with the play of nothing decided to make things their own way. So they created nothing, their own nothing. Theirs became the illusion of nothing, as they were unable to return to the uncompromised creatio ex nihilo which, in itself, comprises all which is as that which is not.

The new fellow from Alabama looked at Doug and said, "Earlier I thought you were crazy. Now I sees you are brilliant."

It's not true that nothing belongs to us, that we own it as one might own a fountain pen and fashion words and thoughts with it (as the illusion goes). No, it is truer to say that we are nothing. And the fountain pen belongs to itself. That what comes from it is the singing of emptiness a love song to paper stretching out across worm-ground and root-wood like next season's drop across from barn waiting to be stacked in some kind of order so that a glance might yield the thought, "nice job."

Me? I was on third base, where I'd been since I was a kid. The scout in the stands calling out, " hey, Halpin, back up a few steps, let's see your arm." I knew I was dead, or, at least, not as good as someone once thought.

A Great Dualism

Our minds are never what we want them to be. That’s part of why we sit in the first place. We are uncomfortable with ourselves as we are. The greatest dualism we face is the split between who we are and who we think we ought to be.

—Barry Magid, "Five Practices to Change Your Mind", Tricycle, Daily Dharma, 22nov2015