God is present awareness

Si...

Chris, in prison Friday morning, said, "God is present awareness."

I'll stay with that awhile.

this monk died 47 years ago yesterday.

We are fond of him.

http://fatherlouie.blogspot.com/2015/12/by-my-monastic-life-and-vows-i-am.html

--BETH CIOFFOLETTI (louie louie blog). 

thomas merton wrote this:

“Why do we spend our lives striving to be something we would never want to be, if we only knew what we wanted? Why do we waste our times doing things, which, if we only stopped to think about them, are the opposite of what we were made for?”

And this:

"For me to be a saint means to be myself.”

seeing things differently

I remain intrigued by the notion that when we reach our center we reach one another, and conversely, if we stay out on the periphery, away from thoughtful investigation and contemplative inquiry, we are more prone to create division and separation, ultimately remaining lonely, or worse, antagonistic and bellicose toward the 'dangers' presented by anyone 'other' than that which our narrow perceptions recognize as 'our people,' threatening (so we are of the opinion) our sanity and safety. 

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Can we learn to experience difference without division? Can acknowledgment and appreciation of diversity and difference introduce deeper access to the diaphaneity (seeing-through) of our true and shared nature with all creatures, people, and being-itself?  

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In other words, will the blown-out outer flame of the candle reveal within us a true and real illumination that will faithfully guide us through the chaos and confusion of a unenlightened world?

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From a blog about Keiji Nishitani and his book Religion and Nothingness:

The burden of existence from the perspective of sunyata appears instead as a mission or a debt towards all others with whom we are essentially connected in elemental existence. As discussed last chapter, entering the infinity of the present moment allows to see our connection with all other things in the universe, effecting a liberation from karmic conditioning. The moment of time and the present moment, then, appears from this perspective as instead one unit of time, the present moment, “spreading out endlessly before and after with the present at its point of origin.” (267) This conception of time as one moment spreading out infinitely into the past and future correlates with the understanding of the elemental existence of the universe as one harmony, a single whole. Understanding the universe as essentially connected makes self-love ignoring others impossible, as loving ourselves necessarily entails loving all other sentient beings, such that loving thy neighbor “as thyself” “comes about where each and every ‘other’ has its being as other, namely, at its own home-ground; or again, where all things are gathered into one circumincessional interpenetration as a ‘world’ and ‘All are One.’” (279) Self-centeredness gives way in religion to understanding the entire world as its own center, such that love must be directed towards all others. Thus, only from the perspective of religion can we grasp our ethical purpose in loving all others, seen most clearly for Nishitani in Boddhisattvahood in Buddhism and love of one’s neighbor in Christianity.
http://strongreading.blogspot.com/2011/08/keiji-nishitani-religion-and.html

aware that this is true

Every breath is final breath.

too soon to say

There are, some might say, several idiots running for president of the United States.

It is an idiotic time.

Fear and intimidation are call words of those trumpeting our movement to a new form of fascism.

These shills do not know God.

Nor do most of us.

But most of us do not peddle fear and intimidation.

Breathe.

This idiocy might pass.

But it's too soon to say.

the entangled knowns and unknowns of this existence.

From CC, 8Dec15, Life BEFORE Death

COLLAPSE

I love David Foster Wallace's explanation of deciphering meanings. To a religious person and to an atheist, there would be a complete difference on how they each view the same problem. In his 2005 commencement address he illustrates a man at a bar, explaining how he was stuck in a blizzard praying to god for help. The man next to him believed God did  help him, while the man telling the story solely believes the Eskimos that came to show him the way were his saviors. I can't say why the man would pray to god for help when he didn't believe in him. Maybe it's a comfort reaction to a hardship. I am not a believer and don't believe in God, or that God put us here and he has 'plans' for us. It's entirely tiring to listen to it as well. This course most definitely gave me incite into what others believe and I've considered the possibility however I don't have enough evidence to convince me from my current beliefs. 

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William Halpin INSTRUCTOR MANAGER 

RE: Life BEFORE Death

COLLAPSE

"...I don't have enough evidence to convince me..."(CC)

...

It's on days like these (i.e. Dec 8, Catholic Feast of the Immaculate Conception, Celebration of Buddha's Enlightenment Day, Secular Feast of John Lennon's Death) that I sense that something is up.

What is "up" I do not know. Like your words, I don't have enough evidence.

But here's my take:

• I like the notion that at least once in history, in the 1st century BCE, a woman was born with no barrier or impediment to completely experiencing and embodying the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That prospect cheers me. And perhaps she's not alone in this realization. 
• I also like the notion that once in history, in the 5th century BCE, a man, sitting under a Bo tree, awakened and realized the true nature of reality, the true nature of suffering, and the path both useful and necessary to successfully invite others into that same samadhi and nirvana. 
• Finally, I like the notion that once in history, in the 20th century CE, a man wrote songs like "Imagine" and "Stand By Me" and "Happy Xmas, War is Over" and "Give Peace a Chance" -- capturing an ethos of an age that resonates forward.     
• •      (Note: Ethos (/ˈiːθɒs/ or US /ˈiːθoʊs/) is a Greek word meaning "character" that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the power of music to influence its hearer's emotions, behaviors, and even morals. (Wikipedia) 

I like the convergence of these three personages into a particular date in early December.

I don't have enough evidence to convince my rational mind to believe or my magical mind to claim control or my mythic mind to join with others in a "we" belief, but I do like the integrality of all the structures of consciousness inviting me into a sense of appreciation and attentiveness to the entangled knowns and unknowns of this existence.

(Thanks for the prompt!)

--bh

Where are you?

Its just a photograph of someone that I knew.

Rather, a video. Vimeo. He's 82 now.

I realize...we're strangers. Then and now.

This does not bother me. We're all strangers. Trying to make our way back home again.

But there's no home there. Never was.

Just the notion.

And that's gone too.

What's left?

Right

Where

You

Are.

harbor responses

KK writes: Scramble on the Mud Pile; King of the Mountain

COLLAPSE

Sometimes it feels like we're crawling all over each other even when we're evenly spread out doesn't it? How strange it is to feel piano wire tension in a room, the unsaid presence of sorrow or the frolicking wispiness of joy.It is the non physical becoming real,unfolding like a sail in the salty spray of oceans dawn. We all want something, we're all going somewhere, and dammit you're all in my goddamn way! It feels at times like the organized madness of ants pouring into and out of a snarling  labyrinth of tunnels, the piglet mass writhing for an open teet. Just millions and millions of conciousness' bouncing around and off of one another trying to understand, if even for just a second, whats really going on here.For when I scramble on the mud pile I feel like the King of the Mountain. 

bh responds: 

RE: Scramble on the Mud Pile; King of the Mountain

COLLAPSE

"It is the non physical becoming real, unfolding like a sail in the salty spray of oceans dawn."(KK)

[nice sentence]

...

 And if we became more conscious? I wonder what I would find. Hungry, would I step back for all the other mouths, also hungry, to eat before me?

The terms "altruism versus egoism" don't seem to satisfy. What could we call it?

I've been thinking about difference without division.  Having a mind which does not divide (although, disastrous for math class) but which recognizes difference (or, as Jacques Derrida coined, "différance") might change something so fundamental that it would be like the collapsing Matrix in its implication.

We could sell t-shirts saying:

    dwd

we for me

--bh

Feel, and understand, the nature of being alive and what suffering is...

Compassion cannot be taught or bought.

It is only learned by feeling what life alone reveals.

It is free & found by understanding suffering.

the way of difference within wholeness without division

december maine

afternoon mild

not yet

steady cold and icy

a kind of kindness

Perhaps God is what is true and beautiful. And we are what longs for truth and beauty. 

But something in our longing becomes craving to possess -- as if an object owned -- what suffuses existence as itself ungraspable and ever gracefully moving as dance of rising light -- in order (by our frantic instinct to prevent loss) to objectify and control what otherwise belongs only to itself as pure subjectivity passing through (perfectly) everything on its way of difference within wholeness without division.

“Take off the garment of your sorrow and affliction, O Jerusalem, and put on forever the beauty of the glory from God. Put on the robe of the righteousness from God; put on your head the diadem of the glory of the Everlasting,” (Bar 5: 1-2).

Advent, coming towards, is anticipation of what is meant to be in the midst of how things are now.

Anticipate what might be -- by attending to what is -- with an attitude of realization -- a kind of kindness toward what is presenting itself seen with beauty and true quiet awareness.

Venite et videte quid hoc est nunc!

Come and see what this is now!