we reside in readying

Yes

In the dream I am carrying weights in a satchel on a corner of a city waiting for a student who's an inmate actually serving 59 years but somehow coming for a tutorial in a wooden door floor desk room after I've been jest ironed by three parole officers. ("Jest ironed" fits as well as the intended "questioned" in that sentence, a decision by hidden genie of iPad spelling security unbidden.)

At Friday Evening Conversation we listened to part of David Whyte and Krista Tippet discussing The Conversational Nature of Reality on this week's On Being. We are aware of dying winter and not yet spring in Maine and in our selves. And the longing for compassion, love made visible.

That's what was said in the plexiglass room with speakerphone during conversation with man 22 months in segregation speaking about his Critical Reflection noting the primary teaching of prison is the development of strong separate egos isolated from everyone and unable to be kind or compassionate to anyone. It is a pedagogy of desiccated delusion and dehumanizing deceit. It is the real punishment prison dispenses. God help the one released and those in society receiving such well educated men and women!

Here, at foot of mountain, white dog climbs stairs and lays on rug, outside single car heads toward town.

When we get to zafus in two hours we will take all this into a more solemn silence. Then we'll chant the Heart Sutra. Then read a Buddhist writing. Then reflect in ersatz teisho what is heard within and without. Then recite the four bodhisattva vows. Then invite a metta blessing. Then listen to bell chant for all beings, in all realms, at all times, from the no ones and nowhere we are.

Dreams might not come true, but they seldom lie.

Between the hidden true and the disclosing true we reside in readying alert presence preparing to be and do the nothing we are, the seeing-through what we are becoming.

Constructive Caring (who and what we are)

Henry Giroux writes:  

At a time when the public good is under attack and there seems to be a growing apathy toward the social contract or any other civic-minded investment in public values and the larger common good, education has to be seen as more than a credential or a pathway to a job, and pedagogy as more than teaching to the test. Against pedagogies of repression such as high-stakes testing, which largely serve as neoliberal forms of discipline to promote conformity and limit the imagination, critical pedagogy must be viewed as crucial to understanding and overcoming the current crises of agency, politics, and historical memory faced by many young people today. One of the challenges facing the current generation of educators and students is the need to reclaim the role that education has historically played in developing critical literacies and civic capacities. Education must mobilize students to be critically engaged agents, attentive to important social issues and alert to the responsibility of deepening and expanding the meaning and practices of a vibrant democracy.         (--in Beyond Pedagogies of Repression, byHenry A. Giroux) http://monthlyreview.org/2016/03/01/beyond-pedagogies-of-repression/

We’re probably not blank slates.

We probably construct knowledge by reasoning our experience.

Hence, we are in danger of remaining uneducated due to unwillingness or inability to experience what is real as distinguished from what is given to us as packaged and received indoctrinating maintenance of the dominant culture.

It’s ok.

Sleep has an additional benefit of releasing our minds to another kind of dream state.

choosing to live this day as one would live

The morning is rainy.

In contemplation we're consciously choosing to let go of our identification with our mind and our identification with our life situation or our false self so that we can fall into the One True Life, which is bigger than each of us, which is moving into a different body, a different state, a different consciousness that Christians call Christ consciousness. For Paul it is his participation in Christ which gives him the courage to walk through each state: passion, death, and resurrection--all of which are brought to focus in the life of Jesus. Most people were told to love Jesus without being invited to love Christ. "The Christ" is the Big Picture of God's enfleshment in all of creation since the beginning of time (Colossians 1:15-20); Jesus is the distilled, personal enfleshment that brings this primal "anointing" of the material world to one concrete loving and loveable moment.

Gateway to Silence Remain in my love. --John 15:9

Reference:Adapted from Richard Rohr, Great Themes of Paul: Life as Participation (Franciscan Media: 2002), disc 7 (CD).  (--from, Dying and Living in Christ, Thursday, April 7, 2016) http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?m=1103098668616&ca=ae63632e-640b-4e02-9d84-161d24efb7b6 And silent. The morning is rainy and silent with memory. It holds its memory with grace and consideration. Choosing to live this day as one would live with rain and silence.

confession, short version

when i was young i did some things i wouldn't do today

that's it

Fowl shot, New York Times; Villanova later wins NCAA championship

ama nesciri

 camden maine 23 hours ago

Alas, why DID the plucked chicken cross the road?
Heidegger might say it was thrown there. Camus, that it was considering suicide, the only serious philosophical question. But Dogen Zenji, in a tender moment of companionship, would cross with it because he didn't know, and was willing to drop mind and body to enter the traceless enlightenment of experience.
Philosophers are lamp holders. Even when what they look for or look at is troublesome and desperately in need of creative transformation, they long to see what is there.
We don't need to be told what is there. More the need, the radical experience, of feeling for oneself what is presenting itself for our engagement. 

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/of-socrates-cynics-and-flat-nailed-featherless-bipeds/?comments&_r=0#permid=18101323

Sunrise through bamboo shade

Returning through silence.

In the sorrow of violent death, remembering his kindness

Yes

Thank you Martin

wholly ones

Yes

At practice, Thich Nhat Hanh* is seen reminding that emptiness is not nothing. Emptiness means empty of separate existence, empty of separate self.

It is 17° and the fire lay dormant in woodstove. To my surprise, it hadn’t caught at bedtime. Furnace had no help. 

Geraniums on sun porch shiver.

I will pull them in.

I think of Dr King.

And pray for him and the changes that still need to happen.

Like letting one another live.

Without fear.

Responding 

Yes

To the invitation

To be the wholly ones

We are

* According to Avalokiteshvara, this sheet of paper is empty; but according to our analysis, it is full of everything. There seems to be a contradiction between our observation and his. Avalokita found the five skandhas empty. But empty of what? The key word is empty. To be empty is to be empty of something. 

If I am holding a cup of water and I ask you, “Is this cup empty?” you will say, “No, it is full of water.” But if I pour out the water and ask you again, you may say, “Yes, it is empty.” But empty of what? Empty means empty of something. The cup cannot be empty of nothing. “Empty” doesn’t mean anything unless you know “empty of what?” My cup is empty of water, but it is not empty of air. To be empty is to be empty of something. This is quite a discovery. When Avalokita says that the five skandhas are equally empty, to help him be precise we must ask, “Mr. Avalokita, empty of what?” 

The five skandhas, which may be translated into English as five heaps, or five aggregates, are the five elements that comprise a human being. These five elements flow like a river in every one of us. In fact, these are really five rivers flowing together in us: the river of form, which means our bodies; the river of feelings; the river of perceptions; the river of mental formations; and the river of consciousness. They are always flowing in us. So according to Avalokita, when he looked deeply into the nature of these five rivers, he suddenly saw that all five are empty. 

(--from, The Fullness of Emptiness, By THICH NHAT HANH| AUGUST 6, 2012)                                http://www.lionsroar.com/the-fullness-of-emptiness/

Seeing practice through

At winter zendo practice, looking at sanctuary light, the realization:

Jesus is present;

Christ is presence; 

What we call 'God' is the realization of 'this reality.'

Walking meditation, earlier, took us past our cemetery.

It snowed, a squal, between two practices.

So much depends upon a footprint seen where once it hadn't been.

Sunday morning

Inside out

April light

Metacognition 

Becoming aware of what is arising through itself

Unburied -- I am because you are --ubuntu 

Every moment blessing