saturday morning in meditation cabin

Zazen practices this...

fact friday

I tell them i know i will die

Nothing startling

Just a fact

Like coffee and toast

And kindling for morning fire

boiling water poured on tablecloth

It takes a 

long time to

get to where 

you are;

to arrive at

who you are

beyond all

interference

we say “thanks, giving”

Because reciprocity and non-dual awareness understand that giving is receiving.

“It is in giving that we receive.”–St. Francis

It is our unawareness that mires us in unawareness of true co-relational inter-relationality.

As giving is receiving, so is thanking being thanked.

The going out is the coming in.

It is God that receives the two dollars at exit of parking lot, it is God that extends it. And God is the exchanging currency between hands.

So too, prayer.

Prayer is the act of each thing becoming itself in its embrace of everything surrounding. 

We pray, not for anyone or anything else, but for the integrity and intimacy of our realization that the one praying and the one being prayed for is the one reality articulating itself in prayer as expression of an everyday wholeness that contains everything and acknowledges nothing-itself as the co-equal sides of loving glance seeing reality as it is in Itself.

And then we sip coffee.

Sip tea.

Spoon yogurt.

Start fire in woodstove.

And say -- thanks, giving! 

finding ground

The political landscape has changed.

So many are so unsure which direction to look.

Nor is there any certainty what they’ll see.

I take a different view --

Walking forward, we walk forward.

Feet will find ground.

53 years ago today

I first realized the world was odd.

Odder than the mind could accept.

Jack Kennedy.

I greet you.

computer experts in Michigan say

Persuasive evidence.

Uh oh!

7% anomaly.

Oh dear.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/11/activists-urge-hillary-clinton-to-challenge-election-results.html

after long phone call from a hurting place

As an old man
I cannot see well
But i do feel
The suffering
Of my sister

as stillness expands

Shakuhachi flute after Heart Sutra at enening practice tonite.

Then bell chant.

Bowing back into zendo then out into rain.

Inclusion, Adyashanti said.

Falling into grace.

poet foresees 222 years ago america’s 2016 ideological divide

Blake, William (1757 - 1827)

Original Text: 

William Blake. Songs of Experience. 1794.  Blake's Illuminated Books, ed. David Bindman. Princeton, NJ: William Blake Trust; London: Tate Gallery, 1991-. See Vol. 2. PR 4142 B46 1991 ROBA.

1"Love seeketh not itself to please,

2Nor for itself hath any care,

3But for another gives its ease,

4And builds a Heaven in Hell's despair."

5So sung a little Clod of Clay

6Trodden with the cattle's feet,

7But a Pebble of the brook

8Warbled out these metres meet:

9"Love seeketh only self to please,

10To bind another to its delight,

11Joys in another's loss of ease,

12And builds a Hell in Heaven’s despite."

Publication Start Year: 

1794

   RPO poem Editors: 

Northrop Frye

http://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/clod-and-pebble

gazing through

One day follows another.

Dawn bows. It practices honoring arrival.

'Many arrivals make us live' -- wrote poet Theodore Roethke.

This morning, here in your absence, makes everything close and intimate.

All is infinite and eternal.

Embodiment is the grace of realizing what is gazing through the reality of what is near.

Profound bow.

I greet you!

[Gassho]