breathing, itself, here

Cough from another room.

Furnace blows warm air through vents from basement.

Box of Tylenol opened.

Blood pressure high.

Pain from mouth pervades.

I've been thinking about last nights conversation. How compassion walks down dark alleys. Dumpsters full of debris and detritus call out resentment and condemnation wanting your compliance and complicity.

Instead of sorrow for those hurting as well as those doing the hurting.

Kuan Yin, Bodhisattva of compassion, hears the cries of the world.

Mary, Mother of Sorrows, feels in her heart the distress and difficulties of the suffering.

No blame.

No recrimination.

No protestations of failed righteousness or sinful deviancy.

Rather, attentive presence. Listening awareness.

Rigpa and condolence.

An offer of nearing humanity in an atmosphere of distancing greed, anger, and delusion.

And then, death.

Of self.

Of separation.

Of tendentious opinions signaling arrogant dismissal of other.

Finally.

Face to face with what is the face of oneself.

Without barrier, border, or boundary.

Breathing.

Itself.

Here.

recollection

ji ji mu ge

(Between one thing-event and another thing-event there is no barrier.)

Jijimuge: (Japanese) The doctrine of the Kegon School of the 'unimpeded interdiffusion' of all Ji, things. Apparently the last word in the intellectual understanding of the unity of manifestation. http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/glossary_fk.htm

long day

When it

Is time for

Sleep --

Then,

Sleep

here, ever-present origin itself said, I am

If God is presence,
then God is
wherever someone
is present to
another

If we’ve stopped
believing in God
it’s that we
fail to be
present

God is alone; I am, nearly, there

My soul, 

find peace 

in God 

alone

(--psalm 61)

an open gate held by snow

No need to look up names or faces from decades gone by.

When ambulances and police cars speed by, lit up, all that is needed is prayer.

Surely it is someone of ken to someone thinking of them.

where’s the love

The New York Times is only the mess-anger.

“Flynn Is Trump’s Just Deserts”, Frank Bruni  FEB. 14, 2017

I’d rather be sending the Four Bodhisattva Vows to a sister practitioner in Georgia.*

Instead, I comment:

Anybody seen the Republican Party?   

McConnell? Ryan?  

No.   

All they wanted was their meal ticket in the White House. They are beyond being embarrassed. They are like white rich looters during a national catastrophe, like the Wall Street crowd. Their response is, “Hang in there, Mr President, a little longer. We’ve almost got the place cleaned out.”  

It’s hard not to be livid over the cynicism and hypocrisy of our Republican senators and representatives. They turn a blind eye to the radical ideological incompetency of the administration while concurrently blindsiding the American people with a cat-burglary dismantling of every safety alarm to unprotect citizens from an ascendant theft-ridden ideology.  

Have all good ideas and effective leadership abandoned this country and gone to new undisclosed locations?  Is this survival reality show the one program available in actual time? Is active resistance and peaceful non-cooperation our new and only political reality?

(Thanks be to goodness I scored a large Whitman's Sampler for therapeutic calming this Valentine’s Day. I’ll need a rehab stay following the current and coming insanity of our political collapsing dam...and/or chocolate overdose.)

...

*
Four Vows of the Bodhisattva, 

Upaya Zen Center version

Creations are numberless, I vow to free them.

Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to transform them.

Reality is boundless, I vow to perceive it.

The awakened way is unsurpassable, I vow to embody it.

if words are prelude to action, these words augur frightening acts to follow

 The words he spoke:

MILLER: Well, I think that it’s been an important reminder to all Americans that we have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become in many case a supreme branch of government. One unelected judge in Seattle cannot remake laws for the entire country. I mean this is just crazy, John, the idea that you have a judge in Seattle say that a foreign national living in Libya has an effective right to enter the United States is -- is -- is beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.   

The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.  

(--excerpt, Transcript, Face the Nation, comments by Stephen Miller, senior policy advisor to DT/45, 12Feb2017) 

Sounds like?

What’s rolling out

Is nothing

We want to hear

Nor will the people, listening

Abide

via con dios

each breath

God

inside and out

where zen gaze and contemplative listening intersect

THE QUIET WORLD

By Jeffrey McDaniel

In an effort to get people to look 

into each other’s eyes more, 

and also to appease the mutes, 

the government has decided 

to allot each person exactly one hundred   

and sixty-seven words, per day. 

When the phone rings, I put it to my ear   

without saying hello. In the restaurant   

I point at chicken noodle soup. 

I am adjusting well to the new way. 

Late at night, I call my long distance lover,   

proudly say I only used fifty-nine today.   

I saved the rest for you.

When she doesn’t respond, 

I know she’s used up all her words,   

so I slowly whisper I love you

thirty-two and a third times. 

After that, we just sit on the line   

and listen to each other breathe.

Jeffrey McDaniel, “The Quiet World” from The Forgiveness Parade. Copyright © 1998 by Jeffrey McDaniel.