and the world needs to figure out when that is

Hospice nurse says, “ I do all my peopling here. When I’m at home I need my alone time.”

She says it for me.

Two of them banter. One says to other, “You don’t need alone time, you like to be with people.”

“No,” the other says, “I get peopled out too, and I need my alone time, and the world needs to figure out when that is.”

constituted by my relations

 Interconnection.

To approach these issues, something must be said about the fourth principle, anatman, the doctrine of no-self. The recognition that there is no self is a key step on the path to enlightenment, but people are often confused about what this means. One way to clarify this is to note the implications of the notion of interconnectedness. Since everything is what it is by virtue of its relations to other things, this means that I as an individual am constituted by my relations to other people, institutions, places, actions, etc. There is no self-grounding inner core of the individual. Our lives are entirely dependent processes. 

Since my life is a function of relationships with others, the only way I can make my life better (not worrying for the moment about what counts as better) is by making everyone else’s life better. That is to say, the only motive I could have for trying to make the lives of others worse is the notion that I could thereby make my life better in some way, but pratityasamutpada makes this impossible. This notion is reflected in the game: It cannot be good to win in Go because it is not bad to lose. This is because the aim of achieving greater understanding is often more effectively facilitated by losing than by winning. 

(From, The Game of Go, Can a board game teach the principles of impermanence, interdependence, compassion, and no-self? By William S. Cobb, in Tricycle, SPRING 1999 

Who am I?

Snoozing cat on plank above kitchen. Another snoozing cat on red fire-rug in front of seasonally out-of-work wood stove.

Empty yoghurt container next to black thermos on brown bookcase.

Who are you?

slip

Silent listening inter-presence.

wooden dinghy rowing skiff

drenching rain, catspaw

this Friday morning  by barn —

dark blue bottom paint

from the rising of the sun to its setting

Benedict

Ora et labora

Monasticism

Feastday

and there she remained

Phrases we hear: religion without churches; spirituality without religion; Christ without Christianity. There is a longing for integrity-in-itself without the caprice of political or organized surround — that which immediately compromises and trivializes the original inspiration.

The origin of religious feeling is a profound connection and interconnection that skirts the commonly held belief that we are separate and alienated from one another, the earth, cosmos, and God.

I trust a return to integral religious identity as interbeing expressions of unfathomable reality-truth is upon us. What it will be called, what shape it takes, what direction it points is not yet clear.

Nevertheless, as an article in Huffpost Highline titled behold, the millennial nuns augurs, there is a deepening of the heart and mind toward something beyond name, or design, or roadmap — maybe more of an aphasiac or mystical emergence of what one thinker called “The Ever-Present Origin.”  By any other name, what we have taken to calling “God among us.”

Traditional philosophical metaphysics tries to grasp this as Being, Nature, Truth, Essence, Becoming.

I’m good with this attempt to word. I’m better with this urge to engage. I’m best when I admit I don’t know, can’t imagine, and continue to put one foot in front of the other.

Mostly, and here is where I currently land, I suspect there is no other, only a non-dual whole wherein everything is reflection of everything else, and “we” are life’s longing for itself with mysterious intimacy and profound urgency.

Tolstoy quotes the gospel saying “do not resist evil.” Perhaps this is meant to suggest we do not resist the separating impulse, the inclination to miss the point, the frustrating temptation to make things better — all of which pull us from our frantic restless searching. Rather, in our uncertainty, it might benefit us to stumble toward le point vierge.

Forthwith, as my aunt Ronnie used to say when her stories ran out of steam, “And there she remained*.”

...   ...   ...

* remain | rəˈmān | 
verb [no object] continue to exist, especially after other similar or related people or things have ceased to exist: a cloister is all that remains of the monastery. • stay in the place that one has been occupying: her husband remained at the beach condo. • [with complement] continue to possess a particular quality or fulfill a particular role: he had remained alert the whole time. • be left over after others or other parts have been completed, used, or dealt with: several years remain in the transition period. 

imperceptibly imbibed

Tolstoy, in What I Believe, writes that it was the words "Do not resist evil" that stopped him and turned around his thinking and life.

Never return evil, but enter life eternal by returning loving and kind example.

Hard task -- and impossible, without grace.

And what is grace?

That which is --

always --

present

sam and susan's dory, 9july19, camden harbor

dreary such when so

Perhaps we have not understood the Incarnation. Popular rendering is that God became man.

What if the Incarnation points to the event, begun but nowhere near completion, wherein everything coheres and matures in each particular appearance. God becoming creation, God becoming human, God becoming itself -- these formulations express the movement of wholeness through individual manifestations whose interior urge turns to significant attraction, an emergence through dichotomy toward synchronous presence-appearance. In other words, that which is becomes completely that which is. 

Phenomenology should not and cannot decide a priori (i.e., prior to my relation  with the Other and with the World) how to classify phenomena -- as if it were an old librarian shelving books under the right call number. This chiasmus becomes the cross on which religion and secularism would have to sacrifice their logic. Religion law, and ethics can, in the proper circumstances, play a crucial role in pointing us toward the eschaton of the Incarnation, but they are never more than ladders that must be left behind in time. 

(--p.33, Toward a Fourth Reduction? by John Panteleimon Manoussakis, chapter in After God, Richard Kearney and the Religious Turn in Continental Philosophy, 2006)

It is not surprising that we are fairly stupid.

What is surprising is that we have not (yet) eradicated ourselves from this planet.

The obtuseness and impertinence of our egoistic preening is beyond any comprehension. That, and the financial rewards accrued to pomposity, celebrity, and outrageous memes of notoriety are breathtaking.

Emily Dickinson helps in this:

I'm Nobody! Who are you? (260)

I'm Nobody! Who are you? 

Are you—Nobody—Too?

Then there's a pair of us!

Don't tell! they'd advertise—you know!

How dreary—to be—Somebody!

How public—like a Frog—

To tell one's name—the livelong June—

To an admiring Bog! 

 ( Emily Dickinson - 1830-1886  )

 Just because such is so, it doesn't mean there our minds should go.

let me see

Religion without church; Spirituality without religion; Politics without the prior three. There's a pulling away from one another using each to justify.

I prefer common decency and the ethic of reciprocity (aka golden rule). This demands a new way of seeing and engaging.

One problem we face is the common delusion so many hold that we are separate, disconnected beings. 

Whatever leads to breaking through that delusion, whatever leads to a heart of compassion, kindness, and active service with and for one another -- I'll affirm and attend, happily.

sam, beyond the horizon, perspectives, 1930-2019

Sam passed at about 1208  

E&H are here it was peaceful 

We are Blessed to have this time with Sam 

THANK YOU all for ur support  and caring love Blessings in Gratitude 

🙏

Susan Erika And Hilary 

🦆🔨

Meetingbrook is candle-lit and rudder-ready for Sam's sail. How fortunate for all those on this dock as lines were cast off with love.
(With gratitude, b&s & rokpa)

The Waking
BY THEODORE ROETHKE 

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground!   I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

(—poem by Theodore Roethke, "The Waking")

hospice end game

We wonder where we will go.

He hears the words: “Go with God,

We love you,” 

back from walk; electricity outage

“Darkness is the mother of religion.” (—Feuerbach)