αλλαγή (allagí) — change

 Change

Is

Correct

Relationship

Let

Us

Change

Well!

oui, mon petit rien

Bells and wood stalls sound

Across ocean, laudes, saying

Yes, really, now, yes

wherein is whereout

 Not thing in itself

but a thing experienced

intentionally —

Consciousness going out from

Itself to itself as there

three, two, one...

 I've been told hate will

end at midnight New Year's Eve --

followed by mère love

ordinary thursday morning

 One day God shows up

Sips coffee bites fresh donut

Looks out at harbour 

think a-bout this

 Exactly one year

from today it will be five 

days after Christmas

Mark your calendar, think a-

bout it will be just like this

how hear the source of sound

 The song said that everybody hurts. 

What do we do? Keep the hurt going? Or, maybe, try healing?

 At their best, Black freedom struggles intensify the virtues of American democracy and lend invaluable support to the search for justice. Amid white violence and Black bloodshed — forces we still face — Archbishop Tutu, like Martin Luther King Jr. before him, reminded us of a lesson we should never forget: that forgiveness and reconciliation are the foundation of a vibrant social movement and a healthy democracy. As King argued, the lex talionis — the law of retributive justice described as an “eye for an eye” in the Book of Exodus — is ultimately unsatisfying and harmful. “The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everybody blind,” King wrote.

With King and Archbishop Tutu as our guides, we can reclaim moral ground and preserve our humanity while achieving the highest form of justice possible. Archbishop Tutu sweetly reverses the usual hierarchy of the West over Africa in colonial thinking when he argues for a conception of justice rooted in his beloved motherland. “Retributive justice is largely Western. The African understanding is far more restorative — not so much to punish,” he said, “as to redress or restore a balance that has been knocked askew.”     

(--from, Where Is the Forgiveness and Grace in Cancel Culture?, By Michael Eric Dyson, Dec. 28, 2021 NYTimes)

We're in such a damn hurry to clean up and clear up what's contrary to our way of thinking, our template for a pure and moral world. 'Kill them,' we yell, 'kill the sons o'bitches!' 

Stop the steal, hang Mike Pence, let those zygotes get driver's licenses and red hats, stop those coloreds from voting out those nice white folks, keep them non-christians out of our country, the hell with the lazy poor trash who don't have trust funds and high-value stocks! Do you know who I am?

You said your students are afraid to talk about race. Are you sympathetic to the idea of keeping certain words out of the classroom context? 

I think it’s dangerous. And there is no word called “the n-word.” For example, Countee Cullen: If we erase the actual word he used, we’re erasing a poem called “Incident,” which should be read because it’s a beautiful poem. Whatever it is that was written,  we need to be able to read it. To me, it’s that simple. And you can call me whatever you want to call me. If I don’t like what you’re saying to me, I have a button here on the Zoom that says “off.” So do you. You have to be free. That’s what I hate about the vigilantism that’s happening now. And what is worth killing somebody for? I live on a mountain, and someone could drive down the mountain too fast and hit a squirrel. That squirrel has to eat, and so it has to go looking for food. Squirrel can’t go to Wendy’s or McDonald’s. So you should go down the mountain at five miles an hour. If you’re late you’re still going to be late. You’re not going to be on time because you murdered a squirrel. 

(from, Talk Nikki Giovanni Has Made Peace With Her Hate, By David Marchese, 26dec2021, NYTimes)  

Tutu knew, and Giovanni knows, what we're made of -- opinions and insufficient words to plumb the deep bottom of our hearts and being. So we skim the scummy surface of polluted bigotry with oars of bored muzzles with fingers on unsafetied triggers looking to take down and take out with bullets whoever is bad, or other, or just in our way.

We have not yet begun to plumb the real depths of wording.

Where, at origin, the urge to convey purpose and meaning grunts upward through mute desire toward intimate communication, saying, 'here, here, I am here!'

We don't hear what is here.

We've become deaf to the mutterings of God.

In unhearing isolation we shout obscenities, 'fu*k you, fu*k you', singing deranged Christmas carols of prejudice and propaganda, ignorance and political nonsense against, and against, and against...

Don't talk of hope. ...I've heard that word before. It's sleeping in my memory. I won't disturb the slumber of feelings that have died... (with apologies to Simon) 

How hear the source of sound? The profound longing to say: I'm here...I love you...Do you see me? Can you hear me?

Mutter.

Mutter...

Mother?

the view from here

 It is good to sit

Looking at nothing, looking

As this attending

作務衣 *

 Sitting zazen black

Samue *— inner monk working

Still doing nothing

….  …   …

   * Monk's working clothes

jeté

 Doe, with quiet grace

Slow motion leaps green fence near-

by oblong gas tank

monocrome

 Ordinary dream,

You see, deer prints in dooryard —

Fresh snow, rope on ground

cowardly and craven

Chaos

Captures

Cacophony of

Craziness throughout

Country

Concern is

Caustic

Casualty of

Crumpled 

Citizenship

Crap

a moment with desmond tutu and tenzin gyatso

A brief, transitory, masterclass of joy. 

Extraordinary footage  

https://twitter.com/steamedhamms/status/1475041964630421510?s=21 

 and 

https://twitter.com/jaiminism/status/1475154652916117504?s=20

Then, the condolences sent by His Holiness. 

How wonderful to have lived in their time!

where stillness goes

 Perhaps love is reality.

human kind 

 

Cannot bear very much reality

(T.S. Eliot, in Burnt Norton) 

Hence our penchant for diversion and distraction.

 Love is itself unmoving, 

Only the cause and end of movement,

(Ibid)

 Stillness is that which drops down into love.

by all things

 It’s not about control or fear.

It’s all about allowing and acceptance.

Seeing oneself (one’s self) in the explication, expostulation, and exoneration.

“I live by letting things happen.”

— Dōgen

  Reality is that which presents itself beyond our thinking or manipulation. Spiritual or religious reality is anecdotal mythology until it becomes antidotal releasement of misread messaging. So much we hold is not there, not vorhanden (not-at-hand.)

“If we don’t know what’s real, we can’t resist.” (Bugs to Neo, Matrix, The Resurrections)

Yes, resist, (from Latin resistere "to make a stand against, oppose; to stand back; withstand,").

To withstand. To oppose might not mean to eliminate. But to make a stand, to with-stand. Our very natures are replete with oppositions. Our personal, psychological, and political selves might be better served by wonder rather than warfare. 

To study the Way

is to study the self.

To study the self

is to forget the self.

To forget the self

is to be enlightened by all things of the universe.

 ~ Dogen Zenji 

The Buddha and the Christ looked at good and looked at evil and wondered what to say about what they saw.

So, too, are we invited to look, and to wonder what response best offers life, peace, and hope of love.

What is being born in us that is source of what is both true and replete with peace? 

A Step 

          (by Robert Creeley)

Things

come and go.

Then

let them.

Having to—

what do I think

to say now.

Nothing but

comes and goes

in a moment.

*

Cup.

Bowl.

Saucer.

Full.

*

The way into the form,

the way out of the room—

The door, the hat,

the chair, the fact...

*

Sitting, waves on the beach,

or else clouds, in the sky,

a road, going by,

cars, a truck, animals, in crowds.

*

The car

moving

the hill

down

which yellow

leaves

light forms

declare.

*

Car coughing moves with

a jerked energy forward.

*

Sit. Eat

a doughnut.

Love’s consistency

favor’s me.

*

A big crow on the

top of the tree’s

form more stripped

with leaves gone

overweighs it.

Pieces of cake crumbling

in the hand trying to hold

them together to give each

of the seated guests a piece.

*

Willow, the house, an egg—

what do they make?

Hat, happy, a door— 

what more. 

                             (-Poem by Robert Creeley) 

Maybe it is seeing.

Maybe, loving.

Maybe — loving seeing.

Or, love/sight.

Maybe it’s not the world that distresses and upsets. But us. Our still as yet inability to see what is there or to love what is seen.

And yet, and yet, and yet…

It is a time of change and exchange.

Let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fears!

mediatrix matrix

 Interior light

Has nowhere to move but out

Through open heart/mind

ecco, ciao cambio, il mio scambio ... finalmente, nient'altro, importa

 Back

Up southwest

On mountain

Machines make

Snow

It is

Christmas

For a brief

Moment

 

Nothing- 

Else

Matters

however we understand 'you' this time of change and exchange

ありがとう、あなたは親切です

(Arigatō, anata wa shinsetsudesu)

Thank you, you are kind!

no we can't; yes (oui) do

Everywhere, Christmas Eve. 

There’s really only one message, and we just have to keep saying it until finally we’re undefended enough to hear it and to believe it: there is no separation between God and creation. That’s the message. But we can’t believe it.  (--Richard Rohr, Only One Message, Daily Meditation 24dec2021)

Even if we cannot believe it, we might come, unknowingly, to see it.

As they say --

Seeing 

is

(beyond) 

believing.

Seven bells, rising sun through cedar tree

 Ten degrees outside

Even ice in dooryard wants

To come into house

if είμαι is

In Greek, είμαι means “I am.”

Spare me

No effort.

 It is only when we are not aware of exactly `what is', that we make the effort to transform it.

So, effort is non-awareness. The moment you are aware, which is neither to condemn nor justify, the moment you accept, look and observe what is, there is no effort; then the thing that you observe, that which is, that which you are aware of, has an extraordinary significance. If you pursue that significance through, you complete that thought and therefore the mind is freed from it. So, awareness is non-effort, awareness is to perceive the thing as it is without distortion. Distortion exists whenever there is effort. When you love completely, every thought comes with such joy, clarity and happiness. This can only happen when there is integration and when there is no effort. Maturity or integration can only come when there is complete awareness of `what is'.

(—from, The Observer is the Observed! Madras, India. Public Talk 30th November, 1947, Jiddu Krishnamurti)

No me

No effort.

One of Taoism’s most important concepts is wu wei, which is sometimes translated as “non-doing” or “non-action.” A better way to think of it, however, is as a paradoxical “Action of non-action.” Wu wei refers to the cultivation of a state of being in which our actions are quite effortlessly in alignment with the ebb and flow of the elemental cycles of the natural world. It is a kind of “going with the flow” that is characterized by great ease and awareness, in which—without even trying—we’re able to respond perfectly to whatever situations arise.

The Taoist principle of wu wei has similarities to the goal in Buddhism of non-clinging to the idea of an individual ego. A Buddhist who relinquishes ego in favor of acting through the influence of inherent Buddha-nature is behaving in a very Taoist manner.

(—from,Wu Wei: The Taoist Principle of Action in Non-Action), by Elizabeth Reninger)

If

I am…

To love you

Is

Wu-wei.

Nothing other.

Master Thich Thien-An in Zen Philosophy, Zen Practice says that,

“When we seek Buddhahood as an object outside ourselves, we fall into the dualism of subject and object, and by their very nature subject and object can never become one. But if we give up all discrimination, subject and object will vanish of their own accord. Then we will see the Buddha within. 

This Buddha is the original Suchness, the Clear Light shining in the Void, the underlying unity of all things. To realize it is to experience enlightenment. 

When we realize the Buddha and everything are one: that is Suchness.”

Suchness, what an evocative word. Its mysterious aloofness draws you in. Inviting you to venture into unknown worlds. And as you enter into it more and more deeply all lines and distinctions are lost.        (—from, Suchness, in Zen Awakened) 

Incarnation is resurrection is incarnation,

As 

I am

Is

All

That is

As it is 

without the fuss

 It’s a Thursday and

tomorrow is Friday then 

comes a Saturday 

if you must know

 What meditation…

Nothing in particular —

Well worth letting in

at the end of anything, a reminder

When you stick around to the end of rolling credits, this: 

Dedication/Memoriam: For Mom and Dad
‘Love is the genesis of everything.’ 

(--The Matrix Resurrections )

 Wherein one's end is isomorphic beginning.

this season of slumber and imagination

We can’t help but wonder. 

It’s how we change and exchange.

 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 

   (  - Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio)

And ... still, we dream.

time away

 there's nowhere to be

nor any time to be there

go ahead, sit still

where metaphors collapse into selfsame

 They say the season

is incarnation. But it 

is no different 

from resurrection. Where to

begin, and where do we change

one plus one becomes no-one

 Between you and me

Sheer emptiness a dwelling

Where each finds itself —

Zen saying tells “Don’t make two

Don’t make one” — Let (‘s) go

the whole of spirituality in a middle line

 She said these three words —

“Disappears into itself...”

A wonderful line

sola terra

 I give up, time to 

go, pack my rucksack, tender

my resignation

there’s no mirror for emptiness

 The invisible

does not show itself to us —

Feel — (silent stillness)

observing as one, see all

become what you cannot see

switching light

 At ten fifty nine

winter will arrive in Maine — 

fall leaves exhausted

unperturbed (in all) outward circumstances

 Fifty one US Senators are against all Americans voting, repairing what is broken, and helping children in need be less so.

What's Christmas got to do with it?

Into this world, this demented inn, in which there is absolutely no room for him at all, Christ comes uninvited.  - Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable (1966)

The uninvited are always annoying.

We need to sit with that fact. 

Also, a person succeeds by the merit of a single sitting 

 

            To destroy one's immeasurably accumulated crimes. 

 

Where then should the evil appearances exist?

The Pure Land is then not far away.

(—from, ZAZEN WASAN, "ODE TO SITTING-MEDITATION" By Hakuin Ekaku Zenji) 

 It's just the way we seem to be -- selfish, greedy, disconnected.

Someone shows up, showing us we are not the self we think we are, that we can't own anything, and (to cap it off) the very essence of our existence is an intimate connection with each and every being -- and our reaction is to freeze, reach for the nearest weapon, and eliminate the uninvited nuisance from any proximity to us.

Hence, our arrogant loneliness.

I practice zazen.

The term zazen is a combination of the terms za and zen. Literally, za means sitting, and zen is derived from the Sanscrit word dhyana meaning meditation, thus the translation of zazen into "sitting-meditation."  However, in Buddhism the activity of sitting meditation should not be taken only literally. The literal act of sitting meditation is the physical gateway or vehicle for the spiritual realization of sitting meditation, which is enlightenment and its function. The Sixth Patariarch of Zen, Hui Neng, described zazen thusly: "to sit means to gain absolute freedom and to be mentally unperturbed in all outward circumstances, be they good or otherwise. To meditate means to realize inwardly the imperturbability of the Essence of Mind."  The veneration and direct exhibition of the enlightenment embodied in sitting meditation is the purpose of the "Ode to Sitting-Meditation." 

(--from, COMMENTARY ON THE ZAZEN WASAN,  by Gregory Wonderwheel 

 It gets me nowhere.

In all.

Where are you?

one-another

 Is absolute being pure nothingness?

The Kyoto School was a group of comparative philosophers and theologians working at the University of Kyoto between 1913 and 1963. Guided and inspired by the pioneering works of Kitarō Nishida the Kyoto School were renowned for their integration of Eastern with West- ern thought. They developed radically novel interpretations of place, body and experience informed by what Western commentators, most notably James Heisig (2001) has described as a meontology. Meonotology lies in stark contrast to the Western concept of ontology. Where ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, meontology is the philosophical study of the nature of non-being or nothingness. Absolute nothingness does not merely refer to the absence of some ‘thing’, but refers to a supposed ‘place’ or field of potential within which things and no-things co-specify and define one another. 

(— from Introduction, Absolute Nothingness –The Kyoto School and Sound Art Practice by STEPHEN RODDY)

Meontology bears looking at.

Meontology is the philosophical study of non-being.

The word comes from the Ancient Greek μή, me "non" and ὄν, on "being" (confer ontology). It refers not exactly to the study of what does not exist, but an attempt to cover what may remain outside of ontology. Meontology has a slim tradition in the West (see Sophist and negative theology), but has always been central to the Eastern philosophies of Taoism and the later Buddhism.  (-wikipedia)

 If someone says, “God is nothing to me.” — are they making a positive statement or a negative one?

It becomes suggestive during this season of koan-creation that the lacunae between things and between utterances is, in-itself, what we are asking after, what we seek to inhabit as dwelling-place, a breath (if you will) within which the interval between inhalation and exhalation (or exhalation...inhalation) becomes (absolutely/pure) (being/nothingness).

Where does that leave us?

What is this realization?

what is, the hand of one, sound

Is this the koan

for Christmas? What is practice?

Appearing presence?

Merton said Christian future

will be Zen. What did he see?

inoculating and masking deepest insecurity

Soon I’ll brew coffee

chiudi la bocca, ask

Who wants love truth life

tired end of saturday

 Hauling wood, moving

Fence, tarping everything — this

labora est ora 

to be more fully and more humanly

At Friday Evening Conversation we spoke of education, technology, Basho, and Frost.  

This morning, comes remote contribution. Thursday, 16dec21, in louie, louie, Beth wrote

bell hooks, who died yesterday, referenced Thomas Merton in a chapter, "Eros, Eroticism, and the Pedagogical Process":

“There is not much passionate teaching or learning taking place in higher education today. Even when students are desperately yearning to be touched by knowledge, professors still fear the challenge, allow their worries about losing control to override their desires to teach. Concurrently, those of us who teach the same old subjects in the same old ways are often inwardly bored—unable to rekindle passions we may have once felt. If, as Thomas Merton suggests in his essay on pedagogy ‘Learning to Live,’ the purpose of education is to show students how to define themselves ‘authentically and spontaneously in relation’ to the world, then professors can best teach if we are self-actualized. Merton reminds us that the ‘original and authentic “paradise” idea, both in the monastery and in the university, implied not simply a celestial source of theoretic ideas to which Magistri and Doctores held the key, but the inner self of the student’ who would discover the ground of their being in relation to themselves, to higher powers, to community. That the ‘fruit of education... was in the activation of that utmost center.’ To restore passion to the classroom or to excite again the place of eros within ourselves and together allow the mind and body to feel and know desire.” (bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress [New York: Routledge, 1994], p. 199)

~Merton writes:

“The purpose of education is to show a person how to define himself authentically and spontaneously in relation to the world-not to impose a prefabricated definition of the world, still less an arbitrary definition of the individual himself. The world is made up of the people who are fully alive in it: this is, of the people who can be themselves in it and can enter into a living a fruitful relationship with each other in it. The world is, therefore, more real in proportion as the people in it are able to be more fully and more humanly alive: that is to say, better able to make a lucid and conscious use of their freedom. Basically, this freedom must consist first of all in the capacity to choose their own lives, to find them¬ selves on the deepest possible level. A superficial freedom to wander aimlessly here or there, to taste this or that, to make a choice of distractions (in Pascal’s sense) is simply a sham. It claims to be a freedom of ‘choice’ when it has evaded the basic task of discovering who it is that chooses. It is not free because it is unwilling to face the risk of self-discovery.

The function of the university is, then, first of all to help the student discover himself: to recognize himself, and to identify who it is that chooses.” (Thomas Merton, Love and Living [New York: Harcourt, 1985], p. 3-4)

Conversation, like knowledge and wisdom crisscrossing technology and education,  chooses our very lives to wander peripatetic circles listening (first) and (then) contemplating what is (being) said.

strong yet tender care

 O, light . . . time will come

Desiring heart will exhale

Pause . . . gap . . . yes, come back

abounding metaphors, sounding, sailing true

“Fear sails better than

hope” (it sounds like)

Matthew McConaughey 

tells Willie Geist in

interview about pirates

with microphones boarding ship

of democracy making

all the noise

(.    cf Sunday Today, with Willie Geist, airing 19dec21)

(yes) is withside

Your light will come Jerusalem; the Lord will dawn on you in radiant beauty. (—from responsory, morning prayer, today)

 We have not under-

stood “The Lord” is not inside

Nor on the outside

Look again think again “the

Lord” (yes) is withside 

it is there

Following first psalm, Lauds: 

 Ant. Our King will come from Zion; the Lord, God-is-with-us, is his mighty name.

Ant.2 Wait for the Lord and he will come to you with his saving power.

 The middle.

The middle place.

Where dwells, unseen, that which is

Most true.

And when we step

Into that space

We, too, become

Truer and more present.

It is there

True strength resides

Between this and that

You and me

The true residing place

Between all things

And no-thing

Passing through

Home

dum spiro spero, dum spero amo, dum amo vivo

 Yes. Let me answer,

Yes!  No matter what is asked —

Ego serviam 

pentimento

 When I speak with you

There is nothing in your words

Hiding who you are

contiguate corporeality

 Somewhere, between us,

Not yet appearing, forming

Itself, God, alights

half way through

 Incense at dusk burns—

Meditation bench empty

Door closes latch clicks

where you stand, underfoot, start there

 So too Christian lore —

The stories you know, teachings

Rote recital — yes

Let these go as well. If truth

Is your root mind, let it out

stepping out of rowboat

Tibetan Buddhism,

Japanese Zen, Chinese Chan —

These are the background.

But you are new now, practice

who and where you are, let go

an instrument of peace

 A saint does nothing 

of their own doing — they let

loose what flows through them

Angels between you and what

Is touched is grace allowed there

they locked him away in solitary confinement

I Live yet do not Live in Me     

  by John of the Cross

I live yet do not live in me,
am waiting as my life goes by,
and die because I do not die.

No longer do I live in me,
and without God I cannot live;
to him or me I cannot give
my self, so what can living be?
A thousand deaths my agony
waiting as my life goes by,
dying because I do not die.

This life I live alone I view
as robbery of life, and so
it is a constant death — with no
way out until I live with you.
God, hear me, what I say is true:
I do not want this life of mine,
and die because I do not die.

Being so removed from you I say
what kind of life can I have here
but death so ugly and severe
and worse than any form of pain?
I pity me — and yet my fate
is that I must keep up this lie,
and die because I do not die.

The fish taken out of the sea
is not without a consolation:
his dying is of brief duration
and ultimately brings relief.
Yet what convulsive death can be
as bad as my pathetic life?
The more I live the more I die.

When I begin to feel relief
on seeing you in the sacrament,
I sink in deeper discontent,
deprived of your sweet company.
Now everything compels my grief:
I want — yet can’t — see you nearby,
and die because I do not die.

Although I find my pleasure, Sir,
in hope of someday seeing you,
I see that I can lose you too,
which makes my pain doubly severe,
and so I live in darkest fear,
and hope, wait as life goes by,
dying because I do not die.

Deliver me from death, my God,
and give me life; now you have wound
a rope about me; harshly bound
I ask you to release the cord.
See how I die to see you, Lord,
and I am shattered where I lie,
dying because I do not die.

My death will trigger tears in me,
and I shall mourn my life: a day
annihilated by the way
I fail and sin relentlessly.
O Father God, when will it be
that I can say without a lie:
I live because I do not die?

From: 

 Translated by Willis Barnstone 

Copyright ©: 

 ICS Publications

pray for us

 Sandy Hook, nine years

May the souls of departed

Help us end gun porn

correspondence

 No one passes on the road this time of night. Maybe sleepless hermit deer on rainsoaked earth.  Night is deepest when alone under meteor sky, feather wings folded over head, dream remnants curled on pillows behind darkened windows behind empty roadside mailbox.

In dim lit cloisters men and women drone psalmist text under echoing vaults above reaching tones. In cardboard contours others push into doorways of city naves alone with transience above city curb sentinel street lamp.

What are we waiting for? 

We wait for our empty hopes to tire of their treks on mountain trails, for promises to despair of their baggage ripped open by thorns and drop-strewn into water gullies half filled with yesterdays rain. There’s little to carry now and fewer miles to cover going forward.

This vacant mind cannot recall where it thought it was going. Yet still it steps over stones and broken branch underfoot, turning trail a meandering animal scenting side to side the passing trace of ghostly precessions. We were not always alone.

We are now.

The prisoner says he stands under shower splashing on his head, his only solitude away from things he’d rather not expose to outer hearing, the crowded punishment of incessant chatter about nothing he wants to hear. He says he’s happier than his words betray, thinking this time will pass.

No one passes in the darkened landscape. In kitchens and hallways footsteps in awkward stirrings think of the day ahead and don’t hurry the heating water. There’s no need to hurry. Everything is always right there just ahead slow motion unraveling always at hand.

It feels my friends are all incarcerated. Sending words through reticence unwilling to answer Lowell’s lines “All's misalliance. / Yet why not say what happened?” Allusion and innuendo, half-revelation and semi-complaint are swallowed up for consideration of hearer.

We’re waiting for something simple.

We’re waiting for the night to give up what it holds back.

For another to read what is not written and nod in undetected watchfulness an unencumbering compassion.

sounds like

 Each philosopher

Asks: truth or lie? Wondering

If this time, a hint

drawn out to see

He hooked a big fish

It became the death of him

Keep your needs simple

root silence

 Think it intention

When attention looks into

Seeing what is there —

We intend reality

Aware what we are seeing

madre de las américas

 Hoy, madre de las américas, nos imaginamos.

 “Listen. Put it into your heart, my youngest and dearest son, that the thing that frightened you, the thing that afflicted you is nothing: Do not let it disturb you. . . . Am I not here, I, who am your mother? Are you not under my shadow and protection? Am I not the source of your joy? Are you not in the hollow of my mantle, in the crossing of my arms? Do you need something more?” 

(— Our Lady of Guadalupe to Juan Diego, 1513, Nican Mopohua {CAC})

Con corazones necesitados llenos de fe.

Proteja a sus hijos mientras viajan a un lugar seguro.

travels without travails

Soon.

We’ll walk to island when ice grows thick.

Until then, the mind imagines a warm inviting divertissement.

Armchair Books, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK 

Such anticipation and imagination is best served with rare friendship and spare dénouement as somnolent dream fades into wind gust as autumn blows through dooryard night.

sésame, ouvre-toi; šem-šāmayīm

Our flaws define us

unwanted and heart-breaking

door of compassion

which has no handle, is locked

Opens only with sorrow

unrestricted and unreserved

 If you believe some-

thing you believe everything — 

Don’t become confused

sufficient means enough (already)

 If you find yourself

Becoming contemplative

Nothing will suffice

four four four, not to be otherwise

 Yes, what are fours for

As if numbers had meaning

Mirroring sequence 

Why does anything appear

Miracle of being here

every 10dec, we pronounce again

 Three Promises: Meetingbrook m.o.n.o.

Contemplation,  Conversation,  Correspondence

...as held by Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage“m.o.n.o.”(monastics of no other).

• Contemplation  is the promise of simplicity.
  It is a gift of poverty inviting open waiting, receptive trust, attention, and watchful presence. It is a simple Being-With.
  It is attentive presence.
• Conversation  is the promise of integrity.
  It is a chaste and complete intention to listen and speak, lovingly and respectfully, with each and all made present to us. It is a wholeness of listening and speaking.
  It is root silence.
• Correspondence  is the promise of faithful engagement. 
  It is responsible attention and intention offered obediently to the Source of all Being, to the Human Family, to Nature. It is a faithful engagement with all sentient beings, with this present world, with existence with all its needs & joys, sorrows & hope.
  It is transparent service.

…………………………………………………………………

Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage invites & welcomes individuals interested in the practice of these 3 promises in their life. Whether the interest is in conversing, praying, deepening, learning, or even holding these 3 promises, we invite you to enter the inquiry and stillness. May the loving light and the compassionate peace of the Christ and the Bodhisattva accompany and support the efforts of each one.

………………………………………………………………..

Quotes: 

1.  We are going to have to create a new language of prayer.  (Thomas Merton, Calcutta 1968)

2.   When you go apart to be alone for prayer…See that nothing remains in your conscious mind save a naked intent stretching out toward God. Leave it stripped of every particular idea about God (what he is like in himself or in his works) and keep only the awareness that he is as he is. Let him be thus, I pray you, and force him not to be otherwise.   (from Chapter 1 of The Book of Privy Counseling. Anonymous)

3.   I long for a great lake of ale. / I long for the men of heaven in my house. / I long for cheerfulness in their drinking. / And I long for Jesus to be there among them. (Brigid, Celtic saint)

4.   It is not by closing your eyes that you see your own nature. On the contrary, you must open your eyes wide and wake up to the real situation in the world to see completely your whole Dharma Treasure, your whole Dharma Body. The bombs, the hunger, the pursuit of wealth and power - these are not separate from your nature….You will suffer, but your pain will not come from your own worries and fears. You will suffer because of your kinship with all beings, because you have the compassion of an awakened one, a Bodhisattva. (Thich Nhat Hanh)    

5.   He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion.  (Sokei-an)``

Prosit…May it be beneficial!

fifty three years ago he was fifty three

 Monk Thomas Merton

Disappeared fifty three years

Gone, he went nowhere

a voice worth hearing

 Listening to Brian

Williams final show, smooth clear 

Words wan wise with wit

inarticulate and articulate disheartening

In his penultimate show at MSNBC, Brian Williams asks Aaron Sorkin: "What is more difficult for you to watch, when the inarticulate achieve great heights or when the articulate fail to live up to the moment?"

It was, and is, is a good question.

Sorkin chose the first option, saying, as well, how disappointing the second.

Both options to view are disheartening.

not one nor the other

 Sounds arise from sound

As silence does from silence —

Who will find me here

எதிர்வினை இல்லாதது *(absence of reaction)

If you hear a wise voice, listen to it. 

“The only spiritual life you need is not to react.” To be calm is the greatest asset in the world. It’s the greatest siddhi, the greatest power you can have. If you can only learn to be calm you will solve every problem. This is something you must remember. When you are perfectly calm, time stops. There is no time, karma stops, samskaras stop. Everything becomes null and void. For when you are calm you are one with the entire energy of the universe and everything will go well with you. To be calm means you are in control. You’re not worried about the situation, the outcome. What is going to happen tomorrow. To be calm means everything is alright. There is nothing to worry about, nothing to fret over. This is also the meaning of the biblical saying, “Be still and know that I am God.” To be calm is to be still. The Only Spiritual Life You Need Is Not To React!

– SRI RAMANA MAHARSHI

If you listen carefully, with luck, you will hear what is being said.

If you do -- please -- tell the rest of us.

We have a great longing to listen with the Bodhisattva of Compassion, with Miriam who, conceived and born with wholeness, will bring forth a Jewish Holy Prophet and Christian Anointed One.

Let us humbly and profoundly listen today to the sound of what is being said, deep within and surrounding without! 

...

*(Tamil)

requiem for a heavy wait

 So many worry

democracy is under 

siege -- goodbye, good luck 

always so close to home, john lennon

 He was shot on street

Near front door in New York as

His life kept singling

connesso non separato, di nuovo

Mary, at source, clear

No barrier came between

What was true — nuovo