Is Nature saying something?
China, Europe, India flooding,
Northwest US heat and burning,
Moral cowardice snorted by hacks
Ethical indifference by us all
Here we are —here we stand
We cannot do other
Saturday, July 24, 2021
Friday, July 23, 2021
this strange atmosphere
Like walking across kitchen with dog and cat on floor.
Climbing a Mountain
The Eastern Peak is towering high;
Summit of beauty, it soars to the blue heavens.
Among its crags is an empty dwelling place,
Peaceful and lonely, fill with the Mystery.
Not made by workmen nor by artisans,
Its cloudy beams are Nature's work.
My search for a spot with this strange atmosphere
Has sent me wandering around time and again.
Now that I'm free I'll make my home right here,
Where I an live out my heaven appointed span.
-
Hsieh Tao-yun (399) Dailyzen
They look up, your footsteps steering clear of their muzzle, their tails, their paws.
Falling back to quiet slumber.
knowing within/without knowing.
If someone sees the light, they see everything contained within light.
And he knew that everything that exists is one living being, and that light is the messenger of life, because it is alive and contains all information. (— The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)" by Don Miguel Ruiz, Janet Mills)
Seeing, some say, is believing.
Perhaps.
I think that seeing is illuminating not-knowing.
You could say we don’t know who or what we are.
Nescience or ignorance? Or something else?
What is the something else?
Knowing within/without knowing.
This palindromic phrasing places us in an intuitive suffusion of what-is-to-be-coming-to-be.
What we are we were not and what we will be we are not yet.
Light is that suffusion.
Articulation and recall are subsidiary skills — highly valued in our culture — but subordinate to the primary essential/existential awareness and embodiment of knowing within/without knowing.
And yet, few would recommend such a state of apophatic being/becoming in-the-world.
It might resemble an idiot.
idiótés: a private or unskilled person
Original Word: ἰδιώτης, ου, ὁ
Part of Speech: Noun, Masculine
Transliteration: idiótés
Phonetic Spelling: (id-ee-o'-tace)
Definition: a private or unskilled person
Usage: (unofficial, hence) an amateur, an unprofessional man, a layman; an ungifted person.
HELPS Word-studies
2399 idiṓtēs (from 2398 /ídios, "own") – properly, of one's own self; used of a person who conspicuously lacks education or status – hence, easily misunderstood as being uninstructed (unrefined, "unlettered in speech"). https://biblehub.com/greek/2399.htm
And then, there’s this:
In Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Idiot the title refers to the central character Prince Myshkin, a man whose innocence, kindness and humility, combined with his occasional epileptic symptoms, cause many in the corrupt, egoistic culture around him to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence. In The Antichrist, Nietzsche applies the word 'idiot' to Jesus in a comparable fashion, almost certainly in an allusion to Dostoevsky's use of the word:[28] "One has to regret that no Dostoevsky lived in the neighbourhood of this most interesting décadent; I mean someone who could feel the thrilling fascination of such a combination of the sublime, the sick and the childish."[29][30] (Wikipedia)
I once read a description of an idiot as one totally imbued with their surroundings. (It eludes me the source.)
And yet, the phrase “It eludes me the source” is as good a koan to begin this day as any.
And it is “any” we are!
Definition of any
(Entry 1 of 3)
1
: one or some indiscriminately of whatever kind:
a
: one or another taken at random
Ask any man you meet.
b
: EVERY —used to indicate one selected without restriction
Any child would know that.
2
: one, some, or all indiscriminately of whatever quantity:
a
: one or more —used to indicate an undetermined number or amount
Do you have any money?
b
: ALL —used to indicate a maximum or whole
He needs any help he can get.
c
: a or some without reference to quantity or extent
I'd be grateful for any favor at all.
3
a
: unmeasured or unlimited in amount, number, or extent
any quantity you desire
b
: appreciably large or extended , could not endure it any length of time https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/any
To paraphrase the Kingston Trio lyric, "And if you knew [your] heart, [you'd] be grateful for any."
Thursday, July 22, 2021
not gone very far away.
Listening to book — Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration’s Response to the Pandemic That Changed History, — Written by Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta.
The Oval Office arrogance, misdirected motives and insufficient acuity is stunning.
As with the question as to whether the former occupant actually believed the seeming absurd pronouncements or if it was an act, a charade of egoistic uncaring — no one can say for certain.
We are poorer and have been ill-served.
What really is upsetting is the allowing of it — the moral and character sluggishness on the part of those invested with the responsibility of maintaining and protecting the public good.
We’ve been weakened.
The infection have not gone very far away.
Not the person.
Not the virus.
Wednesday, July 21, 2021
the most difficult step of every interpretation consists in its disappearing
To see and grasp the thing itself, without interpretation or criticism, is a stark and radical excursion of the thing itself, the poem itself, with what attends it.
To think is to simply dwell with what is appearing and moving through the field of our attendance.
To think-with is to travel accompanying what presents itself, traveling through a solitude of unencumbered relationality.
The fault of modern civilization is not that we have technology, but that we see the world through our technology, through science alone. Science, to Heidegger, doesn't think, it works things out technically. Poetry however can think. In articular, it is Heidegger's engagement with the work of Friedrich Hölderlin that was most fruitful for his developing thought. Hölderlin (1770-1843), was one of the most important poets of the German Romantic movement, and influential in the development of philosophical idealism in Germany. But to Heidegger, engagement with Hölderlin's 'thought', offered the possibility of articulating the very essence of the current age, in which divinity had defaulted, and know-how had come to obliterate actual thought on human being and being itself. In his 1966 interview with Der Spiegel, [https://www.lacan.com/heidespie.html], Heidegger stated, “I do not consider Hölderlin to be just any poet, whose work literary historians also treat together with many others’. Hölderlin is for me the poet who points into the future, who awaits the god.” In the prefaces to his collection of lectures and essays on Hölderlin, written decades after the works, Heidegger is careful to clarify his intent in studying thought through poetry. His intention is not to engage in literary criticism, but to enter into the truth of the poems studied. The author's Preface from the 1971 edition: "The present Elucidations [Erläuterungen] do not claim to be contributions [Beiträge] to research in the history of literature [literaturhistorischen Forschung] or to aesthetics. They spring from a necessity of thought." In the 1951 preface, he explains his hope that
For the sake of preserving what has been put into the poem, the elucidation of the poem must strive to make itself superfluous. The last, but also the most difficult step of every interpretation [Auslegung], consists in its disappearing, along with its elucidations, before the pure presence of the poem. The poem, which then stands in its own right, itself throws light directly on the other poems.
Because Heidegger believes that language is so fundamental to human being, true poetry, a "poetry which thinks" [denkende Dichten]. through its intense and thoughtful use of language, reveals and even shapes the essence of human being, if it is not reduced to an aesthetic experience. To Heidegger, our current technological world-view presents a world of subjects and objects, of material and human resources, giving us an understanding of existence increasingly framed by technology. Poetry offers us a possible path out of this dangerous world-view, which led us to Hiroshima and Auschwitz. This poetic path is one Heidegger spent many decades following, and which led his philosophical work to become increasingly poetic in form.
Heidegger's approach to poetry, which he takes pains to disclaim as literary criticism, does perhaps anticipate more recent 'literary' approaches to poetry. This might partly be due to the great indirect influence Heidegger has exerted on literary studies, perhaps also due a broadening of the methodologies used in studying literary texts during the earlier part of the twentieth century, which had more to do with philology than philosophy. Heidegger's work on poetry attempts mitdenken to 'think with' the poems he elucidates. In exploring the relation between poetry and philosophy, Heidegger illuminates both modes of discourse. In his use of the term thought, rather than 'philosophy' in much of his later work, he bridges the gap between those two modes. Thought is what poetry and philosophy have in common. To Heidegger they are simply differing modes of expressing it, different languages in which thought occurs.
(--from, Heidegger and Poetry, Introduction: A Thinking Poetry) https://sites.google.com/site/heideggerandpoetry/
We're unfamiliar with and unaccustomed to being alone with others or another.
The poem is another.
Individuals are others.
By engaging and practicing thinking poetry and thinking others we move together through the canals, channels, and countrysides of our Umwelt, our surround and surroundings, with one-another, perhaps lovingly and with grace.
What is your thought?
and tender with
Today from Sojourners:
Verse of the day
So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.
- Ephesians 4:25
Voice of the day
The nation as it is currently constituted has never dealt with a yesterday or tomorrow where we were radically honest, generous, and tender with each other.
- Kiese Laymon, Heavy (2018)
Prayer of the day
Work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth.
- The Book of Common Prayer
There -- a verse. voice, and prayer -- worth a glance.
Tuesday, July 20, 2021
whose eyes
Yeah, you don’t.
“You never know whose eyes God is watchin you through. It might not be your teacher, your preacher, or your Sunday school teacher. More likely it's gon' be that bum on the street.”
―
Nah, you can’t.
Monday, July 19, 2021
even if it is broken up into a million pieces
The mytho-morphic words of consecration, "This is my body," are deeper and wider than we think.
To receive this being-one-with is what holiness longs to embody.
On the night of his enlightenment, the story goes, the Buddha was visited by the forces of Mara, the Evil One, who was determined to stop the Buddha from achieving awakening. Most of Mara’s devastating and spectacular display of hopes and fears had to do with the body, either sensual allurements or threats of bodily harm. Declaring that the many threatening minions arrayed behind him were his army, Mara defiantly called out, “Where is your army, oh Buddha?” In response the Buddha touched the ground and said, “The Earth is my witness and support.”
In touching the Earth, the Buddha was not only calling on the Earth goddess to be his protector. He was saying, the Earth is my body. My body expresses Earth, is produced and supported by Earth, is made exclusively of Earth elements. Nothing on Earth, no matter how frightening, can threaten this indestructible Earth body. Even if it is broken up into a million pieces it remains, going home to its Mother who gave birth to it, who embraces it now and always will embrace it.
With this gesture of truth, belonging, and ultimate invulnerability, born of surrender to and identity with the Earth, Buddha expressed his absolute fearlessness, and in doing so defeated Mara. After this, his enlightenment unfolded.
And this is exactly true of all of us. Our bodies too are the Earth. They rise up from her, and are nurtured, fed, and illuminated by her. our bodies are in constant touch with Earth, and return to Earth, from which they have never parted.
(--from, What Is Your Body? BY NORMAN FISCHER| )
This earth.
This field of play.
We are.
Is what I am.
Is who I am.
Wandering at foot of mountain.
Sunday, July 18, 2021
precarious crossing
Barn floor sags.
This hut is small,
But contains the world;
The old man in the tiny room
Has come to understand.
Great bodhisattvas believe without a doubt,
But when lesser beings hear it,
They think it strange.
(- Shitou Xiqian (700-790), dailyzen)
Believe without having beliefs.
Things fall apart.
Of course they do.
unbinding from all views
nameless reality…
The Buddha taught a specific meditation technique with specific goals. This meditation technique, Jhana meditation, was to be practiced within the entire framework of the Eightfold Path if it would contribute to and support awakening.
I found that the Buddha described awakening not as finding an essential inner nature, or “Buddha-nature” but as unbinding from all views that developed from a doctrine of “I.” The Buddha described the state of mind of an awakened human being not as “Buddha-nature,” or “Buddha-hood,” but as released, unbound, and calm. https://becoming-buddha.com/john-haspel/
released reality.
ehipassiko
if so…
I found that if his Dhamma was engaged in wholeheartedly, the Buddha used the word “ehipassiko,” (come and see for yourself) — any human being could develop an understanding of dukkha and experience the cessation of confusion, delusion, and suffering. (—BecomingBuddha.com, homepage)
ah, so!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)