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