I disappear
not to be (seem)
thank you for your kindness
for everything
If you should sight me
no need to (say hello)
you can, if you want
say a small prayer
for all of us the disappeared
In death in life (in birth)
I disappear
not to be (seem)
thank you for your kindness
for everything
If you should sight me
no need to (say hello)
you can, if you want
say a small prayer
for all of us the disappeared
In death in life (in birth)
Friday morning prison
with billy collins poem
our ordinary loveliness
speaking instant reality
as it comes and goes
passing into mythos
1.
I have long
wondered about God --
now I wander within God
finding myself nowhere
2.
I figure I only have
a few days to live --
what a grand success
to have lived until now
3.
where is the inside where
the outside --
(don't ask ...where)
reside now...
4.
be outrageous
it beats
the heart's
inne-r-age
brown squirrel under yew bush
there's nothing there for you
yesterday I moved your cousin
off the road, smashed and bloodied
one lives one dies one walks road
snow bowl closed in the rain
the world is imagination
we seldom use it well
the gaze
soundless language
only watchful
semiotic
philologists
can see through
a hermeneutic
without detection
or meaning
only diaphaneity
only haecceity
they think
I follow
them
the cats
go down
stairs
their complaints
about
each other
for peace
in world
I'll follow
then fly
to gaza/israel
and ukraine/russia
it will
be a busy
day
opening tins
and satisfying
stomachs
Christus natus est
what does it mean to say
Christ is born
Latin word for "to be"
is esse
"Is" born
the word for "behold"
is ecce
And so --
ecce esse
behold being
Christ is
being born
Sit with
this
a while
consider
what is
being
revealed
We trend toward being-with-out.
Drizzly Wednesday.
"The universe is God in evolution. We are Christ in evolution. We are God's becoming."
(--Ilia Delio, re Teilhard de Chardin's thought)
Or, as Robert Creeley wrote:
The Rain
All night the sound had
come back again,
and again falls
this quiet, persistent rain.
What am I to myself
that must be remembered,
insisted upon
so often? Is it
that never the ease,
even the hardness,
of rain falling
will have for me
something other than this,
something not so insistent—
am I to be locked in this
final uneasiness.
Love, if you love me,
lie next to me.
Be for me, like rain,
the getting out
of the tiredness, the fatuousness, the semi-
lust of intentional indifference.
Be wet
with a decent happiness.
(--from Selected Poems of Robert Creeley by Robert Creeley, c.1991)
May the glorious
tumblesault
of God
be-with-in
you!
Tarping remaining
Ground drop wood as rain begins —
Monks in France chant Prime
This radical emptiness
Cannot last for much longer
We’re on our own, no
reliance on external authority —
See your own way through
It’s all that’s left us
1.
everything is
part of it
nothing is
all of it
2.
grooming mountain
snow made
from
blowing machines
Ragged to
welcome skiers
3.
chapel-zendo
window open
breeze wavers banner of
symbols of faiths --
as eight auspices
swivels its hips
Dead mouse resting smile
On back beside black zafu
My Christmas zazen
I take and place beside rock
Where God’s ground leaves — this small monk
Nativity
I wrote a poem once. It's titled "The Stones Speak, I am Silent" (Thomas, in film "Mindwalk")
You know, as Merlin once said to King Arthur... "Don't dishonor your feast by rejecting what's come to it". (Thomas, in film "Mindwalk" 1990)
Nothingness.
There is no such thing as self-sufficiency.
"Let there be light." (Genesis 1:3)
Things are worded into appearance.
What is, who is, this worder?
What is, who is, this wonder?
Things cannot exist on their own, which means, in reality, they do not exist. (--in Philosophy of Nothingness and Love, by Kiyokazu Nakatomi)
God, we might say, does not exist.
God, you might think, chose not to be on (t)his own, but to enter into a newly created relationality that (perhaps) there was no need for before because there was only the unexpressed being-of-God.
God, you might say, was (is) the nothingness out of which all that is comes to be.
But coming-to-be does not necessarily imply standing out from (ex-isting) that which is ground-of-being.
God, it might be said, is the ground-of-being.
And all that has been brought into being is part and parcel of that ground-of-being.
It is only when we believe we are separate from that ground, only when we act in such a way that indicates our actions are predicated on an ignorance of the reality, or belief that the core ground-of-being that is our nature is not our intrinsic and inchoate nature or true reality, that such illusory perception, such erroneous belief, takes on a working delusion so prevalent in our existing world with its preference of comparative merit, hierarchical privilege and superiority.
So it is, as some say, we are broken.
"Who told you that you were naked?" (Genesis 3:11)
Broken away from root relationality with its concomitant impetus of compassionate interaction, helpful service, and loving humility. Scattered on earth's floor like broken branches after storm, aftermath of bad belief and odd ideology. "Let's be great again!" (Our odd pretense toward exclusionary dominance.)
God is the invisible yet transparent clarity-presence of what we confusedly call 'control.'
When I first read (at then friend and poet John Maloney's insistence) Philip Whalen's book of poems fifty years ago On Bear's Head there was this piece that now reveals itself:
4:2-59 Take I
What I need is lots of money
No
What I need is somebody to love with unparalleled energy
and devotion for 24 hours and then goodbye
I can escape too easily from this time & this place
That isn’t the reason I’m here
What I need is where am I
Sometimes a bed of nails is really necessary to any man
Or a wall (Olson, in conversation, “That wall, it has to be there!”)
Where are my hands.
Where are my lungs.
All the lights are on in here I don’t see nothing.
I don’t admit that this is personality disintegration
My personality has a half-life of 10♾️ years; besides
I can put my toe in my mouth
If (CENSORED), then (CENSORED), something like
Plato his vision of the archetypal human being
Or the Gnostic Worm.
People see me; they like that . . .
I try to warn them that it’s really m
They don’t listen; afterwards they complain
About how I had no right to be really just that:
Invisible & in complete control of everything.
(pp. 26-27, On Bear's Head, by Philip Whalen, c.1960)
Clarity-presence.
This might be what the feast we call Christmas really is about.
Christ-revelation as the embodiment of God realized as the Itself, (Ganz andere ohne andere = Wholly other without other.)
Perhaps -- Thisness.
Realization of the Itself -- (that which we've come to call 'God') -- would be for us a liberation from illusion, a letting go of the loneliness of separation, a surrendering into the ground-of-being wherein all is recognizable as being what it is, namely, itself (Itself).
We have become so obsessively determined to make 'other', to create 'other', to dominate and eliminate 'other', to battle and denegrate 'other' -- that the fragmentation and destruction of ourselves and the world has become the primordial enterprise of individuals, governments, corporations, and nations.
We have forgotten who and what we are.
We have forgotten Being.
We've tried to uproot ourselves from Ground.
We've sent ourselves on a fool's errand.
Zen Buddhists constantly ask: "What is this?" This, yes This -- What is This?
This.
Thisness.
Something to ponder. Today, tonight, tomorrow, the next twelve days, for the rest of our lives.
And so this is Christmas. (Thanks John and Yoko!)
And so, it is Thisness.
May it be so, for each, for all!
Of course there’s something
Wrong with this body, pains and
odd irks, signaling
ends and uninteresting
Explanations going off