two ways of viewing today

1. Letters From An American, Heather Cox Richardson

2. Dancing With Doom, Richard Rohr/Brian McLaren

one afternoon in vermont

                (for Nadine, d.3:03 pm, 10may24)

Spit spot

She drank the cocktail

Dying forthwith

The surprise of it

One

Last linger

Turning,

Away

what opens here is nowhere else

we have here no final parking place

we must be diligent today

 If I wander around the house. If I wear meditation beads around wrist. If I listen to the obscenity of political Florida Senator sqwarking for criminal defendant in violation of gag order against family members of judge and prosecutors.

If I wish to maintain a balanced and sober mind in the midst of vile characters.  

Do not pursue the past.

Do not lose yourself in the future.

The past no longer is.

The future has not yet come.

Looking deeply at life as it is

In the very here and now,

The practitioner dwells

In stability and freedom.

We must be diligent today.

To wait until tomorrow is too late.

Death comes unexpectedly.

How can we bargain with it?

The sage calls a person who knows

How to dwell in mindfulness

Night and day

“One who knows the better way to live.”

--Bhaddekaratta Sutra

I listen to the sutra.

I breathe the room.

poetry as its own “standing in itself,” must be seen “its own truth” in the “beauty” of its very word

Thought and love are not strangers.

Perhaps their arrival in the same place at the same time augurs a promising outcome.

Is what we call pure thought and pure love the invitation into what we call the life of God? 

Heidegger therefore maintains that philosophy exemplifies a particular love, indeed a clearly erotic relation to thought.14 And in his lecture course What Is Called Thinking?, he turns to Hölderlin to articulate the relation between love and thinking to trace the relation between thinking or philosophy and love. Reflecting on thought and poetry, Heidegger claims that poetry, as its own “standing in itself,” must be seen “its own truth” in the “beauty” of its very word (WT, 19). This self-standing in the truth “does not exclude but on the contrary includes what we think in the poetic word” (Ibid.). Heidegger’s reading of the poet’s word turns it out of the center of one of Hölderlin’s seductively intriguing poems, “Socrates and Alcibiades”: “Who the deepest has thought, loves what is most alive” [Wer das Tiefste gedacht, liebt das Lebendigste].15 The poet draws us to thinking and love, posing them side by side, as Heidegger observes: “ ‘thought’ and ‘loves’ form the center of the line. Inclination [Mögen] reposes in thinking.”16 The alignment of love (the past of thinking and the present allure of love) betrays the sobriety (and self-sufficiency) ordinarily supposed for the life of thought.

—pp.5,6 in Words in Blood, Like Flowers: Philosophy and Poetry, Music and Eros in Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Heidegger, by Babette E. Babich, 2007

Sometimes referred to as the life of the mind, thought/love in reflective interaction can easily lead to a sense of equanimity and poise.

Philosophy isn't just an intellectual somersault through arcane concepts and logical mazes, rather, philosophy (as a friend once put it) is ordinary thinking done more carefully.

The life of thought is attractive.

We like thoughtful people.

Just as we like those able to clarify and open up things difficult to comprehend.

Let's see poetry where it is.

Let's look around.

One's own truth.

In itself.

post-hagiography, retrospective

He said he wanted to be someone who prays

So he tries to pray

He looks at god and says “I really don’t see you”

He shakes head and sits on bench 

Wonders

In the empty space god is not

The vacant bench 

He rethinks prayer

Comes to conclusion

There’s nothing there for prayer

Stands up

Looks around

Wanders away

Disappears into chill fog

Giving up body

Leaving behind mind

Laments loss

Becomes birdsong

stop the killing, stop the destruction

all forms of violence

are to be condemned

the Senator from Vermont

speaks truth in Senate

how good it is to hear

a strong and clear voice

christian faith commends those who are relentless in their pursuit of justice

There seems to be a difficulty as to how to respond to or react to the horrendous response to a horrendous action last October wherein Hamas committed terror against Israel and the Israeli response of terroristic reprisals against Gaza.

Verse of the day

And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 

- Luke 18:7

Voice of the day

To me, it’s clear we should follow the lead of many of these persistent students in using our own social capital — however much or little — to raise a ruckus in the name of those who suffer starvation, disease, and death-dealing violence each day. 

-- Brooke M. Foster, “Student Encampments Echo Jesus’ Parable of Annoying the Powerful”

Prayer of the day

Our persistence is powerful. You tell us that even the most unjust rulers can grant justice when they’ve been bothered enough. May we continue to annoy the powerful in the name of the marginalized.

    --Sojourners     

It's as though no one is aware of the horrible way the marginalized are treated by the mighty.

It is as though no one is aware of the ugly attacks upon the innocent and the compromised in both Israel and Gaza.

Surely, we are not that stupid.

Surely, we have eyes to see.

But do we have heart-courage and mind-clarity to face and resolve such blatant injustices.

reclusively with appreciation

few people know 

my name 

fewer care to --

its a beneficial trade-off

being no-one

going no-where

happy to be your kin

happy to travel incognito

happy to be happy for you

conatus

Spinoza's notion of God made people uncomfortable.

For humans, being free is understanding the laws of the universe.

In the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, conatus (/koʊˈneɪtəs/; wikt:conatus; Latin for "effort; endeavor; impulse, inclination, tendency; undertaking; striving") is an innate inclination of a thing to continue to exist and enhance itself. This thing may be mind, matter, or a combination of both, and is often associated with God's will in a pantheist view of nature. 

 

... The Latin cōnātus comes from the verb cōnor, which is usually translated into English as, to endeavor; used as an abstract noun, conatus is an innate inclination of a thing to continue to exist and enhance itself. Although the term is most central to Spinoza's philosophy, many other early modern philosophers including René Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, and Thomas Hobbes made significant contributions, each developing the term differently.^[1].

    ...Conatus is a central theme in the philosophy of Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677), which is derived from principles that Hobbes and Descartes developed.^[13] Contrary to most philosophers of his time, Spinoza rejects the dualistic assumption that mind, intentionality, ethics, and freedom are to be treated as things separate from the natural world of physical objects and events.^[14] One significant change he makes to Hobbes' theory is his belief that the conatus ad motum, (conatus to motion), is not mental, but material.^[8] Spinoza also uses conatus to refer to rudimentary concepts of inertia, as Descartes had earlier.^[1] According to Spinoza, "each thing, as far as it lies in itself, strives to persevere in its being" (Ethics, part 3, prop. 6). Since a thing cannot be destroyed without the action of external forces, motion and rest, too, exist indefinitely until disturbed.^[15] His goal is to provide a unified explanation of all these things within a naturalistic framework, man and nature must be unified under a consistent set of laws; God and nature are one, and there is no free will. For example, an action is free, for Spinoza, only if it arises from the essence and conatus of an entity. However, an action can still be free in the sense that it is not constrained or otherwise subject to external forces.^[16] Human beings are thus an integral part of nature.^[15] Spinoza explains seemingly irregular human behaviour as really natural and rational and motivated by this principle of the conatus.^[15] Some have argued that the conatus consists of happiness and the perpetual drive toward perfection.^[17] Conversely, a person is saddened by anything that opposes his conatus. Others have associated desire, a primary affect, with the conatus principle of Spinoza. Desire is then controlled by the other affects, pleasure and pain, and thus the conatus strives towards that which causes joy and avoids that which produces pain.^[8] 

  (--wikipedia)

He said we are all expressions of the same divine substance.

It's our interconnectedness.

By caring for the world around us, we are caring for ourselves.

This 17th century philosopher needs to walk and converse with us in the 21st.

deep homesickness

 everyone has a hobby

whiling time watching time

slide into invisible effect

the inevitable nostalgia

pretending wonderful 

memories and accomplishment

instead, looking out window

weathered prayer flags 

holding remnant petition

dropped aspiration and gone

intention the day turns

a spirituality of homecoming

where true self wanders alone

hobbyless unwatching gaze

imaginative dreamtime

a deep time without

clear or recognizable reference 

trans [s]it i on

• trans:  derived from Latin trans- "across, beyond, so as to change"    
• Many arrivals are us live  -- (Roethke, The Manifestation)

Being Is

That 

Which Is

Becoming 

Itself

after lectio -- ground of being

going nowhere

staying nowhere --

one looks out, 

looks in

israel / gaza

 it is hard to tell

who is more wrong who more

destructive of peace

those who use terror or those

who also use terrorism

behind branch

 There it was

Moon just before dawn

Peeper and songbird

headlights on dark road

Imagination,

peace — no imagination

No peace — imagine

some franciscan brothers

 their names from the past

on the page reside quiet

the way fondness feels

see you

 let my final thought

be -- "oh, what a joy to have

 this final look" -- yes

corporéité -- life’s moments and all transitions between

I like the prospect that when the body goes kaput the signal is lost and there is nothing of the world retained.

    Kaput originated with a card game called piquet that has been popular in France for centuries. French players originally used the term capot to describe both big winners and big losers in piquet. To win all twelve tricks in a hand was called "faire capot" ("to make capot"), but to lose them all was known as "être capot" ("to be capot"). German speakers adopted capot, but respelled it kaputt, and used it only for losers. When English speakers borrowed the word from German, they started using kaput for things that were broken, useless, or destroyed. (--merriam-webster)

Either way, according to early phenomenologist Maurice Marleau-Ponty, the body is the connective/corrective source of knowledge.

Merleau-Ponty emphasized the body as the primary site of knowing the world, a corrective to the long philosophical tradition of placing consciousness as the source of knowledge, and maintained that the perceiving body and its perceived world could not be disentangled from each other. The articulation of the primacy of embodiment (corporéité) led him away from phenomenology towards what he was to call "indirect ontology" or the ontology of "the flesh of the world" (la chair du monde), seen in his final and incomplete work, The Visible and Invisible, and his last published essay, "Eye and Mind". (--wikipedia)

So many fellow human beings (if, indeed, we were to ascend to such a designation) long for everlasting life beyond death with all the presupposed benefits of Elysian Fields, heaven with God, saints, angels and forebears, and the possibility of reincarnated reinstatement into (supposedly) more and more evolved states of conscious being.

I like the idea of turning the lights out and going into the sleep of indecipherable darkness with no awareness of that fact or any other fact continuing. 

Perhaps the notion of eternality could fit. The word "eternal" is mostly defined as everlasting. I do not think that's what it means. I prefer to see eternal as meaning "no-time." Timelessness. A no-time and un-spaced remainder. A balance of emptiness.

Elsewhere, this consideration:

Focusing solely on the near-death cognizance of the dying, rather than the material perspective of the living, reveals a new understanding of death. Its significance to psychology, philosophy, and religion is huge for what emerges is a long overlooked phenomenon: a nonsupernatural, relativistic, and timelessly eternal consciousness, which can be a natural afterlife. Ironically, the validity of the theory of a natural eternal consciousness (NEC) assumes the loss of all materially based consciousness with death — more specifically, the permanent loss of time perception. The theory claims, and the article deduces from empirical knowledge, that by imperceptibly entering the timelessness before death, one’s last conscious moment, whatever the type, becomes by default — psychologically, from one’s perspective— a forever present moment. To help explain and validate the theory, the article presents thought experiments and a formal model of all of life’s moments and all transitions between periods of time perception and those of timelessness. An open-minded reading should reveal that the NEC does not threaten faith in a god or a heaven.

 . . .

The natural eternal consciousness (NEC) (in a nutshell):

You believe you are having an

experience, and for all eternity

you never know otherwise.—p. 63

(--from, The Theory of a Natural Eternal Consciousness:, The Psychological Basis for a Natural Afterlife, by Bryon K. Ehlmann, © 2020 The Institute of Mind and Behavior, Inc. 

There's something intriguing about never knowing otherwise.

As I approach my inevitable death the company these days of squirrel, chipmunk, sparrow, finch, bluejay, mourning dove, junco, chickadee, nuthatch -- as well as cats, dog, nighttime footsteps in the dark of moving unseen animals -- and, of course,  compañeras and compañeros on the conversing journey through this existence --all suffice, happily and affectionately.

Suffice

and satisfactorily 

go on sufficiently

sustained in their being

as who and where they are

as who and where I was

scurries off into nescient nullity

amen!

with a compassionate heart

To live a zen life is not a hobby.

It is where intent goes to nap.

Since sky and earth are mindless,
They last forever.
What has mind has limits.
A person who has attained
The Path is like this too.
In the midst of no activity,
She carries out her activities,
Accepting all unfavorable
And favorable circumstances
With a compassionate heart.

--Yunmen (864-949)

It is what I do whenever I can.

To nap. And to live a zen life.

I'm not so good with either.

Take right now. 

As an abject failure I cannot find anything to suggest accomplishment.

Such circumstances are troubling.

I am troubled. But why?

Red squirrel and Tchaikovsky Vogel (White-throated Sparrow) dance outside sliding door.

There, there, I am whole and entire.

allocution

 We need 

one another

One 

no other

We need 

No other

That’s God-

Language

There’s 

No other

Way

(To say it)

glancing over to the person sitting next to me

 do you want to spend

the rest of the day

trying to guess

what I'm going to say

the place where they are carried on is, in fact, no place

It becomes a chore to locate who is listening who is speaking.

 I look around. 

Something, clearly, is missing.

If you want to freely live or die, go or stay, to take off or put on your clothes, then right now recognize the one who is listening to my discourse.

That one is without form, without characteristics, without root, without source, and without any dwelling place, yet is brisk and very alive.

As for all manifold responsive activities, the place where they are carried on is, in fact, no place.

Therefore, when you look for that one, it retreats farther and farther, when you seek that, it turns more and more the other way: this is called the “Mystery.”

Lin-chi (d.866)

Something clear is missing.

Can I see through it?

Am I even looking? 

absence of facts is only absence of facts

 lie to me

tell me 

something I

don't know

whether true

or not

good to know

 Yes

I’d say yes

If you really

Want to know

I’d say

Yes

reverberating in a deeper place

 Intelligence speaks

To intelligence, (story

in prison today)

Playing classical music

In hospice room, sounding still

no, I did not hear it

 No opinions, police say

This is a university, stick with facts

Remember when disputation was

Deemed height of academic life?

No more. Shut up. Go back to carrel

Be taught, don’t learn, submit!

We’ll get this college stuff right.

Did you hear the one

About the Jew and Palestinian?

playoffs

 Basketballers fly

tossing down scorching dunks — too 

fast too good — lordy

after low energy mountain walk

 Sitting by flowing

brook as white-streaked head bird jumped

branch to branch above

maraṇasati

 A friend used to say "As I always say." 

Someone else would say "As I always do."

As long as you are subject
To a life bound by force of habit,
You are not free from the
Burden of the body.

Kuei-Shan (771-854)

When I realized I was an idiorhythmic christian eremite and buddhist recluse it surprised me that routine and scheduled practice were not my forte. 

I embraced the conceit that practice was every step, breath, and glance. Then the conceit fell away and practice became every step, breath, and glance.

I'm glad others practice with each other. I know the benefits of group practice. I've done so.  

Then when I realized that I, too, will die, a more pronounced solitary meditative and contemplative attitude came to the fore and stayed.

The Buddhists call it Maraṇasati.

Maraṇasati (mindfulness of death, death awareness) is a Buddhist meditation practice of remembering (frequently keeping in mind) that death can strike at any time (AN 6.20), and that we should practice assiduously (appamada) and with urgency in every moment, even in the time it takes to draw one breath. Not being diligent every moment is called negligence by the Buddha (AN 6.19). In the earliest discourses of the Buddha, the term 'Maranasati' is only explicitly defined twice, in the two suttas AN 6.19 and AN 6.20.  (-wikipedia)

Catholics and others call it Memento Mori. An article in the NYTimes Meet the Nun Who Wants You to Remember You Will Die tells story of one woman who took on the task of reminding us.

These practices cheer me. The five remembrances of buddhism. The hundreds of funeral masses I served as an altar boy. The many years as hospice volunteer. The silent empty shikantaza sittings. 

In 1999 when I visited my sister when she of a sudden went to hospital with diagnosis of late stage lung cancer and left it after her death eight weeks later she quipped "You always would remark "We're all going to die, we're just uncertain when and of what." Then she added, "I guess I know of what."

I've long liked the saying (of uncertain attribution): "If I’d known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself."

I know I'm going to die.

When and how might soon become clearer. On one hand it doesn't matter to me. On the other, the prospect pleases me. I've been lucky. I might make it to eighty. My son likes the idea that I've pushed the edge forward by more than a decade of his four grandparent's deaths. He also roots, soberly, for the Red Sox. So there's that.

And cheers for Woody: 

“I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens.” 

― Woody Allen

Looking out glass door of Wohnkűche, Sparrow kicks at ground for seed just out of sight. Yellow Finch takes flight just as Red Squirrel jumps to hanging feeder. Yew Bush spreads with craggy indifference to all using it for transport, seed cracking, or respite.

It is Saturday morning.

Like flock of Juncos, I am passing through.

cat looks at cushion

 Zazen waking breath

Moving in moving out each

Moment each moment

prayer isn’t difficult, don’t ask

 Morning sun

Empty road

Going nowhere

If you want

Peace of mind

Breathe in, out

benign anarchy with good faith

 Dog pees on leaf pile

Moon nowhere to be seen — let’s

Pretend world is safe

no immunity

Been thinking of nap

after morning at prison 

tuckered, supremely

off with heads

Time to reflect. 

 “[W]here, say some, is the King of America?” Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, the 1776 pamphlet that convinced British colonists in North America to cut ties with their king and start a new nation. “[I]n America the law is king. For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.”

—in a Letters from an American, 25april24, Heather Cox Richardson

 Democracy or tyranny?

Justice or absolute immunity?

Should not be a hard decision.

full moon slightly with color

“Nature rests by changing” said Heraclitus.

I think of that when I read Luke chapter 4, the story where Jesus goes out into the wilderness for forty days. The idea we’ve been taught is that he is tempted for forty days, but everybody knows that you can’t be tempted for forty days. Let’s say the temptations took up ten days—well, what about the other thirty? What was he doing? Jesus was watching creation. He was observing what was going on around him. He was listening. The reason that we know that is because when he comes back, he talks about creation for the rest of his life. He talks about flowers and birds and trees and seeds and crops and the earth, and the soil. He could have talked about all kinds of things—Roman chariots and their power and aqueducts and the ingenuity involved—but that’s not what we have a record of. What we have a record of is someone who seemed to be at peace with the quietness of creation.… 
 
The Spirit is so contrary to what we might think or desire sometimes. At one time in my life, it was like every time I wanted to hear from God, God would speak through some person. And every time I wanted wisdom from a person, I couldn’t get it, and I could only hear it in silence from God…. When I go out and I listen in creation and I’m listening to the birds, then all of a sudden the Spirit speaks in my heart. It’s not necessarily always silence. Engaged listening is such a sacred thing, and the Spirit works through that so often.

—in Where the Spirit Speaks, by Randy Woodley, CAC

Change is what the mind does while paying attention.

We hear in silence. 

Each sound of every creature a teaching. 

meeting it everywhere

You might consider it a vacant realization. 

Something to stare at out into a gray dusk.

Something like that.

But different.

Just don’t seek from another
Or you’ll be far estranged from the Way.
I now go on alone
Meeting it everywhere
It now is just what I am
I now am one with it.
You must comprehend in this way
To merge with thusness.

--Dongshan Liangjie (807-869) 

 Thusness isn't a vacant dusk, even though you might think it so.

It is that which we move through, ever moving through, coming to no other side.

Like Pema wrote about not worrying about falling, falling, falling -- because there's no bottom to hit.

Or turtles all the way down.

No time. No end. Nothing of concern.

Way! -- Ha!

Who's kidding whom?

Still, I'm good with it.

As Chris Y. said, something that's true but never happened.

Imagine -- something that's true but never happened.

Appearance, disappearance, reappearance; 

Integration, disintegration, reintegration; 

Embodiment, human life, divine presence.

Is that bread you have there?