when illusion shall cease

 I am not

Waiting on god

I am waiting

For men and women

To stop

Being not god

summa theo-logia

 I cannot

Figure out 

The cross

No-

body can

Clearly

Let it go

Then there’s

Nothing to grasp

as i live and breathe

Do you love me

No, I love you

Don’t mention it

I can’t  

forty nine years now

 When my father died

I sat in room with him

His shoes taken off

The stillness

originary creative breath

Still night

Rain drips

Early light

Bird invitatory

foray date

snow tonight (ha!)

 Lovely invitation for the longest, hottest, day of the year. 

I have a new batch of emerald wine
And a small stove made of cinnabar clay
It feels like it’s going to snow tonight
Can you come by for a cup or two?                                                                                                          (--Pai Chu-yi (772-846) daily zen

Make mine Pellegrino Lemon Zero.

Don't bother with the stove.

Which mountain?

I'll be right up. 

a life in contemplative assent to the world

What is according to reality? 

And what are we missing?

Romano Guardini happened to be speaking to the youngsters on this occasion, the choir gave a recital of some of Goethe’s shorter poems, and twenty-year old Josef had recently begun exploring Thomas’s Summa. And now it happened: “Alles Sollen gründet im Sein; das Gute ist das Wirklichkeits-gemäße” [Moral law originates in Being; the Good is that which is according to reality]. This insight would provide the kernel of his dissertation, “The ontic foundation of morality according to Thomas Aquinas,” and the rest of his philosophy would flow from it.

Pieper spells out what he means. Contemplate, if you will, the result of these words spoken into an American discussion on social policy, school reform, family values, or the abortion debate: “Whoever wants to know and do the good must view objective reality, not his own ‘ideology,’ not his ‘conscience,’ not ‘values,’ not his self-chosen ‘ideals’ and ‘models.’ He has to resist examining his own action and instead view reality.” For only a brief moment one suspects that Pieper is begging the question of what constitutes objective reality. Does not science give us the answers? No! Only philosophy asks after the totality of existence by asking for the ultimate reason of why things are. Pieper’s answer is buttressed by faith: the phenomenal world offers evidence of things unseen. Knowledge is a significant step on the path to belief. One wants to know as much as one can, to be sure. But factual knowledge does not answer “why.” What is common to all the elements Pieper tells us to reject—ideology, conscience, values, ideals, models—is their privileging of the supposedly autonomous self, that chimera of Enlightenment thinking moderns so revere. For Pieper, Aquinas’s natural rights philosophy provides the “nomos” we no longer need to impose on ourselves. In the place of a world self-defined by duties, contracts, and obligations, he would put a life lived in tune with creation, a life in contemplative assent to the world.    (--in JOSEF PIEPER’S CONTEMPLATIVE ASSENT TO THE WORLD, October 8, 2014 by Thomas Austenfeld)

 It seems that "reality" is far down on the list of things we know or experience. Mostly it is our beliefs, our opinions, our interpretation, and our feelings we deal with and respond from. Reality is something (we might say) that is further beyond and more originative.

It might be more difficult than we can imagine to live "a life in contemplative assent to the world."

And yet, and yet, and yet... 

The understanding of reality will set you free. (John 8: 31-32) (Is what "The truth will set you free" actually means.)

225 alḗtheia (from 227 /alēthḗs, "true to fact") – properly, truth (true to fact), reality.

[In ancient Greek culture, 225 (alḗtheia) was synonymous for "reality" as the opposite of illusion, i.e. fact.] 

https://biblehub.com/greek/225.htm

We long for reality.

Not illusion.

Truth/reality.

Yes! (we do.)

dawn

 As contemplative

Slight breeze moves leaves, passes, there

Nothing moves, again

remnant remains ruminant

beginnings, they say, are difficult

 

the way of knowledge

 Fools and the wise greet us daily.

Those who cultivate Prajanaparamita do not reject the dharmas of fools, nor do they grasp the dharmas of sages, because in the light of Prajanaparamita, there are no dharmas to be grasped or rejected.

The Prajnaparamita Sutra spoken by Manjushri

 So much to learn.

So many teachers. 

readying

 

for he could feel the mountains grow

my father moved through dooms of love

                         E. E. Cummings 1894 – 1962

34

my father moved through dooms of love
through sames of am through haves of give,
singing each morning out of each night
my father moved through depths of height

this motionless forgetful where
turned at his glance to shining here;
that if (so timid air is firm)
under his eyes would stir and squirm

newly as from unburied which
floats the first who, his april touch
drove sleeping selves to swarm their fates
woke dreamers to their ghostly roots

and should some why completely weep
my father’s fingers brought her sleep:
vainly no smallest voice might cry
for he could feel the mountains grow.

Lifting the valleys of the sea
my father moved through griefs of joy;
praising a forehead called the moon
singing desire into begin

joy was his song and joy so pure
a heart of star by him could steer
and pure so now and now so yes
the wrists of twilight would rejoice

keen as midsummer’s keen beyond
conceiving mind of sun will stand,
so strictly (over utmost him
so hugely) stood my father’s dream

his flesh was flesh his blood was blood:
no hungry man but wished him food;
no cripple wouldn’t creep one mile
uphill to only see him smile.

Scorning the Pomp of must and shall
my father moved through dooms of feel;
his anger was as right as rain
his pity was as green as grain

septembering arms of year extend
less humbly wealth to foe and friend
than he to foolish and to wise 
offered immeasurable is

proudly and (by octobering flame
beckoned) as earth will downward climb,
so naked for immortal work
his shoulders marched against the dark

his sorrow was as true as bread:
no liar looked him in the head;
if every friend became his foe
he’d laugh and build a world with snow.

My father moved through theys of we,
singing each new leaf out of each tree
(and every child was sure that spring
danced when she heard my father sing)

then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine, passion willed,
freedom a drug that’s bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear, to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit, all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
—i say though hate were why men breathe—
because my Father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all

-- Copyright © 1940, 1968, 1991 by the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust from The Complete Poems: 1904-1962 by E. E. Cummings, Edited by George J. Firmage.

trees and birds and sky and you

Words matter

Look what The Creator

Did with them