yes, please, I would

 Alone man lives

Alone man dies

Alone with the ALONE

Would you like a glass of water?

you find it where it shows up

 Zverev (GER) beats Norrie (GBR)

in third set tiebreaker at Wimbledon. 

Zen announcer said: 

"There's nothing between the two."

filling the feeders

 there's nothing behind 

silence -- sit there a moment, feel

what is beyond you

selling off self

 weary of current

culture --buying selling -- as

crudity panders

with openings

 Doris sends me Solnit:

It’s important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is, or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and tremendous destruction. The hope I’m interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. It’s also not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse narrative. You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings.

--Rebecca Solnit, in Hope in the Dark: Untold Mysteries, Wild Possibilities  

Yes.

Subtlety and complexity. (cf The Marginalian)

ibi dixisti (there, you've said it)

Fool me

Once 

You are God

four sets

Mr Djokovic defeats Mr Fearnley in second round at Wimbledon.

My shoulder hurts watching them.

As time goes by.

blue sighting

 Indigo Bunting

outside door last week, beauty

surprisingly close

contemporary of dōgen & francis

The permeability of inspired time.

Spring has its hundred flowers,
Autumn its many moons.
Summer has cool winds,
Winter its snow.
If useless thoughts do not
Cloud your mind,
Each day is the best of your life.

—Wu-Men-Hui-Kai (1183-1260) dz

All is well. 

It’s the parts that you might at times find discouraging.

in…dependence

 Something has changed.

Supreme Court makes ruling for republican next president.

Depend on it. The people will not allow him to become king.

Evening comes and morning follows on his non-creation.

The court made a mistake. Pray for correction(s).

o clemens, o pia, o dulcis

 Do you have a spiritual practice?

Yes.

What is it?

I practice returning to God.

What is it you do?

Nothing.

Why is that?

No departure is possible.

   No return is necessary.

       Reality is all there is.

looking forward to it

 We like the idea of freedom.

We celebrate freedom.

We will never be free until we know and practice kindness.

clearing mind of a thousand thoughts

Jorge has returned to the woods.

Sparrow hops close to screen door.

All the yogurt pretzels are gone. 

Hidden birds sing as cool and clear
As a bamboo forest.
Between swinging willows
Sun beams glimmer
Like golden threads.
Clouds return to this calm valley.
The winds carry the fragrance of almonds.
By sitting alone all day long
I clear my mind of a thousand thoughts.
To speak of this is beyond words;
Only by sitting in the quiet forest
Can we ever understand.

Fa Yen (885-958) dz

Solitude isn't hard.

It is sunshine on Yew bush.

Breeze carrying July fragrance.

The emptiness of soundless sound through warm afternoon.

Staccato reports of tree-bird wafting across dooryard. 

twig by twig the night-entangled trees

 "What's wrong will always be wrong." (Richard Hugo)

"But what's right is each time created new." (wfh)

There's nothing to being right until it is originated into existence.

While being wrong is something, something always underfoot.

"Why is there something rather than nothing?"

"Why is there anything at all?" or "why is there something rather than nothing?" is a question about the reason for basic existence which has been raised or commented on by a range of philosophers and physicists, including Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,^[3] Ludwig Wittgenstein,^[4] and Martin Heidegger,^[5] who called it "the fundamental question of metaphysics".^{[6][7][8] (wikipedia)}

Many hold the universe (or, that which is) was spoken into existence. By whom, and how, is the stuff of myth-ontology. From Moses to Wittgenstein the story is told about story being told.

Last night's Tuesday Evening Conversation heard Doris' question about the relationship between koan and poem. Poems do not mean, but are.

Ars Poetica

    BY ARCHIBALD MACLEISH

A poem should be palpable and mute   

As a globed fruit,

Dumb

As old medallions to the thumb,

Silent as the sleeve-worn stone

Of casement ledges where the moss has grown—

A poem should be wordless   

As the flight of birds.

                         *               

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs,

Leaving, as the moon releases

Twig by twig the night-entangled trees,

Leaving, as the moon behind the winter leaves,   

Memory by memory the mind—

A poem should be motionless in time   

As the moon climbs.

                         *               

A poem should be equal to:

Not true.

For all the history of grief

An empty doorway and a maple leaf.

For love

The leaning grasses and two lights above the sea—

A poem should not mean   

But be.                                                                                                                                                                          (--Archibald MacLeish, “Ars Poetica” from Collected Poems 1917-1982. © 1985)

Koans are the poems of Being.

Poems are Being written.

If you are a zen student 

    (God help you) 

        you don't know this. 

                You are this...

Aporia.

Write on!

Read yourself in!

aporia

 What’s right is each time created new.

Because what’s wrong will always be wrong.

The right thing always arrives from the unknown.

We are tasked with unknowing the unknown yet still creating new what is right each time.

Go figure. Minus one plus minus one plus one plus one equals zero.

Wrong plus wrong does not equal right.

Right minus right does not equal wrong.

Nothing is the answer.

daily life; nothing particularly special

 It is, after all, meetingbrook dogen & francis hermitage.

1. 

In Fukanzazengi, his most famous set of instructions for zazen, Dogen wrote, “To practice the Way singleheartedly is, in itself, enlightenment. There is no gap between practice and enlightenment or zazen and daily life.” Here, we get a glimpse of how Dogen framed everything. Practice is enlightenment (it’s self-verifying); practice is also zazen; zazen is daily life. Therefore, everything we do, every action we undertake, can be practice. Enlightenment is built in.

    (—from Dogen’s 4 Key Teachings, by SHINSHU ROBERTS)

2. 

Some of my Franciscan sisters and brothers will not like what I’m about to write here. It can easily be misunderstood, so I will try my best to be clear: Contrary to popular belief, there is nothing particularly special about Franciscan beliefs and spirituality! 

    (—from Franciscan Beliefs, Spirituality, and Philosophy, by Daniel P. Horan ofm.)

economics p-n-l birdseed

 squirrel's name's Jorge

persistent on feeder, must

admire his moxie

must calculate percentage

lost to him, (yes, he's hungry) 

comes summer month

turning away, June

disappears behind wide green 

leaves just up mountain

sorrow as the other deepest thing

 Everyone is speculating what "official acts" president Biden should engage in post today's Supreme Court decision.

I'm unsure the Court did former president Trump any favors with their ruling.

It appears they've made the man seemingly above the law, but more, the focus of intense displeasure and wits' end frustration. 

I wish no man's life to end by violence. If I had an enemy, not even my enemy's.

But it becomes scarily an option, I'm afraid, many now consider an alternative to a dubious and contestable and deniable general election in November.

In prison this morning we spoke of ethics, reality, and choosing what is right. Spader, the Golden Retriever in training, was sweet and affectionate after initial low growls upon my entering.

I can only hope the electorate will assume the same sweetness. Even to such a bitter man who would like very much to reassume such protective immunity for his projected untoward fantasies.

We ended the round-table at the Farm with Naomi Shihab Nye:

KINDNESS 

Before you know what kindness really is 

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be 

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken 

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, 

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho 

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, 

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, 

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

 (Poem by Naomi Shihab Nye, 1995) 

no where not when, rather, this

 Love is presence now.