the monk has gone off

Not too many comprehend solitude.

It is a language from a different country.

Only nodding in passing.

A pleasant affirmation. 

Evening mountains

Veiled in somber mist;

One path entering the wooded hill:

The monk has gone off

Locking his pine door.

From a bamboo pipe

A lonely trickle of water flows

Ishikawa Jozan (1583-1672)

 In this country, on this mountain, sounds of meditating branches and sober stones alongside incline and mountain brook.

I don't have God's address. But I know God passes these trails often.

And with grace.

with deference, an inquiry

I can listen for a little while

Then I collapse

Tell me, when you talk,

Who is speaking

What  is

Being said

we wait attentively

 Read poetry.

Write poetry.

 “When reading poetry we don’t look for agreement or disagreement, the critical mind is suspended in order to let the impact of the poem make itself felt. When we read poetry, we are poets…

We wait attentively, without conclusion, for the poem to find us.”

— Jean Klein (1912-1998)

Do things good for you.

Good for everyone.

and sleep comes at once

 Listening tires

Sorting through each word, meaning

Hides sometimes deeply

what, after all, was he about

 Still like the invitation of philosophy.

Even, perhaps especially, the uncertainty.

Let’s step back for a moment—way back—and ask: What was the final goal of Heidegger’s thinking? What was he ultimately after?

Was his goal “being,” das Sein? Or was it something “being-er than being” (wesender als das Sein)?1 And might that be “being itself,” das Sein selbst, sometimes written as Seyn? Or was it rather, as Heidegger says, Seyn qua Seyn—and if so, what might that mean?2 Again: Was Heidegger’s main topic die Wesung der Wahrheit des Seyns?3 or was it die Wahrheit der Wesung des Seyns?4 Or was his topic Anwesung, “presencing”? Or the Lichtung? Or Ereignis as just another name for Being Itself? Or was it, rather, Enteignis?5 Or ἀλήθεια? or perhaps the Λήθη that lurks within ἀλήθεια?6 Or was it the ontological difference, as some scholars hold?7 Or do all of these point to the same thing? And how exactly are we to distinguish (if we are to distinguish) one from the other?

There is, in fact, considerable confusion at the heart of the Heideggerian enterprise, and it may not be the fault of Heidegger scholars. Just to stay with the term Sein: Heidegger himself said that “it remains unclear what we are supposed to think under the name ‘being.’”8 Are Heideggerians, then, subject to the Master’s judgment: “They say ‘is’ without knowing what ‘is’ actually means”?9 In any case, he may have known what he meant by the word Sein, but he didn’t always make that

1 GA 73, 2: 1319.23.

2 GA 73, 2: 997: “Seyn ist nicht Seyn.” Further on Seyn: ibid., 968.7; 1033.10; 1039.10; 1122.7; etc.; also GA 9: 306 (g) = 374 (a): “Seyn ist... das Ereignis.” But cf. loc. cit., “Sein qua Ereignis.” At GA 81: 76.18, Sein and Seyn are equated, but at GA 76: 49.15-9 they are contrasted.

3 GA 65: 73.21 = 58.35-6.

4 GA 65: 78.26 = 63.4-5.

5 GA 2: 252, note a = 183.44; GA 11: 59, note 33; GA 76: 5.25.

6 GA 6, 1: 197.9 = 194.1.

7 “[The difference between being and beings] is the central thought of Heideggerian philosophy”:

Haugland (2000) I, 47.

8 GA 40: 34.31-2 = 34.16-7.

9 GA 15: 277.17-8 = 5.7-8.

What, after all, was Heidegger about?

clear to the rest of us. So we might want to make our own the plea that the Eleatic Stranger expresses in the Sophist: “So first teach us this very thing lest we seem to know what you told us when in fact we don’t” (244a8-b1).

(—from What, After All,Was Heidegger All About? By Thomas Sheehan, Academia.edu)

i have a place to stay

 From here on out.

Right among the people coming and going
I have a place to stay
I shut the gate even in the daytime
And feel as though I had bought
Wo-chu, the great mountain,
And had it with me in town.
Never since I was born have I
Liked to argue, mouth full of blood.
My mouth is made fast to heaven and earth
So the universe is still.

Muso Soseki (1275-1351)

I'm good with it.

 Good with all of it.

patron saint of astronomers and natural scientists

 Dominic, friar

Mendicant, knew how to preach

He with beads and stars

eight bells

whew.

made it

ok, what's

next

wash dishes

take pills

sleep a while

light candle

honoring parents

with gratitude

to and for

all

the plan should it be needed

 Might make eighty — less

than six more hours — if I croak

 radio silence

they’ll stow me until midnight

Then will call authorities 

the light burns upward

1.  

Missa - Graduale • Speciosus forma -- Feast of Transfiguration, 6aug24

 

Speciósus forma præ fíliis hóminum:

You are a brilliant form before the sons of men. 

diffúsa est grátia in lábiis tuis.

Grace has been poured freely into your lips. 

Eructávit cor meum verbum bonum:

My heart has uttered a good word. 

dico ego ópera mea Regi:

I speak of my works to the king. 

lingua mea cálamus scribæ velóciter scribéntis.

My tongue is like the pen of a scribe who writes quickly.

2.  

Poem -- The Buddha’s Last Instruction -- For the Feast of Hiroshima, 6aug45, and Feast of Nagasaki, 9aug45 — 79 years ago 

The Buddha’s Last Instruction

 

 

“Make of yourself a light,”
said the Buddha, before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal – a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.

 

An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.

 

The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.

 

Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.

 

No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.

 

And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire –
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.

Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.

 

~ Mary Oliver ~

 

(House of Light)

like the brilliance of flashing lightning

Hiroshima today. Nagasaki in three days.

The horror.

You must realize that what 

is at stake here does not

reside in words and phrases: 

it is like sparks from struck flint, 

like the brilliance of flashing lightning. 

However you manage to deal with this, 

you cannot get around 

losing your body and life.

—Yunmen (864-949) dailyzen 

Transfiguration today. 

The surprise.

iteration itineris -- how we come though word

 In prison this morning, one of the men spoke these words "...Perhaps with the next iteration of God..."

I told him "the next iteration of God" would be a good title for a book, should he wish to write it.

The reverberation was sweet.

iteration (n.) 

"a saying or doing again, or over and over again; repeated utterance or occurrence," late 15c., from Latin iterationem (nominative iteratio) "a repetition," noun of action from past-participle stem of iterare "do again, repeat," from iterum "again," from PIE *i-tero-, from pronominal root *i-     see  O.E.D.

I immediately connected the word with the Latin word to make a journey, 

iter, (noun)

journey,  iter, itineris, (neuter) noun. The act of travelling, a journey. (b) (in many verbal phrs. denoting to travel or sim.; esp. ~er facere), (c) (be [sic] sea, through the air, etc.). (d) (of inanim. things; esp. of heavenly bodies, also of periods of time or sim.). --Allo Latin

I followed up at final circle with the following: 'It would be interesting to see how the speaking of or about God would make the journey through our thought and experience.'

Hence, Iteration Itineris.

Any articulation of God-emergence is an intimate-experience 

    of the movement of self/Self through

     the everyday/transcending 

    revelation/unveiling 

    of core/care into 

    the landscape/surround of 

    visible cosmos/experience with

     all its underlying foundational

     presence/Presence.

This notion of speaking into Being is a recognizable narrative in many origin stories.

So we ask -- given our contemporary world and culture, what is being spoken into Being now?

Conversation is the practice field of engagement.

We reveal much and we bury much in skillful and/or unskillful speech.

Blaise Pascal wrote -- "To understand is to forgive."

A monk I know once said -- "To genuinely forgive is to remember without bitterness."

I hope the prison conversant writes that book.

philosophers and theologians take note

 "...I'm just truly a believer of speaking things into existence..." -- Noah Lyles, post-win interview, after capturing gold in 100 meter olympic race, France, 4aug24.

on losing our mind, on finding true mind

At Sunday Evening Practice, we read one man's new translation of Xin Xin Ming ('The Truth Mind').

Xin Xin Ming was probably written in the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) and is considered the first text to define Chan Buddhism in China. It has a strong nondualism perspective, similar to the Taoism of Lao Zi (around 300–500 BCE) and Zhuang Zi (around 200–300 BCE). It is also similar to Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, which was heavily influenced by Mahayana Buddhism (200–300 CE) in India. Chan/Zen is part of the Mahayana school of Buddhism.  (--Alan Lew)

Non-dualism often confuses our typical way of thinking. We think that 'no-thing' means nihilism. It doesn't. We think that 'no-thing' means that there aren't things in our rooms and yards. There are things 

Rather, the realm of non-separative dwelling within the whole of reality changes our minds allowing things to be seen or experienced from within the in-dwelling non-dual shared observation of each thing seeing itself as in the surround of wholeness. As Krishnamurti would say, "The observer is the observed."

From the Chan/Zen view, the true mind is perfect as it is and only false views obscure the true mind's inherent perfection. As the text states,

"Any degeneration of your previous practice on emptiness arises because of false perspectives. There is really no need to go after the Truth but there is indeed a need to extinguish biased views." (前空轉變 皆由妄見 不用求真 唯須息見)

Moreover, the passage that follows immediately after explicitly warns against losing the original, true mind (失心):

"Do not dwell in the two biased views. Make sure you do not pursue. The moment you think about right and wrong, that moment you unwittingly lose your true mind." (二見不住 慎勿追尋 才有是非 紛然失心)

Whether translated as Faith in Mind, Believing in Mind, Trust in Mind, or The Truthful Mind, the central message of the Xinxin Ming is the same: to point directly to Mind by giving up one-sided views so we can see the One Suchness of reality as it is.(心若不異 萬法一如)

(--wikipedia) 

It is typical for us to want to stake our claim as possessors of unique and particular views of the world wherein we dwell. We cultivate opinions. We carve our judgments, whether moral or ethical, thereby separating ourselves or our tribe from 'them' or the other tribe.

Our biased views are held as our 'truth' and our systems of thought, from religions prescriptions to standards of behavior, will reflect our preference and our opposition to countervaling opinion.

A tough landscape. An antagonistic atmosphere.

Whenever you hear someone say "They're not in their right mind", perhaps they are intuitively saying that we have not yet come to see reality as it is. Our mind is occupying the fragmented and oppositional antagonism of dualism wherein competition and surmounting the other, eliminating or dominating the other, is order of the day.

The original true mind is a good meditation and worthy contemplation.

We took a look last evening.

We'll, undoubtedly, re-view again.

Wu-Xin (Chinese) / Mu-Shin (Japanese), or "No-Mind", is not what we think...it is. 

Rather, it might be, completely, what-is. 

and asleep rest in his peace

At end of day: 

Night holds no terrors for me

Sleeping under God’s wings

—antiphon, compline 

Sleep. 

an interrogative

 Chris said these words Friday evening: “I don’t know what I believe.”

The conversation went on. It occurred to me that he was right. When you don’t know what, you believe.

Belief is not knowing what.

And “what”  is 1—used as an interrogative expressing inquiry about the identity, nature, or value of an object or matter (Merriam-Webster).

The things that arise!

The investigation of what requires no belief.