buonas noches

Some nights 

Are nights

That feel like

Night

give him a chance, someone said

Sorry. Can't see it. Not Trump. Not the sycophant tech boys, the republican congress, not the stifled press corps.

What I can see is what will soon be the curtain on this Eugène Ionesco administration of the absurd. Even the most flamboyant spectacles wither down when damp dawns arrive.

Trump and his burlesque will soon tiredly twirl into intellectual and  ethical exhaustion.

. . .

 (Note — Rev Ed Trevers in Halifax NS, an Anglican priest, speaks kindly about Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde of Wash DC inviting mercy from American president:  “A Bishop Hurts The President’s Feelings.”)

if that’s what you think

 Ha!

‘Ha’ what?

Ha!

whole sight; or all the rest is desolation

There is no falling off the edge of the universe.

God is the edge of the universe rolling out from Herself / Himself / Itself / Nonself.

There is no falling off God.

Except for those who define the universe as their small self and laughable egos.

No one else abides in their small residence. It has no front door and no sofa. No doorbell.

There are bags of garbage in their foyer. It smells.

You know who they are. They look through you. To them, only they exist.

They never share their donuts. Only their faces show in hall mirrors.

Psalm 63 (64)
A prayer against enemies

Listen, O God, to my voice;

  keep me safe from fear of the enemy.

Protect me from the alliances of the wicked,

  from the crowd of those who do evil.

They have sharpened their tongues like swords,

  aimed poisonous words like arrows,

  to shoot at the innocent in secret.

They will attack without warning, without fear,

  for they are firm in their evil purpose.

They have set out to hide their snares

  – for they say, “Who will see us?”

They have thought out plans to commit wicked deeds,

  and they carry out what they have planned.

Truly the heart and soul of a man

  are bottomless depths.

And God has shot them with his arrow:

  in a moment, they are wounded –

  their own tongues have brought them low.

All who see them will shake their heads;

  all will behold them with fear

and proclaim the workings of God

  and understand what he has done.

The just will rejoice and hope in the Lord:

  the upright in heart will give him glory.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son

  and to the Holy Spirit,

as it was in the beginning,

  is now, and ever shall be,

  world without end.

Amen.

Here is a secret you do not know. God is not alone as the edge of the universe. God turns to look over shoulder and sees your face in bureau mirror. 

Einstein and Kepler share a cafe table.

The edge of the universe is folded in on Itself.

It is everywhere within everything surrounding wild bird seed fallen to snowy ground.

God’s Self is no stranger. 

No stranger.

The malum-absentem, the evil-absenting, see strangers everywhere, every set of eyes, every color of skin not aurantiaco-album.

Quid est maior quam malum? (What is greater than evil?)

(It’s a trick question.) “What is” — (the whole, the gathering into one) — is greater than “evil” —  i.e. the separated out, the excised, the desiccated, the expunged, the left out in the cold, the labeled as ‘stranger’ and tossed aside.

Only the godly, the pia (pious) — only the deus, icis (the God, come here) understand our correct relationship, the correct relationship, of all beings to Being, of each to each. Each to all, all to each, all to all.

The malum-absentem, the evil absenting, cannot see God, will not to see God, cannot abide the sight.

It is the plague of our time. Of this time.

And so, pray for what-is-whole to reveal Itself to all of us, even the malum-absentem…

[MU!]

Pray for ophthalmologists and opticians, creators of braille, seeing eye dogs, learning to navigate the dark, dawns, reading glasses, eyepatches, lifted black hoods, and evolved versions of AI committed to whole-sight.

Or, all the rest is desolation.

…   …   …

 ("Whole sight; or all the rest is desolation" is the opening line from the novel “Daniel Martin” by John Fowles.)

the universe is still

I should shut up. The nothing I have to say is unworthy to be said. 

Instead, I gaze at photo of hobo, small bronze of seated Buddha, wood carving of skiff down from mountain.

 I am a wandering nobody with only garbled mantra in my mouth.

 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)

It is a joy to be reminded just how inconsequential and insignificant I am.

It is a great honor.

Thank you for this wonderful nothing with all its emptiness, dregs, and dross.

the question has been raised

 We wonder if there is intelligent life in the cosmos. We’ve sent probes.

This week that question hits closer to home.

Is there any intelligent life in the United States?

into the fire

 Today in prison, this:

Consolation

BY WISŁAWA SZYMBORSKA

TRANSLATED BY CLARE CAVANAGH

Darwin.

They say he read novels to relax,

But only certain kinds:

nothing that ended unhappily.

If anything like that turned up,

enraged, he flung the book into the fire.

True or not,

I’m ready to believe it.

Scanning in his mind so many times and places,

he’d had enough of dying species,

the triumphs of the strong over the weak,

the endless struggles to survive,

all doomed sooner or later.

He’d earned the right to happy endings,

at least in fiction

with its diminutions.

Hence the indispensable

silver lining,

the lovers reunited, the families reconciled,

the doubts dispelled, fidelity rewarded,

fortunes regained, treasures uncovered,

stiff-necked neighbors mending their ways,

good names restored, greed daunted,

old maids married off to worthy parsons,

troublemakers banished to other hemispheres,

forgers of documents tossed down the stairs,

seducers scurrying to the altar,

orphans sheltered, widows comforted,

pride humbled, wounds healed over,

prodigal sons summoned home,

cups of sorrow thrown into the ocean,

hankies drenched with tears of reconciliation,

general merriment and celebration,

and the dog Fido,

gone astray in the first chapter,

turns up barking gladly

in the last.

                                Source: Poetry (April 2006)

Because consolation is needed this week.

have i heard what

 When news becomes too

Painful, I will sit down, turn

Inside out and leave

Πλευρίζω

Accostation is the rule of thumb now. Rip into everything. You're in charge. 

The patients run the insane asylum. The criminals the judicial halls. 

The mendacious assaulter roams the halls of nunnery looking for piety to kneel before him. 

I will go insane looking for sanity in the corridors of bedlam.

People in monotone list the instances of depravity and obnoxious occurrences. "Can you believe it?" they ask. "Who can do anything about it?" they ask.

They look at me. I look back.

Such a wonderful and excruciating time!

"We knew it was going to happen," they say. There's no comfort in such knowledge.

There is wonder about the folks who put these people in power. "Yeah!" they say. "Watch us now!" they taunt. "F*ck you!" they say. 

A surprisingly evocative plea for mercy from the kindly Episcopal Bishop of Washington DC sent from pulpit to the front pew captive with his deer-in-headlights posse surrounding has taken on reactive screeches of right-wing banshee offended darlings who say that you can't throw the words of the old Jesus in the face of the new Jesus and not be castigated by the new amorality and righteous depredation. 

Saints preserve us from subservient taints straining at leashes to tear jugulars from anyone suggesting moderation and compassion, composure and kindly non-retaliative thoughtfulness.

The aggrieved, of course, pardons all criminals who broke the law for his benefit, setting them free in his debt. He smashes the furniture and dishes set up by the Constitution and previous administrations to protect the preyed-upon, the vulnerable, and those with wombs.

I go insane.

There is no quarter wherein to reside with emotional protection -- not for those who do not have millions and billions to give to him as fees by the ecstatic monied-class and eager uneducated to bolster his childlike ego and obsessive victimhood.

And be assured, the 'uneducated' are not those lacking a college education. To be educated is to be led-out of narrow self-serving agendas into the common arena of shared need and serving assistance. Real education is not university credits, but an honest gleaning of what is right there in front of you, an honest listening to the sounds of what-is-being-said right there in your surround with an open heart and keen mind.

We are becoming less and less educated.

No quarter. No place to hide.

People load their guns. They bring them to schools, again. Shoot and be shot. TikTok, tiktok, time is running out.

That old Jesus seemed like a nice fellow. His ideas never caught on, not really. Not by his followers. But many learned how to make money off his name, how to smash people in his name. 

But that Bishop in DC -- she seemed to grasp his heart. Said what he'd have said. Now she waits for the assemblage of Judas Iscariots to throw their silver and gold at the new Jesus after purchasing some tar and feathers and a rail for her.

Funny, that thing 'insanity'! Makes you think you're right when you're wrong, wrong when you're right. Gets it all tangled and misshapen. Hard to sort out. A real perplexer. 

It is a time when equanimity is accosted. When decency is accosted. When lambs invite wolves to dine and then find themselves a lamb dinner.

No sense appealing to God. God is the very edge of the expanding universe measuring the next lightyear with the length of a wooden match flipped over and over taking care not to ignite the tip.

God feels he left good-enough instructions back in our Milky Way as to how to negotiate the thralls and whirls of human and cosmic intelligence bumping their way through crowded turnstiles as transport cars roll in and out of multitudinous, albeit, at times, multifareous comings and goings.

This is no longer about God. 

It's about us.

We need to make a call. We need to connect.

 We've got a quarter, a dime, and a nickel. We're looking for a payphone. Where'd they all go?

We're looking.

"Excuse me, can you help me?"

five words carefully pronounced

 Tathātā (/ˌtætəˈtɑː/; Sanskrit: तथाता; Pali: tathatā) is a Buddhist term variously translated as "thusness" or "suchness", referring to the nature of reality free from conceptual elaborations and the subject–object distinction.

Car goes by

Birds swoop to seed feeder

Coughing from other room

President swings axe

Splintering everything

He smirks, pleased

This morning, the quiet of

Non-thought is restful, 

Opinions disintegrate

Someone cleans their gun

Sips coffee and calculates

How to end the world

In a cafe, alone at table

Drifter holds rye toast

Blesses and breaks it

When world changes

And nothing matters

Migrants carry the holy

I’d forgotten sanctity

Wears ordinary clothes —

Belled door sounds,

 Announces —

Here is where

Tathātā unfurls

nothing to see here, all gone there, woof

 Sigh!

It seems that it is true --

Up is down.

Corruption not only lives in your fridge.

Flat tires are signs God no longer travels.

This new president is going to save humanity.

All his followers will be with him in heaven.

All our lawmakers are scared spitless of him.

The Supreme Court is on holiday until 2028.

The Nazi salute is no longer a bad thing.

Jews, Hispanics, Californians, Blacks and Irish 

are buying tickets to Mars at half price.  

Christian Bishops and ministers sympathetic

to Jesus' teachings are traitors to the nation.

Police and other law enforcers can stay home.

Canadians have to give up hockey.

Shohei Ohtani can no longer have an at bat.

Fox television news entertainers are to be given

carte blanche to never have to say something true.

Elon must be permitted whatever substances he wants.

Taxi drivers are no longer required to pick up 

non-republicans. Employers now can fire anyone

with impunity. Catholic priests no longer have

to forgive anybody. Pizza is no longer permitted

to be called Italian. Groceries are allowed only 

on Tuesdays. Bagels and cream cheese no longer can

consort with lox. Alcoholics Anonymous meetings 

can only be held for ten minutes on Friday mornings

 at 4AM.

Stephen Curry is forbidden to shoot without

both feet on the floor and right hand tied to waist.

Real Christians and Muslims should pack bags

and flee the country for Donegal. 

Nothing will come of resistance.

Eggs now cost $8.50 cents a half-dozen.

Elections have consequences. There is 

no truth left that fits into your tooth paste tube --

it is being squeezed dry, cap off, abandoned

on edge of sink with dried sponge alongside.  

Sleeping dogs don't lie, never have, never will.

thây

 Three years now 

Thich Nhat Hanh

Went within

Where all things

All beings

Are reintegrated

As What-Is

As One

Coming-to-be

Within Itself

the earth for our heritage

What is written is written out from the conceived or perceived urging of inner experience wanting out into openness. 

Is this what we’ve called divine inspiration? Are the intimate and profound urgings of the human heart or inner essence of material existence something we consider ‘true’ or ‘holy’?

And over time have we enshrined these writings with acknowledged meaning and familiar pathos?

Psalm 36 (37):1-11

The fate of the evil and the righteous

“Blessed are the gentle: they shall have the earth for their heritage” (Mt 5:5).

Commit your life to the Lord, and he will act on your behalf.

Do not fret because of the wicked;

 do not envy those who do evil,

for they wither quickly like grass

 and fade like the green of the fields.

If you trust in the Lord and do good,

 then you will live in the land and be secure.

If you find your delight in the Lord,

 he will grant your heart’s desire.

Commit your life to the Lord,

 trust in him and he will act,

so that your justice breaks forth like the light,

 your cause like the noon-day sun.

Be still before the Lord and wait in patience;

 do not fret at the man who prospers;

a man who makes evil plots

 to bring down the needy and the poor.

Calm your anger and forget your rage;

 do not fret, it only leads to evil.

For those who do evil shall perish;

 the patient shall inherit the land.

A little longer – and the wicked shall have gone.

 Look at his place, he is not there.

But the humble shall own the land

 and enjoy the fullness of peace.

Glory to the Father and to the Son,

 and to the Holy Spirit:

as it was in the beginning, is now,

 and will be for ever. Amen.

Commit your life to the Lord, and he will act on your behalf

(—from Office of Readings, 21jan25)

Triumphic cynicism is a difficult diet to be laid before us. Yet here we are. We are, indeed, hungry, but to pick up and ingest what is presented at this table is costly and detrimental to our well-being. Still, we are ravenous for something not laced with insideous and infuriating poison.

The ascending thing we call truth must pass through the compost dung of what is thrown over nascent hope and nourishing trust.

No cellophane nor barcode presented to us as packaged handoff can fully serve our needs until a loving re-preparation and doctoring places personal touch and longed-for seasoning to satisfy taste and well-being.

We sense when something is right and when something is not right.

What we call the mind is enwrapped by the senses but not completely dependent on the senses for its journey to the surface.

Matter and spirit are not two things. They encircle and cooperate with one another as might song and voice, needle and yarn, sight and scenery.

If I commit my life to what-is-true, acts and action will rise and emerge through any impediment or slant intending to divert or distract.

Upward inclination will push on and through.

“Be still before the Lord and wait in patience;” 

Be still within truth and allow its energy to arise. 

This is active prayer.

The urging within will find a way through us into the manifest reality we call earth, cosmos, world.

nothing at all to show

 Time to retrieve a perspective that suggests a different approach to current events and trends of oligarchy, muscular and economic dominance.

²⁶Βλέπετε γὰρ τὴν κλῆσιν ὑμῶν, ἀδελφοί, ὅτι οὐ πολλοὶ σοφοὶ κατὰ σάρκα, οὐ πολλοὶ δυνατοί, οὐ πολλοὶ εὐγενεῖς· ²⁷ἀλλὰ τὰ μωρὰ τοῦ κόσμου ἐξελέξατο ὁ θεός, ἵνα καταισχύνῃ τοὺς σοφούς, καὶ τὰ ἀσθενῆ τοῦ κόσμου ἐξελέξατο ὁ θεός, ἵνα καταισχύνῃ τὰ ἰσχυρά, ²⁸καὶ τὰ ἀγενῆ τοῦ κόσμου καὶ τὰ ἐξουθενημένα ἐξελέξατο ὁ θεός, τὰ μὴ ὄντα, ἵνα τὰ ὄντα καταργήσῃ, ²⁹ὅπως μὴ καυχήσηται πᾶσα σὰρξ ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ. ³⁰ἐξ αὐτοῦ δὲ ὑμεῖς ἐστε ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, ὃς ἐγενήθη σοφία ἡμῖν ἀπὸ θεοῦ, δικαιοσύνη τε καὶ ἁγιασμὸς καὶ ἀπολύτρωσις, ³¹ἵνα καθὼς γέγραπται· ὁ καυχώμενος ἐν κυρίῳ καυχάσθω.  (1 Corinthians 1:26-31) 

 

Take yourselves for instance, brothers, at the time when you were called: how many of you were wise in the ordinary sense of the word, how many were influential people, or came from noble families? No, it was to shame the wise that God chose what is foolish by human reckoning, and to shame what is strong that he chose what is weak by human reckoning; those whom the world thinks common and contemptible are the ones that God has chosen – those who are nothing at all to show up those who are everything. The human race has nothing to boast about to God, but you, God has made members of Christ Jesus and by God’s doing he has become our wisdom, and our virtue, and our holiness, and our freedom. As scripture says: if anyone wants to boast, let him boast about the Lord.  1 Corinthians 1:26-31 

It once was a comfort to think that the rich and powerful were always teetering on the brink of toppling into a ditch leveling their arrogance and insouciance to a common equality with the poor and hungry.

Have faith, we were told.

Cold comfort, mostly.

But today, on a cold day in Maine, the frozen ground cries out even for some cold comfort. The returning president of the United States with his arrogance and accumulated cohort of deep arrogance begin their dominance of will and misinformation which they will be calling governance.

Of course, what remains unresolved with regard to scripture and suggestion of divine presence is fruition of same in recognizable and tangible ways. Not just vague hope.

They, these poseurs, boast that the Lord has chosen them. Their followers give and give their money as once and currently congregations filled coffers of church establishments. New and ingenious schemes allow unregulated and unaccounted wealth to flow into nebulous and cynical personal bank accounts.

What has happened to holiness and freedom?

We have to begin again. Back at the core.

Here’s my ante: there might not be any God out there, but the God we long for might be in and within.What does it take to realize what longs to come to be? To grasp the heart of once inspired scriptures to explore the hidden, to assist the manifesting of what is good for all?

Perhaps what I’ve forgotten is that everything begins again at each moment of heartfelt mindful attention and awareness. Nothing is guaranteed to continue of and in itself. Not democracy, not kindness, not justice, not equality.

It is all new.

Begun again and again.

With you. With me. Even when hope freezes in dooryards and corridors everywhere.

Is it a matter of forgetting Being, forgetting God, forgetting that nothing continues -- that there is only beginning again, over and over, like wood for the fire?

contemplative action

 Sometimes grief is the best you can do when circumstances prevail. 

If you cannot change something with love then something else is at work and you have to wait.

Then, wait.

If you cannot change evil, don’t let evil change you. 

Wait.

Nothing stays the same. All things change.

Wait.

And see.

thanks martin, your day today

 Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage

I’ve built a grass hut

Where there’s nothing of value

After eating, I relax and enjoy a nap.

When it was completed, fresh weeds appeared.

Now it’s been lived in

Covered by weeds.

The person in the hut

Lives here calmly,

Not stuck to inside, outside,

Or in between.

Places worldly people live,

He doesn’t live.

Realms worldly people love,

He doesn’t love.

Silvery moon hangs high in the sky.

I ride a tiny boat in the vast and misty sea.

Moon and sea forgotten;

I forget that I have forgotten.

And before the window

I sit quietly in meditation until midnight.

—Jakushitsu (1290–1368) dailyzen

she proclaims

Gold finches on gold

Feeder by yellow rower

Wind vane at barn wall

trouble is in the land

 Heather Cox Richardson writes about the words Martin Luther King spoke the night before he was assassinated by a white supremicist:

Dr. King told the audience that if God had let him choose any era in which to live, he would have chosen the one in which he had landed. “Now, that’s a strange statement to make,” King went on, “because the world is all messed up. The nation is sick. Trouble is in the land; confusion all around…. But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.” Dr. King said that he felt blessed to live in an era when people had finally woken up and were working together for freedom and economic justice.

He knew he was in danger as he worked for a racially and economically just America. “I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn’t matter…because I’ve been to the mountaintop…. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life…. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!”

People are wrong to say that we have no heroes left.

Just as they have always been, they are all around us, choosing to do the right thing, no matter what.

Wishing you all a day of peace for Martin Luther King Jr. 

(Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson, 19jan2025)

ritual as snow falls

 Dog out barn door pees 

quickly in snow between cars —

Plow lights down Barnestown 

dismantling all of our answers

Well asked. 

WHAT HAPPENS IF WE DISMANTLE ALL OF OUR human conceptual

constructions, all of the explanations and assumptions that structure

consciousness and orient us and define us as centers of identity? To

do that not in the abstract, but at the level of immediate experience.

What would that leave us? What might we discover about ourselves

at levels deeper than the contingent histories and thoughts that

define us as identity-centers? And what would it mean about the

texture of everyday experience?

This dismantling is the adventure of Ch’an (Jap. Zen) Buddhism as

originally practiced in ancient China, and its primary revelation is

the larger self or “original-nature” that remains after the

deconstruction. The awakening that Ch’an cultivated was :

“seeing original-nature” (chien-hsing; Jap. kensho). And in

cultivating this awakening, Ch’an’s sage-masters operated like a

wrecking-crew disassembling every possible story or explanation,

idea or assumption or certainty. The Ch’an conceptual world sounds

like a constellation of answers, a clear account of consciousness and

Cosmos and their interrelation, and it is. But in the end, Ch’an

dismantles all of our answers, including its own, to leave a new way

of being.

(—from introduction, China Root, Taoism, Ch’an, and Original Zen, by David Hinton, 2020)

Sawdust on workshop floor,  no broom or dustpan in sight.

new bag of seeds in bookshed

When sick, philosophy helps distract the mind. Dasein, (“da” in German translates as “there” “here” or “then”) -being, the dying of others, the ontological meaning of it.

That, blowing nose, coughing, aching, sneezing and contemplating the end of dasein.

Had I been a better student in undergraduate studies, I might not have had to continue into graduate studies, and then decades later, teaching philosophy at university in constant attempt to learn something ungrasped in younger years.

So, I read Being and Time, then works of Henri Bergson, Merleau-Ponty, Kant, Kierkegaard, and off to the side, Alan Watts, Rupert Spira, Iain McGilchrist, and Bernardo Kastrup.

I try novels but seem only to sink into Colum McCann. 

Essays and plays, Arthur Miller and Samuel Beckett, Thomas Merton and Thomas Keating, poets and poets and poets.

My mind wishes to cross over full of wonder if not empty of understanding.

It will snow tonight into tomorrow.

Bird feeders must be filled.

“Death in its widest sense is a phenomenon of life” writes Heidegger.

Perhaps the door that closes is the door that opens.

Demising is not what we think it is.

And yet, and yet, and yet (as Joseph Brodsky said) again and again and again.

a quivering leap smashes a billion worlds

It’s his birthday today. 

Dōgen (道元; also Dōgen Kigen 道元希玄, Eihei Dōgen 永平道元, titled as Dōgen Zenji [Zen Master Dōgen] 道元禅師) (19 January1200 – 22 September 1253) was a Japanese Zen Buddhist priest, writer, poet, philosopher born in Kyōto, and the founder of the Sōtō school of Zen in Japan. (Wikipedia) 

 

Along with Francis of Assisi, Dōgen is the inspiration of meetingbrook Dōgen & Francis hermitage. 

 

Eihei Dogen (1200–1253) was the founder of the Soto school of Zen.

The Tendai school in which Dogen trained as a young monk had adopted a doctrine called hongaku, “original enlightenment.” This teaches, as Mahayana Buddhism generally teaches, that enlightenment is the fundamental nature of all beings. However, the Tendai school had decided that there was no need for disciplined meditation to actualize this inherent enlightenment. Dogen questioned this, and after his time in China, he returned to Japan, certain that zazen, Zen meditation, was essential. 

Enlightenment is inherent, Dogen wrote in “Fukanzazengi,” but our delusions and our selfishness get in the way and cause us to suffer. Since the Buddha sat in meditation to realize enlightenment, he asked, why do we not need to do the same? Dogen also emphasized the unity of practice and enlightenment. Zazen is not something you do that will lead to enlightenment, he taught; it is enlightenment itself, unfolding in each moment.   

Dogen became a fierce advocate for shikantaza, or “just sitting” meditation. Contemporary Zen teacher Taigen Dan Leighton calls shikantaza “the dynamic activity of being fully present.” In shikantaza, one sits without an object or goal in mind, because seeking a goal reinforces the illusion of a separate self that is missing something. 

(—Dōgen, Lion’s Roae)

On his birthday, his death poem:

 

Fifty-four years lighting up the sky. 

A quivering leap smashes a billion worlds. 

 

Hah! 

 

Entire body looks for nothing.

                 Living, I plunge into Yellow Springs .^[23]