one stick too many

 Firebox

Please cool down

Joule by joule

trading seats

 Free throw, jump in paint

Three point shot, good and good, new

Luca laker sits

nigra sum sed formosa

 It is dark outside

Window reflects back inside

I can see nothing

the price paid them to move on

Both trump and musk both know their scam 

and overreach cannot persist much longer

I’d like to be the first to say goodbye

It was neither fun nor entertaining

Let them go somewhere with a big table

To count their money and laugh at the turmoil

The people and their non-traitorous non-complicit

Representatives will pick up the pieces and begin

Again to help us live fairly and without fear

While the disgraced cowardly politicians are left 

To their embarrassing and mournful legacies

the energy of life into person

 This from Cynthia Bourgeault’s book Thomas Keating, c.2024:

Ironically, the less “Thomas” there was, the more powerful his presence became. Somehow, he was learning to convert all the energy previously bound up in personal self-making into pure, luminous being. I think of him when I read these beautiful words from Ladislaus Boros’s The Mystery of Death:

Over time … there emerges the old man, the wise man, the elder, whose whole strength is in spirit, deriving from a composure we can really call saintly. Perhaps such men say little, or at any rate little of importance, but by their simple presence they transform the complex of existence and make it transparent. Their “act” of essential being is in the spiritual transparency of the realized meaning of existence… . These men have transformed all the energy of life into person.[5]

“The only habit a monk should wear at his funeral is a soul wreathed in God,” my beloved Brother Raphael had told me shortly before his own death. And that’s what people were encountering more in those final visits with Thomas: a soul wreathed in God, the pure energy of compassionate attentiveness beaming down upon them like the sun. It’s traditionally known as baraka, a direct energetic transmission of cosmic blessing. That’s what it was like to be in the presence of Thomas those final days in Snowmass. Like standing under a firehouse of blessing.

(from Thomas Keating, by Cynthia Bourgeault)

I remember him from late 70s while on retreats at Trappist monastery in Spencer. 

And his books.

And that his monks practiced zazen at 4:30am in darkened choir stalls as I did also in darkened side chapel.

the site of enlightenment

Stay or go, just be clear. Confusion is no help. A clear mind helps.  

It has been asked,
“How should those who enter the
path apply their minds?”
All things are originally uncreated
And presently undying.

Just let your mind be free;
You don’t have to restrain it.
See directly and hear directly;
Come directly and go directly.
When you must go,
Then go.

When you must stay,
Then stay.
This is the true path.
A scripture says, “Conditional
existence is the site of enlightenment,
insofar as you know it as it really is.”

(—Niu-t’ou Hui-chung (683-769), dailyzen)

I used to worry about living. Should I do this, should I do that?

I used to worry about dying. What will happen? Where will I go?

Now — living or dying, no difference, nothing to see here, nothing to see there.

Happy not to be enlightened. Happy to be the fool. 

“No I am not Prince Hamlet nor was meant to be 

Am an attendant lord one that will do

To swell a progress start a scene or two 

Advise the prince no doubt an easy tool 

Deferential glad to be of use 

Politic cautious and meticulous 

Full of high sentence but a bit obtuse 

At times indeed almost ridiculous—

Almost at times the Fool.

 (—from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T S Eliot)

This life of mine has been a fool’s errand, and I have carried it out well. 

In my 81st year I have nothing to say, nothing to speak for me. This is how it is. This is the way the eaves drip this morning.

Pound by pound this body diminishes. Tooth by tooth this mouth releases. Sand truck comes up Barnestown road. The road is wet, concerns for black ice. 

You know the nearer your destination

The more you're slip sliding away

(—Paul Simon, Slip Sliding Away) 

One minute at a time. 

Insofar as you know it as it really is.

dawning liturgy

 Grey cat hunched on sill

Eaves dripping to porch roof — birds

Come to feeder, leave

of itself

 There’s nothing I want

And I don’t even want that —

I yawn, and sleep comes

from the center of the earth

Nur noch ein Gott kann uns retten.

Only a God can save us now.

             — Martin Heidegger

Snow through the night

Coup by buffoonish billionaires

Through the weekend

And the people stare slackjaw

At entertainment devices

Selling them pharmaceuticals 

What to do with our stupefaction 

How process the gobbledygook 

The ineffective over-analysis

Here’s what I think — they’ve 

Killed God — no church member 

Notices — funeral will be private

Dead, and gone. A moment of

Silence, if you will, bow head

Blow nose, sip a cocktail, eat pâté

Now then. You didn’t know God

Was a Tibetan Buddhist, did you?

God will reappear from center of earth.

Churches, synagogues, mosques, temples

Are being sold off. trump-n-musk decreed

They were money laundering criminal sites,

As were agencies intent on helping sick

And poor, all criminal, anti-American—

We’re better than that — we’re rich

Rich, rich, and we’re no fools, all money

Is ours, say t-n-m. No more law, no more

Charity, no more opposition to great men

Making America like themselves —

Cold and cruel, disdainful and dismissive

No longer giving suckers an even break 

God will come from the center of the earth

And these foolish foolish poseurs will perish

Their hearts collapse, their minds dement

God arises from the center of the earth

The stupefied will stare mouths slack

Unseeing what they see, babbling nonsense

“But where oh where are my dear leaders?”

Red faced and indignant claiming to be robbed

Of the lies they melted into gold and sold

Christ will emerge from center of everything

Buddha from earth, Mohammad from deep bow

Krishna from the inside of every act, Hashem,

That Nameless One, will smile on arrival.

All the Pagan gods will dance and twirl

Agnostics and atheists will offer tea and coffee

We will find a new peace and healthy hope

A meaningful faith, a quiet love, all in one

Wholesome holistic holiness of Whole Sight

experience the intimacy of things

 I'm wondering when simmering outrage

will explode in a flurry of explosive ordinance

As a Christian it saddens me

As a Buddhist I am dismayed

Someone, I suspect, soon enough, will take shots

overwhelmed by fear and frustration -- the wealthy

solipsists who do not care a whit for them, their families

friends, the unfortunate, the marginal, all the people

I say the Confiteor, the Act of Contrition, the Memorare

I pronounce the Fusatsu Gatha of Atonement, Bodhisattva 

promises to overcome afflictive emotions and help

save all beings from anger, greed, and delusion

But, some will slip through, load their semi-automatics

fuse their cellphones wired to Semtex and fireworks

to right the wrongs felt in their bones. I am not one of

them. I sit shikantaza and absorb both frustration & foolish

retaliation, the warfare of revenge and retribution, souls

unable to soothe their damaged pride and ego, insane

narcissism and grotesque rationalizations of superiority

the mental collapse of our time fixated on illusory self.

I sit zazen. I bow. I see the floor beneath me, the hands

upon one another, the mala of lava beads draped in fingers 

and am silent. The silence of regenerative healing.

Silent, with others, silent. In the silence of prayerful

wholeness

Sitting within the language of The One We Call God.

Sitting with The Buddha through eons of confusion

Christ help us! Christ, graciously, help us!

Holy Spirit, One God, Be Merciful, With Us!

The Ten Grave Precepts

 

Affirm life – Do not kill

Be giving -  Do not steal

Honor the body –Do not misuse sexuality

Manifest truth-  Do not lie

Proceed clearly – Do not cloud the mind

See the perfections – Do not speak of others’ errors and faults

Realize self and other as one – Do not elevate the self and blame others

Give generously – Do not be withholding

Actualize harmony – Do not be angry

Experience the intimacy of things –  Do not defile the Three Treasures

atonement

 One more log in fire

4° degrees at barndoor edge

Eve of Fusatsu