In Latin
“whether, if, or”
Three good
Meanings
Whether I
Mean it or not
If I say it
Then it is said
If I am
To be held
To my words
Or they and I
Disregarded is
A matter of no
Indifference
To me
You see, words
Matter and
What matters
Is where God is
Found,
Don’t you think
shirts hang on drying line
aside black meditation pants
Tibetan prayer flags above
near resurrection man
emerging from hell
encircled by mini bulbs
alighting throughout
I watch the NBA game recaps on YouTube. OKC, Minnesota, Indiana and New York. It takes a while to identify most of the players. I didn’t follow them much during regular season. Instead, Warriors, Mavericks, Lakers, Nuggets held my interest.
I try to build up enthusiasm. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is a smooth, talented, and delightful-to-watch athlete. For me he is a quicker Oscar Robertson from back in the day. Jaylen Brunson is a gritty locomotive able to power ahead, make quick stops and dizzying turns with serious face. Anthony Edwards is a high-flying acrobat taunting his way to the rim with electric pulse. Tyrese Haliburton is a modern dance-impressive with sweet face who makes magic happen.
Still, I’m not yet enthused about the semi-finals. Good, yes, maybe great basketball -- but unfamiliar and no deep attachment to any of them. (Maybe the Knicks, but my NYKnicks were from wayback when two-handed push shots were rife and Red Holzman in the 1970s was the fiery gym-rat yelling from sideline.
But this is what we have. And it is good game with fine talent, and my 8 minute recaps draw me in.
I’d like to see the current president take a fierce body-check or hard box-out or flagrant foul by the superbly conditioned players up and down the floor. I’m sure he’d have all their contracts revoked and airlift the offenders to Belarus for secret-keeping.
But I digress.
The only show on television and radio and internet is the man currently in the White House. In today’s Opinion piece Nicholas Kristof points out what he says are the man’s vulnerabilities:
He concludes his piece with these words: "However appalling Trump’s own behavior may be, his critics have to show that they can not only mock him — but can also govern. If we are to hold Trump accountable, we must also hold ourselves accountable.”
He’s right, on both assessments. I’m an inadequate fan of the NBA. (The WNBA, absent the beauty pageant red carpet treatment, is more interesting these days. Thank you, Ms Clark!)
No words matter.
I’m told a punch
in the face gets
their attention. But
I’m a non-violent
Buddhist. So I'll
stay with no-words.
“Dear Republicans:
No!"
In the dream I am meant to be giving some words about a poem shortly and am uncertain about what the poem is and what I might say about it.
I open door to my old bedroom in Bensonhurst. It is pristine. Book containing poem is on dresser as is notebook for jotting.
The word “sere” is seen.
It means drying out, withering.
Sere has not wandered very far from its origins—it derives from the Old English word sear, meaning "dry," which traces back to the same ancient root that gave Old High German, Greek, and Lithuanian words for drying out and withering. Several nouns sere also exist; one is an obscure nominal form of the adjective, but the others are etymologically unrelated to the adjective or to one another. The most common of the nouns is a 20th-century coinage from the Latin word series (meaning "series"), which refers to a series of ecological communities formed in ecological succession. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sere
My life can be seen as a series of dreams, one after another. One on 69th street, one on rt 97, chapel rd, on Belmont avenue, on gun hill road, prospect st, on hall street, on Bethlehem pike, seaside ave, west 3rd, Beauchamp pt road, Barnestown rd.
No poem is written. Only words get written.
Poems are sixteen month old flowers in narrow neck bottle next to green tilted cardboard coffee container behind black lava bead mala hanging from brass desk lamp over shortwave radio. They don’t get written. Are never visible. Cannot contain what mind gazes at but cannot see.
An undug well.
Ground ungrounded.
Urgrund.
Sere.
Listening to Will Durant as I walk Snow Bowl: “Nietzsche says somewhere that the last Christian died upon the cross. He had forgotten Spinoza.” (― Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy)
It brings a small laugh as I think about the white nationalist christian republicans crafting legislation that will harm the poor and the ill, children and elderly, the needy and the hurting. But it will benefit the wealthy and the well-healed, the headship lords and their lassies, the corporate leaders and their investors.
The fact that so many of them wear crosses and lie without blushing, seek hands to bless them and kneel in congress celebrating their cruelty, is beyond cynicism and beyond hypocrisy.
About Spinoza, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy includes the following about his thinking of God:
2.1 God or Nature
“On God” begins with some deceptively simple definitions of terms that would be familiar to any seventeenth century philosopher. “By substance I understand what is in itself and is conceived through itself”; “By attribute I understand what the intellect perceives of a substance, as constituting its essence”; “By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence.” The definitions of Part One are, in effect, simply clear concepts that ground the rest of his system. They are followed by a number of axioms that, he assumes, will be regarded as obvious and unproblematic by the philosophically informed (“Whatever is, is either in itself or in another”; “From a given determinate cause the effect follows necessarily”). From these, the first proposition necessarily follows, and every subsequent proposition can be demonstrated using only what precedes it. (References to the Ethics will be by part (I–V), proposition (p), definition (d), scholium (s) and corollary (c).)
In propositions one through fifteen of Part One, Spinoza presents the basic elements of his picture of God. God is the infinite, necessarily existing (that is, self-caused), unique substance of the universe. There is only one substance in the universe; it is God; and everything else that is, is in God.
Proposition 1: A substance is prior in nature to its affections.
Proposition 2: Two substances having different attributes have nothing in common with one another. (In other words, if two substances differ in nature, then they have nothing in common).
Proposition 3: If things have nothing in common with one another, one of them cannot be the cause of the other.
Proposition 4: Two or more distinct things are distinguished from one another, either by a difference in the attributes [i.e., the natures or essences] of the substances or by a difference in their affections [i.e., their accidental properties].
Proposition 5: In nature, there cannot be two or more substances of the same nature or attribute.
Proposition 6: One substance cannot be produced by another substance.
Proposition 7: It pertains to the nature of a substance to exist.
Proposition 8: Every substance is necessarily infinite.
Proposition 9: The more reality or being each thing has, the more attributes belong to it.
Proposition 10: Each attribute of a substance must be conceived through itself.
Proposition 11: God, or a substance consisting of infinite attributes, each of which expresses eternal and infinite essence, necessarily exists. (The proof of this proposition consists simply in the classic “ontological proof for God’s existence”. Spinoza writes that “if you deny this, conceive, if you can, that God does not exist. Therefore, by axiom 7 [‘If a thing can be conceived as not existing, its essence does not involve existence’], his essence does not involve existence. But this, by proposition 7, is absurd. Therefore, God necessarily exists, q.e.d.”)
Proposition 12: No attribute of a substance can be truly conceived from which it follows that the substance can be divided.
Proposition 13: A substance which is absolutely infinite is indivisible.
Proposition 14: Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.
This proof that God—an infinite, eternal (necessary and self-caused), indivisible being—is the only substance of the universe proceeds in three simple steps. First, establish that no two substances can share an attribute or essence (Ip5). Then, prove that there is a substance with infinite attributes (i.e., God) (Ip11). It follows, in conclusion, that the existence of that infinite substance precludes the existence of any other substance. For if there were to be a second substance, it would have to have some attribute or essence. But since God has all possible attributes, then the attribute to be possessed by this second substance would be one of the attributes already possessed by God. But it has already been established that no two substances can have the same attribute. Therefore, there can be, besides God, no such second substance.
Spinoza was excommunicated from his Jewish community.
On the 6th of the month of Av, 5416, July 27, 1656, the excommunication of Baruch de Spinoza was proclaimed from the Ark in the synagogue of Talmud Torah, the united congregation of the Portuguese Jews in Amsterdam. The complete version of the proclamation, written in Portuguese, is found in the Book of Ordinances of the congregation (Livro dos Acordos de Nacao e Ascamot) and it includes some highly interesting details:
"The Lords of the Ma'amad", i.e. the governing body of six parnassim and the gabbai, announce that
"having long known of the evil opinions and acts of Baruch de Spinoza, they have endeavored by various means and promises, to turn him from his evil ways. But having failed to make him mend his wicked ways, and, on the contrary, daily receiving more and more serious information about the abominable heresies which he practiced and taught and about his monstrous deeds, and having for this numerous trustworthy witnesses who have deposed and born witness to this effect in the presence of the said Espinoza, they became convinced of the truth of this matter; and after all of this has been investigated in the presence of the honorable hakhamim, they have decided, with their consent, that the said Espinoza should be excommunicated and expelled from the people of Israel..."
The "hakhamim," namely the official rabbis of the community, with whose consent the resolution was made to excommunicate the "said Espinoza," were familiar with thetraditional wording of the proclamations of excommunication and excerpts of these onventional formulations were incorporated in the announcement of Spinoza's excommunication:
"By decree of the angels and by the command of the holy men, we excommunicate, expel, curse and damn Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of God, Blessed be He, and with the consent of the entire holy congregation, and in front of these holy scrolls with the 613 precepts which are written therein; cursing him with the excommunication with which Joshua banned Jericho and with the curse which Elisha cursed the boys and with all the castigations which are written in the Book of the Law. Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up. Cursed be he when he goes out and cursed be he when he comes in. The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven. And the Lord shall separate him unto evil out of all the tribes of Israel, according to all the curses of the covenant that are written in this book of the law. But you that cleave unto the Lord your God are alive every one of you this day."
The proclamation of the excommunication concludes with the following famous lines of the actual warning:
"That no one should communicate with him neither in writing nor accord him any favor nor stay with him under the same roof nor within four cubits in his vicinity; nor shall he read any treatise composed or written by him."
This material was taken from http://www.tau.ac.il/~kasher/pspin.htm. https://web.mnstate.edu/mouch/spinoza/excomm.html
Spinoza wrote about Moses and he wrote about Christ:
6. Christ
A second figure of great interest to Spinoza is Jesus of Nazareth, whom he consistently refers to by his Christian appellation, Christ. According to Spinoza, Christ, unlike Moses, was uninterested in statecraft. His concern was with blessedness and the precepts of the divine law that lead to it. Chief among these precepts is the love of God and neighbor, which manifests itself in the practice of justice and charity. In Spinoza’s view, while Moses taught these precepts as well, he understood them as special dictates of the divine will given to the Hebrew people alone. In contrast, Christ understood them as eternal truths applying to all people everywhere. His apostles, having learned these precepts from him, took them outside the Jewish community and proclaimed them to every nation. In this way, Christ became the founder of a truly catholic religion, although one that quickly lapsed into sectarianism as his teaching became mixed with theological dogma and philosophical speculation. This movement toward sectarianism, Spinoza argues, began with the apostles themselves as they adapted Christ’s teaching to their individual understanding and preached it to diverse audiences.
Perhaps most interesting in Spinoza’s treatment of Christ is his claim that the way in which he received revelation was even more direct than the way in which Moses received it. Finding no instance in the gospels in which God communicated with Christ through words, real or imagined, Spinoza asserts that God communicated with him “mind to mind.” This is to say that Christ enjoyed unmediated intellectual apprehension of the precepts of the divine law, which is precisely what allowed him to understand them as eternal truths applying to all people everywhere. Such apprehension, Spinoza claims, is something no one else, including Moses, has so far enjoyed:
[F]or a man to perceive by the mind alone things that aren’t contained in the first foundations of our knowledge, and can’t be deduced from them, his mind would necessarily have to be more excellent than, and far superior to the human mind. So I do not believe that anyone else has reached such a perfection, surpassing all others, except Christ, to whom the decisions of God, which lead men to salvation, were revealed immediately – without words or visions. So God revealed himself to the Apostles through Christ’s mind, as previously he had revealed himself to Moses by means of a heavenly voice. And therefore Christ’s voice, like the one Moses heard, can be called the voice of God. (TTP 1, 84)
As Christ enjoyed unmediated intellectual apprehension of the precepts of the divine law, he is set apart from all the prophets, whose apprehension of those precepts was by way of the imagination. His voice, Spinoza goes so far as to say, can thus be likened to the voice of God that spoke to Moses. For this reason, he concludes, “Christ was not so much a Prophet as the mouth of God” (TTP 4, 133).
https://iep.utm.edu/spinoza-religion/
Paul wrote in his Philippian letter: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.”
Mind alone.
Reminds me of my Buddhist studies.
In the School of Kuan Um Zen, this:
In one of the Buddhist scriptures, the Hua Yen Sutra (in English, the Flower Garland Sutra), there is a short passage that is often quoted: “If you want to understand all the Buddhas of the past, present and future, then you should view the nature of the universe as created by mind alone.” “Created by mind alone” is not a philosophical point about whether everything is inside or outside or whether outside even exists. The point is that we experience everything in our minds, nowhere else. Our feelings are registered in our minds; sounds are registered in our minds. If there were no consciousness, ears wouldn’t be functioning, eyes would not be functioning and so on. Everything occurs in our minds and unfortunately most of the time we are coloring reality with our own mental constructions, imagination and fabrication. We make things. And when we’re making things we are very far away from reality as it is. … All this has to do with the activity of ignorance. Ignorance is not so much a thing as an active ongoing process of ignoring things as they are and generating my own version of them.
Moses, Christ, Buddha.
Voice, mind, heart.
There are, some say, very few, if any, Christians today.
And as the subway advert went when I rode the trains two hours a day back and forth to high school, “The mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
Madame Guyon, like Spinoza, irritated the officials of the faith institution she belonged to. Twice they imprisoned her for her thinking.
“Now when the soul by its efforts to abandon outward objects and gather itself inwards, is brought into the influence of the central tendency, without any other exertion, it falls gradually by the weight of Divine Love into its proper centre; and the more passive and tranquil it remains, and the freer from self-motion and self-exertion, the more rapidly it advances, because the energy of the central attractive virtue is unobstructed and has full liberty for action.
All our care and attention should, therefore, be to acquire inward recollection: nor let us be discouraged by the pains and difficulties we encounter in this exercise, which will soon be recompensed on the part of our God by such abundant supplies of grace as will render the exercise perfectly easy, provided we be faithful in meekly withdrawing our hearts from outward distractions and occupations, and returning to our centre with affections full of tenderness and serenity.
When at any time the passions are turbulent, a gentle retreat inwards into a Present God easily deadens and pacifies them; and any other way of contending with them rather irritates than appeases them.”
― Madame Guyon, A Short and Easy Method of Prayer
This tension between the inner and outer, between effort and no-effort, runs through religious organizations, both East and West.
It is good to know that the tension is not merely our own.
Good to keep in mind.
Reading about Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Motte Guyon (1648-1717), her difficult, fascinating, and mystical life. About which, more later.
This quote from Teresa emerged:
“God walks among the pots and pans.” (--Teresa of Avila, Book of the Foundations, 1610)
The ordinary everydayness of simple presence. Seems like the Church had difficulty with both women.
Began to wonder about control (by Catholic Church and secular authorities).
Then, how Contemplation, Zen, Society of Friends, and Quietism -- how all face opinion-keepers judging the correctness or incorrectness of spiritual practice and meditative practices. How troubling the saying must be for these gate-keepers: “Be still and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10)
Makes me wonder -- if “that” I am is God, what is “this” I am?
Appears to me there’s something to ponder about resting in the stillness and stark presence of reality, especially underlying reality, that reality which is indecipherable and unimaginable, whose face is faceless, whose name is nameless.
This from Sheng Yen:
Faith In Mind
The Supreme Way is not difficult
If only you do not pick and choose.
Neither love nor hate,
And you will clearly understand.
Be off by a hair,
And you are as far from it as heaven from earth.
If you want the Way to appear,
Be neither for nor against.
For and against opposing each other
This is the mind's disease.
Without recognizing the mysterious principle
It is useless to practice quietude.
The Way is perfect like great space,
Without lack, without excess.
Because of grasping and rejecting,
You cannot attain it.
Do not pursue conditioned existence;
Do not abide in acceptance of emptiness.
In oneness and equality,
Confusion vanishes of itself.
Stop activity and return to stillness,
And that stillness will be even more active.
Merely stagnating in duality,
How can you recognize oneness?
If you fail to penetrate oneness,
Both places lose their function.
Banish existence and you fall into existence;
Follow emptiness and you turn your back on it.
Excessive talking and thinking
Turn you from harmony with the Way.
Cut off talking and thinking,
And there is nowhere you cannot penetrate.
Return to the root and attain the principle;
Pursue illumination and you lose it.
One moment of reversing the light
Is greater than the previous emptiness.
The previous emptiness is transformed;
It was all a product of deluded views.
No need to seek the real;
Just extinguish your views.
...
(--from FAITH IN MIND, With a Guide to Ch'an Practice, by Master Sheng-Yen, 1931-2009)
Let’s say what seem to be views about the current political disaster in the United States are not views at all. (Watch this somersault!)
What if “views” meant (also) something different from opinions and judgments?
Rather these “views” are the felt discordance and isogenic homogeneity experienced in stillness with my quantum entanglement brothers and sisters in time and space. Those in poverty and sickness in America and the world; those under siege in Palestine and Ukraine, in African countries and worldwide dictatorships; those punished for their beliefs and sense of ethics and justice worldwide.
To sit in stillness is to feel the innate and inchoate connection of each to each, to feel the ruptures knifed through our essential kinship by oblivious perversion of dignity and sacredness.
When church or state condemns such feeling, when either punishes practitioners of wholeness and holiness, when either obscures or propagandizes substituting manufactured manipulation and hatred for indigenous love and compassion -- there is radical disturbance of the underlying fabric of existence.
The practice of stillness and silence is a healing recovery of what is being -- and what is being lost.
It begins with pots and pans.
Hanging out the wash.
Doing dishes.
Acknowledging both neighbor and reality.
If there is
Nothing else
Where do
I go
When
I walk
Out of
Sight
Around
The corner
I forget things
I forget why we lie
So easily
I remember when
Being a mean shit
Was not prerequisite
To be cabinet member
Or president
Or cruel congressman
I’ve always
Been naive
Always a fool
Israel is wiping out
Palestinians
no mercy, no justice
no name,
unlike their God
Whose real name is
stop, now
boat empty
floating on slow-moving river
only moonlight
athwart
peepers from each shore
sing I am here, I am here
lovely silly song,
perfect prayer
DB, our wily nonagenerian elder, sends Belloc:
Epitaph on the Politician Himself
Here richly, with ridiculous display,
The Politician's corpse was laid away.
While all of his acquaintance sneered and slanged
I wept: for I had longed to see him hanged.
Another on the Same
This, the last ornament among the peers,
Bribed, bullied, swindled and blackmailed for years:
But Death's what even Politicians fail
To bribe or swindle, bully or blackmail.
On Another Politician
The Politician, dead and turned to clay,
Will make a clout to keep the wind away.
I am not fond of draughts, and yet I doubt
If I could get myself to touch that clout.
On Yet Another
Fame to her darling Shifter glory gives;
And Shifter is immortal while he lives.
Epitah Upon Himself
Lauda tu Ilarion audacem et splendidum,
Who was always beginning things and never ended 'em.
Hillaire Belloc
1870-1953 * ( Served a time in Parliament)
Perhaps a self-skewering.
Perhaps a vision of our current indisposition.
Nevertheless, a familiar illness.