an experience that defles articulation

How it rains this morning!

Reading Majumdar. A man in prison wants to include his book in an independent study for the university. We might not get to it. Still, it is interesting stuff he is engaged with, and it colors our Friday Conversations. Also sweeps cobwebs from my psyche. 

 Trika Shaivism acknowledges the multifaceted nature of reality but ultimately asserts the underlying non-dualistic nature of all existence. This philosophy aligns with the Advaita Siddhanta (non-dualistic) philosophy, which posits the apparent duality in the world is an illusion. It suggests that there is only one ultimate reality, referred to as Paramashiva, and everything else is a manifestation of this Supreme Consciousness. This non-dualistic perspective transcends conventional boundaries and unifies the divine and the human. In the Nirvāņașatkam by Sri Adi Shankaracharya, the following verse speaks of the ultimate reality as neither the mind, intellect, ego, nor the reflections of the inner self, nor the five senses. [...]

This means that the ultimate reality is neither ether, earth, fire, nor wind, but something beyond these elements. It is often regarded as eternal knowing, being-ness, and bliss -- an experience that defles articulation.

According the Trika Shaivism, consciousness is the fundamental essence of all existence. It asserts that Supreme Consciousness is omnipresent, manifesting in various forms, and emphasises the importance of self-recognition and realizing one’s true nature as the Supreme Consciousness. Put simply, human beings, as individual souls, are considered microcosmic reflections of the macrocosmic consciousness. 

(pp.20-21 in From Shiva to Schrödinger, Unravelling Cosmic Secrets with Trika Shaivism & Quantum Insights, by Dr Mrittunjoy Guha Majumdar, 2024, Hay House Publisher, India)

The question arises for me -- What is it about us that inhibits the realization of our true nature as  "microcosmic reflections of the macrocosmic consciousness”? 

 If we, indeed, are not separate from the Supreme Consciousness, how so the seeming darkness of our awareness and intellect, the seeming obliviousness of our ethical and moral nature, the feelings of separation and detachment we seem to experience as dualistic experiencers in a seeming fragmented and unattached series of reality moments?

Even in the Western Christian culture and religious indoctrination, with its explaining emphasis on sin and some kind of original mythic fall from grace, there is a drama of dogmatic need for some huge sacrifice, that of the Son of God, to suffer and die because of sin, thus atoning for and redeeming humankind from their transgression(s).

These are curious and confusing narratives.

Surely my illusion will be effaced.

Surely, at one of these Friday Morning Meetingbrook Conversations in prison, we will break through our subjugating befuddlement and be liberated into a refreshing comprehension of our microcosmic/macrocosmic unity of Being/Becoming just before the final circle and our getting thrown out into the mile through the five clanking doors past Officer D in front lobby, his sidearm and kevlar vest nicely tucked, always willing to share his latest riddle with my uncomprehendingly dull mind amid ‘thank-yous’ and stepping out to walkway leading to parking lot and -- soon -- coffee, muffin, and croissant.

why i am inner at war

 I shake my fist

at ICE and other

forms of Gestapo

raging “purity, purity”

across America, their

white arrogance their

drug addled Oval Office

corruption out in open

a country dazed with dread

a time is coming, a time

that will sweep away smirking

racists, sneering bigots, cynics all

onto garbage barge going off shore

to some deep deep ocean trench

where no light will ever reach

infuse a ray of peace

No matter how we pray, there’s something about prayer that changes the one who prays and affects -- that which is being -- prayed with and for.

Hymnus

 At Matins, Feast of Visitation

1. Veni, præcélsa Dómina;

 Come, Most Excellent Lady; 

María, tu nos vísita,

Maria, you visit us

Quæ Jam cognátæ dómui

You, who once brought so much joy 

Tantum portásti gáudii.

To our joint home.

2. Veni, juvámen sǽculi,

 Come, helper of the world, 

Sordes aufer piáculi,

Remove the filth of guilt and, 

Ac visitándo pópulum

Visiting people, 

Pœnæ tolle perículum.

Remove the danger of punishment.

3. Veni, stella, lux márium,

Come, star, light of the seas, 

Infúnde pacis rádium;

Infuse a ray of peace; 

Rege quodcúmque dévium,

Straighten all that is crooked, 

Da vitam innocéntium.

Grant an innocent life.

4. Veni, precámur, vísites

Come, we beg you, to visit 

Nobísque vires róbores

Us and strengthen our forces with 

Virtúte sacri ímpetus,

The power of sacred ardor, 

Ne fluctuétur ánimus.

So that the soul does not faint.

5. Veni, virga regálium,

 Come, whip of princes, 

Reduc fluctus errántium

Make the agitation of the wanderers 

Ad unitátem fídei,

Return to the unity of faith, 

In qua salvántur cǽlici.

In which the saints are saved.

6. Veni, tecúmque Fílium

 Come, let us forever 

Laudémus in perpétuum,

Praise you with your Son, 

Cum Patre et Sancto Spíritu,

With the Father, and with the Holy Spirit, 

Qui nobis dent auxílium.

That they may give us help. 

Amen.

(Neumz)

schlaf gut

 In the night

Up into stars

No bird sings

penumbra and ai and the fact of an idea

 As conversation in prison was beginning, one of the men, per introductory remarks about a book another attending man was writing with regard to Shivaism and tarot, entered a prompt into ChatGPT: PROMPT: 

Prompt: Make a graphic picture: A 78 year old white man, professor of philosophy. He has a one-fourth inch long beard. He has a one fourth hair. Sitting in  room. The room has a huge window. The professor is wearing a checkered shirt- red, black and white lines. He is wearing a khaki pants. He has black sneakers. He sitting on a rocking chair. He is looking out the window his garden. Contemplating. He has wearing a rimmed glasses. A statue of Buddha is in the corner. He has a mala bead.  

The result:  

It doesn’t look like me, and the age given was wrong, but these things, these accuracies are a thing of the past. 

Recall the Picasso / Gertrude Stein story:

In her autobiography, Stein remembered posing for hours in a broken armchair while Picasso sat opposite her on a small kitchen chair, inches from his easel, mixed brown and gray together on his palette, and laid brush to canvas. She described Picasso’s growing frustration over the months as he painted and scrubbed out her features, before reaching a total impasse, painting out the entire head in anger, and vanishing to Spain. On his return, without seeing her again, he painted the face back in, and presented the portrait to Stein as a gift. In the interval between first and second drafts, as she told it, Picasso’s style had undergone a seismic evolution: the original, naturalistic features were gone, and the face now resembled a sculptured mask, its features starkly outlined. When Stein protested that it didn’t look like her, he calmly replied, “It will.” 

(--from The Met, Picasso on Stein) 

The prison conversation went on to discuss two meditations by Richard Rohr (29/30 May, 2025), Jungian thought and the shadow side of Western Civilization, scriptures of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and the current malaise trying to cut a swath through the difference between ethics and law.

The nine of us had good fun and disagreement. One man, at end,  brought in his blind and deaf white dog to say hello -- guten tag, wie gehts, auf wiedersehen --  and one old Norse mythology friend wanted to leave us with one last thought  -- "Trump 2028!” he said smiling -- as he went laughing down the hallway. 

Ah, yes, the penumbra of history.

. . .

Ps. Had I read David Brooks before going in today, we might have discussed his OpEd piece "I’m Normally a Mild Guy. Here’s What’s Pushed Me Over the Edge." May 29, 2025. It is well worth both time and thought.

from poetry to smirks, sneers, and passwords

Funny how a word looks at you and asks, “What?”

“He once changed English to his own demotic." (--line in poem, The Spell by Robert Lowell)

demotic | dəˈmädik | 

adjective

denoting or relating to the kind of language used by ordinary people; popular or colloquial: a demotic idiom. 

• relating to or denoting the form of modern Greek used in everyday speech and writing. Compare with katharevousa 

• relating to or denoting a simplified, cursive form of ancient Egyptian script, dating from c.650 BC and replaced by Greek in the Ptolemaic period. Compare with hieratic 

 

You may recognize the root of demotic from words like democracy and demography. The source of these words is the Greek word dēmos, meaning "people." Demotic is often used of everyday forms of language (as opposed to literary or highbrow versions). It entered English in the early 1800s and originally designated a form of ancient Egyptian cursive script which by the 5th century BCE had come into use everywhere in Egypt for business and literary purposes (in contrast to the more complex, hieratic script retained by the clergy). Demotic has a newer specialized sense, as well, referring to a form of Modern Greek that is based on everyday speech and that since 1976 has been the official language of Greece.  

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/demotic

 Also:

 The term “Demotic” refers to a stage of the ancient Egyptian language, as well as the script in which this stage of the language was generally, though not exclusively, written. The language seems to have been close to that spoken in the 26th dynasty, which developed from the Late Egyptian language of the New Kingdom. Demotic precedes Coptic, in which the Egyptian language was written for the first time in a non-Egyptian script derived from the Greek alphabet.

The first documents in demotic script date to around 650 BCE, with the last dated Demotic text located in the temple of Philae and inscribed in 452 CE. This script had a lifespan of over a millennium, within which it evolved and changed. Scholars have divided this development into three main stages: early demotic, which corresponds to texts written in the Late Period (7th to 4th centuries BCE); middle demotic, corresponding to the Ptolemaic Period (end of the 4th century century to end of the 1st century BCE); and the final stage of late demotic or Roman demotic (from the end of the 1st century BCE to the 5th century CE). 

(-from, Demotic: Opening New Windows into the Understanding of Egyptian History and Culture, 

By Marina Escolano-Poveda)

Unlike sclerotic political language, the media is slowly starting a more demotic telling of the embarrassment we have in the White House. He’ll be gone soon enough. The sweepers behind his elephant parade this 2nd administration will follow after the turd-droppings left behind in his passing rolling them into sacks to be carted off to landfills already stinking with garbage.

He is less a president and more a cheap crook shaking down frightened marks to empty their pockets into his pursed burlap bag hanging over his shoulder.

Everyday his getaway vehicle drives to some cloud depository in the lowlife part of town to stack his stash  into invisible accounts he and his family guard with smirks, sneers, and passwords. They are, demotically, creeps and classless crooks who think they are untouchable.

Half the people in this country do not understand the patois he uses to patronize and placate their ignorance, spewing propaganda and lies that go over their heads and into their subconscious and subliminal resentments and revilements.

When he is gone he will not be missed.

When garbage is taken out to the curb or over to the dump you are glad to see it go. Glad to be rid of the smell.

Ptolemy, in his middle demotic way of speaking, gives us a view of the man we speak about:

“For almost every peculiar attribute of material nature becomes apparent from the peculiarities of its motion from place to place. [Thus one can distinguish] the corruptible from the incorruptible by [whether it undergoes] motion in a straight line or in a circle, and heavy from light, and passive from active, by [whether it moves] towards the centre or move away from the centre.”

― Ptolemy, Ptolemy's Almagest

We watch the movement of an erratic and staggering man as he careens away from decency and lawful adherence toward a pointless drift and grift far from any recognizable or redeemable centre. 

We are dizzy trying to follow his descent and dependence on indecency.

ascension -- is the holy reality already here

Seems odd, doesn't it?

Someone withdraws, is carried up to heaven, disappeared, gone. 

  Then he took them out as far as the outskirts of Bethany, and lifting up his hands he blessed them. Now as he blessed them, he withdrew from them and was carried up to heaven. They worshipped him and then went back to Jerusalem full of joy; and they were continually in the Temple praising God.        (from Luke 24:46-53)

Like its Buddhist mantra counterpart: “Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond...”

Maybe that’s the way to describe it -- the completely beyond -- as alternative/compliment/complement to the Ascension.

Still, we ask, where does someone go when they Ascend, when they go Completely Beyond? 

That’s for our contemplation. For our pondering. And, for those so inclined, for our prayer.

In the words of Joan Tollifson, who has an affinity with Buddhism and Advaita:

 The Holy Reality is already here, fully complete. And if you think otherwise, then simply stop, look and listen.  ~ Joan Tollifson

 Cheers to our Christian brothers and sisters.

That’s quite a koan you’ve got to chew on. 

before climbing stairs

 Leave it there

Empty coffee cup

Wood plate torn cupcake holder

Not tonight

without thinking, just like this is truth

Front room bookcase, dormant and sleepy, yields two books long sequestered. One is Robert Lowell’s Day by Day, 1977. The other is Only Don’t Know by Seung Sahn. From the latter:

 An eminent teacher said, “Without thinking, just like this is truth.” Descartes said, “I think; therefore I am.” If you are not thinking, what?

Being in prison is sometimes very difficult. But, if you make your opinion, your condition, and your situation disappear, then a difficult situation is O.K.; noise is O.K.; your mind will be unmoving. So, when you are doing something, you must do it! That is Zen. I hope you only go straight -- don’t know, make I-my-me disappear, attain enlightenment, and save all beings from suffering.

Yours in the Dharma,  S.S.

(Letter to Robert, July 24, 1978, in Only Don’t Know, The Teaching Letters of Zen Master Seung Sahn, 1982)

These old and dusty friends, like the human ones that have drifted off into yellow pages of temporal history, books have a way of showing up again. They’ve become brittle, spine glue dried out, fragile pages (as with  Schillabeeckx’s Jesus: An Experiment on Christology, reveal their late stage hospice pagination urging gentleness with each turning.

I remember Lowell’s phrasing in Memories of West Street and Lepke: 

Only teaching on Tuesdays, book-worming

in pajamas fresh from the washer each morning,

His use of “book-worming,” a word my eyes recognize, and sometimes my hand performs when not reaching for cup of water or Entenmann’s donut.   

Doing something while doing it. 

Yes, I remember that teaching.

wa 和 brings harmony

Doors open, screens hold, black flies dance in giddy warmth.

Everything fits alongside everything else.

Wa 和 Harmony is the aesthetic and core value that drives Japanese people, embedded deep down in our subconscious mind. Harmony with people, nature, season and the life force energy.

 

In Japan, our life evolves with the season. We surrender to nature, ride on the wave of nature and be harmonious with it. The seasonal rituals of Sinto and Buddhism, are practiced to bring harmony with our inner self and nature.

 

Wa is one of the four principles of Tea Ceremony, Wa Kei Sei Jaku (Harmony, Respect, Cleanness, Tranquility) originating from the 16th century.

 

Living consciously with awareness

brings Harmony.

Harmony brings inner-peace...

 

It’s a beautiful virtue. However, when it comes to communication, typical Japanese characteristics that reflect the virtue of harmony could be a challenging fact to comprehend for non-Japanese. 

 

When Japanese people start talking, we do utmost to create and keep the harmony in conversation.

 

The Japanese conversation is suggestive. Many words were omitted and it gives space to the other person to interpret in his/her own words. We would avoid confrontation at all costs.

 

When disagree, instead of saying No, or showing disagreement, we will divert the answer by saying “Perhaps” or “I will think about it” etc.

 

When we meet, we exchange the greeting ritual of bowing, exchanging our Ki, life-force energy, trying to feel and read the atmosphere, what others have in mind. It is our instinct to keep a harmonious atmosphere within the group. There is occasional silence in between the talk. In this silence, we calibrate and adjust the emotional energy.

 

In western culture, for example in Dutch culture, pragmatism is one of their core values as well as keeping harmony. So that, In communication, people’s primacy is to express themselves as clear as possible and make others understood as effectively as possible.

Both of them has a goal to achieve Harmony in their own way! 

 

I hope this background will help you understand each other with compassion. 

https://www.azumiuchitani.com/wa-the-art-of-harmony/

A friend lived and taught in Japan for ten years. She introduced me to Itadakimasu (いただきます), a Japanese phrase literally meaning “I humbly receive.” While usually applied as a sort of grace before meal, she presented it as a larger attitude of respectful gratitude for what is presented.

The grace of respectful gratitude for what is presented is a quiet dwelling in what would be a harmony of attentiveness even as disharmonious cacophony and disrespectful lack of grace is playing out in our midst.

There is a modeling of harmony even in disharmonious occasions of disrespect. The United States suffers these occasions daily emanating from Washington DC.

Nevertheless, my deceased friend would aver, quiet dignity and trusting resolve present an alternative to bad behavior and insulting demeaning verbiage.

Not every problem can be solved with a long-range rifle or missile bombs banging into hospitals and schools as is taking place in Ukraine and Gaza. Ignorance and cruelty have no bounds. Would America were to have a decent, thoughtful leadership who saw the right thing to do, and did it.

But this is what we have right now.

And it is disappointing. Putin and Netanyahu are Russia’s and Israel’s embarrassments. Trump is ours.

I am not very respectfully grateful. If I were to practice becoming my true core value, perhaps I would near good qualities that would honor the needful potential of human dignity and resplendence (ανταύγεια). Our darkness needs a glitter and shine, a brilliant radiant beauty that would offset and overcome the shadowy grime of greed, anger, and delusion.

Today is a good day to begin.

Wa 和 brings harmony. 

A gatha of inner attentive reminding breath -- “Behold what is within without -- behold what is without within!” 

Undifferentiated union. Harmony of relative and absolute. Form and emptiness intersecting one another.

Begone the false, begone the performatively inauthentic!

May all beings awaken into their true nature!

Gassho!  (合掌)

content to live

 Sit by Hosmer pond

Nones from France

Some think about

Ending their life

Not me

A nice breeze

Coffee milk and Mala beads

Birds recite their office

Blue water green leafing

Clear sky —

Prayer wheel turns with

Sun and silent mantra

I am content to live

an aspect of eternity

 Just one

More day

Another day

Two cats

Of a Tuesday

Morning

Life

Goes on

Breath

Itself

Sub specie

Aeternitatis

the day goes on

This Memorial Day we remember,  pray for, and honor all those dead and deadened by war. 

“The Wall", by Bruce Springsteen 

https://youtu.be/j3m0BXVKPu0?si=QwNhb0NzXcVn6Bvi

[Verse 1]

Cigarettes and a bottle of beer

This poem that I wrote for you

This black stone and these hard tears

Are all I got left now of you

I remember you in your Marine uniform laughing

Laughing at your ship-out party

I read Robert McNamara says he's sorry

[Verse 2]

Your high boots and striped t-shirt

Ah, Billy, you looked so bad

Yeah, you and your rock-n-roll band

You were best thing this shit town ever had

Now the men who put you here

Eat with their families in rich dining halls

And apology and forgiveness got no place here at all

At the wall

[Verse 3]

But I'm sorry I missed you last year

Couldn't find no one to drive me

If your eyes could cut through that black stone

Tell me would they recognize me?

For the living, time, it must be served

The day goes on

Cigarettes and a bottle of beer

Skin on black stone

(Written by Bruce Springsteen 1997/98)