thanks, you two

mary’s

mom and pop

remembered today

you never know about

your kid

she turned out ok

she did

joachim and anne

there are places i remember

 Going nowhere

Doing nothing

Blood (perhaps)

Keeping still

Day looks in

Window, green

Branches, 

unfluttering 

Sun sat on

Just like that —

It is time

Here in this place

tathātā, beside the white chickens

once

I was 

a zenist 

now

I am

not

so much

deep 

ends

upon 

such 

(as it is)

as long as i'm a ghost you can't see

 If, (again), if, there is an undeniable yet unfathomable interconnection with and between all manner of things existing and nonexistent, all manner of things individual and collective, all manner of things physical, mental, spiritual, and material -- if -- then is it not the goal of all consciousness, the task of each instance of consciousness, the responsibility of each one of us, to enter, realize, and act within such a reality in such a way that honors, embodies, and cares for all that each is, all that we are?

What is this reality? Throughout history, for better or worse, this origin/pleroma has been called “God,” or, in Advaita, (per Śaṅkara, 788-820), not other than God.

Pleroma (Koinē Greek: πλήρωμα, literally "fullness") generally refers to the totality of divine powers. It is used in Christian theological contexts, as well as in Gnosticism. The term also appears in the Epistle to the Colossians,^[1] which is traditionally attributed to Paul the Apostle.^[2] The word is used 17 times in the New Testament.^[3]

Etymology

The word literally means "fullness", from the verb plēróō (πληρόω, "to fill"), from plḗrēs (πλήρης, "full").^{[4] wikipedia}

Do we dread such manifest engagement with fullness? Or in Buddhist terms, Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom), engagement with fullness/emptiness?

We should let ourselves be brought naked and defenseless into the center of that dread where we stand alone before God in our nothingness, without explanation, without theories, completely dependent upon his providential care, in dire need of the gift of his grace, his mercy and the light of faith..22  (Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer, (New York : Doubleday Image, 1971), p. 69.)

I finally go down into damp earthen cellar to open airways, turn on dehumidifier, bump head five times on low beams -- you know, something better done a month ago. But I am nothing if not a procrastinating devotee of mañana. Or the Italian domani. 

Domani, forget domani

Let's live for now and anyhow

Who needs domani?

The moonlight, let's share the moonlight

Perhaps together we will never be again

forget domani frank sinatra lyrics 

A playful romantic lyric with existential ontological overtone. 

We are now. Perhaps we will never be again. 

This Net of Jewels, this interconnection, might be our true nature.

“Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out indefinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel at the net’s every node, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that the process of reflection is infinite. The Hua’yen school [of Buddhism] has been fond of this image, mentioned many times in its literature, because it symbolizes a cosmos in which there is an infinitely repeated interrelationship among all the members of the cosmos. This relationship is said to be one of simultaneous mutual identity and mutual intercausality.”

—Francis H. Cook, Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra 

https://scienceandnonduality.com/article/the-indras-net/

If, if such a metaphor is evocative, or iconography worthy of gaze, we might find ourselves listening closely or meditating carefully on exactly what we are. 

And what is that?

Each as all; all as each.

Unusquisque ut omnia; omnes ut singuli. (Each one as all things; all as individuals.)

It occurs to me that without such an inquiry and practice -- we wind up with the world we have known, currently dwell in, and will continue to suffer.

“If” is such a big word.

If the divine fullness were an actual reality, and if the mind/heart of actual reality were a sole, consoling, and resolute presence -- what would be a fitting response to such a reality and such individuals therein?

As in these lyrics:

If you could read my mind, love

What a tale my thoughts could tell

Just like an old time movie

'Bout a ghost from a wishin' well

In a castle dark or a fortress strong

With chains upon my feet

You know that ghost is me

And I will never be set free

As long as I'm a ghost you can't see

https://genius.com/Gordon-lightfoot-if-you-could-read-my-mind-lyrics 

We’ve known the feeling. As infants. During moments of profound intimacy. In silences and unexplainable gratefulness.

Is the feeling gone?

Can we get it back?  

exaudi

                            tr. — hear, listen

 Monastery bells, France

Sexte, pausing, listening —

The quiet joy of the hours!

gazing into what-is-here-coming-to-be

Love reading about Thomas Merton and Ludwig Wittgenstein in the same piece. 

Here is Wittgenstein on philosophy versus helping people practically:

The abstract philosopher troubled Wittgenstein. "What is the use of studying philosophy if all that it does for you is to enable you to talk with some plausibility about some abstruse questions of logic, etc., if it does not improve your thinking about the important questions of everyday life?"23 Though he taught philosophy at Cambridge during the 1930's and 1940's, he always advised students thinking of becoming academic philosophers to take up other careers, preferably ones which helped people practically, and during the war he stopped teaching to work in a hospital.

Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes, and are irresistably tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics, and leads the philosopher into complete darkness.24 

Wittgenstein's method, or therapy, of philosophy, was to investigate thinking that darkens our vision, that makes language opaque rather than transparent. " The real discovery is the one that makes me capable of stopping doing philosophy when I want to," he writes, " one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question."25

(--from SEEING THROUGH LANGUAGE:

Thomas Merton's Contemplation of Hidden Wholeness

With a Perspective from Ludwig Wittgenstein

-by Willie Yaryan

It is tormenting to try to capture the inane reality of today’s political thinking into some comprehensible sensible explanation.  

In the same way, poets look at things and attempt to sing the poetic resonance seen and heard there.

A new or another way of looking at things, situations, people.

“What-is” poetry (without the question mark.)

Many people might not like what they are looking at or hearing, but there is, I submit, a profound longing afoot to look into and see “What-Is” within and taking place as emerging Reality in our midst.

God is “not yet” here.

Yet, here.

As not-yet.

I suspect somewhere between this seeming paradox (“Yet, here. As not yet”) emerges the enticement of what we call “poetry”.

The sense of gazing into what-is-here-coming-to-be.

If you are unsure what this is, attempt to say it anyway.

Practice poetry. 

It is penurious promise richly recalcitrant.

kookie, kookie, lend me your comb

The spiritual life

Is one thing

After another

Until there isn’t

yes, there’s a mouse in the cupboard

Orange vanilla ice cream

Tomato bisque soup

Ginger ale

Able to eat

Mouth willing to try

In wohnkuche full of stillness

denke nicht, schau

                            tr. -- don’t think, look

suddenly turning

to Ludwig Wittgenstein

then to correspondence

between Elizabeth Bishop 

and Robert Lowell

I’d rather die with their words

than the uninhabitable news

of the unintelligible occupant

of the highest office in U.S.

a truly sorrowful occasion

rather, the letters of two American

poets and the language games of

an Austrian philosopher cleanse

the soiled airways and muddied

type-lines of disheartening illness

cum os nihil pronuntiare possit

                (tr. -- since the mouth can pronounce nothing)

Leaves and flowers do it every summer

learning how to speak again in breeze

and sunlight

I will have to learn to speak again

as prosthesis muting utterance garbles 

any offspring

finally

Just this: 

 There is a net of three dimensions, vast and wide stretching in all four directions throughout the universe. At each point that a string meets another point of the net there is a jewel, and this jewel reflects in it all the other jewels of the entire net, and further that reflection too is reflected in all the facets of all the other jewels.

No single part of the net can be independent of the rest; a single movement of the net in one place will affect, in some way, the most distant part of the net or universe. The all is reflected in the one, the one in the all

--The Avatamsaka Sutra (dailyzen)

verifiably not there

 Language precedes existence

(What a silly notion)

That would mean that language

Brings existence into Being

Remaining silent, then…

(Where did you go?)

perhaps in time

 Oral surgeon 

Does his job

Goes home

To eat

Not the patient

Pain goes home

To Tylenol

And ice pack

the mind which [is] between the two

 I think today of man in prison. He is so fond of Mary Magdalene. He brings his dogeared copy of The Gospel of Mary Magdalene, a book by Jean-Yves Leloup to Friday Morning Meetingbrook Conversations held weekly.

Today her feast day is celebrated.

This from Frontline: From Jesus to Christ

The Gospel of Mary

In this gnostic gospel, Mary Magdalene appears as a disciple, singled out by Jesus for special teachings. In this excerpt, the other disciples are discouraged and grieving Jesus' death. Mary stands up and attempts to comfort them, reminding them that Jesus' presence remains with them. Peter asks her to tell them the words of Jesus which she remembers. To his surprise, she does not reminisce about past conversations with Jesus, but claims that Jesus spoke to her that very day in a vision.

But they were grieved. They wept greatly, saying, "How shall we go to the gentiles and preach the gospel of the kingdom of the Son of Man? If they did not spare him, how will they spare us?" Then Mary stood up, greeted them all, and said to her brethren, "Do not weep and do not grieve nor be irresolute, for His grace will be entirely with you and will protect you. But rather let us praise His greatness, for He has prepared us and made us into men." When Mary said this, she turned their hearts to the Good, and they began to discuss the words of the [Saviour].

Peter said to Mary, "Sister, we know that the Saviour loved you more than the rest of women. Tell us the words of the Saviour which you remember - which you know (but) we do not, nor have we heard them." Mary answered and said, "What is hidden from you I will proclaim to you." And she began to speak to them these words: "I," she said, "I saw the Lord in a vision and I said to him, 'Lord, I saw you today in a vision.' He answered and said to me, 'Blessed are you that you did not waver at the sight of me. For where the mind is, there is the treasure.' I said to him, 'Lord, how does he who sees the vision see it through the soul or through the spirit?' The Saviour answered and said, 'He does not see through the soul nor through the spirit, but the mind which [is] between the two - that is [what] sees the vision...'

(the mid-section of the original text is missing)

"[S] it. And desire that, 'I did not see you descending, but now I see you ascending. Why do you lie, since you belong to me?' The soul answered and said, 'I saw you. You did not see me nor recognise me. I served you as a garment, and you did not know me.' When it had said this, it went away rejoicing greatly.

"Again it came to the third power, which is called ignorance. It (the power) questioned the soul saying, 'Where are you going? In wickedness are you bound. But you are bound; do not judge!' And the soul said, 'Why do you judge me although I have not judged? I was bound though I have not bound. I was not recognised. But I have recognised that the All is being dissolved, both the earthly (things) and the heavenly'.

When the soul had overcome the third power, it went upwards and saw the fourth power, (which) took seven forms. The first form is darkness, the second desire, the third ignorance, the fourth is the excitement of death, the

fifth is the kingdom of the flesh, the sixth is the foolish wisdom of flesh, the seventh is the wrathful wisdom. These are the seven [powers] of wrath. They ask the soul, "Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?" The soul answered and said, "What binds me has been slain, and what surrounds me has been overcome, and my desire has been ended and ignorance has died. In a [world] I was released from a world, [and] in a type from a heavenly type, and (from) the fetter of oblivion which is transient. From this time on will I attain to the rest of the time, of the season, of the aeon, in silence."

When Mary had said this, she fell silent, since it was to this point that the Saviour had spoken with her. But Andrew answered and said to the brethren, "Say what you (wish to) say about what she has said. I at least do not believe that the Saviour said this. For certainly these teachings are strange ideas." Peter answered and spoke concerning these same things. He questioned them about the Saviour: "Did He really speak with a woman without our knowledge (and) not openly? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did He prefer her to us?"

Then Mary wept and said to Peter, "My brother Peter, what do you think? Do you think that I thought this up myself in my heart, or that I am lying about the Saviour? Levi answered and said to Peter, "Peter, you have always been hot - tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like the adversaries. But if the Saviour made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Saviour knows her very well. That is why He loved her more than us. Rather let us be ashamed and put on the perfect man and acquire him for ourselves as He commanded us, and preach the gospel, not laying down any other rule or other law beyond what the Saviour said." ... and they began to go forth [to] proclaim and to preach.

(--From The Nag Hammadi Library in English, J M Robinson, Harper Collins)

                      --in Frontline: From Jesus to Christ

just to be clear, a favorite poem

Villager

What's wrong will always be wrong.  I've seen him lean

against the house hours and glare at the sea.  His eyes say

no boat will come.  His harsh throated seemingly

good natured mother bends her back to the soil

and there at least all grows well.  When I speak with him

his eyes move away to the sea and I imagine

the red in his face from drink is also from

some ancient tribal shame. To him I'm wealthy.

When we talk I know how wealthy I am.

The police have him on file: petty theft.

I'm certain he steals to make up for the nothing he finds

every day in the sea, and to find money for drink.

Some days a woman picks him up, a sister I'm told,

takes him away and hours later delivers him back

passed out.  Next morning again he's propped against

the house, the tide out in his eyes.  I imagine

his sister, if that's who she is, knows oblivion

is what he must have often to survive.

I have much to tell him.  And nothing.  I'd start

with the sea.  I'd say, there was another sea something

like this long ago, and another me.  By the time

I got to the point he'd be looking away and be right.

No two hurts are the same, and most have compensations

too lovely to leave.  At night, a photo glows alive

inside him when his mother's asleep and the cops

aren't watching. It lights up in the dark

whenever he looks hard and by dawn has burned out.

I almost forget: he'd do anything for you.  Love him

for what you might have become

and love him for what you are, not that far

from him.  We are never that far.  Love

everyone you can.  The list gets longer and shorter.

We're seldom better than weather.  We're nearly as good

as a woman we met in passing once at Invergarry.

Don't be sorry, for him or for self.  Love the last star

broken by storm. And love you.  You hold it together.

  (Poem by Richard Hugo, in The Right Madness on Skye)

our mutual and respectful quiet

 There’s a metaphor hiding somewhere in here -- is what the wú shēngyi 無生意 (businessless) Takuhatsu 托鉢 (beggar for alms) might say after reading a poem such as Whyte’s:

Sitting Zen

                        by David Whyte 

After three days of sitting

hard by the window

following grief through

the breath

like a hunter

who has tracked for days

the blood spots

of his injured prey

I came to the lake

where the deer had run

exhausted

refusing to save

its life in the

dark water

and there it fell

to ground

in our mutual

and respectful quiet

pierced

by

the pale diamond

edge of the breath’s

listening

Presence.

-from River Flow: New & Selected Poems; by David Whyte, originally published in Fire in the Earth

I put down my begging bowl. I will get back to mowing grass. I will pour a cup of coffee.

I will attend the stark presence of the wounded animal come to rest at water’s edge.

I will look without speaking at the tracks I’ve left since getting up from cushion and walking unsteadily away from revelations actually too lovely to leave.  (cf. piece on Richard Hugo, esp. pp. 14 [16] & 15 [17} his poem Villager) 

ballad of a broken image

 never thought one man

could harm so much our land

would grab it all for his self

never thought one man

would turn hate into patriotism

mock people he’s meant to serve

deprive food and medicine

put his name and face on everything

he ain’t Jesus

he ain’t Washington or Lincoln 

he’s someone whose death

will disappoint no one

so if you pray, pray for him

his life so terribly empty

pray for all he’s hurt, all he’s

left behind in tatters, it matters

that we rise above invective 

find a new perspective, see him

for what he was and will be --

no one to replicate or emulate

hermit at night, eating only night

 Opinions are onions

Peeling brings tears

(Still, the cook says

Someone has to)

I no longer

Want to hear

Someone’s opinion

Show me earth

Show me sky

Show me water

I will touch, I will look

I will sip and cool face

nox noctis

 Owls call back and forth

Fox crosses yard light on barn

Night is theirs, I finger beads

the stranger she used to wait for

Sometimes when we call to God what we get is the sound of God-being-called. 

"Something that exists is out of the mind. To be real. To have no concept of it." (Jean-Luc Marion)

"If you understand it, it is not God." (St Augustine)

In prison today we speak of meaning, of poetry, of men, of feminist philosophy, of good dogs, of what books serve.

I don’t know -- maybe God is what is going on between us in corresponding relationality.

We do not see it in itself.

But we can get a sense of something afoot.

Something.

As Lucille Clifton writes:

my dream about the second coming

mary is an old woman without shoes.

she doesn’t believe it.

not when her belly starts to bubble

and leave the print of a finger where

no man touches.

not when the snow in her hair melts away.

not when the stranger she used to wait for

appears dressed in lights at her

kitchen table.

she is an old woman and

doesn’t believe it. 

 

when Something drops onto her toes one night

she calls it a fox

but she feeds it.

(-- poem by Lucille Clifton, from Next, 1987)

Perhaps there’s no need to believe in God.

One has to, rather, feel and feed what is there.

the future looks bright ahead

To live in the world you wish would come, 

don't cheat, don't lie, don't be cruel.

Don’t want no other one, baby, 

you're the only one I’m thinking of.

(Thank you, thank you! 

Thank you very much!)