Somebody or something is on thin ice.

Maybe Lazarus. He'd stopped breathing, no coursing blood, tissues gone cold, set in cave tomb for the long haul.
Maybe Jesus. They script him cool and hip to the opportunity to do a media splash and photo-op the glory of God thing now that his friend had died.
Maybe it's the person in Saskia's dream who's on thin ice -- that's the words she was told: Justin is on thin ice.

The ice in mid-coast disappears fast and early this late winter. Chickawaukie Pond, the large body of ice last week along route 17 going into Rockland is completely melted, no ice, open water.

Maybe she got the spelling wrong. Maybe "justice" is on thin ice. And we are calling to help before it sinks out of grasp and we are left to surface views, surface memories, and surface transport -- but no justice.

This week we'll invite some people to speak with each other about justice and what we are learning following the thin ice experience one family is suffering in the larger family of the local Catholic Church.

Jesus fell through the thin ice. Grandstanding be dammed, he abandons the show -- and weeps. He comes to understand (or maybe the writers do) that his life is not a propaganda pamphlet. He is flesh and blood. His friend has died. Many are weeping. He awakens.

When he awakens, Lazarus awakens. So too, the writers awaken. The sisters see their brother through their tears. Jesus and Lazarus, Martha and Mary stand there, the other Jews attending this awakening also stand there. No cameras. No reporter's notebooks. No publicist's bus idling nearby. The scene is cleared. Anyone not belonging in that instant of awakening disappears.

Justice, finally.
From the Sanskrit yos, meaning welfare, L.jus, meaning right, justice -- the right understanding of the well-fare-ing of each in light of all. No one fares well until all fare well. It's not rhetoric. It's what is real -- all the way down.

Lazarus fell through, Jesus fell through, and those attending this love fell through -- all the way through. Maybe there is a correlation between thin ice, justice, love, what we call 'death,' and falling through into a depth of understanding and awakening. It seems our fears keep us on surface. When one who has broken through says, "do not fear," we are invited to go where true justice goes.

Few attend when justice occurs -- real justice is a quiet, almost intimate instance of awakening. Perhaps the "All," or, the glory of God, attends only when justice occurs. And not until.

It is Saint Patrick's Day. The Irish smile. And a sweet celebration that is!
But the ice is thin. Winter wanes. Spring longs for itself from the depths, from underground where water tables wander waking from winter frost.

That we each attend the welfare of all is only right.
Off with you! Save each other. Keep each other in mind and heart. Then, for God's sake and all our family's too -- cry for, and smile with, justice!

Top of the mornin' to us all!

When is two not two, two not one, one not two, and one not one?

We say we are of two minds. That’s mostly true. We’ve grown up with that construct and it helps us, so to speak, navigate our way through a non-corresponding dualistic civilization such as we inhabit.

But like the vertical and horizontal -- what appears to the distant seeing mind as two separate planes and two separate movements, is, to the near seeing mind the place of intersection where one and the other punctuate, pass through, emphasize, and celebrate each other.

The fundamental teaching of Buddhism is nothing but the doctrine of One Mind. This Mind is originally perfect and vastly illuminating. It is clear and pure, containing nothing, not even a fine dust. There is neither delusion nor enlightenment, neither birth nor death, neither saints nor sinners. Sentient beings and Buddhas are of the same fundamental nature. There are no two natures to distinguish them. This is why Bodhidharma came from the west to teach the Ch’an method of “direct pointing” to the original true Mind.
- Han-Shan Te-Ch’ing (dailyzen)

This “direct pointing” might be seen as the intersection wherein we are centric within the expanding realization flowing in every direction from and through the very point of origin – here, now – the crossing embrace of reality itself.

Diane sends me two days running interesting pieces. Yesterday from "The Guardian," -- today from "www.SpiritualityHealth.com -- delivering quotations about Jesus that reveal what writers from many religious traditions love and respect about him." Today's is:

Day 27 of Lent March 15, 2002
MOVE VERTICALLY AND HORIZONTALLY

Contemplation unites us with God at a vertical level where we transcend ourselves, the world and all our problems, and experience oneness with God. It is at the same time a mode of action at the horizontal level by which we go out from the center of peace in God to the whole world. The further we go vertically towards God, the further we can go horizontally towards men.

Jesus is the man who is totally given to God, to the Father, the one who is totally surrendered to the vertical movement, so that the Son always sees what the Father is doing. At the same time he was totally open to all people and to life as a whole. That is the dual movement, vertical and horizontal, of contemplation in action, action in contemplation.
-- Bede Griffiths quoted in "Bede Griffiths" edited by Peter Spink

Bede Griffiths was a Benedictine monk equally at home in an English cloister wearing black robes (20 years) as well as in an Indian ashram wearing the colorful garb of a sunyasin, a holy mendicant (38 years). Both expressions surrender to God, the All. It was in India he deepened his life with a penetrating practice of contemplation that could bow respectfully to two cultures, two religions seated alongside him.

Bede came to the advaitic experience, (non-duality), seeing things whole.

I would like to share with you something of my advaitic experience...I was overwhelmed and deluged with love. The feminine in me opened up and a whole new vision opened. I saw love as the basic principle of the whole universe. I saw God in the earth, in trees, in mountains. It led me to the conviction that there is no absolute good or evil in this world. We have to let go of all concepts which divide the world into good and evil, right and wrong, and begin to see the complimentarity of opposites which Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa called the coincidentia oppositorum, the "coincidence of opposites."
(Quote from a talk he gave in Jaiharikal in May 1991)

Sr. Pascaline Coff, O.S.B. in “MAN, MONK, MYSTIC” tells that "Father Bede Griffiths, Swami Dayananda, died May 13, 1993, barefooted and clothed in the color of the sun, in his thatched hut at Shantivanam in South India."

There is so much to look forward to – so much to look at right here and now. So much longing to be looked at and seen.
But there is another way to say this, an advaitic way, namely – there is so much looking ‘as’ what is looking.

Each place we are -- whether in Maine, Nova Scotia, South England, South India, New York, Delaware, or Texas -- there is always the open invitation we might come to a mind that is not dual or divisive.

This mind, this consciousness, will understand and have compassion. It will remain at peace and loving even when everyone (including ourselves) races and reaches after the dispersing attractive nuisances we call things, possessions, accomplishments, and solutions to problems that our racing and reaching have created.

We will come to rest for a while. This seems a fine prospect! When we simply do what is there to be done. When we merely engage what is there for us to engage – without counting, without fear, without concepts of compulsion.

No doubt we’ll meet each other then. We’ll meet many we thought outside our boundaries. We’ll meet all we’ve not yet even begun to imagine possible.

To the question: "When is two not two, two not one, one not two, and one not one?"
No doubt we’ll say: "What a coincidence!"

Young man comes in, says, “It’s great places like this exist.” He says he needs some peace. He sits at piano, plays his own composition “Bells of Love,” and then makes thunder and delicacy with keys and chords. “What days are you open,” he asks. “You mind if I come around?” Adds, “You don’t mind if I don’t buy anything?” To the last two questions -- “Nope.”

The small cape fills with melodic passion of lone musician.

"Le grand malheur, de ne pouvoir être seul": the great sickness, said La Bruyère, is the inability to be alone. Solitude was once counted a virtue. These days, recluses are regarded with suspicion. "Loner" is a word reserved for paedophiles and serial killers. Only a special few are allowed to retreat from society: those, like monks and nuns, wearing the proper uniform. The rest of us are expected to surround ourselves with company; only then can we keep the infinite spaces at bay. Even the solitary stroll, traditionally a cure for most things (solvitur ambulando: it is solved by walking), has been abolished, thanks to the personal stereo and mobile phone.

Yet hermits have been around since the first cave. In every culture they can be found heading into the wilderness and living off roots and berries. The novelist Isabel Colegate, author of The Shooting Party, offers a short, idiosyncratic history of the human quest for solitude. She takes her title from Thomas Traherne: "A man that Studies Happiness must sit alone like a Sparrow upon the House Top, and like a Pelican in the Wilderness."
(From review by Blake Morrison, Saturday February 16, 2002, The Guardian, A Pelican in the Wilderness: Hermits, Solitaries and Recluses, by Isabel Colegate 284pp)

Robert and Su-Sane stop by a while. We speak of the evolving meaning of ‘hermit.’ The hermit is one able to be alone. To be alone as they are, even with another. To be alone with what one is. To be alone wherever one is.

A hermit is alone with himself or herself. No need to impress, explain, or digress. Each act, thought, prayer, or practice is done for itself. The hermit knows, i.e. sees, that each act carries its own integrity. The hermit’s practice is to allow the fact and sound of that integrity to carry itself.

The realm of
buddhahood is not some
external world where there
is a formal "Buddha."
It’s the realm of the wisdom
of a self awakened sage.
- Ta Hui (12th century)

The musician leaves to go back to the bar down the street. “You’re open tomorrow?” “Yep.”

Six bufflehead land on water out back window. Sun line climbs white wall of Wayfarer across harbor. It shines from 4th window of house behind red building. Converted white lobster boat “Z-2” sits at ease at its float as 3 mergansers pass by its bow.

Saskia arrives back. Jim sits by fire. Thursday evening. Time for Putting on the Mind of Christ.
One loon dives. Kristen says looking out the window, “I vant to be a loon.”

In Jim Marion's book we read the chapter beginning Part IV "The Consciousness of a Human as a Realized Divinity." He writes that " God has never created ex nihilo , but gave (and continues to give) birth out of the Womb of Her Infinitely Creative Self." (p.186) He says the Kogi tribe of Columbia, South America, expresses this same truth as follows:

In the beginning there was blackness
Only the Sea...
The sea was the Mother.
The mother was not people, she was not anything...
She was when she was, darkly.
She was memory and potential.
She was aluna [mind, consciousness].
(Marion,p.187, quoting Alan Ereira, in The Elder Brothers, c.1992)

Which one is it?
Alone; a loon; aluna?

Perhaps our great unease is the unwillingness to stay inside the action, not separate ourselves from the very fact of what we are revealing as causal accomplice to the creation and destruction of the world.

Alone. A loon. Aluna -- mind, consciousness itself.

Here,
we are,
visiting each other.

The Christ and The Bodhisattva: A Symposium!
This might be the origin, focus, ground, and continuing grace of Meetingbrook.

This late winter of 2002 we wander off camping and traveling to Maritime Canada to visit a river and a place that calls for a listen and a look.

In the autumn of 1984 Saskia and I happened onto a public radio announcement as we traveled back from Ottawa through Vermont. The announcement said that a conference at Middlebury College beginning that very day would feature a talk by the Dalai Lama and would have as its theme The Christ and the Bodhisattva: A Symposium. Christian and Buddhist scholars would think together about these two down to earth and extraordinary designations of persons. We pitched our tent and attended.

Sitting on wooden deck at night on river island in Nova Scotia between two flowing expressions of Quinan River eating bread with Brynza cheese, drinking seltzer water with lemon flavor -- we settle into the still moving silence of our lives. Sando is flat out, her nose at edge of deck, waiting treats of biscuits.

Symposium – a lovely word! (From Gk. sym=together with; & pinein=to drink).

This symposium of persons and beings, of longing and surrendering, this sipping together of water flowing on either side or between us – this is what Meetingbrook has been since its inchoate intuition in 1984. A symposium, a free interchange of ideas -- a generous revelation of what each person sees or experiences -- this is our center ground and rising spirit, and what Meetingbrook is attempting since its incarnate experience at Ragged Mountain in Camden in 1991 and marketplace appearance in 1996.

This mediation between expressions of the sacred-natural is where we find ourselves after long hours of road and water crossing.
This meditation of the twoness of one, the oneness of two -- and not holding fast the two or the one, but letting what flows by flow by with our attention and affection, -- this is where we find ourselves after many years clinging and reaching after what appeared to be secure traditional belief or refuge.

Each night, I gaze upon a pond,
a Zen body sitting beside a moon.
Nothing is really there, and yet
it is all so clear and bright.
I cannot describe it.
If you would know the empty mind
your own mind must
be as clear and bright
as this full moon upon the water.
- Chiao Jan (785-895)

The stars were out in Quinan for our meal. The moon was off in conversation with rain clouds negotiating timetables and puddle depths for next day. Bubbles of light flowed past wooden platform over river where a single candle burned. Even there, hundreds of road and sea miles away from our inchoate and incarnate origins, we find ourselves in the middle of our practice, in the middle of the symbols and logo of the practice -- two separated flows of living water meeting again at the place watched over by strong, grounded, and rising tree. .

Formed by nature, accompanied by seeing, sacred expressions of the longing to be what is true.
The phrase Zen Contemplative Ecology might mean this – Each itself, looking caringly and carefully, in true relationship with the whole.

Driving out the 4.5 kilometers of dirt road from the 900-acre property we’d camped on, we saw the puddles and deliberation results from prior night’s symposium of moon and clouds. Slowly, carefully maneuvering around places we might get stuck, we make our way out and free. Gale winds tore at flags and made the crossing, Digby to St. John, notable with pitch and yaw.

We were, wouldn’t you know, the last ones to their car, the last ones off the ferry in New Brunswick – all others having departed by and around our seemingly abandoned vehicle as we stood middle-deck noticing this and that, waiting to be called, obviously having missed the one given.

This designation – late and last – seemed appropriate to the theme we so carefully acknowledge. The Christ – the loving one here and now we will all meet together at end. The Bodhisattva – the compassionate one here and now that will not go beyond until all travel beyond together.

When I was in the field of human ecology, engaged in work with youth in care, there was a tension formed by two schools of thought, or beliefs, about what the work was to be done. Some believed it was working with individuals one to one. Others believed it was working with the group as a whole.

Then there was an enlightened view, and wording of it, that grasped the experience as working with the individual in the group.

In one of his short stories Camus describes how a painter who had not much faith in his own talents anyhow, is suddenly besieged by friends and “fans” who successfully prevent him from doing any worthwhile painting at all. In despair he finally retires to an attic where he works at what is to be his masterpiece in complete solitude. Finally he collapses, and the masterpiece is found to be a perfect and absolute blank, except that in the center of it one word is written in a microscopic hand; and this one word was clearly enough written except for one letter. Had he written solitaire or solidaire? (p.40, Zaehner)

In the chapter “Solitary or Solidary,” in his book Matter and Spirit, Their convergence in Eastern Religions, Marx, and Teilhard de Chardin (c.1963), R.C. Zaehner continues,
This is true of religion too. Does it concern itself primarily with individual salvation (however this word is understood) or with that of the “nation,” the “Church,” and beyond that of the whole human race?

One letter difference – and the whole perspective shifts. Solitaire or Solidaire?
What was the artist’s insight?
Alone? All together?

What captures my attention is the beliefs we hold. Beliefs – that which we hold as true -- are usually what separates us from each other: ideas fastened to systems; ideals nailed to floors; received opinions laden with pedigree and family crest. These beliefs are trotted out like cute children at Sunday picnics to prove the fertility and fidelity of their parents.

It seems a strange choice -- we’d rather live by belief than by direct perception or apprehension. My sense is we do fine sipping tea or coffee, noticing the weather, feeling the ground underfoot, touching the arm near us with our extended fingers.

What would life be like experiencing without belief? Or, is everything as it is because we believe it to be that way?

The dirt road, the dog crossing from side to side, the water in the ditch moving downhill – these observations take place in their own light. We, each one of us, take place in our own light. That light, whatever we name its source, is felt belonging.

What shows itself in that light is worth looking at. Never mind trying to fit what you see into a belief that intends to carry experience somewhere else. Each experience belongs where it is, at its originating spot, in its own light.

Solitaire? or, Solidaire? Alone, or, All together?
An enlightened view would see the experience as living alone together, being alone with others.

It’s not a matter of belief. It’s the spirit of felt experience.
See for yourself. Allow what arises to converge.

Most times, just sitting is enough.
One's own words are as senseless as are the words of others.
Silence helps.

Light rain–the mountain
forest is wrapped in mist,
slowly the fog changes
to clouds and haze.
Along the boundless
river bank, many crows.
I walk to a hill overlooking
the valley to sit in zazen.
- Ryokan (1758-1831)(dailyzen)

A letter from Sam saying he hopes something concrete comes from the idea of the laura, "but it does sound a little vague."
I try to email him thanking him for putting his finger right on it. It is returned several times. Bad address. Just like him.

He's right. It's vague. It's not a piece of sculpture hardened by fire and form. It's not a poem tight inside meter and rhyme. It's not jell-o cohering to itself.

Zazen isn't vague. Nothing comes of it.
That's something to sit with.

What remains when everything falls away?
Adrift, does God, still, remain? Or, is it our singing?

As for me, I delight
in the everyday Way,
among mist-wrapped
vines and rocky caves.
Here in the wilderness
I am completely free,
with my friends,
the white clouds, idling forever.
There are roads,
but they do not reach the world;
since I am mindless,
who can rouse my thoughts?
On a bed of stone
I sit, alone in the night,
while the round moon
climbs up Cold Mountain.
- Han Shan, (dailyzen.com)

At night a character wakes in the film saying, “I have no face!”
He is coming to the conclusion of a long story.

In the film “Sunshine” by István Szabó, a Hungarian Jewish family wrestles with assimilation during the troubling times Nazi, Fascist, Communist, and reactionary forces brought. They’ve lived and died through the corruption of culture, human life, and politics when ideals were both a crime and a curse.

Ivan Sors, the 4th generation son in the film, passes beyond the facts of desolation and deceit experienced by his family. In a letter found at end written by his great grandfather he reads:
Never give up your religion, not for God; God is present in all religions. But if your life becomes a struggle for acceptance you’ll always be unhappy. Religion may not be perfect, but is a well-built boat that could stay balanced and carry you to the other shore.
Our life is nothing but a boat adrift on water balanced by permanent uncertainty. I think of you with all my love. Your father, Emmanuel Sonnenschein

When Ivan delivers graveside remarks for a colleague turned victim of harsh political justice, he recalls a quotation from his father’s desk, We are afraid of seeing clearly and being seen clearly. He begins to understand what remains when all falls away.

His grandmother, Valéria Sors, tells him, Politics has made a mess of our lives. Still, life was beautiful. I’ve enjoyed waking every morning. I’ve always tried to photograph what’s beautiful in life, but it hasn’t always been easy.
This practice -- appreciating each thing in its own light!

At end, alone, returning to the family name Sonnenschein (Sunshine), Ivan walks away. Everything lost, but one thing. He realizes the family gift was preserved by his grandmother, the only one in our family who had the gift of breathing freely.

………..
Here, I think about what remains when everything is lost. Loss is full of fear – like waking faceless. Yet, it is an ongoing gift, a subtracting gift taking from us all we’ve added, changed, or accumulated. What is the source of this gift? Why do we fear the night?

We are each alone in the night. There -- free from the tempting twosomes of victory and defeat, success and failure, popularity and disgrace, profit and loss, approval and disapproval – we encounter what is alone there to be seen.

Monks pray at night. Hermits sit in dark silence. In the wars we wage, those on watch pace their posts with sharp awareness expected from those trusted to acknowledge and attend every sound.

Attending alone every sound, you disappear.
Alone, what remains?

What remains attending? Consider this!
Do so breathing freely!

This consideration is similar to Ivan’s. It moves from “I have no face,” to facing what is freely there waiting to be realized. This consideration is not about doing something or nothing, not about finding the one thing. Ivan, like his father, grandfather, great grandfather, and great great grandfather, loses everything, just as others lost everything they were promised. But now he feels he no longer hides. He goes on, realizing the family gift.

When all else falls away, what, still, remains?
God? Or our singing?

What would we call it?
Did I hear myself say something?
No. Nothing.

As film credits roll, a final song is sung, “Please God, May We Always Go On Singing.”

Nothing, but singing, please God!

Allah and Yahweh, two names of God, are disappearing.

Question: Where is God not found? Answer: Where you are not looking.

Filed at 4:40 a.m. ET
JERUSALEM (AP) -- In back-to-back attacks early Tuesday, a Palestinian man opened fire on a crowded Tel Aviv nightclub, a suicide bomber blew himself up on an Israeli bus and gunmen ambushed Israeli motorists in the West Bank. In all, five Israelis and two Palestinian assailants were killed.

In the past four days of fighting, 32 Palestinians and 27 Israelis have been killed, one of the sharpest escalations since violence erupted in September 2000.(nytimes, web edition, 5Mar02)

Theology is flawed. Theology’s flaw is that it hides the name of God. God’s name is and has been more obvious and accessible than the guardians of God have admitted. Now, danger and misperception threaten.

God’s name is missing in the report of 59 killed in four days. Allah and Yahweh are missing in action.

The danger and misperception is that two peoples, Arabs and Jews, mispronounce the name of God. The mispronunciations, “shooting” and “bombing,” are used in fervent prayer. The Middle East has abandoned the true name of God for these substitute names. Loading the substitute names of God with bullets and nails, shells and powder, tanks and bulldozers, the faithful in Israel and Palestine pray for God’s death. God is worried. God is dying.

God has true names, many true names. God has more true names than there are stars or grains of sand, or even sets of arms and legs in the billions upon billions of creatures that have ever, do now, or will ever live. Allah and Yahweh are but two names.

There is a curious reality that surrounds these names. Because God is beyond human comprehension, theology tries to make comprehensible to our limited human intellect what we can understand about God. Of course any theologian worth his or her salt would admit (off the record) that what we can understand is very little. But they neglect to tell us something we can understand.

They neglect to tell us that God uses our name. Your name, my name, everyone’s name – these are also the names of God. There it is! Your name is God’s name. So, what are you going to do with your name? What will you do with God?

What about Allah and Yahweh? Two perfectly good names! Two perfectly good expressions of God!

Allah and Yahweh are dying – much the same way words and names die from misuse, overuse, or abuse. To many people, this is sad.

And it is sad. It would seem more honest if the Arabs and Jews – or for that case, Americans, Europeans, Asians, Africans, Salvadorans, Columbians, etc -- were to proclaim that they kill and maim in the name of property, or military dominance, or even in the name of ethnic superiority. No, they kill and maim in the name of Allah and Yahweh, in the names of their prophets and anointed ones. This is a great strain on names of God. So much so that these names are crumbling and deteriorating under the weight of so much hatred and dishonor.

And without a name, can God (whether Great or G-d) continue to dwell in our midst, in what we consider our land? Allah and Yahweh, two fine names, are being abandoned.

If they are abandoned, what remains? What names will be invoked before detonating explosives, dropping bombs, or squeezing triggers? Will each person call out his or her own names? Moshe be praised? Abdul is great? Benjamin is one? Yosef is most high? George is the man? Miguel is macho?

In my youth I was taught that the Name of God was Holy. I was told that at the name of God every head should bow, every knee bend, and every heart be glad. I feel I am growing very old, too forgetful, a wide distance growing between that teaching and the raw experiences perpetrated in the name of God. I’m afraid that God has changed. God is turning away from these names, is turning away from our names, and returning to the Silence Beyond the Void.

(The Judeo-Christian West, having abandoned its contemplative tradition, wonders and worries senselessly why so many are turning to Buddhism, meditation, and Zen. Perhaps one reason is that Buddhist practice suggests a clear roadmap to the silence beyond the void. The longing is deep for what we’ve called God, and has no end! It might be that the practice of silence, going beyond, and emptiness, is a way of following the way of abandonment, surrender, and conversion of life. A way between what was and what will be – practicing looking to, listening for, and finding the sacred & wholly ordinary – right here, right now.)

Without God’s names able to be heard by our ears and spoken by our mouths will we be able to hear anything, to speak anything of value or worth? Or will our hearing and speaking become that of the stone deaf and iron mute? Will our communication be reduced to dollar signs, real estate signs, stock market symbols, and body counts? Some, I’m certain, would make the claim that such pragmatic semiotics of contemporary culture would be an improvement over desiccated syntactics of ancient religion.

I don’t know. I’d rather hear “Allah is Great!” and, “Yahweh is One!” than either of the other substitutes saying, “Allah murders,” “Yahweh destroys,” “I martyr myself,” “I sacrifice you,” “The asking price is,” “Stocks fell today,” “The euro and peso are up,” and, finally, “59 expressions of God are dead today.”

Will Allah and Yahweh be dead tomorrow? Will anyone even notice?
Where is God not found? Where are you not looking?

It rained most the day. Mushroom soup in bowls. A single vigil candle in lantern outside by steps, grounded, shows way for Sunday Evening Practice. Sangha sits. Six people, one dog, one cat.

If you ask me to tell what community is, I say this: Community is ordinary contact, ordinary connection, ordinary conversation.

Form is fragile; emptiness holds nothing. Around table, water and bread -- and soup. Bakery goods circling talk of community.

Community is simple. Intend it, there it is. See it there, it is created. Call it, the eyes of those there, loving where they are, turn to see what you are asking.

I invite community the way an owl invites moonlight. Only the call. Just the call. If moon stays behind passing cloud; if cloud lets hide night mouse; if tumbling water runs down mountain furrow where snow disappears under last autumns leaves in silver light -- these phases of glowing fact assure -- every call received.
Even ladybug crawling along wire has no other thought but to crawl along the wire.

This is the contemplative's calling -- no other thought.

What we've known as the complex world of human affairs and ideas -- a world strewn with desolate illusion and fractious impertinence -- that world is no more.

Ladybug makes her way along lengthy loop returning to crossing point from which she departs. This is a clue.

Bells under cedar tree wrangle with wind. Night tucks asleep tired bodies, exhausted minds.

My prayer, if that is what it is called, follows: You who live, live here, live who you are with love!

No country, no church, no membership card, no documented paperwork, no protest, no affiliation, no this, no that -- only prayer. Prayer is all of community one receives.

You who live, live here, live who you are with love!

The call to no other, to be no other, to live alone what we are -- this call is heard finding all form fragile, emptiness holding nothing, returning open graciousness. Love.

I resign. I turn in. I enter the non-existing country of nescience. I surrender disappearing into the words ama nescire -- love to be unknown!

The moon, the owl, the mouse, and the mountain stream -- each lives there -- each dwells silent recognition. What once I was is gone unknown there.

Therefore will I be whole again,
And be made new again,
And again be made as a child.

For the night is dark.
But off in the east I see low light.
I smell the dawn.

And will find my God in the thwarted love that breaks between us!
(--final lines of poem "In Savage Wastes" by Brother Antoninus, {William Everson})

Receiving -- all one receives -- community.

No one is alone.

A woman sat by the fire in the shop yesterday, crying.

Daily activity is nothing
Other than harmony within.
When each thing I do is
Without taking or rejecting,
There is no contradiction anywhere.
For whom is the majesty
Of red and purple robes?
The summit of the inner being
Has never been defiled
By the dust of the world.
- P’ang Yun (dailyzen)

She didn’t know what or how to think about the war the United States is fighting. She’d been exchanging emails with her sister, always in a series of twos:

One series is personal – the love and laughter they share with each other.
The second is philosophical, a moral and ethical complaint. They voice their strong difference about Mr. Bush and his rhetorical, secretive posture toward military, governmental, and conflicting private benefits from his policy direction in matters of energy, money, and political survival.

Her tears come with the ambiguity and consternation surrounding the second consideration. She wants to trust the president and his advisors in the grave matters of anti-terrorism and setting firewalls of greater security for Americans and all peoples committed to freedom. But she is confused by this administration’s tainted relationships with Enron as well as other secret deals, corporate interests, and smell of greed and private benefit, not to mention the odor that remains from the last election with its flagrant Rhenquist/Scalia Supreme Court selection of Bush over a more measured judicial process.

She said she cried because when you want to trust and you sorely doubt the object of that trust, there is a deep wound to the heart and the soul.

Someone else said the nation is reeling not only from the Sept.11th attacks, but also from alienation of affection and breach of promise. The others looked at him. Well, he said, the switch from flag as symbol of sorrow for victims of the terrorist attacks, to the flag as let’s go kill evildoers. And, he said, the confusion our leaders seem to be capitalizing on – are we brandishing our supreme power to assist democracy and freedom or to make the world safe for power-brokering millionaires and royal families in Saudi Arabia and Texas?

It was time to close the shop for the day – not because of the turn of conversation, but because I, too, was weary of the day and the issue. Another woman shook her head saying that as with all instances of relationship and domestic matters, she felt to allow love and deceit to occupy the same space in mind and heart – even in a household – much less in a nation, makes you punch-drunk crazy.

The elderly man visiting his daughter pulled at his white whiskers. He’d been telling us the difference between methane, propane, natural gas, coal, oil, and firewood as energy issues. And he actually seemed to know what he was talking about – science, able to concentrate on real and verifiable data, does seem to have a clarity missing from political issues. He wondered just what right those in the G.A.O. had trying to force Dick Cheney to disclose the names advising the administration about how best to run the country.

He too felt that a divided heart and split mind is cause for grief and sorrow. The confusion, he felt, is real.

After flashing the shop lights and throwing everyone out -- much to their enjoyment -- I tallied the register receipts and made a mental note to get rid of the business and live as a hermit.

The fire was grousing under a single charred log with no place to go. Rent was overdue. And aside from dozens of people all day talking and confiding, laughing and sharing dreams and dilemmas, family concerns and artistic breakthroughs, tales of personal history and resolutions for future change – aside from all this, we’re broke, without prospect, and tired.

I took in the flag, turned the open sign to closed, shut the lights by the bookcases, locked the back door, rang the bell once, and pulled the outside door closed and locked.

At French & Brawn, where I stopped for vegetarian bullion and sea salt for the next day’s soup, I met Jim M. of tides research at checkout counter.
“How’re things going down there at the shop?” he asked. I muttered something about quiet; this time of year; we’re still open -- fishing for something to say that would nail it. Jim said, “Well, it’s staying lighter latter!” and looked for some appreciation of the fact from me. I agreed that was good. “Spring is coming,” he said in that knowing hopeful way.

I had to respond, so I said quite by surprise, “I guess you just have to stay on your feet and soon enough the bell will ring,” He looked at me, and smiled. “You don’t mind if I use that, do you?”

“No, Jim, its yours,” I said,

Like someone with glazed eyes listening to the crowd’s muffled shouts, aware of a thirst for water, a blurred figure throwing gloved fists at his face, uncertain of a ghost sound clanging its approach through a rainy wind -- thinking with what is left of thought – surely, certainly, soon it will be heard.

Even so -- in the meditation room next morning, another woman finishing her morning prayers, another hand wiping eyes -- the sound of tears.

“The fragility!” she says.

We're often out of our minds. But not often enough.

It is pitiful that we are
living in a treasure mountain
but cannot see it.
If we develop an
enlightenment seeking mind,
everything becomes the
practice of enlightenment,
even if we are in the midst
of the various worlds of samsara.
- Dogen (1200-1253) (dailyzen.com)

A mind, a seeking mind, an enlightenment, an enlightenment seeking mind -- seeking what is making its way through. Thomas Berry in his book Buddhism (c.1967) writes, "Samsara designates the phenomenal or the conditioned world; Nirvana designates the transcendent, the unconditioned world."

Berry quotes Nagarjuna (India, 2nd C. CE) whose verse presents "...the blissful mystery empty of all that men can really explain," --

There is really no difference
between Nirvana and Samsara.
There is really no difference
between Samsara and Nirvana.

That which defines Nirvana
Also defines Samsara.
Between these two we cannot find
Even a slight difference.
(p.125)

Is this what Jesus and the Samaritan woman conversed about at the well?
His words sound different as poetry than they do as prose.
"I am," Jesus mused, "he," he paused, "the one," he contemplated, "who is," he continued on, "speaking with," and then finally, as if caught by insight, -- "you."

Is Jesus considering God -- the one who will be worshipped in spirit and truth -- as being in, or rather, as being the conversation that is taking place between him and the woman?

The woman is feisty, aware, and wise. She engages and plays with this Jew at the well. Jesus, too, is feisty, aware and similarly wise as he engages and plays with this Samaritan at the well. Together they turn in conversation about the truth of their lives. Together they question, pry, and parry the backgrounds each is emerging from. At end she gives him what he gives her.

They give each other water for the journey, deep water for the mind, living water for a thirst that is "blissful mystery empty of all that men [and women] can really explain." They drink of the gift each reveals in the presence of the other -- the gift of spirit and truth.

In that same chapter Berry calls "Homeless Wisdom," he writes:
The final expression of the Heart Sutra is the exclamation: "Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone completely beyond. Such an awakening! Svaha!" This awakening must be understood as a transition from illusion to reality. It is not a vision of something. It is a final release from all that keeps man from the going-over. This Sutra has no satisfactory word for what is attained beyond by this passage. With a certain deliberate care it limits itself to a description of the receding shore of this world which now is seen as sunyata, emptiness. (p.119)

This emptiness is what we might refer to as transparent reality, that which is seen as it is -- nothing added, nothing subtracted -- a clear, unobstructed view (spirit) of what is (truth). It is the play of the conversation between the Jew and the Samaritan.

It is the conversation we need to continue today. It is the pathway that will have to be cut into the ground by our footsteps as we visit each other and sip from the well together.

The impermanence of things, Berry says, is seen as emptiness. When Jesus' friends returned with food, they found him at completion of the conversation with the woman. Jesus told them, "I have food to eat of which you do not know." And, "My food is to do the will of the one who sent me to finish his work." (Jn.4: 32, 34)

The food for thought is outside our minds. It is the conversation taking place between man and woman, earth and water, spirit and truth.

The treasure mountain, the enlightenment seeking mind, is now sipping water -- maybe coffee or tea -- right there in your hand. Right there in the hand of the one sitting with you.

Soon enough, we'll see.
Svaha! (That is, Rejoice!)

Gift of a Hermit Nun

"I think that in finding the critical distance our friendship can remain." (from letter)
.......................
Notes toward a poem and a haiku:
“critical distance”:
Gk. kritikos=able to discern; to sift apart; to see or understand the difference
L. distare= to stand apart; separated in a relationship other than spatial; far apart.

“Christ”:
Gk. Christos=(fr. chriein=to anoint)=1:Messiah 2: Jesus 3: an ideal type of humanity 4 Christian Science: the ideal truth that comes as a divine manifestation of God to destroy incarnate error.
[Webster’s Seventh]

……………………………………
1. Poem

Silence, the critical
distance between us

is the One
with us;

Silence holds us together
apart,

where I leave you in Silence,
where

I trust, together, we will
find

The Word Silence we cannot find
in words


2. Haiku

Alone, tired end

of winter -- Say no more -- say

yes once, but, for All

To live a religious life in the world today -- first, stay silent. That will work. No one will know what you are doing. And that's good.

To live a spiritual life in the world today -- next, open your mouth. That too will work. No one will understand the babble that tries to word the incomprehensible. Try anyway.

To live an ordinary life in the world today -- finally, practice a poem created while walking beyond your strength.

I've crossed the sea after Truth.
Knowledge, that snare, must be defied.
Here and there, I've worn out heaps of sandals.
Now -- moonlit water in the clear abyss.
(--Kakua, 12c)

There will be those who love their life -- and they will love yours.
There will be those who fear their life -- and they will fear yours.
There will be those who wander mumbling to themselves things true & improbable. Invite them in.

I have never found anyone touched by God to appear sane.
They're not. What they are is something more valuable -- they're safe, and sound.
They're the ones to sit with for a stretch of mind and time.

They've seen
what we are
not seeing.

God is no other than love.
And love will not forget the sound of our voice attempting to pronounce its name.
As the wind blows, there’s no pinning down its direction, it takes our hesitation away with it.

There we stand,
without what we thought
lost.

How can I tell you what I've seen?
Fall, stand -- it's clear at once.
Wearing my cowl backwards, I
Trample the old path. And the new.
(--Kakua)

For Christians, the words expressing longing and struggle to comprehend and embody Christ might sound awkward. Patterns of thought change century after century, and the wording of a core reality needs constant and refreshing expression.

The core reality doesn't disappear with new wording. Rather, it appears in new light. This requires courageous faith, good will toward God, and good will toward one's own exploration.

Christian theology says God doesn't change. God is there as we change. For Buddhists, change is all there is. Transparent awareness reveals what our rational minds cannot grasp. For both, the exploration asks for caring and careful attention.

The proposal for Meetingbrook Laura of Hermits asks into such attention.
We pray for courageous faith, good will all around.

A Proposal for Intentional Community:
Meetingbrook Laura of Hermits
Camden, Maine USA, and dwelling places elsewhere

Meetingbrook proposes a laura of hermits, an intentional community, a loosely knit association of individuals seeking what might be called Zen Contemplative Ecology.

For the purpose of Meetingbrook’s proposal, “laura” means the pathways and waterways connecting us on our journey. A laura is:

1. a gathering of individuals living their own lives in their own dwellings;
2. peripheral to a central location shared for communal use;
3. building community with distinct yet similar shared intention to deepen one’s life;
4. each engaged in idiorhythmic practice (i.e. according to one’s own rhythms and schedule) -- whether prayer, meditation, contemplation, energy work, healing unease, encouraging physical, intellectual, spiritual health & balance;
5. with periodic sharing of each person’s conversation & practice in community;
6. devoted to the common intent of cultivating peace, compassion, engaged service, merciful reconciliation, and lovingkindness;
7. welcoming hospitality and generosity of spirit within and toward others.
8. A Zen Contemplative Ecology is, for this proposal, the practice of seeing directly & clearly -- now, safe, & whole -- interrelationships of individuals in community, sentient beings in nourishing environments, and a cosmotheandric awareness (of earth & nature itself, divine presence, and human family) that caringly and carefully makes room for each other..

A Meetingbrook Laura of Hermits -- welcomes individuals, couples, & families. Members of any or no religion are welcome. Members of sanghas, orders, followers of specific teachers, are welcome. Those on any particular spiritual path, those willing to allow others to practice their own religious and spiritual path, are welcome. Inclusive, autonomous, & generous hearted people, are welcome. Those who appreciate diversity and a plurality of seeking, those realizing and embodying what is natural, sacred, and human – the immeasurable gift of existence and life beyond compare -- are welcome.

The mere prospect of connecting what already touches us is attractive. Identifying, consciously and intentionally as part of Meetingbrook Laura of Hermits, deepens the affection and mystery of living life alone with others. Whether you prefer: to live alone on one’s own; live with others; or live alone together – we will explore how to dwell engaging solitude and community – a dedicating of life and love -- with God, each other, oneself.

If interested, come join us for some exploratory conversations toward the creation invited by a Meetingbrook Laura of Hermits. If nothing else, it might provide thoughtful considerations, laughter & a spate of belonging!

If interested in such an exploration, please call 236-4346, leave name and #. or email laura@meetingbrook.org

Thanks, Bill Halpin and Saskia Huising 25Feb2002

It is time to rethink the word "severity." It wishes to be known by a designation other than "strict in judgment, discipline, or punishment."
Or, what do we really think life is?

This morning, consider every breath. Every blink of the eye. Even the dozens of ladybugs at window suddenly awakened by warm February sun on attic eave. Sando snoozing. Saskia baking. The verity of Sunday morning at the edge of silence.

If we are the universe, there is much we do not yet understand.

If Awakened Buddha, Compassionate Father, Incarnated Christ, Sacred Spirit, Divine Radiance, Eternal Love, Blessed Mother -- (whichever designation brightens our eyes) -- if that personification longs to indwell this reality, there is still much we have to comprehend in order to ourselves inhabit this reality.

If life can be stripped of all denial so that we can begin to love -- there is much to let fall away. When we let this happen, there arrives a transparence that is itself true. .

In 1986, there were 22thousand cases of AIDS worldwide. In 2001 there were 38million cases worldwide. There have been 19million deaths in that time.
"We are each grains of sand on a beach," Joel Rothschild says, "And God is the beach." His book is Signals, An Inspiring Story of Life After Life.
"We are the heartbeat of the universe. There is a biological connection. Every moment in every life matters," says Rothschild speaking with Michael Thoms on New Dimensions Radio.

At the hermitage we pray for all who suffer in body, mind, or spirit. Especially those who are dying, those who will die today, and those who have died with no one to pray for them.

"Se-verity" -- wishes to be known as truth itself, or perhaps, itself true -- another edge of silence. ["Se" in Latin means "itself." "Veritas" in Latin means "truth."]

What is itself true? Or, what is true to itself? And, what can we say about the severity (the itself true) of love?

Even Pilate asked Jesus about severity. Following Jesus' assertion that anyone experiencing the reality he himself embodied, that person will testify to the truth. Pilate asked the reality standing before him, "'Truth,' what is truth?" Jesus remained in silence. Pilate was left to his own reflection.

Our very life depends on our reflection.

A moment of silence might help.

Keep our mouths shut? How long?

Do not tell the vision to anyone until the son of man has been raised from the dead. (Mt.17:9)

What does "raised from the dead" mean?
Yes, there is the notion of resurrection that arises. But are there ways of perceiving this notion that are not typically associated with the return to life of a body once dead or even the continuance of life beyond death? Perhaps, also for us to consider is -- raised from deadening ignorance, unawareness, blind grasping onto what others say and believe -- maybe it means entering this very life we live with eyes open, finally, after a long time of not embodying exactly who I am, who you are, who we are.

It might mean -- until the felt and awakened reality of Christ draws us up into a humble and transparent embodiment of Christ. It might mean -- letting fall forms and ideas, notions of inside and outside, us and them, divine and human, sinner and saint -- all the dualistic, separating, either/or's of our mind's making.

Don’t seek favor
Don’t clamber after fame.
Giving up and getting are empty:
Both the same.
This floating life
Is petals falling,
Emptied past the eye.
Serving the state
Is a dream;
Serving yourself
Is the same. -
Ch’en Ts’ao-an (dailyzen)

No tents. Just attend him, just fully engage the reality he is attending and engaging. Do what he is doing -- deepening his dwelling, finding root, allowing cloud to enfold and overcome -- trusting the grace of a loving community of all beings in God's sacred voice.

Jesus, Moses, and Elijah are in the cloud. Peter, James, and John are outside the cloud. So it seems in the script. But does inside and outside really represent what is taking place here in this story?

On the high mountain, where Jesus is made luminous, Peter wants to build three tents. The voice from the cloud interrupts -- "listen to him" -- listen to the one with whom the voice is well pleased. The three disciples are in the drama; they are part of the story. They are actors as much as the other three are. It is a single and singular event. We're there too. Not outside. Not inside. In fact, we are the story.

Standing in light, three are glowing. Prostrate on ground, three are frightened.

The cloud is God's tabernacle. It is the manifestation of His presence promised for the last time (Rev.21:3) It is here a theophany. The one whom God hides in His pavilion belongs very closely to Him (Ps.27:5). If Jesus is taken up into the cloud with the two divine messengers of the last time, this means that He brings final deliverance and that He brings it now. (Lohmeyer, quoted in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Kittel, Vol.IV, pp.908-909).

Jesus touches the three on the ground. (What a lovely place to be. It's where we encounter the sacred.)

He says, "Rise, and do not be afraid." Matthew then writes, "And when the disciples raised their eyes, they saw no one else but Jesus alone."

No one else. Jesus alone with them. They alone with him.
This brief, bright, surprise of the Christ touching them. Saying, be without fear. Saying, be what you are. Saying, be what you see.

Places, everyone!
Ok, rise and shine!

Now. Are we ready to speak?

I've been thinking about dying. I'm alive. It's not over yet...

The front page of the Rockland paper has a picture of a man, Jim H., now terminally ill with stomach cancer, but once a student in a Philosophy course I taught in Thomaston where he was police chief. The last night of class he said he'd put off the Ethics course until last, that when he realized he wouldn't get a list of ethical standards for his department from the course he was worried he'd wasted his time. But, he'd come to find out the course was just what he needed -- made him think, tore away many of the neat categories of right and wrong he'd been used to, exposed him to some hard questions, grounded ethical thinking in an evolving consciousness poetry seems to access as good as anything, and finally it was a good enough course -- he liked it.

And I liked him. His papers had the experience and maturity of someone who'd been around, whose ideas of how the world should be were tempered by how people were, and he was a student set in a career that saw people, situations, and responses to both that were real and gritty -- and not hypothetical, not nearly.

Jim is aware of his mortality. More so than most of us, he knows that he's going to die. We all do. But his time is defined by an illness with no respect for time, age, person, or place.

I know I will die. Just when, and how -- I don't know. There are days I think I won't see dusk. But it is February and all ailments take on more sinister outcomes during this awkward month especially considering this curious winter. Being of Irish-American heritage I've adopted the point of view, especially having no health insurance, that you are born, live, get sick, and die. Absent accident or catastrophic natural or terrorist events, that formula seems accurate.

I wince when I read obituaries -- those claiming that so and so fought a valiant, hard, or long battle against their illness, losing -- or unexpectedly, of natural causes, suddenly, succumbed, or wordlessly we are left to wonder just what it was that immediately preceded their death. Was it suicide? Murder? (This category we're usually told.) Or was it a simply loss of the will to continue living, a sighing of an out breath, a turning of a head, no recognizable symptoms of anything, a closing of eyes, and... death?

Then what? Ah, there's the rub! What then?

Here is where several billion words have been written and spoken -- about death, afterlife, grieving of those remaining behind, the spiritual, psyhchological, and religious verities proclaimed sincerely by those who claim a very certain knowledge or faith. Assurances are asked for and received, comforting expectations are shared and are comforting, beliefs are led out to be seen and reviewed -- and they too are nodded to in their passing review. These activities of settling into the fact of one's life and pending death are good activities, usually done by sensitive and caring people with individuals who come to realize that love, kindness, and respect is what we need to reckon with the final considerations. No matter what assurances and comfort we find, death is an unknown.

In the newspaper article Jim said, "The rest of my life depends on me, a personal attitude, a positive attitude." Jim mentioned a couple of regrets about his life: "I didn't stop the Vietnam war," he said. "And I didn't stop world famine." The article also said that he keeps in sight a small printed message on his wall -- "I am baptized. I am a child of God." .

There's a new war now. And a new hunger.
Jim H. is still alive. It's not over yet.
Seeing through the fog and the raindrops on the window, I know there is a foghorn out there, somewhere.

Perhaps -- if we look together...

If we had that mind in us which was in Christ Jesus, would we see what is there -- without fear, illusion, or judgment. Would that free us?

The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of a conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes. (William James)

There was a progression of quotes I once followed in order and properly attributed. From Edmund Husserl, to William Carlos Williams, to Robert Creeley, to my own conclusion. They went: "To the things themselves." "No ideas but in things." "And things are made of words." Finally, "Silence makes no-thing clear."

The perceptual order sees what is there. The conceptual order looks elsewhere.

We long to see what is right here, right in front of us. Yes, the obvious and visible and finite -- but also the hidden, the formless, the beyond that stretches from here. This kind of mind, this kind of seeing -- is hard to word. We are often reduced to mumbling, and sometimes to silence. There, in stark and desolate bewilderment, we are given a profound invitation -- let go, surrender, and fall into freedom!

Christ help us!
If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: infinite. (William Blake, plate 14 in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell )

...................................................................................................

Please note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery --
·
Will be closed weekdays the last two weeks in February,
Monday – Friday
Feb.18th-22nd
Feb. 25th – Mar.1st


We will be open on weekends
Saturday and Sunday
Feb.23rd –24th
Mar. 2nd- 3rd.


No weekday evening events will be held during this time.
Sunday Evening Practice will be held at the hermitage.

Evening events will resume with Tuesday Evening Buddhist Studies, Mar.5th.

What would peace look like? We might have to look through words a while before coming to see itself as "itsown."

Graham Greene in his novel The Heart of the Matter (1948):
"That's what I say," she said. "If I go away, you'll have your peace."
"You haven't any conception," he accused her angrily, "of what peace means." It was as if she had spoken slightingly of a woman he loved. For he dreamed of peace by day and night. Once in sleep it had appeared to him as the great glowing shoulder of the moon heaving across his window like an iceberg, artic and destructive in the moment before the world was struck: by day he tried to win a few moments of its company, crouched under the rusting handcuffs in the locked office, reading the reports from the sub-stations. Peace seemed to him the most beautiful word in the language: My peace I give to you, my peace I leave with you: O Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace. In the Mass he pressed his fingers against his eyes to keep the tears of longing in. (pp.60-61)

Cordwood in towers by oak tree. Cedar branch in warm February sunlight. The day cannot imagine itself other than it is. It is fine.
I've begun to think about Meetingbrook in terms of practicing Zen Catholic Ecology.

What might that look like? What is Zen Catholic Ecology?
What of the words? Zen -- A seeing and saying that adds nothing, subtracts nothing. Catholic -- A whole-safe comprehension that turns one into one. Ecology -- A dwelling inquiry that asks into the interrelationships of organisms and their environments.

A theme runs through the three words for me -- a theme that originates before split and separation -- a theme embodied in each of the words, namely: Practice seeing, whole and safe, each as its own dwelling place.

Perhaps a new word, "itsown," wishes to come into our language. I have long liked the word "itself" as pointing to that which cannot be other than what it is. It has served to suggest to me a corresponding place for the notion of "God" in theistic parlance, and "What Is" in nontheistic parlance. The "Itself" -- whether God or Ultimate Reality -- cannot be divided, but can be seen in diverse manifestation.

"Itsown" --as a new word, yet to cry aloud in its own voice -- suggests not only that which belongs to itself, i.e. "its own", but that which sows itself wherever it appears, i.e. "it sown." This suggestive quality of "itsown" reminds me of peace.

Peace is when each belongs to Itself as Itsown.

Please note: Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery --
·
Will be closed weekdays the last two weeks in February,
Monday – Friday
Feb.18th-22nd
Feb. 25th – Mar.1st

We will be open on weekends
Saturday and Sunday
Feb.23rd –24th
Mar. 2nd- 3rd.

No weekday evening events will be held during this time.
Sunday Evening Practice will be held at the hermitage.

Evening events will resume with Tuesday Evening Buddhist Studies, Mar.5th.
...............................................................................

Turn stones into bread? The devil tempts Jesus. Never mind baking bread -- perform magic, go for the big sell, the fast profit, the easy return on small investment.

Jesus had it. He'd had enough of the foolish parlor tricks stipulated by the power broker in this world. Then he said it:
He responded, "It is written, 'Human beings are not to live on bread alone, but on every word that comes out of God's mouth.' " (Mt.4:4)
Morning Lectio at our monthly Saturday retreat was taken with this utterance.

The Os Dei, L.=the mouth of God. As we understand the story of the creation of the universe and all in it, God spoke the word of creation. Or, attempting to relate the origins of what we experience as matter and form, we have no idea what and how anything occurred "in the beginning." So, we say, "In the beginning there was the divine word and wisdom." (Jn.1:1)

Then, whatever is, and all that is, flows from the Os Dei, the mouth of God -- the ever-present origin. This is the word of God, these are are the words of God. Each thing, each being, each manifestation, each instance -- this is what emanates and emerges from the mouth of God.

Stones are stones. Bread is bread. Each is itself. Each longs to be itself.
Beware the suggestion to become something else, to be other than what we are at root. .
Jesus seems to be saying we are not about magic and myth, not about the mindless or the mental -- but rather, we are part of the expression of God.

As part of the expression of God we are invited to watch and look, listen and speak, engage and serve each and everything encountered and experienced in this world, on this earth, before, and within one's body.

Jesus embodied Christ-Nature, Christ-Mind. In the story of his encounter with the devil, (with false action and manipulated reality), Jesus teaches us to recognize the false and choose what is true. "Not by bread alone," but by the Alone -- which excludes nothing and includes everything, that which is the root and sustenance of creation as it reveals itself .

What we call God -- or, the Alone -- is here, now, the ever-present origin. God presents all we need -- just like that, just like this. Jesus saw and felt this presence, this awareness, and he tells us we are inside and surrounded by what God is speaking.

The Os Dei is silence, stillness, and solitary seeing. The Os Dei is communicative, moving, and communal Christ consciousness. By any other name, "Christ" is the permeating intelligence and compassion longed for by all that is human. God's presence, or, the creating word of God is a way of relating this grounded reality.

If we accept a particular facile answer as the whole, as substitute for a universal compassionate understanding that moves within and incorporates all creation -- we trip over the false promise of self-serving greed, our particular devil at this time in the world. The wisdom of one who would be Christ accepts no substitution -- wisdom longs for the good of each and all, a longing that will not be satisfied until Alone-With-Others (God with us) inhabits our consciousness, our hearts, and our lives.

No war against evil can substitute for Christ. The wisdom of compassion says: Human beings, if you don't live compassionately with every person and being now in the world, you will inevitably perish in the ignorance of false and fatal warfare, crusades, military and secret retribution, campaigns of terror against terrorism.

Can we hear the sound of that plea?
Christ, the Os Dei, longs to be that sound in our creation.

O Lord, open my lips; and my mouth shall declare your praise! (Ps.51:15)
O Christ, open mouth of God, help us praise the presence of every being!

Fresh, rising, worked in morning mist, scent of yeast, fragrance of heat forming crust, the very revelation of creation for all to taste.

Bread anyone?

The Beloved, through the energy of Love
brought forth the world.
From the rising to the setting sun,
Love radiates out to the nations
perfect in beauty.
...
I know every creature, every plant,
every mineral;
I know you -- your every need
and your fears;
The Earth and all that is in it
belongs to the Whole, to be
tended by all in co-operation
with Love.
(from Psalm 50, as presented by Nan Merrill in Psalms For Praying, An Invitation to Wholeness, pp.96-97)

Jim said in response to the question "Really...What is Love?" at Wednesday Evening Conversation, "Love is allowing God to flow through you."
To the thought "God is what is there," Charlotte corrected "here!" Jesus, by dying on the "T" makes it and separation and death disappear -- so that, There becomes here -- and God is what is here.
Saskia added, "By entering the flow we present God here. Trust, the letting go on, and the letting go into, the Love-of-God flowing through us -- that's trust."
It seems to me that the phrase "Love-of-God" is the very flow of the reality that originates and sustains life and existence. As we come to feel it and know it, we enter and even dissolve into it. What we have named "God" and "Love" with the possessive "of" -- can be seen in another way. The "Love-of-God" is what we are, what we are meant to be, the very reality of existence we are not other than..

Earlier in the day Virginia told that Seinfeld once said his show was all about language and words. She, Hugh, and I were assembling the new chair for Saskia purchased in Bangor enroute home from Presque Isle and the County. Talking about our stay-over in St. Andrews By The Sea, New Brunswick, I told them about our ruminations about the missing third part. There's a wonderful sailboat with its business for sale there, and a house perfect for the hermitage also for sale up the hill from the wharf. This process --from separateness, to consolidation, to enfoldment, to disappearance -- seems to be a sequence of meetingbrook meditation that applies to spiritual as well as physical life.

My friends, search for the still voice
that dwells in the Silence.
If you call upon Me in times of trouble,
I am ever present to you.
You will know Me in your hearts,
As you honor my love for you.
(Merrill, Ps.50, p.98)

Allowing is suffering, is letting -- that's the definition meaning of the word patior, (L.=to suffer, experience, undergo, permit, allow). Suffering is not synonymous with pain. Suffering is allowing. So, when Jim says, "Love is allowing God to flow through you," there is a suggestion of suffering God through one's being, one's person. Much the same way Jesus said, "Suffer [let] the children to come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these." (Mk.10:14) To prevent, or hinder, the free flow of love through anyone, especially the young, is a real sorrow. To dam (damn?) anyone, to attempt to block the flow of the Love-of-God, is a foolish, cruel, and terrible activity to attempt. To open, unblock, let flow again what has been dammed (damned?) is healing, kind, and gracious activity.

All who surrender to the love of
the Great Mystery,
whose hearts are merciful and kind,
will go in beauty and walk with grace;
And all who reverence Love's Eternal Flame,
will know Love's Companioning Presence.
(Merrill, Ps 50, p.99)

It's St. Valentine's Day. Give chocolates! Bow in gratitude to the life and love that flows through each one of us!

The Earth and all that is in it belongs to the Whole, to be tended by all in co-operation with Love.

Tend well! Let love go on!

Desperate times demand desperate measures. When does despair become a virtue? Is it when hope turns to face you, and you have disappeared?

Comprehending the fundamental,
Embracing the spirit,
Roam the root of heaven and earth,
Wander beyond the dust and dirt,
Travel to work with noninvolvement.
Take care not to let mechanical
Intelligence burden your mind;
Watch what is not temporal
And remain unmoved by things.
- Lao tzu (in dailyzen)

In a time of censure, suicide, and slaughter, I propose a more radical penance practice -- namely, disappearing in place of Christ!

VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn

Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings

And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth

This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Blessed sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit
of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto Thee.
(final part, from poem "Ash Wednesday" by T.S.Eliot)

Dean, concert singer doubling as bookstore clerk, would often reach for a quote from Pema Chodron, about hope -- that it was something you hung on to, clung to -- but it too must be dropped. He'd say this over coffee. He wondered why Christians placed so much value in hope. Wasn't it wanting something other, something separate that wasn't necessary? Suffer me not to be separated.

Lent begins. Let the suffering begin! Or, put differently, let the allowing begin. To suffer is to allow, to let what is taking place be what it truly is. And what is taking place? What truly is? What is turning itself into itself in this existence?
Perhaps, just perhaps, it truly is the body of Christ taking place in this world.

Although I do not hope to turn. These are desperate times. Canadian figure skaters are denied the gold they demonstrated belonged to them. Catholic priests are deconstructing the privilege and power they once assumed was theirs no matter what. Politicians poise to saw off the limb of easy money that held them aloft from the ground of honest brokering. The heresy of having a different opinion about war, murder, infallibility, and nearness to God -- has been moved from ecclesiastical sanctuaries and relocated in the oval office, justice department, and pentagon -- linking heresy with treason, and usurping the national flag as new icon of redemption.

And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth.

I am desperate. I despair. I cannot see myself...without hope...where does one turn?

It is Ash Wednesday, Lent, and the slow emptying begins.
Perhaps it is not hope, but something wonders -- If what we call "Christ" takes place in this world, will anyone who answers 'yes' or 'no' come to realize their separation? -- or, their true self, their Christ-self?

As for me, disappearing might be a virtue to consider.
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross

At least, it's a place to begin.

[Note for bookshop Tuesday Evening Schedule -- There will be no Buddhist Studies for the remainder of February. They'll continue first Tuesday in March.]

.......................

The woman, the priest, and the community are shaky today.
We're not sages. We're ordinary people...

Sages lean on a pillar
That is never shaken,
Travel a road that is
Never blocked, are
Endowed from a
Resource that is never
Exhausted, and learn
From a teacher that
Never dies.
They are successful
In whatever they undertake,
And arrive wherever they go.
Whatever they do, they
Embrace destiny and go along
Without confusion.
- Wen-tzu (dailyzen.com)

...And we're confused.

Yesterday the pastor of the local Catholic church said someone had accused him of being sexist, arrogant, and having done immeasurable harm to women parishioners. He said he'd be rendering his resignation at an emergency parish council meeting this coming Wednesday. He then launched into his sermon, ignoring the murmurs of surprise as well as the woman who stood addressing him "Father?" Her plea was ignored. So too ignored was the question of propriety in announcing in such an unresponsive way what to some is a sudden and undesirable revelation.

Edward Collins Vacek, S.J. in an America article (March 9, 1996) entitled "The Eclipse of Love for God," wrote:
When David Hare interviewed clergy as part of his research for his play, "Racing Demons," he ran into a problem: None of the priests wanted to talk about God. One of the disturbing questions his play raises is whether contemporary Christians, with the exception of a few fanatical fundamentalists, are concerned about loving God.
In my own conversations with Christians, I find that almost all of them talk approvingly about love for others, some talk confidently about God's love for us, but few are willing to talk about their love for God. When I press them to say what it means to love God, some of them in fact deny that we can love God directly, many admit that they don't give much thought to love for God and most deny that there is any ethical obligation to do so. They judge that it is wrong not to love people, but they have no such thoughts about neglecting God. In short, many contemporary Christians subscribe to Jesus' second commandment, but not to the first. (p.13

The priest on Sunday must have been very upset to blurt out his suffering in what some feel was an insensitive and uncaring way to his parishioners. If he was asking for help, he didn't ask. If he was lining up support against the person (presumably a woman) accusing him, he chose an abusive way to do so. But if he was trying to say that he loved God, wished to serve God and God's people, and was temporarily knocked off his pins by rage, sorrow, and helplessness -- then, we must attempt to heal the cut and tear that all of us participate in as members of the body of Christ.

Brother Antoninus (William Everson), in his book of poems The Hazards of Holiness (1960) writes in his poem "Saints" --
Souls and warriors!
Great-hearted ones!
How may we hope to learn of you,
Of anyone,
For a course of battle
That can't be seen
Ever at all?
When what is relatable
Broke at a level beyond any ken?

Even you, even you,
Never really knew it, saints.
Stalwarts of the soul's war,
Prechosen.

But woke one morning
Dead and glorified,
Nobody more surprised than yourselves.

And looked back doubtless
As some thorn-torn climber
Pants at the peak-top,
Staring down in amaze
At the hell of cockle
He clambered through.

I've done that.
Looked back down all choked and bleeding
At what I crawled across,
Raking scorpions and poison-mouthed toads
Off my clothes as I stared.
I know that.

But now ahead
No cactus there nor any beasts,
No toads, no snakes,
No devils and no ghosts.

Nothing.

No thing. Not anything.

Not to be named, even,
Cursed at, grinned back against,
Invoked, knelt to,
Adored, denied, befouled or hated!

And nothing to love!

A blankness
Like neither night nor day
Confronts: the flat void
Of unrealization.

Before what will be
Is.

Before what might be
Can.
(pp.32-33)

The woman, the priest, the community attempting to be body of Christ -- are each "Before."

What happens next -- with, to, and as, love -- will reveal to us either realization or unrealization.

Vacek ends his article in America saying:
At the end of this essay, let me make it clear that in speaking of love for God, I do not mean to exclude love for neighbor or self or world. Rather, love for God leads us to cooperate with God's love of the world. Hence -- strange as it seems -- one of the reasons we want to love ourselves and others is that we want thereby to cooperate with God's love for us. In a profoundly religious sense, we are aware that the ordinary and usually best way that God can love creatures is through our love for them. Still, although love for neighbor and love for self are essential to the Christian life, my concern here is that we must not let these wholesome Christian loves eclipse our love for God. That love should be the sun of our lives. (p.16)

Perhaps here is offered a way out, or in, for the woman, priest, and community attempting to be body of Christ in a confusing time -- namely, acknowledge, but do not succumb to seasonal affective disorder. The light of the sun, deprived during dark winter, is returning -- slowly, slowly. Lent, the slow preparation for the mystery that enfolds our bodies as well as that of Jesus' is upon us. The sun, the son, the sum of our "thorn-torn climber" selves -- is returning to the midst of our consciousness, returning to this part of Maine's eco-geography. Put differently, what we are "Before" is ready to engage and enfold Real Presence. And for this, we need to:
...lean on a pillar
That is never shaken,
Travel a road that is
Never blocked, are
Endowed from a
Resource that is never
Exhausted, and learn
From a teacher that
Never dies. (Wen-tzu)

The snow is blowing horizontal in Presque Isle. We're on our way!
We'll, all of us, clamber through!

Meetingbrook riddle:
Question --"How do you know that you're a fool, a dimwit, and don't know anything?"
Answer -- "I don't know. Try not to think about it. What was the question again?"

There was this silly exercise done in workshops -- you ask one half the room to think of a question, any question, and write it down. The other half is told to think of an answer, any answer about anything that comes to mind, and write it down. Then by choosing willy-nilly one from each side to read their question and answer -- there occurs a sometimes hilarious, sometimes serious, but most times absurd connection between random questions and random answers. It nearly always served as a curious reminder that, while all questions find answers, the direct relationship between question and answer resides in the wit and intelligence of the occurrence, and not in the intentional logical conclusion reached for by the questioner or responder. The general result of the exercise is laughter.

So what? Well you might ask!
Once you enter the path of prayer and unknowing -- a curious sensation occurs -- nothing makes sense, and, everything seems absurd. Absurdity isn't a condition one reaches for in order to cultivate, propagate, and disseminate -- rather, absurdity arises from the everyday occurence of being, life, loss, and emptiness. Absurdity, according to the New World Dictionary, is from the Latin absurdus= not to be heard and is defined as "so clearly untrue or unreasonable as to be laughable or ridiculous; laughably inconsistent with what is judged as true or reasonable; laughable from incongruity; foolishness; nonsense."

Erazim Kohak's book Idea & Experience -- Edmund Husserl's Project of Phenomenology in IDEAS 1 (c.1978), begins with Kohak's Preface:
This study is predicated on the Heraclitean conviction that wisdom is "to know the gnome, the thought by which all things are guided through all." In the case of Husserl's project of phenomenology, that one thought, profound in its simplicity, is that, primordially and ultimately, to know means to see, or, as Husserl presents it in Ideas 1 # 19c,
Direct "seeing" ([Gk]: noein), not merely experiential sense perception, but seeing in general as the primordial presentive consciousness of whatever kind, is the ultimate source of the validity of all rational assertions. ((p.xi)

Kohak continues, The primordial starting point, as well as the ultimate aim of all knowledge, is not speculation but that clear, evident insight which humans acknowledge with the startled exclamation, "Oh, now I see!"

The devout wish such a consummation!

A Zen Master writes:
He who truly attains awakening knows that deliverance is to be found right where he is. There is no need to retire to the mountain cave. If he is a fisherman he becomes a real fisherman. If he is a butcher he becomes a real butcher. The farmer becomes a real farmer and the merchant a real merchant. He lives his daily life in awakened awareness. His every act from morning to night is his religion. (Sokei-an)

Place that alongside the Dalai Lama's words when he said, "My religion is simple. My religion is kindness..." and there is a generous invitation to open one's eyes and see.

Human nature is developed
By profound serenity and lightness;
Virtue is developed
By harmonious joy
And open selflessness.
When externals do not
Confuse you inwardly,
Your nature finds the condition
That suits it;
When your nature does not
Disturb harmony,
Virtue rests in its place.
- Huai-nan-tzu (dailyzen.com)

These days the externals confuse me inwardly. While my only refuge is kindness -- this I trust -- the storm of closed self pounds absurdly against the place virtue rests in profound serenity and lightness. I feel Queeg's steel round clinking balls rolling around my hand as I realize the absurdity of my foolishness, dim wit, and ignorance.
What was the question, again?

The morning is brilliant. Bright sun on white snow, startling blue sky, elongated white cloud, bracing cold breeze. Outside the window everything seems in place. On bed, Sando stands, stretches, turns and returns to blanket, licks left paw while looking at me.

She sees me sitting right where I am!

Enfold. That's the word. The word had been 'consolidate.' Enfold seems more like it. 'Enfold' in the dictionary has two parts: 1. to wrap in folds; wrap up; envelop; 2. to embrace. We need to enfold.

Don’t be surprised,
Don’t be startled;
All things will arrange
Themselves.
Don’t cause a disturbance,
Don’t exert pressure;
All things will clarify
Themselves.
- Huai-nan-tzu (dailyzen.com)

In Meetingbrook's case, the two separate instances need to enfold one in the other. The bookshop/bakery in town and the hermitage on Barnestown Rd. at Ragged Mountain can no longer be sustained as two places. This emerging fact is unsettling. Perhaps Huai-nan-tzu is right, all things will clarify themselves, all things will arrange themselves.
Right now it looks like our 6 years at Bayview Street might come to an end and we will enfold at Barnestown.

A hermit by temperament longs for the simplicity of nature being nature. A solitary by inclination longs for silence and solitude to experience what is alone. A monastic by surrender longs to move through the appreciation that there is no movement to or from anything -- only the nondual appreciation of what is moving in stillness.

In the forward to Frederick Franck's book To Be Human Against All Odds, James W. Heisig writes of Franck:
He is equally attracted to the Zen view that dichotomized thinking is ultimately a betrayal of religious experience. Life/art, subject/object, I/Thou, persons/things are all modes of thought and need to be broken through in order to make what sense they can make.
By the same token, and in true Zen fashion, he does not see Zen itself as something to be clung to in exclusion of other religious ways. The sacredness of any tradition is that it opens our eyes to see what there is to see. By becoming dogmatic and self-sufficient, a tradition may have a better chance of surviving shifts of time and place, but it forfeits the basic task of opening our eyes to the sacred. (p.9)

The sacred is enfolded in the secular. Prayer is enfolded in politics. Work is enfolded in worship. If there is a thin place, that thin place is not between one and the other, not a membrane however transparent that separates one and the other, not a free zone that runs contiguous to one and the other. The thin place is the aspect of enfolding.

The aspect of enfolding is the looking at and as what is enfolding. It is not a matter of foresight nor of hindsight. Rather, what the aspect of enfolding is -- is seeing itself, now -- and here. Here we speak about seeing the reality of Meetingbrook move from two locations to one while retaining the monastic tension inherent in living -- alone-with-others, or solitude-in-community, or embodying the thin place of rooting-sprouting as the same instance differing directions.

The whole consideration of Meetingbrook is practicing between traditions. We are coming to see that this doesn't mean going from one to the other and back. Nor does it mean throwing them both into a single pot to stir together. Perhaps we will come to see that the meaning for us is to watch and see the unfolding and enfolding of what longs to present itself in the midst of creation itself. Some might call that God. Or, Ultimate Reality, Truly Human, Risen Christ, Buddha of Compassion, The Way with its Power, Truth, What Is, or even -- Hello my name is...!
Something is emerging in, with, and through creation and those awake to the emergence. Exactly what that is to look like is unknown to all but a few of our species. And it terrifies us.
Terra est! Terra's I Am! What is the error? It is the earth! I am the earth. And the error? It seems the error is we've separated ourselves from the earth, from creation -- and are intent on objectifying it, thereby eliminating it.

Frederick Franck writes:
Raimon Panikkar coined the term cosmotheandric for the trinitarian relationship referred to by Samartha. I understood him to agree that in our present situation no single religion, culture, or tradition can pretend to present a universally valid solution for either our theoretical or practical human problems. Alone and isolated, Hinduism is threatened, Christianity is impotent, Islam is in ferment, Buddhism is dissolving, Marxism is bankrupt, secularism is self-destructing. It is not unthinkable that cross-fertilization among the traditions could reconcile the original insights of the various cultures and make the stilled voices of the sages audible once more over the abysses of time.

A new innocence, perhaps even a new naivete, is needed. This is not something that can be willed or concocted intellectually, but must be born from "grace." What we need is a holistic view of reality, a post-modern view in which all our fragmentary modern knowledge would be evaluated as mere preparation of its insights on a higher level. This does not imply facile assumptions about some undifferentiated reality, but a restoration of a view of the human in its dignity as a spark of the infinite fire (agni), a microcosm, an image of the whole, a constituent of the entirety of the real: cosmically, environmentally, communally integrated.

Science is powerless when it comes to understanding what it might mean to be human, for this is not a scientific question. It is precisely this human mystery that is the questioner. An anthropocentric answer would be as deficient as a theocentric one, for being human is a coexistence with the Divine and the Cosmos. The Divine is not "pure transcendence," not free from all relationship. The Ultimately Real is not "Wholly Other," not an exclusively 'divine" kingdom. The human has its place in it.

In every human being, Panikkar noted, the entirety of the cosmotheandric real is centered. This does not make us the center of reality. It means that reality is centered in itself and at once the center of that "circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference nowhere."

As creatures we may be nothingness, but as constituents of the real, we are integral participants in the Trinitarian Mystery, and not merely passively but as fully sharing in the destiny of being. (Franck, pp.97-98)

The cosmotheandric, the enfolding aspect of Earthly/Divine/Human, is a longing that is felt everywhere. And yet, there are those who intentionally rape, pollute and expropriate for personal greed what does not belong to them, but belongs to a grace and a power beyond the understanding of the separators, takers, and criminals -- both petty and lawyerly corporate. (This last sentiment after viewing Bill Moyers Report: NAFTA'S Powerful Little Secret).

Elsewhere Panikkar describes his Cosmotheandric Principle as that in which what is divine, what is human and what is earthly (let everyone find their own terminology) are the three irreducible dimensions which constitute what is real. These three parts are not juxtaposed simply by chance, but they are essentially related and together constitute the Whole. They are parts because they are not the whole, but they are not parts which can be separated from the whole. (In 'The new innocence -- Interview with Raimon Panikkar,' by Carmen Font, from the October 1996 issue of "Share International.")

Something dies. Something falls away. As we participate in our small instance of this change, we try to see the enfolding aspect of the cosmotheandric; we try to see the grace of it.

Hui-neng, 7th century, said, "The Meaning of Life is to SEE."

The poet Ikkyu (1394-1481) wrote:
I shall not die
I shall not go away
Just don't ask me any questions
I shall not answer.

I enfold my hands. They assume the posture of prayer, departure, and arrival. These enfolded hands set to greet what is to be. This is done as the unnecessary disappears.

What is it we think about when killing people?

Read papers, listen to news, and the reasons heap upon each other. The explanations, the defenses, the invocation to national pride, satisfaction of justice, or elimination of evil -- all have a compelling soundness that nods heads and mulls minds sipping coffee in strategy rooms, cafes, and penal committee rooms.

"A mind," an advertisement went years ago, "is a terrible thing to waste!"
It is also a troublesome thing to taste. At best it makes clear what is clouded. At worst it clouds what is presented to it.

"Pay no mind," -- my grandmother would say. "Don't give it any currency," -- David would say at a Wednesday Evening Conversation. It is costly to use the mind in ways that are useless. It is costly to allow the mind to use us in ways often beyond our recognition.

"No mind," the Zen people say. "Dropping off mind and body," enlightened Dogen Zenji. "Don't mind me," takes on a different ring when spoken to another.

Coming, I don't enter by the gate,
Going, I don't leave by the door.
This very body
Is the land of tranquil light.
(--Gyokko, 1315-95)

Perhaps it is the body that refracts the light of understanding we normally attribute to mind.

The perfect way out:
There's no past/present/future.
Dawn after dawn, the sun!
Night after night, the moon!
(--Getsudo, 1285-1361)

Perhaps it is Nature itself that calls to us -- as mother, lover, friend, and child -- inviting us to simply see what is there, who we are, how life endures.

What is it we think about when killing people? Mind this -- reason justifies, but no reason satisfies. I don't sense we understand, not yet. Perhaps we're not ready yet.
Don't mind me.

God's breath exhales: "I Am Everywhere!" God's sight pleads: "Don't kill me!" God's compassion wonders: "What are you thinking of?"

Every thing, every place is real,
Each particle makes up Original Man.
Still, the absolutely real is voiceless,
The true body's majestically out of sight.
(--Chosa, 9c)

See?