Note: The bookshop/bakery is closed today, Thursday. There is no evening conversation.
..................
Wednesday, April 28, 2004
See our way through?
It is worth contemplating that God is never other than where God dwells.
Where does God dwell? God dwells in the void, where nothing other is.
It's not that we are nothing -- it's that the void, emptiness, is where God dwells, and we would rather God dwelt elsewhere. The notion -- the very idea of the void, is off-putting. We want to fill that void with something, anything, in order to escape the fear engendered by the void. A French philosopher said, "All sins are attempts to fill voids." (Simone Weil, d.1943).
When something is not there, can we learn to let it not be there? If we cannot allow such an absence of what is not there, then can we simply become exactly who we are in that place we find nothing?
In the sabbath sanctuary, God and self meet, and the self rests and listens in the hushed silence, free of human discourse and filled with God's presence. Holiness is the consummation and counterbalance of all activity, human and divine. Sabbath is the temporal context of Israel's "imitatio Dei." As the approbation of "goodness" denotes creation's ecological integrity, in which all life is preserved and promoted before God, holiness points to an ecology of restoration, in which the integrity of community is formed and reformed before God. (p.387, in The Ethos of the Cosmos, The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible, by William P. Brown, c.1999)
To contemplate the forming and reforming of community is not an easy contemplation. Nor is the meditation an easy one that suggests were we to dwell in community with one another, something might disappear. What something? The something that impedes convergence into union might have to disappear. We each have a sense what that 'something' might be for us.
If we were to dwell in community with God, something would disappear. Which something in this case? The something we have tried to insert into the void, namely anything that is not (our) true self. Is genuine community the absence of everything which is not God?
In other words -- Is there only God in the void?
Do we avoid God by attempting to place something there in order to make God other than the presence of our true self?
Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. (Psalm 90: 1-2, NRSV)
The Hebrew Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Elohaynu Adonai Echad, opens with words translated as either "Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord alone," or, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one." A more colloquial saying of it might be, "Only God is, nothing else is!"
Is God nothing else? And is 'nothing else' the same as or different from 'everything'? Many have attempted to place God in the word 'everything' or the phrase 'in everything' -- as in the phrasing "God is everything," or, "God is in everything," or "Everything is in God." Is our desire to say 'everything' a greater comfort than the phrasing 'nothing else'?
The Takbeer, the Islamic prayer, "Allahu Akbar min kullisay," means, "God is greater than everything."
'Namaste' is the most popular Indian greeting. It means "You and I are one. I bow down, honor and worship the divine within you." The Hindu greeting Namaste, loosely means "the divine in me recognizes the divine in you" -- or, divine sees divine. This might be rendered -- As it is, so it sees.
If God is nothing else, then community with God is the absence of what is not God. In that void of unity there is nothing we can call our own.
What is is what is. Life is life. I am I. God is God. You are you. This is this. And that's that. The words 'same' or 'different' do not apply nor do they compute. No matter how many people tell you how you measure up against someone else or some standard they have in mind, there is no such measurement to be made.
If you want to perceive
And understand objectively,
Just don?t allow yourself
To be confused by people.
Detach from whatever you
Find inside or outside yourself.
Detach from religion,
Tradition, and society,
And only then will you
Attain liberation.
When you are not
Entangled in things,
You pass through
Freely to autonomy.
- Linji (d. 867)
'Autonomy' -- (from Gk auto=self, or one's own; and nomos=law) -- means not just 'a law unto oneself,' but the law itself, or standing within itself.
To stand within itself -- for each to be one's own dwelling place -- is to live alone with the Alone.
Not for nothing -- but for nothing else -- do we dwell here cherishing community.
Where God dwells is God dwelling.
As it is, so it sees.
Passing through.
Freely dwelling.
It is worth contemplating that God is never other than where God dwells.
Where does God dwell? God dwells in the void, where nothing other is.
It's not that we are nothing -- it's that the void, emptiness, is where God dwells, and we would rather God dwelt elsewhere. The notion -- the very idea of the void, is off-putting. We want to fill that void with something, anything, in order to escape the fear engendered by the void. A French philosopher said, "All sins are attempts to fill voids." (Simone Weil, d.1943).
When something is not there, can we learn to let it not be there? If we cannot allow such an absence of what is not there, then can we simply become exactly who we are in that place we find nothing?
In the sabbath sanctuary, God and self meet, and the self rests and listens in the hushed silence, free of human discourse and filled with God's presence. Holiness is the consummation and counterbalance of all activity, human and divine. Sabbath is the temporal context of Israel's "imitatio Dei." As the approbation of "goodness" denotes creation's ecological integrity, in which all life is preserved and promoted before God, holiness points to an ecology of restoration, in which the integrity of community is formed and reformed before God. (p.387, in The Ethos of the Cosmos, The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible, by William P. Brown, c.1999)
To contemplate the forming and reforming of community is not an easy contemplation. Nor is the meditation an easy one that suggests were we to dwell in community with one another, something might disappear. What something? The something that impedes convergence into union might have to disappear. We each have a sense what that 'something' might be for us.
If we were to dwell in community with God, something would disappear. Which something in this case? The something we have tried to insert into the void, namely anything that is not (our) true self. Is genuine community the absence of everything which is not God?
In other words -- Is there only God in the void?
Do we avoid God by attempting to place something there in order to make God other than the presence of our true self?
Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. (Psalm 90: 1-2, NRSV)
The Hebrew Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-9) Sh'ma Yisrael Adonai Elohaynu Adonai Echad, opens with words translated as either "Hear O Israel, the Lord your God, the Lord alone," or, "Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one." A more colloquial saying of it might be, "Only God is, nothing else is!"
Is God nothing else? And is 'nothing else' the same as or different from 'everything'? Many have attempted to place God in the word 'everything' or the phrase 'in everything' -- as in the phrasing "God is everything," or, "God is in everything," or "Everything is in God." Is our desire to say 'everything' a greater comfort than the phrasing 'nothing else'?
The Takbeer, the Islamic prayer, "Allahu Akbar min kullisay," means, "God is greater than everything."
'Namaste' is the most popular Indian greeting. It means "You and I are one. I bow down, honor and worship the divine within you." The Hindu greeting Namaste, loosely means "the divine in me recognizes the divine in you" -- or, divine sees divine. This might be rendered -- As it is, so it sees.
If God is nothing else, then community with God is the absence of what is not God. In that void of unity there is nothing we can call our own.
What is is what is. Life is life. I am I. God is God. You are you. This is this. And that's that. The words 'same' or 'different' do not apply nor do they compute. No matter how many people tell you how you measure up against someone else or some standard they have in mind, there is no such measurement to be made.
If you want to perceive
And understand objectively,
Just don?t allow yourself
To be confused by people.
Detach from whatever you
Find inside or outside yourself.
Detach from religion,
Tradition, and society,
And only then will you
Attain liberation.
When you are not
Entangled in things,
You pass through
Freely to autonomy.
- Linji (d. 867)
'Autonomy' -- (from Gk auto=self, or one's own; and nomos=law) -- means not just 'a law unto oneself,' but the law itself, or standing within itself.
To stand within itself -- for each to be one's own dwelling place -- is to live alone with the Alone.
Not for nothing -- but for nothing else -- do we dwell here cherishing community.
Where God dwells is God dwelling.
As it is, so it sees.
Passing through.
Freely dwelling.
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Who cries these days?
"For the tear is an intellectual thing." (William Blake)
Just put thoughts to rest;
Don't seek outwardly anymore.
When things come up,
Then give them your attention;
Just trust what is functional
In you at present,
And you have nothing
To be concerned about.
- Linji (d. 867)
John Joseph was raking leaves with Margarite in Port Clyde. We saw him as we drove by. We stopped. He had his toy tractor in his small hand. The three and a half year old and the sitter in her seventies stood and talked with us and two dogs as fog gathered off shore for dusky assault. Poppa arrived. Margarite and I waved to the rest off in the station wagon and talked a spell on the front lawn. After fifty-six years of marriage five years ago her husband died. "Park here whenever you want," she said. "I will," I told her.
Years ago I came to the realization that the most poignant of all lyric tensions stems from the awareness that we are living and dying at once. To embrace such knowledge and yet to remain compassionate and whole -- that is the consummation of the endeavor of art.
At the core of one's existence is a pool of energy that has nothing to do with personal identity, but that falls away from self, blends into the natural universe. Man has only a bit part to play in the whole marvelous show of creation. (Stanley Kunitz, "Reflections" -- in preface to his own The Collected Poems, c.2000)
We have a few days left. Some write and wonder where we are with our decision. Kevin wants to make pizza. What do we think? It is late as we watch for deer on winding roads. A red squirrel ran under tire mid-afternoon. We go back a little while later. Blood from mouth. Lifeless. I lift him to side of road, bow, and return to car.
At my age, after you're done -- or ruefully think you're done -- with the nagging anxieties and complications of your youth, what is there left for you to confront but the great simplicities? I never tire of bird-song and sky and weather. I want to write poems that are natural, luminous, deep, spare. I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world. (Kunitz at age 95, in "Reflections" in Collected Poems)
If it is true that anything kept too long goes wrong -- (a truism for contents of refrigerator) -- then, only an emptying out of the contents of mind will serve us right.
Kunitz; All power does not flow from the top. Since I've thought a good deal about this subject, I'd like to add some further reflections:
-- To live as a poet in this culture is the aesthetic equivalent of a major political statement.
-- Beware of manifestos: they are the death of poetry.
-- A poet is a citizen, like any other. One of the obligations of citizenship is participation in the political process.
And:
Kunitz: I do not subscribe to any organized religion, yet I think of myself as a religious person, and that's independent of any kind of faith or practice, or belief in God. While I was still in college I fastened on the phrase "the holiness of the heart's affections" in one of Keats's letters, and it has stayed with me ever since. To me, that's religion. "I am certain of nothing," he wrote, "but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination." Though I am in no danger of conversion, the poets you mention as early influences--Herbert, Donne, Blake, Hopkins--still speak to me and light the way.
(Interview: Stanley Kunitz. By Stanley Kunitz and By Mark Wunderlich. From http://www.poets.org/poems/prose.cfm?45442B7C000C04050876)
If we have nothing, what is there to be concerned about?
If we are fools, functionally, we trust what is present in us.
Knock knock!
Come in!
(No joke.)
Trust the heart's affections and the truth of imagination.
Light the way!
"For the tear is an intellectual thing." (William Blake)
Just put thoughts to rest;
Don't seek outwardly anymore.
When things come up,
Then give them your attention;
Just trust what is functional
In you at present,
And you have nothing
To be concerned about.
- Linji (d. 867)
John Joseph was raking leaves with Margarite in Port Clyde. We saw him as we drove by. We stopped. He had his toy tractor in his small hand. The three and a half year old and the sitter in her seventies stood and talked with us and two dogs as fog gathered off shore for dusky assault. Poppa arrived. Margarite and I waved to the rest off in the station wagon and talked a spell on the front lawn. After fifty-six years of marriage five years ago her husband died. "Park here whenever you want," she said. "I will," I told her.
Years ago I came to the realization that the most poignant of all lyric tensions stems from the awareness that we are living and dying at once. To embrace such knowledge and yet to remain compassionate and whole -- that is the consummation of the endeavor of art.
At the core of one's existence is a pool of energy that has nothing to do with personal identity, but that falls away from self, blends into the natural universe. Man has only a bit part to play in the whole marvelous show of creation. (Stanley Kunitz, "Reflections" -- in preface to his own The Collected Poems, c.2000)
We have a few days left. Some write and wonder where we are with our decision. Kevin wants to make pizza. What do we think? It is late as we watch for deer on winding roads. A red squirrel ran under tire mid-afternoon. We go back a little while later. Blood from mouth. Lifeless. I lift him to side of road, bow, and return to car.
At my age, after you're done -- or ruefully think you're done -- with the nagging anxieties and complications of your youth, what is there left for you to confront but the great simplicities? I never tire of bird-song and sky and weather. I want to write poems that are natural, luminous, deep, spare. I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through and see the world. (Kunitz at age 95, in "Reflections" in Collected Poems)
If it is true that anything kept too long goes wrong -- (a truism for contents of refrigerator) -- then, only an emptying out of the contents of mind will serve us right.
Kunitz; All power does not flow from the top. Since I've thought a good deal about this subject, I'd like to add some further reflections:
-- To live as a poet in this culture is the aesthetic equivalent of a major political statement.
-- Beware of manifestos: they are the death of poetry.
-- A poet is a citizen, like any other. One of the obligations of citizenship is participation in the political process.
And:
Kunitz: I do not subscribe to any organized religion, yet I think of myself as a religious person, and that's independent of any kind of faith or practice, or belief in God. While I was still in college I fastened on the phrase "the holiness of the heart's affections" in one of Keats's letters, and it has stayed with me ever since. To me, that's religion. "I am certain of nothing," he wrote, "but the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination." Though I am in no danger of conversion, the poets you mention as early influences--Herbert, Donne, Blake, Hopkins--still speak to me and light the way.
(Interview: Stanley Kunitz. By Stanley Kunitz and By Mark Wunderlich. From http://www.poets.org/poems/prose.cfm?45442B7C000C04050876)
If we have nothing, what is there to be concerned about?
If we are fools, functionally, we trust what is present in us.
Knock knock!
Come in!
(No joke.)
Trust the heart's affections and the truth of imagination.
Light the way!
Monday, April 26, 2004
Tears through the hurtling wind.
"In a dark time, the eye begins to see," wrote poet Theodore Roethke. It is a dark time. Are we beginning to see?
It seems very hard for some people--especially those in high places, but also those striving for high places--to grasp a simple truth: The United States does not belong in Iraq. It is not our country. Our presence is causing death, suffering, destruction, and so large sections of the population are rising against us. Our military is then reacting with indiscriminate force, bombing and shooting and rounding up people simply on "suspicion."
(--from, "What Do We Do Now?" by Howard Zinn, published in the June, 2004 issue of "The Progressive ")
The dark time is shadowy chronicle of mistrust and disdain. Hussein had it for Iraqi's. Bush and Cheney have it for Americans and other peoples drawn into the lightless mind that wages war and deception.
Reinhold Niebuhr said, The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan values and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.
In America, for the next six months, we are distracted by the appearance of a campaign to choose a president for the next four years. It is, we are told, a serious time. One man, some say, has a frightening resemblance to a religious fanatic intent on Armageddon messianism. With him, others say, we have a strong decisive leader who will rid the world of evil and evildoers.
The campaign is a distraction. The real focus of attention is needed elsewhere.
The subtlety of seeing and hearing
Transcends mere colors and sounds.
The whole affair functions
Without leaving traces,
And mirrors without obscurations.
Very naturally mind and dharmas
Emerge and harmonize.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157)
It is a fool's seduction that tries to replicate itself by copulating with itself. When I was a kid in the city the strongest words of putdown heard were, "Go screw yourself!" (Words have been interchanged to protect the innocent). To screw yourself, (so went the putdown) seemed the ultimate stupidity and degradation. A replica of yourself (the inference went) would be the worst outcome imaginable.
The United States is not making love to the rest of the world in hopes of fathering freedom. It is, rather, something more like date-rape. First you ply Iraq with intoxicants and toxins, and then you have your way with it because you can. Of course, we first interchange words, not calling it what it is, but substituting words like "liberation," "democracy," and "the will of the Almighty."
Enthusiastic but foolish followers of fundamentalist muscular Christian mythology swoon over the rhetoric of divine missionary messianism preached by Mr. Bush and his ministers. These Christians forget the recent pageantry of their Holy Week remembrance when Jesus, as God's very communication-in-flesh, took the peaceful route of healing and forgiveness to absurd lengths by going through the delusion of the world for power and control, by allowing his own demise at the hands of regal rulers and resolute religionists. Perhaps for contemporary savants Jesus was not the God they can be.
On the next day the people who remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. (from John 6)
Did Jesus miss the boat? Or, did his disciples then and now get on the boat without him because they knew the way better than he? The confusion about where Jesus is, where he goes, and where he will show up baffles and crazes many.
What to do about the rest of the words of John in this scene:
When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?" Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal". (John 6)
The food that perishes in this dark time is the illusory seduction and use of force and might to extract benefit for ourself. Whether it is rape, assault, hostile takeover, or invasion -- it is a food benefit that rots and spoils. In this metaphor the Son of man is not a replica of arrogant ambition masked as righteous revenge and ransoming from evil. In this metaphor the Son of man is not killing Iraqis, not stealing their resources, not lying about intentions, not taking the presence of God for personal possession, not planning and coveting the elimination of neighbor's goods and belongings because their bad behavior nullifies any rights they do have, not remembering that holiness is indigenous to the indecipherable emergence of God in ways beyond us.
What is the Son of humankind in this metaphor? What is it that endures to eternal life? The answer is as plain as our very face. The answer resides in the very air we breathe. Right now, right where we are -- do we see the face before us? Can we hear the still, silent voice saying: To these, the least. Whatever is done to anyone is done to me. See me, only me, every me. I am not replicable. Each man, woman, and child is my residing place. Everywhere, without exception, without end.
Roethke, in the poem, asks:
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance?
This country's circumstance of 9/11 has had consequence to its noble soul. The madness embarked upon by its leaders is advancing on devastation. It is at odds with the deeper wisdom it needs to transcend the current darkness.
The madness must cease.
Can ordinary men and women see their way through? Which self, which country do we wish to live through?
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
(final lines, poem "In a Dark Time," by Theodore Roethke)
Can we see our way through and out of fear?
Pray the tearing wind!
"In a dark time, the eye begins to see," wrote poet Theodore Roethke. It is a dark time. Are we beginning to see?
It seems very hard for some people--especially those in high places, but also those striving for high places--to grasp a simple truth: The United States does not belong in Iraq. It is not our country. Our presence is causing death, suffering, destruction, and so large sections of the population are rising against us. Our military is then reacting with indiscriminate force, bombing and shooting and rounding up people simply on "suspicion."
(--from, "What Do We Do Now?" by Howard Zinn, published in the June, 2004 issue of "The Progressive ")
The dark time is shadowy chronicle of mistrust and disdain. Hussein had it for Iraqi's. Bush and Cheney have it for Americans and other peoples drawn into the lightless mind that wages war and deception.
Reinhold Niebuhr said, The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan values and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.
In America, for the next six months, we are distracted by the appearance of a campaign to choose a president for the next four years. It is, we are told, a serious time. One man, some say, has a frightening resemblance to a religious fanatic intent on Armageddon messianism. With him, others say, we have a strong decisive leader who will rid the world of evil and evildoers.
The campaign is a distraction. The real focus of attention is needed elsewhere.
The subtlety of seeing and hearing
Transcends mere colors and sounds.
The whole affair functions
Without leaving traces,
And mirrors without obscurations.
Very naturally mind and dharmas
Emerge and harmonize.
- Hongzhi Zhengjue (1091-1157)
It is a fool's seduction that tries to replicate itself by copulating with itself. When I was a kid in the city the strongest words of putdown heard were, "Go screw yourself!" (Words have been interchanged to protect the innocent). To screw yourself, (so went the putdown) seemed the ultimate stupidity and degradation. A replica of yourself (the inference went) would be the worst outcome imaginable.
The United States is not making love to the rest of the world in hopes of fathering freedom. It is, rather, something more like date-rape. First you ply Iraq with intoxicants and toxins, and then you have your way with it because you can. Of course, we first interchange words, not calling it what it is, but substituting words like "liberation," "democracy," and "the will of the Almighty."
Enthusiastic but foolish followers of fundamentalist muscular Christian mythology swoon over the rhetoric of divine missionary messianism preached by Mr. Bush and his ministers. These Christians forget the recent pageantry of their Holy Week remembrance when Jesus, as God's very communication-in-flesh, took the peaceful route of healing and forgiveness to absurd lengths by going through the delusion of the world for power and control, by allowing his own demise at the hands of regal rulers and resolute religionists. Perhaps for contemporary savants Jesus was not the God they can be.
On the next day the people who remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. (from John 6)
Did Jesus miss the boat? Or, did his disciples then and now get on the boat without him because they knew the way better than he? The confusion about where Jesus is, where he goes, and where he will show up baffles and crazes many.
What to do about the rest of the words of John in this scene:
When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?" Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labour for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of man will give to you; for on him has God the Father set his seal". (John 6)
The food that perishes in this dark time is the illusory seduction and use of force and might to extract benefit for ourself. Whether it is rape, assault, hostile takeover, or invasion -- it is a food benefit that rots and spoils. In this metaphor the Son of man is not a replica of arrogant ambition masked as righteous revenge and ransoming from evil. In this metaphor the Son of man is not killing Iraqis, not stealing their resources, not lying about intentions, not taking the presence of God for personal possession, not planning and coveting the elimination of neighbor's goods and belongings because their bad behavior nullifies any rights they do have, not remembering that holiness is indigenous to the indecipherable emergence of God in ways beyond us.
What is the Son of humankind in this metaphor? What is it that endures to eternal life? The answer is as plain as our very face. The answer resides in the very air we breathe. Right now, right where we are -- do we see the face before us? Can we hear the still, silent voice saying: To these, the least. Whatever is done to anyone is done to me. See me, only me, every me. I am not replicable. Each man, woman, and child is my residing place. Everywhere, without exception, without end.
Roethke, in the poem, asks:
What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance?
This country's circumstance of 9/11 has had consequence to its noble soul. The madness embarked upon by its leaders is advancing on devastation. It is at odds with the deeper wisdom it needs to transcend the current darkness.
The madness must cease.
Can ordinary men and women see their way through? Which self, which country do we wish to live through?
Dark, dark my light, and darker my desire.
My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly,
Keeps buzzing at the sill. Which I is I?
A fallen man, I climb out of my fear.
The mind enters itself, and God the mind,
And one is One, free in the tearing wind.
(final lines, poem "In a Dark Time," by Theodore Roethke)
Can we see our way through and out of fear?
Pray the tearing wind!
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Who's really keeping time?
At 39 minutes 58 seconds into the 40 minute sitting Sunday Evening, a sudden sound -- the falling to wood of the mechanical floor sweeper -- thumped sharply in the loft of meditation cabin. Startle! I invited the bell to sound. We walked for 10 minutes before chanting the Heart Sutra.
Whose hand sounds the echo replacing time?
I climb these hills
As if walking on air
Body too light to fall
Bamboo staff resting
Against a great stone
Torn cloak snapping in the wind
A lone bird soars the azure depths
Far distant springs reflected in its eye
Carefree, singing a timeless song
Gone, on a journey without end.
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
Earlier along mud-hardening path up blueberry fields on Appleton Ridge we hiked in sun and wind through words about our work these eight years. At round table back in hermitage another's words before chicken soup was ladled.
Perhaps the one question that we don't ask often enough is "What do I have to offer?" We are so intent on analyzing what we can get from a job or an occupation that we rarely consider the sense of satisfaction that comes from offering our unique contribution. We could take the question "What do I have to offer?" as a koan, leaving the world of mental analysis in order to enter into the experience of not knowing. Simply raising the question and focusing on the gestalt of the moment may not bring any immediate answers. Nor is it particularly pleasant, since it brings us once again face-to-face with the experience of no ground. However, there is something about being in the moment that is compelling, real, and far removed from the confused spinning of the mental world.
(p.96, in Being Zen, Bringing Meditation to Life, by Ezra Bayda, c.2002)
How much of our work life do we picture and story as failure? Even our work as member of a family? Maybe a glorious failure? Perhaps mere preface for the real work in life.
We often forget what our real job -- our life job -- is. Our life job is to become awake to who we really are. When we remember this, we will be less likely to separate our work from our practice. We'll begin to understand that it's possible to practice with everything we encounter, even at work. (Bayda, p.98)
Work practice. We dwell in the between. We carry on in the vacant space between work and practice. The more and closer we look we glimpse who we are in the betweens of ordinary existence. We occupy -- (to use the descriptives of the Iona Community's founder George McLeod) -- the slash/space between work/worship, prayer/politics, secular/sacred, and whatever additional dyad that we include in our descriptive attempts to locate ourselves.
We cannot keep out of the middle of everything. We can only pretend to move off to one side or another. Time terrifies us into seeking refuge at extremes where we arrive and find not refuge, but desolation. Our home is in the midst.
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
(from poem "Burnt Norton" by T.S. Eliot)
We cannot keep time. It is already gone. Snow that fell on frozen ground has melted into softened mud which hardens dry with sun and wind near thin thicket of blueberry stem.
Other echoes inhabit our stillness facing the broad ridge silence beckoning.
Some unseen gracious hand sounds our way.
Shall we?
Follow?
At 39 minutes 58 seconds into the 40 minute sitting Sunday Evening, a sudden sound -- the falling to wood of the mechanical floor sweeper -- thumped sharply in the loft of meditation cabin. Startle! I invited the bell to sound. We walked for 10 minutes before chanting the Heart Sutra.
Whose hand sounds the echo replacing time?
I climb these hills
As if walking on air
Body too light to fall
Bamboo staff resting
Against a great stone
Torn cloak snapping in the wind
A lone bird soars the azure depths
Far distant springs reflected in its eye
Carefree, singing a timeless song
Gone, on a journey without end.
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
Earlier along mud-hardening path up blueberry fields on Appleton Ridge we hiked in sun and wind through words about our work these eight years. At round table back in hermitage another's words before chicken soup was ladled.
Perhaps the one question that we don't ask often enough is "What do I have to offer?" We are so intent on analyzing what we can get from a job or an occupation that we rarely consider the sense of satisfaction that comes from offering our unique contribution. We could take the question "What do I have to offer?" as a koan, leaving the world of mental analysis in order to enter into the experience of not knowing. Simply raising the question and focusing on the gestalt of the moment may not bring any immediate answers. Nor is it particularly pleasant, since it brings us once again face-to-face with the experience of no ground. However, there is something about being in the moment that is compelling, real, and far removed from the confused spinning of the mental world.
(p.96, in Being Zen, Bringing Meditation to Life, by Ezra Bayda, c.2002)
How much of our work life do we picture and story as failure? Even our work as member of a family? Maybe a glorious failure? Perhaps mere preface for the real work in life.
We often forget what our real job -- our life job -- is. Our life job is to become awake to who we really are. When we remember this, we will be less likely to separate our work from our practice. We'll begin to understand that it's possible to practice with everything we encounter, even at work. (Bayda, p.98)
Work practice. We dwell in the between. We carry on in the vacant space between work and practice. The more and closer we look we glimpse who we are in the betweens of ordinary existence. We occupy -- (to use the descriptives of the Iona Community's founder George McLeod) -- the slash/space between work/worship, prayer/politics, secular/sacred, and whatever additional dyad that we include in our descriptive attempts to locate ourselves.
We cannot keep out of the middle of everything. We can only pretend to move off to one side or another. Time terrifies us into seeking refuge at extremes where we arrive and find not refuge, but desolation. Our home is in the midst.
Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
(from poem "Burnt Norton" by T.S. Eliot)
We cannot keep time. It is already gone. Snow that fell on frozen ground has melted into softened mud which hardens dry with sun and wind near thin thicket of blueberry stem.
Other echoes inhabit our stillness facing the broad ridge silence beckoning.
Some unseen gracious hand sounds our way.
Shall we?
Follow?
Saturday, April 24, 2004
Note: Schola Vacation. The bookshop/bakery is closed today. There will be no conversation.
................................
Informing intention and affective attention.
What occurs within and what takes place in the open is isomorphic. (Isomorphic is defined as being of identical or similar form, shape, or structure.)
When it was already dawn, Jesus was standing on the shore; but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.(from John 21)
We so seldom see what we are looking at.
The knowledge of the pure clean mind
Is as yellow gold to the world;
The spiritual treasury of wisdom is
All in the body and mind.
The uncreated spiritual treasury
Is neither shallow nor deep.
The buddhas and bodhisattvas
Understand this basic mind;
For those who have the chance
To encounter it, it is not
Past, future, or present.
- Fu Shan-hui (487-659)
To live a monastic life in the open calls for a mind without boundaries. The contemplative sees through boundary. To dwell in an open monastery of the ordinary calls for a willingness to practice no-barriers. The hermit in the open is always alone. Everyone met is the one and only, the source and transmission of what we've come to see through.
As Meetingbrook at dawn arrives at the shore, we stumble over something familiar but do not yet realize what it is. "Go fish," says silence to word. We look around. Tide waits to feel the keel of obedience.
Mono: monastics of no other; monastics of now opening.
Cross fertilization: no other is now opening.
We are coming to realize what is at the harbor in early morning calm: no other is informing intention; affective attention is now opening.
We arrive at the unrecognizable.
We wander through what is...
...to follow.
................................
Informing intention and affective attention.
What occurs within and what takes place in the open is isomorphic. (Isomorphic is defined as being of identical or similar form, shape, or structure.)
When it was already dawn, Jesus was standing on the shore; but the disciples did not realize that it was Jesus.(from John 21)
We so seldom see what we are looking at.
The knowledge of the pure clean mind
Is as yellow gold to the world;
The spiritual treasury of wisdom is
All in the body and mind.
The uncreated spiritual treasury
Is neither shallow nor deep.
The buddhas and bodhisattvas
Understand this basic mind;
For those who have the chance
To encounter it, it is not
Past, future, or present.
- Fu Shan-hui (487-659)
To live a monastic life in the open calls for a mind without boundaries. The contemplative sees through boundary. To dwell in an open monastery of the ordinary calls for a willingness to practice no-barriers. The hermit in the open is always alone. Everyone met is the one and only, the source and transmission of what we've come to see through.
As Meetingbrook at dawn arrives at the shore, we stumble over something familiar but do not yet realize what it is. "Go fish," says silence to word. We look around. Tide waits to feel the keel of obedience.
Mono: monastics of no other; monastics of now opening.
Cross fertilization: no other is now opening.
We are coming to realize what is at the harbor in early morning calm: no other is informing intention; affective attention is now opening.
We arrive at the unrecognizable.
We wander through what is...
...to follow.
Friday, April 23, 2004
Note: Schola Vacation. The bookshop/bakery is closed today. There will be no conversation.
................
Sudden tears at the playing of Con Te Partiro (Time to say goodbye). It brings to the place when someone dear was nearing death.
Today, finally, pictures of caskets returning from Iraq.
Some say, "They sleep."
Then, this from Puccini's Turandot:
Nessun dorma!
Nessun dorma!
Tu pure, o Principe,
Nella tua fredda stanza guardi le stelle,
Che tremano d'amore e di speranza!
(No-one shall sleep!
No-one shall sleep!
You too, oh Prince,
In your cold room, watch the stars
Trembling with love and hope!)
There is much we do not yet understand. Is it absence of understanding that flows with tears? Yet, if we did understand -- would sorrow and joy bow to each other with the same deep reverence of tears?
Mountain sounds carry a chill wisdom
An upwelling spring whispers subtle tales
Pine breezes stir the fire beneath my tea
Bamboo shadows soak deep into my robe
I grind my ink: clouds scraping across the crags
Copy out a verse: birds settling on branches
As the world rolls right on by
Its every turn tracing out non-action
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
Would that reverential bow suffice? Is non-action profound surrender to the passage of life through itself to Itself?
It was Teilhard de Chardin who wrote, "If there were no real propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level, indeed, in the molecule itself ~ it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up in the 'hominized' or human form."
Teilhard defines this innate urge to unite as an energy force in his famous Law of complexity-consciousness:
Throughout all time there has been an evolutionary tendency for all matter to unite and become increasingly complex in nature.
With each increase in material complexity, there is a related rise in the consciousness of matter and an even greater urge to unite.
Teilhard called this energy force RADIAL ENERGY and it is this radial energy in matter, this deep urge towards union and completion, which eventually manifests itself as LOVE.
As such, we now have close to 7 billion people on the planet and we have reached a critical state of complexity consciousness with an even greater urge to unite. We have reached THE MOMENT OF TRUTH where we either surrender to this innate urge to unite or perish.
History has conclusively shown that altruism and social cooperation are the deciding factors in the survival of the species ~ not war and survival of the fittest. Richard Leakey in THE BEGINNINGS OF MANKIND argued that there is no evidence that cruelty and hostility are innate in man . On the contrary , all the evidence points to non-violence and social cooperation.
(from Feb 2003 Newsletter, "The Moment of Truth," by Allen Roland, Ph.D (http://allenroland.com/archives/newsletter.php?id=24)
The irony of words -- 'unite' and 'untie' are rearrangement of each other. Is there a clue here? Is it when we continue to perceive 'other' that we untie? Will we unite when our sight becomes clear?
In 1949 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin made an extraordinary remark published after his death in The Future of Man. It is what he called 'the moment of affective attraction'. He was discussing the likelihood that one day we would all together move into a closer union, where our human nature would change for the better, and there would result a 'human totalisation'. The line of reasoning he used, which was in the form of one of his reveries, had in a mere footnote to his main arguments this quite extraordinary statement: 'This totalisation would take place within a field of affective attraction sufficiently intense to influence the human mass as a whole and at the same time'.
Television was in its infancy, commercial computers still ten years away, and the kind of expanded means of intelligence he predicted would become real for millions of us through the Internet in forty years time. But his almost outrageous statement was about a moment or event, which would bring us all together and change us. Could that happen? Has it already started to happen? Did a large proportion of the world's population ever experience something at the same time with such power that it changed how we think and live together?
-- the first NASA photographs of the beautiful, fragile blue and white Earth taken from space, our precious planet which we would never again take for granted and which we might now learn to protect
-- nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phue running naked, burned, crying in terror, from a South Vietnamese air attack
-- the world watching and praying as Apollo 13 limped home, millions wanting the crew to land safely
-- the vast number of people on the planet who experienced the Millennium
-- the 2001 attack on New York's World Trade Center.
Were these moments of affective attraction? Will there be more and then some day a big one? Will it be within the domain of war or love?
(from "The global consciousness project" by Brian Rothery (http://www.philosphere.com/article25.html?&MMN_position=27:2:24)
Kahlil Gibran said, "Ever has it been that love knows not its depth until the hour of separation."
Will we stay asleep?
"No-one" will sleep.
Will 'yes-one' awake?
Trembling.
Good morning!
................
Sudden tears at the playing of Con Te Partiro (Time to say goodbye). It brings to the place when someone dear was nearing death.
Today, finally, pictures of caskets returning from Iraq.
Some say, "They sleep."
Then, this from Puccini's Turandot:
Nessun dorma!
Nessun dorma!
Tu pure, o Principe,
Nella tua fredda stanza guardi le stelle,
Che tremano d'amore e di speranza!
(No-one shall sleep!
No-one shall sleep!
You too, oh Prince,
In your cold room, watch the stars
Trembling with love and hope!)
There is much we do not yet understand. Is it absence of understanding that flows with tears? Yet, if we did understand -- would sorrow and joy bow to each other with the same deep reverence of tears?
Mountain sounds carry a chill wisdom
An upwelling spring whispers subtle tales
Pine breezes stir the fire beneath my tea
Bamboo shadows soak deep into my robe
I grind my ink: clouds scraping across the crags
Copy out a verse: birds settling on branches
As the world rolls right on by
Its every turn tracing out non-action
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
Would that reverential bow suffice? Is non-action profound surrender to the passage of life through itself to Itself?
It was Teilhard de Chardin who wrote, "If there were no real propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level, indeed, in the molecule itself ~ it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up in the 'hominized' or human form."
Teilhard defines this innate urge to unite as an energy force in his famous Law of complexity-consciousness:
Throughout all time there has been an evolutionary tendency for all matter to unite and become increasingly complex in nature.
With each increase in material complexity, there is a related rise in the consciousness of matter and an even greater urge to unite.
Teilhard called this energy force RADIAL ENERGY and it is this radial energy in matter, this deep urge towards union and completion, which eventually manifests itself as LOVE.
As such, we now have close to 7 billion people on the planet and we have reached a critical state of complexity consciousness with an even greater urge to unite. We have reached THE MOMENT OF TRUTH where we either surrender to this innate urge to unite or perish.
History has conclusively shown that altruism and social cooperation are the deciding factors in the survival of the species ~ not war and survival of the fittest. Richard Leakey in THE BEGINNINGS OF MANKIND argued that there is no evidence that cruelty and hostility are innate in man . On the contrary , all the evidence points to non-violence and social cooperation.
(from Feb 2003 Newsletter, "The Moment of Truth," by Allen Roland, Ph.D (http://allenroland.com/archives/newsletter.php?id=24)
The irony of words -- 'unite' and 'untie' are rearrangement of each other. Is there a clue here? Is it when we continue to perceive 'other' that we untie? Will we unite when our sight becomes clear?
In 1949 Pierre Teilhard de Chardin made an extraordinary remark published after his death in The Future of Man. It is what he called 'the moment of affective attraction'. He was discussing the likelihood that one day we would all together move into a closer union, where our human nature would change for the better, and there would result a 'human totalisation'. The line of reasoning he used, which was in the form of one of his reveries, had in a mere footnote to his main arguments this quite extraordinary statement: 'This totalisation would take place within a field of affective attraction sufficiently intense to influence the human mass as a whole and at the same time'.
Television was in its infancy, commercial computers still ten years away, and the kind of expanded means of intelligence he predicted would become real for millions of us through the Internet in forty years time. But his almost outrageous statement was about a moment or event, which would bring us all together and change us. Could that happen? Has it already started to happen? Did a large proportion of the world's population ever experience something at the same time with such power that it changed how we think and live together?
-- the first NASA photographs of the beautiful, fragile blue and white Earth taken from space, our precious planet which we would never again take for granted and which we might now learn to protect
-- nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phue running naked, burned, crying in terror, from a South Vietnamese air attack
-- the world watching and praying as Apollo 13 limped home, millions wanting the crew to land safely
-- the vast number of people on the planet who experienced the Millennium
-- the 2001 attack on New York's World Trade Center.
Were these moments of affective attraction? Will there be more and then some day a big one? Will it be within the domain of war or love?
(from "The global consciousness project" by Brian Rothery (http://www.philosphere.com/article25.html?&MMN_position=27:2:24)
Kahlil Gibran said, "Ever has it been that love knows not its depth until the hour of separation."
Will we stay asleep?
"No-one" will sleep.
Will 'yes-one' awake?
Trembling.
Good morning!
Thursday, April 22, 2004
Note: Schola Vacation. The bookshop/bakery is closed today. There will be no conversation.
.................
Earth Day.
Foghorn comes through middle of Rockport Harbor. Is there still an other side?
The Monastery of Christ in the Desert in their martyrology today writes of St. Theodore of Sykeon, April 22:
Today we travel to 7th century Asia Minor to meet another unusual and obscure saint. Theodore was born at Sykeon in Asia Minor in the middle of the 6th century. His unmarried mother, Mary, lived the life of a prostitute and innkeeper. His father is listed as Cosmas, a messenger of the royal court. According to his biography, which was written by a contemporary, Theodore was a very prayerful child. At school he would often give up his lunch so as to spend the time in a local church in prayer.
Despite the objections of his mother, he left home at fourteen and lived the life of an ascetic. His holiness and simplicity came to the attention of Bishop Theodosius of Anastasioupolis, who ordained him a lector, then a deacon. At the age of eighteen, Theodore was ordained to the priesthood, which although not common, was not without precedent. He spent the next several years living the life of an ascetic and drew many disciples by his simplicity, humility and austerity. He founded several monasteries to accommodate the many young men drawn to living a life dedicated to God.
He was abbot of the monastery at Sykeon and reports of his holiness and the many wonders, which occurred through his intercession, brought many to conversion of life. Theodore had a great devotion to St. George, who we will meet tomorrow. He reluctantly accepted the position of bishop of Anastasioupolis after the death of Thodosius and remained there for eleven years.
Theodore was never comfortable with the administrative duties and activities of the office of bishop and was finally able to obtain permission to retire to his monastery. He lived the remainder of his life in prayer and solitude except for a brief visit to Constantinople to bless the emperor and the senate. He died on April 22, 613.
We don't have a great deal of historical data about the life of this saint, but the little we do know shows a man who apparently listened to the call of God from the very beginning. One might wonder how he could have come to know God considering his beginnings, but as Scripture tells us, "...my ways are not your ways..." (Is 55:8). Theodore learned of God and heard His call and simply said "yes" for the rest of his life.
"Yes" to everything is a response almost beyond imagining. "Yes" transforms, like Tonglen practice. (Tonglen: in Tibetan, it means "give and take".) We breathe in the dark and hurtful, and we breathe out light and consolation. Nothing stays fixed and shut-in during the process -- in and out, come and go, receive and donate, accept and pass on.
Tonglen is the Tibetan practice of “sending and receiving.” Tong means “sending out” or “letting go,” len means “receiving” or “accepting.” Tonglen is ordinarily practiced in sitting meditation, using the breath. Put simply, the practitioner breathes in the bad and breathes out the good, taking on the suffering of other sentient beings. At first the practice may appear self-defeating, but as the late Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said, “The more negativity we take in with a sense of openness and compassion, the more goodness there is to breathe out. So there is nothing to lose.”
(http://www.lighthousewoods.com/buddhist_tonglen.html)
So too God?
What does it mean to be dedicated to God? ('Dedicate': 'de'='from', and 'dicare'='to speak, proclaim'). Hence, to dedicate is to speak from, in this usage, to speak from God. God -- origin and continuation, reality and encounter, foundation and movement, silence and expression, impermanence and surrender.
Breathe in the 'no' of the world; breathe out 'yes.'
Perfumed springs ripple over skeletal outcrops
In the distance a hint of smoke, rising
I hear perpetual stillness in these hills
Sense the rush of swirling waters
White plum blossoms blanket a dozen miles
Save for this single, tiny hut
Tigers, half-tame, loiter near my door
Chattering monkeys guard my gate
A wild mountain-man, white hair streaming
Tops the slate summit on a bamboo staff
Caught unawares, I laugh at the distant bell
Follow the twist and turn of an ancient stream.
Zen hearted, washed free of all desire
Never again will I wander the noisy dust.
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
Toothless tigers enter the bookshop/bakery at harbor and roar weariness and disconsolate upset at their bodies, their lives, the state of the economy, and the turmoil in the world. Monkey minds jump from one branch of thought to next, from one frond of tasty memory to the next. The noisy dust of desire and regret is thrown against the doors, comes in on shoes to grit the wooden floor and burdened rugs. A sip of tea, a cup of coffee, fire conversing with wood their ashy insights, loll of harmonica, greetings to next arriving face.
It is sometimes difficult to stay through the human. It's not as though there is something else or better that is held out for -- even if someone says, "It will be better on the other side," or, " We must throw off the human, it's bad." Staying through the human is the route to arrive at the human/divine. Whether with body or beyond body, that which we call 'human,' that which we name 'creation' -- these ways of speaking try to hitch a ride with that which is passing through.
Our thinking struggles with the attempt to get in step with what is passing through. Often we overstep. We do this by trying to explain away the reality occurring right before our eyes. We do this by knowing better than another person how to live their life. And we do this by stepping outside emerging reality -- as a casual observer might note a wounded soldier trying to stop blood seeping away his life. Once we step closer to emerging reality we feel the uncertainty and experience the movement of life through realms of unknowing passage beyond our control and out of our awareness.
How love what is passing through?
Spring
Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge
to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else
my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,
it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;
all day I think of her--
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.
(Poem: "Spring," by Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems. © Beacon Press.)
Celebrating Earth Day is taking on the reality of earth and earthly existence. It is stepping into the reality of what is passing through. Not wishing for anything else -- but practicing being that which is. Not condemning the beliefs and actions of others we deem despicable -- but embodying what we hold sacred. Not trying to accumulate and hoard the fragile peduncle (that narrow part by which some larger part or the whole body of an organism is attached) -- but attending with our own fragile presence the emergence.
When friends are overemphasized, enemies also come to be overemphasized. When you are born, you do not know anyone and no one knows you. Even thought all of us equally want happiness and do not want suffering, you like the faces of some people and think, "These are my friends," and dislike the faces of others and think, "These are my enemies." You affix identities and nicknames to them and end up practicing the generation of desire for the former and the generation of hatred for the latter. What value is there in this? None. The problem is that so much energy is being expended for a level no deeper than the superficial affairs of this life. The profound loses out to the trivial.
If you have not practiced and on your dying day you are surrounded by sobbing friends and others involved in your affairs, instead of having someone who reminds you of virtuous practice, this will only bring trouble, and you will have brought it on yourself. Where does the fault lie? In not being mindful of impermanence.
(Pp.50-51, in Advice on Dying And living a Better Life, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Trans. & Ed. by Jeffrey Hopkins, c.2002)
Music and chant sound in this small room. Dom Jean Claire and the Monastic Choir of St Peter's Abbey, Solesmes pray the Night Office: Vigils of Christmas. Earth and Incarnation seem sufficient today. They chant: Diffusa est gratia in labiis tuis, propterea benedixit te Deus in aeternum -- "Grace is poured out upon your lips: therefore God has blessed you forever." Upon lips, and ears, and eyes -- and we are blessed with silence, with sound, and with sight.
For rest of life, a gift of God.
Her perfect love.
Welcome, yes, to earth!
.................
Earth Day.
Foghorn comes through middle of Rockport Harbor. Is there still an other side?
The Monastery of Christ in the Desert in their martyrology today writes of St. Theodore of Sykeon, April 22:
Today we travel to 7th century Asia Minor to meet another unusual and obscure saint. Theodore was born at Sykeon in Asia Minor in the middle of the 6th century. His unmarried mother, Mary, lived the life of a prostitute and innkeeper. His father is listed as Cosmas, a messenger of the royal court. According to his biography, which was written by a contemporary, Theodore was a very prayerful child. At school he would often give up his lunch so as to spend the time in a local church in prayer.
Despite the objections of his mother, he left home at fourteen and lived the life of an ascetic. His holiness and simplicity came to the attention of Bishop Theodosius of Anastasioupolis, who ordained him a lector, then a deacon. At the age of eighteen, Theodore was ordained to the priesthood, which although not common, was not without precedent. He spent the next several years living the life of an ascetic and drew many disciples by his simplicity, humility and austerity. He founded several monasteries to accommodate the many young men drawn to living a life dedicated to God.
He was abbot of the monastery at Sykeon and reports of his holiness and the many wonders, which occurred through his intercession, brought many to conversion of life. Theodore had a great devotion to St. George, who we will meet tomorrow. He reluctantly accepted the position of bishop of Anastasioupolis after the death of Thodosius and remained there for eleven years.
Theodore was never comfortable with the administrative duties and activities of the office of bishop and was finally able to obtain permission to retire to his monastery. He lived the remainder of his life in prayer and solitude except for a brief visit to Constantinople to bless the emperor and the senate. He died on April 22, 613.
We don't have a great deal of historical data about the life of this saint, but the little we do know shows a man who apparently listened to the call of God from the very beginning. One might wonder how he could have come to know God considering his beginnings, but as Scripture tells us, "...my ways are not your ways..." (Is 55:8). Theodore learned of God and heard His call and simply said "yes" for the rest of his life.
"Yes" to everything is a response almost beyond imagining. "Yes" transforms, like Tonglen practice. (Tonglen: in Tibetan, it means "give and take".) We breathe in the dark and hurtful, and we breathe out light and consolation. Nothing stays fixed and shut-in during the process -- in and out, come and go, receive and donate, accept and pass on.
Tonglen is the Tibetan practice of “sending and receiving.” Tong means “sending out” or “letting go,” len means “receiving” or “accepting.” Tonglen is ordinarily practiced in sitting meditation, using the breath. Put simply, the practitioner breathes in the bad and breathes out the good, taking on the suffering of other sentient beings. At first the practice may appear self-defeating, but as the late Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said, “The more negativity we take in with a sense of openness and compassion, the more goodness there is to breathe out. So there is nothing to lose.”
(http://www.lighthousewoods.com/buddhist_tonglen.html)
So too God?
What does it mean to be dedicated to God? ('Dedicate': 'de'='from', and 'dicare'='to speak, proclaim'). Hence, to dedicate is to speak from, in this usage, to speak from God. God -- origin and continuation, reality and encounter, foundation and movement, silence and expression, impermanence and surrender.
Breathe in the 'no' of the world; breathe out 'yes.'
Perfumed springs ripple over skeletal outcrops
In the distance a hint of smoke, rising
I hear perpetual stillness in these hills
Sense the rush of swirling waters
White plum blossoms blanket a dozen miles
Save for this single, tiny hut
Tigers, half-tame, loiter near my door
Chattering monkeys guard my gate
A wild mountain-man, white hair streaming
Tops the slate summit on a bamboo staff
Caught unawares, I laugh at the distant bell
Follow the twist and turn of an ancient stream.
Zen hearted, washed free of all desire
Never again will I wander the noisy dust.
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
Toothless tigers enter the bookshop/bakery at harbor and roar weariness and disconsolate upset at their bodies, their lives, the state of the economy, and the turmoil in the world. Monkey minds jump from one branch of thought to next, from one frond of tasty memory to the next. The noisy dust of desire and regret is thrown against the doors, comes in on shoes to grit the wooden floor and burdened rugs. A sip of tea, a cup of coffee, fire conversing with wood their ashy insights, loll of harmonica, greetings to next arriving face.
It is sometimes difficult to stay through the human. It's not as though there is something else or better that is held out for -- even if someone says, "It will be better on the other side," or, " We must throw off the human, it's bad." Staying through the human is the route to arrive at the human/divine. Whether with body or beyond body, that which we call 'human,' that which we name 'creation' -- these ways of speaking try to hitch a ride with that which is passing through.
Our thinking struggles with the attempt to get in step with what is passing through. Often we overstep. We do this by trying to explain away the reality occurring right before our eyes. We do this by knowing better than another person how to live their life. And we do this by stepping outside emerging reality -- as a casual observer might note a wounded soldier trying to stop blood seeping away his life. Once we step closer to emerging reality we feel the uncertainty and experience the movement of life through realms of unknowing passage beyond our control and out of our awareness.
How love what is passing through?
Spring
Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring
down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring
I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue
like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:
how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge
to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else
my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,
it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;
all day I think of her--
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.
(Poem: "Spring," by Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems. © Beacon Press.)
Celebrating Earth Day is taking on the reality of earth and earthly existence. It is stepping into the reality of what is passing through. Not wishing for anything else -- but practicing being that which is. Not condemning the beliefs and actions of others we deem despicable -- but embodying what we hold sacred. Not trying to accumulate and hoard the fragile peduncle (that narrow part by which some larger part or the whole body of an organism is attached) -- but attending with our own fragile presence the emergence.
When friends are overemphasized, enemies also come to be overemphasized. When you are born, you do not know anyone and no one knows you. Even thought all of us equally want happiness and do not want suffering, you like the faces of some people and think, "These are my friends," and dislike the faces of others and think, "These are my enemies." You affix identities and nicknames to them and end up practicing the generation of desire for the former and the generation of hatred for the latter. What value is there in this? None. The problem is that so much energy is being expended for a level no deeper than the superficial affairs of this life. The profound loses out to the trivial.
If you have not practiced and on your dying day you are surrounded by sobbing friends and others involved in your affairs, instead of having someone who reminds you of virtuous practice, this will only bring trouble, and you will have brought it on yourself. Where does the fault lie? In not being mindful of impermanence.
(Pp.50-51, in Advice on Dying And living a Better Life, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Trans. & Ed. by Jeffrey Hopkins, c.2002)
Music and chant sound in this small room. Dom Jean Claire and the Monastic Choir of St Peter's Abbey, Solesmes pray the Night Office: Vigils of Christmas. Earth and Incarnation seem sufficient today. They chant: Diffusa est gratia in labiis tuis, propterea benedixit te Deus in aeternum -- "Grace is poured out upon your lips: therefore God has blessed you forever." Upon lips, and ears, and eyes -- and we are blessed with silence, with sound, and with sight.
For rest of life, a gift of God.
Her perfect love.
Welcome, yes, to earth!
Wednesday, April 21, 2004
Note: Schola Vacation. The bookshop/bakery is closed today. There will be no conversation.
..................
Breakfast is a sacred meal.
Jesus said to them,
“Come, have breakfast.” And none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who
are you?” because they realized it was the Lord. (from John 21)
What if we began again? Eight years later, what if we began our original intuition of a community bakery/cafe/bookstore? What if we ran the place differently?
What if all food and baked goods was by donation? And non-new books? And sails?
Comedy is "the only thing worth writing in this despairing age, provided the comedy is truly on the side of the lonely, the neglected and the unsuccessful, and plays its part in the war against established rules."(John Mortimer)
If the Zen Contemplative life is absurd, why not make light of it?
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." (John Muir)
What if everything stayed as it is -- completely different, and open to spirit?
Conversations -- with food -- by workers, artists, writers, practitioners of every spiritual persuasion, the elderly, the teenager, the business owner, the retired, and the poetically or politically active.
Everything by donation.
Plus ca change, plus cela meme chose!
The more a thing changes, the more it becomes itself!
Because -- everything is gift.
..................
Breakfast is a sacred meal.
Jesus said to them,
“Come, have breakfast.” And none of the disciples dared to ask him, “Who
are you?” because they realized it was the Lord. (from John 21)
What if we began again? Eight years later, what if we began our original intuition of a community bakery/cafe/bookstore? What if we ran the place differently?
What if all food and baked goods was by donation? And non-new books? And sails?
Comedy is "the only thing worth writing in this despairing age, provided the comedy is truly on the side of the lonely, the neglected and the unsuccessful, and plays its part in the war against established rules."(John Mortimer)
If the Zen Contemplative life is absurd, why not make light of it?
"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe." (John Muir)
What if everything stayed as it is -- completely different, and open to spirit?
Conversations -- with food -- by workers, artists, writers, practitioners of every spiritual persuasion, the elderly, the teenager, the business owner, the retired, and the poetically or politically active.
Everything by donation.
Plus ca change, plus cela meme chose!
The more a thing changes, the more it becomes itself!
Because -- everything is gift.
Tuesday, April 20, 2004
Living the Zen life is absurd. (That's what was said at Tuesday Evening Conversation)
Study the Way and never grow old
Distrust emotions; truth will emerge
Sweep away your worries
Set even your body aside
Autumn drives off the yellow leaves
Yet spring renews every green bud
Quietly contemplate the pattern of things
Nothing here to make us sad
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
'Absurd' is a good word. ('ab' from L. = 'from, away, off'; 'surd' from L. 'surdus' = 'deaf, silent, stupid').
Webster's 7th says of 'absurd' -- ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous.
The words we say about our lives, like words intending to teach, are often not much help.
I feel sorry that I cannot help you very much. But the way to study true Zen is not verbal. Just open yourself and give up everything. Whatever happens, whether you think it is good or bad, study closely and see what you find out. This is the fundamental attitude. Sometimes you will do things without much reason, like a child who draws pictures whether they are good or bad. If that is difficult for you, you are not actually ready to practice zazen.
This is what it means to surrender, even though you have nothing to surrender. Without losing yourself by sticking to a particular rule or understanding, keep finding yourself, moment after moment. This is the only thing for you to do.
(pp. 75-76, "Finding Out for Yourself," in not always so, practicing the true spirit of Zen, by Shunryu Suzuki)
The four of us laughed and marveled at how absurd we are. There is no reason things are as they are. Just as there is no explanation that satisfies telling after the fact. Words that intend to justify or say "I knew that" fall flat when said seriously and soar with laughter when playfully posed.
To be listened to. To listen.
To be heard. To hear.
No matter...what.
Is what is served.
Open and give up.
Going on.
Study the Way and never grow old
Distrust emotions; truth will emerge
Sweep away your worries
Set even your body aside
Autumn drives off the yellow leaves
Yet spring renews every green bud
Quietly contemplate the pattern of things
Nothing here to make us sad
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)
'Absurd' is a good word. ('ab' from L. = 'from, away, off'; 'surd' from L. 'surdus' = 'deaf, silent, stupid').
Webster's 7th says of 'absurd' -- ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous.
The words we say about our lives, like words intending to teach, are often not much help.
I feel sorry that I cannot help you very much. But the way to study true Zen is not verbal. Just open yourself and give up everything. Whatever happens, whether you think it is good or bad, study closely and see what you find out. This is the fundamental attitude. Sometimes you will do things without much reason, like a child who draws pictures whether they are good or bad. If that is difficult for you, you are not actually ready to practice zazen.
This is what it means to surrender, even though you have nothing to surrender. Without losing yourself by sticking to a particular rule or understanding, keep finding yourself, moment after moment. This is the only thing for you to do.
(pp. 75-76, "Finding Out for Yourself," in not always so, practicing the true spirit of Zen, by Shunryu Suzuki)
The four of us laughed and marveled at how absurd we are. There is no reason things are as they are. Just as there is no explanation that satisfies telling after the fact. Words that intend to justify or say "I knew that" fall flat when said seriously and soar with laughter when playfully posed.
To be listened to. To listen.
To be heard. To hear.
No matter...what.
Is what is served.
Open and give up.
Going on.
Monday, April 19, 2004
Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage Update
April 2004
Theme: Nonsiding, Undeciding, and Nothing Special – A Buddhist, Christian, and Ordinary Reflection of This Season
My heart hurts at the sides and decisions of current war in Iraq. Even the nothing-special that is Meetingbrook considers what to do.
I
April is not a cruel month. Cruelty is the work of men and women intent on forcing their beliefs on others. Cruelty accompanies betrayal. Betrayal is holding on to broken beliefs. Broken beliefs are sharp slicing shards that bloody the hand of the person holding tight to them. This hand usually strikes out at those considered unbelievers. In striking these faces both hand and face sear with pain and blood. Each suffers. All suffer because broken belief is held tight.
There is nothing wrong with having beliefs. Beliefs provide guideposts to us on our way. What we hold as true helps us on our setting out and setting forth. Beliefs sometimes shore up faith. Faith is seeing without certainty. Faith trusts what it sees to be what it is. Belief is the wrapping we place on faith. We feel often that belief strengthens faith. This is a feeling based on a belief in what faith sees without certainty.
Seeing requires itself and what is seen.
Seeing is what faith embodies. Embodying what is seen is a direct connection not mediated by anything outside of the intimate interpenetrating encounter. When seeing sees what is seen, there is no separating the reality-come-to-light.
Nothing can be said. Nothing is what is said when seeing embodies what is seen. What is seen and what is said is nothing. Between what is seen and what is said is nothing. This realization of nothing is an experience of emptiness.
In emptiness each is what it is. Each is whole. Nothing comes between one thing and another thing, one person and another person, or one thought and another thought. This nothing, this empty-no-space, allows immediate response -- whether with word or activity -- to take place on its own. This response is responsive to the one evoking, what is being said or what is being done, and the one being evoked by the word or the act.
Broken beliefs are to be discarded. They are to be let go and not used against others. What is important always is right here. What is right here is what is right here. This right here is also called the true. What is truth? Truth is right here and (as a Zen Master once said) "just like this." What is this? This is what is taking place in and with our presence. What is presence? Presence is this moment speaking or acting without interference by thought or doubt.
What is thought? Thought is the attempt to hold what is taking place. What is doubt? Doubt is calling into question what is taking place. Both thought and doubt are useful enterprises. However, when they interfere with direct engagement with what is taking place this moment, presence suffers. Or, we suffer the absence of presence. Absence of presence is the distance inserted between our words/actions and what is taking place right before us.
Absence of presence is similar to grabbing one view as it attempts to pass us and holding it fast. We are jerked from the flow of seeing what is taking place, and riveted to a particular view – like snapshots from vacation – sidelining us a distance from where we are.
Very often we fade our lives in that distance. We disappear in that absence.
II
When we become attached to views we stagger-stop on our journey through daily life and life as a whole.
It is curious to consider life fading and disappearing -- curious to live distantly and absently. To do so might be part and parcel of the ability we have to decide, the ability to make a decision. Deciding is a useful enterprise. Surely it is. And yet, what of undeciding? What value is there in undeciding? In our culture undeciding is confused with indecision, and therefore considered a flaw or weakness – we say, ‘They cannot choose between two things,’ or ‘They are plagued by indecision, they are indecisive.’
To be undeciding is not the same as indecisive. Undeciding suggests there is no decision to be made; indecisive suggests an unwillingness or inability to choose between two things or paths.
In this Easter season there is an aspect of resurrection we might explore. Might we understand incarnation in light of resurrection, and resurrection in light of incarnation? Was Jesus' resurrection his very incarnation? How come to see whether one thing is isomorphic (i.e. of one form) with or separate from another? What if there was no "decision" to be made? (The word ‘decision,’ from ‘de’ – ‘caedere’ = to cut off, means cutting away the other.)
Is the uniqueness of the Christian metaphor the undeciding of the divine/human? Was Jesus' incarnation/resurrection the undeciding of anything other?
Buddhists say that no choice, choicelessness, is strong practice leading to clear seeing of each as-it-is.
Bankai, a 17th century Japanese Zen master said, “Don’t side with yourself.”
III
(A Sidestep)
Meetingbrook is at its annual April nexus of decision. The question is whether we can afford to keep the doors open of the bookshop/bakery, or to fold merely into hermitage without harbor presence in Camden.
The issue is simple: the shop on the harbor is a place of hospitality, quiet respite, and refuge, sharing of views, laughter, and conversation. The shop is lovely, but we can no longer fund it on our own with the work we do.
There are many friends of Meetingbrook. We have one person (of the many people who consider Meetingbrook a touchstone and a safe place to reveal and converse varied points of view), who thinks we should not be open. She feels – not inaccurately – (especially for Saskia the first 4 months of the year in her other work to pay rent) that the strain to finance the shop is too high. This person, with wise connection to 12 step views, no longer comes to Meetingbrook, not wanting to enable its continuance. We are delighted to have her as friend-in-absence. The rest of those who come in and out feel it would be very unfortunate if we closed.
Expenses and income for Meetingbrook Bookshop and Bakery result from goods for sale. This venture is mostly a wash, i.e., no real profit from retail sales. We are distinctively small. In Camden there are now two other full-service general bookstores and two other used/antiquarian bookstores as well as a store that sells books alongside their games and clothing. Meetingbrook’s specialty niche of books is related to monastic, interreligious, interfaith, ecumenical spirituality as well as ecology, poetry, prayer and religious thought – we are less a retail force than a place of hospitality and reflection. In this regard we utilize the room above the shop as a retreat room or place of respite stay for short periods of time by those in need, (as one might a sanctuary). There is no set charge for the use of this room even though this is one of the sweetest rooms on the harbor; rather use of it is by donation only. The room is available for general use daily when not occupied. People have likened Meetingbrook to a Poustinia in the marketplace.
An additional service Saskia provides is taking anyone who asks, especially those with no prior experience, on short sails during the summer months on her 26’ O’Day that she shares with her nephews. These sails are also no charge and serve either as an afternoon’s outing or an overnight retreat. She takes a wide spectrum -- from paraplegic and elderly or those with illness, to those who would never sail except for her gentle captaining. Her’s is an everyday gift of the sea.
In addition to the shop, Saskia works with self-insured worker’s compensation audits in the first quarter of the year. I teach part-time as adjunct, now two courses, in the fall for the University of Maine System at Thomaston. Income from these efforts is folded into the running of bookshop/bakery. Some who frequent Meetingbrook make financial donations. In the past three years this has been between thirteen hundred and eighteen hundred dollars each year. To date, we have not requested nor actively sought any financial help, choosing instead to make a go of it by ourselves, with the quiet generosity of those wishing to donate to the tea-pot to help defray rent. We have neither reserves nor independent means to draw from to keep the shop functioning.
If we were more clever retail business owners we might be on better footing. But from our opening day 8 years ago we have been intent to be, first and foremost, a place of contemplation, conversation, and correspondence. Much of our time is given to matters of individual or communal importance, interpersonal or personal interest related to any individual coming through the doors. Attention to each is vital, and the intention to practice deep listening and loving speech, are hallmarks of both ordinary and formal conversation and interaction. It is our practice to be present. Sometimes it is wearing. With financial strain it is more wearing.
Still, we do not bring in sufficient income to relieve the economic strain. Something must change.
Some suggest strategies to look for monies to continue us as a community resource.
There are suggestions made to us:
1. We move to a subscription membership. Ask those who value Meetingbrook’s presence at the harbor to contribute a yearly sum to defray the cost of rent, utilities, and fees – (e.g. $19,000 per annum divided by the number of subscribers).
2. Seek grants and do fundraising. Meetingbrook is a community resource, open six days a week for 8 years now, holding public conversations 6 hours a week on spirituality, practice, thought, everyday concerns, and personal journeys through each. Include retreat opportunities (room above shop, 3rd Saturday at hermitage), semi-weekly conversations in prison, and daily presence for group or individual conversations about anything – and we have a unique presence and service for local and visiting population.
3. Watch for and invite, in joyful hope, a patron. If someone of means were to grace Meetingbrook with gift – once or continuously – we would be grateful, stay open where we are, and deepen Meetingbrook as a place of conversation, collation, and recollection for as long as we are capable.
For eight years we have said, “All events at Meetingbrook are free, open, and informal.”
Might we undecide our presence?
Contact us with your way of good will. April’s end is the nexus to end or continue our lease.
IV
(Returning)
Is there a difference between thoughtless action and action without thought? Thoughtless action, also called acting on impulse or from ideology, is acting in reaction to what is taking place. This often appears as blind striking out, or anger-slap. Action without thought, also called right-action or engaged-activity, is acting in harmonious concert with what is taking place. This often appears as seamless embrace, or effortless kindness and assistance.
When we act from intention or motivation that is separate from the reality of what is taking place right before us -- or in some other geographical region of the world -- we fall into a doubtful reality and an absence of kindness. In that pit we've fallen into is unreality and cruelty. The longer we stay there, the more unkind and cruel we become.
My heart hurts. The pain is from unkindness and cruelty. And I cry there.
I cry because I am unkind and cruel there. I cry because unkindness and cruelty reach me from anyplace they are committed by any person, any nation, or any betrayal.
What can I do? At first it feels like nothing. Then I go beyond. I feel the hurt and accept the pain for what it is. I cannot ignore it or pretend it isn't there. Iraq pains me. The actions of the American government are hurting. The intentions and ideology slapped on others by this dubious war are hurting. The broken beliefs and self-siding heresy preached by doubtfully ordained executive pretenders are frightening weapons -- they bloody the hands faces limbs and hearts of many men women and children throughout the world every day.
What is heresy? Heresy means other opinion. What is opinion? Opinion is what we hold onto in the absence of truth. Opinions are substitutes or blankets for truth – especially when truth does not serve well our opinions and needs to be hidden. Opinions in service to falsity are lies in costume. How do we arrive at truth? A Zen Master once said it was simple -- to arrive at the truth just drop all your opinions.
If opinions are dropped -- what is there then? Yes – this is a koan -- 'what is’ is there then -- or, here now. ‘What is’ – by any other name – is what is. Variously called God, Truth, Reality, the Absolute, the Ground of Being, Source, Way, the One, or the Good – ‘what is’ is what is no matter what it is called. Positing this ‘what is’ in the forms of these names is explanation human consciousness arrives at through history and evolution of thought, experience, and intuition,
V
My heart continues to hurt. My mind runs frightened. What to do? Run away? Become cynical? Despair? Sit still? Pray silently? Shout dementia down? Or, speak honestly the promptings of my heart -- breathe and open to what is right here?
The season of departures engages and enters this season of arrivals.
Many arrivals make us live: the tree becoming
Green, a bird tipping the topmost bough,
A seed pushing itself beyond itself,
The mole making its way through darkest ground,
The worm, intrepid scholar of the soil--
Do these analogies perplex? A sky with clouds,
The motion of the moon, and waves at play,
A sea-wind pausing in a summer tree.
What does what it should do needs nothing more.
The body moves, though slowly, toward desire.
We come to something without knowing why.
(--Poem, "The Manifestation" by Theodore Roethke)
Letting go attachments, not siding with my ‘self,’ undeciding, embracing nothing-special and allowing what is whole to remain what it is – this is the nexus.
This is the binding connection we each have with one another – namely --what is light and what is true.
Live in the nowhere that you came from,
Even though you have an address here.
(--Rumi)
I finish this Update on April 19. It has been unwriting itself for three weeks. This morning, in his ever-welcome “The Writer’s Almanac” Garrison Keillor notes:
“… On this day, April 19, 1943, the first day of Passover, hundreds of German soldiers entered the ghetto in rows of tanks, planning to destroy the ghetto in three days. But resistance fighters fought back with the guns and grenades they had been storing. Fighting went on for days; when they ran out of grenades and bullets the Jews fought with kitchen knives, chair legs—whatever they could get their hands on. They hid in their trenches and tunnels and in the sewers. They held out for almost a month, but on May 16 the revolt ended. Nazis burned down buildings, shot many of the remaining Jews, and sent the rest of them to concentration camps.
On the forty-fifth anniversary of the uprising, a survivor named Irena Klepfisz said, "What we grieve for is not the loss of a grand vision, but rather the loss of common things, events and gestures. . . . Ordinariness is the most precious thing we struggle for, what the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto fought for. Not noble causes or abstract theories. But the right to go on living with a sense of purpose and a sense of self-worth -- an ordinary life."
What is there?
What is here?
Even if we disappear -- it is a joy to serve each one, to serve what is here.
In ordinariness.
Gratefully,
Saskia & Bill, Sando, Cesco, Mu-ge, and all who grace Meetingbrook
19 April 2004,
Patriots Day in New England, Running of Boston Marathon, 4th Game of 1st Boston Red Sox/New York Yankees 2004 meetings, Second Monday after Easter, and our ordinary Monday off.
April 2004
Theme: Nonsiding, Undeciding, and Nothing Special – A Buddhist, Christian, and Ordinary Reflection of This Season
My heart hurts at the sides and decisions of current war in Iraq. Even the nothing-special that is Meetingbrook considers what to do.
I
April is not a cruel month. Cruelty is the work of men and women intent on forcing their beliefs on others. Cruelty accompanies betrayal. Betrayal is holding on to broken beliefs. Broken beliefs are sharp slicing shards that bloody the hand of the person holding tight to them. This hand usually strikes out at those considered unbelievers. In striking these faces both hand and face sear with pain and blood. Each suffers. All suffer because broken belief is held tight.
There is nothing wrong with having beliefs. Beliefs provide guideposts to us on our way. What we hold as true helps us on our setting out and setting forth. Beliefs sometimes shore up faith. Faith is seeing without certainty. Faith trusts what it sees to be what it is. Belief is the wrapping we place on faith. We feel often that belief strengthens faith. This is a feeling based on a belief in what faith sees without certainty.
Seeing requires itself and what is seen.
Seeing is what faith embodies. Embodying what is seen is a direct connection not mediated by anything outside of the intimate interpenetrating encounter. When seeing sees what is seen, there is no separating the reality-come-to-light.
Nothing can be said. Nothing is what is said when seeing embodies what is seen. What is seen and what is said is nothing. Between what is seen and what is said is nothing. This realization of nothing is an experience of emptiness.
In emptiness each is what it is. Each is whole. Nothing comes between one thing and another thing, one person and another person, or one thought and another thought. This nothing, this empty-no-space, allows immediate response -- whether with word or activity -- to take place on its own. This response is responsive to the one evoking, what is being said or what is being done, and the one being evoked by the word or the act.
Broken beliefs are to be discarded. They are to be let go and not used against others. What is important always is right here. What is right here is what is right here. This right here is also called the true. What is truth? Truth is right here and (as a Zen Master once said) "just like this." What is this? This is what is taking place in and with our presence. What is presence? Presence is this moment speaking or acting without interference by thought or doubt.
What is thought? Thought is the attempt to hold what is taking place. What is doubt? Doubt is calling into question what is taking place. Both thought and doubt are useful enterprises. However, when they interfere with direct engagement with what is taking place this moment, presence suffers. Or, we suffer the absence of presence. Absence of presence is the distance inserted between our words/actions and what is taking place right before us.
Absence of presence is similar to grabbing one view as it attempts to pass us and holding it fast. We are jerked from the flow of seeing what is taking place, and riveted to a particular view – like snapshots from vacation – sidelining us a distance from where we are.
Very often we fade our lives in that distance. We disappear in that absence.
II
When we become attached to views we stagger-stop on our journey through daily life and life as a whole.
It is curious to consider life fading and disappearing -- curious to live distantly and absently. To do so might be part and parcel of the ability we have to decide, the ability to make a decision. Deciding is a useful enterprise. Surely it is. And yet, what of undeciding? What value is there in undeciding? In our culture undeciding is confused with indecision, and therefore considered a flaw or weakness – we say, ‘They cannot choose between two things,’ or ‘They are plagued by indecision, they are indecisive.’
To be undeciding is not the same as indecisive. Undeciding suggests there is no decision to be made; indecisive suggests an unwillingness or inability to choose between two things or paths.
In this Easter season there is an aspect of resurrection we might explore. Might we understand incarnation in light of resurrection, and resurrection in light of incarnation? Was Jesus' resurrection his very incarnation? How come to see whether one thing is isomorphic (i.e. of one form) with or separate from another? What if there was no "decision" to be made? (The word ‘decision,’ from ‘de’ – ‘caedere’ = to cut off, means cutting away the other.)
Is the uniqueness of the Christian metaphor the undeciding of the divine/human? Was Jesus' incarnation/resurrection the undeciding of anything other?
Buddhists say that no choice, choicelessness, is strong practice leading to clear seeing of each as-it-is.
Bankai, a 17th century Japanese Zen master said, “Don’t side with yourself.”
III
(A Sidestep)
Meetingbrook is at its annual April nexus of decision. The question is whether we can afford to keep the doors open of the bookshop/bakery, or to fold merely into hermitage without harbor presence in Camden.
The issue is simple: the shop on the harbor is a place of hospitality, quiet respite, and refuge, sharing of views, laughter, and conversation. The shop is lovely, but we can no longer fund it on our own with the work we do.
There are many friends of Meetingbrook. We have one person (of the many people who consider Meetingbrook a touchstone and a safe place to reveal and converse varied points of view), who thinks we should not be open. She feels – not inaccurately – (especially for Saskia the first 4 months of the year in her other work to pay rent) that the strain to finance the shop is too high. This person, with wise connection to 12 step views, no longer comes to Meetingbrook, not wanting to enable its continuance. We are delighted to have her as friend-in-absence. The rest of those who come in and out feel it would be very unfortunate if we closed.
Expenses and income for Meetingbrook Bookshop and Bakery result from goods for sale. This venture is mostly a wash, i.e., no real profit from retail sales. We are distinctively small. In Camden there are now two other full-service general bookstores and two other used/antiquarian bookstores as well as a store that sells books alongside their games and clothing. Meetingbrook’s specialty niche of books is related to monastic, interreligious, interfaith, ecumenical spirituality as well as ecology, poetry, prayer and religious thought – we are less a retail force than a place of hospitality and reflection. In this regard we utilize the room above the shop as a retreat room or place of respite stay for short periods of time by those in need, (as one might a sanctuary). There is no set charge for the use of this room even though this is one of the sweetest rooms on the harbor; rather use of it is by donation only. The room is available for general use daily when not occupied. People have likened Meetingbrook to a Poustinia in the marketplace.
An additional service Saskia provides is taking anyone who asks, especially those with no prior experience, on short sails during the summer months on her 26’ O’Day that she shares with her nephews. These sails are also no charge and serve either as an afternoon’s outing or an overnight retreat. She takes a wide spectrum -- from paraplegic and elderly or those with illness, to those who would never sail except for her gentle captaining. Her’s is an everyday gift of the sea.
In addition to the shop, Saskia works with self-insured worker’s compensation audits in the first quarter of the year. I teach part-time as adjunct, now two courses, in the fall for the University of Maine System at Thomaston. Income from these efforts is folded into the running of bookshop/bakery. Some who frequent Meetingbrook make financial donations. In the past three years this has been between thirteen hundred and eighteen hundred dollars each year. To date, we have not requested nor actively sought any financial help, choosing instead to make a go of it by ourselves, with the quiet generosity of those wishing to donate to the tea-pot to help defray rent. We have neither reserves nor independent means to draw from to keep the shop functioning.
If we were more clever retail business owners we might be on better footing. But from our opening day 8 years ago we have been intent to be, first and foremost, a place of contemplation, conversation, and correspondence. Much of our time is given to matters of individual or communal importance, interpersonal or personal interest related to any individual coming through the doors. Attention to each is vital, and the intention to practice deep listening and loving speech, are hallmarks of both ordinary and formal conversation and interaction. It is our practice to be present. Sometimes it is wearing. With financial strain it is more wearing.
Still, we do not bring in sufficient income to relieve the economic strain. Something must change.
Some suggest strategies to look for monies to continue us as a community resource.
There are suggestions made to us:
1. We move to a subscription membership. Ask those who value Meetingbrook’s presence at the harbor to contribute a yearly sum to defray the cost of rent, utilities, and fees – (e.g. $19,000 per annum divided by the number of subscribers).
2. Seek grants and do fundraising. Meetingbrook is a community resource, open six days a week for 8 years now, holding public conversations 6 hours a week on spirituality, practice, thought, everyday concerns, and personal journeys through each. Include retreat opportunities (room above shop, 3rd Saturday at hermitage), semi-weekly conversations in prison, and daily presence for group or individual conversations about anything – and we have a unique presence and service for local and visiting population.
3. Watch for and invite, in joyful hope, a patron. If someone of means were to grace Meetingbrook with gift – once or continuously – we would be grateful, stay open where we are, and deepen Meetingbrook as a place of conversation, collation, and recollection for as long as we are capable.
For eight years we have said, “All events at Meetingbrook are free, open, and informal.”
Might we undecide our presence?
Contact us with your way of good will. April’s end is the nexus to end or continue our lease.
IV
(Returning)
Is there a difference between thoughtless action and action without thought? Thoughtless action, also called acting on impulse or from ideology, is acting in reaction to what is taking place. This often appears as blind striking out, or anger-slap. Action without thought, also called right-action or engaged-activity, is acting in harmonious concert with what is taking place. This often appears as seamless embrace, or effortless kindness and assistance.
When we act from intention or motivation that is separate from the reality of what is taking place right before us -- or in some other geographical region of the world -- we fall into a doubtful reality and an absence of kindness. In that pit we've fallen into is unreality and cruelty. The longer we stay there, the more unkind and cruel we become.
My heart hurts. The pain is from unkindness and cruelty. And I cry there.
I cry because I am unkind and cruel there. I cry because unkindness and cruelty reach me from anyplace they are committed by any person, any nation, or any betrayal.
What can I do? At first it feels like nothing. Then I go beyond. I feel the hurt and accept the pain for what it is. I cannot ignore it or pretend it isn't there. Iraq pains me. The actions of the American government are hurting. The intentions and ideology slapped on others by this dubious war are hurting. The broken beliefs and self-siding heresy preached by doubtfully ordained executive pretenders are frightening weapons -- they bloody the hands faces limbs and hearts of many men women and children throughout the world every day.
What is heresy? Heresy means other opinion. What is opinion? Opinion is what we hold onto in the absence of truth. Opinions are substitutes or blankets for truth – especially when truth does not serve well our opinions and needs to be hidden. Opinions in service to falsity are lies in costume. How do we arrive at truth? A Zen Master once said it was simple -- to arrive at the truth just drop all your opinions.
If opinions are dropped -- what is there then? Yes – this is a koan -- 'what is’ is there then -- or, here now. ‘What is’ – by any other name – is what is. Variously called God, Truth, Reality, the Absolute, the Ground of Being, Source, Way, the One, or the Good – ‘what is’ is what is no matter what it is called. Positing this ‘what is’ in the forms of these names is explanation human consciousness arrives at through history and evolution of thought, experience, and intuition,
V
My heart continues to hurt. My mind runs frightened. What to do? Run away? Become cynical? Despair? Sit still? Pray silently? Shout dementia down? Or, speak honestly the promptings of my heart -- breathe and open to what is right here?
The season of departures engages and enters this season of arrivals.
Many arrivals make us live: the tree becoming
Green, a bird tipping the topmost bough,
A seed pushing itself beyond itself,
The mole making its way through darkest ground,
The worm, intrepid scholar of the soil--
Do these analogies perplex? A sky with clouds,
The motion of the moon, and waves at play,
A sea-wind pausing in a summer tree.
What does what it should do needs nothing more.
The body moves, though slowly, toward desire.
We come to something without knowing why.
(--Poem, "The Manifestation" by Theodore Roethke)
Letting go attachments, not siding with my ‘self,’ undeciding, embracing nothing-special and allowing what is whole to remain what it is – this is the nexus.
This is the binding connection we each have with one another – namely --what is light and what is true.
Live in the nowhere that you came from,
Even though you have an address here.
(--Rumi)
I finish this Update on April 19. It has been unwriting itself for three weeks. This morning, in his ever-welcome “The Writer’s Almanac” Garrison Keillor notes:
“… On this day, April 19, 1943, the first day of Passover, hundreds of German soldiers entered the ghetto in rows of tanks, planning to destroy the ghetto in three days. But resistance fighters fought back with the guns and grenades they had been storing. Fighting went on for days; when they ran out of grenades and bullets the Jews fought with kitchen knives, chair legs—whatever they could get their hands on. They hid in their trenches and tunnels and in the sewers. They held out for almost a month, but on May 16 the revolt ended. Nazis burned down buildings, shot many of the remaining Jews, and sent the rest of them to concentration camps.
On the forty-fifth anniversary of the uprising, a survivor named Irena Klepfisz said, "What we grieve for is not the loss of a grand vision, but rather the loss of common things, events and gestures. . . . Ordinariness is the most precious thing we struggle for, what the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto fought for. Not noble causes or abstract theories. But the right to go on living with a sense of purpose and a sense of self-worth -- an ordinary life."
What is there?
What is here?
Even if we disappear -- it is a joy to serve each one, to serve what is here.
In ordinariness.
Gratefully,
Saskia & Bill, Sando, Cesco, Mu-ge, and all who grace Meetingbrook
19 April 2004,
Patriots Day in New England, Running of Boston Marathon, 4th Game of 1st Boston Red Sox/New York Yankees 2004 meetings, Second Monday after Easter, and our ordinary Monday off.
Monday, April 12, 2004
"I said nothing in secret. Why question me? " (Jesus, in John's account of the Passion)
After late spring rain
The falling petals swirl
Weightlessly; celestial scent
Covers my patched robe
A simple vacant mind
Has no place to go
Resting on the peak
I watch the clouds return.
- Han-shan Te-ch?’ing (1546-1623)
If we are to understand the resurrection we will have to come face-to-face with nothing.
"I have spoken openly to the world," Jesus replied.
"I always taught in synagogues or at the temple,
where all the Jews come together.
I said nothing in secret.
Why question me?
Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said."
When Jesus said this,
one of the officials nearby struck him in the face.
(from John 18:12-27, NIV)
Did his saying that he said "nothing" in secret get Jesus slapped and killed?
No wonder we are so frightened about nothing.
The will of God -- "this way of the good will," as Rudolf Bultmann uses the phrase -- follows:
...but he taught men that the present instant is the moment of decision, in which it is possible to yield up every claim of one's own and submit obediently to the will of God. It is this way of the good will, that Jesus preached, which leads man directly to the awareness of his own unworthiness and worthlessness in the sight of God, and of his own situation as faced with inevitable decision; it is only here that he learns the profoundest meaning of God's forgiveness, which one can receive only as a little child.
(p.74, in Form Criticism, by Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Kundsin, c.1934)
Nothingness, emptiness, vacancy -- the requisites for resurrection.
Was Jesus' resurrection his very incarnation? Was there no "decision" to be made? ("Decision" means "cutting away the other.") Was Jesus' incarnation the undeciding of divine/human?
Nothing left out. Nothing to insanely reach for. Nothing to own. Nothing to lose.
The whole is the whole -- it cannot be divided. Nothing can said about undivided wholeness.
Jesus said nothing when Pilate asked him, "What is truth?"
When Jesus said 'nothing,' when Jesus said 'this'...he was struck in the face.
If nothing, we've forgotten this about Jesus.
The sun slants through trees and comes in to Mu-ge our black and white coon cat lazing on daybed in kitchen.
When we awake, will we remember?
After late spring rain
The falling petals swirl
Weightlessly; celestial scent
Covers my patched robe
A simple vacant mind
Has no place to go
Resting on the peak
I watch the clouds return.
- Han-shan Te-ch?’ing (1546-1623)
If we are to understand the resurrection we will have to come face-to-face with nothing.
"I have spoken openly to the world," Jesus replied.
"I always taught in synagogues or at the temple,
where all the Jews come together.
I said nothing in secret.
Why question me?
Ask those who heard me. Surely they know what I said."
When Jesus said this,
one of the officials nearby struck him in the face.
(from John 18:12-27, NIV)
Did his saying that he said "nothing" in secret get Jesus slapped and killed?
No wonder we are so frightened about nothing.
The will of God -- "this way of the good will," as Rudolf Bultmann uses the phrase -- follows:
...but he taught men that the present instant is the moment of decision, in which it is possible to yield up every claim of one's own and submit obediently to the will of God. It is this way of the good will, that Jesus preached, which leads man directly to the awareness of his own unworthiness and worthlessness in the sight of God, and of his own situation as faced with inevitable decision; it is only here that he learns the profoundest meaning of God's forgiveness, which one can receive only as a little child.
(p.74, in Form Criticism, by Rudolf Bultmann and Karl Kundsin, c.1934)
Nothingness, emptiness, vacancy -- the requisites for resurrection.
Was Jesus' resurrection his very incarnation? Was there no "decision" to be made? ("Decision" means "cutting away the other.") Was Jesus' incarnation the undeciding of divine/human?
Nothing left out. Nothing to insanely reach for. Nothing to own. Nothing to lose.
The whole is the whole -- it cannot be divided. Nothing can said about undivided wholeness.
Jesus said nothing when Pilate asked him, "What is truth?"
When Jesus said 'nothing,' when Jesus said 'this'...he was struck in the face.
If nothing, we've forgotten this about Jesus.
The sun slants through trees and comes in to Mu-ge our black and white coon cat lazing on daybed in kitchen.
When we awake, will we remember?
Sunday, April 11, 2004
Note: Meetingbrook will be closed and on retreat Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We will re-open Tuesday 13 April. May the reflections invited by this time deepen the resolve for peace, truth, and love in each heart!
...........................
Easter.
Once, word was made flesh.
Now body returns as silence dwelling within us. Carefully -- light and truth .
Like salt in water,
Like adhesive in coloring,
It is certainly there,
But you don’t see its form;
So is the monarch of mind.
Dwelling inside the body,
Going in and out the senses,
It responds freely to beings,
According to conditions,
Without hindrance, succeeding,
At all it does.
- Fu Shan-hui (487-659)
Morning's first nuthatch lands on feeder outside chapel/zendo just before sunrise at 6:02am.
May the risen Lord
breathe on our minds and open our eyes
that we may know him in the breaking of the bread,
and follow him in his risen life.
(--from Alternative Prayer, Easter Sunday, Lauds)
Breathe, and open!
A seeing silence.
Yes.
...........................
Easter.
Once, word was made flesh.
Now body returns as silence dwelling within us. Carefully -- light and truth .
Like salt in water,
Like adhesive in coloring,
It is certainly there,
But you don’t see its form;
So is the monarch of mind.
Dwelling inside the body,
Going in and out the senses,
It responds freely to beings,
According to conditions,
Without hindrance, succeeding,
At all it does.
- Fu Shan-hui (487-659)
Morning's first nuthatch lands on feeder outside chapel/zendo just before sunrise at 6:02am.
May the risen Lord
breathe on our minds and open our eyes
that we may know him in the breaking of the bread,
and follow him in his risen life.
(--from Alternative Prayer, Easter Sunday, Lauds)
Breathe, and open!
A seeing silence.
Yes.
Saturday, April 10, 2004
Note: Meetingbrook will be closed and on retreat Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We will re-open Tuesday 13 April. May the reflections invited by this time deepen the resolve for peace, truth, and love in each heart!
...........................
What sound?
From an ancient homily for Holy Saturday
Something strange is happening - there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.
He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all”. Christ answered him: “And with your spirit”. He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light”.
I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.
See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.
I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.
Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.
(--from Vigils, or, Office of Readings, Holy Saturday, in Liturgy of the Hours)
Quiet.
In the grave.
Each one of us, "...for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. "
A single cloud envelops
Ten thousand streamside pines
Before my door,
The flowing water babbles all the time
No matter if it’s day or if it’s night
I snore until the bell across
The ridge ends my blissful dreams.
- Han-shan Te-ch’ing (1546-1623)
Sound of passage.
...........................
What sound?
From an ancient homily for Holy Saturday
Something strange is happening - there is a great silence on earth today, a great silence and stillness. The whole earth keeps silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. God has died in the flesh and hell trembles with fear.
He has gone to search for our first parent, as for a lost sheep. Greatly desiring to visit those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, he has gone to free from sorrow the captives Adam and Eve, he who is both God and the son of Eve. The Lord approached them bearing the cross, the weapon that had won him the victory. At the sight of him Adam, the first man he had created, struck his breast in terror and cried out to everyone: “My Lord be with you all”. Christ answered him: “And with your spirit”. He took him by the hand and raised him up, saying: “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will give you light”.
I am your God, who for your sake have become your son. Out of love for you and for your descendants I now by my own authority command all who are held in bondage to come forth, all who are in darkness to be enlightened, all who are sleeping to arise. I order you, O sleeper, to awake. I did not create you to be held a prisoner in hell. Rise from the dead, for I am the life of the dead. Rise up, work of my hands, you who were created in my image. Rise, let us leave this place, for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. For your sake I, your God, became your son; I, the Lord, took the form of a slave; I, whose home is above the heavens, descended to the earth and beneath the earth. For your sake, for the sake of man, I became like a man without help, free among the dead. For the sake of you, who left a garden, I was betrayed to the Jews in a garden, and I was crucified in a garden.
See on my face the spittle I received in order to restore to you the life I once breathed into you. See there the marks of the blows I received in order to refashion your warped nature in my image. On my back see the marks of the scourging I endured to remove the burden of sin that weighs upon your back. See my hands, nailed firmly to a tree, for you who once wickedly stretched out your hand to a tree.
I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side for you who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side has healed the pain in yours. My sleep will rouse you from your sleep in hell. The sword that pierced me has sheathed the sword that was turned against you.
Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly paradise. I will not restore you to that paradise, but I will enthrone you in heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The bridal chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The kingdom of heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.
(--from Vigils, or, Office of Readings, Holy Saturday, in Liturgy of the Hours)
Quiet.
In the grave.
Each one of us, "...for you are in me and I am in you; together we form only one person and we cannot be separated. "
A single cloud envelops
Ten thousand streamside pines
Before my door,
The flowing water babbles all the time
No matter if it’s day or if it’s night
I snore until the bell across
The ridge ends my blissful dreams.
- Han-shan Te-ch’ing (1546-1623)
Sound of passage.
Friday, April 09, 2004
Note: Meetingbrook will be closed and on retreat Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We will re-open Tuesday 13 April. May the reflections invited by this time deepen the resolve for peace, truth, and love in each heart!
.......................
Good Friday.
Who is startled?
Mu-ge gets long taste of outdoors. Saskia and dogs visit Mom. They are near monastery. I stay at hermitage with Mu-ge, birds, squirrels, and solitude.
13. See, my servant shall prosper, he shall be raised high and greatly exalted.
14. Even as many were amazed at him-- so marred was his look beyond that of man, and his appearance beyond that of mortals--
15. So shall he startle many nations, because of him kings shall stand speechless; For those who have not been told shall see, those who have not heard shall ponder it.
(Isaiah 52 {NAB})
Who is startled remembering the death of Jesus today?
Startling is the vehemence of destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and Palestine. Just as startling is absence of authentic anguish at daily deaths caused by greed and mindlessness on the part of individuals or corporations. Drugs, sex, and guns are rife throughout subcultures numbed and dazed by circumstance, without genuine connection to the larger world -- except when individuals are used and discarded when the buy is done, the itch is scratched, or the bullet is fired.
Without the case made for Jesus (by any other name) within the tortures and terrorism of contemporary Golgotha (i.e. mount of execution) -- it is merely his name and story recounted in church and cinema. There is no body, no spirit present if the holy one is not dwelling within each and all. And not just in the terrible -- this holy, strong, and immortal one must also be dwelling within the sweet, the askance, and the delightful.
Otherwise, Jesus dies this good friday and is buried. End of story.
And that just might be that.
Without what must come to be -- without the startling realization -- Jesus is in his tomb, gone to earth, done with his life -- and the stark celebration today is what it has become for many: something done by others, quaint tradition, and let's move on to what really runs the world.
What is the startling realization?
External sky empty of
Substantiality and characteristics;
Internal nature of mind
Empty of substantiality and characteristics.
The way the insubstantial sky
Appears is that it may appear as anything.
The ceaseless insubstantial nature
Of mind may also appear as anything.
- Godrakpa (1170-1249)
As anything.
It is startling to imagine that the Christ -- the reality Jesus died through -- may appear as anything.
If we do not look around at where we live, look into the eyes and hearts of those near us in silence, we might be unwilling to be startled.
Marengo
Out of the sump rise the marigolds.
From the rim of the marsh, muslin with mosquitoes,
rises the egret, in his cloud-cloth.
Through the soft rain, like mist, and mica,
the withered acres of moss begin again.
When I have to die, I would like to die
on a day of rain--
long rain, slow rain, the kind you think will never end.
And I would like to have whatever little ceremony there might be
take place while the rain is shoveled and shoveled out of the sky,
and anyone who comes must travel, slowly and with thought,
as around the edges of the great swamp.
(Poem: "Marengo," by Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press).
Good Friday is a day to travel through slowly and with thought.
If not Christ, what reality do we die through?
Last season's downed leaf and broken branch are strewn along our sight rising the mountain. Look there.
Look anywhere. The mystery we die through is there to see us though.
Isaiah helps: "For those who have not been told shall see, those who have not heard shall ponder it."
Anywhere now -- it is the gift of the mystery of the day -- to see, to ponder.
Holy is...holy and strong... holy immortal one: see and ponder each and every one of us!
This day.
.......................
Good Friday.
Who is startled?
Mu-ge gets long taste of outdoors. Saskia and dogs visit Mom. They are near monastery. I stay at hermitage with Mu-ge, birds, squirrels, and solitude.
13. See, my servant shall prosper, he shall be raised high and greatly exalted.
14. Even as many were amazed at him-- so marred was his look beyond that of man, and his appearance beyond that of mortals--
15. So shall he startle many nations, because of him kings shall stand speechless; For those who have not been told shall see, those who have not heard shall ponder it.
(Isaiah 52 {NAB})
Who is startled remembering the death of Jesus today?
Startling is the vehemence of destruction in Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and Palestine. Just as startling is absence of authentic anguish at daily deaths caused by greed and mindlessness on the part of individuals or corporations. Drugs, sex, and guns are rife throughout subcultures numbed and dazed by circumstance, without genuine connection to the larger world -- except when individuals are used and discarded when the buy is done, the itch is scratched, or the bullet is fired.
Without the case made for Jesus (by any other name) within the tortures and terrorism of contemporary Golgotha (i.e. mount of execution) -- it is merely his name and story recounted in church and cinema. There is no body, no spirit present if the holy one is not dwelling within each and all. And not just in the terrible -- this holy, strong, and immortal one must also be dwelling within the sweet, the askance, and the delightful.
Otherwise, Jesus dies this good friday and is buried. End of story.
And that just might be that.
Without what must come to be -- without the startling realization -- Jesus is in his tomb, gone to earth, done with his life -- and the stark celebration today is what it has become for many: something done by others, quaint tradition, and let's move on to what really runs the world.
What is the startling realization?
External sky empty of
Substantiality and characteristics;
Internal nature of mind
Empty of substantiality and characteristics.
The way the insubstantial sky
Appears is that it may appear as anything.
The ceaseless insubstantial nature
Of mind may also appear as anything.
- Godrakpa (1170-1249)
As anything.
It is startling to imagine that the Christ -- the reality Jesus died through -- may appear as anything.
If we do not look around at where we live, look into the eyes and hearts of those near us in silence, we might be unwilling to be startled.
Marengo
Out of the sump rise the marigolds.
From the rim of the marsh, muslin with mosquitoes,
rises the egret, in his cloud-cloth.
Through the soft rain, like mist, and mica,
the withered acres of moss begin again.
When I have to die, I would like to die
on a day of rain--
long rain, slow rain, the kind you think will never end.
And I would like to have whatever little ceremony there might be
take place while the rain is shoveled and shoveled out of the sky,
and anyone who comes must travel, slowly and with thought,
as around the edges of the great swamp.
(Poem: "Marengo," by Mary Oliver, from New and Selected Poems, Beacon Press).
Good Friday is a day to travel through slowly and with thought.
If not Christ, what reality do we die through?
Last season's downed leaf and broken branch are strewn along our sight rising the mountain. Look there.
Look anywhere. The mystery we die through is there to see us though.
Isaiah helps: "For those who have not been told shall see, those who have not heard shall ponder it."
Anywhere now -- it is the gift of the mystery of the day -- to see, to ponder.
Holy is...holy and strong... holy immortal one: see and ponder each and every one of us!
This day.
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Let's begin wisdom.
"Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth." (Pema Chodron)
"Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." (Prov. 1:7)
At Wednesday's Laura Conversation we spoke among the nine of us about practicing moving closer to fear.
What I teach people just
Requires you not to take
On the confusion of others.
Act when necessary,
Without further hesitation or doubt.
When students today do not attain this,
Wherein lies their sickness?
The sickness is in not
Trusting yourself.
If your inner trust is insufficient,
Then you will frantically go along
With changes in situations,
And will be influenced and
Affected by myriad objects,
Unable to be independent.
If you can stop the mentality
Of constant frantic seeking,
Then you are no different
From Zen masters and Buddhas
- Linji (d. 866)
A response to Sylvia's question about 'panic' was that it might mean being 'all over the place' and not, in Pema's words, nailed "right to the point of time and space that we are in."
What we're talking about is getting to know fear, becoming familiar with fear, looking it right in the eye -- not as a way to solve problems, but as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and thinking. The truth is that when we really begin to do this, we're going to be continually humbled. There's not going to be much room for the arrogance that holding on to ideals can bring. The arrogance that inevitably does arise is going to be continually shot down by our own courage to step forward a little further. The kinds of discoveries that are made through practice have nothing to do with believing in anything. They have much more to do with having the courage to die, the courage to die continually.pp.2-3 in When Things Fall Apart, Heart Advice for Difficult Times, by Pema Chodron, c.1996)
Passover, Sacred Triduum, and chaotic fighting and killing in Iraq coincide this week. It is a time of departures. In history and in the present we are facing stories of departure with the open uncertainty of return. The rituals of religion and war leave us uncertain and concerned about life and death.
"Nothing is more dangerous to a republic than fanatics unconstrained by democratic politics. Yet in a second term of this administration, that's exactly what we'll have." (--in www.commondreams.org, from "W.'s Second Term: If You Think the First is Bad..." in April, 2004 issue of the American Prospect, by Robert B. Reich, professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University).
Politics and public safety vie with ritual and liturgical remembrance in the cradle of civilization and Holy Land -- where three monotheistic views stare warily at human experience.
Fear is not an abstraction. Fear is a practice for our eyes and heart. The mind may know what ideal and ideology it wishes to impose on the external world, but it is the heart that enters with apprehension and uncertainty the intuitive impulse to inner responsive compassion.
Su.Sane said, "Fear is not knowing where we are in the alchemy of transformation."
This wisdom of not knowing, this innocence of quivering anticipation, longs to begin a new life in the world.
Beginning with us. Beginning as we are beginning.
Directly, eye to eye with God, each willing not to run away, willing to die, to live.
Joanie cried. Lola held her hand.
Robert left a chocolate bar.
"Fear is a natural reaction to moving closer to the truth." (Pema Chodron)
"Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." (Prov. 1:7)
At Wednesday's Laura Conversation we spoke among the nine of us about practicing moving closer to fear.
What I teach people just
Requires you not to take
On the confusion of others.
Act when necessary,
Without further hesitation or doubt.
When students today do not attain this,
Wherein lies their sickness?
The sickness is in not
Trusting yourself.
If your inner trust is insufficient,
Then you will frantically go along
With changes in situations,
And will be influenced and
Affected by myriad objects,
Unable to be independent.
If you can stop the mentality
Of constant frantic seeking,
Then you are no different
From Zen masters and Buddhas
- Linji (d. 866)
A response to Sylvia's question about 'panic' was that it might mean being 'all over the place' and not, in Pema's words, nailed "right to the point of time and space that we are in."
What we're talking about is getting to know fear, becoming familiar with fear, looking it right in the eye -- not as a way to solve problems, but as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and thinking. The truth is that when we really begin to do this, we're going to be continually humbled. There's not going to be much room for the arrogance that holding on to ideals can bring. The arrogance that inevitably does arise is going to be continually shot down by our own courage to step forward a little further. The kinds of discoveries that are made through practice have nothing to do with believing in anything. They have much more to do with having the courage to die, the courage to die continually.pp.2-3 in When Things Fall Apart, Heart Advice for Difficult Times, by Pema Chodron, c.1996)
Passover, Sacred Triduum, and chaotic fighting and killing in Iraq coincide this week. It is a time of departures. In history and in the present we are facing stories of departure with the open uncertainty of return. The rituals of religion and war leave us uncertain and concerned about life and death.
"Nothing is more dangerous to a republic than fanatics unconstrained by democratic politics. Yet in a second term of this administration, that's exactly what we'll have." (--in www.commondreams.org, from "W.'s Second Term: If You Think the First is Bad..." in April, 2004 issue of the American Prospect, by Robert B. Reich, professor of social and economic policy at Brandeis University).
Politics and public safety vie with ritual and liturgical remembrance in the cradle of civilization and Holy Land -- where three monotheistic views stare warily at human experience.
Fear is not an abstraction. Fear is a practice for our eyes and heart. The mind may know what ideal and ideology it wishes to impose on the external world, but it is the heart that enters with apprehension and uncertainty the intuitive impulse to inner responsive compassion.
Su.Sane said, "Fear is not knowing where we are in the alchemy of transformation."
This wisdom of not knowing, this innocence of quivering anticipation, longs to begin a new life in the world.
Beginning with us. Beginning as we are beginning.
Directly, eye to eye with God, each willing not to run away, willing to die, to live.
Joanie cried. Lola held her hand.
Robert left a chocolate bar.
Tuesday, April 06, 2004
Here.
Gazing this morning at roaring stream coming out from under ice where two brooks meet, I am merely the meeting-point of what is looking from both sides of this face.
As someone who dwells in the thin place between Contemplative Catholic and Zen Buddhist ways of looking and listening, I enter this week with open wonder at the open mystery of interconnection, interpenetration, and interdependence involved with human life/divine life.
Spring has come again
The snow has finally stopped
The crescent moon and
Leafless trees look
Thinner than before
At night I push my window open
And gaze into space
Beyond my pillared eaves
Spreads a sky of stars.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)
It is full moon in Maine. Passover tonight. Holy Week saunters. Saskia's final road-trip. Chill morning. And on C-Span, words defending and anguishing war.
Rain Travel
I wake in the dark and remember
it is the morning when I must start
by myself on the journey
I lie listening to the black hour
before dawn and you are
still asleep beside me while
around us the trees full of night lean
hushed in their dream that bears
us up asleep and awake then I hear
drops falling one by one into
the sightless leaves and I
do not know when they began but
all at once there is no sound but rain
and the stream below us roaring
away into the rushing darkness
(Poem: "Rain Travel," by W.S. Merwin, from Travels, Knopf, c.1992; on "Writer's Almanac")
Dark start alone on journey -- all of us -- no matter how familiar the scroll, scripture, ritual, or routine. When we encounter the long reflections of religious depths we are on our own -- whether with others, or in solitude.
It is the nature of the profound to meet us alone in places abandoned with no assurances. Still, we allow ourselves to be led into such circumstances of encounter when we proceed with humility to the open place of liturgical mystery.
James Arraj in his God, Zen and the Intuition of Being, writes in "Chapter 8: Zen Catholicism?" the following:
The two religious galaxies of Christianity and Buddhism begin, not to collide, but intersect and occupy the same space. This poses a challenge for Christianity that is comparable to its meeting with Greek thought or with the natural sciences. (1) How Zen might interact with Catholicism is one aspect of this larger encounter, and one we can look at under three different headings: Zen and western Catholics, Zen and oriental Catholics, and Zen Buddhism and Catholicism.
ZEN AND WESTERN CATHOLICS
A road has been opened up for a Catholic understanding of Zen by men like Heinrich Dumoulin, H.M. Enomiya LaSalle, William Johnson and Thomas Merton. Where does it lead? Where does it go once we see that Catholics can appreciate and practice Zen? What will happen when Catholics begin to attain enlightenment? It is then that it will be crucial for us to understand as clearly as possible the differences between Zen enlightenment and the ultimate goal of Christian life, and the different inner horizons that distinguish the Catholic from the Zen Buddhist.
For the Catholic, enlightenment is an absolute only in a particular order. It is not an absolute absolutely, which is reserved for union with God through love. But if Catholics begin to advance on the way of enlightenment under the guidance of Zen Buddhists, then it is possible that they will feel a tension between these two different ways of looking at enlightenment. Having gone through the gateless gate, how readily can they come forth and understand this experience, not in the traditional categories of Zen Buddhism, but within the perspectives of faith? How transparent will enlightenment be to divine union? How much will it capture the Catholic by its deep actuality and bedazzle him so he will have great difficulty in reflecting on this experience in a Christian way, especially since Christian reflection on Zen enlightenment has just begun?
The more a Catholic penetrates deeply in Zen the more will he have to ponder these questions, be aware of their potential dangers and strive to overcome them in order that the riches of Zen will flow into Catholic life.
ZEN AND ORIENTAL CATHOLICS
When will the day come when we have a distinctive Indian, Chinese or Japanese Catholicism? Catholicism is no more intrinsically Greek than Japanese. It is the task, immensely difficult and exciting, of oriental Catholics to create a Buddhist Catholicism or Zen Catholicism. This can take place if we can see the inner nature of enlightenment, and see that it not only does not conflict with faith, but is a beautiful creation of men and women who share an identical longing with Christians for the Absolute. Then Catholics could take up this age-old work of people called to grace and illuminate it with the treasures of their own faith while this very faith becomes enriched by a new understanding.
ZEN BUDDHISM AND CATHOLICISM
If Catholics can turn to Zen, is it impossible to imagine Zen Buddhists becoming Catholics? This would demand that Catholics carefully articulate their own metaphysical and mystical traditions and show that they are not antithetical to the heart of Zen. But could a call to faith appear in the very midst of enlightenment? And could it not already be doing so in certain cases? John of the Cross describes how when a ray of light enters a dark room, if there is dust in the air the light becomes visible, and if the air is pure the light is not seen. He uses this example as a way of describing the rare contemplative state in which the light of contemplative union strikes an exceptionally purified spirit and plunges it into forgetfulness. (2) What of the inner mind and heart of those men and women who have forsaken all things and attained to this night luminous with existence? What hidden longings remain in the midst of enlightenment calling out to some unimaginable depth? And if contemplative union would begin to dawn, how could it be spoken of or known in the ordinary sense of the term? And if such a person could sense this calling, and in some cases its fruition, and then see that the Gospel was nothing else but the explicitation of this inner mystery, would becoming a Catholic be a betrayal of Zen or its crown? None of this implies that right now the Zen Buddhist is any less close to God than Catholics, for God calls all people to Himself and is the judge of how they respond. But if God has revealed Himself and calls out in the very midst of enlightenment, then imagine the Zen-Catholicism that would be born if this call were heard.
(in Christianity in the Crucible of East-West Dialogue / God, Zen and the Intuition of Being
by James Arraj.) (http://www.innerexplorations.com/catew/gz8.htm)
The kitchen is quiet but for refrigerator motor and crackle inside woodstove. Sando sleeps on daybed. Mu-ge grooms in wicker basket. Cesco lies in middle room between Janet's round table and cold fireplace. It is time to ready departure for harbor.
So much of this week is about readying departure.
What hidden longings remain in the midst of enlightenment calling out to some unimaginable depth?
Are we nearly ready to hear that call?
And let go.
Now.
Gazing this morning at roaring stream coming out from under ice where two brooks meet, I am merely the meeting-point of what is looking from both sides of this face.
As someone who dwells in the thin place between Contemplative Catholic and Zen Buddhist ways of looking and listening, I enter this week with open wonder at the open mystery of interconnection, interpenetration, and interdependence involved with human life/divine life.
Spring has come again
The snow has finally stopped
The crescent moon and
Leafless trees look
Thinner than before
At night I push my window open
And gaze into space
Beyond my pillared eaves
Spreads a sky of stars.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)
It is full moon in Maine. Passover tonight. Holy Week saunters. Saskia's final road-trip. Chill morning. And on C-Span, words defending and anguishing war.
Rain Travel
I wake in the dark and remember
it is the morning when I must start
by myself on the journey
I lie listening to the black hour
before dawn and you are
still asleep beside me while
around us the trees full of night lean
hushed in their dream that bears
us up asleep and awake then I hear
drops falling one by one into
the sightless leaves and I
do not know when they began but
all at once there is no sound but rain
and the stream below us roaring
away into the rushing darkness
(Poem: "Rain Travel," by W.S. Merwin, from Travels, Knopf, c.1992; on "Writer's Almanac")
Dark start alone on journey -- all of us -- no matter how familiar the scroll, scripture, ritual, or routine. When we encounter the long reflections of religious depths we are on our own -- whether with others, or in solitude.
It is the nature of the profound to meet us alone in places abandoned with no assurances. Still, we allow ourselves to be led into such circumstances of encounter when we proceed with humility to the open place of liturgical mystery.
James Arraj in his God, Zen and the Intuition of Being, writes in "Chapter 8: Zen Catholicism?" the following:
The two religious galaxies of Christianity and Buddhism begin, not to collide, but intersect and occupy the same space. This poses a challenge for Christianity that is comparable to its meeting with Greek thought or with the natural sciences. (1) How Zen might interact with Catholicism is one aspect of this larger encounter, and one we can look at under three different headings: Zen and western Catholics, Zen and oriental Catholics, and Zen Buddhism and Catholicism.
ZEN AND WESTERN CATHOLICS
A road has been opened up for a Catholic understanding of Zen by men like Heinrich Dumoulin, H.M. Enomiya LaSalle, William Johnson and Thomas Merton. Where does it lead? Where does it go once we see that Catholics can appreciate and practice Zen? What will happen when Catholics begin to attain enlightenment? It is then that it will be crucial for us to understand as clearly as possible the differences between Zen enlightenment and the ultimate goal of Christian life, and the different inner horizons that distinguish the Catholic from the Zen Buddhist.
For the Catholic, enlightenment is an absolute only in a particular order. It is not an absolute absolutely, which is reserved for union with God through love. But if Catholics begin to advance on the way of enlightenment under the guidance of Zen Buddhists, then it is possible that they will feel a tension between these two different ways of looking at enlightenment. Having gone through the gateless gate, how readily can they come forth and understand this experience, not in the traditional categories of Zen Buddhism, but within the perspectives of faith? How transparent will enlightenment be to divine union? How much will it capture the Catholic by its deep actuality and bedazzle him so he will have great difficulty in reflecting on this experience in a Christian way, especially since Christian reflection on Zen enlightenment has just begun?
The more a Catholic penetrates deeply in Zen the more will he have to ponder these questions, be aware of their potential dangers and strive to overcome them in order that the riches of Zen will flow into Catholic life.
ZEN AND ORIENTAL CATHOLICS
When will the day come when we have a distinctive Indian, Chinese or Japanese Catholicism? Catholicism is no more intrinsically Greek than Japanese. It is the task, immensely difficult and exciting, of oriental Catholics to create a Buddhist Catholicism or Zen Catholicism. This can take place if we can see the inner nature of enlightenment, and see that it not only does not conflict with faith, but is a beautiful creation of men and women who share an identical longing with Christians for the Absolute. Then Catholics could take up this age-old work of people called to grace and illuminate it with the treasures of their own faith while this very faith becomes enriched by a new understanding.
ZEN BUDDHISM AND CATHOLICISM
If Catholics can turn to Zen, is it impossible to imagine Zen Buddhists becoming Catholics? This would demand that Catholics carefully articulate their own metaphysical and mystical traditions and show that they are not antithetical to the heart of Zen. But could a call to faith appear in the very midst of enlightenment? And could it not already be doing so in certain cases? John of the Cross describes how when a ray of light enters a dark room, if there is dust in the air the light becomes visible, and if the air is pure the light is not seen. He uses this example as a way of describing the rare contemplative state in which the light of contemplative union strikes an exceptionally purified spirit and plunges it into forgetfulness. (2) What of the inner mind and heart of those men and women who have forsaken all things and attained to this night luminous with existence? What hidden longings remain in the midst of enlightenment calling out to some unimaginable depth? And if contemplative union would begin to dawn, how could it be spoken of or known in the ordinary sense of the term? And if such a person could sense this calling, and in some cases its fruition, and then see that the Gospel was nothing else but the explicitation of this inner mystery, would becoming a Catholic be a betrayal of Zen or its crown? None of this implies that right now the Zen Buddhist is any less close to God than Catholics, for God calls all people to Himself and is the judge of how they respond. But if God has revealed Himself and calls out in the very midst of enlightenment, then imagine the Zen-Catholicism that would be born if this call were heard.
(in Christianity in the Crucible of East-West Dialogue / God, Zen and the Intuition of Being
by James Arraj.) (http://www.innerexplorations.com/catew/gz8.htm)
The kitchen is quiet but for refrigerator motor and crackle inside woodstove. Sando sleeps on daybed. Mu-ge grooms in wicker basket. Cesco lies in middle room between Janet's round table and cold fireplace. It is time to ready departure for harbor.
So much of this week is about readying departure.
What hidden longings remain in the midst of enlightenment calling out to some unimaginable depth?
Are we nearly ready to hear that call?
And let go.
Now.
Monday, April 05, 2004
It is a week many think about salvation.
Is it Christ who saves us? Or are we saved within ourselves? Are these two sentences two separate possibilities? I think not.
Names of the unified mind are
Buddha-nature,
True suchness, the hidden essence,
The pure spiritual body,
The pedestal of awareness,
The innocent, universal
Round mirror-like knowledge,
The open source, the ultimate truth,
And pure consciousness.
The enlightened ones of the
Past, present, and future,
And all of their discourses,
Are all in your fundamental nature,
Inherently complete.
You do not need to seek,
But you must save yourself;
No one can do it for you.
- Xuefeng (822 - 908)
After all the cases have been made for what happened those few days two thousand years ago -- who beat the man, who judged him, who spoke what words, who was at his feet the final minutes, who buried him, who went to the tomb, who saw what, who felt what, who recognized whom in the breaking of the bread? -- we still have to live in the present moment as it is.
Thus I will bless you throughout my life,
and raise my hands in prayer to your name;
my soul will be filled as if by rich food,
and my mouth will sing your praises and rejoice.
I will remember you as I lie in bed,
I will think of you in the morning,
for you have been my helper,
and I will take joy in the protection of your wings.
My soul clings to you...
(from Psalm 62 (63))
Scholars have their reasoned theories that form into credible narratives. No matter what Paul and others believed about the quick return of the messiah and the ending of the world -- the world is still here, and the messiah is either an idea whose time has not yet come or the messiah is a totally different presence as yet undetected.
There is a brush painting of the 6th Patriarch tearing up sutras. He appears determined to eradicate those troublesome accounts. He is a madman performing his transmission to us outside of scripture.
Just after sitting down, a woman at breakfast many years ago at the Corner Shop asked me if I'd accepted Jesus as my personal savior. It wasn't the conversation I thought we'd have. I looked at her, pausing. I was wondering what kind of eggs to order. I was wondering why that question had never meant much to me. I had eggs over easy. With rye toast.
I don't think much about salvation. Not from anyone else. Not from anywhere.
Those troublesome scriptures.
Outside them...within oneself...how safe are we face to face with what is right here right now?
There's another famous transmission koan that deals with the 6th Patriarch. He showed up at the 5th Patriarch's (Obai), monastery, and everybody ignored him. He's just this kid and he couldn't read. Even so, Obai recognized him right away, but he stuck him pounding rice. Then one day, Obai decided to hold a poetry contest to decide who would be his successor. Everyone thought the head monk, Jinshu, who was very intelligent and an excellent scholar, would win easily. Jinshu's poem said:
"The body is the Linden tree,
the mind is a clear mirror stand.
Wipe it clean;
Never let dust adhere to it."
It's really a description of zazen. We sit and focus on our breath. Thoughts, ideas, and concepts come up and we let them go, wiping it clean. The there's just calm water — this clear mirror that reflects everything. It's not a bad poem, but the 6th Patriarch looked at it and decided to compose his own poem, which someone else had to write out for him:
"The Linden intrinsically has no trunk,
Also, the clear mirror is not the stand.
There is nothing from the beginning,
What is there that dust and rubbish can adhere to?"
When he saw the 6th Patriarch's poem, Obai said, "This guy's got it. He's not clinging to 'I've got something wrong with me that I have to fix; I've got some thoughts I have to let go of.' He's not clinging to 'I am a mirror; I am this, I am that." All along there's nothing to cling to. Where's the dust? You just made it up. Obai called the 6th Patriarch into his rooms and he said, "You're my successor, but since they don't like you and you're so young, they'll kill you if I publicly recognize you."
During transmission, the teacher gives the disciple a Kesa, or robe. Obai said, "Here's my robe; take it and run." Unfortunately, a monk named Myo, once a general, pursued the 6th Patriarch. Myo must have thought, "We've been here a long time, working hard, and this kid comes along and steals the robe." Myo caught up with the 6th Patriarch at Mount Daiyu. When the Patriarch saw Myo, he said, "This robe represents the faith. How can it be competed for by force? I will allow you to take it away." Myo tried to lift the robe, but he couldn't. It finally dawns on Myo and he said, "I came for the Dharma, not the robe. I beg you, please reveal it to me."
And the Patriarch said, "Think neither good nor evil. At that very moment, what is the primal face of Monk Myo?" Now we're back to "don't speak about other's errors and faults." What is your true nature? Who are you? The story says that "in that instant, Myo suddenly attained deep realization." Still, he wasn't satisfied and he asked whether there was anything secret in the teaching. The 6th Patriarch answered, "What I have now preached to you is no secret at all. If you reflect on your own true face, the secret will be found in yourself." Then Myo said, "Though I have been at Obai with the other monks, I have never realized what my true self is. Now thanks to your instruction, I know it is like a man who drinks water and knows for himself whether it is cold or warm." That's exactly the same thing as Mahakashyapa's smile.
(from talk, "The Flower of No Separation," by Anne Seisen Saunders, Sensei)
No secret at all.
In yourself.
No dust and rubbish.
No adherence.
True self...with cup of coffee.
Is it Christ who saves us? Or are we saved within ourselves? Are these two sentences two separate possibilities? I think not.
Names of the unified mind are
Buddha-nature,
True suchness, the hidden essence,
The pure spiritual body,
The pedestal of awareness,
The innocent, universal
Round mirror-like knowledge,
The open source, the ultimate truth,
And pure consciousness.
The enlightened ones of the
Past, present, and future,
And all of their discourses,
Are all in your fundamental nature,
Inherently complete.
You do not need to seek,
But you must save yourself;
No one can do it for you.
- Xuefeng (822 - 908)
After all the cases have been made for what happened those few days two thousand years ago -- who beat the man, who judged him, who spoke what words, who was at his feet the final minutes, who buried him, who went to the tomb, who saw what, who felt what, who recognized whom in the breaking of the bread? -- we still have to live in the present moment as it is.
Thus I will bless you throughout my life,
and raise my hands in prayer to your name;
my soul will be filled as if by rich food,
and my mouth will sing your praises and rejoice.
I will remember you as I lie in bed,
I will think of you in the morning,
for you have been my helper,
and I will take joy in the protection of your wings.
My soul clings to you...
(from Psalm 62 (63))
Scholars have their reasoned theories that form into credible narratives. No matter what Paul and others believed about the quick return of the messiah and the ending of the world -- the world is still here, and the messiah is either an idea whose time has not yet come or the messiah is a totally different presence as yet undetected.
There is a brush painting of the 6th Patriarch tearing up sutras. He appears determined to eradicate those troublesome accounts. He is a madman performing his transmission to us outside of scripture.
Just after sitting down, a woman at breakfast many years ago at the Corner Shop asked me if I'd accepted Jesus as my personal savior. It wasn't the conversation I thought we'd have. I looked at her, pausing. I was wondering what kind of eggs to order. I was wondering why that question had never meant much to me. I had eggs over easy. With rye toast.
I don't think much about salvation. Not from anyone else. Not from anywhere.
Those troublesome scriptures.
Outside them...within oneself...how safe are we face to face with what is right here right now?
There's another famous transmission koan that deals with the 6th Patriarch. He showed up at the 5th Patriarch's (Obai), monastery, and everybody ignored him. He's just this kid and he couldn't read. Even so, Obai recognized him right away, but he stuck him pounding rice. Then one day, Obai decided to hold a poetry contest to decide who would be his successor. Everyone thought the head monk, Jinshu, who was very intelligent and an excellent scholar, would win easily. Jinshu's poem said:
"The body is the Linden tree,
the mind is a clear mirror stand.
Wipe it clean;
Never let dust adhere to it."
It's really a description of zazen. We sit and focus on our breath. Thoughts, ideas, and concepts come up and we let them go, wiping it clean. The there's just calm water — this clear mirror that reflects everything. It's not a bad poem, but the 6th Patriarch looked at it and decided to compose his own poem, which someone else had to write out for him:
"The Linden intrinsically has no trunk,
Also, the clear mirror is not the stand.
There is nothing from the beginning,
What is there that dust and rubbish can adhere to?"
When he saw the 6th Patriarch's poem, Obai said, "This guy's got it. He's not clinging to 'I've got something wrong with me that I have to fix; I've got some thoughts I have to let go of.' He's not clinging to 'I am a mirror; I am this, I am that." All along there's nothing to cling to. Where's the dust? You just made it up. Obai called the 6th Patriarch into his rooms and he said, "You're my successor, but since they don't like you and you're so young, they'll kill you if I publicly recognize you."
During transmission, the teacher gives the disciple a Kesa, or robe. Obai said, "Here's my robe; take it and run." Unfortunately, a monk named Myo, once a general, pursued the 6th Patriarch. Myo must have thought, "We've been here a long time, working hard, and this kid comes along and steals the robe." Myo caught up with the 6th Patriarch at Mount Daiyu. When the Patriarch saw Myo, he said, "This robe represents the faith. How can it be competed for by force? I will allow you to take it away." Myo tried to lift the robe, but he couldn't. It finally dawns on Myo and he said, "I came for the Dharma, not the robe. I beg you, please reveal it to me."
And the Patriarch said, "Think neither good nor evil. At that very moment, what is the primal face of Monk Myo?" Now we're back to "don't speak about other's errors and faults." What is your true nature? Who are you? The story says that "in that instant, Myo suddenly attained deep realization." Still, he wasn't satisfied and he asked whether there was anything secret in the teaching. The 6th Patriarch answered, "What I have now preached to you is no secret at all. If you reflect on your own true face, the secret will be found in yourself." Then Myo said, "Though I have been at Obai with the other monks, I have never realized what my true self is. Now thanks to your instruction, I know it is like a man who drinks water and knows for himself whether it is cold or warm." That's exactly the same thing as Mahakashyapa's smile.
(from talk, "The Flower of No Separation," by Anne Seisen Saunders, Sensei)
No secret at all.
In yourself.
No dust and rubbish.
No adherence.
True self...with cup of coffee.
Sunday, April 04, 2004
Shut-up and go home?
It is almost time.
"A time comes when silence is betrayal." (Martin Luther King, quoting Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam statement of executive committee, 1967)
Jesus will have to wait for humanity this week.
In the earlier story he arrives amid rooting celebration with palms and cheering shouts. In the emerging story humanity is still swinging a club that bashes heads and bloodies the ground. There is no celebration today.
The groaning rivers of the ocean rise
The star vibrates quickly in its corona
And the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating
(-from poem, "The Poet's Obligation," by Pablo Neruda)
By week's end there will be a story of betrayal, death, and expectation through darkness of an arising that will stun listeners for centuries.
I have no plans to see the Gibson movie of the passion of the Christ -- instead I saw the frontline documentary on Rwanda, "the triumph of evil," about Hutu mass killings of Tutsis -- some 800,000 murders during 100 days in 1994 -- while the world did little or nothing.
I don't need to hiss at the story of Judas betraying Jesus -- I have the deception by lies and betrayal of lives by top administration executives who sent the United States to war, sent men and women to kill men and women, sent death and destruction after kissing its former puppet and sending him into a hole in the ground.
I don't need Hollywood films or Washington myths about the savior of the world reaping billions for celebrities, churches, and the culture of curios -- I have read about the obscene profits and payoffs given entertainment, corporations and influence peddlers which has taken the name of savior into the marketplace of murky religiosity and the ideology of spiritual pretence.
A hard cold rain
A forest of wind
Late at night
The lotus drips
Who knows the dream
That entrances the world
Is simply the luminous
Prajna mind
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)
I don't think the dream that entrances the world is the Prajna mind. I wish Han-shan were right. Instead, the dream seems to be less wise, the mind less clear.
I don't need the ritual remembrance of Passover or the Last Supper -- I have encountered scores of contemporary killings of innocent children, first-born revenge, molestation and sacrifice in the name of holiness.
I don't want to feel sorry for someone murdered two thousand years ago by people who had difficulty with his understanding of God -- there are too many millions of deaths these past nine decades by people who had difficulty with the words "mine" and "yours" and "ours."
A poem by Pablo Neruda:
To whoever is not listening to the sea this Friday morning
to whoever is cooped up in house or office, or factory or woman
Or street or mine or dry prison cell
To him I come and without speaking or looking
I arrive and open the door of his prison
And a vibration starts up vague and insistent
A long rumble of thunder adds itself to the weight of the planet
And the foam.
The groaning rivers of the ocean rise
The star vibrates quickly in its corona
And the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating
So drawn on by my destiny
I ceaselessly must listen to
And keep the seas lamenting in my consciousness
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
So that wherever those in prison may be
wherever they suffer the sentence of the autumn
I may be present with an errant wave
I may move in and out of windows
And hearing me my eyes may lift themselves
Asking how can I reach the sea
And I will pass to them saying nothing
The starry echoes of the wave
The breaking up of foam in quicksand
The rustling of salt withdrawing itself
The gray cry of seabirds on the coast
So through me freedom and the sea
will call to the shrouded heart.
( -- poem, "The Poet's Obligation," by Pablo Neruda)
The lament of the sea is a scripture not yet translated for us.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons [and daughters] of God, and our brothers [and sisters] wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men [and full women], and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
(-- from "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," a talk by Rev. Martin Luther King, 4 April 1967. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html)
Martin was assassinated one year later -- 4 April 1968. I remember him today.
If betrayal is our common flaw, we must speak it aloud in an attempt to recognize it for what it really is.
Betrayal is the act that tries to fix broken belief. It is the attempt to wrest broken belief from hands bloodied by sharp slicing shards of what was once held as true. Betrayal refuses to allow emerging forms of what is true to take shape, transfigure, die and resurrect, and finally be true to what is now -- what is this reality -- greeted with direct, open, and engaging compassion. What else is God?
The myth that belief is worth spilling blood for, that power retains power by pouring the blood of enemies, and that blood (as they say) is thicker than water -- is a mythos and a muthos, a story with silence that entrances us with the paradoxical silence-of-betrayal and betrayal-of-silence.
The house of Odysseus in Ithaka is an aggregate of spaces, some entirely public and others more intimate and inaccessible. The innermost recesses of the house are associated with Penelope's chastity, while the megaron is essentially a masculine space. Eurykleia is a boundary crosser; like nurses in later literature, and by virtue of her advanced years, she acts as a liaison between male and female spaces. Appropriately Eurykleia is often featured in the role of doorkeeper, guarding the provisions of the house, and locking away the female servants during the revenge. Cognate with this role is the concept of women's silence, for in the constellation of symbols associated with female chastity, symbols which include the interior domestic spaces, feminine silence is one of the most conspicuous. Eurykleia's importance is signified by her guardianship of various portals, while her loyalty and feminine excellence are signified by her silence. Telemachos exacts an oath of silence from Eurykleia at the door leading into the storeroom, one of the most important areas of the oikos, and traditionally guarded by women (2.349-360).
Eurykleia's allegiance to the male members of the household is again signified when she keeps the secret of Odysseus' identity. By contrast the twelve faithless maidservants, who divulge the secrets of the women's spaces (i.e. Penelope's unraveling) have concourse with men in the megaron and beyond, passing through the doors of the house into the suitors' beds.
Eurykleia's contribution to her master's triumph is to keep women silent and behind closed doors (e.g.19.16). This way of viewing Eurykleia's role helps us to define more precisely the difficult term apteros muthos, which appears to describe Eurykleia's reaction to a man's order in three out of its four occurrences; all four occurrences have something to do with doors. Building on Clark's discussion, I argue against Russo's conclusion that apteros muthos identifies the male speaker. I contend that the formula refers to the speechless responses of Eurykleia and Penelope, who understand the need for silence at sensitive moments in the plot.
{Works Cited:
Clark, Matthew "Was Telemachus Rude to His Mother? Odyssey 1.356-59" CPh 96.4 (2001) 335-354
Russo, Joseph, Fenandez-Galiano, Manuel, and Heubeck, Alfred A commentary on Homer's Odyssey v. III (Oxford UP, Oxford, 1992)
(http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:RorZJx2D09IJ:www.fp.ucalgary.ca/grst/conferences/Colloquium/fletcher-bstract.pdf+muthos+and+silence&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)}
"Oikos" in Greek means home.
"Muthos" in Greek means silence.
Is it time to go home and shut up? Or is it time to leave home and open one's mouth?
This week it is time to enter a hermitage full of the sound of what is being said with and without words.
The nursing thin place -- where silence words stillness, and stillness silences words.
Contemplating resurrection as incarnation.
Is this the absurd wisdom of an emerging story of "the same mind that was in Christ Jesus" (Philippians's 2:5)?
Is this emergence Prajna's mind? (The Jerusalem Bible, c.1966, phrased the line: "In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus...")
This time; this mind.
This open silence?
It is almost time.
"A time comes when silence is betrayal." (Martin Luther King, quoting Clergy and Laymen Concerned about Vietnam statement of executive committee, 1967)
Jesus will have to wait for humanity this week.
In the earlier story he arrives amid rooting celebration with palms and cheering shouts. In the emerging story humanity is still swinging a club that bashes heads and bloodies the ground. There is no celebration today.
The groaning rivers of the ocean rise
The star vibrates quickly in its corona
And the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating
(-from poem, "The Poet's Obligation," by Pablo Neruda)
By week's end there will be a story of betrayal, death, and expectation through darkness of an arising that will stun listeners for centuries.
I have no plans to see the Gibson movie of the passion of the Christ -- instead I saw the frontline documentary on Rwanda, "the triumph of evil," about Hutu mass killings of Tutsis -- some 800,000 murders during 100 days in 1994 -- while the world did little or nothing.
I don't need to hiss at the story of Judas betraying Jesus -- I have the deception by lies and betrayal of lives by top administration executives who sent the United States to war, sent men and women to kill men and women, sent death and destruction after kissing its former puppet and sending him into a hole in the ground.
I don't need Hollywood films or Washington myths about the savior of the world reaping billions for celebrities, churches, and the culture of curios -- I have read about the obscene profits and payoffs given entertainment, corporations and influence peddlers which has taken the name of savior into the marketplace of murky religiosity and the ideology of spiritual pretence.
A hard cold rain
A forest of wind
Late at night
The lotus drips
Who knows the dream
That entrances the world
Is simply the luminous
Prajna mind
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)
I don't think the dream that entrances the world is the Prajna mind. I wish Han-shan were right. Instead, the dream seems to be less wise, the mind less clear.
I don't need the ritual remembrance of Passover or the Last Supper -- I have encountered scores of contemporary killings of innocent children, first-born revenge, molestation and sacrifice in the name of holiness.
I don't want to feel sorry for someone murdered two thousand years ago by people who had difficulty with his understanding of God -- there are too many millions of deaths these past nine decades by people who had difficulty with the words "mine" and "yours" and "ours."
A poem by Pablo Neruda:
To whoever is not listening to the sea this Friday morning
to whoever is cooped up in house or office, or factory or woman
Or street or mine or dry prison cell
To him I come and without speaking or looking
I arrive and open the door of his prison
And a vibration starts up vague and insistent
A long rumble of thunder adds itself to the weight of the planet
And the foam.
The groaning rivers of the ocean rise
The star vibrates quickly in its corona
And the sea beats, dies, and goes on beating
So drawn on by my destiny
I ceaselessly must listen to
And keep the seas lamenting in my consciousness
I must feel the crash of the hard water
and gather it up in a perpetual cup
So that wherever those in prison may be
wherever they suffer the sentence of the autumn
I may be present with an errant wave
I may move in and out of windows
And hearing me my eyes may lift themselves
Asking how can I reach the sea
And I will pass to them saying nothing
The starry echoes of the wave
The breaking up of foam in quicksand
The rustling of salt withdrawing itself
The gray cry of seabirds on the coast
So through me freedom and the sea
will call to the shrouded heart.
( -- poem, "The Poet's Obligation," by Pablo Neruda)
The lament of the sea is a scripture not yet translated for us.
Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter -- but beautiful -- struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons [and daughters] of God, and our brothers [and sisters] wait eagerly for our response. Shall we say the odds are too great? Shall we tell them the struggle is too hard? Will our message be that the forces of American life militate against their arrival as full men [and full women], and we send our deepest regrets? Or will there be another message, of longing, of hope, of solidarity with their yearnings, of commitment to their cause, whatever the cost? The choice is ours, and though we might prefer it otherwise we must choose in this crucial moment of human history.
(-- from "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence," a talk by Rev. Martin Luther King, 4 April 1967. http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html)
Martin was assassinated one year later -- 4 April 1968. I remember him today.
If betrayal is our common flaw, we must speak it aloud in an attempt to recognize it for what it really is.
Betrayal is the act that tries to fix broken belief. It is the attempt to wrest broken belief from hands bloodied by sharp slicing shards of what was once held as true. Betrayal refuses to allow emerging forms of what is true to take shape, transfigure, die and resurrect, and finally be true to what is now -- what is this reality -- greeted with direct, open, and engaging compassion. What else is God?
The myth that belief is worth spilling blood for, that power retains power by pouring the blood of enemies, and that blood (as they say) is thicker than water -- is a mythos and a muthos, a story with silence that entrances us with the paradoxical silence-of-betrayal and betrayal-of-silence.
The house of Odysseus in Ithaka is an aggregate of spaces, some entirely public and others more intimate and inaccessible. The innermost recesses of the house are associated with Penelope's chastity, while the megaron is essentially a masculine space. Eurykleia is a boundary crosser; like nurses in later literature, and by virtue of her advanced years, she acts as a liaison between male and female spaces. Appropriately Eurykleia is often featured in the role of doorkeeper, guarding the provisions of the house, and locking away the female servants during the revenge. Cognate with this role is the concept of women's silence, for in the constellation of symbols associated with female chastity, symbols which include the interior domestic spaces, feminine silence is one of the most conspicuous. Eurykleia's importance is signified by her guardianship of various portals, while her loyalty and feminine excellence are signified by her silence. Telemachos exacts an oath of silence from Eurykleia at the door leading into the storeroom, one of the most important areas of the oikos, and traditionally guarded by women (2.349-360).
Eurykleia's allegiance to the male members of the household is again signified when she keeps the secret of Odysseus' identity. By contrast the twelve faithless maidservants, who divulge the secrets of the women's spaces (i.e. Penelope's unraveling) have concourse with men in the megaron and beyond, passing through the doors of the house into the suitors' beds.
Eurykleia's contribution to her master's triumph is to keep women silent and behind closed doors (e.g.19.16). This way of viewing Eurykleia's role helps us to define more precisely the difficult term apteros muthos, which appears to describe Eurykleia's reaction to a man's order in three out of its four occurrences; all four occurrences have something to do with doors. Building on Clark's discussion, I argue against Russo's conclusion that apteros muthos identifies the male speaker. I contend that the formula refers to the speechless responses of Eurykleia and Penelope, who understand the need for silence at sensitive moments in the plot.
{Works Cited:
Clark, Matthew "Was Telemachus Rude to His Mother? Odyssey 1.356-59" CPh 96.4 (2001) 335-354
Russo, Joseph, Fenandez-Galiano, Manuel, and Heubeck, Alfred A commentary on Homer's Odyssey v. III (Oxford UP, Oxford, 1992)
(http://216.239.41.104/search?q=cache:RorZJx2D09IJ:www.fp.ucalgary.ca/grst/conferences/Colloquium/fletcher-bstract.pdf+muthos+and+silence&hl=en&ie=UTF-8)}
"Oikos" in Greek means home.
"Muthos" in Greek means silence.
Is it time to go home and shut up? Or is it time to leave home and open one's mouth?
This week it is time to enter a hermitage full of the sound of what is being said with and without words.
The nursing thin place -- where silence words stillness, and stillness silences words.
Contemplating resurrection as incarnation.
Is this the absurd wisdom of an emerging story of "the same mind that was in Christ Jesus" (Philippians's 2:5)?
Is this emergence Prajna's mind? (The Jerusalem Bible, c.1966, phrased the line: "In your minds you must be the same as Christ Jesus...")
This time; this mind.
This open silence?
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