Canada hosts the American president tomorrow. Maybe he'll choose to emigrate to a hospitable, inclusive, non-bellicose country.

Just by listening with your eyes
you can fold back on yourself and
merge into that primal
stream of awareness like a river
is swallowed by the immensity of the ocean.
Only then will you know what point to live from.
- Journeys on Mind Mountain

Live from personal and universal truth.

If we are afraid of being alone, afraid of silence, it is perhaps because of our secret despair of inner reconciliation. If there is no hope of being at peace with ourselves in our own personal loneliness and silence, we will never be able to face ourselves at all: we will keep running and never stop. And this flight from the self is, as the Swiss philosopher Max Picard pointed out, a ?flight from God.? After all, it is in the depths of the conscience that God speaks, and if we refuse to open up inside and look into these depths, we also refuse to confront the invisible God who is present within us. This refusal is a partial admission that we do not want God to be God any more than we want ourselves to be our true selves.
(Thomas Merton, in "Creative Silence" published in Monastic Interreligious Dialogue, Bulletin 67, August 2001)

It is odd that some Americans on The National, the evening news on CBC, are so hostile to other Americans who wish to emigrate to Canada because they do not recognize their country any longer. It is the hostility and mocking severity on the part of the right-wing that makes so many feel strange in their own land.

Maybe incivility is a passing phase.

There's still time to go deeper.

Where the real can be reached.

Only with open hands.

Not clenched fists.

Fall into God.

We want Isaiah's vision.

Nation will not lift sword against nation,
there will be no more training for war.
(Isaiah 2:4)

We want to move from numbing unawareness.

Besides this you know what hour it is, how it is full time now for you to wake from sleep.
(Romans 13:110

We want to watch, carefully.

Watch therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.
(Matt 24:41)

Advent says it is coming.

Of all good works, zazen comes first, for the merit of only one step into it surpasses that of erecting a thousand temples. Even a moment of sitting will enable you to free yourself from life and death, and your Buddha nature will appear of itself. Then all you do, perceive, think becomes part of the miraculous Tathagata-suchness.
- Meiho (1277-1350)

Zazen tells the truth.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant --
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind --
(Emily Dickinson, #1129)

Dazzling lightning gradually approaching.

Christ seeing us through.

Sitting true.

Note: Bookshop and Bakery closed today, Friday.
Friday Evening's Conversation Interreligious Dialogue will take place at the hermitage, 5:30-6:30pm.
Be back tomorrow, Saturday, 10:30am.
.....................

The authentic interests us.

An Introduction to Some Poems

Look: no one ever promised for sure
that we would sing. We have decided
to moan. In a strange dance that
we don't understand till we do it, we
have to carry on.

Just as in sleep you have to dream
the exact dream to round out your life,
so we have to live that dream into stories
and hold them close at you, close at the
edge we share, to be right.

We find it an awful thing to meet people,
serious or not, who have turned into vacant
effective people, so far lost that they
won't believe their own feelings
enough to follow them out.

The authentic is a line from one thing
along to the next; it interests us.
strangely, it relates to what works,
but is not quite the same. It never
swerves for revenge,

Or profit, or fame: it holds
together something more than the world,
this line. And we are your wavery
efforts at following it. Are you coming?
Good: now it is time.
(Poem: "An Introduction To Some Poems" by William Stafford, from The Way It Is: New and Selected Poems © Graywolf Press, 1998.)

It worries, still, we have swerved for revenge. A Zen Master used to say, 'Only go straight.' It worries we become "vacant effective people" intent on making the world and our society in the image of a few men who wield power.

And yet, it consoles that the inauthentic has a short span. Life, they say, is ephemeral and impermanent. The authentic transcends and includes any and all limitation placed on it.

That's why the authentic interests. It "is between" any attempt to divide and dualize us into snarling pairs of opposites maligning the other.

But, there is no other.

Interested?

In the corner of the meditation cabin is Janet's small wood box with a carved anchor on top. There is nothing in the box. The box is empty. At times it is open. There is never anything in it but empty, open, space. It is our tabernacle.

Writer James Carroll suggests:
What we love most is Thanksgiving's underlying idea: that existence itself is a gift. If the holiday ritual calls for the bounty of culinary excess -- four side dishes, three kinds of pie, two forms of cranberry -- it is not to celebrate affluence but to acknowledge the accidental richness of life itself. The multiple desserts are tribute to all that we don't deserve. In taking time away from work, we are remembering that the most precious things are those that we do nothing to earn.

At Mass this morning I looked at the tabernacle as the priest prepared the altar for communion. The door was open. The space was empty. The Eucharist, if you will, the Body of Christ, was out and about. The dwelling-place of the sacramental Jesus was open and empty. The whole process of remembering the true nature of what we call “God” resides in the empty open conveyance of one’s presence in the presence of one another.

An attitude of gratefulness defines us at our best. It does this by pointing away from the self toward others, or toward an Other. Conventionally religious people are quick to put the name "God" on the one being thanked, and prayers come quickly to lips this week. But the feeling of sublime indebtedness, defining what is expressly human about humanity, is larger than religion. On Thanksgiving, feast of the exuberant abundance of creation, all language about any conceivable Creator falls short because creation itself exceeds our capacity to account for it. No matter, because, in being buoyed by this most oceanic of emotions, one need not know toward whom, exactly, one feels it. Let each person be God, therefore, to every other. God enough for now.
(Published on Tuesday, November 23, 2004 by the Boston Globe "America's Heartfelt Holiday", by James Carroll http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1123-21.htm)

The day is foggy. Rain falls; darkness slowly lowers through shrouded trees. The road out front is quiet. Birds come to and leave feeder. Cat hopes for mis-flaps. Dogs snooze. Saskia fusses with kitchen scents. We bailed dinghy, walked Rockport Harbor, sipped tea on balcony of Hermitage Harbor Room after church. Myles was delivered a pumpkin cream cheese pie. The day is spacious with stillness.

No matter how hard Rabbi, Priest, or Minister tries to make ungrateful the nine who were healed but didn't return to Jesus to say thank you, they are misdirected. The one who returned is enough for now. In that one, all are represented. If it works for Jesus, it works for all of us – all who forget to say it, all who feel it but just keep on going, all who are surprised by sudden and unforeseen happiness – we are represented by any one among us who carries grace through our midst.

I agree with James Carroll. At our best, we are grateful.

For all of it.

Not excluding nothing.

Only you can resurrect the present. People
need your voice to come among them like nakedness,
to fuse them into one marching language in which the word
"peace" will be said for the last time.
(from Part 1 of "To American Poets" in The Naomi Poems Corpse And Beans, by Bill Knott, c.1968 in Introduction to Quickly Aging Here, Some Poets of the 1970's, edited by Geof Hewitt, c.1969)

I like the fact that Hewitt had faith there would be the 1970's in 1969.

Faith in gratefulness, accepting that nothingness reveals each as ‘Itself,’ affirming empty open space, and allowing happiness to return when it is ready -- this is my prayer, this Thanksgiving.

For all.

Everywhere.

Music and St. Cecilia. Assassination and J.F. Kennedy. It is November 22nd.

Cecilia’s life inspires the creative spirit.
This saint, so often glorified in the fine arts and in poetry, is one of the most venerated martyrs of Christian antiquity. The oldest historical account of St. Cecilia is found in the "Martyrologium Hieronymianum"; from this it is evident that her feast was celebrated in the Roman Church in the fourth century. (http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03471b.htm)

John F. Kennedy’s life inaugurates an uncertainty new to the mind.
Don DeLillo wrote, "What has become unraveled since that afternoon in Dallas is...the sense of a coherent reality most of us shared. We seem from that moment to have entered a world of randomness and ambiguity."

Today, creative spirit and uncertain mind are our odd companions.

If you want to understand that
All within the three realms
Is nothing but buddhamind,
Then contemplate that the Dharma realm
Is nothing but a product of mind.
- Avatamsaka Sutra

There is a spirit that is embodied when we learn love. There is a mind that is at peace when we allow the unhidden, when we suffer truth.

Teilhard de Chardin wrote; " If there were no real propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level, indeed, even in the molecule itself ~ it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up in the ' hominized ' or human form."

(It is curious that the word 'unite' and the word 'untie' depend on where the "I" is placed.)

Becoming human is suffering love and loving truth.

He looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the treasury; and he saw a poor widow put in two copper coins. And he said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all the living that she had”. (Luke 21:1-4)

Today, we consider putting all we have into the now, all our living into the empty present.

The spirit is willing. The mind, watching, sees.

Song and sorrow chant early gray dawn-light.

Morning comes.

It is today.

Poetry, Tea, and Literature at the shop exceeded the hour limit, went for two hours Saturday afternoon, and seven out of nine of the attendees stayed for a third hour talking.

So much of human experience these days is about disapproval, trashing, belittling, bullying, eliminating, terrorizing and inciting fear. Does a healing solution to this human experience reside within the creativity of making, tasting, and intimately embodying the ontogenetic patterns of poetic intuition?

The superior students are unaware of the coming into the world of Buddhas or of the transmission of the non-transmittable by them: they eat when hungry, sleep when sleepy. Nor do they regard the world as themselves. Neither are they attached to enlightenment or illusion. Taking things as they come, they sit upright, making no idle distinctions.
- Meiho (1277-1350)

What is 'ontogenesis?' (Greek: 'onto'= being; 'genesis' = arising. Thus, arising [into, as, from, with] being.)
Ontogenesis refers to the sequence of events involved in the development of an individual organism from its birth to its death. This developmental history often involves a move from simplicity to higher complexity.
Complexity is one of those terms for which it is difficult to give a precise definition. Intuitively, it is thought of as a property or feature that implies the opposite of simplicity. Complexity is often used to describe single sytems made of multiple interacting parts.
(from http://www.iscid.org/encyclopedia/Ontogenesis)

What is arising in our midst? It is an important question.

Unless we are awake, unless we are aware, we might fail to see what is arising in our midst. This failure at this point of human and world history would be a serious failure.

This is why we gather. We read. We listen. We converse. We attend and we attend to what is arising in our midst.

What is it?

In our midst arising?

Ask. And listen.

Carefully. With creativity.

Please. Come caring into being.

Be what is, what God is, loving.

In our midst.

If it is true we dwell in the reality we see, much depends on perspective and willingness to see through what is there to be seen.

If what we call God, or "What's It's Name," is indeed Hashem Beyond All Comprehension, it is now, it is here, we must begin intimate and intense watchfulness.

Let others create categories of monster entities who prowl through the world seeking the ruin of souls -- I'll not look to create such symbols of misappropriation -- the taking unto oneself what belongs to all.

I prefer the whole of it.

Of which I am

No longer separate.

Light in love.

Being nobody is an authentic way of being. Doing nothing is a valuable active life. Going nowhere is a lovely journey.

There's a quaint tradition enacted in the Rose Garden at the White House today. It is the pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkey. It is done with simplicity and good humor. It is a good ceremony. It reminds us of compassion and connection. Even though the turkey would ordinarily be slated to die for America's celebration of gift and abundance, it is allowed to live, it is pardoned.

There is no difference between
The mind,
The Buddha,
And all sentient beings.
- Lotus Sutra

As a nobody, doing nothing, going nowhere, I celebrate the fact of this day. Today a sentient being was allowed to live. Right now, I continue to live. The content-free appreciation of life -- where it is and as it is -- intertwines all who celebrate the fact of it.

I would like more than a symbolic turkey be pardoned -- among them, the innocent and those with unconscionable sentences in prison, and innocent civilians under bombardment in Fallujah, Mosul, and Najaf. I would like pardon be given to hostages, political prisoners, and the needless poor in societies capable of better generosity.

The poet says:

I'm Nobody! Who are you?
Are you--Nobody--too?
Then there's a pair of us?
Don't tell! they'd advertise--you know!

How dreary--to be--Somebody!
How public--like a Frog--
To tell one's name--the livelong June--
To an admiring Bog!
(Poem by Emily Dickenson)

We'd do well to pair up nobodies, doing nothing, going nowhere. Together we'd be a force negating or neutralizing every somebody, wreaking havoc, enroute paradise.

We'd surround them with peace.

We'd stand back and retreat with prayer and love.

We'd incarnate and embody the antithesis of celebrity, greed for power, and inane quest for supremacy or control.

And when they say, "Move or die!" -- We’ll be ready to die. And when they do us harm, we'll let their harm pass through our middle -- and evaporate in futility.

And if we die in and for peace, we will die as we have lived.

Is there a moral? No. Is there a payoff? No. Is there a happy ending? (Now, why would that question even come up?)

There is no ending.

Just -- passing through.

The deer leg was on the second runway when Cesco found it and began to gnaw. Somewhere else by someone else a kill is made.

To train in the fullest sense of the word, one needs an awareness of the impermanence of all phenomena, including our own lives, and an eye that isn’t blind to cause and effect; emotionally speaking, great compassion and courage on behalf of all beings; practically speaking, a firm faith in the Way and a firm resolve to actualize the Way through practice. If there is even a speck of any one of these present when beginning to train, that is enough. All will then become manifest through practice.
- Anon

Our practice leads to the middle. While the country tilts right and righter, there is a need for a practice seeking center.

Overreach topples. It is best to watch out as the weight of purging enemies takes place at a distance. When the next fall begins there will be debris and vituperation.

This morning in the cabin -- a silence holding sacred space for those pained by the terrible turmoil in Iraq.

While real men and women are suffering destructive power and military might, it is hard to suffer gladly foolish creating of horrible retaliation in wars administered with arrogant and hidden purpose.

It is time to recount the votes.

Surely, some mistake has been made.

Surely some slouching toward bedlam makes way without notice.

A trap is set to ensnare the unaware. We must take shelter.

Somewhere a pack has carried away a deer carcass.

We are wary.

Cold night.

Watch!

A classmate from forty years ago writes three of us. He asks a question. Like the end of an Iranian film, the answer is discontinuous.

Knowing that sentient beings
All have a thousand desires
Gripping the depths of their minds,
The Buddha teaches them
In accordance with their characters
And conditions.
With stories, words, and skillful means
He teaches them the truth.
- Lotus Sutra

Like two breaths of a passing sentient being – one inhales, one exhales – we pass, and touch each other in passing.

Dear "three wise(?) men",
I don't believe I am sending this email, but what the heck. I am interested in your definition/description/version of faith/believing. I am not inclined to consider it a "gift", although it has been presented to me that way at times. I lean toward a view of it as evolving/changing/developing, possibly in a variety of directions. It just occurred to me that this issue has been the subject of books, so a recommendation for a book about faith/believing is also requested.
I am tempted to also pose a question or two about "morality", but will refrain. I don't really expect too much of a response, but if any of you three are so inclined, I'd be interested in a response. I have a pretty clear memory of each of you - physical image as well as your "persona". By now each of you is probably only a vague hint of the physical image I remember. Life goes on. Anyway, take care of yourselves and pray for me and my family. Sincerely, Dave

Breathing in, breathing out, one response:
Hello David,
How are you?
I have few beliefs. Mostly, like this evening, I practice Zazen, I sit in silence. I end with, "May our evening prayer rise before you like incense, O Lord, and may your loving-kindness descend upon us.” Last night we ended with Compline.

I live by faith. Not as you might suppose. For me ‘faith’ is the mere trust that what is happening is actually happening.

Another way of saying it for me is: Not to know is to rely on faith. In as much as I don’t know much, actually hardly anything, in fact – I don’t know anything – and thus, not knowing and faith are inseparable.

I don’t understand the common understanding of ‘faith’ or ‘belief.’

Tonight, ‘faith’ is writing this to you, and sending it. Why do you write? I don’t know. Why do I respond? I don’t know. And yet, and yet, and yet – there is your writing, and here is my responding. Knowledge has little to do with it. ‘Faith’ – whether in supernatural or in natural things – is the air we breathe and the sounds we hear.

I actually breathe. I hear my dog barking in the front room. These are facts that surround me like a blanket, a blanket of faith. It is a mere seeing and hearing. No reason, no purpose, no explanation, and no understanding arrive. I am delightfully empty of anything but what is taking place.

‘What is,’ for some, is called God. This, I don’t know. Still, I attend what is taking place. It is enough.
Best, Bill

We finish watching Abbas Kiarostami’s “Taste of Cherry,” the Iranian director’s meditation on life and death.

At the end, he is taking a sound check.

The true form of the body is nothing we can see.

Contemplate the body until you see its true form,
then you will cease your grasping.
These contemplations will extinguish
the fires of desire
in the same way that torrential rains
extinguish wild fires.
- Perfection of Wisdom

At the "Many Faces of Death" conversation Saturday reading Who Dies by Steven Levine, the following:
As Achaan Chaa said, holding his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart, "All you have to understand is just this much, just this moment." If you can participate in this moment openly, then you'll more likely be present for the next. If that next moment turns out to be on your deathbed, then you'll be open to that too. There is no other preparation for death except opening to the present. If you are here now, you'll be there then. (p.33)

We make juice from pear, orange, and apple. A lovely sipping treat.

"...Karl Rahner, one of the great theologians of the twentieth century, assured me that no matter the depth of my doubts about God and Christianity, I could still pray. 'If you think your heart cannot pray,' he says, 'then pray with your mouth, kneel down, fold your hands, speak loudly, even if it all seems like a lie to you (it is only the desperate self-defense of your unbelief before its death, which is already sealed)....' Although I couldn't will my heart to have a stronger faith, I could certainly will my body to take a posture of prayer and my mouth to say some words of prayer. Rahner assured me that not only was there no hypocrisy in this, but it was vital that I express my half a mustard seed of faith in this way.

"My favorite definition of prayer also comes from Karl Rahner, who says that prayer is opening our hearts to God. In the most familiar type of prayer, verbal or discursive prayer, we open our hearts to God using words. We talk to God, either aloud or mentally. But that's not the only way to pray. Christianity also has a tradition of contemplative prayer, in which we open our hearts to God without words or with very few words. We heed God's call in Psalm 46: 'Be still, and know that I am God.'"
(excerpt from Kim Boykin's book, Zen for Christians: A Beginner's Guide, published by Jossey-Bass (A Wiley Imprint), 2003)

There's the phrase -- "I am."

It is nothing we can see.

The true form of the body.

Richard comes in saying he's going to die. The vet's hospital, this day after Veteran's Day, told him what he's got is irreversible. He and Pia are talking by the fire. I ask him what he's got, "Is it 'life'?" He say's it's something else and gives a name. Joanie comes in and quickly enters the conversation, and it shifts.

Come to say goodbye,
We sit for a while
By the sandy creek.
On far roads,
You hold out an empty bowl;
Deep in mountains,
Walk on fallen flowers.
Having no master, you
Puzzle out Zen on your own;
Observing strict prosody,
Your poems merit praise.
This going-away
Has no circumstantial cause;
A solitary cloud
Has no fixed home.
- Chia Tao (779-843)

Of course his words are serious. I know they are. And so is whatever conversation the three of them have by fireplace. They are talking about cows now. This is how we carry on with one another. One speaks, the rest listen. This listening shifts around the threesome. Like some modern trinity of origin, word, and spirit they attend as best they can each other and the fire.

And in the beginning was love. Love
made a sphere:
all things grew within it; the sphere
then encompassed
beginnings and endings, beginning
and end. Love
had a compass whose whirling dance
traced out a
sphere of love in the void: in the center
thereof
rose a fountain.
(excerpt from poem "Circus of the Sun" by Robert Lax, 1915-2000)

Joanie says the guy in California was given a guilty verdict for killing his wife. They debate guilt and innocence.

In the beginning of everything there is love.

What happens after that is anyone's guess.

If love has a compass, we have to glance at it from time to time.

Cesco and Sando arrive.

North by Northwest.

I stand with the teachings of non-violence.

The Height of Heaven, the Thickness of Earth

The body of heaven is extremely high. Open, round, immeasurable, it is boundlessly vast. Covering everything, containing everything, it produces myriad beings without presuming on its virtue, it bestows blessings on myriad beings without expectation of reward. Whether people are respectful or insincere, supportive or antagonistic, is left up to them. Whether people are good or bad, attractive or repulsive, and whether creatures are violent and stubborn or docile and obedient, they are allowed to be so of themselves, without any contrivance.
- Lui I-Ming

War, even for the detached and dutiful, is a troublesome thing.

Real sacrifice is self-sacrifice, not sacrificing others.

We cannot be deceived -- not any longer.

Peace is no deception.

Embody peace.

Just because bombs are falling on Fallujah it doesn't mean we believe in the leaders who say --"We are the ones changing the world, listen to us, or you will be eliminated."

Ceasing is the same as samadhi,
and contemplation is the same as wisdom.
All good dharmas arise from cultivating these two.
And why is this so? This is so
because ceasing overcomes attachment
while contemplating disentangles one entirely from it.
(- from Treatise on Completion of Truth)

The bombing and killing must cease. We must disentangle from the destruction. We stipulate Saddam. He and his boys are better not strangling Iraq. But our grip is becoming tighter around Iraq's throat. Can we let go?


The Philosopher

A man rides a bicycle into town. He's forgotten his clothes,
or maybe this is what he means to do.
He rides carefully into the burning town.

Apartments of old stone list, iron balconies, awnings,
the window-grates blacken with heat. He rides by.

His lip perspires, his eyes intent.
In the hills behind him there is a glow that is not the burning.
The Acropolis maybe. The Dome of the Rock.

The man has a book under his arm. The pages are gilt-edged, the title
has worn away. He has a shoulder-wound also, an old crescent scar.
Now his chest sweats, now his abdomen.
He is more agile than laughter.

The road turns. A black sedan rounds the corner
behind him. They are leaving town or they're trailing him.
Either way it's too late.

The man is not cold without clothes. He sees whole worlds
wherever he looks, and this keeps him busy.
Maps and globes and civilizations not on fire.

Now when he stops and considers the spokes, the bicycle tires,
he sees ashes, nails, explosions of glass.

He does not believe in this. He believes in something else.
(Poem by Rebecca Wee)

We must find this man. We must ask him about something else.

My soul does not believe in the cruelty of either dictators or liberators.

There is something else to contemplate.

Change us, O Mystical Lord of Change, into food for one another!

We cannot swallow steel, nor drink fire, neither can we reconnect blown-away limbs or parts of our face fallen to dirty street.

As I go to bed, Fallujah is going to hell.

Change, O Lord, this world!

Zen is this moment speaking. Zen is this moment seeing.

Buddha is Sanskrit for what you call aware, miraculously aware. Responding, perceiving, arching your brows, blinking your eyes, moving your hands and feet, it?s all your miraculously aware nature. And this nature is the mind. And the mind is the buddha. And the buddha is the path. And the path is zen. But the word zen is one that remains a puzzle to both mortals an sages. Seeing your nature is zen. Unless you see your nature, it?s not zen.
- Bodhidharma (d. 533)

When we say what we see, and when we see what we say -- everything is revealed as what it is -- just this, nothing more.

"See. Either we are one with the Holy Spirit, or not. Eh? And if the incarnation, the 'Word Made Flesh', is a living reality - then the whole cosmos is sacramentalized...is sacred and holy...is redeemed....
"To appreciate this you've got to know that revelation is all around you, all the time. -Revelation expressing itself as beauty, truth, goodness, and especially love!...Creation is lit up with the numinous...
"And faith is the surrender to this great gift of love, Life!...to be alive in Creation....Submit to it - not in the sense of passive resignation, but in acceptance and participation in being!...
"In total inhalation, in the act of Eucharist, you eat the Mystical Body, the Cosmic Christ, by accepting, by participating, in joy, the total charity of your being in creation! -The I of you dies to One...You are, in the truest sense, what you eat.
"And in total exhalation you offer up, give back, go home in redemption....You do this by curing the inner split between you and God (the incarnate Creator) - this division, what we often-times call Original Sin in mystical theology.
"That's why you go to the monastery, the primary reason anyway. It's to do that - to heal the illusion of separation...the separation of you from your true person, from the world in creation, and especially from God.
(Thomas Merton,in Song For Nobody, by Ron Seitz)

We are not to disparage what is.

God is pure no-thing,
Concealed in now and here:
The less you reach for him,
The more he will appear.
~ Angelus Silesius

It is enough to see, say, and be what is here to see, say, and be.

This moment.

In passing.

Touch and go.

When someone appropriates as one's own that which belongs to everyone -- that is what some call sin, others call abuse of power, some say capitalism, and (after the recent vote) what some are calling stolen votes.

Autumn’s colors dropping from branches
In masses of falling leaves,
Cold clouds bringing rain
Into the crannies of the mountains:
Everyone was born with the same sort of eyes –
Why do mine keep seeing things as Zen koans?
- Dogen

The Zen koan my eyes see this morning is: What have we lost that belongs to US?

Quickly! Can you find the response of your soul?

In prison Joe and I worked an Icelandic folktale. When it came to right or left in that instant Joe remembers, the pain said right, but the turn went left. After a million visits to that turn, Joe went back fresh.

Outside my window, plum blossoms,
Just on the verge of unfurling, contain the spring;
The clear moon is held in the cuplike petals
Of the beautiful flower I pick, and twirl.
- Dogen

At Interreligious Dialogue of a cold night at the shop Richard said the words, "What is the meaning of life?" Lloyd said the words, "I don't know what God is."

The first one spoke the purity of the meaning of life -- "What is." The second one spoke the enlightenment of "not knowing," the integration of "What is" with "God" in medio, the Thin Place revelation of life and existence.

I am honored to be in the presence of all three.

Chaplain brought sweetgrass for smudging.

And the merman smiled.

Chill bright morning.

Disentangling oneself
From desire and evil ways
Requires both vision and wisdom.
Disentangling oneself from the world
And discovering inner joy
Is the start of meditation.
- Perfection of Wisdom

Cesco stretches in sun by barn door. Sando rises and turns on mattress, wearing orange bandana. November hunting season. On C-Span the recently elected President outlines his agenda at his first press conference following the election.

In a Dark Time

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,
I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;
I hear my echo in the echoing wood--
A lord of nature weeping to a tree,
I live between the heron and the wren,
Beasts of the hill and serpents of the den.

What's madness but nobility of soul
At odds with circumstance? The day's on fire!
I know the purity of pure despair,
My shadow pinned against a sweating wall,
That place among the rocks--is it a cave,
Or winding path? The edge is what I have.

A steady storm of correspondences!
A night flowing with birds, a ragged moon,
And in broad day the midnight come again!
A man goes far to find out what he is--
Death of the self in a long, tearless night,
All natural shapes blazing unnatural light.

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.
(Poem by Theodore Roethke)

There are facts and there are mythologies. There are personal opinions and there are strict interpretations of the law. We can deal with whatever is real.

Right now, the dogs snooze, the President fields question about America's image in the wider world, and the morning turns with November light.

"When the American President speaks..." -- the American President is saying -- "people had better listen... I mean what I say."

I turn off the television. The sound is gone. It is an odd time.

We are at odds with circumstance.

The recent wind tears apart.

Still, illusion lurks.

Silence speaks.

Healing.

It's been a day of silences muted by odd opinions following concession of election.

With one who does not
Speak his every thought
I spend a pleasant evening.
- Hyakuchi (1748-1836)

There is a mess to clean up. Those who made it best should clean it. Simple parenting. Put the kids to work fixing what they busted. Smart country.

It's a new beginning. Breathe in, breathe out.

On balance, the world will right itself.

Delia Mae said we must remember to forget.

All Saints Day wanders into All Souls Day, which in America this year is also Election Day.

Oh leaves,
Ask the wind which of you
Will be the first to fall.
- Soseki (1867-1916)

One will fall, and we will see, among the others, one with all.

To find release you must begin to regard life and death as identical to Nirvana, neither loathing the former nor coveting the latter. It is fallacious to think that you simply move from birth to death. Birth, from the Buddhist point of view, is a temporary point between the proceeding and succeeding; hence, it can be called 'birthlessness.' The same holds for death and deathlessness. In life there is nothing more than life, in death nothing more than death: we are being born and dying at every moment.
(Dogen Kigen Zenji, 1200-1253)

Today we pray for one in all.

One through all.

Tuesday is Election Day in the United States.

Everyone hopes that the American people are not stupid. They are not stupid. They will elect the right man for this time. That man might be George W. Bush. That man might be John F. Kerry.

The final days leading up to the election are filled with passionate, some say blind faith, positive endorsements of either man. You would think you’d have to be insane and a vile terrorist sympathizer to vote for the opposite man and not the partisan favorite.

It is what some call the messiness of democracy. Others call it a foundational patina of distortion, distraction, and dissembling.

Those who have strong passions are never able to perceive the Way; for it is like stirring up clear water with hands. People may come there wishing to find a reflection of their faces, which, however, they will never see. A mind troubled and vexed with the passions is never able to see the Way.
- Sutra of Forty-Two Chapters

Some of us drop out. Some leave for Waterville to canvas for their candidate. Some let the dogs out and prepare to take the soup and bread into the shop.

{There are two paths leading to oneness with the Tao.}

The first in the path of acceptance.
Affirm everyone and everything.
Freely extend your goodwill and virtue in every direction, regardless of circumstances.
Embrace all things as part of the Harmonious Oneness, and then you will begin to perceive it.

The second path is that of denial.
Recognize that everything you see and think is a falsehood, an illusion, a veil over the truth.
Peel all the veils away, and you will arrive at the Oneness.

Though these paths are entirely different, they will deliver you to the same place: spontaneous awareness of the Great Oneness.
(#48 from The Hua Hu Ching, by Lao Tzu)

As a political agnostic, I can only try not to resemble the unlovely. In the middle core of this swirling cacophony of frantic grasping for power there is a still and quiet loveliness dwelling in our hearts.

The lovely longs to be our home, our moveable dwelling place, capable of seeing us through whatever falls across our path.

I suddenly saw that all the time it was not I who had been seeking God, but God who had been seeking me. I had made myself the centre of my own existence and had my back turned to God. All the beauty and truth which I had discovered had come to me as a reflection of his beauty, but I had kept my eyes fixed on the reflection and was always looking at myself. But God had brought me to the point at which I was compelled to turn away from the reflection, both of myself and of the world which could only mirror my own image. During that night the mirror had been broken, and I had felt abandoned because I could no longer gaze upon the image of my own reason and the finite world which it knew. God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything.
(Bede Griffiths, writing on Feast of Dunstan, Archbishop of Canterbury)

The center seeing in every direction with love and compassion is the very being we seek by looking everywhere else but where seeing itself sees us through.

God bless no exception!

In every way we step.

Do not be fooled.

This is no time to fall apart and throw away what holds us together

We’ve grown accustomed to explaining things away.

I wonder when we will near embodying what is true.

Good is to practice the Way and to follow truth.
Great is the heart that is in accord with the Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

October will fall into November in two days. The light in Northeast New England will dim and shrink on the ground with curling leaves drying in night frost.

The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough
(Poem, "In a Station of the Metro," by Ezra Pound, published in Poetry magazine in 1913J

We’ll think of saints and souls. We’ll continue to pray for Ed who sleeps deep in hospital.

We’ll look to the end of Election Day and hope for the spirit of a people to rise from its own dark slumber.

We will cease explaining when we embody truth. We will present ourselves. We’ll see through one another.

Let’s pray for that. Let’s elect this prospect.

We’ll be indistinguishable word/body/act.

The word of God will return in us.

Charlie feels acceptance is giving up.

Those who are pure in heart and single in purpose are able to understand the most supreme Way. It is like polishing a mirror, which becomes bright when the dust is removed. Remove your passions, and have no hankering, and all will be revealed to you.
(- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters)

Michael feels similar to Doug. As does Ryan, Greg, Les, Rusty, Vaughn, Eli, Saskia and I. As well as Lao Tzu and David Wagoner.

Stand still. We know where you are. You are not lost.

To see what is really there we need one another. The Sangha. The community.

The conversation in prison listens to the voice of the soul.

Today the way opens for New England baseball fans: The Boston Redsox have won the World Series!

If you endeavor to embrace the Way through much learning, the Way will not be understood. If you observe the Way with simplicity of heart, great indeed is this Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

An email from Chicago:
From Peter Gammons, quoting someone else (I believe):
"Calvinism is finally dead in New England."

I can't help but think of the fellow who lived above the shop, listening to the games on his radio during summer evenings, that loyalty for all those decades without his team winning the Series. Imagine.

It's like we're free now. The Sox are just another team, its fans just another set of fans. The misery and negativity and fear and paranoia: all gone. It's just a game again, not a history of failure.

Red Sox Nation is no longer Preterite Nation. Amen to all that.

Dan comes into shop with guitar in its case. On the case a sticker: "Thank God I'm an agnostic."

Joanie sorts common-reading-box. Myles' bookcases have fit themselves throughout shop and hermitage harbor room. Tom the mailman says he's from Connecticut -- an ambivalent topography of baseball allegiance. Leonard demands I read, not return to him, Pete Hamill's Snow in August. The crisp air in Maine feels clear and full of sunlight.

It's only a game -- that's what they say.

And water is only wet.

Wash well today!

I got irritable yesterday when a bevy of "Defeat Bush" passions found themselves gathered at the shop. It wasn't that I disagreed with their assessment. It was more that the negativity coming from the Bush-likes and Bush-dislikes is wearying and yet so vital as election nears.

To be free from the passions
And to be calm,
This is the most excellent Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

Excellent way or not, there are innumerable voices claiming we are lost should Bush and cohorts be elected. It would be, they say, a confirmation for the first time by the people of the United States that we are, indeed, what George Bush says we are. This prospect of resembling what Bush and Co say we are -- empire, pre-emptive warriors, ignorer of human rights, ignorer of environmental sanity, ignorer of democracy and rights of citizens, global omnivores, and Christian fundamentalists intent on saving our sorry souls and ignoring the rest of the world -- this is what those who fear and feel helpless in the face of Bush are worried about, this is what their passionate desire to defeat bush is all about.

Are we lost?

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
(Poem by David Wagoner)

The irony. Even this beautiful poem sounds calm and ready to carry on should our lostness and our Bushness coincide.

We'll have to find a new creativity to help see our way through.

I'd rather George Bush go back to Texas.

That's my feeling.

But for now, I'll be still.

And be found.

Here.

There is a light that goes beyond the muted faint shadows of our current world. We wander in dark confusion away from our true home.

Consider the world light,
And the spirit is not burdened;
Consider the myriad things slight,
And the mind is not confused.
Consider life and death equal,
And the intellect is not afraid;
Consider change as sameness,
And clarity is not obscured.
- Lao-tzu

Buddhist Zen and Christian Contemplation work together to let authentic light through.

"… For me the mu-experience, triggered by my working on the koan of Joshu’s dog, literally shook me inside out, and kept me laughing and even crying for about three days, as I remember. People around me must have thought I was going crazy then. I can only say at this point that the experience enabled me to see the truth, the forcefulness, the real reality of what Paul wanted to express in Galatians 2:20 - "It is no longer I that live, but Christ in me!" (Ruben Habito’s response to Koun Yamada’s Questions to Christians, "Christianity in the Crucible of East-West Dialogue" http://www.innerexplorations.com/catew/cru1.htm)

When we get close to wisdom residing inward, we see the closeness of practice and faith from seemingly different views found in different religions.

"Hardly anyone today would question whether Zen enlightenment and similar experiences in other non-Christian religions are genuine experiences of the Absolute, even though they are impersonal in nature. Were they personal in nature, they would be the same as an experience of God in the Christian sense… Genuine mystical experience resists all attempts at conceptual expression. This means that anyone who attempts to do so will utilize the categories available, although this, by its very nature, can easily lead to misunderstandings.

"In enlightenment, the Buddhist experiences his deepest self as one with absolute existence, and is strengthened as a result in his faith in the nonduality of all existence. The Christian and anyone who believes in a personal God experiences the self not only in himself, but also in his relationship to an absolute personal reality."
(Hugo Enomiya Lassalle, Living in the New Consciousness. p. 121-122.)

We benefit from looking into the profound. Whether from a religious point of view, philosophy, poetry, nature, or ordinary open-hearted conversation -- we create the place where light begins to glow.

This is no time for short-sighted, bigoted, or petty statements that create fear, darkness, or loneliness.

Words must become lighted corridors through which we are heartened to search for the way home.

Do not accept sorry or cynical rhetoric.

Let's re-create a place of trust.

Let's come home.

Everyone.

What is truly creative must create itself.

In prison one Friday, Joe and I were talking about irony. Our context was an Independent Study on “Fantasy, Myth, and Enchantment as Self Discovery.”

“Irony,” from Greek, eironeia, is "feigned ignorance."

i·ro·ny n. pl. i·ro·nies 1. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. 2. An expression or utterance marked by a deliberate contrast between apparent and intended meaning. 3. A literary style employing such contrasts for humorous or rhetorical effect. See Synonyms at wit1. 4. Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs: “Hyde noted the irony of Ireland's copying the nation she most hated” (Richard Kain). 5. An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity. See Usage Note at ironic. 6. Dramatic irony. 7. Socratic irony. (From http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=irony )

It is an ironic time in politics, baseball, and creative life. We pretend we do not know what is happening. Bush and Kerry will face off on November 2nd. The Boston Red Sox and St. Louis Cardinals begin a World Series best of 7 on Oct 23rd. And contemplative creators continually have to decide to allow what is pulsing through them for presence in the world to come through and take “place” in the world.

What is our place in the world?

When the mind neither sorrows nor delights, that is supreme attainment of virtue. To succeed without changing is supreme attainment of calm. To be unburdened by habitual desires is supreme attainment of emptiness. To have no likes and dislikes is supreme attainment of equanimity. Not getting mixed up with things is supreme attainment of purity. Those who can accomplish these five things reach spiritual illuminations. Those who reach spiritual illumination are those who attain the inward. (- Huai-nan-tzu)

Perhaps the “inward” is the thin-place between the dualistic notions of inside and outside. Perhaps the inward is our place in the world.

God is the only creator ab initio The creation of works of art would therefore come under the head of the active life, as the enjoyment of works of art would come under that of the contemplative life. But the essential difference, as I have already pointed out, is this – that the writer of a poem or the composer of a symphony has as his end, neither possession nor contemplation, but the bringing of a new sort of thing in the world. The poet or painter may indeed give us recognizable likenesses of the forms of common experience; to this extent they use imitation as a means to their further ends. But the poem or the painting in itself is a thing in itself and not an imitation of anything already in the world. It is sui generis, a new creation, and belongs to a different order of being from anything it imitates. Y.B. Yeats speaks of the poets as people whose work exists not primarily to help or to inform us. When we read them, he says, we “have added to our being, not to our knowledge.” It is the impulse to “add to being” which is the distinctive mark of the creative way of life. (p.117 “The Three Faces of Love” by A.D. Hope, in The Poet’s Work, 29 Masters of 20th Century Poetry on the Origins and Practice of their Art, edited by Reginald Gibbons, c.1979)

How do we add to what is? Is that where the inward takes place? The place of the inward is fully dwelling Being.

The essential thing about education for the creative life as distinct from education for the active or the contemplative life is this: that what is truly autonomous must be self-initiating, or it stops being autonomous. For the active life the ends in view are practical ends which depend for their formulation on the known facts about man and society. The form that education for the active life should take can therefore be determined in advance. Similarly, for the contemplative life of the world as it exists in its object and perhaps God insofar as he is knowable. The conditions of the contemplative life can therefore be set out in advance. But the ends of the creative life can therefore be set out in advance. But the ends of the creative life can only be surmised, and the great difference between its conditions and the other two modes of human existence is that what is truly creative must create itself. This is the axiom on which any view of education for the creative life must be based. (pp.119-120, A.D. Hope)

Creating itself (or, the Creative Itself) is perhaps God insofar as God is knowable.

Irony is feigned ignorance. We cultivate ignorance in the same way we miss facts until someone gathers them in a way and, when shown, we say, “Oh, I see.”

You've always painted the Bush administration as these macho poseurs, phony gunslinger tough guys. Is that the kind of daddy we're looking for?

Yeah. And that's probably why Bush didn't let his own daddy speak at the Republican National Convention -- which was unbelievable that a former president who went to war with Iraq wasn't given a speaking slot. But Bush didn't want the real daddy, because the real daddy has differences with him on the Iraq war. The ironies of that are beyond belief. The father went to war in Iraq to defend the principle that you can't invade another country unilaterally; the son goes to war with Iraq to establish the principle that you can invade another country unilaterally.
(“Ms. Bush-Bash,” Does anyone understand Dubya better than New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd? By John Colapinto, Oct 6, 2004, Rolling Stone Magazine)

I’d not seen Dowd’s observation before.

Nor had Ron Suskind comprehended what he’d been told two years ago:
In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Who besides guys like me are part of the reality-based community? Many of the other elected officials in Washington, it would seem. A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: "Look, I want your vote. I'm not going to debate it with you." When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, "Look, I'm not going to debate it with you."
October 17, 2004, IN THE New York Times MAGAZINE, “Without a Doubt" By Ron Suskind

Perhaps the time for debate is over. We’ve listened to each other too long. It is time to allow those who know best to run things, run our lives, run the country and the world. Perhaps, as Aldous Huxley’s Mustapha Mond in Brave New World says:
"The world's stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can't get. They're well off; they're safe; they're never ill; they're not afraid of death; they're blissfully ignorant of passion and old age they're so conditioned that they practically can't help behaving as they ought to behave. And if anything should go wrong, there's soma." Mustapha Mond (p.220)

"Call it the fault of civilization. God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness. That's why I have to keep these books [i.e. the Bible, the Imitation of Christ, Varieties of Religious Experience, Works of John Cardinal Newman] locked up in the safe. They're smut"-Mustapha Mond (p. 234)

Then, another voice is heard:
"But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin."
"In fact," said Mustapha Mond, "you're claiming the right to be unhappy."
"All right then," said the Savage defiantly, "I'm claiming the right to be unhappy."
-Mustapha Mond and John the Savage (p.240)

I claim the right to be unhappy. Right now Boston has the reality of playing in the World Series and the possibility of winning. Right now the election between Bush and Kerry is still open to a fair and deliberative choice. Right now we each have an opportunity in our lives not to have to feign ignorance in order to have voice in the world.

"Place" is "Creating Itself.”

Inwardly.

Free.

Crisp cool evening.

In autumn
Even though I may
See it again,
How can I sleep
With the moon this evening?
- Dogen (1200-1253)

In the empty silence of the night I recall five years ago my sister's final hours.

I write Lori Ann, Anthony, Frank, and Mark -- companions on that vigil.

Each going on.

With love.

To pretend to know, when there is only unknowing, is an unkind and selfish thing to do.

The human body is a little universe
Its chill tears, so much wind-blown sleet
Beneath our skins, mountains bulge, brooks flow
Within our chests lurk lost cities, hidden tribes

Wisdom quarters itself in our tiny hearts
Liver and gall peer out, scrutinize a thousand miles
Follow a path back to its source, else be
A house vacant save for swallows in the eaves
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)

In the New York Times (Published: October 12, 2004) there was a page one article entitled "Group of Bishops Using Influence to Oppose Kerry" By David D. Kirkpatrick and Laurie Goodstein. It quoted the Archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, about the upcoming election, the positions of the candidates, matters of abortion, along with moral considerations of conscience. I wrote the Archbishop and was sent a transcript of the complete interview. It was sent as a clarification of the reported conversation.

A section of the transcript reads:
NYT: Archbishop Burke in St. Louis caught my attention again on Friday [October 1]. he issued a statement basically stating that it's a sin if you vote for a pro-choice politician, I believe he was saying even if that wasn't the reason you voted for him, that you voted for a pro-abortion politician that is still something that you ought to confess. Is that...?

AB [Archbishop]: I don't believe that's where you should start. The place to start would be, does our voting for someone make us responsible for what that person does as a legislator or as a judge?...And the answer is yes, because we are in some ways materially -- we use the word "materially" -- cooperating in that person's activity because we've given [him or her] the platform to be elected. Now, if the person does something wrong, our participation is remote, but if we knew they were going to do something wrong and we approved of it, our responsibility would be really be close, even if we knew they were going to do something wrong and we voted for them for another reason, we would still be responsible in some ways.

The standing is if you know someone is going to do evil and you participate in that in some way, you are responsible. So it's not..."if you vote this way, should you go to confession?" The question is, "if you vote this way, are you cooperating in evil?" Now, if you know you are cooperating in evil, should you go to confession? The answer is yes. There's a more sophisticated thing here...it's not so crude. The reason I want to stress that is because it is not like bishops are issuing edicts about who should vote for whom. It's issuing statements about how a Catholic forms her conscience, or his conscience...and remote material cooperation or proximate material cooperation is cooperation, and it's important for Catholics to know that, to be sophisticated in their judgments.

This argument is chewing gum on sole of shoe. It makes responsibility a combination of fortune-telling and pre-emptive challenge.

"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind." -- George Orwell

I wrote back.

Dear Archbishop Chaput –

I’ve read the complete transcript you sent. Thank you. I re-read the Times article.

I’ll mention one thought while doing this reading, namely: It is a difficult task to delineate public policy and personal morality.

My love for the Church is not diminished over five dozen years. My love for the people in and out of the Church seeks increase.

When the Church seeks to inform the conscience of individuals and general citizenry –she does right. But the difficulty of maintaining the razor’s edge of modeling/informing versus influencing/threatening is surely a sharp edge worth careful contemplation.

It seems to me that my opposition to abortion as a Catholic is and should be readily available for disclosure. The same is true for the issues of war, capital punishment, genocide, abuse of all sorts, and refusal to consider and reflect on the perspectives (in good faith) offered by those with whom I might differ.

And yet, the law of the land must be based on deliberations common to the values and judgment of the general populace as filtered through the good offices of legislative and judicial office holders. Fight, yes, for the candidate of your choice, and the values you choose as sacred – but avoid the dirty stick of ex-communication, non-reception of communion, and public condemnation of character based on legal and public deliberation of moral/religious matters. Pre-emptive elimination or character assassination based on suspected or speculative future wrong is a dangerous heuristic or haruspication – even for a Church so involved with a God we claim to be wise and loving as well as eternal and without limits.

My preference is to encourage individual and community via compassionate, open, and deliberate means – genuine dialogue -- to consider God, grace, forgiveness, and prayer. And to urge change of behavior based on those realities (God, grace, forgiveness, and prayer). Authentic change, as you know, comes from within. External incrimination is a blunt and numbing control – not worthy of Christ-mind seeking to gather safely those who long for the embodied presence of God-with-us.

Of course we are a little stupid. We generally can’t see the wholeness of life. We need examples of wholeness – or at least, mending broken individuals who have felt the pain of flaw and anguish. We are brother and sister in the family of God. Perhaps our only sanity is coming to see that inter-relatedness.

I will not burden you any further. Your task might be different than mine. You are a very visible man in a very big office as part of a very powerful organization.

I will pray for you and your work as part of my daily intention.

May all of us be happy, may all beings be safe, and may all beings come to dwell in our true home!

And may you, my brother, know and experience the peace and sanity you work so hard to convey to others!

Bill

p.s. I, too, will be taking my ballot to our chapel/zendo for silent prayer prior to casting my vote. Thank you for the prompt.

These men are trying hard to preserve the form of something whose core is empty. It is emptiness -- the impermanent and ephemeral, the diaphanous and unbounded openness -- that dwells at our core. Yet institutions spring up attempting to control what is not there. It seems to be the curious fate of men with power to try to capture the wind in a wire fence.

Fact is -- we're all just passing through.

Let the contest continue.

Unknowing.

And finding one’s way through.

When religious people think of God, God is usually a dualistic, external, and anthropomorphic construct.

As flowing waters disappear into the mist
We lose all track of their passage
Every heart is its own Buddha
Ease off; become immortal

Wake up: the world’s a mote of dust
Behold heaven’s round mirror
Turn loose: slip past shape and shadow
Sit side by side with nothing save Tao
- Shih-shu (17th century-early 18th)

Christians hardly admit that God became human. Willing to celebrate the birth of Jesus and allow the belief that God became man, there is still a hesitation to give up the notion that God is really above all this creation, humanity, and existence.

But wholeness is wholeness.

It would be useful if Christians actually believed what is one of the core beliefs of Christianity: Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis; "The Word became flesh, and dwells between (among) us..." (from John 1: 1-14)

Either God became one of us, or Christianity merely has had a good spin for two thousand years.

The prophet Jeremiah wrote:
The days are coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.
It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers the day I took them by the hand to lead them forth from the land of Egypt; for they broke my covenant and I had to show myself their master, says the LORD.
But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD. I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
No longer will they have need to teach their friends and kinsmen how to know the LORD. All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.
(Jeremiah 31:31-34)

"Sin," division and separation, will be forgiven, gone, and forgotten.

It is wholeness that puts to rest the strain and illusion of a divided reality.

Going beyond, or having gone beyond the numbing sleep of separation and fragmentation of half-knowledge, we vow to live what is here with courage, compassion, and wisdom.

It is not just a one day Christmas celebration, but a vital need, to embody the reality of wholeness. Hodie Christus Natus Est Pro Nobis -- "Today Christ is born with us."(Antiphon to Magnificat – Vespers of the Christmas day)

It is a lot to meditate on.

A contemplation beyond us.

This is where we must go.

Are we willing?

What's wrong will always be wrong. That's what poet Richard Hugo wrote as the first line of his poem "Villager."

Iraq is no-place to us. That's because we've lost our way. Our way, we like to think, used to be the modeling of freedom and justice. Now, losing our way at home, we try to impose on others a facsimile of what we've stopped believing in.

If that sounds harsh, listen to the words of a writeup about Seymour Hersh interviewed recently in Berkeley, California:
There was more -- rumors of atrocities around Iraq that to Hersh brought back memories of My Lai. In the evening's most emotional moment, Hersh talked about a call he had gotten from a first lieutenant in charge of a unit stationed halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. His group was bivouacking outside of town in an agricultural area, and had hired 30 or so Iraqis to guard a local granary. A few weeks passed. They got to know the men they hired, and to like them. Then orders came down from Baghdad that the village would be "cleared." Another platoon from the soldier's company came and executed the Iraqi granary guards. All of them.

"He said they just shot them one by one. And his people, and he, and the villagers of course, went nuts," Hersh said quietly. "He was hysterical, totally hysterical. He went to the company captain, who said, 'No, you don't understand, that's a kill. We got 36 insurgents. Don't you read those stories when the Americans say we had a combat maneuver and 15 insurgents were killed?'

"It's shades of Vietnam again, folks: body counts," Hersh continued. "You know what I told him? I said, 'Fella, you blamed the captain, he knows that you think he committed murder, your troops know that their fellow soldiers committed murder. Shut up. Complete your tour. Just shut up! You're going to get a bullet in the back.' And that's where we are in this war."

The story seemed to leave Hersh sincerely, deeply saddened. While his critics may call him a "muckraker" and unpatriotic, on Friday night it was obvious that Hersh takes the crumbling of America's image, very, very personally.
(On Friday evening, Oct. 8, Seymour Hersh, investigative journalist extraordinaire, was interviewed on the campus of UC Berkeley by KQED host Michael Krasny.)http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/

War is personal. It must be taken thus.

We're frightened by the mind of the men who cheerlead us during the war.

Hugo was right -- What's wrong will always be wrong.

Today is the feast of Teresa.
If we plant a flower or a shrub and water it daily it will grow so tall that in time we shall need a spade and a hoe to uproot it. It is just so, I think, when we commit a fault, however small, each day, and do not cure ourselves of it.
(--St Teresa of Avila)

Until we learn love.

A far cry away.

Let's not forget who we are.

Suzanne, John, Joanie, Su Sane, Robert, Erika, Saskia, Sylvia, Dirk, Will, Sandra, and I read and conversed about "True self or No self?" by Jack Kornfield at Wednesday Evening Laura Conversation.

Is the cause of hostilities in war and elsewhere our failure to recognize our true self? In and through one another?

All so vague:
The reasons why in autumn
All fade away
And there’s just this
Inexplicable sadness.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

There will be two men debating tonight. They each want to win the presidential election.

Leaves fall. Creative imagination is on hold. The sadness we feel is partially caused by the way these men split us in two.

We are not two. We cannot trust any man who tries to divide us.

Is there anyone who understands the true self?

We have to be something to comprehend it.

If we remember who we are, those who divide will be forgotten.

The Boston Red Sox open against the New York Yankees tonight in the American League Championship Series. Schilling will face Mussina. They'll throw whatever they have at one another.

Scaling the crags
Where azalea bloom, not for plucking
But for hanging on!
The saving feature of this rugged
Mountain face I’m climbing.
- Saigyo (1118-1190)

The baseball battle will be a welcome alternative to the bloodier battles taking place in Fallujah and Ramadi in Iraq.

Also Tuesday, the military resumed air strikes in nearby Fallujah, said to be the hideout of the terrorist network run by Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born militant responsible for numerous bombings, kidnappings and beheadings, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.

The military said it hit a center for Zarqawi "terrorist meetings" in one strike and a "known terrorist safe house" in another. The safe house was being used by Zarqawi associates at the time of the strike, a statement said.

Wire service reports said at least one of the buildings hit was a restaurant. The Associated Press reported that five people died in the strike on the restaurant.
("U.S., Iraqi Forces Raid Ramadi Mosques, Air Strikes Resume in Fallujah," By Fred Barbash, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, October 13, 2004; 7:30 AM, in Washington Post, Tuesday, October 12, 2004) [Note: Tomorrow's date is on this news posting. It evokes magical thinking -- that we might be able to forestall tomorrow's pain by diverting it from its temporal course. It is today here, it says, might we change tomorrow today?]

I'd rather we stole a base than set up bases, hit a triple than cripple bodies, throw a 2-hitter than split two countries in two with the cruelty of war and foolishness of want, power, and false security.

What is it we fail to comprehend about the mystery of life we call God?
Pleni sunt caeli et terra gloriae tuae."Heaven and earth are full of your glory." (in Te Deum)

This war of ideology, bombs, and bullets is a shame. Baseball playoffs with runs, hits, and errors -- with full counts, pitching changes, and stretching for extra bases -- are better expressions of skill, strategy, and human excellence than the ugly (though some say, necessary) behavior of warfare.

Let the championships begin!

Let warfare end!

Let us play!

Maybe we can fake it. At least for a while until, with practice faking it, we might ease into the thing itself.

And what is this thing? It's in the bag.

If you want to catch a rat
You don’t need a fancy cat
If you want to learn the principles
Don’t study fine bound books
The True Pearl’s in a hemp sack
The Buddha nature rests in huts
Many grasp the sack
But few open it.
- Shih-te

If we could shut up, be still, sit down, and look at the sack awhile...maybe we'll see there's nothing to say.

Life is this simple. We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent and God is shining through it all the time. This is not just a fable or a nice story. It is true. If we abandon ourselves to God, and forget ourselves, we see it sometimes, and we see it maybe frequently. God shows Himself everywhere, in everything - in people and in things and in nature and in events. It becomes very obvious that God is everywhere and in everything and we cannot be without Him. It's impossible. The only thing is that we don't see it.
(~ Thomas Merton)

We don't see God because we are in God as God is in us. This dualistic language is the way we normally describe something whose explanation might satisfy the intellect. It never does.

Let's fake it.

Let's say nothing.

Without dualistic language we wouldn't know what to say.

Let's open the sack, and say nothing.

Another debate. Are we better informed?

I no longer think any explanation satisfies. We know the truth not by analytic assessment but by embodied resonance. It is a sensory experience that conveys truth and recognizes falsity.

The Buddhas left their Sutras
Because people are hard to change
It’s not just a matter of saintly or stupid
Each and every heart throws up its barricade
Each piles up his own mountain of karma
How could they guess that what they clasp so close
Is sorrow
Unwilling to ponder, as day and night
They do embrace the falsehood of the flesh
- Shih-te

We recognize truth when we hear it. We feel the false in the pit of our stomach.

The religion of souls should follow the law of development of bodies. (from An instruction by St Vincent of Lerins)

Spirituality embodies.

The way we sit, walk, and move through being itself.

No convincing the mind. Surrendering body.

Feeling surely all.

All hermits dwell in the hidden presence of others.

If you are not put off
By the voice of the valley
And the starry peaks,
Why not walk through the shady cedars
And come see me?
- Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831)

Actually, each of us lives amid curious personnae rarely seen mute and naked of mask.

October 6. St. Bruno [1032-1101]
Bruno was brought up at Reims in Eastern France and, as a priest, later taught at the Cathedral school there. He decided to become a hermit (possibly as a result of witnessing the deplorable personal behaviour of the Archbishop, who had to be deposed), and after an unsuccessful start near Cologne moved down to the French Alps near Grenoble where the Bishop gave him, and six followers, a plot of land which was to be the origin of the first Charterhouse (Chartreuse), and of the Carthusian Order named after it. The Carthusians developed a life of extreme simplicity, based on the early models of hermit life in Egypt rather than on the Rule of St. Benedict, then dominant in Europe. The design of their buildings, with individual cells built around a Church, rather than within a large communal building emphasises the character of their spiritual life. Bruno later made another foundation in Southern Italy where he died in 1101. Given the strict nature of their rule, there have never been many Carthusians; there is only one house in England at Parkminster in West Sussex.
(http://www.hullp.demon.co.uk/SacredHeart/saint/StBruno.htm)

So many of us are Carthusian in soul.

We wander about, exclaustrated outsiders, in the middle of chaos masquerading as sanity.

Bruno gave the vision.

We give long gaze.

The shepherd monk who sells Trappist jams told us to maintain the balance between hermitage and marketplace.

Once I lived in community. Now, as near-hermit, the Laura-footpath between town and mountain is worn deep.

Torn and tattered is this life.
Food? Wild vegetables from the roadside.
The shrubs and bushes advance toward my hut.
Often the moon and I sit together all night,
And more than once I have lost myself among
The wild flowers,
Forgetting to return home.
No wonder I left the community life:
How could such a crazy monk live in a temple?
- Ryokan Taigu (1758-1831)

We wondered at university class today what metaphor carries us through the difficulties of everyday life. William, Este, Dennis, Laura, Bethany, Jessica, Bonnie, Denise, and Robert read their poems with their particular metaphor. We read David Whyte's poem "Revelation Must Be Terrible" as we contemplated what it feels like to resonate the bitter and the beautiful.

My metaphor is hermit solitude.

It helps me through the sometimes crowded opinions that press in from all sides.

We go apart and we return.

The mystic soul sets out to see what is difficult to see, and comes back to say what is difficult to say.

With or without sound.

Silence throughout.

Feast of Francis. Three walks in woods today.

At night, deep in the mountains,
I sit in meditation
The affairs of men never reach here;
Everything is quiet and empty,
All the incense has been swallowed up
By the endless night.
My robe has become a garment of dew.
Unable to sleep I walk out into the woods—
Suddenly, above the highest peak,
The full moon appears.
- Hakuin (1686-1768)

Over twig, root, and stone -- the silent visit to mountain family -- a coming to earth, a return home.

Back at cabin Mu-ge carries lifeless bird. Its warm light body is laid at foot of garden statue of Francis.

“And who is my neighbour?” (from Luke 10)

The quiet joy of looking around at the answer.

"Tota pulchra est..."

When Francis died the earth didn't care. The earth was happy to receive its loopy son back into its arms.

The ways of proclaiming
The Mind all vary,
But the same heavenly truth
Can be seen
In each and every one.
- Ikkyu (1394-1481)

We covered the statue of Francis with white cloth at Transitus ceremony in cabin tonight. Lit incense. Blew out candle. And left.

As we, the human beings, form part of the divine body (sarira), we are strictly related to every animate and inanimate beings of this universe, constituting one "organic whole. Consequently, we are responsible for the well being or suffering of the body, viz, of this universe with all its varieties of beings. The Buddhists thus believe that there is nothing that we do that affects only ourselves: "The entire Universe is helped by our acts of compassion but is harmed by our acts of violence and unkindness."
(Kurian Kachappilly, in paper, "'Holocoenotic' Nature Of Ecology: An Indian Perspective Of Ecotheology and Process Thought")

The solitude that Thomas Merton longed for burned him until there was nothing left of him. He knew it was coming twenty years before it arrived. The final pages of his Seven Storey Mountain, speaking as God, laid it out in searing brand.

Still, we, like Francis, have to learn we've never been other than earth. Our ambivalence echoes like the characters in Samuel Beckett's play:
Don't touch me! Don't question me! Don't speak to me! Stay with me!
(Estragon to Vladimir, in Waiting For Godot)

I don't mind living on the outside of everything. I forget that sometimes. I complain. I try to pretend it matters. That I am nowhere to be found.

Living within God is enough.

There's nowhere to go.

Staying at home.

Alone together.

Earthen.

It is not religion causing this war. It is men who choose retribution rather than reason.

Those thinking of giving up their faith because fundamentalists have kidnapped the forms of expression and names of belief should think further. Forms are empty. Emptiness is form.

If you have abandoned one faith, do not abandon all faith. There is always an alternative to the faith we lose. Or is it the same faith under another mask?
(--Graham Greene)

The forms of belief and faith can be stolen, misused, and made to seem apparently real. This is being done with Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. Islam is not terrorism. Christianity is not imperial might. Judaism is not a militaristic state.

Emptiness is a more profound religion. It is the core of each religion. There is nothing there -- and what is to be here is created each time new.

IV
She says, ``I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;
But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields
Return no more, where, then, is paradise?''
There is not any haunt of prophecy,
Nor any old chimera of the grave,
Neither the golden underground, nor isle
Melodious, where spirits gat them home,
Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm
Remote on heaven's hill, that has endured
As April's green endures; or will endure
Like her remembrance of awakened birds,
Or her desire for June and evenings, tipped
By the consummation of the swallow's wings.
(From poem, "Sunday Morning," by Wallace Stevens)

The forms of religion are collapsing. They are being looted by political greed and private gain. Compassion and love are tools in the hands of advertisers and propagandists. As the forms cave in on themselves -- like the images of twin towers brought down because they could be brought down -- religions shudder in the bare light of naked revelation.

VIII
She hears, upon that water without sound,
A voice that cries, ``The tomb in Palestine
Is not the porch of spirits lingering.
It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.''
We live in an old chaos of the sun,
Or an old dependency of day and night,
Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,
Of that wide water, inescapable.
Deer walk upon our mountains, and quail
Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;
Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;
And, in the isolation of the sky,
At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make
Ambiguous undulations as they sink,
Downward to darkness, on extended wings.
(Stevens)

If emptiness is the heart of what was once religion, it can only be embodied by men and women willing to become awake and human.

From now on Mullah, Priest, and Rabbi will divest their clerical clothing and redress the wrongs done in the name of religion. From now on each man and woman will allow the animals and elements to consecrate hands and feet with the very gloriousness of creation.

What once we called God -- out there and supreme commander -- will reassert as itself the Word of Creation. That empty breath will find its way through no-where, no-place, and no-thing -- emerging as it is, as it was, and as it will be in the very instant of revelation expressing each now, and now, and now.

What now we call God -- in each here, and grace itself -- is humility of presence coming to be in and as each unfolding moment.

We've never really accepted creation. We've never surrendered to the Word of Life made language. We've never allowed the Most High to become human. In these three prohibitions unawake men have stolen religion and made of it a lifeless, wordless, inhuman institution.

But what do I know? I can only walk with dogs on early morning mountain path through sun-slant mist and wet green grass -- a loveliness of solitude emerging with itself.

I am content when wakened birds,
Before they fly, test the reality
Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings

Guardian angels brighten the way.

Lighting and guarding.

Ruling and guiding.

To God's love.

Committing.

Here.

Is there any help for a life in danger of devastation?

Azriel, an old wanderer is the sole survivor of a pogrom which destroys his small Carpathian community. Its people are sworn, should any of them survive, never to speak of the town's last days and nights of wait and terror. And so for decades he roams the earth searching for someone with the authority to release him from his vow. At last, fifty years after the event, Azriel encounters a young stranger who wishes to die. What arguments can he invoke to dissuade him? He decides to tell the story of the death of his town, breaking his vow in hopes his story will save a life. (An Annotated Bibliography, The Oath, by Elie Wiesel. http://www.pbs.org/eliewiesel/bibliography/)

No telling. No place. No matter when. It is an attempt to break a paradigm, no longer to story what shouldn’t be told.

Moshe the madman was taking an oath of silence when out in the gym someone took a barbell weight across his head. The book closed on Moshe in Kolvillag staying alone on the abandoned table as we were spirited out men-lined corridor, out guarded door, down end of season fading flowers, as sound of ambulance siren floats over razor-sharp rolled cutting wire into nether silence.

I climb the tower for a look,
Gradually feeling
Their serene effect.
In smoke-blue haze,
Massed peaks
Appear as if joined.
When will I climb
And set foot there,
And gaze on all
Creation below?
- Chia Tao (779-843)

The Hospice Memorial Service around corner past library was called out and done. Candles stood vigil in empty chapel as silent plants newly set down languished near abandoned lectern. A man down and red with his own life not far away and nearly extinguished could easily be named on list for next service. But for now the drill: secure and search, inquire and tighten. But first, evacuate civilians procedure is priority number one.

Life is fragile. It spins on a dime. Prison is no place to find yourself.

Keep us safe, Lord, while we are awake, and guard us as we sleep, so that we can keep watch with Christ and rest in peace. (Nunc Dimittis, Compline)

And yet, no place is where we find ourselves.

We pass through what is taking place with awareness and compassion.

The name Azriel means ‘God is my aid.’

Humility of presence.

Archangels are the mirrors of our consciousness. That's what Stephen Mitchell wrote in his Meetings with the Archangel, A Comedy of the Spirit, c.1998

Today is the feast of Michael, Gabriel, Raphael -- likeness, might, and healing -- Archangels.

Is consciousness the space within which every possibility dwells in the open?

If you can see a thought as it arises
This awareness will at once destroy it.
Whatever state of mind should come,
Sweep it away, put it down.

Both good and evil states
Can be transformed by mind.
Sacred and profane appear
In accordance with thoughts.
- Han Shan Te Ch’ing (1546-1623)

Clusters of galaxies of thought amid endless empty space of transparent consciousness.

To be between is to be interested...(L. inter {between} + esse {to be} = to be between)...and ready to leap from one truth into the next truth.

Without fear.

Mirroring.

What is.

Rising from the dead. How is that?

You need not seek the real,
Mind originally is Buddha.
The familiar becomes remote,
The strange seems familiar.

Day and night,
Everything is wonderful.
Nothing you encounter confuses you.
These are the essentials of mind.
- Han Shan Te Ch’ing (1546-1623)

It is often said that we do not stay dead. Death is an instantaneous transition from one form of life to no form. What seems odder to consider is that we have not been born.

When some Christian believers claim to be born again, does their position compound the problem -- namely, if never born to begin with, what does it mean to say someone is born again?

The Buddha Mind you have from your parents innately is unborn, so it has no beginning and no end. There is not even a hair's breadth of anything you can call delusion. So get it squarely in your minds that there is nothing arising from inside. The main thing is simply not getting involved with the world of externals. That which is not involved with the world of externals is the Buddha Mind, and since the Buddha Mind is marvelously illuminating, when you abide in this marvelously illuminating Buddha Mind just as it is, there is no delusion, no enlightenment. . . . In the innate Buddha Mind, there is neither joy, sorrow nor anger – nothing but the Buddha Mind itself, marvelously illuminating and seeing clearly.
(from Sermons, by Bankei)

Zen Master Bankei refers to the unborn as true reality. Apostle Paul says that life is not ended, merely changed.

No birth, no death -- only life.

These two days in the Harbor Room, hermiting. Full moon rises behind birch bark. Fog bank under orange moon over Penobscot Bay islands. Mosquitoes dusking along low tide docks. Man in condo window eats pretzels and nuts. I had banana with peanut butter ending two day fast.

Student papers read one day early. Plastic chairs scrape wooden deck at waterfront restaurant next door, orders for drinks taken, menus handed out. Man in small pram rows past boat named Economy tied to finger float. Woman with digital camera take picture of moon with flash. Man inhales cigarette, coughs.

New fog bank takes moon away.

What we call full moon is uninhibited sunlight on moon. When the earth does not impose shadow on moon, it is fully reflective of origin light in this solar system.

On earth oil prices hit unprecedented $50 dollars a barrel.

There's this feeling it is time to go within.

When death comes, will there even be a desire to continue through resurrection to some clarity of life in the dwelling place we call God? If reality is non-dual, how occupy any place considered outside the mythic consciousness of unification?

In any case, none of the Buddha’s extant sermons states that a transcendental Being does not exist. Rather, this great master’s emphasis was on the pragmatics of the spiritual path, which he understood as a way out of the maze of the world. His indifference to metaphysical guesswork not only left ample scope for practical experimentation, but also reduced the danger lurking in non-dualist schools of thought -- namely, that of false idealism and self-delusion.
(p.36, in Wholeness or Transcendence? Ancient Lessons For The Emerging Global Civilization, by Georg Feuerstein, c.1992)

White sparkling trail across water from transformed moon risen from fog bank to ongoing journey across its sphere of this part of the galaxy.

For now, how we go on.

We need stillness.

While everyone else
Is so busy striving,
The lone traveler
Is at ease by himself.
He’s been living outside of convention
For a long time now;
In his pouch there is nothing at all.
When he walks,
He takes a cane for a companion;
When he talks,
He has the rocks for an audience.
If you ask him what his religion is,
When hungry it’s a bowl of rice.
- Wen-siang (1210-1280)

Walking town in emptiness with sound.

You are in our midst, Lord, your name we bear; therefore do not abandon us, Lord, our God. (Jeremiah 14:9)

That name is each glance, step, and sound.

Stillness.

Alone.