Only to learn.

Searching for words,
Hunting for phrases,
When will it end?
Esteeming knowledge
And gathering information
Only maddens the spirit.
Just entrust yourself
To your own nature,
Empty and illuminating
Beyond this,
I have nothing to teach.
- Bankei Yotaku (1622-1693)

Beyond this and that -- is mother.

Tibetans believe that we have all lived so many lives that every single person we pass in the street was in some former life either our parent or child. "Seeing all beings as our mother" is recommended in traditional Asian Buddhist cultures. We come into existence in each moment totally mutually dependent, with all phenomena. Thus all beings are like our mothers, helping give us birth, and are worthy of our love.
(pp.215-216,"Kshitigarbha (Jizo), Monk as Earth Mother," in Bodhisattva Archetypes, Classic Buddhist Guides to Awakening and their Modern Expression)

Beyond mother and father, male and female, you and me -- is wordless entrusting nature.

Original monastic practice.

Looking under our feet.

Seeing one's life!

Ramesh Balsekar has written: A painting can never know why its painter created it.

Maybe we don't understand what we call 'free will.'

If one understands Amida Buddha,
His paradise is not far;
But if one has doubt, it is indeed distant.
The compassionate Buddha
Will not come from the West,
The dying soul will not be
Taken to the western paradise.
It is like the moon shining upon the waters;
It does not sink to the lakes and ponds,
Nor do they rise to the heavens.
Pure water reveals the moon,
A pure mind manifests the Buddha.
If the mind understands and gives praise,
It reaches satori.
- Ungo Kiyo (1582-1659)

'Free will' might just be the realization there is no separate will, there is only God's will and our attempts to divert from that. Once we abandon our conditioning and ego, we are free to be what the undifferentiated creating painter is painting.

There is no faith in God without total acceptance of "what is" in the present moment -- including all the ugliness.
(-- Ramesh S. Balsekar, in The One in the Mirror, See What You Truly Are!)

Sitting in 'winter zendo' front room of hermitage house, dawn light gives outline to outdoor tree and indoor tree. Cat stretches as I bow. Hit, hit, hit of wooden box in rhythm with Prajna Paramita. Of course there is no need to practice -- no need for prayer, nor to turn off whistling tea kettle on stove.

Still, all three happen and are done.

Sunlight climbs down Bald Mountain.

I sew cat's ripped toy.

Barge breaks ice in west channel of Camden harbor. What minutes ago was solid across is broken apart into floes in time for descending outgoing tide.

Notch the arrow of emptiness
To shoot the hawk of ultimate meaning;
If you’re not right on target,
You will be deceived by this barbarian monk.
- Fugai Ekun (1568-1654)

I worry the arrow set loose from America's hand and sent wobbling dangerously into a foreign heart will not rest unreturned.

Cupid's arrow says love. I don't know what this invasive arrow stands for.

...and God chose the lowly and despised of the world, those who count for nothing, to reduce to nothing those who are something, so that no human being might boast before God.
(1 Corinthians 1: 28)

There is an edge to our reasoning. What is over that edge? Is there an unforgiving solidity that aggression smashes against? Will an arrow poisoned by ignorance send an unyielding venom through the barrier we imagine separates "us" and "them?"

Albert Einstein proffered the theory that the edge of the universe is constantly expanding. Being completely nothingness, a perfect vacuum, the universe is expanding into what Einstein imagined to be "less than nothing." He posited that if a rocket ship were to approach the edge of the universe, exceeding the speed of expansion, it would disintegrate, because apparently even "nothingness" has an edge, a solidity to it. Letting go of the contents of mind, of desire, leaves nothing to obstruct the entrance into "less than nothing." The actual experience of "less than nothing" cannot be accurately imagined because even that moment of imagination is "just another something" in the mind.
(p.52, in Who Dies, An Investigation of Conscious Living and Conscious Dying, by Stephen Levine, c.1982)

The ice flows out. Solidity breaks apart. One country elects to smash through and waits to see what follows.

The bow is slack. A confident, uncomprehending, man grins after the something he has loosed.

Einstein, in another dimension, looks blankly at the man.

The man has something in his mind.

Just another something.

We are befuddled.

Where will it land?

At prison today eight of us read from Bo Lozoff's It's a Meaningful Life, It Just Takes Practice.

One of the guys says that each aspect -- the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual -- is receptor and originator of the world we pass through.

Nancy says there's a dynamic tension to be practiced. We have to sit with the contradictions pressing in and out. At times, just that -- to sit with.

The fuel in the tea brazier is burnt out,
So I collect pine needles,
The fields of medicinal plants are empty,
So I cut vegetable roots.
Naturally dull, I've forgotten Zen activities,
My gate is darkened at noon by
The shade of ancient trees.
White clouds impart a sense of peace
To my Zen meditation,
Green grasses suffice to make a rug for my guests.
What I have collected is a hundred years
Of emptiness.
- Isshi Bunshu (1608-1646)

Murder. That's what it's called. Prison. That's where murderers go when caught and convicted. Conversation. That's what takes place afterward between those of us who have and have not murdered.

It's a crap-shoot. So we shoot the breeze. We drift along one another's breath. We keep ourselves in one another's sight.

The 1st Noble Truth in Buddhism reminds us.
1. Life means suffering.

To live means to suffer, because the human nature is not perfect and neither is the world we live in. During our lifetime, we inevitably have to endure physical suffering such as pain, sickness, injury, tiredness, old age, and eventually death; and we have to endure psychological suffering like sadness, fear, frustration, disappointment, and depression. Although there are different degrees of suffering and there are also positive experiences in life that we perceive as the opposite of suffering, such as ease, comfort and happiness, life in its totality is imperfect and incomplete, because our world is subject to impermanence. This means we are never able to keep permanently what we strive for, and just as happy moments pass by, we ourselves and our loved ones will pass away one day, too.
(http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/fourtruths.html)

We collect a hundred years. Of emptiness.

Awareness of emptiness. Looking to see.

Turning with one another.

Listening. Even, hearing.

It takes practice.

A suicide changes his mind. He decides to stay alive. Eleven die in his place.

The president tells people to vote in Iraq. Many die. He lives. Some wonder what he is doing in Iraq, Iran, the Middle East.

Vibrating within
The ear are many voices
But their origin
Has a source which may be called
The sound of no sound.
- Takuan (1573-1645)

It is bewildering to hear and see the antipathy against America. How a few people could turn a country around so quickly is astounding.

"Prayers don't change the world, but prayers change the people, and people change the world." (Albert Schweizer)

Iraq and America exchange glances.

Is anyone listening?

Will awareness transcend and include forgiveness?

So -- in thinking about someone's "wrongdoing," are we being in a judgmental mood, blindly, stubbornly identified with a position from which we condemn or accept? Or are we in an open, impartial space of wondering and examining what is going on in ourselves, and why anyone would be doing what they are doing?
Suspending the judgment of someone else's violent action, we may discover, maybe to our surprise, a movement of animosity and violence in ourselves. Can we examine it thoroughly, not looking away, not needing to condemn? Don't actions of violence and animosity speak clearly for themselves, revealing their driving ignorance, their divisiveness and destructiveness -- their lack of love? In our relationships with each other, do we need judgment and condemnation, or rather understanding and compassion?
This is the miracle of awareness: it gives birth to intelligent and compassionate action. Awareness does not judge, condemn, or accept, because it has no me-ness to be defended or nurtured. In the wonder of clear-seeing, me-ness is in abeyance, leaving infinite room for love.
(pp.101-2, in The Wonder of Presence And The Way Of Meditative Inquiry, by Toni Packer, c.2002)

Is awareness love?

Blizzard white along Maine coast. And at the mountain, snow on snow.

Human nature is developed by profound
Serenity and lightness,
Virtue is developed by harmonious
Joy and open selflessness.
When externals do not confuse
You inwardly,
Your nature finds the condition
That suits it;
When your nature does not disturb
Harmony, virtue rests in its place.
- Huai-nan-tzu

Bird feeders full. We shovel, sit on open porch facing brook, and will light fire in cabin. Shop closed. Joanie celebrates 75th birthday.

Hearing that John had been arrested, Jesus went back to Galilee, and leaving Nazareth he went and settled in Capernaum, a lakeside town on the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali. Matthew 4:12 - 23

Imagine the disappointment when you are no longer allowed to speak or hear truth.

Those who favor the opposite of truth are forever trying to make truth something else.

Where we come down is that everything is itself.

Truth is sacred. 'Itself' is what we call one's everyday revelation. God is this moment revealing Itself.

Meetingbrook sees contemplation, conversation, and correspondence as the sacred ordinary.

Begin again? [The bookshop/bakery is closed today.]
.....................

Things are seldom how we think they are.

At Wednesday Evening Laura Soul Friend Conversation we read Rumi's "Moses and the Shepherd," and a piece from Julia Cameron about getting the God we understand.

In the course of the conversation Will M. said: "It is time to frame the future, not tear down the present."

My doctrine is to think the thought that is unthinkable, to practice the deed that is non-doing, to speak the speech that is inexpressible, and to be trained in the discipline that is beyond discipline. Those who understand this are near; those who are confused are far. The Way is beyond words and expressions, is bound by nothing earthly. Lose sight of it to an inch, or miss it for a moment and we are far away from it.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

In the poem/story Moses hears the shepherd praying and becomes upset with the prayer's earthy, simple, and folksy language.
Moses could stand it no longer.
"Who are you talking to?"

"The one who made us,
and made the earth and the sky."

"Don't talk about shoes
and socks with God! And what's this with your little
hands
and feet" Such blasphemous familiarity sounds like
you're chatting with your uncles.
Only something that grows
needs milk. Only someone with feet needs shoes. Not
God!

The shepherd goes off chastened and confused. Then Moses is forced to reconsider:
A sudden revelation
came then to Moses. God's voice:

You have separated
me from one of my own. Did you come as a Prophet to
unite,
or to sever?

I have given each being a separate and unique way
of seeing and knowing and saying that knowledge.
What seems wrong for you is right for him.
What is poisonous to one is honey to someone else.

Purity and impurity, sloth and diligence in worship,
these mean nothing to me.

I am apart from all that.
Ways of worshipping are not to be ranked as better
or worse than one another.

Isn't this a new frame for us to look into? Isn't it time to stop tearing down the efforts of others to open to God, and frame a future where God, the Open Itself, is allowed to be what God is, and not what we think God should be?

Moses finally caught up
with him.

"I was wrong. God has revealed to me
that there are no rules for worship.
Say whatever
and however your loving tells you to. Your sweet
blasphemy
is the truest devotion. Through you a whole world
is freed.

Loosen your tongue and don't worry what comes out,
It's all the light of the spirit."

The shepherd replied,

"Moses, Moses,
I've gone beyond even that.
You applied the whip and my horse shied and jumped
on itself. The divine nature of my human nature
came together.

Bless your scolding hand and your arm.
I can't say what has happened.

What I'm saying now
is not my real condition. It can't be said."

The shepherd grew quiet.

When you look in a mirror,
you see yourself, not the state of the mirror.
The flute player puts breath into the flute,
and who makes the music? Not the flute,
The flute player!

Whenever you speak praise
or thanksgiving to God, it's always like
this dear shepherd's simplicity.

When you eventually see
through the veils to how things really are,
you will keep saying again
and again,

"This is certainly not like
we thought it was!"

Today is a day of new beginnings. Every day, of course, is. But today we begin again to frame the future. Tearing down the present -- whether we are tearing down persons, religious or ethnic groups, regimes or nations, beliefs or ideas -- is cad's play. We must mature. We begin again today to explore and recreate a timeframe wherein many can live through their stories into the heartfelt reality of a place they can call home.

Those who understand this are near.

We open to them.

And we pray for them -- just as we pray for those who are far -- there are many of them.

Actually, we must near a difficult but liberating truth: There is no us and them. We are them. When we decide to deny them, to punish them, to exclude them, to make them suffer -- someone has to wake and remind those of us suffering a world tearing apart -- we are them.

Not one single penny should be paid into the delusion that we are not them

Rather, the entire glorious wealth of the world for one shining, seeing, soul the profound reality seeking the revelation of the Open Itself into the frame of our present dwelling.

We frame the future with loving hands.

It is simplicity --

Through you a whole world is freed.

Will God find us?

It is the feast of Antony, Abbot, founder of monasticism.

Something has existed
Before heaven and earth;
Shapeless and silent
In its origin,
Yet the master of
Every image and form,
It can never wither
With the passing of time.
-- Bankei (1622-1693)

As the country moves to permanent war footing with the world, is it time to personally retreat to peace dwelling with God?

Should we worry? A radio program from American Radio Works, the documentary arm of American Public Media is titled "No Place to Hide." It is about surveillance and loss of privacy. Information technologies monitor everyone. We are an American Surveillance Society. Both business interests and national security interests operate together to sell and secure the American soul. It is worth pondering whether we should worry.

It is enough to make those not wanting public scrutiny a bit squeamish. On the other hand, if there is an alternative, an address for safe dwelling, it might be called "transparency." We might wish to search it out and call it home. The fact is we are being watched both by merchant/governmental agencies and, for many, a more troubling entity. That entity is what many call God.

We suspect we should worry about civil and governmental surveillance. On the other hand, we don't think much about what used to be called an all-seeing God. When we do, it has the remnant petulance of a mind that worries peccadillo and indiscretion will be revealed and embarrass. (They are. And they do.) For politicians it is the stuff of blackmail and disgrace. For the rest of us it is evidence we are exactly what we are. And what are we? Watched!

Blessed be the Lord,
for he has shown me his wonderful kindness
within the fortified city.
In my terror, I said
"I am cut off from your sight";
but you heard the voice of my prayer
when I called to you.
(from Psalm 31)

Government, especially now the American government, watches us in the name of freedom and national security. The effect is we are co-opted. In a different, more metaphysical realm of consideration, the One-We-Call-God watches us in the name of a deeper, more real, and honest freedom. The effect of the OWCG watching is invitation. This invitation is not a co-option; it is a more subtle and discerning asking into co-operation. It leads to release from false freedom and illusory security. It moves toward an ultimate freedom. Ultimate freedom, it needs be said, often seems a vague and unrecognizable goal. So does God.

Frank Bianco asked Mac, a Trappist monk, about his life.
Monks want to give God more room in their lives, he said. The key, he continued, is self-sacrifice. It sets the stage for contemplation, which is nothing more than prayerful awareness of God's presence. A monk works at stripping himself of all that is passing, the obvious, things that satisfy the senses. The smallest sacrifice builds willpower. "Like they say, when the going gets tough, the tough get going. You need discipline. You need to learn to say no."
(p.12, Voices of Silence, Lives of the Trappists Today, by Frank Bianco, c.1991)

The 'no' we say need not be harsh and angry -- although often it is. The no can be quiet. This quiet no to false security, and the accompanying erroneous belief in 'more and more,' is a solemn acknowledgement of a deeper promise residing at the heart of our existence. That promise is morphic 'yes.' It is a yes that gives form to the new creation searching to be revealed in a tired, troubled, and turbulent world. It longs to be revealed with, in, and through us -- each of us.

"Merton once wrote," Mac said, " 'A monk is somebody who seeks God because he has been found by God.' You know when you've been found. Something tells you this is where you belong. That's what we mean when we say you're called to this life. God finds you."
(p.13, Bianco)

It is coming time to disappear.

Wordsworth named it "18."
18.
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers:
Little we see in nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The Winds that will be howling at all hours
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for every thing, we are out of tune;
It moves us not -- Great God! I'd rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
-- poem by William Wordsworth (1770-1850)

Not only is the world too much with us, we are becoming co-opted by the world, and forgetting co-operation with the Spirit of Truth.

St Antony, Abbot (251 - 356)
St Antony is the originator of the monastic life. He was born in Egypt: when his parents died, he listened to the words of the Gospel and gave all his belongings to the poor. He went out into the wilderness to begin a life of penitence, living in absolute poverty, praying, meditating, and supporting himself by manual work. He suffered many temptations, both physical and spiritual, but he overcame them. Disciples gathered round him, attracted by his wisdom, moderation, and holiness. He gave support to the victims of the persecutions of Diocletian, and helping St Athanasius in his fight against the Arians. He lived to be over a hundred years old, and died in 356.
The Gospels are full of wise sayings of Jesus that seem to be ignored, and one of the most poignant of these was in his meeting with that young man who asked over and over again, insistently, "What must I do to have eternal life?". When, in the end, Jesus told him that if he wanted to be perfect he would have to sell all that he had and give the money to the poor, the young man went away, sorrowing; because he was very rich. What could be more of a waste than that? You tell someone what he has to do, and he is afraid to do it. And yet... 250 years later, St Antony hears the story, and does give away all that he has, and becomes the founder of monasticism. And then again, over 1,000 years later, St Francis of Assisi hears the story, and gives away his possessions (and some of his father's) and revolutionises Christianity again.
Not all the words that we speak are forgotten, even though we cannot see their effects ourselves. Let us pray that those unknown effects may always be good ones.
(http://www.universalis.com/readings.htm)

The effects of the 17th will lead us to the 18th.

Tomorrow is the 18th.

Find our hearts?

Help us hear.

Martin Luther King Jr. arrived this date. Happy Birthday, Martin! Our gratitude for who you were and what you changed.

Our change might be "mendicants of no other." Thus retaining the lettering "m.o.n.o."

In the dream the woman says, "Do you have a cliche'd schedule?" I answer yes. She shrugs. I ask what she has. She begins to say, "It is an extended..." I do not hear how she completes the response. The rest is left to my contemplation as I wake.

In the realm of True Purity, there is no such thing as "I" or "He" or "She," nor can "friend" or "foe" be found there. But the slightest confusion of mind brings innumerable differences and complications. Peace and disorder in the world, the distinction between friend and foe in human relationships, follow upon one another as illusion begets delusion. A person of spiritual insight will immediately recognize what is wrong and before long rid themselves of such an illusion.
- Muso Kokushi (1275-1351)

We change our third Saturday retreat to a 3rd weekend extended mindfulness weekend. We use is as a time of continual and constant reminder to do what we are doing, be what we are, hear what we are hearing, and speak what we are speaking. We end the formal 3rd Saturday 8 hours of retreat at the hermitage.

Rather, we take it to heart, and we take it on the road. We focus on attention, intention, mindfulness, deep listening, and loving speech with a more intense, expansive, and everyday practice of these qualities.

We embrace mendicancy. A mendicant is one depending on alms for a living; practicing begging. Mendicant derives from Latin mendicare, "to beg," from mendicus, "beggar."

Heidegger says that the question of philosophy is 'why are there things rather than nothing?', but surely there is an even prior question: why objectify the world after all? or, more simply, why do we want to know? It sounds like a psychological question, but it is only partly that. The moment we ask it we are involved in the whole process of what I have called recreation, the constructing of human culture and civilization, and the question turns into something more like: 'why is simple existence in the world not good enough for us?' Whatever the answer, the question itself seems to push us away from the biblical story of a beginning creation, and towards the vision of recreation as a future goal in which our own efforts are involved.
(p.54, in Creation and Recreation, by Northrop Frye, c.1980)

Simple existence in the world is good enough for us.

I don't know why there are things rather than nothing. Nor why some have more things than others. I don't know why some have very little, some do not have enough, and some have nothing.

A beggar, or mendicant, in this mythology, is someone following intuition of gift and gratefulness.

'Beggar' is a word and way of being that is seldom aspired to. [Middle English, from Old French begart, ultimately from Middle Dutch beggaert, "one who rattles off prayers."]

We ask for, we beg for, nothing other than what we have; no other than what we are.

Prayer is act of communion.

Prayer is gift, not obligation. Life is gift, not recompense. Mendicancy is gift, not disgrace.

We rattle on.

Without cliche.

Merely...grateful.

There -- is no other way.

Solitude is a hermitage with no walls.

Hermits are who they are because What Is remains itself.

Follow the opportunity to seek out perception,
But you must travel the path alone.
If you have not found illumination,
Go where you may achieve completion.
- Ch'en Hsien (1634- 1654)

Even when with others, a hermit enters solitude. This is when each is allowed to be each and all allowed to be all. A hermit does not disconnect. Rather, a hermit allows root connection to be the heart of the hermitage of solitude. There is no cultivation of disconnection or strain to connect what is already of a piece.

Still, there's something to be said for being alone.

The house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace. Thought and experience are not the only things that sanction human values. The values that belong to daydreaming mark humanity in its depths.
( from The Poetics of Space, by Gaston Bachelard.

I daydream peace in the world. I daydream comfort for those suffering natural catastrophes. I daydream the foggy white mist of mountainside after snow. I daydream everyone resting in the presence of God -- everyone completely themselves.

The hermit is before God. His hut, therefore, is just the opposite of the monastery. And there radiates about this centralized solitude a universe of meditation and prayer, a universe outside the universe. The hut can receive none of the riches "of this world." It possesses the felicity of intense poverty; it is one of the glories of poverty; as destitution increases it gives access to absolute refuge. (Bachelard)

This week at hermitage is quiet stretch. I nightdream of my sister and husband greeting me in visit-- first since death placed them in dream garden together. I write to tell niece and nephew. We are orphans and children of orphans. There is a roundness to solitude.

In speaking of the "Dialectics of Outside and Inside," the author speaks of our modern obsession with circumscribing things, the modern's "geometrism" or "geometrical cancerization." We geometrize everything from property to national boundaries, from forests to green-spaces, from ideology to psychology of the individual -- all is cut up, divided, entrenched. But, says Bachelard, being is all around us, not circumscribed. We are not the center of being, nor is anything else, for that matter. Hence there is neither being-here nor being-there.
(from, "Hermit's Hut, Hermit's Dream" book reviews in Hermitary http://www.hermitary.com/bookreviews/hermithut.html)

I can no longer penetrate the fog of 'there' and 'here'. In the dream I know I am dreaming and caution myself to be aware it will soon enough fade. It does. Both in the dream and out of it are tears for the joyful visit.

Being is all around.

Us.

Truth is back from holiday.

"Knowledge of the Father," says Irenaeus, "consists in the self-revelation of the Son." The metaphor no longer hides what it carries within.

If revelation unfolds what has been hidden, and truth consists of the not-hidden, something important is constantly being revealed.

"Truth," a zen master said, "is just like this."

We ask: When is a lie a lie? Or, is a lie a convenience, something used to accomplish a greater end than merely being truthful? There is, I imagine, much to be said for 'convenience.' But for truth -- there is always, and only, 'this.'

The moon and the paper are the same white
The pupil of the eye and the ink, both black.
This mysterious meaning remains a circle,
Beyond the possibility of understanding.
- Sokuhi (1616-1671)

Just for a moment, we pause to consider this truth, this revelation:
U.S. Ends Fruitless Iraq Weapons Hunt. White House Says Iraq Weapons Search Over; Evidence That Bush Used in Argument for War Not Found.

WASHINGTON Jan 12, 2005 -- The search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has quietly concluded without any evidence of the banned weapons that President Bush cited as justification for going to war, the White House said Wednesday.
Democrats said Bush owes the country an explanation of why he was so wrong.
(The Associated Press)

What is this truth we are being told today?

No one can know the Father apart from God's Word, that is, unless the Son reveals him, and no one can know the Son unless the Father so wills. Now the Son fulfils the Father's good pleasure: the Father sends, the Son is sent, and he comes. The Father is beyond our sight and comprehension; but he is known by his Word, who tells us of him who surpasses all telling. In turn, the Father alone has knowledge of his Word. And the Lord has revealed both truths. Therefore, the Son reveals the knowledge of the Father by his revelation of himself. Knowledge of the Father consists in the self-revelation of the Son, for all is revealed through the Word.
The Father's purpose in revealing the Son was to make himself known to us all and so to welcome into eternal rest those who believe in him, establishing them in justice, preserving them from death. To believe in him means to do his will.
(From the treatise Against Heresies by Saint Irenaeus, bishop)

If Word and words are mere conveniences, we are lost.

We must find justice.

Death cannot continue.

See son, see father. Hear lie, hear death.

When one's word is no good, death clutches the heart.

We must retrieve and release truth.

Word truth now!

This, this, this...

In the open.

The bookshop and bakery will re-open Saturday, 15 January, Martin Luther King's birthday.

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

Spirituality is a way of traveling and arriving home.

Relief effort from tsunami continues in South Asia. In Iraq, more deaths from violence. Water drenches Southern California.

Dwelling at home requires dedicated practice.

The way to true spirituality
Cannot depend upon others;
One instant of enlightenment
And I go beyond body and self.
The myriad and profound virtues
Are complete;
Anywhere in the universe is now my home.
- Mokuan (1611-1684)

There is a weaving around knowledge to arrive at wisdom. Wisdom holds home with courage and strength.

Thomas Merton was constantly trying to find his way home.

Merton was able to distinguish quite clearly the difference between human learning - to which he may have perhaps arbitrarily confined the entire Socratic dialectical process - and wisdom, that is, between knowledge gained through hard thinking and knowledge that reveals itself through hard experience and inner solitude. In short, wisdom appears only after one has abandoned a life of hubris, and experiences, in depth, the hollowness of intellectual knowledge, and the painful sense of moral and spiritual depravity. Moreover, unlike most other artists and writers, what distinguished the monk was that he was a great mystic and contemplative. As it has been noted by many, the psychological and spiritual makeup and the modus operandi of mystics and contemplatives from different traditions tend to be very similar, though the roads and goals they take and reach may be quite divergent, even contradictory. (John Wu Jr.)

At this time in this country we are inquiring into what home is. In personal life there continues tension between university and monastery, head and heart, knowledge and wisdom.

Even as a young budding writer Merton was able to fathom the difference between the knowing of oneself in the Platonic Dialogues and the knowing (or, shall we say, more accurately, the "unknowing") of the true self one finds in all authentic traditions, mystical, Zen or otherwise. In this discrimination, you can see why he ultimately chose the monastery over the university and why he would have been constantly at sixes and sevens in an academic setting where high power intellects joust for the critical competitive edge that may end in great frustration. This choice of place itself comes, I think, from profound self-knowledge, for he most likely would have suffered badly in any other place except in a monastery. For, is it not true that part of life's wisdom is to know where we belong, where we would do the least damage to ourselves and others?
(John Wu Jr.)

What if home is dwelling well within oneself?

Although a very good intellectual, Merton knew that the Socratic kind of knowing could not possibly satiate his real desire for a fulfillment that would ultimately please and lead him back to his Maker. He had this enormously significant intuition that somehow wisdom and the search for the inmost self did not lie in the gaining of knowledge; it lay, rather, in the losing of it.
(from a revised version of the paper presented at the First General Meeting of the International Thomas Merton Society at Southampton, May 17-19, 1996. The original title was "Thomas Merton and the Spirit of Zen." by John Wu, Jr.)

I've been thinking about my dwelling place, about truth and deception.

This is the definition of sin: the misuse of powers given us by God for doing good, a use contrary to God's commands. On the other hand, the virtue that God asks of us is the use of the same powers based on a good conscience in accordance with God's command.
Since this is so, we can say the same about love. Since we received a command to love God, we possess from the first moment of our existence an innate power and ability to love. The proof of this is not to be sought outside ourselves, but each one can learn this from himself and in [her]self.
(From the Detailed Rules for Monks by St. Basil the Great, bishop, Office of Readings, 11Jan)

There is an innate home wherein we are invited to dwell.

Our journey encircles, widening to nearing, that place.

Our spirituality practices this journey home.

Travel well.

Arrive well.

Anywhere.

Truth is not-hidden.

Open words, open acts, and open hearts reveal what we call truth. Clear sight through clear space helps clear the debris of troublesome and unfortunate deception.

In the mountains
Are many companions of the Way,
Sitting Zen, chanting,
Forming a natural community.
But if you gazed
Far off from city walls,
In this direction,
All you would see is white clouds.
- Wang Wei (701-761)

Let's remember something important -- the heart cannot be fooled. The mind can be fooled, but not the heart. In America today we know minds are easily fooled. Hearts, when faced with direct encounter, are more direct. The heart sorrows with sorrow. The heart grieves when broken, is torn when bereft of trust.

Despondency is a purse seine encircling both sides of simplistic distinctions cultivated as republican/democrat, red/blue, or conservative/liberal. These distinctions are a deception. Deception hurts both sides, deceiver and deceived.

Deception sometimes hides in belief. We are told to believe blind patriotism equals will of God for America, an America touted to be God's favorite country by dint of wealth, arms, and a faith-filled populace.

This belief is not true. The favor of God, or what we can know of it, is absence of deception. It is best thought of as heart's longing to reside with God in true union. That dwelling place is where each being -- each person, each thing, and each longing of the heart -- is most truly at home. We need more than belief. We need the actual presence, the felt reality, of our true home. Love and peace define that home.

All wisdom is from the Lord,
and it is his own for ever.
The sand of the sea and the raindrops,
and the days of eternity, who can assess them?
The height of the sky and the breadth of the earth,
and the depth of the abyss, who can probe them?
Before all other things wisdom was created,
shrewd understanding is everlasting.
For whom has the root of wisdom ever been uncovered?
Her resourceful ways, who knows them?
One only is wise, terrible indeed,
seated on his throne, the Lord.
He himself has created her, looked on her and assessed her,
and poured her out on all his works
to be with all mankind as his gift,
and he conveyed her to those who love him.
(from Ecclesiasticus 1)

By uncovering wisdom we begin to retrieve sanity. There's no sanity in lies. No health in false promises. Mind cannot sustain falsity. Mind requires real substance. Mind needs honest truth to remain sane. These times challenge sanity.

This new year we must find a new equilibrium. Nature frightens many with surfeit of water. America frightens many with overstated fear.

We cannot allow that fear to feed and grow. Fear breeds fear. Terror feeds on and feeds fear. We need balance. The fulcrum must be well balanced and centered between healthy fear and healthy trust. If trust is abandoned -- we topple into the arms and armaments of fear.

That balance, that fulcrum, is wisdom.

We pray for all...wisdom.

Unhidden.

Holding us.

True.

President Bush is mistaken. He underestimates the American people. Once the whiff of failure overcomes the fragrance of partisan policy victory, he will have to leave his office and leave sorrowing hearts behind his departure.

Look up to heaven and down on earth, and they will remind you of their impermanency. Look about the world, and it will remind you of its impermanency. But when you gain spiritual enlightenment, you shall then find wisdom. The knowledge thus attained leads you to the Way.
- Sutra of Forty Two Chapters

This departure is not about politics. It is about the collective soul of many peoples who will not allow error or terror to wear a pressed suit and friendly smile.

Peter addressed them: 'The truth I have now come to realise' he said 'is that God does not have favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him.'
(Acts 10:34)

It was an awful presidential campaign season last year. The insult to intelligent people worldwide will not be easily brushed aside with further arrogance and foolish posturing of invincible pretence. It is surprising that these false God controlling men do not fear the exact justice of the real God beyond their clutch. It is a curious hubris that believes safe passage through blasphemy and deceit is their privilege.

But Jesus replied, 'Leave it like this for the time being; it is fitting that we should, in this way, do all that righteousness demands'.
(Matthew 3:15)

There will be an inauguration in Washington. It will be a glitzy and triumphant celebration. They won. They will reward their faithful.

Alentejo Seen From The Train
Nothing with nothing around it
And a few trees in between
None of which very clearly green,
Where no river or flower pays a visit.
If there be a hell, I've found it,
For if ain't here, where the Devil it is?
(1907, poem by Fernando Pessoa)

We will suffer this display as we suffer the spectacle of Iraq.

We will pray for all who long for justice.

We will call for the just of the world to speak out.

We will ask the president to change his heart, to change his mind, and to change the course of mistaken decisions he has taken.

This is not a red/blue or republican/democrat child's game.

This is something far more serious.

Ask yourself. Go on, ask.

Do you hear what it is?

It is Epiphany.

Beauty sees birth through. It also sees death through.

Appearing as we are to others, receiving the gifts associated with acceptance, respect, reverence, and presence -- we experience epiphany.

To appear. To show. To see. This is what epiphany means. From Greek epiphaneia, manifestation, from epiphainesthai, to appear : epi-, forth; see epi- + phainein, phan-, to show; see.

Epiphany is "a revelatory manifestation of a divine being. It is a sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something; a comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization."
(from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition)
Christ-nature is a shock to our sensibilities. To see Christ-nature in the everyday -- is to see the hidden no longer hidden.

When you look closely, you see that people of the present are none other than people of old, and the functions of the present are none other than the functions of the past; even going through a thousand changes and myriad transformations, here it is just necessary for you to recognize it first hand before you can attain it.
(- Foyan 1067-1120)

Everything is what it is. Nothing is other than what it is. Christ-nature shines through. But something radical occurs. We see. And when we see everything is what it is. Nothing is other than what it is.

Arise, shine out, for your light has come,
the glory of the Lord is rising on you,
though night still covers the earth
and darkness the peoples.
(Isaiah 60:1)

So it is -- our journey. We travel through intrigue and political machination. We bump up against people wanting to make things other than what they are, wanting to make themselves other than each other, wanting to make everything in their own image, that is, a hiding otherness frightened of their own ground.

This is the journey through what is not true to what is itself -- truth.

7. Then Herod called the Magi secretly and found out from them the exact time the star had appeared.
8. He sent them to Bethlehem and said, "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him."
(Matthew 2: 7-8)

Give Herod a pause. Maybe some instinct called from deep within him. Saying, 'Go, find who you are, bring it home, love the truth shining through; see the Christ here for you, you, here for Christ.'

Maybe Herod duplicated the earlier killings of innocent children because he was himself killed by not being seen-through, not accepted as who he was, not respected nor reverenced in the light shining through all beings, the one shining through him?
We are metaphorically killed before we actually choose to enact killing ourselves. Repetition finds its source and follows flow into actual world.

We'll let Herod rest here; here at this line in Matthew. No interpretation has yet been imputed. He merely says: "Go and make a careful search for the child. As soon as you find him, report to me, so that I too may go and worship him." We've all had the grace of this impulse. What happens afterward is another story within that story. Within our own story.

But, if we were to pause at this impulse, if we took a while to look around -- without calculating what we might hide, or what we might grab for ourselves -- there is good chance we might see.

Your sun will set no more
nor your moon wane,
but the Lord will be your everlasting light
and your days of mourning will be ended.

Your people will all be upright,
possessing the land for ever;
a shoot that the Lord has planted,
my handiwork, designed for beauty.
(Isaiah 60: 21-22)

We might see beauty

We might end the mourning of any and all death -- death that easily infiltrates that mind in us which calculates and computes data based on rational deduction and sensory limitation.

Beauty is seeing each as it is. It does not end, but begins, at the senses. Beauty is the beginning, the day-star, of our true reality. Beauty sees death through.
Beauty sees birth through.

Let us say that beauty, in this particular metaphor of Epiphany, is Christ-nature emerging through this reality. Jesus is seen through. This world is seen through. And we are seen through.

Day by day we bless you, Lord: we praise you for ever and for ever.
Of your goodness, Lord, keep us without sin for today.
Have mercy on us, Lord, have mercy on us.
Let your pity, Lord, be upon us, as much as we trust in you.
In you, Lord, I trust: let me never be put to shame.
(from "Te Deum")

Everything is what it is. Nothing is other than what it is. Christ-nature shines through. But something radical occurs. We see. And when we see everything is what it is. Nothing is other than what it is.

Wisdom is the gift we are.

Given.

When we are seen.

Through and through.

With love.

Ground opens.

Seeing one another as oneself, without barriers, is love.

This is the message
as you heard it from the beginning:
that we are to love one another;
(1 John 3:11)

Attend one another. The 'beginning' speaks each moment into existence. Beginning says: "Love what is showing itself. Serve what is to follow."

"If you can let go of (the Tao) with your mind and surround it with your heart, it will live inside you forever."
~ Lao Tzu (c.604-531 B.C.)

No need to ask "Where is it?" The Way will slip past mind and hide in heart until coast is clear. This way is the beginning of seeing ourselves through, in, and with one another.

And then he added "I tell you most solemnly, you will see heaven laid open and, above the Son of Man, the angels of God ascending and descending".
(John 1:43 - 51)

The wise follow light from star to where the beginning is found.

Showing itself.

Serving one.

Another.

Ever is Now. And Now is for Ever.

When I see
The purity of
The lotus flower,
Then my heart
Can no longer be stained.
- Mokuan (1611-1684)

What keeps us from seeing?

All the things we think we are -- things we identify with and believe to be ours and permanent -- like thoughts, emotions, ego

1. "At that time there shall arise Michael, the great prince, guardian of your people; It shall be a time unsurpassed in distress since nations began until that time. At that time your people shall escape, everyone who is found written in the book.

2. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake; some shall live forever, others shall be an everlasting horror and disgrace.

3. But the wise shall shine brightly like the splendor of the firmament, And those who lead the many to justice shall be like the stars forever.
(from Daniel 12:1-3)

Let's edit Daniel. Others shall not "be" but rather "know" a long horror and distress. We are softening that first condemnatory impulse -- and holding hope that even the horror and distress will be only a duration, not a permanent state.

Leading to justice -- ah, there's the redemptive longing! Justice and mercy kiss with our lips as they work to retrieve the true -- what others would let fall to falseness.

And we are the same extension of the stars in the deep reality of endless space. We are the very stuff of the cosmos. We are what God longed to be once Creation Itself brought into manifest Being the sights, sounds, and sensory apparatus of being-in-the-world.

When the many around us, or the one before our eyes, return to that stuff, that original dwelling-place of the Creating One -- we marvel at the transformation.

We wonder, profoundly, at the process we call 'death' as it transforms the many and the one back into the Itself of Wise Splendor.

We bury Frank today.

We see him as he was.

No more.

But, Now.

Ever, and Awake.

In us.

Barrels of refuse line streets in this Long Island New York town. The post-holiday queue of chachkas and replaced things wait curbside for transport to disappearance.

Snow covers earth and sky
Everything is new
My body is concealed
Inside a silver world
Suddenly I enter
A treasury of light
A place forever free of
Any trace of dust.
- Han-shan Te-ch'ing (1546-1623)

Mild temperatures and fresh deer tracks cover hundreds of acres of park at end of street. We walk with dogs.

We attend wake of Frank B. in this heavily populated stretch of island. The sound of cars passing a half mile away sounds like river or steady wind. This is not the coastal town back home. This is a place far away. Still, solitude is a movable hermitage.

For you are my strength and my refuge:
you will lead me out to the pastures,
for your own name's sake.
You will lead me out of the trap that they laid for me--
for you are my strength.

Into your hands I commend my spirit:
you have redeemed me, Lord God of truth.
You hate those who run after vain nothings;
but I put my trust in the Lord.
I will rejoice and be glad in your kindness,
for you have looked on me, lowly as I am.
You saw when my soul was in need:
you did not leave me locked in the grip of the enemy,
but set my feet on free and open ground.
(from Psalm 31)

I don't think the Lord God hates. At funeral parlor Ann tells of conversation with atheist friend who asked after her reasoning, "Then, who created God?" Ann said she is stuck when he asks that.

I tell her to say to him, "We do!" She looks puzzled. "If time dissolves into Now, and places collapse into Presence, then as we are here creating one another with attentive, even loving, presence, so is God creating and being created."
Ann says she'll think on that. I will too.

Our feet have been freed, set on open ground.

We come to attend to the place once and forever Frank. We come to view the open ground.

Water and ground, air and fire -- each receive the remains of the dead. We mourn South Asia's losses. We mourn Iraq's losses. And we mourn the loss of this man.

All feet and faces passing through these places designated as remembering moments are gifts of sacred connection and reconnection.

We look down at our feet. We look into the face before us. This is a time to recollect who, and what, we are.

Each one --
"A treasury of light
A place forever free of
Any trace of dust."

In your kindness.

In our kindness.

We come to see.

Open ground.

Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery is closed today. We will re-open Saturday, 8Jan.05

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

Comes 2005.
Names and numbers take different form.
May all beings be happy, safe, and come to dwell in their true home.

So ends 2004.

South Asia suffers the after-effects of land and water's sudden shudder.

A sober watch falls over everyone so recently content to point fingers and mock any difference of opinion.

Help the living. Bury the dead. Re-think the precarious impermanence of everything.

I join my hands and bow to the place in each of us compassion dwells.

Nothing is hidden. Everything is, and will be, revealed.

We must change our lives.

Happy New Year!

Meetingbrook Bookshop & Bakery is closed today. We will re-open Saturday, 8Jan.05

Frank, brother-in-law, died yesterday, the 29th.

I knew he was placed on life support. I was writing the following piece to his son and step-daughter, to lighten their load. As it turned out, I was writing the ending of the piece at the very time he died. I sent it by email, but not before catching up with emotion at the last two phrases of the dialogue.

--- --- ---
Hello my favorite niece and nephew -- actually, my only ones (at that):

Your dad is in our prayer. At church this morning I mentioned his name specifically.

"Who?" came a voice.
"Frank Bonfiglio," I answered.
"Frank, Frank Bongiglio...?"
"No," I clarified, "Frank BonFiglio."

"Oh, Oh yes," the voice went on, a bit distracted. "We had him listed under the category 'You toucha my truck, I breaka your face.'" "Well, yes," I answered, "that was a phase of his past, but only a phase."

"Oh yes," said the voice, "here he is again, cross-referenced under the dialogue: 'Frank! Let's go shopping!' 'Okay, kid, get in the car.'" The voice paused. "There are innumerable entries under that dialogue."

"Look, forget about the folders you have on the guy, all I want is some acknowledgment he will be recognized in prayer. Will he?"

"Yes, yes," the voice said, "we'll forward the request to the proper attending angels who will swoop down to his side where he lays abed."

"Thank you," I said, "You're attention is appreciated. "And I also..."
[Interruption]
... "Ah, Mr Halpin?"
"Yes."
"Just one thing."
"Yes?"

"Do you want to cancel your complaint regarding some stolen hubcaps you registered aloud to an unheeding sky about ten years ago?"

[Pause. Rumination. Deep thought.]

"Yes, of course, yes. My comments were only a playful complaint. After all, they did have a 'B' on the hubcap, and he is from New York, and his name is 'Bonfiglio' -- so naturally he felt they were his hubcaps. And besides, it was only a rusted junker at the foot of a mountain in Maine. I didn't even notice them on the car. He did. End of story. Yes, cancel that complaint."

"Good," said the voice. "That relief from his immortal soul will make his remaining time on earth lighter and more carefree. I'll let the angels -- hmmm, they're already in his room, playing with the lights on the monitors and sampling the toast on the trays in the hallway -- I'll let them know to comfort his mind and soul that all is forgiven and soon to be forgotten. Right?"

"Forgotten...Of course, forgotten. Er...What were we just talking about?"
"Oh, nothing. Nothing at all."

[Remembering something, as from a while back]
"OK. Prayer. Oh yeah, prayer -- we send him our prayer."

"Done!" said the voice.
"OK," I concluded.

[Gazing out window to where light wisp of smoke rises from wood stove chimney]

"OK...Frank --"

[Longer pause]

"...OK."

--- --- ---
That's it. I finished, pressed "Send/Receive," and went back to reading student papers.

Lori Ann called 29 minutes later to tell me, "It's over, he died."

I sat a while in silence, and I acknowledged, recognized, and appreciated the prayer of what had just taken place.

Returning with dogs from brief ceremony in chapel and further up the path, I wrote the following:

Haiku
(for Frank Bonfiglio)

One stick of incense
placed on old Buick near brook --
fresh deer track in snow
(wfh)

I saw my family this morning.

Cesco and I walked the wide loop up from hermitage, across four runways of snow-making blow, through woods fresh with dusting through the night, down along ravine over towards Tom's place, and back to where brook returns to itself. I sat there on jerry-rigged bench watching tumbling water skirting ice-fingers reaching from stone frost.

At a private gate,
A light snow falls;
Here the quietist's "scheme"
Is perfectly achieved.
Meditation proceeds
Through the day;
Only lone peaks
Compare in purity.
I'm at ease
In this insignificant dream;
Fir and bamboo
Stir in the cold.
There's only one old man
On West Peak,
And when we meet,
His eyes shine clear.
- Kuan -Hsiu (832-912)

We met no one. Cesco was bright-eyed. He turned time to time to see if I was still with him. I was. I followed his prints etched in snow over root and leaf path through bare trees.

Bless the Lord, you heavens; all his angels, bless the Lord.
Bless the Lord, you waters above the heavens; all his powers, bless the Lord.
Bless the Lord, sun and moon; all stars of the sky, bless the Lord.
Bless the Lord, rain and dew; all you winds, bless the Lord.
Bless the Lord, fire and heat; cold and warmth, bless the Lord.
Bless the Lord, dew and frost; ice and cold, bless the Lord.
Bless the Lord, ice and snow; day and night, bless the Lord.
Bless the Lord, light and darkness; lightning and storm-clouds, bless the Lord.
(from Daniel 3)

This is my family. This, and all the people passing through heart and mind on morning walk. This is my prayer, this holy family of all existence.

Back at chapel/zendo, I bow to image of Mary, Joseph, Jesus leaning before statue of Buddha in silent adoring inclusion of one another.

In kitchen, Mu-ge licks lingering scent of skunk along his fur into the air. Cesco has his off-switch on shut-down laying stretched along grey rug. Wood-stove re-catches as English muffins defrost and coffee sits fresh-brewed.

(Hyphens hold together while proclaiming distinctiveness.)

Distinct is this family I see.

You-are-my-family.

For seeing this, I am grateful!

What is born today?

The wolf lives with the lamb,
the panther lies down with the kid,
calf and lion feed together,
with a little boy to lead them.
The cow and the bear make friends,
their young lie down together.
The lion eats straw like the ox.
The infant plays over the cobra’s hole;
into the viper’s lair
the young child puts his hand.
They do no hurt, no harm,
on all my holy mountain,
for the country is filled with the knowledge of the Lord
as the waters swell the sea.
(From Isaiah 11)

For us – Nobis.

All of us.

Seeing whole.

What is – born, today.

Christmas is nothing special made visible.

For some, it is a celebration of the divisible.

I lean to the quiet (in)side of it.

Stillness, stillness
In the flowering branches
At the thatched hut,
Swept strings of a zither.
Because you're now in mountains,
The way you see has changed;
When meeting visitors,
You do not speak your heart.
The moon rises
Over the quiet river road;
Cranes cry from trees
Deep in cloud.
If I could learn
The art of alchemy,
I, too, would settle
In an unknown wood.
- Chang Chi (776-829)

Alchemy, says the dictionary, is the medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy whose aims were the transmutation of the base metals into gold, the discovery of a universal cure for diseases, and the discovery of a means of indefinitely prolonging life.
(Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary, © 2002)

I'm not so interested in gold, cures, or indefinite and prolonged life. Pizza, water, ice cream, and cookie suffice.

Awake, mankind! For your sake God has become man. Awake, you who sleep, rise up from the dead, and Christ will enlighten you. I tell you again: for your sake, God became man.
(from A sermon of St Augustine, Office of Readings, 24Dec.04)

It is a welcome notion God became man. So, here we are. Male and female -- God became us. Mother and child -- God became us.

Truth, then, has arisen from the earth: Christ who said, I am the Truth, was born of the Virgin. And justice looked down from heaven: because believing in this new-born child, man is justified not by himself but by God.
Truth has arisen from the earth: because the Word was made flesh. And justice looked down from heaven: because every good gift and every perfect gift is from above.
Truth has arisen from the earth: flesh from Mary. And justice looked down from heaven: for man can receive nothing unless it has been given him from heaven.
(from A sermon of St Augustine)

Heaven is the dwelling place of God. And God became us. Hence we are God's dwelling place. Heaven is now here.

It is nice so many churches celebrate Christmas with abandon. They invite the collaboration of God with us to sing, and pray, and share the elements of earth as sign of wholeness.

Of indivisibility.

Light leaping into darkness.

Word impregnating silence.

Until -- there is only one step following another; one breath following another; one indivisible simple realization following an unending stretch of divisible complexity.

Word becomes flesh, dwells among us, and we see.

Don't we?

Nothing finer; nothing finite; nothing to it.

Each in itself seeing Itself.

Mary was indivisible. Forget the dissembling confusion over the shell of the story; the heart of the myth is wholeness and compassion. Mary broke open the shell; Jesus embodied the core.

What is sitting meditation?
To remove ourselves from
all external distractions and
quiet the mind is called “sitting.”
To observe the inner nature
in perfect calmness is called “meditation.”
- Hui-neng

We need quiet and meditation this Christmas. The noise and distressing infidelity to truth by makers of war and violence has hurt our souls and pained hearts.

But now, God, you have spurned us and confounded us,
so that we must go into battle without you.
You have put us to flight in the sight of our enemies,
and those who hate us plunder us at will.
You have handed us over like sheep sold for food,
you have scattered us among the nations.
(from Psalm 44)

The birth of Jesus and giving-birth by Mary is celebration of indivisibility.

Is that the mystery of Christ? Is that what Mary entered, what Jesus found?

What did Mary enter? What did Jesus find?

In this time of unnecessary war we desperately embody these questions.

To bring them home.

Ask them in.

One and one.

Dirk, just back from India, says compassion treats the other as oneself.

Far up this cold mountain,
A steep rocky trail
Leads to places men dwell
In white clouds.
I stop my horse-drawn cart,
Sit and enjoy sunset through the maples,
Whose frosted leaves are redder
Than early spring flowers.
- Tu Mu (803-852)

War-deaths continue to mount. A fragile seesaw tries to balance celebrating holiday cheer alongside screams of fear and explosives. We are encouraged to think positively -- as if wishing made so what wisher wishes.

For he knows how we are made,
he remembers we are nothing but dust.
Man -- his life is like grass,
he blossoms and withers like flowers of the field.
The wind blows and carries him away:
no trace of him remains.
(from Psalm 103)

At Wednesday Evening Laura Conversation, words such as "wholeness" and "compassion" were looked at. Is awareness of the one prerequisite for the other? Not seeing one or the other, are we blind to the mystery of life?

War is a lie.

Can spoil be snatched from heroes,
or captives escape from a soldier?
Yes, thus says the Lord:
The hero's captive will be snatched away,
the soldier's spoil escape.
I myself will fight with those who fight you,
and I myself will save your children.
(from Isaiah 49)

What is born whole is torn asunder by fragmenting minds unable to apprehend the whole.

Word looks out from itself.

Will it come to earth?

As antidote to lie?

Again.

Christmas nears.

Mystery pauses.

Winter tomorrow. Tonight, as prelude, freezing wind slices open any hope of moderation. Temperature bottoms.

An old friend who lives on Tung Mountain
Loves the beauty of valleys and hills.
In green spring, he rests in empty woods
And sleeps though the sun is high.
Pine wind rustles his collar and sleeve;
The deep, rocked pool cleanses heart and ear.
I envy this man who suffers no delusions,
His high pillow wreathed by green clouds.
- Li Po (701-762)

Delusions huddle in cold light. We face the prospect of falling colder and further into an ideological ice age where reactionary leadership and politics threaten fear and devolving smugness in place of compassionate kindness and warm humanity.

I pondered and tried to understand:
my eyes laboured to see –
until I entered God’s holy place
and heard how they would end.
For indeed you have put them on a slippery surface
and have thrown them down in ruin.

How they are laid waste!
How suddenly they fall and perish in terror!
You spurn the sight of them, Lord,
as a dream is abandoned when the sleeper awakes.
(--from Psalm 73)

I worry about this time in history; worry the men creating our world see something the rest of us do not see. These men see Jesus as a Republican. Jesus is a corporate executive winning expanded market-share exclusively for the deserving. Jesus is a white man using chosen men to represent the tenets of privilege, exclusive ownership, and noblesse oblige over the undeserving, the have-nots, and the unworthy.

Their eyes are the pain of winter without winter's beauty.

Recently a circular letter arrived from a musician who said that if he heard the name Jesus one more time in this first post-election Christmas, he'd crap in his shoe.

It's about compassion, he wrote. Always and only about compassion -- for everyone and everything.

It is a tricky thing to celebrate the birth of Christ among men who believe they own Jesus.

I am not fond of all the arrogant men who claim they own Jesus.

Mother Mary shows us another way.

She is compassionate presence.

A Bodhisattva.

Delusionless.

Salve Maria!

Let's leave well enough alone.

The one we call God never leaves.

We're the only ones who try to disappear.

To find a buddha,
all you have to do is see your nature.
Your nature is the buddha.
And the buddha is the person who's free;
free of plans, free of cares.
If you don't see your nature
and run around all day looking
somewhere else, you'll never find a buddha.
- Bodhidharma (d. 533)

It is our nature to long to appear. It is God's nature to be appearance.

If I looked upon sin in the depths of my heart,
the Lord would not hear me;
but the Lord has listened,
he has heard the cry of my appeal.
(from Psalm 66)

Beyond sin -- that is, beyond the fear we might disappear -- there is this listening. There is this listening appearance that sees us through but cannot be seen.

There's no need to keep looking elsewhere. There is no somewhere else.

All appears well right where we are.

Right where you are.

Listening alone.

Well, well...

Enough.

Skunk hits. Cat walks desultorily up driveway. The reeking.

In the mountains,
A monk's robe hangs
In the meditation hall.
Outside the window,
No one's to be seen,
Only birds skimming over the creek.
As I descend,
Dusk meets me halfway
Down the mountain road.
Still hearing the creek fall,
I hesitate, reluctant
To leave these blue heights.
- Meng Hao-jan (689-740)

This cold night. Ice thickens on pond, Ice grows out from stones in brook.

I hesitate.

The seeking.

No one's to be seen.

Carrying ladder to cabin. Carrying wreath to place up near forepeak. Climbing. Wire-wrap on last year's headed nail. Coming down. Carrying ladder back to barn.

The simple fact of it.

To find a buddha,
you have to see your nature.
Whoever sees his or her nature is a buddha.
If you don't see your nature,
invoking buddhas,
reciting sutras,
making offerings
result in good karma.
Reciting sutras results in good memory.
Keeping precepts results in a good rebirth.
And making offerings results in future blessings.
But no buddha.
- Bodhidharma (d. 533)

The practice of everyday actions as a path to the seeing of everyday actions as the path of practice enlightening each thing being done, each face appearing, each sound shaping silence -- this is a fine learning.

The LORD spoke to Ahaz, saying: Ask for a sign from the LORD, your God; let it be deep as the netherworld, or high as the sky! But Ahaz answered, "I will not ask! I will not tempt the LORD!" Then Isaiah said: Listen, O house of David! Is it not enough for you to weary people, must you also weary my God? Therefore the Lord himself will give you this sign: the virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel.
(Isaiah 7:10-14)

The young girl, the ordinary maiden, will be pregnant, give birth, find name for the child -- and live day to day the ordinary reality of her life, his life, and the life of the people walking by.

Door opens -- Saskia, Cesco, and Sando come in door to kitchen where Mu-ge looks out from wicker basket and I listen to Dvorak's Romance in f-minor on Maine Public Radio's Morning Classical Music.

No Buddha? No Christ? Fluppidup!

(This is where "Mu" arises.) Un-ask the question. Instead, glance over at snoozing cat, snoozing dog -- and let addled border collie back out to sunshine embracing him in front of barn door.

Tall trees sway further up Ragged incline!

Offenbach's ballet of snowflakes ends as Snowbowl makes snow this cold morning

Indivisibility.

Otherwise, blame and guilt emerge with the divisible.

Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross.
(--St. John of the Cross)

The forest grows wood. Some will be shaped into a cross to hang the indivisible. Some wood hangs silently in a deep solitude where awareness wanders.

The trail enters
Pines, the sound of pines;
The farther one goes,
The rarer the sound.
Mountain's light
Colors the river water.
Among peaks,
A monk sits Zen,
Facing an old branch
Of a cassia tree,
Once a seedling in the Liang.
- Chiao-jan (730-799)

It is hard imagining any sense coming from explanation offered by men about the world of politics and society, much less thought and wisdom. Maybe -- poets. As it is, nature itself is truest expression of what is beyond comprehension. The wet leaves on mountain path will stiffen tonight in freezing plunge.

Ah, who has the power to heal me?
now wholly surrender yourself!
Do not send me
any more messengers,
they cannot tell me what I must hear.
(STANZA 6, Spiritual Canticle, John of the Cross)

No more messengers, poet says.

Pass quietly the pine tree.

Sapling grows beyond brook.

Across footbridge, just there.

Ragged indivisibility.

Cesco is better. As odd as ever. But better. He reminds me of so many I meet. Oddly themselves.

Don?t be concerned with
who is wise and who is stupid.
Do not discriminate the
sharp from the dull.
To practice whole-heartedly
is the true endeavor of the way.
Practice-realization is not
defiled with specialness;
it is a matter for every day.
- Dogen (1200-1253)

In cabin at dusk Cesco, Sando, and Mu-ge stretched on floor. I sat on one of Phil Root's benches. Just that. Saskia was still in Boothbay. The apple tree on Sally's land tilted on its broken arm.

Undoubtedly, what attracted [Jean]Gebser was the same clarity that he also appreciated in the Zen monasteries of Japan. According to him, clarity is an essential aspect of the arational structure of consciousness. He lived by this principle himself. Gebser stood for intensification, rather than mystical or psychedelic expansion, of consciousness. Clarity is both a means and a sign of such intensification. Gebser approvingly cited a remark by Paul Klee, one of the great pioneers of the aperspectival consciousness in art. "I begin more and more to see behind or, better, through things."
(-- from "JEAN GEBSER: Philosopher of the New Order" - By Georg Feuerstein)

Life is impermanent, they say. Still, it is nice to be gathered with one another.

Cesco looks up when I say that to Saskia.

No names. Things are what they are. The attachment we have for names is similar to the attachment we have for ownership, privilege, and personal wealth.

To study the Way,
whether moving or still,
is nothing more or less
than becoming quite intimate
with our own nature,
resting quite easy in our natural state.
- Anon

The natural state is the thing itself.

(Ding an sich, i.e the thing itself, was defined by Immanuel Kant in his "Critique of Pure Reason" as the reality of the thing -- the essence beyond the knowledge of appearances. Or Zu die sache selbst (to the things themselves) -- Edmund Husserl's phrase in his phenomenology -- the attempt to describe the structures of experience as they present themselves to consciousness, without recourse to theory, deduction, or assumptions from other disciplines.)

Pointing to natural state -- unadorned and unmediated, unappropriated and uncovered -- seeks to see individuals (things or persons) in and of themselves.

What I envision is a rebuilding of monasticism without the need for monasteries, a recovery of sacred language without a church in which to use it, an education in the soul that takes place outside of school, the creation of an artful world accomplished by persons who are not artists, the emergence of a psychological sensibility once the discipline of psychology has been forgotten, a life of intense community with no organization to belong to, and achieving a life of soul without having made any progress toward it.
(p.40, in Meditations, On the Monk Who Dwells in Daily Life, by Thomas Moore)

The monastic life at dusk between Bald Mountain and Ragged Mountain lifts water by spoonful to the dog Cesco on his side between brother cat Mu-ge and sister dog Sando.

This enlivens and leavens the world -- spoonfuls of water -- or soup, taken in the presence of attentive and engaged community.

At least...for now.

We are being lead out.

Into the open -- that nameless place.

We are.

Cesco is ill.

In the Mountains
Common birds
Love to chatter
Where men live quiet lives.
Peaceful clouds
Seem jealous
When the moon is bright.
In the world,
The ten thousand affairs
Are not my affairs.
My only shame,
It’s autumn,
And I have no poem.
- Szu K’ung-t’u (837-908)

The athletic Border collie is unmoving on kitchen floor.
He is back from animal hospital. “Call me if you need to tonight,” the vet says.

Saskia keeps watch.

It is silence, after all, holds us.

Stop searching for phrases
and chasing after words.
Take the backward step
and turn the light inward.
Your body-mind of itself
will drop off,
and your original face will appear.
If you want to attain just this,
immediately practice just this.
(- Dogen 1227)

We pronounce promises at shop after conversation. Michael, Pia, Jean, Genevieve hear Saskia and I say yes to what and who we are.

In silence we face and admit that gap between the depths of our being, which we consistently ignore, and the surface which is so often untrue to our own reality. We recognize the need to be at home with ourselves in order that we may go out to meet others, not just with the mask of affability, but with real commitment and authentic love.
(--Thomas Merton, d.10Dec.1968))

Just this.

Time does somersaults. Anselm says, "The whole universe was created by God, and God was born of Mary."

This December, that which seeks Itself turns round and round in wobbly gyre, feet over head and hands with extended arms out from rotating shoulders. The season turns, and with its turning, we turn too.

When true simplicity is gained,
To bow and to bend we will not be ashamed,
To turn, to turn will be our delight,
'Til by turning, turning we come 'round right.
(from “Simple Gifts” -- a Shaker Hymn written by Shaker Elder Joseph Brackett, Jr. in 1848)

Time present and time past cartwheel when we try to figure and follow which comes first in the realm of the Spirit.

Reading: A sermon by St Anselm:
O Virgin, by whose blessing all nature is blessed!
Blessed Lady, sky and stars, earth and rivers, day and night -- everything that is subject to the power or use of man -- rejoice that through you they are in some sense restored to their lost beauty and are endowed with inexpressible new grace. All creatures were dead, as it were, useless for men or for the praise of God, who made them. The world, contrary to its true destiny, was corrupted and tainted by the acts of men who served idols. Now all creation has been restored to life and rejoices that it is controlled and given splendour by men who believe in God.

The universe rejoices with new and indefinable loveliness. Not only does it feel the unseen presence of God himself, its Creator, it sees him openly, working and making it holy. These great blessings spring from the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb.

Through the fullness of the grace that was given you, dead things rejoice in their freedom, and those in heaven are glad to be made new. Through the Son who was the glorious fruit of your virgin womb, just souls who died before his life-giving death rejoice as they are freed from captivity, and the angels are glad at the restoration of their shattered domain.

Lady, full and overflowing with grace, all creation receives new life from your abundance. Virgin, blessed above all creatures, through your blessing all creation is blessed, not only creation from its Creator, but the Creator himself has been blessed by creation.

To Mary God gave his only-begotten Son, whom he loved as himself. Through Mary God made himself a Son, not different but the same, by nature Son of God and Son of Mary. The whole universe was created by God, and God was born of Mary. God created all things, and Mary gave birth to God. The God who made all things gave himself form through Mary, and thus he made his own creation. He who could create all things from nothing would not remake his ruined creation without Mary.

God, then, is the Father of the created world and Mary the mother of the re-created world. God is the Father by whom all things were given life, and Mary the mother through whom all things were given new life. For God begot the Son, through whom all things were made, and Mary gave birth to him as the Saviour of the world. Without God’s Son, nothing could exist; without Mary’s Son, nothing could be redeemed.

Truly the Lord is with you, to whom the Lord granted that all nature should owe as much to you as to himself.
(from Office of Readings, Dec.8, Feast of the Immaculate Conception)

We re-dedicate hermitage to this wholeness of Mary.

At conversation last evening the artists named Clarity remind it is a round path, not a flat path, we each walk.

Listening this morning to Joseph Campbell. He says: God is a metaphor for a mystery that absolutely transcends all human categories of thought. Even the categories of 'being' and 'non-being.' Those are categories of thought. (from video, "The World of Joseph Campbell; The Hero's Journey")

Christianity is metaphor. As is Judaism, Islam, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, etcetera. Those who hold metaphors as true are one category of seers. Those not holding them as true are another category of seers. We are invited to be seers. We speak at times and we remain silent at times in the presence of what is seen.

When we ask, "What is true?" we place ourselves in response to invitation. To ask is invitation into the open. The very question itself is invitation to contemplation, meditation, or prayer. Ask, and drop into the way of metaphor.

In language, a metaphor is a rhetorical trope where a comparison is made between two seemingly unrelated subjects. Typically, a first object is described as being a second object. In this way, the first object can be economically described because implicit and explicit attributes from the second object can be used to fill in the description of the first.

A trope is a play on words, a word used in something other than what is considered its literal or normal form. It comes from the Greek word, 'tropos,' which means a "turn", as in heliotrope, a flower which turns toward the sun. We can imagine a trope as a way of turning a word away from its normal meaning, or turning it into something else.
(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trope)

There is a dance that occurs with words. The steps of the dance are idiorhythmic to the dancer and the word. Idiorhythmic, that is, where each person and word could follow their own rhythm and tempo.

The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an eye for resemblance.
(-Aristotle, De Poetica, 322 B.C.)

"Una voce dicentis" (one voice saying) was the Latin phrase leading to "Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus" (holy, holy, holy) in the preface to the celebration of the Presence in Sacrament at Catholic Liturgy.

What is holy is the sound of seeing.

On the 10th of December, (what we hold as the feast of Thomas Merton), we pronounce again our 3 promises of Contemplation, Conversation, and Correspondence.

Contemplation is the promise of simplicity.
It is a gift of poverty inviting open waiting, receptive trust, attention, and watchful presence. It is a simple Being-With.
It is attentive presence.

Conversation is the promise of integrity.
It is a chaste and complete intention to listen and speak, lovingly and respectfully, with each and all made present to us. It is a wholeness of listening and speaking.
It is root silence.

Correspondence is the promise of faithful engagement.
It is responsible attention and intention offered obediently to the Source of all Being, to the Human Family, to Nature. It is a faithful engagement with all sentient beings, with this present world, with existence with all its needs & joys, sorrows & hope.
It is transparent service.
{Three promises: Contemplation, Conversation, Correspondence ...as held by Meetingbrook Dogen & Francis Hermitage “m.o.n.o.”(monastics of no other).}

We listen silently.

For that one voice.

Speaking as Itself.

Mother. Metaphor.

A blessed fruit.

Turning with love.

Mary is our sister. The present is our mother. What is here is What Is here.

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. (John 19:25-27, NIV)

“Here” is our only home. Jesus understood that “here” is our mother. When we are present we are mother. When we are in the presence of another we are in the presence of mother.

Mother is presence, and presence is always here.

Waking from sleep,
I can hear the dew in the trees.
I open my door
Overlooking the garden.
The winter moon
Clears the eastern cliffs;
Water murmurs
Through roots of bamboo.
The mountain stream’s
Beyond my hearing,
But a mountain bird cries once,
And then again.
Leaning in the doorway,
I follow night through to dawn.
What words can I summon
For such mystery and peace?
- Liu Tzung-yuan (773-819)

To be conceived and born whole is to be undifferentiated from presence itself. Mary, says the feast of the Immaculate Conception, was conceived and born whole. Thus it was that Presence Itself received permission to be let go through her. To be sent through here.

“Permission” comes from the Latin per = through, and mitto, mittere = to send, or, to let go.

Mary was sent through God. God was let go through Mary.

It is a wonderful feast. It is the feast of Letting Presence Through.

“Whole sight,” wrote John Fowles beginning his novel Daniel Martin, “Or all the rest is desolation.”

The world knows desolation and the ambition of the half-sighted.

Here it is time for whole sight. Mary whole is our permitted wholeness.

Mary, Spirit-Sophia. Mother of God. You and I. And each about us.

Recourse.

War is deception and lie.

Common Form (1918)
If any question why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied.
(Kipling)

War is now a permanent state for America. As long as there remains a single terrorist, America is at war. The next difficult question will be: Who is not a terrorist? Anyone opposing the ascendant reign of righteous warfare and crusade will be considered terrorist.

A Dead Statesman (1924)
I could not dig, I dared not rob,
And so I lied to please the mob.
Now all my lies are proved untrue,
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale will serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young?
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)

Young men face down and kill men, women, and children in Iraq. They will have to live with the screams and scents of carnage. These men will come home. They will haunt the homes and streets of our neighborhoods. We will have to face terror in our streets -- the terror of felt memory in men. These haunted men and memories -- men who've done their job well will look out from eyes and smiles -- these decent warriors gone to the bidding of their leaders.

Our streets and roads will be filled with memories drifting like ghosts in and out of family cars, shopping malls, and places of worship.

The real way circulates everywhere;
how could it require practice or enlightenment?
The essential teaching is fully available;
how could effort be necessary?
Furthermore, the entire mirror is free of dust;
why take steps to polish it?
Nothing is separate from this very place;
why journey away?
- Dogen 1227

We can pray. Soon we will have nothing remaining but prayer for these our brothers, fathers, and sons.

Pray, then, we will.

For the living.

And dead.

Among us.

John was ahead of his time. He saw God in stones.
For I tell you, God can raise up children to Abraham from these stones. (Matthew 3)

Paul was a theologian for our time. He saw 'welcome' as the glory of God.
Welcome one another, then, as Christ welcomed you, for
the glory of God. (Romans 15)

What is this for? What is that for?

For the glory of God.

Glory is defined, and defines us, as: Praise, honor, admiration, or distinction, accorded by common consent to a person or thing -- says Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

Common -- i.e. -- belonging equally to or shared equally by two or more.

Each stone, each person, and everything between -- is the glory of God.

The voice of success and profit
May stir the vault of heaven,
But not this place.
In the rounds of the day,
You wear threadbare clothing
And eat simple fare.
When the mountain snow deepens,
Your thoughts
Are far from those of people.
Occasionally,
Immortals pass your door
And knock.
- Kuan-hsiu (832-912)

Imagine.

Revise our theology.