I feel sick. It's not virus. It is the secret nation.

It is a recurring feeling. I felt it during El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala. And yet, there are moments when something else arises. Like the feeling during profound illness that the nausea cannot last forever, I like the fact that George Bush and this administration -- recurring reminders of hidden governance and secret agendas -- that they, too, will go away.

There is a Pali chant which I like very much. I don't know if I have the tune quite right but it goes something like "All things are impermanent, they arise and they pass away. To live in harmony with this truth brings great happiness." How do we learn to live in harmony with this truth of impermanence? When we first meet it we think of it only as: "our life will end." But impermanence is in each moment. Each instant. All things are impermanent - all the time. Everything arises and passes away. And in the practice of zazen we see this.
(from "Dogen Zenji's Zazen," a talk by Abbess Zenkei Blanche Hartman, Oct. 1999)

We sat Sunday Evening. At table we read from Cheri Huber. She wrote, Life will not prove to you that you are inadequate. The only evidence of your inadequacy comes from those voices, that conditioning.
(in Trying To Be Human, Zen talks, c.1995).
The voices she refers to are the inner voices of resistance. These are the voices we hear in our head every day, those saying, 'You can't do it,' and 'You're not good enough.'

I hear these voices whenever I hear the gloating voices of the President and other Republican examples of -- (what has become for me) -- smirking arrogance. It is hard to love these people. It's hard to respect someone you feel is smacking you around. It's one thing to stand in church and pray for victims of tsunami devastation, or sit on zafu holding difficult people in lovingkindness metta inclusion. It is quite another thing to discern harm being done or discriminate whether someone is actively intending to commit crimes in your name. Further, the difficulty of what then to do.

Suffering love is not an easy prescription to fill.

"To enter deeply into meditation is to enter into the mystery of suffering love. It is to encounter the woundedness of our human nature. We are all deeply wounded from our infancy and bear these wounds in the unconscious. The repetition of the mantra is a way of opening these depths of the unconsciousness and exposing them to light. It is first of all to accept our woundedness and thus to realize that this is part of the wound of humanity. All the weaknesses we find in ourselves and all the things that upset us, we tend to try to push aside and get rid of. But we cannot do this. We have to accept that "this is me" and allow grace to come and heal it all. That is the great secret of suffering, not to push it back but to open the depths of the unconscious and to realize that we are not isolated individuals when we meditate, but are entering into the whole inheritance of the human family." (Bede Griffiths, p50).

The annoying invitation that Buddhist nirvanic awareness and Christian incarnational resurrection issues is that I consider -- not running away -- but being present to, consciously entering, and willingly transfiguring the reality Mr. Bush fashions and hurls at me and the world.

It is not enough for me to take the advice of a Republican friend -- that spirituality demands not paying attention to this world. (He, of course, regularly contributes money to Bush campaign and Republican causes). He writes:
How can you dare to blend politics and war with the right of passage of a soul, any soul that takes on for itself the task of completing its mission on this earth. That path compels noninvolvement with the various crisis's going around as they always will to confuse and dilute the strength necessary to complete the task. Be above the fray. All problems are designed to confuse and deter. (email, 5Feb05)

His words do not make me pause. Bede Griffiths' do.

"The resurrection does not consist merely of the appearances of Jesus to his disciples after his death. Many think that these appearances in Galilee and Jerusalem are the resurrection. But they are simply to confirm the faith of the disciples. The real resurrection is the passing beyond the world altogether. It is Jesus' passage from this world to the Father. It was not an event in space and time, but the passage beyond space and time to the eternal, to reality. Jesus passed into reality. That is our starting point.
It is into that world that we are invited to enter by meditation. We do not have to wait for physical death, but we can enter now into that eternal world. We have to go beyond the outer appearances of the senses and beyond the concepts of the mind, and open ourselves to the reality of Christ within, the Christ of the resurrection."
(p.77, Bede Griffiths OSB, The New Creation In Christ: Christian Meditation And Community (Springfield, IL: Templegate, 1994))

It is a bit confusing to consider that the eternal, that reality itself, is the dwelling place of the Christ. Not the easy Jesus of facile cultural one-upmanship, but the essential ground of existence as experienced by mystics of every tradition by whatever name they wish to call it.

The world of Bush and company must become suffused by the ground of being. Let them call out 'Jesus, Jesus,' 'Lord, Lord' -- as they slap aside the poor, create more suffering, and play king-of-the-hill. For the rest of us, there must be a quieter and more involved way to dwell as companion and family to those most distressed and discarded by powerful and wealthy forces.

I'll have to spend more time in meditation.

The sickness I feel at this time of conquest and disregard for law and common decency must find healing balm in quiet understanding of what is eternal and what is real.

No one owns truth. No one owns the world. Nor can truth remain hidden and privatized for long. Anyone pretending to own and control these things is performing a solipsistic pantomime in a dark corner of their mind they believe no one can see. It is not a world that can be claimed and owned by a permanent landed ownership class.

We are visitors here. The unhidden is a public park. We must dance together in the open.

Everything arises, and passes away.

And then arises in new light.

Can we see this?

A starting point.

To your health!

"Faith," says a man lecturing at University Synagogue in Irvine California, "is a conversation stopper."

Invoke "Faith" and no criticism is brooked.

It is worth a moment of pondering.

If there is a God, however "God" is conceived or conceptualized, there's no need for Faith. If God is here, there, and everywhere -- then something more obvious is called for than belief without evidence.

The reason those who search
For the Way are unaware
Of its reality is simply
Because from the first
They accept all their
Discriminations for true.
Those have been the very source
For birth and death.
How clear, in a dream,
The Three Worlds are.
When you wake,
All is empty,
All the myriad worlds are Mu!
Where does this seeing take place?
The entire earth is the eyeball of a
Buddhist monk --
Take one more step!
- Hakuin (1685-1769)

Let's take a step back. There's no reason to gasp with horror that cherished beliefs and institutions are crumbling or are about to disappear into irrelevance. It is more the option to grasp what it is that religious revelation has attempted to make manifest in this sensible world.

What is attempting to manifest in this world and on this earth?

We must walk, carefully and caringly, the ground of our being. The Golden Rule -- treat others as we wish to be treated; don't do to others what you don't want done to you -- constitutes the ground we all walk.

Compassion and love survey that ground with an attentive presence all their own -- they are the present moment unveiled with joy and inclusive appreciation.

Charles Murray, conversing on C-Span, suggests we might wish "To be a valued place" -- i.e., a person or place that would be missed if absent or gone. A Buddhist response to that fine suggestion might be that a valued place has no absence, is ever-present, and cannot be missed.

We long for wholeness of presence, wholeness of being, and wholeness of seeing.

Mind's destiny is the madhouse, because a part
trying to pretend to be the whole is already mad, insane.
(p.28, The Grass Grows By Itself, Osho)

We must learn to dance with one another, to turn with one another -- to fall into conversation without fear.

We have two options -- conversation and war; and "Faith" is a conversation stopper.
(Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason)

Why are we at war?

"MU!"

We must unask the question that has as its aim to convince or explain. Our need right now is to investigate. We need to investigate, profoundly and without fear, what is right before our eyes, right under our feet.

In effect, we must begin to practice in, with, and through one another. Practice what?

Practice the sacred ordinary.

For now, Meetingbrook sees contemplation, conversation, and correspondence as sacred ordinary practice.

For now.

No more!

At what point does discussion cease to add, but only fall to subtraction?

The pointless mind of distraction.

In the autumn of my sixty-sixth year,
I’ve already lived a long time.
The intense moonlight
Is bright upon my fact.
There’s no need to discuss
The principles of koan study;
Just listen carefully to the wind
Outside the pines and cedars.
- Ryonen Genso (1646-1711)

Nothing else to say. We simply look.

In silence.

Is there more?

No.

The party's over.

Swearing-in fallen silent, dancing done, State of Union thrown into filing cabinet of speeches delivered -- America's world goes on with myth-making, resource-taking, and altruism-faking.

It is a question, they say, of trying to make the world safe for freedom and democracy.

America has appropriated a particular interpretation of Christianity and claimed all of Christ. We are also appropriating a Buddhist koan that asks to show the Buddha.

If you understand the answer clearly,
There was no Buddha before you
And there is no Buddha to come.
- Mumon

America the new Buddha? This Buddha is not Buddhist. This Buddha is not even a Buddha. But, that doesn't matter. In their own eyes, America is never wrong, has no doubts, and is doing the bidding of all gods, devas, angels, talk-show hosts, and born-again reconstituted messiahs -- and therefore is the Buddha, the Christ, and Apocolyptic Avenging Angel rolled into one governing group of ideologically intoxicated good old boys (and one girl).

Joan Chittister writes from Ireland about an incident and a mindset:
Dublin, on U.S. Inauguration Day, didn't seem to notice. Oh, they played a few clips that night of the American president saying, "The survival of liberty in our land increasingly depends on the success of liberty in other lands."

But that was not their lead story.

The picture on the front page of The Irish Times was a large four-color picture of a small Iraqi girl. Her little body was a coil of steel. She sat knees up, cowering, screaming madly into the dark night. Her white clothes and spread hands and small tight face were blood-spattered. The blood was the blood of her father and mother, shot through the car window in Tal Afar by American soldiers while she sat beside her parents in the car, her four brothers and sisters in the back seat.

A series of pictures of the incident played on the inside page, as well. A 12-year-old brother, wounded in the fray, falls face down out of the car when the car door opens, the pictures show. In another, a soldier decked out in battle gear, holds a large automatic weapon on the four children, all potential enemies, all possible suicide bombers, apparently, as they cling traumatized to one another in the back seat and the child on the ground goes on screaming in her parent's blood.

No promise of "freedom" rings in the cutline on this picture. No joy of liberty underlies the terror on these faces here.
(Published on Friday, January 28, 2005 by the National Catholic Reporter, "What the Rest of the World Watched on Inauguration Day" by Joan Chittister) (http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0128-35.htm)

"It is a little frightening," someone said yesterday passing through the shop, "that what these people in charge are doing is being done in the names of each and every one of us." At conversation yesterday evening we read "The Politics of Victimization," by Mel Gilles. Anyone who has known abuse or bullies will shiver in recognition at her words. (http://www.awakenedwoman.com/gilles_abuse.htm)

In the Laura Soul Friend Circle last evening there was considerable passion and wisdom about abuse, bullies, and spiritual caution.

"God made the angels to show Him splendor -- as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind! If He suffers us to fall to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can, and yes, then we may clamor like champions...if we have the spittle for it. And no doubt it delights God to see splendor where He only looked for complexity. But it's God's part, not our own, to bring ourselves to that extremity! Our natural business lies in escaping..."
(Sir Thomas More, in A Man for All Seasons, play by Robert Bolt)

Escaping is a tricky tactic.

Joseph Campbell writes in his classic work about the Monomyth:
The hero is the man [or woman] of self-achieved submission. But submission to what? That precisely is the riddle that today we have to ask ourselves and that is everywhere the primary virtue and historic deed of the hero to have solved. As Professor Arnold J. Toynbee indicates in his six-volume study of the laws of the rise and disintegration of civilizations, schism in the soul, schism in the body social, will not be revolved by any scheme of return to the good old days (archaism), or by programs guaranteed to render an ideal projected future (futurism), or even by the most realistic, hardheaded work to weld together again the deteriorating elements. Only birth can conquer death -- the birth, not of the old thing again, but of something new. Within the soul, within the body social, there must be -- if we are to experience long survival -- a continuous "recurrence of birth" (palingenesia)to nullify the unremitting recurrences of death. For it is by means of our own victories, if we are not regenerated, that the work of Nemesis is wrought: doom breaks from the shell of our very virtue. Peace then is a snare; war is a snare; change is a snare; permanence is a snare. When our day is come for our victory of death, death closes in; there is nothing we can do, except be crucified -- and resurrected; dismembered totally, and then reborn.
(pp.16-17, in The Hero With A Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell)

And then:
Professor Toynbee uses the terms "detachment" and "transfiguration" to describe the crisis by which the higher spiritual dimension is attained that makes possible the resumption of the work of creation.
(Campbell, p.17)

Many do not know what to think about America's war and strategy in Iraq and the threat of expansion into other countries. Disintegration and schism worm through the soul, through body politic and body social -- causing a civilization close at home and in the desert to shiver.

I think it is time to escape into the present reality.

We are to be born from the middle, the center of submission and recurrence.

No Christian, Buddhist, Neocon, or anyone else can appropriate to themselves that which belongs to each and every person, each and every name.

What is it that belongs?

Being born -- once and again. Again -- once and for all.

Renounce bullies. Escape abusers. Hide in the center of truth and awareness.

Dissolve abusive dreams and let bullying behavior disintegrate into its own demise.

We must be about life. About love and compassion. We must be about the work of creation.

Don't be fooled.

Resurrect...

Rebirth...

Oneself.

Beginning, now.

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.